The Princess and the Prepper

by Barbara Elsborg

  The same elderly woman sat at the desk today. She smiled broadly when she saw him. He knew she’d tell his mother he’d been in.

  “Changed your mind about coming to our reading group?” she asked.

  Has hell frozen? “No, sorry.”

  “Ah, you’re here for the town meeting. They’re upstairs in the big room.”

  “No, I’m not here for that. I’m after some information. Do you have a list of the guest houses in town?”

  She pushed to her feet and opened a filing cabinet. “Here you go.” She handed him a sheet of paper.

  “Thank you.” He turned to leave. Ten addresses. Lili had to be at one of them.

  “You looking for the princess?” she asked.

  He stumbled to a halt and turned.

  “It’s a small town.” Her mouth curved in a smile.

  “You know where she is?”

  “They’re staying with Maggie Farrell.”

  Her name was halfway down the list. She’d once gone out with his eldest brother.

  “Maggie’s upstairs at the meeting.”

  “Thanks.”

  Grant’s heart pounded as he walked out. Now what was he going to do? He’d been ready to follow Lili to Yellowstone and…stop her getting married. At the very least he needed to satisfy himself that she wanted to go through with it. His fuel gauge read full; he had his emergency pack. He was prepared for everything except Lili saying no to him and yes to the asshole who hit her. Oh, and add one more thing he wasn’t prepared for—how to get her out of the other guy’s grasp.

  He was fairly certain the man wouldn’t have a gun, which was a relief because Grant’s rifle was back at the cabin and purely for show. He’d have difficulty hitting a house with a machine gun. He didn’t get on with guns, probably because his brothers and his father were crack shots, and he’d known he’d never be as good. He wasn’t a fighter, either. He was several years younger than his brothers, had leukemia when he was kid, and after that had been treated as if he was going to break. He stamped back to his SUV. Excuses.

  He could have sworn Shadow looked disappointed to see he was on his own. He drove to Maggie Farrell’s guesthouse and parked a little way up the street.

  “Now what am I supposed to do?” he muttered.

  Shadow nudged him with his muzzle.

  “Okay, okay.” He exited the car and headed for the door.

  He knocked, and kept on knocking. When it was clear no one was going to come, he tried the door but it was locked.

  As he headed back to his vehicle, he could see Shadow staring at him through the window. Grant climbed in and closed the door.

  “What do you expect me to do? Break in? Don’t answer that.”

  He drove back to the library and pulled into the lot to see a group of people coming out of the building. Looked like the meeting was over. As he exited the vehicle, Shadow jumped out, too.

  “Be good. Don’t scare anyone,” he warned.

  Grant headed for the crowd, but his steps slowed as he approached. He could see Maggie, but next to her stood his mother. Shit.

  Too late to back away. Both women had seen him. If he turned now, he’d hurt his mother even more than he already had. She might deserve some of his displeasure but the night they’d fallen out seemed a long while ago now.

  “Grant!” Maggie said. “I read your latest. Brilliant.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Is that Shadow?” Maggie asked.

  He nodded. The wolf pressed against his leg.

  “Well, I’ll be getting home. ’Bye, Orla.” Maggie kissed his mother’s cheek.

  “Actually, it was Mag—” Oh shit. He caught sight of his mother’s disappointment and swallowed hard. “Maggie, is the English couple staying with you tonight?”

  He glanced at his mother, saw her begin to move away and shook his head.

  “Yes. Dining out though.”

  “What’s Dieter like?”

  “Very polite. A real gentleman. Wipes his feet carefully before he walks in.” She laughed and then sighed. “Though not as concerned about his missing wife as I thought he’d be.”

  “They’re not married,” Grant said.

  “Oh. Well, he should still have been more concerned. He went to his business meeting as if he didn’t have a care. I’d have thought he’d have been too worried to bother with that. But when Jake spoke to him, he was different, more upset but—I don’t know, he’s an odd guy for all his perfect manners.”

  “Is Lili okay?”

  “He interrupted her when she tried to speak to me, practically hauled her up the stairs. I thought….”

  “Thought what?”

  “That he seemed more angry than relieved. Well, I need to get back. See you, Orla. Grant.”

  As Maggie walked away, he turned to his mother. She looked smaller, paler, all wrapped up her old coat, wearing the hat she’d worn since he was a teenager, and sheepskin mittens he’d bought her one Christmas.

  Neither of them spoke for a moment.

  “How are you, Grant?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  “Would you like a coffee?” he mumbled.

  Her smile made him feel bad. “I sure would.”

  “Shadow, you want to go home or wait?” he asked.

  The wolf loped off.

  His mother let out a short laugh. “Mary used to swear he understood her, too. She’d be so pleased you and he are friends.”

  They left their vehicles in the library lot and walked the block to Mountain Rail Donuts. Grant didn’t recognize the staff, but the two behind the counter greeted his mother by name. Neither he nor his mother spoke until they had coffee and two Wrangler’s Bedrolls in front of them, at their table by the window. The cream-filled pastries were a specialty.

  “I haven’t had one of these since….”

  “In a long while,” his mother finished for him. “How are you?”

