The Frog Prince (26 page)

I shrug out of my full-length black coat and hand it to her. “Thank you, and please feel free to call me Leigh.”

Johanna turns to a tall, brooding man in a dark suit who looks like he’s about to step out to lead a funeral procession. “
Nehmen Sie ihr Beutel zum Gastraum
.” The man replies in German and leaves through the door we came in, back towards the SUV.

My coat over her arm, Johanna leads us down a long, well-lit passage. “I’m afraid you made better time from the airport than we had anticipated,” she says. Jason and I follow her through a door and into a long, broad hallway. “Prince Roman was in his office on the other side of the palace when we alerted him to your arrival. It takes several minutes to walk from one side to the other,” she says with a note of pride. “We will meet him at the Blue Staircase.”

The butterflies in my stomach throw themselves around like punk rockers in a mosh pit. My hands are covered with a thin sheen of sweat, my heart racing in anticipation. I tuck my hair behind my ears and straighten my sweater, a form-fitting, thigh-length gray cashmere with ruffled poet sleeves. I check the strands of gray pearls around my neck to be sure that the clasp hasn’t fallen forward to the front.

One long hallway of closed doors leads into another, and it’s not long before I’ve lost all sense of direction. At each turn or doorway I tilt my head to see past Johanna, but Roman is nowhere in sight. Finally, Johanna opens an ordinary, if tall, door and motions for me to walk through. “Just go right up to the top floor.” She turns back to Jason and speaks to him sharply in both German and English. “
Wir bleiben hier
. This entire wing is secure.”

It’s not until the door clicks shut behind me that I realize that Jason hasn’t followed me and I’m alone for the first time in weeks. I follow the brilliant blue carpet to the bottom of the wide, deep stone steps and look up. And up and up. There are only three flights of stairs, but the ceiling soars at least twenty feet above the last landing, ending in a brilliantly-colored fresco of people and horses frolicking in the clouds, doing something that looks vaguely important.

I start climbing, following the royal blue runner up the stairs, craning my neck backwards to try to make out the fresco details better. I pause at the landing, looking up the last twenty steps to the third floor. There are four tall, heavy-looking wood doors at the top: one leading left, the second to the right and two more straight ahead. They’re all closed, like a royal version of Let’s Make a Deal. Will Roman be behind Door Number One? Number Two?

I smile to myself and turn around on the landing. Stepping carefully over the red velour tourist rope, I lean in to study one of the two battle scene paintings on the wall. Between them is an imposing bust of a mustachioed man mounted on a monolith of terracotta-colored marble. I’m about to read the Plexiglas information card mounted on a stanchion by the wall when I hear a door opening above and behind me.

I had thought that seeing his face on TV and magazine covers innumerable times in the last three weeks would have desensitized me to the shock of seeing him in person. That theory crumbles instantly. Roman stands exactly in the middle of the wide staircase, hands on his hips, looking better in a blue sweater and jeans than anyone has a right to. His dark brown hair is a little shorter than the last time I saw him, but still long enough for my dad to refer to him as a “hippie.”

“Whiskey Tango,” he says softly, a smile tugging at his lips. His voice echoes off the walls and the towering ceiling far above.

“Papa Romeo,” I say.

He tilts his head. “What’s that stand for again?”

“‘Prince Roman,’” I say and frown. “
Not
my idea, just so you know.”

He laughs. “I like it. I can say ‘come to papa’ without sounding like some pervert.”

He starts down the stairs and I notice that his feet are bare. Roman holds his arms out to me, and I rush up the stairs to meet him halfway. I drop my bag as he grabs me in a bear hug and lifts me off my feet. I throw my arms around his neck and burrow my nose into the collar of his scratchy sweater. Still holding me tightly, he carries me up the stairs to the top landing. He puts me on my feet without releasing his arms.

“You have no idea how glad I am to see you,” he says, his words muffled in my hair and against the skin of my neck.

I inhale deeply, breathing in the cedar scent of his cologne. “I think that was the longest three weeks of my life.”

He chuckles. “Let’s not do that again, shall we?” His breath, spicy with cinnamon, is warm against my neck. “You look absolutely incredible,” he says, taking my face in his hands. “Even better in person.”

