Almost My Prince

by Miranda King

  Smart Sally still held Mr. Princeton at bay, mere steps from his escape out the door, with her animated conversation. He and I had not yet settled on what to do with Divina’s doll project.

  After walking away from me like that, he was going to have to come to me now. I circled around the classroom, observing and helping students—and where did I end up?

  Yep, right beside him and Smart Sally.

  She displayed the Poesie Enchantee white evening gown, originally on an Agnes doll, in front of Mr. Princeton and explained, “I’m taking off the original fabric decoration and adding a string of gossamer applique along the bodice and shoulders in a V shape.” She looked up at us with her big brown eyes. “What color should I chose?”

  “Red,” I said in perfect unison with Mr. Princeton.

  My mind flashed to the image of him looking up the skirt of Irresistible Dania and those red panties he’d found. I darted a look at the mischievous man beside me, and the way he stared at me ignited a fire inside of me.

  Hell bells, I didn’t want to be attracted to this man, yet I was. I swallowed hard and licked my lips.

  Smart Sally had been talking, but I only caught Mr. Princeton’s response. “Beautiful.”

  There it was again. That same word from the mail room. That word that’d kept me up all last night wondering what he’d meant.

  “What’s beautiful, Mr. Princeton?” It was the question burning within my soul since our last encounter.

  Smart Sally furrowed her brows at me. “My design,” she answered for him. “I’m calling it Victorious Evening and it’s my tribute to Churchill with the V design on the front,” she said. “And to Maravista as the spy capital of the world.”

  She’d hinted at this on my first day here, but it was as fanciful to me now as it was then. I arched a brow at her and folded my arms.

  She studied me for a moment. “Oh, that’s right, you’re American,” she said. “You wouldn’t know about our spies.”

  I unfolded my arms. “Then why don’t you share with me?” I asked her. “I love learning new things about your country.” I tossed my hair over my shoulder and narrowed my gaze on this infuriating man—who’d not bothered to answer my question for himself about what was beautiful—beside me.

  So I threw back some of his words from earlier. “I don’t tire easily of it.”

  He coughed and stared back at me with heavy-lidded eyes fringed with a dark curtain of lashes.

  Smart Sally blinked at both of us and then said, “Oh, you should be the one to tell her, Princeton, about how our Queen Elise”—she made a sign of the Cross—“smuggled a diamond-studded dress to the queen in England, and when they plotted the diamonds on a grid it gave them Nazi coordinates.” She glanced over at him. “Did I get that right?”

  “Perfect,” he said. “Better than I could have done.” He rewarded her with a smile that lit up Smart Sally’s face like he’d just handed her a fresh-baked cookie. He reached out to rumple her braided hair, but patted her shoulder instead. This was a man who would spoil his kids with affection so sweet that they’d never know the bitterness of having their own father turn his back on them.

  My heart melted into a gooey mess. He’s not like my father….

  He knew each student’s name on this campus. I saw him chatting every day with the kids about their video games, their music, their favorite movies… their hopes and dreams. He never interacted with cool detachment—he cared.

  He’s not like my father.

  Damn it, I wanted—I couldn’t believe I was admitting it—this man to care about me, too. No, I wanted more—much more. I wanted this man to be my first… over and over and over.

  There. I’d said it.

  My head pounded over my heart:

  He’ll hurt you and walk away…

  My heart beat over my head:

  He’s not like my father.

  I slid my hand back into the pocket of my skirt and touched the cool metal of the True Royalty ship headpiece. The prongs had blunt edges—nothing to cut me. It was a rare find, like the man who’d given it to me.

  No man had ever physically affected me like this. No man. Maybe I owed it to myself to see where it would lead…

  I led my eyes across his chiseled good looks, and our eyes locked. Heat crept to my face.

  Was there any possibility that he didn’t catch me checking him out?

  He lifted the corner of his sensuous mouth in a lazy half-grin.

  I thought not.

  I vaguely picked up a piece of Smart Sally speaking. “Isn’t that right, Princeton?” she asked. “Now we can laser tiny, secret messages on our diamonds?”

  “Yes.” He dragged his gaze away from me and focused on Smart Sally. “But spy capital might be a far stretch.”

  She shrugged her shoulders and reexamined her doll dress. “For my Victorious Evening, I want to reapply these rhinestones around the skirt in a constellation pattern, like looking up in the evening sky,” she said. “But I don’t think I have enough.” She glanced up at me with her puppy dog eyes. “Do we have any more rhinestones I could use?”

