Princess in the Making

by Michelle Celmer

  She stepped back into the living space to find Marcus standing by the door, arms crossed, checking his watch impatiently.

  “There’s no place for Mia to sleep,” she told him, and at his blank expression added, “Gabriel said there would be a crib for her. She moves around a lot in her sleep, so putting her in a normal bed, especially one so high off the ground, is out of the question.”

  “There’s a nursery down the hall.”

  There was an unspoken “duh” at the end of that sentence.

  “Then I hope there’s a baby monitor I can use. Otherwise, how will I hear her if she wakes in the middle of the night?” Though Mia slept through most nights, Vanessa was still accustomed to the random midnight diaper changes and feedings, and an occasional bad dream.

  He looked puzzled. “That would be the responsibility of the nanny.”

  Right, the nanny. Vanessa had just assumed the nanny was there for the times when Mia needed a babysitter, not as a full-time caregiver. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Vanessa worked such long hours, and was away from home often. Part of this trip was about spending more time with her daughter.

  “And where does the nanny sleep?” she asked Marcus.

  “Her bedroom is attached to the nursery,” he said, in a tone that suggested she was asking stupid questions. In his world it was probably perfectly natural for the staff to take full responsibility for the children’s care, but she didn’t live in his world. Not even close. Surely he knew that, didn’t he?

  She would have to carefully consider whether or not she wanted the nanny to take over the nightly duties. She didn’t want to be difficult, or insult Karin, who was probably more than capable, but when it came to Mia, Vanessa didn’t fool around. If necessary, she would ask Marcus to move the crib into her bedroom, and if he had a problem with that, she would just sleep in the nursery until Gabriel returned. Hopefully it wouldn’t be more than a few days.

  “If there’s nothing else you need,” Marcus said, edging toward the door. He really couldn’t wait to get away, could he? Well, she wasn’t about to let him off the hook just yet.

  “What if I do need something?” she asked. “How do I find someone?”

  “There’s a phone on the desk, and a list of extensions.”

  “How will I know who to call?”

  He didn’t roll his eyes, but she could see that he wanted to. “For a beverage or food, you call the kitchen. If you need clean towels or fresh linens, you would call the laundry…you get the point.”

  She did, although she didn’t appreciate the sarcasm. “Suppose I need you. Is your number on there?”

  “No, it isn’t, and even if it were, I wouldn’t be available.”

  “Never?”

  A nerve in his jaw ticked. “In my father’s absence, I have a duty to my country.”

  Why did he have to be so defensive? “Marcus,” she said, in a voice that she hoped conveyed sincerity, “I understand how you must be feeling, but—”

  “You have no idea how I’m feeling,” he ground out, and the level of animosity in his tone drew her back a step. “My father asked me to get you settled in, and I’ve done that. Now, if there’s nothing else.”

  Someone cleared their throat and they both looked over to see the nanny standing in the doorway.

  “I’ll leave you two to discuss the child’s care,” Marcus said, making a hasty escape, and any hope she’d had that they might be friends went out the door with him.

  “Come in,” she told Karin.

  Looking a little nervous, the girl stepped inside. “Shall I take Mia so you can rest?”

  She still wasn’t sure about leaving Mia in a stranger’s care, but she was exhausted, and she would have a hard time relaxing with Mia in bed with her. If Vanessa fell too deeply asleep, Mia could roll off and hurt herself. And the last thing she needed was Marcus thinking that not only was she a money-grubbing con artist, but a terrible mother as well.

  “I really could use a nap,” she told Karin, “but if she wakes up crying, I’d like you to bring her right to me. She’s bound to be disoriented waking up in a strange place with someone she doesn’t know.”

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  “Please, call me Vanessa.”

  Karin nodded, but looked uncomfortable with the idea.

  “Mia is asleep on the bed. Why don’t I carry her, so I can see where the nursery is, and you can bring her bag?”

  Karin nodded again.

  Not very talkative, was she?

  Vanessa scooped up Mia, who was still sleeping deeply, and rolled her suitcase out to Karin, who led her two doors down and across the hall to the nursery. It was smaller than her own suite, with a play area and a sleeping area, and it was decorated gender-neutral. The walls were pale green, the furniture white and expensive-looking, and in the play area rows of shelves were packed with toys for children of every age. It was clearly a nursery designed for guests, and she supposed that if she did decide to stay, Mia would get her own nursery closer to Gabriel’s bedroom.

  The idea of sharing a bedroom with Gabriel, and a bed, made her stomach do a nervous little flip-flop.

  Everything will work out.

  She laid Mia in the crib and covered her with a light blanket, and the baby didn’t even stir. The poor little thing was exhausted.

  “Maybe I should unpack her things,” she told Karin.

  “I’ll do it, ma’am.”

  Vanessa sighed. So it was still “ma’am”? That was something they would just have to work on. “Thank you.”

  She kissed the tips of her fingers, then gently pressed them to Mia’s forehead. “Sleep well, sweet baby.”

  After reiterating that Karin was to come get her when Mia woke, she walked back to her suite. She pulled her cell phone out of her bag and checked for calls, but there were none. She dialed Gabriel’s cell number, but it went straight to voice mail.

