"Love isn't just about sex, Frost. I need you not to do this."

"Not to do what?" he asked.

"This" —I poked a finger against his chest—"this cold distant facade. I need you to be real, yourself."

"You do not like me when I am myself."

"That's not true. I love you when you are yourself, but you have to stop letting everything hurt your feelings. You have to stop pouting." I stepped back enough so I could look up into his face without straining my neck. "I spend so much energy worrying how you're going to take something. I don't have the energy to spare to tiptoe around your feelings, Frost."

He moved away from the wall. "I understand."

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Leaving. That's what you want, isn't it?"

I turned to the two men. "Help me out here, please?"

"She doesn't want you to leave," Rhys said. "She loves you. She loves you more than she loves me." He didn't sound hurt; it was more a statement of fact. Since it was the truth, I didn't try to argue. "But every time you pull the cold, arrogant act, Merry pulls away. When you pout, she pulls away."

"The cold arrogant act, as you put it, is what saved my sanity with the queen."

"I am not the queen, Frost," I said. "I don't want a toy in my bed. I want a king at my side. I need you to be a grownup." It should have been silly to tell someone hundreds of years my senior to grow up, but it was necessary. Sadly.

Doyle spoke from against the pillows, and his voice held the effort that speech cost him. "If you could curb your emotions, she would love you and no other. If you could but understand, there would be no contest."

I wasn't entirely sure of that, but saying so out loud would not help. So I let it go.

"And what matters who she loves, if there is no child," Frost said.

"It seems to matter to you a great deal." Doyle closed his eyes and seemed asleep.

Frost frowned. "I do not know how not to do this. It is a habit of centuries."

"Let's do this," I said. "Every time you start to pout, I just tell you to stop. You try to stop when it's brought to your attention."

"I don't know."

"Just try," I said, "that's all I'm asking. Just try."

A very solemn look passed over his face, then he nodded. "I will try. I still do not agree that I pout, but I will try not to do it."

I hugged him. When I pulled away, he was smiling. "For that look in your eyes, I would slay armies. What is a little emotion, to that?"

Anyone who thought that slaying armies was easier than fixing your own internal emotional mess hadn't had enough therapy. But I didn't say that out loud, either.

CHAPTER 17

In the morning the golden goddess of Hollywood was crying at our kitchen table. It might have been baby hormones, but then again, it might not. Maeve liked to pretend that it was Gordon who'd been the brains of the two, but the truth was that when she wanted to, she had a very good mind. A logical mind, a dangerous mind. She was trickier to deal with when she was thinking than when she was seducing. Crying meant either real emotion, or she was about to try to manipulate me. I didn't want her sad, but I sort of hoped she was, because I didn't want all her skills directed at me. She was the goddess Conchenn again, and there had been men and women greater than me over the centuries who hadn't been able to tell her no.

I stood in the doorway, debating a retreat, but I hesitated too long. She raised her head, and showed me tear-streaked, lightning-kissed eyes. Her hair was the yellow-blond of the glamour she usually wore, but her eyes were real. Of course, being Seelie sidhe, her skin was still flawless. She didn't have the decency to get blotchy or hollow-eyed. Though she was dabbing at her nose with a Kleenex, her nose wasn't the least bit red. If I sobbed my nose got red, and eventually my eyes would get red. Maeve could probably have cried for a hundred years and still have looked this perfect.

She dabbed at her eyes. "I see you're dressed to go." Her voice showed the tears that her skin did not. She sounded thick and snuffling, as if she had been crying for hours. Somehow the voice sounding less than perfect made me feel better. Probably shallow of me, or maybe even insecure, but true.

She'd said I was dressed to go, not that I looked good. Which was a roundabout insult among us. If a fey has taken time with her wardrobe, then it was an insult not to compliment her, unless of course you thought she'd failed in her choices. I had taken care with my wardrobe today. I knew that not only would I be seeing my aunt, the queen, in the outfit, but there would be reporters as well. Every time we left Maeve's house there seemed to be reporters.

A black, ankle-length skirt hugged my hips and flared out as it flowed down my legs, in a material not found in nature so it wouldn't wrinkle on the plane. A black leather belt with a matching buckle was cinched tight at my waist. A green silk-and-spandex T-shirt was topped with a black bolero-cut jacket. Antique gold-and-emerald earrings picked up the green. Calf-high black boots showed under my skirt. They had three-inch heels, and the leather was shiny, and gleamed when the light caught it. I'd thought the emerald-green shirt brought out the green of my eyes, and the fit, along with the scoop neck, showed off my breasts. I'd normally have worn a shorter skirt, but it was January in St. Louis, and showing off my legs wasn't worth risking frostbite. But the skirt flowed as I moved, and the black over-skirt gave an impression of floating, catching in the slightest wind, whether of my movement or air.

I'd thought I looked good, until Maeve had worded her sentence oh, so carefully.

"I take it you don't approve of the outfit," I said, and went for the teapot under its cozy. Galen had had to search Los Angeles over to find an honest-to-goddess tea cozy to keep our tea warm. Most of the men preferred a strong black tea for breakfast instead of coffee — Rhys being the exception. He just didn't think that hard-boiled detectives should drink tea, so he drank coffee. His loss. More tea for me.

She looked at me, almost startled. "I forget sometimes that you were raised out among the humans in your formative years. Though, frankly, you can be blunt even by human standards." She dabbed at her eyes again, but there were no more fresh tears, just the tracks drying on her face. "You don't play the game."

I added cream to the sugar I'd put in my tea and stirred as I looked at her. "What game would that be?"

"I'm angry with you, so I imply that you don't look good. You're not supposed to ask me outright what I think of your outfit. You're supposed to simply worry that I think you look bad. It's supposed to eat at you, undermine your confidence."

I sipped my tea. "Why would you want to do that?"

"Because it's your fault what happened last night."

"What's my fault?"

A sound very close to a sob broke from her lips. "I had sex with that... that false sidhe."

I frowned, then finally realized what she meant. "You mean Sage?"

She nodded, and there were fresh tears. In fact she laid her head back on the pale pine of the table and sobbed. Sobbed as if her heart would break.

I set my tea down and went to her. I couldn't stand to hear that broken sound. I'd heard it often enough over the last few weeks since her husband had died, but lately, less. I was glad it was less. Most of the stories talk about what happens to the poor mortals who fall in love with the immortal, and how badly it goes for them, but Maeve was showing the other side. When the immortal truly fell in love with a mortal, eventually it ended badly for the immortal. We died, and they didn't. Simple, horrible, true. Watching Maeve mourn Gordon had made me worry about what I was getting myself into with a sidhe spouse. Eventually, whomever I married would be a widower. No way around it. Not a pretty thought.