Hotter on the Edge (6 page)

"Please," he murmured. "Don't take me back into this."

"You shot me out of the sky," she reminded him, and stepped out into the furor.

He had no choice but to step with her. And the other riffraff followed behind, a little closer than necessary, Jace with his hand on his slicer.

Mica waved a welcome to the crowd. The din rose, vibrating in her bones. She walked the short way to where her family stood to greet her. She didn't miss the way her father went space-cold upon seeing Simon at her side, which meant that her father had to know why Simon lived the way he did now. Good. She'd start with him at her first opportunity.

She hugged her mom first, but amid the noise, couldn't hear what she was saying. Then her father, whose tight hold made her realize how much she'd missed him, in spite of whatever was going on with Simon. When radiant Pilar stepped forward and embraced her, a golden aura wavering at her back, the wildness of the crowd surged. Pilar had always been beautiful, but now she appeared a goddess in gold.

Mica turned to Otis and Jace, and raised her voice. "My father's security will take it from here. Thank you very much, and please enjoy Sol City." How much they heard, she had no idea. She made a small sweeping motion that meant,
Go on. Run away.
This is your chance.

But she reached for Simon's arm. Not him. He was staying with her.

The other two ducked into the crowd. Neither was smart enough to stay out of trouble. She wouldn't report them, which was their deal, but she knew that they would be picked up soon enough by the Peace anyway for crimes they were sure to commit.

Pilar was blowing kisses when the car's driver opened the door. And then everyone climbed inside and found a seat on the sumptuous long leather benches.

"There's a dinner?" Mica asked when the door finally slammed shut and the car started moving. A formal dinner was not how she'd envisioned her homecoming, but she thought she heard her father mention something to that effect earlier.

Pilar narrowed her eyes Simon. "Crashing the party?"

Gods. Three words and Mica was home. From the sweet gush of Pilar's comms, Mica had expected a different homecoming. Maybe Pilar knew something about Simon, too.

"I see now," her father grumbled like a storm, "why you wouldn't give the Peace the ident-tags of your crew."

Here we go.

"How could I, Father," Mica shot back, "when I just found out that Simon isn't permitted inside the city?"

"And did he tell you why?" the storm raged.

"He says it's his business." Mica flicked a glance at Simon, who could have been carved out of stone. Very angry, molten stone.

"You look lovely, de—" her mother began.

"How could you do that?" Mica demanded of her father. "Exile someone into wilds not capable of sustaining human life? It's barbaric."

Her father leaned forward. "I'll tell you barbaric! Do you have any idea what he did? He's a murderer! Exile was warranted."

Murder.

Mica reared back. "I don't believe it."

Pilar looked pained. "Please don't ruin my wedding."

Simon had killed someone. Okay. It was sad and terrible, but there had to be extenuating circumstances.

"Mica," her mother said, with a small nod at Pilar, heavy communication batting across their gazes. "We're headed now for the ambassador's dinner." She pressed her lips in a pretty I'm-sorry. "It's a formal dinner, and while you're dressed beautifully, it might be best that Simon wait—"

Her father splintered her mom's polite speech. "He is not welcome in Sol City. We can confine him until a prison barge can be diverted."

Mica understood now. The cost to bring a barge would be astronomical, as Sol was located in the backwaters of space. Exile was so much easier.

"I can't believe this is happening." Pilar looked to their mother. "Hakan is going to be so angry. He'll deal with an occasional miner for the media, but not outright criminals."

Mica was shaking inside. Simon had been her refuge when her family was at its worst, but now he was distant. He didn't try to defend himself, so he must agree with the charges her father laid.

But she didn't believe it. He wasn't a cold-blooded murderer. He hadn't changed that much. There was more to this than anyone was letting on. So she was going to make it very easy for them to understand.

"I'm prepared to give you my love and leave again," she said. "I can make my own living just fine."

Her father's gaze went wary, his jaw cocked. Pilar's mouth went agape.

That's right,
Mica told her with a look.
I'd give up my claim to Sol.

