The Christmas Princess (21 page)

Then he said in a low, even voice, “Okay, April. Go ahead. Ask.”

She expelled a long breath, still holding his gaze. She wanted to ask everything. That would never work. “Tell me about the soldiers. Tell me what you remember.”

Pain flashed deep in his eyes before he looked down at his hands.

Just as she’d decided he wasn’t going to, he spoke.

“The first thing I remember with clarity is lying in low weeds beside a road, and seeing a truck with an emblem painted on it. Red and white and blue. The truck was dirty, but someone had swiped clean where that flag was and it seemed to dazzle my eyes. I wanted to touch it. I got up and went to the truck.”

Half a heartbeat’s hesitation before those words
got up
told her what that effort had cost him all those years ago.

His mouth twisted. “I don’t know if I succeeded. If my fingers did touch where that flag was painted. I see my fingers stretched out, and then blackness. The next thing I remember is the motion of the truck, someone holding up my head and giving me sips of water, while voices argued over my head. I would have died that week if they hadn’t picked me up.”

She saw him assess his statement, weighing its accuracy.

“Maybe the next week,” he said.

Tears pressured for release. She blinked them back.

“There was no one to turn me over to or I’m sure they would have. One said to leave me there, but the others said no. I didn’t understand their words, but I could tell that from their faces. They gave me food and clothes. They gave me a name.

“They called him Scotty. I stuck with him for … I don’t know how long. Four, five months or more. It had been winter when they picked me up, and it was warm when they turned me over to the humanitarian unit. That was after Scotty was killed. A sniper. Their officer said the rest couldn’t afford to be distracted by me like Scotty was.”

A thousand questions pressed against her lips. What had Scotty been like? Where was he from? Did he know anything about Scotty’s family? Had he been there when Scotty was killed? Had anyone comforted the little boy who had lost his protector and friend?

“Memphis — he’d been Scotty’s best friend — took me to a nurse he knew at the humanitarian unit. She looked out for me in the refugee camp most of the time I was there. She got one of the volunteer doctors to look at my leg, where I’d been hit by shrapnel. Her tour ended so she left soon after that, but eventually the doctor got me to a hospital in the States.

“One of the rehab therapists took me in for a while. Then I got a scholarship to the school in Virginia. More scholarships helped me through college. Got my citizenship when I was old enough. After I graduated, I looked at the military, but special forces were out because of my leg. I found out about DS — State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security — and here I am.”

She thought she knew the answer, but she asked anyway. “Military? State Department? Did you ever consider anything else? Anything in the private sector?”

“This country fed me, clothed me, repaired me, and educated me. The least I could do was give something back.”

He had been taken in by people, but they had died, left, changed. What had been stable for him, from the time he’d seen that flag, was that all those people belonged to one country. That was what had endured. But what of
people
staying in his life? What of his family? What of the father King Jozef had spoken of?

“You don’t remember anything before the soldiers picked you up?”

His lips parted, then closed on a silence she feared might become permanent. Finally he said, “What’s there to remember?”

His mother was the pale woman with the sweet voice who had gone away so long ago.

His father was the tall, strong man who had come for him later. Taken him somewhere strange. Then left him, never returning.

April and Sharon double-teamed Madame about baking cookies in the embassy’s impressive kitchen.

“Look at this marble counter, it’s made for rolling out cutout cookies,” Sharon said.

“And this table—” April contributed, patting the wooden surface of the table that stretched nearly the length of the room. “—is made for cooling racks and putting together baskets.”

“No. Making cookies is a duty for the kitchen staff.”

“But as you’ve mentioned, Madam, the kitchen is understaffed now. And I enjoy making cookies. So why not—”

“No. It is not seemly.”

It was the closest she’d come to accepting April’s status. It almost was a shame not to simply accept that advance and let the cookies go.

Almost.

“Perhaps we could go to your house and make them there.” April said to Sharon, but with the corner of her eye focused on Madame.

