A Princess in Maine

by Jen McLaughlin

  After Grace was discharged, we all headed back to the inn. Jeremy and I stopped by Antonio’s Pizza on the way home to pick up dinner.

  We pulled into the driveway in Jeremy’s truck. The town car with Grace, her parents, and her guards was waiting for us.

  As Jeremy shut off the ignition, I let out a long breath.

  “You okay?” he asked, running his hand through his brown hair. It was getting long and was driving him insane, but I kind of liked the way it looked. It curled at the ends. “Chels?”

  I touched his hair, enjoying the way its strands wrapped around my fingers, but my mind was somewhere else. Could this have been a play from the Sullivans to gain leverage over us? Maybe it was time to remind them that I, too, could fight dirty.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Just a little tired, that’s all.”

  “Want me to handle dinner alone? You can go crash early.”

  The fact that he’d offered to host dinner by himself, especially after the kind of day we’d both had, only reminded me for the billionth time why he was too good for me.

  “I’ll stay,” I said. “We’ll get through the rest of this day together, since that’s how we do it best.”

  “Agreed.” He grabbed my hand and lifted it to his mouth, gently kissing the back of it. “Then after, we can share a glass of the good whiskey you hide in the back of your closet.”

  I laughed. “I’ll pass on the whiskey, but you’re free to have some if you’d like.”

  “Since when do you turn down whiskey?” he asked, frowning.

  “Since I’m tired, and I feel a little sick from all the stress.” I smiled and patted his cheek, chuckling. “If you’re that surprised, though, maybe I do need to lay off the booze for a little while, huh?”

  He stared at me.

  I got out of the truck.

  Grace came up behind me, looking as tired as I felt, and rested a hand on my shoulder. Beside us, Jeremy got out of the truck and took out the five pizzas we’d picked up. “I spoke to Phillip. He wanted to move his arrival up because he’s worried, but I talked him out of it. We need to stick to the plan. He’ll arrive on Monday, as previously agreed.”

  “Grace, I—”

  “Thank you for getting dinner,” she interrupted, before turning her attention on her parents. “I really appreciate all you’ve done for me.”

  I nodded, not meeting her eyes, because gratitude from anyone other than Jeremy made me uncomfortable. I wasn’t good with emotions. Or feelings of any kind. We O’Kanes weren’t supposed to have any. “Anytime.”

  “Chelsea, this is my mother, Genevieve.” She stepped aside, motioning her mother forward. “And my father, Hugo.”

  I inclined my head, smiling. “Nice to meet you. My husband, Jeremy, is over there, with the pizza.”

  Genevieve smiled and held her hand out. I shook it. Her father patted me on the back, then went over to Jeremy to offer to help carry the food.

  He, of course, refused.

  My Jeremy liked to be the hero.

  As everyone trickled inside, Grace walked beside me, so I grabbed her arm to slow her down. “I’m so sorry this happened, Grace. I’m not sure where you came across peanuts, but if it was here, I can only express my deepest apologies. If someone found out you were here and tried to hurt you, we’ll—”

  “Chelsea?” Grace interrupted.

  “Yeah?”

  “Stop. It happens. It’s not the first time it’s happened, so don’t read into it. Michelle always has an EpiPen on her, because this could occur anywhere. It doesn’t mean someone is out to get me, or ruin the wedding.” She smiled, showing her dimples. “Everything’s fine.”

  I let out a breath. Did she actually believe that? I thought that was just something optimistic people said when in denial. “Do you need to pick up another EpiPen?”

  “They refilled my prescription at the hospital, so I’m all set.”

  We walked inside the lit-up foyer, and immediately noticed that the house smelled like bleach. Good. That meant the housekeeper, Holly, had cleaned up the place like I’d asked, in case any trace of peanut oil was lingering.

  Paul was on the couch and Samantha, the baker, was with him.

  Of course she’d decided to stop by now, when we’d just avoided a catastrophe. She lurched to her feet when she saw me. “Hello.”

