The Christmas Princess (32 page)

“Thirteen — yes, a child who was already far too much of grownup for her own good, taking care of herself and her mother.”

“I was surly and sullen.”

Leslie smiled slightly. “You were. As was your God-given right as a teenager. It was the one piece of your childhood you held on to, bless your heart. Grandma Beatrice, Grady, and I—”

“Took me in. Rescued me.”

“Gave you a safe place to be while your years caught up with the adulthood you’d been pitched into, practically from the time you were a baby. And as soon as that happened, you set about taking care of everything around you. Gerard Littrell, Reese Warrington, Rufus and all the other dogs. Why you even tried to rescue Brussels sprouts and the Vegetable Consortium. And now King Jozef and Hunter Pierce.”

“No. Not Hunter—” She stopped.

Leslie’s gaze was knowing. She nodded slowly. “It might take some time for you to get used to the idea that you’ve been the rescuer, what with you thinking all this time that you were the rescued, but it’s clear that what you feel for Hunter is different.”

“What I feel for Hunter …” Tears slid down her cheeks, the only ending to her sentence.

Leslie put her arms around her. “Terrifying, isn’t it? Terrifying and so very wonderful, when you can rescue each other.”

As he pulled up to the back gates, Hunter saw a group start running toward them from the corner.

He drove in. Rupert stepped in behind the car, guarding the dwindling gap. The first of the running group arrived as the gates locked.

Hunter nodded to Rupert and sprinted for the back entrance.

“What’s happened?” he demanded of Derek, who was rushing to meet him. “April? The king—?”

“They’re fine,” Derek said. “It’s the media. All hell’s breaking loose here. It’s all over about April—.”

“His Highness wishes to see you,” Madame announced from the stairs, glaring at Hunter.

“Princess Found, they’re calling her. It’s all over the Internet.”

“Where’s April?”

“His Highness—”

“Where is April?
Now
.”

Apparently, the voices outside the library drew Leslie and April out.

Hunter took an automatic step toward April. “You’re crying.”

She smiled. “Not anymore.” But then her eyes filled again.

Grady, who’d been studying Leslie’s face, put a hand on Hunter’s shoulder. Possibly comradely. Possibly meant to be restraining. He could have shaken it off. He didn’t. “When you’ve been married as long as we have, you’ll know that sometimes crying is a good thing.”

Leslie gave him a special smile. “It is. Hello, Hunter.”

He nodded curtly, but his eyes were on April. She gave him a small smile.

“Ah, bless you hearts.” Leslie’s words blended satisfaction, confirmation, and acceptance.

Now that he knew April was okay, they could get on with this. “We have a situation. Need to deal with it. Everybody in the office—”

“Not yet,” April interrupted. “Not until I hear— Until we talk.”

“April.”

She looked back at him. “Hunter.”

Grady put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “C’mon, sweetheart, let’s let April win this round in privacy. We’ll wait for you in the office.”

April stepped back into the library.

“We can talk about this later,” he tried again.

“What happened?”

He followed her into the room. “I told them. Told them I was the reason their son — their brother, their friend — died.”

“Oh, Hunter.”

He looked at her, frowning. “They said I wasn’t. Memphis — he was one of the soldiers and he’s stayed in touch with the family, lives nearby. He said I wasn’t even there. I was back in camp. Could I have remembered all of it that wrong?”

“You were a child. You’d been through so much.”

I’m the reason Scotty died.

His words had echoed in the silence that followed.

Then MaryLou Hunter stepped forward, said, “Oh, my poor boy,” and wrapped her arms around him.

“Remembered all of it wrong?” April asked.

“They had a letter he’d written talking about me. A few letters. But this one… He said King Jozef came after me. Wanted me to return with him. He said I’d blamed the king for my father’s death. He said he felt sorry for the king, because he was torn up about it. He wrote to his parents about how did you explain to a kid that even a king wasn’t always in charge of everything that happened around him.”

She touched his arms, crossed in front of him. She slid her hand down between his arms and chest. He shifted slightly to make room for the touch.

