She wouldn’t dare complain—Thomas was doing this without proper footwear—although, damn, she was hungry, thirsty, and a freakish mix of both sweaty and cold.
As he glanced over, she saw him weighing his words before answering her, and she braced herself for some attempt at humor or distraction. About climate change? Absolutely.
Instead, he said, “I am a little worried, yeah. I’d expected Uncle Navy’s rescue team to be here by now.”
“So... we’re heading to the ski lodge, then.” She guessed correctly, because he nodded. “Will we make it before nightfall?”
“If we can keep up this pace,” Thomas said, “we should arrive just in time for the Queen’s Tea.”
“You’ve done your homework on Ustanzia,” Tash said.
“Type Queen Wila into Google, and one of the first things that comes up is Queen Wila’s Tea. She’s unflinchingly consistent in her need for afternoon caffeine.”
“It’s not the caffeine,” Tasha told him. “Ted says she drinks chamomile. Or sometimes just hot water with lemon. You know, Tea is strictly immediate-family-only, no exceptions. I hope they don’t make us wait outside.”
“If they do, you may want to rethink this whole Ted thing,” he said.
Believe me, I already am. She didn’t say it aloud, but God, she was thinking it so hard it was echoing inside of her head. Of course, his idea of the Ted thing was vastly different from the reality.
She also didn’t say, So. Teenaged fantasy unlocked—we finally slept together. Although last night had been a thirteen-year-old’s-fantasy of sleeping together rather than the racier eighteen-year-old version. Thomas’s touch had been about as impersonal as he could manage. His goal had clearly been to keep her warm, period.
But oh, a woman could dream.
After he’d carefully arranged himself around her, then covered them with brush, Tasha had thought that she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. The tension had been so damn high and weird. The warmth of his breath on the top of her head, the heavy weight of his arm around her ribs, his broad chest against her back, his knees tucked up behind hers, his solid thighs closer to her than the seat of a very comfortable chair...
Despite the fact that she’d spent considerable time fantasizing this exact scenario—through the darkness of the night, they huddled intimately close together, body against body, sharing warmth with every wild heartbeat—she couldn’t bring herself to make a move.
She couldn’t even make herself speak: What are you thinking, because frankly, I’m thinking about that bullshit I forced you to shovel your way out of when I climbed into your bed that stupid night, then puked all over your bathroom floor. I’m so sorry I disrespected you like that. I promise I won’t make the same mistake again, but if you ever change your mind about you and me, please let me know.
Instead, last night, she’d somehow fallen asleep. In doing so, she gave herself the gift of waking up in Thomas’s arms.
It felt as good as she’d always dreamed.
Now, as they continued their awkward scramble down this mountainside, she said, “Imagine, pretty much out of nowhere, your brother and father are both dead, and you’re suddenly the queen. Everyone and their hanger-on cousin is demanding a piece of you. Important meetings, lunches, dinners are now mostly obligations and public events—and most of the time you and your husband are forced to go in separate directions. I think it was a genius move on Queen Wila’s part—establishing the ritual of afternoon tea, immediate royal family only. Bite me, Uncle Hendrake. I mean, she didn’t say it, but she said it. Tea became her red-M&Ms-only diva demand, and most people didn’t get it. But Ted told me when he and Sebastian were younger, Tea was the only time in their day—usually only about twenty minutes when things were crazy-busy—that they got to see their parents. Now they’re older and out of the, you know, castle, but the family still uses it to reconnect.” She shook her head. “Not just that, but it’s their only chance to be completely safe. Or at least it was.” Okay, don’t go there.
“Will you be allowed in, when you and Ted get married?”
“If we get married,” Tash corrected Thomas, adding, “I don’t know. I won’t take it personally if I’m not.”
He glanced at her, eyebrow elevated.
“Really,” she said. In truth, she’d be relieved. The idea that she’d be allowed into Ted’s family’s inner sanctum was not a happy one. It felt wrong on so many levels.
But then again, the closest in years that she’d come to feeling right had been last night.
In Thomas’s arms.
But it was crystal clear that he didn’t feel the same.
Chapter Ten
The muscle in Thomas’s jaw got tighter and tighter as the smell of smoke in the air got stronger. He’d always been a teeth-clencher, even when he was a teenager, but at this rate he was moments from spitting out broken shards of enamel.
Tasha could feel her own heart racing, and it wasn’t from the physical exertion of the close-to-over hike. The smoke—probably started by that explosion they’d heard in the SUV yesterday morning—surely came from the Ustanzian ski lodge. Or whatever was left of it.
What else could it be? There was nothing else out here.
“Thomas,” she said, “This smoke...? Is it...?” and she didn’t have to go any further. He was already nodding his head, the absolute Yes to her unspoken question right there in his dark brown eyes.
She had to sit down, and he came toward her immediately, crouching down beside her to say, “It’s a good time to stop. We should assume there’s trouble ahead.”
As she sat there, trying to breathe, she was actually impressed by his ability to downplay the potential horror of what they didn’t yet know.
Because she would’ve gone with, I’m already assuming that Ted and his entire family have been brutally murdered and left for dead by terrible people who broke into the compound with rocket launchers that blew the place up before burning it down.
He knew exactly what she was thinking. “We don’t know that anyone’s dead,” he said.
“We don’t know that they’re not,” she countered. “Although I guess maybe that’s true anytime you’re not in the same place with someone. And not talking on the phone with them. Or in the middle of texting, or... You never know for sure. I mean, people step in front of buses or get struck by lightning...”
Thomas put his hand on the side of her face, his palm and fingers somehow warm, and Tasha leaned into it, into him, before she realized he hadn’t done it to comfort her. Oops. He was making sure she hadn’t gotten too cold. For most of the afternoon, the temperature had been dropping steadily.
Still he didn’t pull his hand away until she leaned back and essentially released him.
“I’m okay,” she said, managing to meet his eyes and force a smile. “We should keep going.”
He shook his head. “I’mma build another hide, dig another fire pit, light it and let us both get warm. Okay?” She nodded. “After I put the fire out, I’ll make sure this area is secure before I go—alone—to surveil the compound.”