The Surprise Princess (25 page)

“Katie, Katie. Please. Wait. Slow. Good. For. You.”

He was panting. Words. But they made no sense. Nothing made sense except this need.

“Now.” That was her voice. That was really her voice.

She raised her head, and kissed his exposed throat, then sucked on it.

“Ahh.”

“Now,” she repeated. “Move
now
.”

She was already moving, rocking.

He moved.

They were together.

“You owe it to yourself to go to Bariavak, Katie.”

He’d done a lousy job of keeping his hands off her. Twice. Even now one hand curved over her hip, holding her against him.

Her leg slid between his in micromovements, stirring the sheet that covered them.

Vibration.

That frequency.

It was something in her. It communicated to him like a tuning fork being struck. Amplified ten thousand times.

But he would still look out for her. He would still try to help her to the life she deserved.

“But what about the basketball office?” she asked

His smile felt forced. “Katie, Katie. Run Ashton’s basketball office? Or be princess of Bariavak? Get your priorities straight.”

“You said…” It died away.

“Said what?” he nudged.

Her head came up and she met his eyes. “You said you – all of you, the basketball office – couldn’t function without me.”

He looked away. “Maybe Bariavak can’t either.”

“It’s going to have to. At least I think … I don’t know.” Her voice had wound down, but now she said quickly, “I’m not sure I even believe in princesses. And to actually run a country…”

“What does your grandfather think of that?”

“I haven’t talked to him about much of anything. You know that. I want to be sure before I …”

“Break his heart?”

She was silent.

He shifted around, resting his cheek on the top of her head. “You’re going to go, Katie. It’s your birthright. It’s your family. It’s your future.”

She reached up, cupped her palm to his cheek. The sheet slid lower. “I’m here now, Brad.”

His heart turned over, along with an earthier reaction well south of his heart.

“Yes, you are. Yes,
we
are.”

He pushed the sheet down.

“Carolyn? I’m sorry to call so early on a Sunday—”

“Katie? I wish you’d tell my children it’s too early to be up and demanding breakfast on a Sunday. But—are you okay?”

Her bags were packed. She had these few minutes to let her friend know what had happened – some of what had happened.“Yes. I — I want to let you know, you and C.J., the DNA test result came in. It, uh, it said I’m…”

“You found your grandfather,” the older woman supplied quietly.

“Yes.”

“How do you feel about that? All of that?”

“I don’t know. I just found out yesterday and…” Images from last night pinwheeled through her mind. “Uh, the other thing I wanted to let you know – I’m going to Bariavak with King Jozef. We leave in a few minutes, so—”

“Did something happen with you and Brad?”

Everything.

Right up until she woke in Brad’s arms, knowing that he would protect her from ever having to leave – Ashton or the marriage – if he thought that’s what she wanted. Desire stronger than anything she had experienced had flooded through her.

But even as the desire remained, she’d known she couldn’t do that to him. To take advantage of him. To let him shelter her.

“What? Why would you think that? He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Really? How you’ve felt about him all these years doesn’t have anything to do with it?”

“How I …” She dropped her head. “How did you know?”

“I know something about women who close themselves off, Katie, because I was one. I saw that in you and I hoped our friendship might help.”

“It has Carolyn. It has. And if I haven’t said how grateful I am for your friendship—”

“Oh, honey, there’s no need for that. But I’m afraid it hasn’t been enough to help you open up to Brad.”

She tried a laugh. If a frog tried to laugh, that was the sound it might make.

She’d married a man she’d fallen in love with. And now she’d made love with him and had fallen even deeper.

“Carolyn,” she said with calm and reason she didn’t know she had left in her, “he’s been very supportive and I appreciate that, but he never showed the least interest in me before—”

“You were never in trouble before.” The words came so quickly it was as if the other woman had been waiting to say them.

Or perhaps she heard them that way because it’s what she’d been fearing. Brad saw her as an underdog he was going to help no matter what.

