Page 158 of Enchanted Kingdom
I cocked my head. “Well don’t make me change my mind.”
He stood up immediately as Krew laughed. “We can’t have that. Let’s go.”
“Have fun,” Owen offered as he tipped his head over the couch to look at me. “Try not to kill Keir until you get back.”
“I’ll do my best,” I told him with a smirk.
It was such a lovely day so far, I only hoped this decision to finally let Keir back in a little didn’t come back to haunt me. But if the king’s spies saw us strolling together, maybe then he’d think all was well where Keir and I were concerned.
Not that things were not well. They just also were not great either.
I took a deep breath outside. Fall had officially crept in. While summer had stubbornly tried to stick it out, eventually fall won, bringing with it some rain too. The mountain air hit my lungs a little differently too. It was fresher, stronger somehow. As if the mountain itself was exhaling directly onto us.
“Any more wolf sightings?” Keir asked.
I shook my head. “No. But they come for the food.”
“Any change in the lake?”
I again shook my head. “Nope. Not that either.”
Keir patted my hand hooked into the crook of his arm. “Even if nothing ever happens for either of those things, I’ll still be forever grateful Rafe decided to save you that day.”
I truly hoped this wasn’t the end of the story for either the lake or the wolves. “I feel the same.” After a few beats of silence, I said carefully, “You’ve been out late this week.” I didn’t want to sound like I was prying into his business or being jealous. I just wondered where he’d been.
He looked at me a moment as if trying to gauge what I was asking. “I’ve been practicing with Krew.”
I gave him a nod. “I figured as much.”
“Father has asked that you come to dinner this week,” Keir sighed. “So in other words, he has demanded your presence.”
“Likely to make sure I’m not still mad at you and have obeyed his last orders,” I offered with a disgusted laugh.
“Can you make it through a meal with him?” he asked gently. “I don’t want to force you to go.”
I shrugged. “I’ll endure. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” Keir argued. “But please know it’s not because I don’t want you there that you haven’t been to these dinners.”
I appreciated him trying to protect me from his father, but from the king’s perspective, my having not been there after all these weeks was probably more suspicious than if I had been. “It was bound to happen eventually.”
Keir sat down at the bench in the gardens he had walked me over to. The large willow I had seen so long ago on our first walk still swooped toward the ground, but now it looked like it was reaching for the ground in an effort to crawl away from the winter.
“I miss you,” Keir said quietly.
I gave my head a shake. “Because I’ve been in the kitchens more?”
Keir shrugged. “Yes and no. I just miss your laugh. I hate that look you get when you are walking on eggshells around me.” He paused. “And I know I’ve apologized for what happened with Gwen, but please realize that if I could do this all over again, I’d do a lot of things differently. Beginning with the fact that I never would have let you down in the first place.”
I let out a sigh. “It will just take some time, Keir. I know you are sorry. I know you’ve been doing better at the balls. Or you haven’t kissed anyone right there for me to see, anyway.”
He shook his head. “No. No kissing at all. I haven’t been on any dates with the others either, Jorah. None.”
That made me frown. Then where was he all day? Off kissing babies and practicing his princely wave?
He reached for my hand and squeezed it gently. “You are the only one I want to be kissing, Jorah. To hell with a contingency plan, I want it to be you. You and only you.”
My breath caught. “And it took me getting mad at you and asking for you to send me home for you to figure out you wanted that?”
