The Kingmaker

“That’s one of the fascinating things about it,” he says, the excitement piquing in his voice. “There’s this point where tropical and arctic merge. Antarctica is this study of paradoxes. An icy desert. Two things that never should have been together.” He kisses my neck, his breath feathering my hair with the words. “But they fit. Make sense. Belong.”

Like us.

I don’t say it, but I feel it.

He closes my hands on the map he sketched into my palms, holding them together and pulling me tighter to his chest.

“Now you’ve got the whole world in your hands.” He laughs into my hair. “I know. Corny, right?”

“No. Not corny.”

Sweet.

I open my hands again, studying the path he drew from the upper corner of my left palm to the lowest corner of my right. We’ll be at extreme points on the Earth. As far apart as two people could be.

If I was smart, I’d begin putting distance between us now, preparing my heart for his absence. For his ultimate, inevitable departure. But I’m not as smart as I thought I was. I turn to face him, wrap my arms around his neck, and push until he’s on his back and I’m straddling his hips with my thighs. I slide my hands into the luxury of his hair. With every kiss I brush my palms over it, erasing every mile that soon will separate us. We don’t

have long, but right now, I have this.

21

Maxim

I miss Lennix already.

I should be reviewing my notes for the team meeting in London, but what am I doing? Looking through pictures of us . . . of her at the tulip fields yesterday.

This is why. This is why the fuck I don’t do relationships. I have goals. All the things my father thinks I can’t do without him and the Cade name, I’ll do. Yet here I am, embarking on the most treacherous, important trip of my life and I’m grinning like an idiot at pictures of Lennix in a tulip field. The wind whipped through her hair like it did the first day I met her, but her eyes aren’t stormy or teary like they were at the protest. They smile at me, that indefinable gray. There’s a sea of color behind her, countless beautiful flowers, and she puts them all to shame.

“She really is gorgeous,” David murmurs from the seat next to me.

I darken my phone screen and snap my head around to glare at him. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Dude, I’m screwing her best friend. Seriously?”

“I don’t care if you . . . wait. What? You and Kimba?”

“Where have you been all week? Yeah, I tapped that on day two. You didn’t notice because you were too busy falling in love.”

“Am not.” I frown down at the dark screen.

“Oh, so you’re just tapping that ass, too?”

My fingers curl reflexively with the urge to strangle him for talking about Lennix and what we’ve shared like that. “You don’t know shit,” I say as casually as I can manage. “We’re all on vacation. Whatever.”

“Yeah, Kimba and I were totally upfront. Just a holiday lay. I mean, a damn good one. Did I mention her ass?”

“You don’t have to, thanks.”

“But when she leaves in a couple of days, I’m cool. That’s it. Can you say the same about Lennix?”

It feels like there’s an uprising at the cellular level in my body at the thought of leaving her forever. At the thought of reducing what we’ve shared to a holiday lay. I’m a learner, a researcher, a student. I don’t ignore facts because I don’t like what I find. Maybe that’s why I haven’t allowed myself to examine my visceral reaction to Lennix from the first moment I saw her. Seeing her again felt like a miracle. Am I really going to let her go for good?

“It’s probably good you do stay focused, though,” David says. “About a dozen things could go really wrong on this trip, man. And every one of them could kill us.”

“That’s pretty bleak. We’ll be fine. We’ve prepared as much as we possibly can.”

Hadn’t Shackleton prepared? And Douglas Mawson? They were not only both brilliant scientists, but also exceptional tacticians. Sheer will and the force of their leadership got them out of the worst conditions when things went wrong on their Antarctic expeditions. Both ended up stranded. Men died.