Going Royal 01 - Some Like It Royal (10 page)

Chapter Twelve

Surprisingly—or maybe not that surprising—they sat in first class on a small plane departing LAX for Sacramento. They didn’t have to rush through security—Daniel’s connections earning them a spot in the exclusive line of frequent travelers and high-end customers. They handed over their driver’s licenses, walked through the metal detectors, grabbed their shoes and were off again. He’d alternated between holding her hand—to keep from getting separated—or laying his palm against her lower back as if to guide her through the lines of humanity streaming in from one gate or rushing off to another.

Daniel turned out to be a terrific traveling companion. He knew all the tricks to weave around the crowds and when the crowd thickened, he charmed a path. At the gate to their flight, he led them right up to the attendant checking in passengers and showed her the boarding passes on his phone and they were whisked up the gangway and into their seats. Daniel flipped open his laptop as soon as they were in the air, then glanced over at her.

“Do you remember the street address?”

“1710 Bonner Avenue.” She never forgot the address or the digits of the family phone number. Her mother’d drilled those into her before kindergarten. With all the addresses she’d had over the years, she’d expected to have forgotten it. But no, she could still picture the white A-frame house, four-foot-white-fenced-in front yard and the driveway with its cracked pavement and grass threading through the seams spiderwebbing the concrete. She’d learned to roller skate on that driveway, falling often enough that by the time she mastered it, her bottom ended up bruised and sore.

Her gaze misted at the memory and she cleared her throat, covering the emotion with a quick swallow of orange juice. “It’s in Woodland.”

“Yep.” He opened a browser window and plugged in the address. “Just want to check our drive time. I’ll rent a car when we get there.” A map scrolled across his screen with their route highlighted in green. “Not bad at all. Hungry?”

The stewardess was heading toward them with muffins. Alyx shook her head, despite the growling cramp in her stomach. The morning rush to race off to the airport on this unexpected journey to the past had knotted her insides. “I’m good. Thanks.”

Maybe she should have said no, or at least put up more than a token resistance. This trip had nothing to do with why he hired her, a job she constantly reminded herself about. Leaning back in the seat, she forced herself to look out the window. The California landscape was nowhere near as interesting as her traveling companion. But staring at Daniel had its consequences. Like forgetting he was an employer and they weren’t really involved.

A warm hand covered hers. She jumped and glanced to her left. His full, rich mouth turned up in the gentlest of smiles. “It’s going to be okay.”

Her heart squeezed and her stomach did a little flip-flop.

Damn, it was easy to forget he was her employer.

Too easy.

“Thank you. I’m worried that this is a waste of our time,” she lied again—the lie much easier to swallow than the raw truth. “There’s a lot of work to do.” She carefully avoided mentioning the words
princess
or
practice
. The whimsical trip to Sacramento to track down her childhood home and the slim possibility of finding treasured memories didn’t fit anywhere in his future plans.

Despite her very real concern, eagerness clawed at her belly. Would the house be the same color? Would the residents have fixed the driveway? Her father’d wanted to. He’d mentioned it every day when he came home from work—swooping in like some hero to scoop her up and spin her in a circle. She couldn’t see his face anymore, but the strength enveloping her in his arms grounded her—filled her with longing. Turning her hand over under Daniel’s, she threaded her fingers through his. He tightened his grip and that same sense of protective power swept over her again.

“I know.” He gave her another one of those endearing smiles, the kind that socked her in the solar plexus and left warm emotion to flow through her body. Her nipples tightened and she forced her gaze to drop to their joined hands. If she looked into his eyes, he might see past all the barriers to the ragged soul inside. The soul that longed to see her home again and the little girl—buried beneath years of carefully built barriers—who wished her parents would be at the other end of this journey.

Stupid.
Stupid.
Stupid.
The internal voice chided the hopelessly juvenile thoughts. Her parents were dead. They’d died a very long time ago and she’d given up on hoping for a miracle or a fairy tale where they swooped in to find her again.

Why then could she not contain the eagerness flushing through her blood or warming her skin?

