The King - Tiffany Reisz Mills & Boon Spice

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of his hand. “Forgive me. French wine brings out my French.”

      “I speak some,” she said. “You haven’t lost me yet.”

      “Bon,” he said and paused for another drink. “I have something to tell you. A story. And I can’t tell you why I’m telling you the story until after the story.”

      “I see...” she said, although Kingsley knew she didn’t. “May I ask what the story concerns?”

      Kingsley reached into the inner breast pocket of his jacket. From it he pulled a crisp white envelope thick with documents sealed with wax. The wax was imprinted with what appeared to be a number eight inside a circle. Kingsley placed it on the table between his glass of wine and Grace’s.

      “The story is about that,” Kingsley said, nodding toward the envelope. “And I can tell you the long version which is the true version or I can tell you a shorter, sweeter version. I’m happy to tell you either. But you decide.”

      “The long version, of course,” she said. “Tell me everything I should know even if you don’t think I want to hear it.”

      “Everything...dangerous word.” Kingsley sat back in the chair, and Grace leaned forward. She looked at him with a child’s eagerness. “But if you insist. The more you know about us, the better it will be if...”

      He didn’t finish the sentence, didn’t have to, because he saw the understanding in Grace’s eyes. She knew the end of the sentence he hadn’t spoken, and her nod saved him the pain of saying the words that no one yet had dared to utter aloud.

       If Fionn takes after his father...

      “The story starts twenty years ago,” Kingsley said, conjuring the memories he had tried to bury. But he’d buried them alive and alive they remained. “And it takes place in Manhattan. And although you don’t know yet why I’m telling you this, Grace, I promise you, you won’t regret hearing me out.”

      “I don’t regret anything,” she said.

      Kingsley straightened the photograph of her infant son. No, none of them regretted anything. Not even Kingsley.

      “It was raining,” Kingsley began. “And it was March. I had everything then—money, power and all the women and men in my bed anyone could possibly want. And to say I was in a bad mood would be the understatement of the century. I was twenty-eight years old and didn’t expect to see thirty. In fact, I hoped I wouldn’t see thirty.”

      “What happened?”

      Kingsley took a breath, took a drink and took a moment to pull his words to together. A pity Nora wasn’t here. Storytelling was her gift, not his. But only he could tell this story and thus he began.

      “Søren happened.”

       2

      Somewhere in Manhattan, 1993 March

      “WHAT’S YOUR POISON?” the bartender asked, and Kingsley answered, “Blonds.”

      The bartender, Duke, half laughed, half scoffed as he pointed to the stage.

      “Two bleach-blonde bottles of poison right there.”

      Kingsley eyed the two girls—Holly and Ivy—who now hung naked from their knees, which they’d wrapped around twin poles. Men sat belly up to the stage watching in silence, making eye contact with no one but the dancers. Dollar bills fluttered between their waving fingers.

      “Not what I’m in the mood for tonight.” Kingsley looked away from the stage.

      “What?” Duke asked. “How can you not be in the mood for that? Are they too hot? Too sexy?”

      Kingsley reached behind the bar and grabbed a bottle of bourbon.

      “Too female.”

      “Don’t look at me,” Duke said, raising both his hands.

      “I promise, I’m not.” And he wasn’t. Someone else had caught his eye. But where had he gone?

      “It’s too quiet tonight,” Kingsley said to Duke. Usually on a Friday night at the Möbius, the place would be standing room only. Half the usual crowd was in attendance tonight. “What’s going on?”

      “You came in the back way?” Duke asked as he uncorked Kingsley’s bourbon for him.

      “Of course.”

      “Some church is outside holding up signs.”

      “Signs?”

      “Yeah, you know. Protest signs. Sex Trade Fuels AIDS. Fornicators will burn. She’s somebody’s daughter.”

      “Are you serious?”

      “Go look for yourself.”

      Kingsley took his bottle of bourbon to the front door of the club and took a long drink but not long enough for the sight that greeted him. Duke hadn’t been exaggerating. A dozen people walked up and down the sidewalk carrying various white signs held aloft proclaiming the evils of strip clubs.

      “Told you so,” Duke said from behind Kingsley. “Can we call the cops on them or something? Shoot them?”

      “We don’t have to get rid of them,” Kingsley said. “God will.”

      “He will?” Duke asked. “You sure about that?”

      The sky broke open and rain began to fall. The protestors lasted about five seconds under the bite of the late-winter rain before running for cover.

      “See?” Kingsley said to Duke. He looked up at the sky, “Dieu, merci.”

      “God must be a tits and ass man.”

      “If He wasn’t,” Kingsley said, “He wouldn’t have invented them.”

      He shut the door and glanced around the club again.

      A psychiatrist—if Kingsley would let one near him—would have had a field day with his prodigious talent for finding the blond in every room he entered. If someone blindfolded him right now, he could, with picture-perfect recall, point out every last blond man in a fifty-yard radius. Five of them sat at various stations of the Möbius strip club—two at the bar (one real blond, the other a punk who’d bleached his hair), one working as a bouncer, one disappearing into the bathroom with a suspicious bulge in his trousers and a young one at table thirteen back in the corner. Kingsley had noticed the young blond when he’d first entered the Möbius half an hour ago. He’d been watching him, studying him, getting a read on him. Kingsley approached him.

      The blond at table thirteen sat alone. He didn’t look at any of the girls, but only at his hands, his drink, his table.

      Kingsley sat down across from him and placed the bourbon on the table between them. The amber liquid licked at the sides of the bottle. The blond glanced first at the bourbon, as if wondering where it came from and how it got there, before his eyes settled on to Kingsley’s.

      “I’m going to ask you a question, and it’s important you answer it correctly.” Kingsley did his best to temper his French accent without disposing of it entirely. The accent got him attention when he wanted it but in such a noisy room, he needed to speak as clearly as possible. “Luckily for you, I will tell you the correct answer before I ask the question. And that answer is twenty-one.”

      “Twenty-one?” The blond spoke in some sort of accent of his own—American, obviously, but this young man was far from home. “What’s the question?”

      “How old are you?”

      The blond’s eyes widened. In the dim light, Kingsley couldn’t make out the boy’s eye color. Steel-gray, he hoped, although tonight he wouldn’t be picky.

      “Twenty-one,”

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