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Authors: MaryJanice Davidson

BOOK: The Royal Mess
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Chapter 31
J
effrey knocked on the door he had leaned against thousands of times.
“Come!”
He opened it but stayed on the threshold. “You wished to see me, my king?”
“Yeah, come on in, Jeff.”
Jeffrey walked into the office. “Majesty?”
“Have a seat, Jeff.”
For the first time in his career, Jeffrey took the seat opposite the king. “How may I assist you, my king?”
“You can settle down and unclench. Want a drink? Something to eat?”
“No, sir.”
“How about a vacation?”
“No, sir!”
“Calm down, you're so tense you're making me nervous. Granted, your last vacation wasn't much fun—”
“You nearly died. By the time the border patrol eased up enough for me to get back into the country, it was all over.”
“—but your last vacation was also four years ago. I think, after what happened at lunch, that you're a little overdue.”
“Does the king require my resignation?” he asked stiffly.
“Shit, no!” The king looked honestly stressed, and even worried. Jeffrey had often wished someone would try something on his watch, just so he could have the pleasure of taking a bullet for Alexander Baranov II. And he always felt guilty when he had such thoughts. “I'm just worried about you, Jeff. Nicole popping up out of the woodwork has been stressful for all of us—”
My king, you have no idea.
“—everybody's on edge and—”
She talked to me like she hated me.
“—stressful, sure, and—”
Hated me.
“—a handful, but she's had to adjust to a lot—”
I couldn't bear it if she felt the way she sounded.
“Okay?”
“Of course, my king.”
“Okay.” King Alexander beamed. “So it's settled. Effective tomorrow, you're on vacation for the rest of the week.
“
What?”
“Okay, okay, take two weeks. See what a softy I am?”
He cursed himself for not paying more attention. Then he realized: the king was right. He couldn't even focus on orders from the sovereign. What good was he to Nicole in this state?
“That, ah, that won't be necessary, sir. I'll see you Monday morning.”
“Take 'er easy, Jeff. Oh, and Jeff! Where's the Dragon right now?”
He consulted his Palm Pilot. “Third floor, north wing. I would guess she's taking more pictures of the family portraits.”
“Great. That's fine. Thousand of feet away. Okay. Thanks. Enjoy your time off. You've earned it.”
Then why did it feel more like a punishment than a reward?
Chapter 32
C
hristina Baranov, once Crown Princess of Alaska, now just plain Princess, came at once to answer her daughter's cries.
She cursed Dara's grandfather for letting the almost-four-year-old watch
Lord of the Rings.
This was the third night in a row Dara had dreamed of catapulting severed heads. She soothed her daughter, named for a dead queen, David's mother. And soon enough, the child drifted back to sleep.
David hadn't come to help her. And when David was home, he always came when Dara cried.
Christina was hot tempered, but a good wife who loved her husband beyond all reason, and she said nothing to David when she returned to their bedroom.
“She okay?” David said, not looking away from the television. That in itself was super weird; David never watched television. He never had time. If he wasn't tending the penguins or speaking at an aquarium or studying law or history, he had almost as much paperwork to juggle as Al, or Edmund.
Not anymore.
“Another nightmare about flying severed heads. Remind me to kick your dad's butt up to his shoulder blades tomorrow.”
David smiled, clicking rapidly through the channels. “You know he can't refuse her anything.”
“He's spoiling her rotten
and
giving her nightmares. The worst of both worlds.”
“Don't bug Dad. He's got enough on his mind. Especially after that balls-up of a luncheon.”
Shockeroo number eighty-seven, and it had already been a helluva week. David didn't normally talk crude; he left it to her.
She sat on the edge of the bed, trying for noncommittal. “Yeah, I heard Jeffrey had kind of an overreaction. But all those guys are wound so tight I can't believe it hasn't happened before.”
“Mmm.”
“So how'd it go? Nicole's first official thingamabob?”
“Before or after our gold medalist nearly got concussed?”
“Right. So. Uh. What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” Click, click, click, click, click. “At all.”
“Yeah, uh, we haven't really talked about this.”
“Talked about what?”
“How you're suddenly out of the job you've been training for since you were in diapers.”
At last, at last he looked at her. “There's nothing to discuss. It's just as much my duty to step aside for the true heir as it was my duty to learn how to—to run things after Dad. You know.”
She threw up her hands. “Duty! If I hear that word again this week I'll puke! Fuck duty, how do you
feel
? ”
“Fine.” Click. Click. Click.