  “Hello,” I said in surprise. “I’m so sorry you sat here for so long. I didn’t know that you had an appointment with Grace tonight.”

  She glanced at Grace, her cheeks flushed. “I d-didn’t. I was just dropping off fresh cake samples, and then Paul…your brother…told me Grace was in town…” She held a Tupperware container out to Grace. “I know you picked your icing via Skype, but I thought it would be nice for you to have a chance to try it yourself, too.”

  Grace stepped toward Samantha. “That’s so incredibly sweet of you.” Then she turned back to everyone else and said, “How about all of you get started on the pizza, and I’ll meet you in the dining room in a few minutes?”

  Man, she had this princess thing down. Polite dismissal and gracious acceptance, all in one breath. Everyone filed out for the dining room. Jeremy was chatting up Grace’s parents, and shot me a wink over his shoulder as he charmed them effortlessly.

  Damn, he was good.

  Joseph and Michelle stayed behind to watch over Grace, and I moved next to Paul.

  As soon as Jeremy turned around, I lost the fake smile. “This can’t be coincidence.”

  Paul nodded, staring straight ahead. “What does Dad always say?”

  “You’re not paranoid if they’re really out to get you,” I murmured in reply.

  “Does Jeremy agree that this is too much to be coincidence?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Probably not. You know how he is, he always wants proof before accepting that the world really is a shitty place. I want to be sure this is about us before I pop his bubble. Until I am, I’ll smile and act like I see nothing.”

  “He needs to pop it himself.” Paul frowned at Jeremy’s back.

  I nodded, not saying anything.

  “I have a guy in the Sullivan ring. Want me to poke around, see what I find?” he asked, his voice dropping even lower as we neared the rest of the group.

  Jeremy looked at us, frowning.

  I smiled and waved. I loved Jeremy. I did. But if the Sullivans were coming after us, I needed an O’Kane. Jeremy didn’t need to get dragged into this crap because he married someone with the wrong last name. Hell, neither did Grace and Prince Phillip, for choosing our inn as their wedding location.

  As if he had read my thoughts, Paul asked, “Should you call the wedding off, to be safe?”

  “Absolutely not,” I said immediately. One way or another, I’d give Phillip and Grace the wedding they deserved. There was something satisfying about creating dreams, instead of ruining them, like Dad had always done. “The wedding is, and will remain, on.”

  Call me a fairy godmother if you must, but I was going to bibbidi-bobbidi-boo the shit out of this wedding, and grant some goddamn wishes.

  “Fine.” Paul pulled his phone out. “Want me to poke around?”

  If I was wrong, and this wasn’t an attack from the Sullivans, then I didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention. But there was still a chance that it was them. For that reason, I needed to take every precaution in the book. “Yeah,” I said. “Go ahead. But be discreet.”

  He raised his eyebrow. “As if I’d ever be anything else?”

  And then he walked away.

  Chapter 16

  Two days later, Jeremy frowned up at the sun. Chelsea was in a frenzy of wedding planning, trying to get everything ready before the crown prince arrived. She’d organized and reorganized Grace’s wedding binder at least five times, and stayed up late last night creating the master of all checklists.

  Chelsea had huddled with Grace over the seating chart in the dining room this morning. The weather guys said it was going to be anot
her hot one, so after Jeremy finished cleaning the pool, he had every intention of making sure that Chelsea took a break to strip down to a bikini and join him for a lap or two.…

  Which would hopefully end with them helping each other out of their suits.

  She’d been wound too tightly lately, probably worrying about the still-unsolved mysteries of the robbery and Grace’s allergy attack. Chelsea usually jumped to conclusions about these things, yet she hadn’t voiced a single suspicion to him, so Jeremy had kept his mouth shut in case he was overreacting. It was weird, though. Chelsea was always the first to think someone was after them. She often told him to vary his route home and was practically religious about shredding their mail because “You never know.”

  But now, after two highly suspicious events, she suddenly had nothing to say?

  What the hell was she waiting for?

