I check my watch. Noelani had a meeting with Maxim at CadeCo an hour ago. She might still be there. I might still have a chance to catch her before she boards the plane back to Manaroa. I don’t even know what I’ll ask or offer, but she needs to know she can stop looking before she even starts because I’m the right man. We’ll figure out what that means.
“Let’s pick this up later,” I tell the team, already grabbing my coat and striding from the strategy room to the sound of their surprised murmurs.
I’m fitting together a plan as I go to Grimstone’s parking garage and hop in one of our black SUVs. It’s cold as shit, but I don’t waste time warming up the car. I have to get to Noelani—and anyway, after you’ve wintered over in Antarctica, it’s hard to complain about the mostly mild Beltway winters. Even with the snow fluffed over everything like so much cake frosting, the temperature is mild enough that I don’t even bother to pull on my gloves. I let the cold keep my thoughts sharp as I pull out into the streets and head for CadeCo.
I need to approach this exactly right—I need Noelani to see why this is the best possible way forward for her. I need her to see that I’m the right man for her, even though I left her cold and unhappy last night. I’ll convince her that it won’t ever happen again.
I’m a man of plans, an expert in strategy, famed for my cool head and quick thinking, but when I finally carve my way through the snowbound streets to the glassy offices of CadeCo, I’m a tangle of messy, jangled nerves.
I’ve gone to the ends of the earth. I’ve faced down bullets and fire. I’ve held literal lives in my hands, and yet nothing compares to the raw terror of facing Noelani and risking her saying no.
After how I left last night, no is the answer I deserve . . . but won’t accept.
I don’t even bother trying to park the SUV; I pull up to the snowbank marking the curb and I slam the car into park. The possibility that I might be too late crawls up my throat, and my heart thuds against my ribcage as I get out of the SUV and mount the salted stairs up to the CadeCo doors.
Which is when Noelani steps out.
In a long wool coat and a scarf wound elegantly around her throat, she’s the picture of grace and radiance. She doesn’t wear a hat, and the light breeze toys with those long silky strands, sending them dancing around her shoulders and arms as she turns to say something to Vashti.
“Hurry up,” snaps an unpleasant voice in Manaroan.
Kimo emerges from behind the two women, his face flushed, featu
res tight with irritation. He grabs Noelani’s wrist and jerks her down the first two steps. She stumbles and almost falls.
All my carefully laid plans dissipate like a snowflake tossed into a broiler. My respectful logic, my careful diplomacy—all of it vanishes when that weasel Kimo manhandles Noelani like she’s his possession, and a worthless possession at that. In an instant, I’m up the steps, pulling his hand from her arm. Years of practice make it easy to find the right pressure points in his arm, even through his coat, and he yelps when I press on the nerve bundles with just enough pressure to make him stagger back.
“You. Don’t. Touch. The. Queen.”
My words have the report of bullets. Swift and lethal and aimed at his vital organs. His black, beady eyes narrow, outrage sketched on his face.
“Guards,” he commands, eyes locked with mine. “Take this man into custody.”
One of them reaches for me, and I stare him down, daring him to touch me.
“If you ever want to use that hand again,” I warn the guard, “I wouldn’t if I were you.”
Another steps forward, ratcheting up the tension encircling the group, and I instinctively reach for the piece at my back.
“Stop,” Noelani says. She steps close, her scent surrounding me, and lays a staying hand on mine where it rests on the weapon. “Grim, don’t.”
She looks up at me, pleading and caution in her eyes.
“Are you okay?” I ask softly, reaching for the arm Kimo wrenched. I push back the buttery leather of her glove to uncover marks his fingers left on her wrist. I glare at him, lips bared and teeth gritted. “You son of a bitch,” I snarl in Manaroan. “You leave marks on her, but I’m the threat?”
His eyes widen at my harsh accusation in his native tongue. “She’s my sister-in-law, my brother’s wife. I have her best interests at heart.”
I step close enough to growl in his ear for him alone to hear me. “She’s not your anything. Touch her again, they’ll be finding parts of you all along the Manaroan coast.”
He stiffens and, through what I recognize as fear, glares at me. “We need to leave, Your Majesty. I have guards with Ka’eo at home, but you wouldn’t want to delay getting back for your son’s first Christmas without his father.”
His manipulative words, carrying a transparent threat, have an immediate effect on Noelani. Her mouth goes tight and her shoulders straighten, but her hands tremble. Seeing that subtle vulnerability when she’s trying to project strength undoes me. I grab her small hands between mine and position myself so my height and the width of my shoulders blocks Kimo from her line of sight, and her from his.
“Lani.” I lower my voice so only she can hear.
Her gaze snaps up to mine at the familiarity. Not in royal outrage, but in recognition, reminiscence. The name she asked me to use, the one no one else does, takes us back to that suite; to our bed and a bottle of rum, to the confessions we shared that bound us together quickly, tightly, and in ways I haven’t with any other woman before.
“Last night,” I continue. “You said the right man and a ring might make things better.”