Royal Treatment (Royals of Danovar 2)

He shook his head sharply. “I’m not telling them anything. I won’t lie, but I can charm the hell out of them, dance around the issue, obfuscate. That’s the only shot I’ve got at nailing down the votes I need.” Bitterness tugged his mouth into a frown. “The only way they’ll follow me is if I keep things positive, give them what they want, show them a good time. That’s all I’m good for, after all.”

Anna’s eyes shone. “Eric, that’s not true. You have to know that’s not true.”

He barked a laugh. “Why are you arguing? What do you have to complain about? A good time is all you wanted from me, too.”

She reared back like he’d slapped her, but it was too late to take it back. After a second her expression transformed from hurt to betrayal to anger, and she spit out, “Well, apparently all you wanted from me was my brain, and now not even that is good enough for you since you won’t listen to my advice.”

Still reeling from her news, he lashed out. “In this situation, no, apparently your brain wasn’t good enough since you couldn’t get your research done on the schedule we agreed upon when you accepted my offer.”

Her hands curled into fists. “Did you even mean it when you said I was beautiful? Did you even enjoy any of it? Or was I just another conquest to you?” She hurled the questions at him like daggers, and each one stabbed a little deeper.

“That has nothing to do with it,” he snapped back.

“I think it does.”

“Okay, fine, it does. Yes, I think you’re beautiful, and what we had was special—but you’re a distraction now that I’m trying to do real work, and I’m a distraction for you too, apparently. Neither of us are right for each other. We should’ve stuck to the small talk lessons and never taken things further than that.”

“You can’t mean that.”

No, he didn’t. He could never. But his mouth stayed shut even as his heart screamed at him to go to her, to apologize, to find some way to work this whole mess out.

She threw back her shoulders and reached for the doorknob. “Fine,” she said. “If that’s what you want, then you can have it, have your party, have your good time. But I won’t stand by to watch it. I can’t support what you’re doing to my research. And I can’t see you this way.”

She paused, giving him one last chance—but he simply reached for his cufflinks and turned his back, finishing his preparations for the party.

When the door closed behind her it was whisper-soft. It sounded like the end.

16

The next morning, Eric felt like he had a hangover. The party hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped. Sure, he’d managed to say all the right things and give everyone the good time they’d come for, but he hadn’t achieved the purpose of the night. The members of the press might have been fooled into thinking the research was ready. The members of Parliament, not so much.

Now, sitting at a breakfast meeting with Simon, he groaned as he gulped down half a cup of coffee in one go. It scorched his throat, but he couldn’t help but feel like he deserved it. The look on Anna’s face last night, the way he’d turned his back on her when she’d walked out—that couldn’t possibly have gone any worse. But what was done was done, and now he was stuck between a rock and a hard place without his best advisor.

“So. The Parliament task force won’t budge on their demands,” Simon commented. They both already knew that—it was the reason for this morning’s meeting to dig through the bill one last time and see if there was any way to save it without either cutting coverage for the poorest Danovians or cutting funding and changing the currently-beneficial medical research laws for projects like Anna’s.

“What about section twelve B?” Eric asked, rubbing his face as he sorted through the papers. “If we could trim some of those requirements up, it might save some on the budget.”

“Not nearly enough.”

Eric slammed his empty coffee mug to the table. “This is ridiculous,” he declared. “This bill would benefit everyone, but all that task force cares about is which big health corporation is putting money in their pockets. They don’t want to cover sick people, homeless people, the citizens who need it most. And if I refuse to let them make cuts there, they’re going to cut funding for medical research and kill the loopholes that allow scientists to fast-track their projects here. How can that possibly be good for the economy, not to mention all the people who would benefit from a fucking cure for cancer?”

Simon raised an eyebrow. “Hey, I’m on your side, buddy,” he tried, but Eric had built up too much steam to stop now.

Eric pulled a piece of paper from the back of a binder on the edge of the table. “Look at this,” he said, shoving it at Simon. “This is how close her team was to proving her dissertation, to making a real breakthrough toward a cure. If she’d just trusted me or even just done her job and gotten done on time, we wouldn’t have to deal with these shitheads in Parliament who only care about themselves.”

Simon glanced at the paper but then looked back up at him. “How is Anna?” he asked carefully.

“How would I know?”

“Maybe because you’ve been dating her?”

“Not anymore,” Eric said shortly.

Simon crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, waiting for an explanation. Eric refused to give one, stabbing his fork at his eggs with far more violence than necessary. Finally, though, the silent game of chicken became too much and he huffed and gave Simon the rundown on what had happened between him and Anna.

Simon shook his head when he was done and whistled, then, after a quick glance at Eric’s face, decided not to comment further. He squinted at the paper Eric had given him instead. “Is this in Greek?” he asked.

“No, it’s an analyzer printout. Results from one of the team’s trials.”