Page 23 of The Prince and the Bodyguard
“So,” Eddie said, sitting down with careful precision, “that happened.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, because eloquent conversation was apparently beyond me at the moment. My brain was still trying to process the fact that Eddie had kissed me, that I’d kissed him back, that we’d been about thirty seconds away from doing something that would’ve changed everything between us permanently. “It did.”
We sat there in our small living room, the overhead lights too bright after the soft glow from the TV. Everything had changed. There was no going back to professional distance, no pretending that what I felt for Eddie was anything close to appropriate.
“What happens now?” Eddie asked quietly, his green eyes searching my face for answers I wasn’t sure I had.
I looked at him in his rumpled sweater with his hair still messed from my fingers, waiting for me to decide what came next. There was vulnerability in his expression, but also determination, like he was prepared to fight for whatever this was between us if I gave him any encouragement at all.
And for the first time in my adult life, I had no idea what the right answer was.
All I knew was that I’d never wanted anything as much as I wanted to cross the space between us and kiss him again.
9
EDDIE
I woke up Sunday morning with the taste of regret in my mouth, staring at my ceiling while the events of the previous evening played on an endless loop in my mind. The kiss. Bash’s hands in my hair. The way he’d responded like he’d been waiting for it as much as I had. The bloody fire alarm that had interrupted us at the worst possible moment.
And then the awkwardness afterward. The careful way we’d both retreated—me into my bedroom and he on his makeshift bed on the couch—murmuring goodnight like we were strangers instead of two people who’d been on the verge of doing something that couldn’t be undone.
I’d barely slept, too wired from adrenaline and the memory of Bash’s mouth on mine to do anything but lie there and overthink every moment. Had I made the worst mistake of my life? Was he regretting it? Had I destroyed our relationship by acting on feelings I should have kept to myself? The questions churned in my mind like clothes in a washing machine, round and round without resolution.
I checked the time. Bash wasn’t back from his workout, considering how quiet it was, so I didn’t have to face him yet. I forced myself out of bed and into the shower, hoping hot water might wash away some of the nervous energy that had been building since the moment that alarm had gone off. It didn’t work. If anything, the enclosed space of the bathroom made everything worse, the memory of steam and Bash in nothing but a towel making my stomach clench with want.
By the time I emerged again from my bedroom, fully dressed, Bash had returned and had broken the world record for the fastest shower. His hair was wet and his face still slightly red as he sat in the living room with a cup of coffee and the most absorbed interest in a textbook that anyone had ever displayed on a Sunday morning. He looked up when I appeared, and our eyes met for exactly half a second before we both looked away like we’d been burned.
“Mornin’,” he said.
“Good morning.” I accepted the mug of coffee he’d prepared for me. Our fingers brushed during the exchange, and I swear I felt electricity arc between us.
We sat at our small table like civilized adults, drinking coffee and pretending to read while the weight of everything unsaid pressed down on us like a physical thing. The silence stretched until it became almost unbearable, filled with stolen glances.
This was ridiculous. We were both clearly thinking about the same thing, both affected by what had happened, and yet we were sitting here like awkward strangers instead of… Well, instead of whatever we were now.
“Bash…” I stopped when he looked up at me with those warm brown eyes that had been haunting my dreams.
“Yeah?”
“I rather think we should…” I took a breath, trying to organize my thoughts into something coherent. “That is, perhaps we ought to discuss?—”
“Yeah,” he said quickly, saving me from having to finish that sentence. “We should.”
But neither of us moved. We sat there, both apparently waiting for the other to find the courage to begin a conversation that felt too big for our small dorm room.
“Perhaps we could go somewhere,” I said finally, desperate to break the stalemate. “Get some air. It’s a lovely day, and I feel rather confined.”
Bash glanced toward the windows, where autumn sunshine was streaming through the glass, then back at me. Something shifted in his expression, understanding passing between us.
“Beach?” he suggested. “It’s only about a forty-minute drive, and it would be quiet, probably.”
Quiet. Private. Exactly what we needed for the kind of conversation we had to have.
“That sounds perfect.”
An hour later, we were in Bash’s red pickup truck, one of those massive American things that would never fit on any European road, let alone in any parking garage, winding through the increasingly rural roads that led toward the Pacific coast. The landscape shifted gradually from the urban sprawl around the university to rolling farmland dotted with small towns, then to dense evergreen forests. Moss green, pine green, grass green—so many shades of green.
I tried to absorb every detail—the way morning light filtered through the Douglas firs, the glimpses of distant mountains, the increasing salt tang in the air as we drew closer to the ocean. Anything to avoid thinking about the conversation we were driving toward, or the way Bash’s hands looked on the steering wheel, or how the memory of those same hands tangling in my hair made my stomach flutter.
