by Merry Farmer
Emma sat straighter, impressed by the fact that not only did the man know about the Simon Bolivar orchestra, he knew it’s correct name. “They’ve accomplished amazing things,” she said, certain that, considering how big her smile had gotten, he would think she was throwing herself at him.
“I’d give my eye teeth to bring that kind of program home to—”
He was interrupted as a man in a suit rushed up to him and said something in a vaguely Scandinavian-sounding language. Come to think of it, his accent hadn’t quite been British. She suddenly found herself wondering if the man was more than a promoter/politician and where he came from.
But instead of giving answers to those questions and a thousand more she’d have loved to ask, he stood with an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, I have to go. Apparently, my plane has been ready for fifteen minutes, and they need me to—”
“Sir,” the man who had spoken to him said.
“Sorry,” he said one last time, then rushed off, leaving the lounge by way of the door that led directly to the tarmac.
Emma deflated, feeling as though she’d had a lottery ticket with four numbers that matched the winning numbers, but the last one was a miss. She’d have given anything to find out who the man was and to spend more time with him. A lot more time. She hadn’t connected with someone like that in years. She hadn’t even had the chance to give him her name.
Giving it up as a lost cause, she paid the bartender, then wandered back to join her crew. It wasn’t like she would have been able to tell the guy who she was anyhow. Not without breaking her contract. And given the way Hoss stared at her as she rejoined the group, she already had enough hell to pay.
“Who was that?” Tracy asked, slipping up to Emma’s side as she leaned on the back of one of the sofas where her sound guys sat.
“I don’t know,” Emma sighed, glancing out the window at the rows of private jets. “Prince Charming?”
“Ooh! That sounds exciting.” Tracy sat beside her and nudged her with her shoulder. “He was cute. What nationality?”
“Aegirian, I think. Something Scandinavian at least, judging by the guy who came to whisk him away.”
“You didn’t get his name? His phone number?”
Emma sighed. “There wasn’t time. I wish I had, though. I’d go out with him in an instant.”
Tracy fixed her with a hard stare. “Does he know who you are?”
“No.” Emma grinned. “That’s why I’d go out with him.” She paused. “You don’t think it’d be breaking my contract to go out with a guy who doesn’t know Fuchsia from a hole in the ground, do you? To go out as my real self?”
Tracy shrugged. “I can pull up your contract and read the fine print, if you’d like.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Emma hugged herself, considering all the possibilities. A few seconds later, she puffed out a breath and let her arms drop. “It’s not like I’ll ever see him again anyhow.”
“You never know,” Tracy said with a wink.
“Mr. Hoss, your plane is ready,” one of the airport attendants announced as she approached the group. She glanced at the crew, probably trying to guess which one was Fuchsia.
“Very good, m’lady,” Hoss answered her with an offensively bad British accent.
The attendant continued to study them all as she led the whole group out of the lounge and through private corridors to the tarmac, where Fuchsia’s private jet waited. Well, not her private jet. It jet belonged to Dazzle Productions, but they’d painted it a garish fuchsia, with her logo and branding blazoned across the middle. All the same, it was a relief to retreat to the luxurious jet. At least there, everyone knew who she was and who she wasn’t, and she didn’t have to worry about breaking the terms of any contracts by slipping up.
Her thoughts stayed with the man from the VIP lounge as the flight crew prepared for take-off and taxied into the line of planes on the runway. He had been so handsome, his looks so fresh and refined. The suit he’d been wearing was expensive, and, now that she thought about it, embroidered with the crest of Aegiria.
Her stomach flipped, and it had nothing to do with take-off. Aegiria. That’s where she was heading. She’d been called in to perform at a concert hosted by the royal family on Friday. Duh. She could have facepalmed as she looked out the jet’s window while they soared out over the English Channel. She decided that the man was a promoter for the concert in Aegiria after all. She’d been so bowled over by his charm that everything she’d overheard before they started talking had slipped her mind. And if he was a promoter and involved in the concert, she’d probably see him again.
“Oh, crap,” she whispered.
“Something wrong?” Tracy asked from the seat next to her.
“Maybe,” Emma mumbled. As much as she wanted to meet the man again and find out who she was, the second the jet touched down in Aegiria, she’d be on the clock. Which meant she’d have to play her part. Even if she did meet the man again….
“The pilot says we’re now free to move about the cabin,” Beth, Fuchsia’s chief stylist said, getting up from the seat across the aisle from Emma and Tracy. “You ready to suit up?”
“As I’ll ever be,” Emma sighed.
She unfastened her seatbelt and climbed over Tracy into the aisle. She and Beth headed to the back of the plane, which contained a make-shift changing room, complete with stylist’s chair. Fuchsia’s travel wardrobe was stashed away in two, huge travel cases, which Beth went to and started unlatching.
For the rest of the hour-long flight, Emma was subjected to her usual routine of being poured into her skin-tight, glittery, glitzy costume, stuffed into an unreal wig—turquoise this time to match the colors of the Aegirian flag—and caked with stage make-up. She was amazed that Beth could work with the slight turbulence that accompanied their flight. As soon as they landed, Beth touched up everything that had come out wobbly and glued rhinestones to the side of her eye and forehead. It delayed their deplaning enough to make Emma nervous, but the end result was amazing as usual.