“Alyx.” Her name rolled off his tongue, heating her like brandy, but a thousand times sweeter and more provocative. “Knowing where we come from, it’s important.” His head tilted toward her and her throat closed. He was close enough to kiss. The warmth of his breath tickled her cheek. “I can’t promise you we’ll find anything today, but I want to try. And this isn’t about business or deals—it’s just something I want to do.”

The kindness and the sense of the purpose in the words were too much. They should be back in Beverly Hills. Victor should be drilling her on how to walk, to talk and to eat in public. Daniel should be barricaded in his study, debugging code. The fantasy they worked on constructing was far safer than this—far safer than sitting here, gripping his hand. This was real.

Too real.

She should let him go, but no matter how much she knew it was a mistake, she couldn’t quite bring her fingers to unlock from his.

“Okay.” She swallowed, because the whisper was all she could manage.

“Okay.” He squeezed her hand and his grin tightened another band around her heart. “Do you want to eat first or drive straight to the address?”

The man seemed determined to fatten her up. Her lips curved. It was altogether too damn sweet. Affection softened her resolve. “Are you hungry?”

“Starved,” he admitted, unabashed. He ignored the laptop in front of him, his blue-eyed gaze fixed on her. She made the mistake of staring into those eyes. This would be a lot easier on her equilibrium if he were ugly.

“Then let’s get food first.” She couldn’t stomach the thought of food. The coffee she drank earlier sat like a rock in her belly and the orange juice churned around it, burning like acid.

“Fantastic, I know this great little diner. It’s about halfway between the airport and your address. They make waffles, like, this big...” He tugged his hand free to mime a huge circle with both his hands. She fought the disappointment at the loss of contact. Just when she thought her rough emotions were under control, his warm fingers closed on hers again. “Strawberry waffles with whipped cream.”

Her stomach growled, a low sound, but unmistakable even with the engine noise. His lips curved teasingly. “I heard that.”

“Shh.” Her face warmed. “It’s not polite.”

He laughed and the sound draped around her like a shawl. “Okay, but you’re hungry and trust me—the waffles will be worth it.”

Not quite trusting the wild tingles racing through her, she nodded slowly. “I believe you.”

The answer satisfied him and he leaned back in his seat and flipped his screen to a news site’s business feed. He read through the top stories, still cradling her hand in his.

If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine this was real.

Damn her if she didn’t want to do just that.

* * *

He rented a Lexus. A very nice, very comfortable,
sink into the seats and let it cradle the body
Lexus. The man spent money like some people collected coupons. He didn’t look at the receipt when he signed the rental slip. Conversation lagged until he negotiated his way through traffic and put them on the road toward Woodland.

“Nervous?” He tossed a glance her way, but she shook her head.

“No.” She intended to leave it at that, but surprised herself. “A little uncertain. We’re assuming that the house is still there and that the people in it will have some idea of who lived there before.”

Was that why her stomach refused to settle? Why it kept flip-flopping like a fish caught on a line?

“We’re not assuming the new owners know anything. I didn’t think to have the P.I. investigate the property. He traced the sale of it, but that happened after your parents passed.”

Her stomach sank at the reminder, not that she needed one. The last time she’d tried to get answers, she ended up spending a small fortune in calling cards and getting nowhere. She’d finally given up. If the social workers had anything for her, maybe it had all gone to her care with the state.

“But—” he patted her thigh in the most casual and familiar of gestures, “—the area of Woodland you grew up in is known for longevity of its residents. I’m hoping your neighbors remember and can point us in the right direction.”

Neighbors.
How easily he described them. Neighbors were not something she’d given a thought to or considered a potential source. Her life had revolved around fitting into a new home or a new school, not maintaining ties to a past that grew more distant, almost invisible in the rearview mirror of time.

“We’re assuming that my parents were social.” It was a lame rebuttal and the patient look he wore tweaked her.