“You being in trouble is the one thing,” Carolyn went on, “that would let Brad get past the stiff-arm you always presented—”

“Stiff-arm? I never—”

“—to him. You did. A stiff-arm that held him safely at a distance. I knew it was because you were scared, but he didn’t. He wouldn’t push past your defenses when it was solely because he wanted to get closer to you. He’d only do it when he thought it was necessary to protect you. Because he has defenses, too, you know. He—”

A knock came at her hotel room door. “I have to go, Carolyn.”

“Will you think about what I’ve said?”

“Yes. But I’m going and he… It’s not possible.” Was she telling Carolyn that? Or herself.

“Promise you’ll think about it. And you’ll stay in touch.”

“I promise.”

He knew she was gone before he was fully awake. Knew it without reaching across to the emptiness beside him.

He pulled himself up, cramming pillows behind his back.

Of course her clothes were gone, too. Last thing on earth he could imagine was Katie sauntering down the hall to her room without her clothes.

But there was something else.

Something that gave the room an air of dusty desertion.

Or maybe that air of dusty desertion was inside him.

Because he knew – no idea how, but he
knew
– she’d gone. Not just to her room, but out of the hotel. Out of the city. Out of—

He reached around and punched the pillow pressing against his back. Because that had to be where the pain came from.

She’d gone to Bariavak. Where she belonged. Finding her future as a princess.

Out of his life.

E
ven though she had it memorized, Katie tipped the paper to catch light from the window in the gallery and looked over the detailed schedule issued today by King Jozef’s staff for next week’s three-day visit by the Ashton University men’s basketball team.

Without Brad.

The first time she and C.J. had talked, days after her arrival in Bariavak and the day before the official announcement, he’d told her Brad had withdrawn from the trip.

Though Carolyn was coming, taking Katie’s spot, while C.J.’s mother stayed with the kids in Ashton

The team arrived in eight days. After a welcoming reception, they would play against the Bariavak national team at the university. Saturday would start with morning clinics put on by the coaches for local children at a gym built into the mountain as part of the royal complex. There would be a second game with the national team in the afternoon, followed by a gala for both teams, their families, dignitaries, and other guests. Sunday morning was free. More clinics in the afternoon, this time led by players from Ashton and Bariavak. Then an evening in which each national player took an Ashton player and two youth participants to his home for dinner.

Monday morning, the team would leave.

It hadn’t been easy to watch from a distance as King Jozef’s staff finalized the plans she’d started from Ashton. But he had tactfully conveyed that she could be seen as intruding.

As reluctant as she was to relinquish involvement, how could she argue when she knew nothing about how things worked here. About how things worked in what was now her life.

Views from the windows still caught her breath, but anyone who became so accustomed to these mountains that they didn’t catch their breath at the sight had to be mostly dead. It seemed impossible that any structure could adhere to the abrupt inclines, yet here she was, living in a palace – no, Madame had told her more than once it was a castle — that proved they could.

That was among the aspects she hadn’t grown accustomed to. She lived in a castle, with a suite of rooms as her “apartments.”

The castle held the highest occupied ground in the capital city, digging its fingernails into the rock sides of the mountain and clinging so ferociously that it was impossible to imagine the mountain without the castle.

One night at dinner, King Jozef had remarked that if the castle were built on flat ground it would be a simple structure. She had laughed, because that was like saying if Neil Armstrong’s moon walk had taken place on earth it would have been a simple stroll.

The king had smiled, though she’d heard a tinge of sadness when he said, “That is the first time I have heard you laugh. Your laugh is very much like your mother’s.”

Comparisons to Princess Sofia were also something she had not adapted to.

And then there’d been the episode with the Magda tiara.

King Jozef had cajoled her into wearing the diamond tiara for a reception with government officials a week after her arrival.

It was dramatic and history-laden – the king’s own mother’s official portrait showed her wearing it. It also was heavy and awkward. At least it was awkward when she wore it. It hadn’t looked awkward on the queen.