“There she is,” Beth grinned. “Goodbye Emma Sands, hello Fuchsia the Rock Star.”
Emma pretended to be thrilled with the transformation, but as she stared at her unrecognizable reflection in the mirror, her heart sank. What happened to that music student who just wanted to sing? Forget that, what had happened to the relaxed woman who had sat in an airport lounge, bantering with a handsome stranger? She would have done anything to get that woman back and to be her full-time.
2
Arne hit the ground running the second his jet landed. His jaunt to London was the calm before the storm that was the Royal Announcement Concert, as the press had dubbed it.
“Someone is going to have to define ‘technical difficulties’ a lot more precisely for me if we’re going to solve these problems by Friday,” he said on the phone to Sven at the arena as his bodyguard escorted him across the tarmac to the royal family’s private waiting room.
“No one is defining it because it’s more than one thing,” Sven said, though with all the noise from the airport, Arne could barely hear him,
“Well, put together a short list for me, and we’ll deal with one thing at a time. This concert has to be right. My family is depending on it, and they mean everything to me.”
“Yes, Your Highness, of course,” his contact said.
“Thank you, Sven,” Arne added quickly. “You’re doing a good job under trying circumstances.”
“Thank you, Your Highness,” Sven answered, sounding appeased.
Arne ended the call as the representative from the airport rushed him through the door and into the relative quiet of the royal waiting room. He shook his head as he mounted the stairs to the heart of the lounge, where his mother, Dr. Hayes, Cassandra Hayes, his Aunt Marina, and most of his brothers were already assembled. The problems at the arena didn’t sit right with him. They’d never had problems putting on a concert before. The mystery of it all was as irritating as the troubles themselves.
A
nd yet, with all that on his mind, he’d spent his entire time in the air thinking of the woman at the bar at Heathrow. He’d made more than a few massive mistakes with her. Massive mistake number one was that he hadn’t asked her name. At any point during their conversation. It was an amateur mistake. Massive mistake number two was that he hadn’t asked for her phone number. His mystery woman was part of Fuchsia’s entourage, which meant she’d be landing in Aegiria any moment now, but without her phone number, it would be that much harder to reconnect with her. He was determined to do it, though.
“You look as put out as I feel,” his Aunt Marina greeted him with a kiss on each cheek as he blended into the waiting crowd of his family.
“It’s nothing,” Arne answered, kissing her back. “Just that there’s something going on with the concert venue, some kind of technical problems, but no one seems to know what exactly they are, so I can’t solve them.”
Marina made a frustrated noise. “If you ask me, the arena probably just lost the will to go on, considering the act it has to put up with.” She sneered and shook her head, then shot a sideways look to where Cassandra and Dr. Hayes were having an animated chat with the queen. “You really couldn’t convince them to abandon this ridiculous plan to let a gaudy American perform in favor of our own national talent?”
“We do have our own national talent performing before Fuchsia,” Arne argued, watching as a bright pink jet made its approach in the clear, blue sky. It was enough to leave him gaping at American audacity.
“The Solrighavn Children’s Choir is nothing more than a token,” Marina went on. She saw the jet and groaned.
“We also have that tenor, John Larson,” Arne pointed out, crossing his arms, his eyes fixed on the jet. “And the groups that won the television contest.”
Marina made a scoffing sound. “They’re nothing compared to the Aegirian Royal Orchestra.”
Across the room, Dr. Hayes nudged his daughter and said, “There she is, sweetheart! She’s landing. Fuchsia will be here any minute now.”
Cassandra rolled her eyes and laughed. “Dad, calm down. I only ever said I liked Fuchsia’s music. You’re acting like I’m some teenage fangirl.”
Dr. Hayes laughed with her. “I know, I know, but you’ll always be my little girl, my little sweet pea.”
“Dad.” Cassandra’s cheeks went pink, but the affection between the pair was obvious.
“My pumpkin angel?”
“Dad, stop.”
Dr. Hayes chuckled. The queen gazed at him in adoration.
Marina rolled her eyes.
“If our mother and father could see the kind of cretins my sister is letting into this family, they’d roll over in their graves,” she murmured.
“I was under the impression that Great-Grandpa Gustav liked Americans,” Arne said.
Marina snorted.
“If my memory of history serves, he worked with them during the Second World War to set up a haven for American spies, even though Hitler’s forces occupied the island.”
Marina sent him a sidelong look. “Those were different times. They did what they could back then.”
“Isn’t that what Mother is doing?”
“By marrying a cartoon character?” Marina arched an eyebrow at him. “That’s hardly working to defeat a hostile enemy.”
“You’re just jealous because that thing you had with Herman Lindqvist last year fell apart,” Arne teased her.
Marina’s face pinked, and she snapped her eyes forward, watching as Fuchsia’s plane taxied across the tarmac. “There was no thing, as you put it,” she insisted. “Herman and I were only ever friends. You know I have too many royal duties to attend to for love.”