  He pulled his shirt away from his stomach. It was already slightly damp with sweat. It was so damn hot that he could feel the heat from the fires of hell, and smell the smoke —

  Shit. Smoke?

  He took off running for the side of the inn, his heart pounding painfully hard. He came around the corner and froze for a second, unable to believe his eyes. A fire licked the grounds for the royal wedding.

  “Son of a bitch,” he snarled, springing into action.

  He bolted for the hose, cranked the lever on, and immediately sprayed the middle of the fire, working his way out toward the edges. The fire dissipated quickly, but the damage was done. As the smoke drifted off into the air, and he let the trigger on the hose handle go, all that was left was scorched earth and burnt siding on the inn.

  If he hadn’t been there…

  He forced that thought from his head. He had been there, and he wasn’t one for playing out what-if scenarios in his head. He was more a man of action. Pulling his phone out, he dialed quickly. The man on the other end answered after two rings. “Hello?”

  “I need you out at the inn immediately, Bob.” He ran a hand down his face, eyeing the charred grass and flowers. “There’s been a fire, and we have a wedding in less than two weeks.”

  Their landscaper, an old friend of his, groaned. “Shit. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  As soon as Jeremy hung up, he searched the center of the charred grass. He’d learned a lot of tricks in the DEA. During one case he’d investigated involving an arsonist, a fireman had told him how to track down the source of the fire.

  After searching the ground carefully for a few minutes, Jeremy found it, but didn’t feel any better about this whole damn thing.

  As Jeremy squatted over the blackened earth, Bob walked up beside him, rubbing his jaw and staring at the mess. He let out a low whistle as he approached.

  Jeremy glanced up at the house, frowning. Chelsea hadn’t smelled the fire or heard him putting it out. The flames had just reached the side of the inn, but if they had burned it down with her inside…

  Yeah, he might not be a what-if man, but he knew one thing about this whole scenario. Whoever was doing this was going down, one way or another. It didn’t matter if this was a direct attack against them. No one messed with his wife and walked away clean.

  “This is pretty bad,” Bob said, stooping beside him. “What happened?”

  Jeremy stood. “Well, I found a cigarette in the grass.”

  “It’s too dry for that kind of carelessness.” Bob shook his slightly balding head, and rested a hand on his dark-blue carpenter jeans. “Find the employee who did this and fire them. They could have taken down the whole building.”

  “I know. Can you fix it in time for the wedding?”

  “I can get some sod and fresh soil.” He pulled his notebook out and started scribbling. “As long as no one walks on the new grass until the wedding, you should be okay. A couple of rose bushes and maybe a few lobelias will hide the fact that the garden was freshly planted, but it won’t be cheap.”

  “We’ll pay what we need to pay.”

  “Do you have a guy for siding?” Bob tucked his notepad back into his pocket. “It’ll need to be repaired, too.”

  “I’ve got it. I put it up the first time, and I have some leftover sitting in the shed.” Jeremy stepped back, calculating how much he would need. “I can get it done in time.”

  “I’ll get working on this right away, then,” Bob said, holding a hand out.

  Jeremy shook it, forcing a smile. “Thanks, man.”

  He wasn’t alone for more than thirty seconds before Joseph approached. “What happened?”

  “A fire.” Jeremy stepped back, debating how much to say. “Someone improperly disposed of a lit cigarette, and the grass caught fire since it’s been so hot and dry.”

  Joseph frowned. “Which of your employees smoke?”

  “No one.” Jeremy locked eyes with the other man. “We’re a non-smoking inn.”

  “This was intentional.”

  Jeremy didn’t say anything.

  “The prince won’t like this.”

  “Yeah, well, neither do I,” Jeremy replied. “It’s my inn that almost burned down.”

  Joseph sighed, then headed back toward the house. “I’m going to call Prince Phillip. Let me know if you need anything, or if you find out who the target was.”

  Jeremy frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, like you said, it’s your inn.” Joseph held his hands out, his accent deep, his frown deeper. “You could have been the target, too. Not Miss Grace.”