Mica then turned back to her father. "Simon stays by my side in Sol City, or he stays by my side elsewhere."

***

Simon would have killed again just to get out of that car. This was the Mica he knew. Stubborn beyond all scope. No moderation. Her either/or propositions always stripped everything to the bone. Nothing halfway. She was like that, too, in love, in conversation, in bed.

"You would abandon Sol?" Drummond Sol demanded.

Mica sighed. "I love Sol, but I can stay only on my terms. Eventually I inherit, but I'm fine if I don't as well."

"Well then, I guess you'd better start looking for employment." Drum scowled and glanced out of the car's window.

Mica got her flair for ultimatums from her father. But while hers was a real threat—she could, and had, gone elsewhere—his was empty.

Drum Sol had two children to succeed him to his corp holdings. Mica, the eldest, who'd proven herself in toil and study and knew every ecosystem and people on Sol. She'd labored in the mines, and had even negotiated that fateful stake system with her father and his shareholders.

Then there was Pilar, who'd left the work of Sol to her sister and dedicated herself to a marriage of celebrity. Simon knew Pilar well enough to know that she was not merely content to look pretty—she wanted the power and influence of a corp family. She just used her talents differently to get it.

"Drummond," Mica's mother said, a warning in her voice. Seemed like she didn't trust this new Mica, either. Mica had grown up. All the way up. And they couldn't risk losing her, especially with Pilar becoming a Frust.

Simon wanted to laugh aloud at them, and commiserate, too.
Five years is a long time, isn't it?

Here they'd engineered Mica's years-long survey on Encantada to get her away from him, to destroy all possibility that Mica would choose him—a miner, of all people!—to wed, and now they were all right back to where they started. Except Mica was tougher. And he didn't care a jot about impressing her father anymore.

Maybe he'd take the princess after all, and never let her go. If she asked him to marry her again, he'd say yes. They'd had a wild dream once of racing for the stars.

"Earn the right to have her," Drum had said. Simon could still feel the hard clap on his shoulder. He'd taken it for affection, but it had been a challenge. And one rigged against him.

Drum rounded on his wife, booming, "So you'd rather he come to the dinner?"

Michaela shrugged helplessly. "If she leaves ..."

Pilar looked out of the corner of her eye at her parents. "No. This is my wedding, and I don't want him there."

Maybe he should remind her that there was a time when she
had
wanted him. She'd tried her beauty on him. Wanted to take her sister's place in his bed the night Mica had left for Encantada. She'd been a baby then, playing dangerous games.

"This is an
ambassador's
dinner," Drum corrected Pilar, "not one of your wedding dinners." Then demanded of Mica, "And just how would you have us introduce him?"

Simon wanted to hear this, too. He'd been a miner. A murderer. An exile. A scavenger. A would-be thief. How did she see him now?

"Well, since he refused to marry me ..." Mica began.

That was five years ago, and his first mistake in a string of others.

She lowered her lids at him in that new Mica way and smiled her payback. "Introduce him as my consort."

Consort? Fancy word for kept man.

The tension gripping his neck made his head pound.

Because he was at war with the Sols, even the one whom he loved, he scraped a hot, lust-born glare up her gorgeous body, lingering on her breasts before meeting her gaze. He let his desire show nakedly on his face, a promise of what he'd do the next time he was alone with her. He'd be her consort, all right.

Just look at her blush.

The rest of the Sols could have their glitter; he only wanted her.

The ambassador's dinner was held at the Museo del Sol, which housed the Sol family's collection of art and alien artifacts. Simon ascended the white steps to its entrance at Mica's side, but couldn't help overhearing the
who? who? who?
amid the clamor of the media and spectators that thronged the perimeter. It suddenly occurred to him that his face would be—no,
was
—all over the sector comms at that very moment as they relayed each movement of the Sol corp family. When he was announced at the entrance as Simon Miner,
consort
of Princessa Mica Esmerelda Incomparabla Sol, the
whos?
transformed into avid gossip whispers throughout the gathering.

He'd only shot her out of the sky and planned to steal a fortune from her family. She had thrust him into hell.