  I scrunched my lips together and played with Grandpa’s necklace around my neck. Hmm. I bit down on my bottom lip.

  Mr. Princeton had his eyes on my lips again and grumbled. “If you stop that right now, I’ll bring her some.”

  “Stop what?” Smart Sally and I asked in harmony.

  No answer.

  He combed a hand through his hair, huffed, and walked away. His usual routine with me.

  “But what about...” I started to ask about Divina’s project, but he was too far gone.

  So much was always left unsaid between us. I didn’t even thank him for Granny. I sighed.

  “Why was he so flustered?” Smart Sally peered up at me and moved her doll dress into position under the ancient lime green sewing machine. It’d taken me three weeks to teach them the basics of how to use these dinosaurs made in the 1950s.

  “Maybe he’s just tired.” I piggybacked off his earlier statement about tiring easily of Margarita Girls. Well, maybe they tired easily of him, too. I certainly did.

  It exhausted me keeping mental tabs of all my unanswered questions about him. If I bothered to write them down, I’d run through the world’s supply of hot pink stickies—if Mom hadn’t already done so after tabbing tons of those tabloid pictures of me.

  “Someone should keep tabs on him,” she said. “He works too much. He’s here”—she flipped a machine switch—“He’s at Diamond Corp.—”

  “Why there?”

  She adjusted her doll dress under the machine. “He’s supposed to run the company, but his father had him reassigned here full time and there part time.”

  “I wonder why?” If I was snooping, I wouldn’t admit to it.

  She had the machine going, but stopped. “The scandal,” she said, as if that explained everything.

  I knitted my brows together.

  “Oh, I forgot you’re an American,” she said. “And it was never in the papers.”

  She checked to see if anyone was listening around her, and then whispered, “The divorce.”

  “You know about that?”

  She nodded. “Before Mama got promoted to the trash truck, she was the trash girl at Diamond Corp. She worked nights and took me with her,” she said. “When I played around in their empty offices, I learned people throw a lot of secrets out with their trash.”

  So, Smart Sally was a little snooper…

  “I really shouldn’t be gossiping.” She pushed the foot pedal for the machine to stitch up the shoulder area of the dress she’d taken out for her redesign. “Mama says that’s what the Richies do, and we’re better than them.”

  I wasn’t about to contradict her mama by enlightening Smart Sally that ordinary folks like us fueled the three billion dollar gossip magazine industry. Hadn’t Granny forbid me from reading those “tittle-tattle” magazines and told me essentially the same thing as Smart Sally’s mama? />
  I wasn’t about to corrupt the girl.

  “But I guess I could tell you….” She leaned in closer to me. “I think he’s here because of Ms. Krusher, and—”

  I wasn’t about to interrupt her either.

  I leaned in, too, about the same time that she pushed her foot on the machine pedal.

  Crink-clank.

  My necklace from Grandpa had twisted under the spool pin area. This sewing machine model, from a manufacturer I’d never heard of, had an exposed gear shaft, with no cover plate.

  Smart Sally pushed her body from the chair to help and must’ve pressed the foot pedal again because my necklace wound even tighter into the gear shaft, leaving me mere inches from it. Now the most valuable thing I owned in the world, the only reminder I had of Grandpa, was coiled inside the belly of this dinosaur dragon.

  Was there any possibility that this situation could improve?

  The bell rang, signaling the end of school.

  I thought not.

  Since Smart Sally and I were at the very back of the classroom, we witnessed the kids bolt towards the front door in under a minute and shout random “byes” with nary a look back at my predicament behind them.

  So much for enlisting any of their help.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “What do we do?” She peered at the wall clock. “We have a mock trial scrimmage right now!” Her voice was as tightly wound in her throat as my necklace was to this shaft. “And I have to change, and you… you’re… stuck.” She eyed me as if I’d been ensnared by a dragon, not a sewing machine, and she believed the dragon was winning.

  “Go. I don’t need you,” I said in a simple statement, but I couldn’t swear it was fact. “I’ve got this.”

  She hesitated.

  “Go.”

  She finally hauled up her behemoth backpack and paused before leaving. “Are you sure?”

  Nope. “Yes,” I said. “Remember in your pretrial motion to keep a conversational tone with the judge, and hold back on any emotion.” I smiled up at her from my awkward angle above the machine. “Any last questions?”