“You don’t have to be social to notice your neighbors. When I was seven, we lived in this great little trailer park.” He grinned at the grimace she couldn’t hide fast enough. “Don’t knock trailer parks. They don’t always have the best reputation, but I loved living there. I couldn’t have told you the names of my neighbors, but I knew them all on sight and they knew me. They’d get after me if I was getting too rambunctious and they were always keeping an eye on the kids in the neighborhood. I went back about four years ago, just out of curiosity, and a lot of them remembered me.”

“Yeah?” A nugget of hope edged past the doubt coiling in her belly.

“Hmm-hmm. They remembered the windows I’d broken with my baseballs and the fact that I preferred reading and playing on that ‘damn’ computer to more manly pursuits. Mrs. Filmore, who taught my third-grade class, still lived in her trailer house across from our old lot and she was impressed that I grew into my brain.”

Alyx couldn’t help but join in to his laughter. There was something carefree about it. “You grew into your brain?”

“Oh yeah.” He leaned back in the seat, the jeans he wore stretching over his muscular thighs. Muscles she couldn’t help but notice when he breezed through his bedroom in boxers. The man might work in software, but he knew how to keep fit and trim. She dragged her mind away from imagining him without his pants to focus on the next story. “I was a bit of a smart-ass in school.”

“Bit?” She lifted her brows skeptically. He seemed straightforward and sweet, but she enjoyed the acerbic bite to his wit.

“Okay, I was a lot of a smart-ass in school. I could argue my way out of PE on a regular basis and she used to have to let me read when I was done with tests because I always finished with thirty to forty minutes to spare—and the last time I got really bored in her class, I took apart the new computer they’d received to see how the parts worked.” He flashed another toothy grin. “I couldn’t put it back exactly as I found it.”

A fresh wave of laughter threatened to burst from her lips and she shook her head. The ease with which he could make her smile—it undid her. She didn’t doubt his tale for an instant. “Was she impressed that you owned your own company?”

He shrugged and slowed the car, turning into a lot next to the most ordinary diner she’d ever seen. It looked straight out of the annals of television history, down to the orange on the sign and the line of booths visible through the wide panel glass windows.

“I don’t think that mattered. Money doesn’t buy happiness or success.” He killed the engine and turned to look at her. “It doesn’t buy peace of mind either.”

Hard to argue with that. She didn’t remember having much money before her parents died and financial concerns didn’t faze her through the rest of her teen years until she wanted a car. She’d gotten a job and earned what she needed to buy an old secondhand vehicle from her foster mother at the time. Fortunately, she’d managed to buy it just a month before her move to her final foster home. The car saved her life that year—it was the first time she bought something of tangible value and it had granted her a freedom she hadn’t known she craved. Freedom she needed because her last set of foster parents had been on the fast track to early graves. The money they earned by taking in foster kids went directly to their liquor bills. They liked their charges older, because ignoring them didn’t mean much and most, like her, knew better than to stir up the crap with them. She’d learned quick that weekends were better spent staying away from that house. The car let her do it.

Still musing on that, she slid out of the rental and followed him. She avoided taking his hand again, no matter how much her palm itched for the contact. The familiarity and comfort he seemed to have developed in touching her left her quivering on the inside. It was better to put in a little distance for now. At the door to the diner, she paused. Blinking twice, she read the name written in white letters.

It couldn’t be right.

“The Snooty Pig?”

Daniel’s grin grew and he grasped the door with one hand and slid the other against her lower back. Her skin tingled beneath the shirt. “Yep. You’ll not get a better bacon-and-eggs breakfast anywhere. But the waffles—the waffles are to die for.”

“There’s something vaguely wrong with that statement.” Unable to suppress her amusement, she grinned back at him. Inside, the diner was exactly as she expected—vinyl seats, Formica-topped tables and waitresses in aproned uniforms. If some salty waitress sailed out with a “kiss my grits” apron she wouldn’t have been surprised. They claimed a table near the window and reviewed the menus. Everything was served with home fries or hash browns. The air was scented with coffee, bacon, sausage and ham. Cups clinked against tables and forks scraped on plates.