She jerked the remote out of his hand, shut off the television, and tossed the remote across the room.
“Oh,” her husband observed, “now that's mature.”
“David! Stop being such a damn guy and talk to me! Tell me you're pissed, tell me you're sad, tell me you're thrilled to be off the hook. I don't give a shit, just speak.”
Nothing.
“Speak!”
“Arf.”
“I hate you,” she muttered, getting up from the bed, but he rolled across the mattress, grabbed her arm, and pulled her back down.
“You worship the very ground I walk on and we both know it.”
“Don't press your luck.”
“Chris, I can't tell you how I feel because I don't know how I feel. I really don't. I'm just—” He groped for words, seemingly at a loss. Or perhaps actually at a loss.
“Well, I don't really care if I'm ever queen. You know that. You always knew that.”
“Yes.”
“But you've got to have feelings about not being the king.”
“I do have feelings.” He paused. “I just have no idea what they are.”
She understood. She had spent her time as a royal dreading Al's death, dreading the crown. And now that she never had to worry about it again, she wasn't sure if she was relieved or out of sorts. And if she, who'd only been in the royal family a little over four years, didn't know, how could David possibly know?
“You want something? An omelet?” Their suite was the only one equipped with a kitchen; Christina had been a cook in her old life. “Coddled eggs?”
“I'm sick of eggs. I'd rather have you.”
“Oooooh,” she said, letting him drag her across the bed and into his lap. “Now if only you had the remote back, you'd be the happiest guy in the country.”
Chapter 33
“U
h, hello.” Nicole blinked at the stranger standing opposite her door. “Who are you?”
“Natalia Burdenov, Your Highness. I'm new to your detail, effective 0800 today.”
Nicole blinked harder. Yesterday had been a disaster—the botched luncheon, her screaming at Jeffrey—complete and total nightmare. She'd spent the rest of the day hiding in a library she'd found. No one had disturbed her, and she'd worked her way through four Hardy Boys books. She had declined to eat with the royal family and had hit the sheets early after someone sent up a sandwich and decaf.
Her favorite sandwich: rare roast beef, mustard, tomatoes, on a sourdough roll.
She wondered how the palace staff ferreted stuff like that out.
Resolved to make a fresh start and hash this thing out with Jeffrey, her plan had been foiled by sleeping late. And now—
“Where's Jeffrey?”
“Off duty for the rest of the week, Your Highness.”
She squinted at Natalia, who looked as far from a bodyguard as anyone she'd ever seen: big dark pansy eyes, pale skin, long blond hair in a Valkyrie braid that hung over her left shoulder. Black suit. Armed to the teeth. Sensible flats.
“He's gone?”
“Yes, Highness.”
“Did I get him in trouble?”
“No, Highness.”
“Would you tell me if I did?”
“Yes, Highness.”
Great. They'd assigned her a cyborg.
She sighed. “Well, what's the plan for today, Natalia?”
“You'll be presenting awards to the GSA—”
“What?”
“Girl Scouts of Alaska. Then lunch. Then—”
“Then nothing. I'm off duty then, too.”
Natalia didn't blink. Perhaps she hadn't been programmed to. “Yes, Princess.”
“And one more thing.”
“Yes, Princess?”
“Where's Nicky?”
Chapter 34
A
fter dealing with several giggling preadolescents, all who wanted to know what it was like to be “a real live princess, like Sleeping Beauty!” she made her escape and tracked down the youngest prince. She found him exactly where Natalia had told her he'd be, which was a good trick.
Because when it was just family, the detail left them pretty much alone. They only stuck close at official luncheons and the like. And they were positively leechlike when the royals left the palace grounds. And yet, they always knew where each royal could be found, day or night.
Anyway, Nicky was watching the new Harry Potter movie, which she knew for a fact wouldn't be out in theaters for another six weeks, and munching popcorn in the small theater.
Munching alongside him was Princess Christina.
“Hi, Nicky.”
He turned and smiled when he saw her. “Hi, Nicole. Lights!”
The gloomy theater instantly brightened, and the movie shut off.
“Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt—”
“He's seen it three times already.” Christina was studying her with a cool, calculating gaze. “Did you come to rumble? Get payback for that bump on the noggin?”
“Don't flatter yourself.”
“To meet your niece?”
“Uh, sorry about that. Sure, but maybe later? I mean, doesn't she have a schedule, too?”