Security asked for his concealed knife and gun at the door, both of which he gave up reluctantly. And then he stood in a scanner that searched for harmful biomatter.

Inside the museum, sculptures of earth goddesses at least three meters long and half as wide were suspended from the ceiling over the long dining table, as if puppeted by human-set strings. He couldn't name the goddesses, but they gave the setting a dramatic ideological effect, raising the question, was it the creation gods or terraforming humankind who mastered the universe? It was a favorite debate of ethics and practicality among Mica's academic set, and one he'd listened to her muse about at length in the deep hours of the night. When humanity invoked the "gods" now, they weren't referring to any of these ancient figures. No, "gods" now referred to humankind.

The food was like nothing he'd ever tasted—courses of dollops and crisps that tantalized his tongue, but didn't satisfy his belly. The women stared at him from within their simmering auras. Some men did too, while others would not signify that he breathed the same air. The latter behavior wasn't much different from when he was a miner.

A dark-haired woman with old eyes and young cleavage finally leaned her bosom toward him. "I'm sorry, sir, but I don't think I caught your position in the Sol business affairs."

Consort. Mica could have easily named him her personal guard. Her secretary. Even her research assistant. Well, two could play.

He bowed his head slightly, happy to oblige. "I see to the sexual needs of Mica Sol, firstborn and heir to the Sol corp."

Voices stilled around him. A few blinked their surprise.

The woman pressed her lips together in amusement. "But didn't she just get back from some research somewhere?"

He nodded, as seriously as he could manage. "I was waiting to see to her immediate needs. She's very demanding."

Mica sat at a far end of the table, near her family, and conversed with the most important of the sector dignitaries. Simon couldn't hear what she said, but whatever it was made her father's eyes spark with pride and her sister's smile gradually sour. When Mica looked down the long table to where he sat, he raised his glass. Consort, indeed.

Their gazes were locked in silent communication when movement brought his gaze up higher. He stood, heart stalling, as a massive white thing crashed into the table. One of the goddess statues. Screams shattered the air as glass and food splattered. Mica was flung backward, her place at the table crushed.

***

"I'm fine. See to my father!" Mica gasped when Simon pulled her off the floor. He held her upper arms tightly, searched her expression for signs of pain, and seeming to find her well, turned to dislodge her father from Gaia, the Earth goddess.

Mica faltered on her high-bladed shoes and grabbed a chair for support. She spotted Pilar and her mother, stunned, but picking themselves off the floor, too. Food splattered the front of her mother's gown and Pilar had a small trickle of blood easing down her temple. But they seemed okay.

Hakan, the groom, was pinned, but he was cursing—a good sign. Pilar rushed forward to pull him out, which made Mica remember that her little sister wasn't always a brat. That she might actually love him.

Simon co-opted the help of three other men—Pilar ducked out of the way—and together they were lifting the big-breasted goddess from the trapped guests when new shrieks rose as another suspended statue—the Yoon mother of healing—crashed onto the table. This was worse, as Sr. Prithi Aduyla of Hamburg Station, took a full blow of the goddess's uplifted helping hands and was crushed under her weight. Remaining guests fled for cover or the door.

A traveling shadow caught Mica's attention above in the white lip of a crawl space that rimmed the perimeter of the main floor and provided ambient lighting. An assassin?

"Guards!" She pointed upward. But they were assisting the injured and hysterical.

The service stairway. The only way up to the crawl space, and a little bit farther, the roof, where she'd once set up an antique telescope—a gift for her birthday—to look at the stars, where her heart had wanted to take her.

Damn her bladed shoes; she could only hobble.

"Simon!"

His gaze followed the arrow of her arm, then he vaulted over Gaia's tit to dash toward the concealed door. That's right; he knew the roof, too. They'd spent some nights up there a long time ago.

A moment later, a second shadow moved down the crawl space. Had to be Simon. Mica clasped her hands to contain her anxiety. He was unarmed, but had grown up rough-and-tumble in the back alleys of Sol before becoming a miner at thirteen. She reminded herself that he could handle a fight.