“I did. I blamed King Jozef. For my father leaving me. For his getting killed. I know better now. I know things happen that even the best leader can’t prevent. I know operations go wrong. I know…”

He looked at her then away. “But that was my head. That was what I know, what I learned. And that’s not what’s been in charge. Like you said, I had to look at the past as an adult. I blamed him as a kid and I never stopped blaming him because I never looked at what I was thinking — feeling.”

She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. He held her tight.

Her mouth opened to him, and he took it with gratitude and pleasure. Sinking into her, into
them
…

He surfaced with a curse and a smile. “God, April. We can’t.”

She pecked him on the check. “We can. We
will
. Later.”

Holding hands, they returned to the office.

April’s calm took a hit when they entered the office to find it so crowded that she could only see the king’s shoulder as he sat by the fireplace.

“Bette? Paul?”

The Monroes turned toward her. Bette hugged her, then Paul slung an arm around her. “How’re you doing, kid. Sorry we missed the beginning of the fun, but we took a detour to pick up—”

At the same time April realized Susan was there now, and she was talking, too. April picked up the phrase, “…may I introduce—.”

“—Grandma Beatrice,” Paul said.

“—April’s great-grandmother, Beatrice Craig,” Susan said.

“What?” April jolted away from Paul. The crowd parted, and there was her great-grandmother, sitting in the chair next to the King of Bariavak. “Grandma Beatrice, what are you doing here? You don’t travel.”

“I no longer care for the hurly-burly of travel. That does not mean I am not capable of it when circumstances call for it.”

It took several minutes to sort out the new arrivals, assure everyone that April was fine, and determine that Sharon had organized the media into a reception room with the promise of a news conference and the restraining presence of Bariavak’s security detail.

“There were rumors before,” Sharon said. “They quieted down with April and King Jozef less in the public eye since the White House party, but all it took were a few pictures to jump from rumor to major story. Slow news day.”

Hunter gave Sharon a narrow-eyed look that he then turned on King Jozef.

“What’s going to be said at this news conference? Because if you say you just discovered that April’s not your granddaughter, the wolves will be after her in a heartbeat. She’ll be accused of trying to scam you, and it won’t matter how much anyone denies it.”

“I shall not say I have just discovered it, because I have known it—” He met April’s gaze, gave a suggestion of a bow of apology, and finished. “—from before I met her.”

“You knew she wasn’t your granddaughter before we brought her here that first day? Is that what you’re saying? Then why on earth didn’t you turn her away? Or refuse to see her in the first place?”

“Because,” April said slowly, “I didn’t come here alone.”

“So? You were the one who was his possible granddaughter.”

She placed a hand on his arm. “It was you. He knew you were involved. He knew you were in charge. He knew you would come to the meeting. He wanted to see you.”

Hunter turned from her to the king. “Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The silence stretched, the king staring thoughtfully toward the fireplace, Hunter staring at him unrelenting. The others still.

“Because he wants to make things right before he goes in for the surgery,” April said. “He wanted to see you, to be sure you were okay. For himself and … others.”

There would be a time for Hunter to know of his connection to Madame, but this was not it. Not for either of them.

“You are a wise young woman, April,” King Jozef said. At last he looked at Hunter. “I should have honored your father as he deserved by insisting on your return to Bariavak, by raising you in the royal household. I have regretted not doing so. Very much. Now … now all I can do is to offer you your father’s station in our country.”

Hunter shook his head slowly. “Your country, sir. I didn’t want that. I don’t want it.”

After a pause, Sharon Johnson said briskly, “It’s a good thing, because I have plans for you at Diplomatic Security. But first what are we going to tell those hordes out there? I don’t imagine you want to tell them your personal history, Pierce.”

In another circumstance his look of horror might have been amusing.

“I’ll talk to them,” April said. “I’ll tell them I’m not the princess, but that the king and I formed a friendship, and that’s all there is to it.”