I can’t resist the spicy scent of him a moment longer. I decide to skip all the verbal niceties and go straight for his lips. He stiffens for a fraction of a second, shocked by my sudden attack. Then he spins me around and pins me against the wall of the stairwell.

Holding my face in his hands, he brushes his tongue across my lower lip before carefully touching his own lips to mine. I take this as my cue to start removing his sweater.

“Leigh,” he says, catching my hands and moving out of range. “Can we do this somewhere besides the Blue Staircase?”

I pull away and smile mischievously. “What’s wrong with the Blue Staircase?”

He looks down the stairs at the landing where I’d been standing a few moments before. I turn my head to see what’s holding up our fun. The only thing down there besides the paintings is the marble bust of the stern-looking guy with the mustache.

“That’s my great-great-great grand uncle, Franz Joseph,” he says. “He wasn’t the kind of guy who approved of fornication on the Blue Staircase.”

“You’re kind of putting a damper on our reunion,” I say, eyeing the now creepy statue.

He laughs. “
And
there are security cameras all over this part of the palace. I just happen to know that there’s a hidden camera on Uncle Franz.”

Horrified, I take a step away from him, trying to remember our embrace detail by detail to see if there is anything lurid enough to be tabloid-worthy.

“Luckily for you,” he says, pulling me through the left-hand door and into a room with soaring ceilings, white paneling with gold trim, and crystal chandeliers, “I had more, uh,
adventurous
ancestors.” I follow him along the red carpet to the opposite corner, past the velvet ropes separating us from the rest of the room.

The next room is comparatively small. I catch a quick glimpse of scarlet drapes and lace sheers over the floor-to-ceiling windows and lush landscapes painted directly onto the wall panels before Roman steps over the tourist ropes and motions for me to follow. We pass a red couch anchoring a seating area on our left before going through another door. Two steps into the next room, Roman stops short.

This room is round, the décor such a departure from the previous rooms as to be shocking. An intricate pattern of wood in shades from bamboo to ebony spreads from the center of the parquet flooring like a spider web. Gilt framed lacquer insets of all sizes and shapes are set into the chalk-white walls, each containing various delicate pieces of blue and white porcelain.

“Would it be rude to say that it looks ‘Chinese-y’ in here?” I whisper.

Roman laughs. “No, it wouldn’t be rude. This is the Round Chinese Salon. China was all the rage in the eighteenth century.”

I drop his hand so I can look more closely at what is no doubt a priceless porcelain vase on the floor. It’s as tall as my waist.

“You coming?” he says.

I look back at him, still standing by the door we just came through. “Is this the wrong way?” I say, confused.

Roman pushes on the wall next to the door. A three inch by three inch section of wall opens, revealing a security keypad. He stabs at the numbers, and, to my astonishment, an entire wall panel pops free and opens like a door. Behind it is a narrow staircase that hugs the exterior of the round room, winding up and out of sight.

Roman holds the door open for me and grins. “My great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother had a sneaky side.”

“Your great wha’?” I say, having lost track after the third ‘great.’

“Empress Maria Theresa,” he says, as I duck into the staircase and walk carefully up the plain wooden stairs. “The only woman ruler in the Habsburg dynasty. She ruled in the mid-seventeen hundreds.”

At the top of the stairs is a short, narrow passage and more stairs. “Just one more flight,” he promises.

“Don’t you royals believe in elevators?” I mutter, a little short of breath as I stagger to the top. I hear him chuckling behind me.

“There are elevators all over the palace,” he says, too vague to suit me. “If they put one right here they’d have to take out the staircase and destroy a lot of historical space. Besides, I’m not going to be staying up here for very long. They’ve relocated most of the people who were living on the top floors, so I’ll be moving again in about a week.”

Once we’re to the second landing, Roman squeezes past me to the first of the two doors in the long hallway, swinging it open wide. Once I’m able to see inside the room I gasp in astonishment. It’s twice as large as Roman’s tree-house bedroom, but is decorated exactly the same, right down to the wainscoting, sleigh bed and steamer trunk loaded with books. Even the words “
Austria est in orbit ultima
” are stenciled on the wall. The curtains are same color blue as the ones in Colorado, but they couldn’t possibly be the same; the windows here are three times as tall and there are twice as many.