  “How do you think?” He winced at his snap. “Sorry.”

  Her hand crept across the table. “We miss her, too. Both of them.”

  He stared at her twisted fingers, the skin wrinkled around her swollen, arthritic knuckles. “You didn’t want me to marry her.”

  “She was ten years older than you.”

  “Not because she was African American?”

  The scowl on his mother’s face made his stomach churn.

  “You know better than that, Grant Thomas Houston. Since when have I had a problem with the color of anyone’s skin? It’s just that I thought Serena was…too needy, too desperate to have babies.”

  “Time wasn’t on her side.”

  “I know that. But the prolonged treatment, the anxiety, it made her unstable. It was all she ever talked about, and it overwhelmed your lives. Yet another cycle of IVF, the waiting, the disappointment, it made losing Layla even more painful. And then Serena fell apart and you took it all on your shoulders to put her back together.”

  “She was my wife.”

  “And you’re our son, and we lost you too.”

  His mother’s hand still lay there on the table. He lifted his from his lap and laid it over hers. Her sigh was audible.

  “It was my fault they died,” he whispered.

  She turned her hand over to grip his. “You know that’s not true.”

  “I was supposed to take care of them, protect them.”

  “Grant, there are some things you can’t protect against. It was no one’s fault you got leukemia. No one’s fault Layla contracted meningitis.”

  “I should have recognized the symptoms.”

  “The doctor missed them first time round. How were you to know?”

  He shuddered. “Serena came up too fast on that dive. If she’d been with me—”

  “Did you ever wonder if she’d done it deliberately?”

  He tried to pull back his hand but his mother held him tight.

  “No,” he whispered. But he had.

  “It was the first thing we thought,” she said gently. “
But what does it matter now? Serena’s gone. Do you think she’d want you to spend the rest of your life regretting what’s done? You’re punishing yourself and us. You need to start living again.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “You could help by joining the Cooperative, come to the meetings. Everyone in the community has a role to play. We’re fighting back, rebuilding the town, refurbishing the bomb shelter so we have a place to go if more trouble comes our way. The guy that’s staying with Maggie is an expert in a new sort of photovoltaic cell. He came all the way from…what’s wrong?”

  “He hits her.”

  His mother gave him a puzzled look.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he whispered.

  “Tell me what’s happened.”

  He told her, just not quite all of it.

  Chapter Eight

  “Stop fidgeting,” his mother said. “I’ll tell you when they come in.”

  Grant sat with his back to the door of the restaurant, his brother James at his side, and their parents facing them.

  “You sure they’ll come here to eat?” Grant asked.

  “Maggie’s going to point them in this direction,” she said. “This is the classiest place in town. If they eat, they’ll eat here.”

  “The restaurant’s full now,” his father said.

  “There’s one empty table,” his mother added.

  “What am I supposed to do?” God, did I say that out loud?

  “You’ll know,” she said, and smiled at him.

  While his father had been uncharacteristically quiet since they’d sat down, James had hardly shut up. Filling Grant in on everything that had happened, how the ranch was doing, quietly telling him all about the work on the bomb shelter under the town. Grant tried to concentrate as his brother talked about the high-tech air and water filtration systems, the hydroponic greenhouse, the swimming pool—it was literally a town under a town.

  “You’re with us, right?” James asked.

  He sighed. “What use am I? I write books. I’m not an engineer.”

  “You could take responsibility for the spread of information,” James said. “We need to share prepping ideas and at the same time be careful not to allow knowledge of what we’re doing with the bomb shelter to go too far. If something bad happened, and people discover we’ve already set up a way to survive, we don’t want to be targeted by looters or raiders.”

  “What about families who come here looking for help? You going to turn them away?”

  “No, we won’t do that.”

  He stared at his mother.

  She raised her eyebrows. “You’re my son. I know what you’re thinking. It’s families we want to protect.”

  The thought of having to decide whom to save and whom not to wasn’t one he was comfortable with.

  His mother caught hold of his hand. “That’s the worst-case scenario. I pray it will never happen, but we could get another night of tornadoes and this way, we have a place to shelter.”

  “If you had time to reach here from your farm.”

  “We get a forty-minute warning,” James said.

  “Working on the shelter has given this town a sense of purpose,” his father said. “I hope we never have to use the place, but it’s a good feeling, knowing it’s there. We’re not fanatics, son. We’re just acting responsibly to ensure the safety and security of our loved ones. We might even be able to survive a minor eruption at Yellowstone.”

  His mother tsked. “You’re making it sound like we spend all our time worrying about what might never happen. We don’t. But we’re lucky enough to have this old army shelter under the town, and we might as well use it. Just say you’ll think about joining us.” She swallowed hard. “I want you safe.”

  She squeezed his fingers, and his father and brother put their hands on top.

  “They’ve just walked in,” his mother whispered and they pulled their hands back. “Whatever she decides, remember we love you.”

  Grant’s heart pounded. Love. If you love someone, you want to keep them safe, hold them tight, not let them die before you, but if they did, it didn’t mean love was gone from your life forever. Evans Point had been hit by tragedy, had dragged itself from the rubble and out of despair, and rebuilt, not just physically but mentally. It was time he did the same.