She’d nearly lost the damned thing when she bent slightly to pick up the floor-length skirt of her formal dress – thank heavens for Maurice — so she could walk up a stairway.

“Princess Katrina?” a woman stopped before her, waiting patiently for an acknowledgment of her presence.

Katie was even starting to respond when people called her Princess Katrina. Officially she was called Princess Josephine-Augusta. But inside the castle – and in some of the media – she was now known as Princess Katrina. Losing her name was not something she expected to ever become accustomed to.

Elisabeta, the same middle-aged woman here now, had taken her into a private room and applied emergency bobby pins to hold the tiara. The woman hadn’t laughed and she’d fixed the problem, so she’d won a spot in Katie’s heart. By the end of that evening, though, the bobby pins felt like they’d weighed as much as the tiara.

“Hello, Elisabeta. How are you today?”

“Very well, ma’am. Madame asks that you come to her office.”

There was only one Madame in the castle. Perhaps in all of Bariavak.

Madame directed Katie’s daily lessons on life as a princess. Katie clung to as much free time as she could, wandering the castle, the grounds, the library, and the town. Between that and an hour daily with the king, she was learning pieces of Bariavak’s long, complex history bit by bit.

King Jozef’s insistence that she have an escort outside the castle rubbed against her nerves, but she’d acquiesced before the expression in his eyes.

She smiled at the woman. “Will you lead the way, please? I’m not sure I know the most direct route from here and I would not like to keep Madame waiting.”

Yes, there was much she didn’t know.

What she did know, despite her best efforts to not know it, was an aching soreness under her skin from missing Brad.

She would not think about him. About that last night. About the months before it. She would not.

If there was one thing Bob and Anna Davis had taught her it was how to ignore.

“Good day, Princess Katrina,” Madame said. “There is a visitor His Majesty would like you to entertain.”

“Me? Alone?”

“Most certainly you. He is awaiting you now in the Brocade Room. You shall have lunch in the ladies’ dining room, then entertain him this afternoon. A tour of the castle would be appropriate. The Royal Librarian is prepared to guide you both. Return to the Brocade Room by five o’clock so you can prepare for this evening’s small dinner.”

Katie’s heart sank.

She enjoyed the occasional times when she and King Jozef dined together. Or even when she and Madame had trays here in her office. But the “small” dinners – or lunches, or brunches, or breakfasts – usually included two dozen or more and were a trial.

Not at all like the gatherings in Angelo's back room or when Brad had cooked for her and Andy and— No, she wasn’t going to think about that.

“Who is this visitor?”

“Posture.” Only after Katie straightened did Madame add, “Your cousin.”

“Prince Vatche?” She’d met King Jozef’s nephew the first week and hadn’t liked him. At all.

He’d been smooth and charming, with smiles and bows abounding, and she hadn’t trusted him for a second. She was certain he liked her even less than she liked him.

That hadn’t kept him from showing up a lot.

Madame’s eyes went frosty, and Katie realized she’d let her feelings about the prince show through.

“Not Prince Vatche. However, if it were—”

“I know. I would be expected to entertain him or anyone with grace and dignity.”

Madame folded her hands on the desk. “Yes.”

Katie broke the look first. “So who is this cousin?” And why hadn’t she heard of him or her before now?

“Prince Karl is a cousin of some distance. You are related through the three-times great-grandfather of King Jozef’s mother.”

“That’s some distance,” she said.

C.J. looked up from his desk when his wife walked into his home office and closed the door behind her. Her expression told him immediately that the closed door didn’t mean what he’d hoped it might.

“Did you know King Jozef has arranged a meeting of Katie and a prince?” she asked him.

He rubbed his forehead. Unless he’d somehow missed it on ESPN the chances were small he would have. But all he said was, “Where’d you hear that?”

She came close enough for him to pivot his chair and pull her down to his lap. She kissed the top of his head and added, “April Gareaux. She and Hunter just got to Bariavak.”