On his nightstand I see a familiar silver picture frame. “I guess you liked the picture,” I say, pointing to it.

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, me and every other guy on the planet. I thought I had a one-of-a-kind until I opened
Vanity Fair
.”

I laugh. “I told you I was sorry! It was just such a good picture. Narcissism got the better of me.”

Through a door on the far side of the room I can see where his living room has been reconstituted, although the white love seat looks a little diminutive in the larger space.

“Is this all your stuff or did they have to recreate your shabby chic look?”

“It’s mine,” he says, crossing the room and pulling the curtains closed one by one from left to right. “I told them I liked my furniture, so they had everything shipped over from Colorado. There’s nothing wrong with the stuff I already had.” He says this with a tone of defensiveness, like someone has tried to convince him otherwise.

I get to the far window before he does. “I can’t believe they let you have a room overlooking the front courtyard,” I say, worried now as I see the brightly-lit avenue in front of the palace. “Isn’t this a security risk?”

“They replaced all the glass with bullet-proof glass,” he says, rapping his knuckle on the window. I can tell from the low thump it makes that it is either very thick or very dense or both. “No one can see in from outside anyway.” He steps around me and closes the last of the curtains.

“So why did Great Grandma Maria need a secret attic?” I say.

“It wasn’t really a big secret. She just liked a place to go where the servants couldn’t overhear her conversations with her advisors. Plus,” he adds, coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around my waist, “she had sixteen children.”

“Sixteen children…are you kidding me?”

“Nope. Thirteen survived to adulthood.”

“Never mind, this room is starting to make perfect sense.” I’m about to add more, but Roman distracts me by kissing my neck and working his way up to my ear.

“Maria Theresa was an interesting woman,” he murmurs. “She championed the first smallpox inoculations, even had her own kids vaccinated.”

“Mmm-hmm.” I try to shut him up by twisting my body around and blocking his lips with my mouth.

“
And
,” he says, leaning back out of reach, “her youngest daughter was Marie Antoinette.”

I groan. “Look, if you’re going to give me a history lesson, can you at least take your clothes off first?”

I squeal as he picks me up and tosses me onto the bed. I land on my back and prop myself up on my elbows as he shrugs out of his sweater and jeans and drops them to the floor. I stare at him, wondering if there is anything sexier on a tall, lean man than a body-hugging T-shirt and a pair of properly fitting boxer-briefs. I think about asking him to go fetch a razor so he can stand there and shave for me.

I collapse backwards as Roman slowly lowers the full length of his body onto mine. His hands find mine, and he pushes our entangled fingers up until our hands are above my head. Kissing me gently, he skims his fingers down the side of my thigh to the back of my knee. In one smooth movement, he pulls my leg up and around his waist. “
Sie fühlen sich so gut
,” he murmurs as I press my hips into him.

“Whatever,” I say, my voice distorted by his mouth moving against mine. I can tell by the quivering of his stomach that he’s trying hard not to laugh.

“
Zuerst werde ich Ihrer Strickjacke entfernen
,” he says, rolling to his back and pulling me on top of him.

I straighten up, still straddling him. “First you’re going to…what?”

His raises his eyebrows in surprise. “You understood that?”

I shrug. “Jason’s been giving me full-immersion German lessons. I guess we haven’t gotten to that phrase yet.”

He stares at me for a second. “If Jason ever says that to you I will crush his testicles with a lump hammer.”

Holding my hair so it doesn’t fall on his face, I lean over and pull my sweater over my head. I throw it behind me onto the floor. “Say something else Jason shouldn’t say to me,” I say, kissing the hollow spot just in front of his ear.

His hands are my waist and sliding downward. “
Dann werde ich Ihre Hosen entfernen
.”

I frown at him. “You’re going to take my pants off?”

The corners of his mouth turn up. “I’m going to do more to you than just that.” He pulls my hair forward so it spills over my shoulders. “But I think…” He trails off, running his fingers along the rope of pearls around my neck. He nods once, as if he’s come to some sort of agreement with himself. “
Ich lasse Sie Ihre Perlen an halten
.”