Arne grinned at her, not believing a word his aunt said. Marina had never married, but since her eighteenth birthday, she’d been burning up the scandal sheets in Aegirian newspapers with her affairs. And while she’d slowed down once she passed fifty, Arne didn’t believe for a second that she’d taken herself permanently off the market. In fact, he wasn’t even sure the fling with Lindqvist was over or whether his aunt had taken it underground after a streak of bad press coverage.
“Should we go down now?” Dr. Hayes asked at the other end of the room as Fuchsia’s plane came to a stop, not far from where the royal jet was parked. “I can’t wait to meet her. I mean, for Cassie to meet her. Do I look okay? I didn’t cut myself shaving today, did I?”
“You look lovely, dear,” Viktoria said, resting a hand on his arm.
“Ugh.” Marina made a face. “I know you’re just going to call me a snob, but I can’t stand to see the way my sister fawns all over that man and his daughter. I mean, that girl is a nobody. She’s just a masseuse.”
Arne chuckled. “I am going to call you a snob, but I’m not going to blame you for it.” Women of Marina’s age, who’d grown up at the end of the old school of European royalty and nobility, had a way of clinging to the past. “Although I wish you’d rethink the whole thing.”
Marina turned to him with a look of shock. “A masseuse!” She sniffed. “Really. I thought you, more than any of your brothers, had better taste than that.”
“I would never marry her,” Arne said. “But it’s not up to me who Mother marries.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t do more to dissuade her.” Marina crossed her arms.
Outside, the ground crew and royal security were gathering around the jet, readying for Fuchsia’s arrival. A bus full of journalists and photographers pulled up as well.
“Do you think Mother would have listened to a thing I said in regards to her marriage?” Arne asked. “I made my opinion as clear as I could.”
Marina pursed her lips. “You could have tried harder.”
“Should we go down now?” Cassandra broke away from the window, heading for the stairs, where half a dozen bodyguards and members of security waited.
“As soon as the ground crew tells us it’s safe,” Viktoria said, taking Dr. Hayes’s arm and following her.
Marina let out one more frustrated growl and rolled her eyes as she and Arne joined the family. Arne offered his arm, and when Marina took it, he patted her hand consolingly. “You’ll never do anything so foolish as to get involved with an American, will you?”
Arne nearly missed a step. His thoughts flew back to his mystery woman from Heathrow. She was American, and she was about to get off the jet in front of him. He was determined to ask her name this time, get her phone number, and invite her out for supper. Although, if he were wise, he’d do it without Marina knowing about it.
Emma took a deep breath, pushed her shoulders back into her Fuchsia posture, chest out, everything on display, and stepped into the jet’s doorway. She’d made an entrance a thousand times before, but that didn’t stop the butterflies from raging in her stomach. She raised one gloved and glittered hand and waved to the small bank of reporters and photographers who’d come to greet her, and to the even smaller group that must have been the Aegirian royal family. Her wide, beaming smile was exactly the opposite of the anxiety knotting her stomach.
“Hello, Aegiria!” she called, her voice half an octave higher than her usual speaking voice.
She started down the stairs that had been rolled up to the side of the jet, clutching the railing and praying that she wouldn’t take a tumble in her stupidly high heels. As soon as she reached the tarmac, she let out a breath of relief.
Three seconds later, she sucked that breath back in again. The royal contingent that had come to greet her was elegant and distinctive. The queen was tall and beautiful. The man holding her arm was decidedly less so, and the younger woman bouncing up and down beside him was everything that Emma had come to expect from Fuchsia’s die-hard fans. There was a handsome assortment of men flanking the queen—her sons, the princes, if everything she’d read to prepare for her concert was right. But what could have knocked Emma over with a feather was that her mystery man, the hot guy from Heathrow, was right there with the rest of him.
“You guys the royal family?” Hoss burst into the scene, rhinestones flashing in the sunlight, dousing both the butterflies in Emma’s stomach and any hope she had that the encounter would go well.
The other, older woman in the group—who bore a distinct resemblance to the queen—groaned.
Hoss singled her out with a glare in no time flat. “You got a problem, missy?”
The woman snapped straighter, gaping. “I…I don’t know how to begin to answer that.”
“Allow me to introduce everyone,” one of the princes stepped forward, voice raised, to stop the situation from blowing up any harder. He assumed a supremely formal stance, then said, “May I introduce Her Majesty, Queen Viktoria II of Aegiria.” He gestured to the queen, whose smile was full of kindness and magnanimity.
“Your majesty,” Emma said, taking a step forward, her hand outstretched to greet the queen. “How do you—”
She only managed a few words before one of her ridiculous heels caught on the hem of her long, shimmery, mermaid-like dress. She spilled forward. It was her luck that she’d tripped on her costumes so many times she’d become an expert at recovering, but before she could get her balance, she grabbed the queen’s arm and pulled her off-balance.
In an instant, four different bodyguards rushed her. As soon as the royal bodyguards moved in on her, her own bodyguards advanced on them. The net result was that within seconds, what had started out being a simple royal greeting turned into what looked like the beginnings of an international incident.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Your Majesty,” Emma laughed, more out of pure, freakish nerves than because she thought the situation was remotely funny. “Looks like I don’t have my land legs again yet.”
