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“Your willpower is that weak?” God, please tell me that she finds me as hard to stay away from as I find her.
“It was tonight,” she says. Then she nods at my food. “Eat your klipfisk.”
I take a tentative bite, reeling from everything.
It’s not…bad.
“What is this?” Please don’t say it’s eyeballs.
“Dried salted cod,” she says. “Like bacalao. It’s more popular up north. My grandmother used to make it all the time. She’d even put it on pizza.”
And at the mention of her grandmother, her shoulders drop, and it’s like watching a candle getting snuffed out.
It’s then that I realize what just happened and why. I was thinking too much with my dick to pay attention, but what happened in the restroom wasn’t about us succumbing to lust. At least it wasn’t for her. It was about Laila trying to process what happened with her grandmother. If I had thought about it for even a moment, I would have realized how vulnerable she was. And I wouldn’t have taken advantage of her.
“Hey,” I say to her between chews, swallowing it down. I put my hand over hers, giving it a squeeze. “I know what you’re saying. And I respect that. I won’t try anything anymore, I promise.”
She gives me a weak smile. “That includes any funny business through the walls.”
“I promise,” I tell her again.
I mean it too. I just know keeping that promise isn’t going to be easy.
Eleven
JAMES
“Pack your bag, James, we’re going on a trip!” Magnus announces, hands held high in the air as he appears in the kitchen doorway.
I put my coffee down, my mind immediately racing to all the possibilities. Paris? London? Somewhere hot, like the Maldives? I’m usually briefed on Magnus’s schedule ahead of time, and being so close to Christmas, I hadn’t seen anything other than a few public events this week.
“Where to, sir?” I ask, thrilled to be getting out of the house. Today marks three weeks since I got here, and even though I’ve been to Oslo on duty a few times (and of course that fateful last Sunday with Laila), I’ve been getting a bit of cabin fever.
“The kikut!” he exclaims, and then walks away.
From beside me, Lady Jane sighs.
I eye her, watching her dejectedly spread butter on her knäckebröd. “What? Where’s kikut? Or what’s kikut?”
“Kikut is a cabin,” she says tiredly. “Up the side of a mountain. That will no doubt be covered in a load of bloody snow. Magnus loves to drag us all up there around the holidays. Last year he had a New Year’s Eve party for all his royal friends up there—King Aksel of Denmark, Prince Viktor of Sweden, and the likes of them. Thankfully that meant I didn’t have to go.”
“A cabin…in Norway?” I’m already disappointed.
“Yes,” she says, munching on her bread, trying to keep the crumbs in. “And cabin is a stretch. It’s a hut. Thank god they built another addition, but still. There’s no indoor plumbing. You know what that means? That means having to dig a tunnel through the bloody snow to the outhouse in order to take a whiz.”
“And we’re all going?” I ask, finishing the dregs of my coffee.
She nods. “Yep. Just for a couple of days. Me, you, Einar, Ottar, the boys, Ella…Laila.”
I don’t appreciate the way she says Laila’s name. Or the rather pointed way she’s looking at me.
“What?” I ask warily.
“Nothing,” she says. “You know I have a theory about you two.”
Oh fuck.
“About who?” I ask, feigning ignorance. The blank mask slips on with ease.