  She glanced over at the sofa, thinking she would sleep there for an hour or so, but the bed, with its creamy silk comforter and big, fluffy pillows, called to her. Setting her phone on the bedside table, she lay back against the pillows, sinking into the softness of the comforter. She let her eyes drift closed, and when she opened them again, the room was dark.

  Three

  After leaving Miss Reynolds’s suite, Marcus stopped by his office, where his assistant Cleo, short for Cleopatra—her parents were Egyptian and very eccentric—sat at her computer playing her afternoon game of solitaire.

  “Any word from my father?” he asked.

  Attention on the screen, she shook her head.

  “I’m glad to see that you’re using your time productively,” he teased, as he often did when he caught her playing games.

  And obviously she didn’t take him seriously, because she didn’t even blink, or look away from the cards on the screen. “Keeps the brain sharp.”

  She may have been pushing seventy, but no one could argue that she wasn’t still sharp as a pin. She’d been with the royal family since the 1970s, and used to be his mother’s secretary. Everyone expected she would retire after the queen’s death, and enjoy what would be a very generous pension, but she hadn’t been ready to stop working. She claimed it kept her young. And since her husband passed away two years ago, Marcus suspected she was lonely.

  She finished the game and quit out of the software, a group photo of her eight grandchildren flashing on to her computer screen. She turned to Marcus and caught him in the middle of a yawn and frowned. “Tired?”

  After a month-long battle with insomnia, he was always tired. And he wasn’t in the mood for another lecture. “I’m sure I’ll sleep like a baby when she is gone.”

  “She’s that bad?”

  He sat on the edge of her desk. “She’s awful.”

  “And you know this after what, thirty minutes with her?”

  “I knew after five. I knew the second she stepped off the plane.”

  She leaned forward in her chair, elbows on
her desk, her white hair draped around a face that was young for her years, and with no help at all from a surgeon’s knife. “Based on what?”

  “She only wants his money.”

  Her brows rose. “She told you that?”

  “She didn’t have to. She’s young, and beautiful, and a single mother. What else would she want from a man my father’s age?”

  “For the record, your highness, fifty-six is not that old.”

  “For her it is.”

  “Your father is an attractive and charming man. Who’s to say that she didn’t fall head over heels in love with him.”

  “In a few weeks?”

  “I fell in love with my husband after our first date. Never underestimate the powers of physical attraction.”

  He cringed. The idea of his father and that woman…he didn’t even want to think about it. Though he didn’t doubt she had seduced him. That was the way her kind operated. He knew from experience, having been burned before. And his father, despite his staunch moral integrity, was vulnerable enough to fall under her spell.

  “So, she’s really that attractive?” Cleo asked.

  Much as he wished he could say otherwise, there was no denying her beauty. “She is. But she had a child out of wedlock.”

  She gasped and slapped a hand to her chest. “Off with her head!”

  He glared at her.

  “You do remember what century this is? Women’s rights and equality and all that.”

  “Yes, but my father? A man who lives by tradition. It’s beneath him. He’s lonely, missing my mother and not thinking straight.”

  “You don’t give him much credit, do you? The king is a very intelligent man.”

  Yes, he was, and clearly not thinking with his brain. No one could convince Marcus that this situation was anything but temporary. And until she left, he would simply stay out of her way.

  * * *

  Vanessa bolted up in bed, heart racing, disoriented by the unfamiliar surroundings. Then, as her eyes adjusted to the dark and the room came into focus, she remembered where she was.

  At first she thought that she’d slept late into the night, then realized that someone had shut the curtains. She grabbed her cell phone and checked the time, relieved to see that she had only slept for an hour and a half, and there were no missed calls from Gabriel.

  She dialed his cell number, but like before it went straight to voice mail. She hung up and grabbed her laptop from her bag, hoping that maybe he’d sent her an email, but the network was password protected and she couldn’t log on. She would have to ask someone for the password.

  She closed the laptop and sighed. Since she hadn’t heard a word from Karin, she could only assume Mia was still asleep, and without her daughter to take care of, Vanessa felt at a loss for what to do. Then she remembered all the bags in the closet waiting to be unpacked—basically her entire summer wardrobe—and figured she could kill time doing that.

  She pushed herself up out of bed, her body still heavy with fatigue, and walked to the closet. But instead of finding packed suitcases, she discovered that her clothes had all been unpacked and put away. The maid must have been in while she was asleep, which was probably a regular thing around here, but she couldn’t deny that it creeped her out a little. She didn’t like the idea of someone else handling her things, but it was something she would just have to get used to, as she probably wouldn’t be doing her own laundry.

  She stripped out of her rumpled slacks and blouse and changed into yoga pants and a soft cotton top, wondering, when her stomach rumbled, what time she would be called for dinner. She grabbed her phone off the bed and walked out to the living room, where late afternoon sunshine flooded the windows and cut paths across the creamy carpet. She crossed the room and pulled open the French doors. A wall of heat sucked the breath from her lungs as she stepped out onto a balcony with wrought iron railings and exotic plants. It overlooked acres of rolling green grass and colorful flower beds, and directly below was the Olympic-size pool and cabana Gabriel had told her about. He put the pool in, he’d bragged, because Marcus had been a champion swimmer in high school and college, and to this day still swam regularly. Which would account for the impressively toned upper body.

