Revolution (Replica) (38 page)

Nate smiled, all the good news lifting some of the gloom that had been hovering about him.

“We saved a lot of lives by getting people into those tunnels,” Kurt continued, “but there are still a lot of dead.” He sighed. “A
lot
of dead. Especially in what used to be the free territories. Haven’t found anyone I used to know there still alive.”

“Not even Angel?” Angel had seemed well-nigh indestructible to Nate, a tough-as-nails survivor.

“Nope. That little people’s army she put together got wiped out when they tried to destroy one of the barricades. Good thing we didn’t all join up or we’d probably be dead, too.”

Nate didn’t know what to say, especially while feeling guiltily glad that the people he cared most about had lived, so he changed the subject. “When can I see you? Will you come out of the Basement?”

“If you guarantee me the troops on the border aren’t going to shoot me, I’ll come out—and maybe we can talk about how to get some help in here, ’cause we sure as hell need it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Nadia
was far too agitated to hold still, so instead of sitting demurely in the living room to await her guest, she paced the foyer of her apartment. The butler, Crane, kept giving her repressive looks meant to send her scurrying back to her proper place, but she no longer gave a damn about the fussy, antiquated etiquette that Executive girls were supposed to adhere to.

The expected knock on the door occurred, and Crane made his slow and stately way over to answer it. Having no patience with slow and stately, Nadia darted past him and yanked the door open so hard she was lucky it didn’t fly off its hinges.

Standing in that doorway was the most beautiful sight Nadia had ever seen.

Dante had obviously stopped to get cleaned up—and to see a doctor, judging by the splint on his left arm—before coming to see her. She would have been just as glad to see him if he were covered from head to toe in dirt and stank like rotten cheese—and she would have been just as unladylike in her greeting.

“Dante!” she cried, throwing her arms around him and hugging him tight. She was well aware of Crane’s disapproving frown, but she took her greeting one step further anyway, kissing Dante like her life depended on it.

Dante returned her kiss eagerly enough, but he pulled away sooner than she would have liked, giving Crane a self-conscious look.

She still didn’t care what Crane thought, or what he might whisper to the other servants and her father. She was through with being a proper Executive, and if she wanted to kiss a low-level Employee right on the mouth, then that’s what she would do.

Dante, however, was clearly not as comfortable with her newfound spirit of rebellion, so for his sake she reined herself in. She couldn’t seem to let go of him, though, so she kept hold of his hand as she led him to the living room.

“We won’t be needing anything,” she told Crane, knowing he would pop in and ask in just a couple of minutes. “And we do not wish to be disturbed.”

Crane’s eyebrows reached for his hairline. “But, Miss Lake—”

Nadia made a dismissive gesture. “No arguments.” If Crane knew how much time Nadia had spent unchaperoned in Dante’s presence, he’d probably have heart failure. The idea that she had once worried so much about such things herself seemed almost impossible to believe. “Come on,” she said, tugging on Dante’s hand and ignoring the butler’s second attempt at protest.

“Is he going to run off and tell your father?” Dante asked, worried.

Nadia shook her head. “My father’s in no condition to play head-of-the-household right now, and Crane knows it.”

There was a part of Nadia that was still deeply angry with her father for the way he had failed to stand up for her when she had needed him most. She suspected that was the kind of wound that never fully healed. And yet she couldn’t help but feel sorry for him after everything he had suffered. He had survived Rikers Island, but he was far from unscathed. He had never been all that strong-willed in the first place, and he was no match for Nadia now.

Despite her request not to be disturbed, Nadia knew the living room was hardly a private place, so she refrained from sitting on Dante’s lap and devouring his lips as she so wanted to do. Instead, she sat close beside him on the sofa and looked him over.

He had lost a bunch of weight, as evidenced by how loosely his clothing hung upon him. He’d also spent a lot of time out in the sun—no doubt trying to dig through the rubble—and the freckles on his nose had multiplied. He was in desperate need of a haircut, and his hands were covered in cuts and bruises and calluses. And yet the sight of him made her heart flutter, just as it always had.