  Chapter 17

  After dinner was served and the dishes were cleaned, I settled back against the pillows, chatting away. I’d been talking at Jeremy since we walked into our bedroom to turn in for the night, and he’d barely said two words back. I wasn’t going to bring up the thing that was really worrying me, though. I wasn’t going to drag Jeremy into that mess.

  Paul had a meeting with his Sullivan contact tonight, so pretty soon, I’d know if these threats were about us or the royal wedding. Then we’d figure out where to go from there.

  Until then, I welcomed Jeremy’s silence.

  But secretly, it was killing me, not talking about this with him.

  We talked about everything.

  “—and then I asked her if she was sure, and she said yes.” I smiled at Jeremy. He stared back, deadpan. “So we’re going with light-peach roses instead of pink.”

  Jeremy opened his mouth, closed it, and then settled for, “Awesome.”

  I held my fake smile strictly in place, eyeing my phone. Had Paul gotten any answers yet? “Yeah. I had to reorganize the binder again, because that changed everything, but I think it’s finally right. Everything is falling into place. Soon, this’ll all be over and we’ll be on vacation in Hawaii.”

  Or at war with the Sullivans.

  Whichever.

  Jeremy tore his shirt over his head. I took a second to admire his hard abs, and the sprinkling of chest hair across his pecs that led down into a happy trail. It disappeared under the waist of his jeans. It was a trail I enjoyed traveling on a nightly basis, and tonight would be no different. My husband had distraction written all over him, and I was in need of some of that. I shut my MacBook and crawled across the bed toward him, wearing nothing more than a short black nightie.

  He saw me coming, and dropped his shirt. “Chels—”

  Resting my hands on his shoulders, I kissed him, and for a second, he leaned into it, possessively closing his hands over my hips. But then he stiffened.

  I felt him pulling away before he even moved.

  “We need to talk,” he said slowly, frowning down at me.

  He hadn’t smiled all night.

  I didn’t know what to do with that.

  “Jer—”

  Jeremy cupped my face, resting his thumb against my mouth as he stared down at it. “I love you, but we can’t just kiss this away. Do you think someone is after us again, or do you think they’re after Grace this time?”

  “I—” I started.

  “I,
personally, think this is the Sullivans,” he said, cutting me off. “A fire, a robbery—that has their MO all over it. They love this petty shit.”

  Relief surged inside me.

  Uncontrollable. Unstoppable.

  He saw it, too. For once, he was on the same page as me right from the get-go. I wasn’t dragging him anywhere because he was already there. No arguing was needed to sway him to the dark side. Oddly enough, though, with that relief came sadness. I guess I hadn’t really wanted to be right about my gut feeling, and maybe I’d been hoping I was just being paranoid like usual. “Thank God.”

  He frowned. “Wait. What?”

  “I’m so happy you said that, without me having to try to convince you. I’ve been thinking the same exact thing.”

  He crossed his arms. “And you didn’t say anything because…?”

  “I thought my threat would keep the Sullivans at bay, but apparently not. So I—”

  “Wait.” He looked half confused, half pissed as hell. I wasn’t sure what to do with that. “What threat?”

  I glanced down at the bed and swallowed hard. “I, uh, may have taken photos of the pages in that journal we found a few months ago. I told them that as long as they left us alone, we’d leave them alone.”

  “Jesus,” he breathed, covering his face. “You blackmailed a crime family.”

  I lifted a shoulder.

  “Are you insane?” he asked, his voice so low I could barely hear him.

  “No, I’m cautious.” I lifted my chin and met his eyes. “And Paul’s talking to a guy he knows inside the family to see if they’re gunning for us.”

  “This just keeps getting better,” he said stiffly, his nostrils flaring. “As if it wasn’t bad enough that you blackmailed the Sullivans, you went to Paul with your suspicions…instead of me? You kept me, your husband, in the dark about all of this? You cut me out of the decision-making process and seriously saw nothing wrong with that?”

  Chapter 18