“Absolutely. A great idea. I’d love to have you come out to the house. Of course King Jozef has said he’d like to watch us baking cookies. Oh,” Sharon added with a glint. “We’ll invite him, too. I bet he’d enjoy decorating the cutout cookies. You know, the cookies shaped like bells and trees and Santas that you slather with colored frosting and shake the different colored decorations on.”

She paused, and April wished the Academy Awards nominating committee could see this performance. Meryl, Halle, and Nicole would be eating Sharon’s dust.

“The kids can get a little wild with the frosting and shake cans, but I’ll explain that the king’s off limits for putting sprinkles in his hair. They’ll listen to that.” She frowned. “I’m sure they’ll listen this time.”

Madam sucked in an audible breath.

“His Highness is not going to the kitchen of a common house in the suburbs—” She pronounced that word as if it were a curse. “—to be subjected to colored frosting and sprinkles or for any other reason as long as I have breath in my body.”

April faced her, arching her brows. “The only alternative is to make the cookies here.”

“Very well.”

“Thank you. Will Tuesday suit you, Sharon?”

“Perfectly.”

“Is that satisfactory, Madam?”

“I shall see that it is.”

Madam exited with her back so straight and her head so high that guilt pinched at April.

“Mission accomplished,” Sharon said. “You did great. I think you’re getting the hang of this royal edict thing.”

April couldn’t help grinning at her. “And you are wicked.”

“Aren’t I just? It’s why you like me.” Her tone changed. “And why I don’t let up on Hunter.”

April cut the older woman a look, but said nothing.

“Can’t let up on him. For his own good.”

It was as if Sharon had heard all the doubts and second-guessing scratching at April’s heart from the inside. Had she pushed him too far? Did she have any right to push him at all? What if he was right to forget the past? How could she be sure—

“The man makes a clam look like a motor mouth,” Sharon continued. “In our business it’s not all bad to be able to keep your mouth shut. But it’s way beyond that with Hunter. Some days I think all the pressure’s going to build up inside and the man’s going to blow. Other days I worry he’s gotten so good at letting nothing out that before much longer there won’t be anything left to let out.”

“I don’t see how ice-skating on the National Mall can be some childhood tradition when you didn’t live here as a kid.”

Hunter was grumbling, and he knew it. Why didn’t he keep his mouth shut and stoically get through this? Sure it was chilly, but he’d stood for hours in bone-chilling cold without complaining. And it wasn’t as mind-numbing as a lot of assignments he’d withstood as a rookie. He even had enjoyable things to watch — the crowd, he meant, not her.

Her.

That was the core of his discontent. April was up to something. That had to be why he didn’t like this outing … not because it was the two of them. Or because of that outfit she was wearing.

The leggings molded to the sleek curves of her legs. The fleecy tunic didn’t mold. It flirted, swinging with her slightest motion to reveal the swell of her breast or the rounded shape of her rear end. He couldn’t even blame Maurice. She’d said these were part her regular wardrobe. She shouldn’t be allowed on the streets in those things.

Still, it wasn’t any of that. It was that glint in her eyes he didn’t trust.

He stared down as if he could read her thoughts through the back of her head, which was all he could see as she bent over to put on her rented skates.

“Done,” she announced standing and pulling on gloves. She had a pair of earmuffs looped around the tunic’s turtleneck, ready for use. “Well?”

The skates put her closer to his height, so he could see the glint in her eyes more clearly than ever. He returned his most forbidding stare.

It didn’t dim the glint and it didn’t stop her words. “Aren’t you going to put skates on?”

“No.”

“Don’t you know how to skate?”

He made a neutral sound.

“Then you’ll have to let me teach you, won’t you?”

“No.”

“Afraid to admit there’s something I can teach you? Afraid you can’t keep up with me when it comes to learning something new, huh? Huh?”

She looked about eight. Too bad his body didn’t think so.

“Yes.”

“So, you’re going to have me go out there alone?”

“This was your idea, not mine.”

