she said, her voice not much more than a whisper. She wasn’t stupid. She only had to look at him to know that he and she had nothing in common. He looked liked money, talked like money. He had the whitest fingernails she’d ever seen and hands that belonged on a statue or something. All of him looked like a work of art—his hands, his face and lips, his height and beauty…. And here she was, chipped black nail polish, wet from the rain she’d been arrested in, hair falling in lank waves into her face, her school uniform a sodden mess, no money, no hope, and her whole life a fucking train wreck.
“There is nothing I don’t want to know about you,” Søren said, and seemed to mean it. “And I assure you, nothing you tell me will shock or disgust me. Nothing will make me change my mind about you.”
“Change your mind? You’ve already made up your mind about me? What’s the verdict?”
“The verdict is simply this—I am willing and capable of helping you out of this mess you’ve gotten yourself into.”
“Can we call it a ‘pickle’? Pickle sounds less scary than mess.”
“It’s a disaster, young lady. You could easily spend years in juvenile detention for what you did tonight. One of the cars you stole belonged to someone important and influential, and he’s apparently determined that you don’t see sunlight until age twenty-one. Keeping you out of juvenile detention will take a great deal of doing on my part. Blessedly, I have some connections. Or, more accurately, I have someone who has connections. The time and expense will be considerable,” he said in a tone that seemed to imply he relished the time and expense, which made no sense. But nothing about the man or his interest in her made any sense at all.
“And you’ll go to all this trouble for me … why?” Eleanor lifted her head a little higher and stared straight into his eyes.
“Because there is nothing I wouldn’t do to protect you, Eleanor. Nothing I wouldn’t do to help you. And nothing I wouldn’t do to save you. Nothing.”
A chill passed through Eleanor’s whole body. Someone walked over her grave, as her grandmother would say. She never understood that phrase, that feeling before. Now she did.
“But my assistance doesn’t come without a price.”
“Right.” Eleanor smirked at him. “So this is when we get back to my first question and the fucking of the kids at church. Oh, well, if you insist.”
“Do you value your worth as a child of God so little that you think the only thing I could possibly want from you is sex?”
The question hit Eleanor so hard she almost flinched. But she wouldn’t let him see he’d gotten to her. Her mom would disown her for this. Her dad was probably eight states away by now. Her grandparents were seven minutes from death. Her entire future was about six feet under. Still she wasn’t about to let anyone take away her pride. She at least had that. For now, anyway.
“So that’s a no?”
Søren raised his eyebrow at her and she almost giggled. She was beginning to like this guy. She’d fallen in love with him already—utterly, completely and until the end of the world or even after. Never guessed she’d end up liking him, too.
“That would be a no. I will require something of you, however, in exchange for my assistance.”
“Do you always talk like this?”
“You mean articulately?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Weird. So what price am I paying? Hope it’s not my firstborn child. Don’t want kids.”
“My price is simply this—in exchange for my assistance, I only ask that you do what I tell you to do from now on.”
“Do what you tell me to do?”
“Yes. I want you to obey me.”
“From now on? Like … how long?”
And he smiled then and she knew she should have been afraid but something in that smile … It was the first time that night she felt safe.
“Forever.”
“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”
She heard a voice tinged with a French accent and tried to ignore it as she always tried to ignore French-accented voices. The last thing Nora wanted to do was wake up. In her dream she was with Søren and he was twenty-nine and she fifteen and their story had only begun. And she knew if she opened her eyes, she could very well be facing the end of their story. She wanted to stay in her dream and would have stayed in it forever but for the cold, delicate fingers dancing across her face like spider legs.
Nora opened her eyes.
2 THE KING
Kingsley Edge stood in front of the mirror in his large walk-in closet studying his wounds as he changed from his torn shirt into another. The layers of marble-colored bruises Søren had left on him after their one night together had already turned from red to black. He could have hated the priest for the reminders upon his body of a night he feared would never be repeated. Still, he cherished the bruises now as much as he did when they were boys at school. Far more than the scars on his chest, gifts from enemies with guns, he wore them as badges of honor.
He raised his hand to the worst of his old wounds—a scar on the left side of his chest a few inches below his heart. A strange injury that looked more like he’d been stabbed than shot. Who knows? Maybe he had been.
The mission that had left him with that scar, with two of his four bullet wounds, he remembered almost nothing of. His mind had buried the memory, and he had no desire to dig it back up. Waking up in the hospital in Paris … That moment he would never forget. He would probably think of it on his deathbed. That hospital bed … it should have been his deathbed, could have been …
But for the visitor.
He had come to consciousness slowly, arduously, crawling through the deep dark on his way back into the light. He had dragged himself up through the trench of drugs and pain, bitter pain and the failure of the mission. Sensing white light in the room, he’d kept his eyes closed, unable yet to confront the sun.
From over his shoulder he’d heard low voices—one female, crisp and careful, and one male, authoritative and unyielding.
“He will live,” the man’s voice said in French. It wasn’t a question he asked the woman, but an order given.
“We’ll do what we can for him, of course.” Of course, she said. Bien sûr. But Kingsley had heard the lie in her voice.
“You will do everything for him. Everything. From this moment on he is your only patient. He is your only concern.”
“Oui, mon père. Mais …” Mais … but … Her voice betrayed her fear. Mon père? Kingsley’s muddled mind had tried to wrap itself around the words. His father had been dead for years. Who was the father she spoke to?
“Consider his life as precious as your own. Do you understand that?”
There it was. Kingsley would have smiled in his half sleep were it not for the tubes down his throat. He knew a death threat when he heard it. Consider his life as precious as your own…. That was French anyone could translate. He lives and you live. He dies and …
But who cared enough about him anymore to make even an idle threat? When joining le Légion he’d put one name down on his next-of-kin line. One name. The only family he had left. And yet, he wasn’t family, not at all. Why would he of all people come to him now?
“He will live,” the woman had promised, and this time she spoke no “mais.”