“No.” King Jozef stood. “After you have all safely departed, I shall take my place at the lectern that Sharon has prepared. I shall make an announcement that I have greatly enjoyed the company of a delightful young American whom I could only wish were my granddaughter. And I shall answer questions until they are bored with asking them.”

“No, you will not,” Beatrice declared.

Madame gasped. Beatrice cast a glance her way, then returned her attention to the king.

The King of Bariavak looked at her coolly. “Indeed?”

“Indeed,” she confirmed. “My great-granddaughter is clearly very fond of you. The Craig family does not desert its friends, allies or—” She narrowed her eyes at him, as if in a dare. “—family when difficulties are encountered.”

The two stared at each other, while it seemed everybody else in the room held their breath.

“Very well.”

“Your Majesty.” Madame’s tone held a breadth of meanings, including a strong objection and a warning.

“My dear, do you not think you could call me Jozef in front of our friends?”

Madame flushed, while her eyes shone.

The King took her hand. She didn’t pull away.

He led her toward the door, while the rest gathered behind him.

“Rupert, are they assembled?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

King Jozef turned to Beatrice Craig. “I shall first announce the extension of an agreement with your government. On that matter, I shall answer all questions, if you do not object, dear lady.”

“That’s quite all right,” she allowed graciously, her hand resting on Grady’s arm.

The king’s mouth twitched, but he maintained his countenance better than many of the others assembled.

At the door, Madame released his hand and stepped back. He looked at her. When she nodded, he looked around at the others, laid his hand briefly on April’s shoulder, regarded Hunter for an extra moment, then faced the door once more.

“Very well. Let us proceed.”

NEWS REPORT

Jan. 2

WASHINGTON — King Jozef of Bariavak had surgery that doctors termed “very successful” today for an undisclosed ailment. He is in satisfactory condition this evening. The king, who has ruled his tiny country for more than six decades, is 87.

While doctors would not comment on the cause for the king’s surgery, they spoke at length about its success. “It could not have gone better,” said Donald Effingham, the head of the surgical team.

King Jozef had been in the headlines this past week because of the unfolding of the story of a young woman who was first rumored to be his long-lost granddaughter after she attended a number of events with him in December. King Jozef said at a news conference that she was not his granddaughter and that he had never believed she was. He strongly denied all supposition that there had been any effort to mislead him, and the young woman, April Gareaux of Fairlington, Va., was at his side for the surgery.

The king’s granddaughter was kidnapped and believed killed 30 years ago during a brief but bloody coup attempt by extremists in Bariavak ... .

WASHINGTON, D.C.

April was fifteen minutes late for her first day back at work.

“Well, if it isn’t, Princess Brussels Sprouts!” Jason said, followed by his loud, braying laugh.

She looked him over coolly, and said nothing.

Zoe bustled up and enclosed her in a hug.

“Oh, April! Oh, baby! I’m so sorry. So close to being a princess and now — you didn’t have to come back to work today. You could have taken a few days to get over — not that anyone gets over being so close to a crown and then having it fall apart.”

April laughed as she disengaged from Zoe’s hold, and gently placed the other woman in a chair. Still standing, she looked around at the faces in the other cubicles, all looking at her.

“I have something to say to all of you, and then we can forget about it.”

Two phones rang unanswered, and Zoe didn’t say a word.

“I had a wonderful month away. I had to come back to work today, because I need a couple days off next week to spend with a friend who is recovering from surgery.”

Zoe’s lips parted. April forestalled any words with a raised hand.

“I am not the least disappointed that I turned out not to be the princess. I have been enriched beyond measure — I have two dogs I love, a cherished friend, and the most wonderful and challenging man in the world who is going to become my husband later this year.”

Zoe grabbed April’s left hand, and gasped. “It’s gorgeous.”

“So’s the man,” April said with a smile.

Hunter had insisted on getting the man who owned the little jewelry store whose window display she’d enjoyed the week before Thanksgiving to open early. And then he’d insisted on spending entirely too much on a ring. She had put her foot down about the one that equaled a down payment on a house, but when it came to this one he was not to be budged.