“I suppose you know why I’m here,” he said.
I slowly sat back down in my chair and swallowed. “Yes,” I replied.
“Honestly, Lucas, I was waiting for you to come to me.”
“You were?” I asked, surprised.
“I thought you’d want to explain to me what was going on and why that other woman is here and your fiancée has done a disappearing act.”
I opened my mouth, not even knowing what I would say, but Jamie went on.
“Meredith is not happy, as you can imagine. None of us are happy about the way this all went down, and at the very least I thought you would come to me if you were having problems. I know I’m not that much older than you, but I do have some experience with being in love with an independent and feisty woman.”
My mouth snapped shut, and I tilted my head to look at him curiously. I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on.
“You’re not here to reprimand me for pretending to be engaged to Frankie?” I asked.
Jamie smirked and sat forward in his seat. “You have met Danika, right?”
I nodded slowly, not quite sure what he was getting at.
“And you know how she is my head of security too, right?”
I nodded again.
“So knowing Danika and knowing the position she holds here in the palace, did you really believe we wouldn’t know every single thing about you before I let you anywhere near my wife?”
I swallowed. Right. It was easy to forget that Jamie had been part of the royal guard of Merveille. He held himself like a king, but he was also personable and friendly. The undercurrent of danger I sensed in him now was absent from his everyday dealings, but it was a reminder of the violence he was capable of under the right circumstances. He would protect the woman he loved with all his resources, and that included doing a thorough background check on me and Frankie before they even invited us to the palace.
“You knew this entire time?” I asked, but it was more of a clarification, rather than a serious question. “So why didn’t you call me out on it? Why did you let us go on pretending?”
If I was honest, I was a little angry. If he’d known and told me he’d known then maybe I wouldn’t have had my heart ripped out of my chest and stomped on.
Jamie shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “I had every intention of doing just that when the two of you arrived, but then I saw you together and I knew.”
“You knew what?”
“That you are in love with her and she is very much in love with you.”
I snorted and shook my head. “Frankie was not in love with me. We’ve been friends for a long time, and she loves me, but it is philia love, not eros.”
“That’s not what I observed,” Jamie said. “And that’s certainly not what Meredith thought either.”
I pushed up from the desk and paced, running a hand through my hair. “Everyone keeps telling me that, but…”
“But?”
“Well, everyone else is telling me that Frankie is in love with me but the woman herself told me to my face she wasn’t.”
“Then she was lying.”
“Why would she lie about something like that?” I asked. “I told her how I felt, I handed my heart to her and she gave it back to me after giving it a thorough beating. Frankie feels nothing for me except friendship, and I’ll be lucky if I even have that from her now.”
“So why did she get so upset when Clarissa turned up? Why did she run?”
“I asked him the same thing,” Dorian said, coming into the office and sitting in the chair beside Jamie.
“I can tell you this,” Jamie said. “If you marry Clarissa, I might need to retract my offer to join the royal court.”
“What?”
Jamie shrugged. “Meredith doesn’t like her, and I don’t much like her either. She’s using you and she has been using you for the entirety of your relationship.”
I fell back into my chair and groaned. “I know, and for the record, I don’t much like her either.”
“So why is she still here?” Dorian asked.
“Because I don’t know how to make her leave,” I admitted.
“I have a solution,” Jamie said.
“Okay,” I replied. “I’m listening.”
“You need to go to Boston and bring Frankie back.”
I rolled my eyes. “And just how do you expect me to do that? And how does that solve the Clarissa issue?”
“If you’re not here, then Clarissa will have no reason to be here,” Jamie said.
“Okay, but why do I need to bring Frankie back? She left of her own accord. I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to drag her kicking and screaming back here. Besides, can’t you just get Danika to get rid of Clarissa? Not like that,” I clarified when they both raised their eyebrows.
“You need to end it with Clarissa and give her no recourse to come back into your life.”
“You’re right, I know,” I said with a sigh. “But why do I need to bring Frankie back here? She doesn’t want me.”
“That’s still up for debate,” Jamie said. “But the reason she needs to come back is so I can give her the interview she needs for her dissertation and I’d like to speak to her in person when I offer her a job.”
“You want to offer Frankie a job?”
Jamie nodded. “I do. We need people like Frankie. We’re rebuilding our nation and we want to do it right and someone like Frankie would be an invaluable asset to have. I want her to consult and liaise. She has this uncanny ability to bridge the gaps between the palace and the village, and we need that. We need her.”
“And,” Dorian added, “it gives you a chance to fix what you broke.”
“I don’t even know what I broke,” I replied glumly.
“What did she say? What reason did she give?” Jamie asked.
“What do you mean?”
“When you told her how you felt, what did she say?”
“She said I didn’t need her anymore, and that I was just afraid of losing everything I’d gained if she left.”
“I don’t understand,” Dorian said with a frown.
“I have always been able to be myself around Frankie. She was the only person who I ever let in. My parents were continually disappointed in me and my sister treats me like a five-year-old. I disappointed everyone in my life until I met Frankie. She was the only person who didn’t want to change me or expect more from me.”
“Until now,” Jamie said.
I nodded. “Until now. Until I came here and found…myself.”
“So if Frankie thinks you don’t need her anymore, why don’t you just show her you do?” Dorian said.
I shook my head and Jamie said, “No, that’s not the answer.”
“Frankie needs to know that I want her for her, not just because of what she thinks she does for me.”
Jamie nodded. “Exactly. So that’s what you need to tell her. Yes, you have found a place here on Kalopsia and within the palace, but that doesn’t mean Frankie doesn’t still have a place in your life.”
“And just how am I supposed to make her believe me?”