Page 78 of Happily Ever After

“I wasn’t your father, orin loco parentis.”

“No, you sat with me after I calmed down—”

Raphael snorted. Sometimes it had taken her hours to calm down after a verbal knock-down, drag-out fight with Wulfram, but he didn’t need to mention that.

“—and then we had discussions about safety and the world. You remember those?”

Flicka had still been a puppy back then, and she’d begun the discussionscurled in an angry ball on the other end of the couch, but she’d slowly unwound herself and listened to him. “I remember.”

“Operational security was your favorite lecture.”

“Of course, it was.”

“And most of the time, I ended up snuggled up next to you, your arm around me, while we discussed scenarios and how to survive them. All that time, even when I was seventeen and eighteen and nineteen,you were the soul of decorum, comforting me with no ulterior motive, and trying to protect me. I, however, lived for those stolen moments in your arms.”

He remembered child-Flicka as a fragile little bundle of bones and golden hair, like a fluffball kitten. Had she been pressed up against him like that? “Wulf accused me of taking advantage of you. Maybe he was right.”

“He wasn’t. You never tookadvantage of the fact that I was a teenager with more hormones than I knew what to do with. When I tried to kiss you when I was sixteen, you somersaulted backward over the end of the couch to get away from me and made a big joke of it.”

“I don’t remember that,” he said, wracking his brain for a time that he had flipped backward over a couch arm. Yeah, maybe it was there.

“You were as pure asthe alpine snow, Dieter, a clear crystal of honor. You were a perfect, golden demi-god in every way, and I worshipped you. You treated a silly, spoiled blonde with respect and good humor. When I developed that horrible methamphetamine habit when I was sixteen, after Wulfie ripped me apart emotionally that night in London, you held me while I cried it out, and then you talked to me about choosingthe honorable way to live your life. I’ve never forgotten that.”

Neither had Dieter. That had been a rough night for all of them.

“It’s a good thing you married me, Dieter Schwarz, because no other man could have ever lived up to your example. Any other man would have lacked what youare,so effortlessly.”

Raphael’s eyes burned. He swallowed because his throat felt thick and hard. He ate anotherbite of the cheese sandwich to cover it up.

Her fingers found his hand where he clenched his water and pried his fingers away from the glass. She placed something in his palm, something sharp and fragile, like herself. “Here, take this. You said that it was the best part of you, that it symbolized that your soul had been washed clean in the alpine snow. It has comforted me all these years, butyou need it now.”

In the dark, Raphael’s fingers closed around something delicate, fashioned from wires and silk. “My alpine mountaineering ribbon.”

“The one you had made into a gold-and-diamond pin for me.But more importantly, youearnedthat medal. There’s no other way to be awarded it. It’s not one of our silly royal honors that we bestow on each other to show others who isreallyin ourfavor. The police didn’t hand you that medal to help you hide. Youcompletedthe alpine mountaineering course. Youexcelledat it. You survived an insane regimen of winter warfare and survival, and all this was over and above your ARD-10 commando training. That day, you became a Swiss man, a guardian of the Alps, and you became Dieter Schwarz.”

“You took the pin when you left my father’s housein Geneva,” he said, his fingers wandering over the cool metal and solid fabric in the center, “and you have it still.”

Her dedication to it devastated him.

She said, “I’ve kept it with me all these years because Dieter Schwarz gave it to me. Dieter Schwarz, the silly, Germanic name for a man who mangles the noble German language.”

“Durchlauchtig,”he whispered, his fingers lightly holdingthe pin.

“Yes, just like that. It’sDurchlauchtigste. If you’re going to be Dieter Schwarz, we simply must work on your German conjugations. I thought you were just stubborn.”

“You’ll always be myDurchlauchtig.”He slid his arms around her and drew her slight body against his chest. Her sweetness in his arms comforted him, draining away the anger and boiling pain. He buried his face in herhair in the darkness. “And I am stubborn as hell.”

Near his ear, she whispered, “I need you to be Dieter Schwarz, the strong, skilled man who always saves me from assassins and from myself. I need that rock-solid man of honor to be the father for our child.”

He nodded, rubbing his cheek against the silk of her hair. His eyes burned harder. “I will always be there for you.”

“That’s my Dieter,”she murmured, stroking his back. “That’s myLieblingwächter.”

He clenched the alpine mountaineering pin in his fist, trying not to bend the wires. “You are everything to me, Flicka. You’re my whole life and my soul.”

“And so, who are you?”

“I’ll be Dieter,” he whispered. “I’m Dieter Schwarz.”