Page 62 of Royal Rising

I hear Kalle chuckle. “I never thought you’d be scared of anything.”

“I’m not scared, I just don’t like storms.”

“Don’t like seeing me naked either.”

“I did not see you naked,” I cry. “I can’t see. It’s dark.”

“Didn’t stop you from trying.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying this,” I mutter, peeling my wet T-shirt over my head.

“What’s that you said?”

“Be quiet or I’ll make you stand like that all night,” I snap.

He laughs.

When at last I manage to get out of my wet jeans—I have no idea how Kalle undressed so quickly—and into a pair of flannel pants and a thick sweatshirt, I figure Kalle should be shivering by now.

“I don’t have much that would fit you but—” I stop short when I come out to find Kalle in the middle of the room, holding Ernie to his chest. “Oh. He never lets anyone pick him up.”

“He’s warm so I didn’t give him much of a choice.” He sets down the cat to take the clothes I hand to him, my baggiest pair of pink tie-dyed jogging pants that I wear as a second layer in the winter, and an old University of Laandia sweatshirt that I stole from Kalle years ago. “That looks familiar.”

“Maybe,” I say primly.

“I’m going to have to go commando,” he tells me. “Unless you’ve got a pair of my boxers stashed away someplace.”

“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer, and please commando yourself in the bathroom. And take your wet clothes and hang them up in the shower while you’re at it.”

I’m not thinking I’m not thinking I’m not thinking…

With another chuckle, Kalle takes his nakedness into the bathroom while I start the hunt for candles.

By the time he comes out, I’ve lit a handful of tea lights left over from the pumpkin-carving episode of two years ago, a pair of beeswax tapers, and a fat three-wick vanilla candle and there’s enough light for me to really look at Kalle when he comes out.

And laugh, because the pants are snug, to say the least, and only come to mid-calf. And the sweatshirt may have fit him when I took it, but it certainly doesn’t now. The shoulders cling to him like a Harry Styles fan given a chance to hug him.

“You comfy?” I ask with a grin.

Kalle rotates his hips and gives a little shimmy. “You have no idea.”

The man is in an awfully good mood in the middle of the storm of the year that’s knocked out the power.

And then I remember he’s been drinking most of the evening.

“I’m hungry,” he says, grabbing a light and moving into the kitchen. “What food?”

“Not much,” I admit, following him. “Plus, no microwave.” I know he’s got a childish preference for pizza pockets.

“You’ve got peanut butter.”

I hover nearby, holding a candle as Kalle moves with familiarity around my kitchen, collecting bread and my mother’s homemade strawberry jam, and makes two peanut and jam sandwiches. “I thought you had dinner,” I say, and get a one-shoulder shrug in return. “Howwasdinner?”

“Fine.”

“And things with Fenella?”

“How are things with you and my cousin?” The abrupt change of topic makes my stomach flip over. Or maybe it’s just talking about Mathias.

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