  He picked up the menu, but he knew exactly what he’d order.

  The last thing Lili wanted to do was eat, but away from the guesthouse, there was a chance she could escape Dieter. She had her coat and her passport, not her purse—but the passport was the important thing. And she wore her warm boots. He’d given way on that because they’d walked in order that he could have a drink.

  The restaurant heaved with people who all seemed bent on not looking their way. Odd. They were shown to a table in the middle of the room and for once, there was no point in Dieter asking to sit somewhere different.

  “The food must be good,” Lili said.

  He harrumphed.

  She’d already decided to play the penitent in the hope of lulling him into complacency. If she didn’t get away tonight, she’d kick up a fuss when she was asked to say yes at the wedding. She still couldn’t understand why he thought she’d say yes. But maybe it was because he was too blinkered to see how much she despised him. It fit with the narcissistic personality syndrome.

  Was Grant sitting by the stove with Shadow and thinking she was an unfaithful bitch? She wished she’d had the chance to tell him she wasn’t married, but knew their moment had come and gone. And that band of pain around her chest would go, too, eventually.

  Dieter looked across at her as the waitress asked for her order. She knew what he wanted her say.

  “The old-fashioned hamburger and fries, please,” Lili said.

  The bastard laughed. “She means grilled chicken and steamed vegetables. I’ll have the filet mignon, rare, with a plain baked potato. And a bottle of the Cabernet Sauvignon.”

  The waitress walked away, and Dieter ogled her backside. Lili could guess what he’d do if he caught her looking at a guy’s bottom.

  “We’ll have to set off early tomorrow to make sure we reach Yellowstone in time,” he said.

  “What do you think my parents are going to say?”

  “Your mother knows what I’ve planned.”

  But not my father?

  “She’s delighted, of course. Thinks it’s highly romantic.”

  The wine arrived. Dieter sniffed, swirled, and tasted it before he nodded. The waitress poured out two glasses.

  “I always imagined I’d get married in the castle,” she said carefully.

  “I’m sure your father will throw a ball and invite all the guests who would have come to our wedding.”

  “Where are you planning for us to live?”

  He laughed. “In Schloss Brunnstein, of course. Your parents’ home is plenty big enough.”

  Was that what he wanted? To be married to a princess and live in a castle? If her stomach wasn’t churning so hard, she’d laugh. When her parents died, she’d inherit everything and by default, so would he. That was what he wanted, not her. He started to talk to her about what he expected of her and she tuned out. She’d wasted too much of her life on other people’s needs.

  A plate of grilled chicken and artistically arranged but boring vegetables was put in front of her. She sighed. As she picked up her knife and fork, a hand reached over her shoulder, lifted the plate away, and put another in its place. Hamburger and fries. Oh God.

  “What are you doing?” Dieter snapped.

  Lili knew before she turned. Her heart leaped before she saw him. Grant smiled at her.

  I’m not married to this idiot. Why wouldn’t the words come out?

  “What’s going on?” Dieter barked.

  “Lili doesn’t want chicken and vegetables. She wants a hamburger.” Grant moved to stand at the side of the table. “And fries.”

  She popped a chunky, thick-cut fry into her mouth and gave a long m
oan. The restaurant chatter died to silence. Lili picked up another fry and stared at Grant as she ate it. He didn’t blink as he watched her. Dieter reached for her plate and she smacked his hand away.

  “I know what I want to eat, Dieter,” she said quietly.

  “You’re making a spectacle of yourself. Who is this man?” He sat back in his chair and exhaled. “Ah.”

  “Would you like to meet my parents and my brother?” Grant asked and held out his hand to her.

  “Stay right where you are,” Dieter muttered.

  “I’d love to meet them.” She took Grant’s fingers. He grabbed her plate with the other hand and guided her to a table at the side of the room.

  Her heart raced out of control, afraid of what Dieter might do. She turned to see him rise to his feet. There was a loud scraping of chairs on the floor as every man in the restaurant stood, too.

  Dieter looked round and let out a short laugh. “Liliane, come with me now.”

  “No.”

  For the first time in maybe ever, she saw uncertainty on Dieter’s face. He picked up his coat, and she thought he was going to walk out, but he came right up to her and Grant.

  “I was only marrying her to please her parents,” he said quietly. “She’s a slut. You’re welcome to her.”

  Grant tensed. His fist clenched, and Lili quickly wrapped her hand around it.

  “Think about what you’re doing. Giving up everything for this.” Dieter cast a scornful look around the room. “Hicksville.”

  “Dieter,” she said, and when he faced her, she kneed him in the groin.

  The collective gasp from the men in the restaurant wasn’t as loud as Dieter’s. The sheriff appeared out of nowhere and moved between Dieter and Grant.

  “I think it’s time you went back to your lodgings,” the sheriff said. “I’ll be happy to help you get there.”

  Dieter left the restaurant bent double, and she heaved a sigh of relief. Grant turned her to face the table they’d been heading for.

  “Lili, this is my mom, my dad, and my brother James.”

  She held out her hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

  “That’s a mighty fine knee you have,” said Grant’s father, a twinkle in his eye.