“I'm pretty sure Al is sneaking her Ding-Dongs and ruining her supper,” Christina said dolefully. “Why don't you have supper with us? David and me and her, I mean, in our suite? I'll cook.”
Oh, right. She had read that Christina Baranov, née Krabbe, had been a cruise line chef before meeting the king, and then David. “Sure, sounds good.”
“Are you allergic to anything?”
Amused, Nicole asked, “You don't have paperwork on that?”
“Sure. But who can find it in that haystack?”
“No, no allergies. But I hate green beans.”
“Three helpings of
haricots vertes
coming up.” Christina tossed another handful of popcorn in her mouth. “So what's on your mind?”
“Actually, Christina, I'm here for him.”
“You are? I mean, of course you are.” Christina looked surprised. Nicky looked smug. “Listen, I'm sorry about the other day. Even though you started it.”
“You really suck at apologies,” Nicky told his sister-in-law.
“I'm just saying—no hard feelings, okay?”
“I,” Nicole replied, “have no other kind of feelings, on the off chance you hadn't noticed. Now if you don't mind, I'd like to talk to Nicky alone.”
“What are you going to do to him?” Christina asked suspiciously, not budging from her seat.
“I'm going to probe his diabolical mind.”
“Seriously.”
“I am being serious.”
Christina turned to the only other blonde in the family. “Do you want me to stay?”
“What for?”
“She's probably got some piano wire on her somewhere. Possibly a crossbow.”
“You think I'm in danger because she tried to punch you?
You're
in danger because she tried to punch you. Why don't you go take care of David's penguins or something?”
“You mean it's true?” Nicole said. “There really are penguins living inside the palace? I thought that was an urban legend.”
“Don't we all wish.” The tall blonde shuddered but got to her feet. “Why don't I go take care of the smelly things? Because I have a life? I'm gonna go make pea soup from scratch.”
“Pea soup,” Nicky said, shivering. “Why not just vomit into a bowl and call it good?”
“God, you're disgusting.” Christina moved up the aisle. “Later, Nicole.”
“Maybe.”
“Even ‘maybe' sounds ominous coming from you.” But Christina was talking to herself; Nicole had focused her attention on Nicky.
She sat beside him and said, “If I wanted to find out where a staff member lived while at the same time not making a big deal of it, how would I—”
He handed her a computer printout. It had one name on it, and one address.
Jeffrey Rodinov.
She stared at him. “What are you, a witch? How'd you know what I wanted? How'd you know I'd show up here looking for it?”
“Well, everybody knows Jeffrey was sort of forced into a vacation.”
“Forced?” she said sharply. Here she'd been thinking he had gotten himself transferred to another detail, and who could blame him?
“Well, yeah. He's really overdue. It's stressful, watching out for us.”
“I can imagine.”
“No, Nicole, you can't. Our detail is bored 99.9 percent of the time, and the other tenth of a percent, people are shooting at them—or us—or trying to blow us up.”
“I guess I didn't think about it like that.” Mostly, she mused, she thought of the detail as grossly invading her privacy as much as they could.
“And he was on Dad's detail for years. That's probably the most stressful detail of all.”
“I can imagine.”
“No, you can't.”
“Okay, okay, we've established I'm the detail dumbass. But you still haven't explained how you can see into the future. Is that your royal superpower?”
“I just figured you'd want to check up on him. Whenever one of our detail is sick or whatever, we usually stop by their place at least once. They're trained to take a bullet or a knife; the least we can do is visit them when they're sick or whatever.”
“Okay.” Sick or whatever had nothing to do with nothing, but she had no plans to enlighten the Prince of Darkness. “I'm with you so far.”
“And I figured you wouldn't know who to ask—Edmund, by the way, when in doubt, always ask Edmund—so I pulled Jeffrey's address out of one of our databases, printed it, and stuck it in my pocket. I figured I'd have to find you, but you tracked me down.”
She stared at him. “You're kind of terrifying, you know?”
He arched blond brows at her. “Sure.”
“Didn't you blow up the bathrooms at—”
“Nicole!” He grinned. “Don't tell me you believe everything you read.”
“Just give me a chance to kill myself if I ever get on your bad side.”
“Please. I'm glad you're here. Uh.” He colored. “I mean, I'm sorry about your mom and all, but I'm really glad you're here. It's been so
boring
lately.”
“Anything to brighten your weird little life.” She pocketed the printout. “Thanks for this.”
“Please. Next time give me something hard.”
“I'll try to stump you.”

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