“I was so worried about you,” she said, fearing that she was going to burst into tears, as she’d done when he’d first called her from the Basement to tell her he was okay.

Dante grinned crookedly. “
You
were worried about
me?
” he said. “I wasn’t the one who went waltzing into enemy territory and asked Synchrony to bomb the building
she was trapped in!
”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

He shook his head. “I’m glad I stayed somewhere safe, like the Basement.”

Nadia could no longer hold herself back, and she practically lunged for Dante’s mouth, wrapping her arms around him once more. He kissed her back with familiar passion, his tongue dancing with hers, his hands sneaking under the hem of her top and searing the skin of her lower back.

Once again, it was Dante who drew away first. His cheeks were pink beneath his tan, his eyes dark with desire, his breathing quickened.

“Maybe we should slow down,” he said hoarsely, though every nuance of his body language said he didn’t want to. “It’s one thing for us to fool around in the Basement, when we don’t even know if we’re going to live through the night, but this is different.”

Nadia knew he was right. Society was in too much of a state of upheaval right now to care much about her reputation, but that reprieve wouldn’t last long. She had no idea what her fellow Executives would make of her time on the run, but it was possible they would ignore it, act as if nothing untoward could possibly have happened. After all, she had been far outside the public eye at the time, with no reporters capturing her every scandalous step for posterity. If Nadia was known to indulge in public displays of affection with an Employee
after
she’d been returned to society, it was likely to cause a scandal.

But the thing was, Nadia didn’t give a crap about social politics anymore. Causing a scandal had once seemed like an unthinkable nightmare, and yet now she saw how truly unimportant such things were. She had escaped the Executive world, and though she was now nominally back in it, she was never going to fit herself back into its narrow-minded mold.

“You’re right,” she told Dante. “It
is
different. So maybe we should take this discussion somewhere more private.”

The pink in Dante’s cheeks deepened. He reached out and brushed a hand over her cheek, then ran his fingers through her hair. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said, leaning forward to feather his lips over hers. “I would love to.” Another soft, feathery kiss. “But, um…”

His voice trailed off and he pulled away. “If we go somewhere more private,” he mumbled, staring at the floor instead of looking at her, “things might get out of hand. And I’m not prepared for that, if you know what I mean.”

Nadia let out a sigh and collapsed back into the cushions of the sofa. If she’d been thinking with her head instead of her hormones, she would have known that without being told. He could hardly have expected her to throw herself at him like this. What was she thinking? Her cheeks heated with a blush.

Dante smiled at her a little sheepishly. “Under the circumstances, I have to ask: is the engagement between you and Nate back on?”

She honestly hadn’t given the idea any thought. Her present was way too chaotic and uncertain for her to spend much time thinking about her future. And yet the only reason her unofficial engagement to Nate had been broken was because Nate’s father wanted to punish the two of them for blackmailing him. Nate was now Chairman himself, and, within reason, could marry whomever he wished. Nadia would still be a safe choice for him, someone who knew about Kurt and didn’t object, someone who had been his friend since they were children.

But Paxco was in a very different situation now than it had been when their parents had first agreed to the arrangement, many years ago. Then, Paxco had been prosperous and stable, its position in the world of the Corporate States secure despite the corruption that lay in its heart. In such a position of power, Chairman Hayes hadn’t needed to use Nate’s marriage as a political bargaining chip, so he had chosen to marry Nate within the state.

“No,” Nadia finally answered. “Paxco’s going to need allies, badly. Nate’s going to have to marry someone who will help stabilize our position, and that’s not me. It might even still be Agnes. Paxco’s vulnerable right now, and having Synchrony’s military stay on our side would be a major advantage.” Assuming their “peacekeeping” force wasn’t already planning to overstay their welcome.

Dante shook his head ruefully. “After everything that’s happened, we’re no closer to being a democracy, are we? Still stuck back in the middle ages with this arranged marriage crap.”