  But she definitely shouldn’t be thinking about Marcus’s upper body, or any other part of him.

  Her cell phone rang and Gabriel’s number flashed on the screen. Oh, thank God. Her heart lifted so swiftly it left her feeling dizzy.

  She answered, and the sound of his voice was like a salve on her raw nerves. She conjured up a mental image of his face. His dark, gentle eyes, the curve of his smile, and realized just then how much she missed him.

  “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there to greet you,” he told her, speaking in his native language of Variean, which was so similar to Italian they were practically interchangeable. And since she was fluent in the latter, learning the subtle differences had been simple for her.

  “I miss you,” she told him.

  “I know, I’m sorry. How was your flight? How is Mia?”

  “It was long, and Mia didn’t sleep much, but she’s napping now. I just slept for a while too.”

  “My plane left not twenty minutes before you were due to arrive.”

  “Your son said it was a family matter. I hope everything is okay.”

  “I wish I could say it was. It’s my wife’s half sister, Trina, in Italy. She was rushed to the hospital with an infection.”

  “Oh, Gabriel, I’m so sorry.” He’d spoken often of his sister-in-law, and how she had stayed with him and his son for several weeks before and after the queen died. “I know you two are very close. I hope it’s nothing too serious.”

  “She’s being treated, but she’s not out of danger. I hope you understand, but I just can’t leave her. She’s a widow, and childless. She has no one else. She was there for me and Marcus when we needed her. I feel obligated to stay.”

  “Of course you do. Family always comes first.”

  She heard him breathe a sigh of relief. “I knew you would understand. You’re an extraordinary woman, Vanessa.”

  “Is there anything I can do? Any way I can help?”

  “Just be patient with me. I wish I could invite you to stay with me, but…”

  “She’s your wife’s sister. I’m guessing that would be awkward for everyone.”

  “I think it would.”

  “How long do you think you’ll be?”

  “Two weeks, maybe. I won’t know for sure until we see how she’s responding to the treatment.”

  Two weeks? Alone with Marcus? Was the universe playing some sort of cruel trick on her? Not that she imagined he would be chomping at the bit to spend quality time with her. With any luck he would keep to himself and she wouldn’t have to actually see Marcus at all.

  “I promise I’ll be back as soon as I possibly can,” Gabriel said. “Unless you prefer to fly home until I return.”

  Home to what? Her apartment was sublet for the next six weeks. She lived on a shoestring budget, and being on unpaid leave, she hadn’t had the money for rent while she was gone. Gabriel had offered to pay, but she felt uncomfortable taking a handout from him. Despite what Marcus seemed to believe, the fact that Gabriel was very wealthy wasn’t all that important to her. And until they were married—if that day ever came—she refused to let him spoil her. Not that he hadn’t tried.

  The wining and dining was one thing, but on their third date he bought her a pair of stunning diamond earrings to show his appreciation for her professional services at the hotel. She had refused to take them. She had drooled over a similar pair in the jewelry boutique at the hotel with a price tag that amounted to a year’s salary.

  Then there had been the lush flower arrangements that began arriving at her office every morning like clockwork after he’d flown back home, and the toys for Mia from local shops. She’d had to gently but firmly tell him, no more. There was no need to buy her affections.

  “I’ll
wait for you,” she told Gabriel. Even if she did have a place to go home to, the idea of making that miserably long flight two more times with Mia in tow was motivation enough to stay.

  “I promise we’ll chat daily. You brought your laptop?”

  “Yes, but I can’t get on the network. And I’ll need plug adaptors since the outlets are different.”

  “Just ask Marcus. I’ve instructed him to get you anything that you need. He was there to greet you, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, he was there.”

  “And he was respectful?”

  She could tell Gabriel the truth, but what would that accomplish, other than to make Gabriel feel bad, and Marcus resent her even more. The last thing she wanted to do was cause a rift between father and son.

  “He made me feel very welcome.”

  “I’m relieved. He took losing his mother very hard.”

  “And it’s difficult for him to imagine you with someone new.”

  “Exactly. I’m proud of him for taking the change so well.”

  He wouldn’t be proud if he knew how Marcus had really acted, but that would remain hers and Marcus’s secret.

  “Your room is satisfactory?”

  “Beyond satisfactory, and the palace is amazing. I plan to take Mia for a walk on the grounds tomorrow, and I can hardly wait to visit the village.”

  “I’m sure Marcus would be happy to take you. You should ask him.”

  When hell froze over, maybe. Besides, she would much rather go exploring on her own, just her and Mia.

  “Maybe I will,” she said, knowing she would do no such thing.

  “I know that when you get to know one another, you’ll become friends.”

  Somehow she doubted that. Even if she wanted to, Marcus clearly wanted nothing to do with her.

  “I left a surprise for you,” Gabriel said. “It’s in the top drawer of the desk.”

  “What sort of surprise?” she asked, already heading in that direction.