Page 93 of My Trojan Horse Majesty

“I love you, Leonid Ivanovich. Maybe it’s because our souls are like puzzle pieces, formed a hundred years and a billion miles apart.”

“I mean, it’s probably more like five thousand miles,” I say.

She flicks my chest.

I laugh.

“I love you because you listen to me. I’m not sure why you do, and I’m still not sure why you like me.” When she tilts her head, she’s so painfully beautiful, I could cry. “But my soul, shredded and battered though it is, still longs for yours.” She wraps her arms around me, and then she presses her mouth to mine. Then, with her lips touching mine, she whispers, “I think I’ll love you forever, you poor little broken Russian prince.”

When she kisses me this time, I forget where we are. I forget my own name. I forget what I was worried about, and what I wanted to do, and I forget everything but how much I love this woman, and how I would do literally anything for her, including sparing the whole undeserving world on her whim.

Until someone groans from the corner, and says a very ugly swear word. “What am I looking at right now?”

In my love-inspired haze, I forgot about stupid Timothy Heaston.

“Can I kill him now?” I mutter.

“Sure,” Izzy says.

I leap toward him, eager to do it before she changes her mind.

But she shouts, “Leo,I was kidding.”

I can’t stop before I kick him, at least. Hard. And then I lift him with air, and I drag him down three flights of stairs, and then I drop him in the bed of his own pickup truck, which, in a stroke of luck, still has a muck tub full of horse manure. I can’t help my smile as I upend the tub. . .dumping a juicy pile of my well-aged horse crap over his head.

I brush my hands off, even though I didn’t have to touch him, and I spin on my heel.

“Are you quite done?” Izzy’s watching me, one eyebrow raised.

“You can take the evil out of the villain, but you can’t take the villain out of the. . .” I pause. “You know what I mean.”

She laughs. “He really should have dumped that already.”

“From now on, though,” I say. “I’ll do much better at listening.”

“Somehow I doubt it.” She sighs. “But a girl can dream.”

Another truck pulls up then, a big grey one. The doors open right away, and Steve and Abigail both climb out.

“I forgot to mention,” Izzy says. “When I told Mom that I wasn’t giving you up, she said she has conditions.”

“Conditions?” I blink.

“You have to come home and meet us all,” Steve says. “Amends will have to be made.”

“I didn’t actually harm anyone,” I say. “Maybe you can keep that in mind.”

Izzy winces. “I did text my Aunt Helen.”

“Helen?” I vaguely remember her. She was irritating.

“She’s had some reparations to make before,” Izzy says. “She recommends Lucchese boots.”

For. . .kicking? “For. . .what?”

Abigail laughs. “You have a lot to learn, but I think you’re showing a little bit of promise. More than that guy, anyway.” Abigail’s eyes widen as she glances in the back of the truck bed. “Although, this is a good first start.”

“We have a little common ground, it seems,” I say.

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