“We’ll be closer with Nate in charge than we would be with Dorothy or with Nate’s father.” Nate had never been much of a revolutionary until very recently—certainly nothing like Dante and Bishop—but he had changed. And in time, he would change Paxco, she was sure of it.

“Nate might have to marry for political gain,” Nadia continued “but
I
won’t. I’m through with being an Executive. From now on, my life is my own, and I’m going to do what makes me happy, even if other people don’t approve.” Including dating an Employee who had once been a servant in her household.

Nadia could tell from the look in his eyes that Dante was still skeptical. He probably thought that once her world was restored to some semblance of order, she would drift away from him and they would each settle into their old, familiar places in society. She looked forward to proving him wrong.

*   *   *

Thanks
to her concussion, the doctors had not cleared Agnes to travel yet, so instead of inviting her to his place and playing host, Nate visited her in the presidential suite of her hotel. She was waiting for him in the suite’s living room when he was shown in, and he did a double take at the sight of her.

Gone was the mousy brown hair in its unflattering bob. She’d dyed it a rich auburn and had it cut in a fashionably asymmetric style—very short on one side to help camouflage the swath that had been shaved off to stitch her wound, and chin-length on the other. She’d also done away with her usual baggy wardrobe and was wearing a close-fitting camisole top and a pair of sleekly tailored pinstripe trousers that rode low on her hips.

When she saw the way he was looking at her, Agnes smiled and turned around, giving him the 360-degree view.

“Who are you, and what have you done with Agnes?” he asked, shaking his head.

“How do I look?” Her little-girl voice hadn’t changed, and there was still an aura of shyness that clung to her, like she hadn’t quite grown into her new look yet.

“Fantastic,” he told her honestly.

Another thing that hadn’t changed about her was her easy blush. But at least this time she was blushing because he’d said something
nice.
She reached up and patted her hair as if to remind herself what it looked like.

“I’m having a little trouble getting used to it,” she admitted. “But everyone tells me I look better this way, so…” She shrugged. “But please, come on in. Sit down. Can I get you anything?”

“No, no,” he said, taking a seat on the sofa and gesturing for her to do the same. “I’m fine. And you need to stay off your feet.”

She rolled her eyes. “I keep telling everyone I feel fine, but no one seems to believe me.”

“Concussions are nothing to mess with.” As great as she looked, it was hard to miss the line of stitches the fuzz on her scalp wasn’t yet long enough to hide.

“So they tell me,” she said, finally accepting his invitation to sit down. “But if they don’t give me the all clear soon, I’m staging an escape.”

Nate raised an eyebrow at her. More than just her appearance had changed. Defiance of any kind had seemed impossible for her when he’d first met her.

“But you must have an impossibly busy schedule, Mr. Chairman,” she said, “and I doubt you stopped by to trade small talk.”

He made a face. “Please, Agnes. You don’t have to call me that. Not after everything we’ve been through together.”

“But you’re here on official business, aren’t you? If it’s official business, then you should use your title even with your closest friends.”

He thought about it a minute, then shook his head. “If we get around to talking anything that resembles business, then you can call me Mr. Chairman if you really want to. But right now it’s just Nate talking to Agnes. Okay?”

Her expression turned faintly quizzical, and she cocked her head at him. “Okay. So what is it you want to talk about that isn’t strictly business?”

Nate sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly before he started to speak. “First off, I want to apologize for the way I treated you when we first met. In all the drama, I don’t know if I ever came right out and said that to you. I was a total dickhead, and I’m sorry.”

Most Executive girls would have been offended by his language; but then most Executive girls hadn’t spent time hanging around in the Basement. Agnes just smiled.

“You’ll get no argument from me,” she said, and Nate thought that perhaps now
he
might be blushing. “But we were both different people back then, and you had your reasons.”

“That doesn’t make what I did right.”

“Maybe not, but it’s still a thing of the past. In other words: apology accepted.” She smiled at him again, and there was no hint of lingering anger or resentment in her eyes.