“It’s been my idea to go several places and you haven’t let me go alone. With that let-the-bullets-hit-me-first business of going out the door first, but now you’re going to let me go other there in a spotlight where any assassin could target me?”

“You’re being melodramatic.”

“Me! After these weeks of—” She bit it off. “Okay. Fine. In fact, great.” She produced a smile he didn’t quite buy. “It will be a pleasure to be alone out there, amid all these strangers, with the chance that one might ask me a question and I could answer the wrong thing and —
poof
! — everyone would know.”

He knew a threat when he heard one. Why she was making the threat, he had no idea. But it wasn’t his job to understand, which was a damned good thing because he hadn’t understood much about April Gareaux. It
was
his job to prevent disasters, and that he was good at.

“Okay. Don’t move.”

“Yes, sir.”

She was getting a smart mouth. Smarter mouth.

He leveled a look at her to be sure she knew he meant business. She smiled back.

He kept an eye on her as he stood in line for the rental skates.

He hoped he could stand up in them. From the standpoint of protecting her he’d be better off in shoes. But this mission wasn’t really about protection. And he’d grimly accepted that whatever this particular outing was about was known only in April’s mind.

With both skates on, he bent over to begin tightening the laces …

Bent at the waist like this, his field of vision narrowed to his hands and the skate laces.

The hands he saw changed. They were broad, long-fingered. Older. A scar across the back of two. Strong.

With accustomed ease they tightened the laces of small, brown skates, badly scuffed. Handed down, but treasured. Starting closest to the toe of the skate … always the toe … always …

Always start at the start, my boy. And go on from there.

The deep voice patient, while Hunter’s whole body thrummed with eagerness and excitement. Cold nibbled at the tips of his fingers inside his mittens, so he curled them into a fist. Skating, he was going skating. And today Papa had promised to teach him how to spin.

That is how you get on in this world. Always start at the start.

He’d done that. He’d learned to stand and skate forward and make turns. He’d been practicing and practicing skating backward the way Papa had taught him, and he would show him how well he’d learned that, and then Papa would teach him to spin.

“Hunter?”

Her voice reached him. She crouched in front of him, touched his calf, and it warmed him through the denim of his jeans.

“I’ll do the laces. I guess you really don’t know how to skate, huh?”

The hands from another life faded. Hers were there now. Long and narrow, the skin soft and white, the short nails gently curved.

“I’ll do it.” He took the ends of the laces from her before she could strain those delicate hands by trying to draw them tight.

She started tightening his other skate. He finished that one up, too. He stood, stiff and awkward. The unbalanced sensation of standing on a narrow blade wasn’t the only reason.

Belatedly, he realized the memories of a moment ago had not come to him in English.

She shot him a questioning look, but he wasn’t in the mood to give any answers.

“You wanted to skate, so let’s go.”

She looked solid and confident on the skates. Nothing fancy, really, but moving easily enough to flit around him.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she said. “I love how the lights loop around the whole rink. Like Christmas lights.”

That was a poke at him. He knew it even before he looked up from watching where he was going to the challenge in her eyes.

He grunted.

“Look at that, the way the rounded tops of the bare trees look like a garland all around us. And the way all the buildings are lit up. Archives, the National Gallery, and over there the Natural History Museum. So festive. You know this is a fountain during the summer? And they have free concerts here. Grady brought Leslie and me a lot when they first got married.”

He felt the rhythm, the balance, the flow.

“You’re really good. Must be from being a natural athlete.”

He shifted his weight to one leg, following some long-forgotten motion.

“That’s great, Hunter. You’re almost skating backward.”

Another move, the next element to complete the shift — no, it was gone. He stalled. And she was too small to guide him into it. It worked better when the teacher was big and the student small, like—

“Let me go on my own.”

He pushed off, and that did it, without his thinking. He was going backward, pumping his legs to move away from her, checking over his shoulder that it was clear. He found the balance for the straight-line glide. Then pumped again for more power.