  “No.” She blew out that word like a candle. “Just get there as soon as you can.” She swiveled to go, but stopped. “Can I get a hug for luck?”

  It was more of a pat on the back because the chain around my neck tied me to the machine like a dog. Then she said, “I love my mama, but I’ve grown to love you, too, like a second mama.”

  In the center of my chest, a knot unraveled and released a surge so strong that my eyes burned. But experience had taught me no tears would seep from my damn emerald eyes, even happy ones.

  A tear slipped down her cheek. “I’ve been wanting to tell you, but I couldn’t find the right time. Mama said not to wait.” Her tone was reverent. “She says love should never be hidden.”

  The image of my father scraped against the outer edges of my mind. And then Mom, decked out in her Kelly scarf, had her turn.

  Love should never be hidden…

  “Your mama is a smart woman,” I said. “Like you. Now go or you’ll be late.” Maybe I should’ve said something else like “I feel the same way about you” or “I also care about you” or “I thank my lucky stars for you.”

  But wasn’t I just her teacher? Professional logic, along with whatever else held back my tears, imprisoned the words in my heart tighter than my necklace was to this machine.

  After she’d left, I hiked up my skirt, hoisted my body against the long, hard wooden table, and curled myself around the sewing machine. Then I rolled up my sleeves, as best I could, to dissect this machine with all the skill of a freshman history major in biology lab.

  At the very least, I should try to make her first scrimmage, yet the clasp to free me from this machine was twisted out of eyesight. I opened side panels, ejected contraptions, lifted levers. I had grime on my hands and probably also on my shirt and face.

  But since I didn’t dare do a yank-and-break of Grandpa’s gift to me, I was stuck.

  Was any luck going to find its way to me today?

  Mr. Princeton appeared, arms crossed and leaning against the doorframe leading into my classroom.

  I thought not.

  “You look like you’ve just stepped off that garbage truck again.” The amusement in his voice was unmistakable.

  I glanced down at the dark oily streaks on my white blouse and my hands. Lord only knew what the rest of me looked like.

  “You need some help?” There was that lazy grin again.

  Yes. “Nope.”

  “Sally said you did.”

  “I have it under control.” That was a statement, but, at this point, I definitely wouldn’t swear to it as fact.

  “I see that,” he mused and approached the machine like a knight-in-shining armor about to slay this lime green dragon.

  But I could slay my own dragons, and I finagled faster to loosen myself from this machine’s death grip.

  Pop!

  What was that? Whatever it was, I still wasn’t free.

  Mr. Princeton’s muscled chest, stretching open his suit jacket, overwhelmed even the perimeters of my vision. I couldn’t crick my neck any higher to see his face. But the view from here was just fine.

  He sucked in a deep breath and his chest expanded impossibly larger. “Ms. Wellborn,” he exhaled. “Before a student walks in, may I touch your… your”—he drew in another unsteady breath and released it—“thigh.”

  My body pulsed to life, anticipating an encore performance of his hands on my body again, like he’d done with my knee at the bike rack.

  “My thigh?” I may have squeaked that out, but I wouldn’t own up to it.

  “To pull your skirt down,” he finished.

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I craned my neck to see and caught only a glimpse of my pink, wide-pleated skirt folded over towards my waist, not my knees. Dear Lord, I must’ve done that jostling myself onto the table.

  Hells bells, could he have found me in a more embarrassing position than having my skirt flopped over my butt?

  I thought not.

  “You know, this wouldn’t have happened if I could wear pants to school,” I said. “Was it your idea to come up with that stupid ‘skirts-only’ rule?”

  “No,” he said. “In Maravista, we believe that men should be men and women… well, women.”

  Yes, here they still clung to the old ways brought by their ancestors from the American South. Men opened doors, scooted in chairs, rose to their feet when a woman entered a room—I could go on and on.

  Yep, chivalry hadn’t died here. As a trade-off, when attending events or in business, women didn’t seem to wear pants, not even Princess Divina. Strange country. Strange customs.

  “I’m pretty sure I can still be a woman in pants.” I tried to reach behind to pull my skirt down over my butt, yet I was failing miserably the way my back was curled around the sewing machine.

  He moved around towards my backside. “Here, let me,” he said. “I’m confident I can handle it.”

  “So did they teach you how to adjust women’s skirts in the military, too?”

  “More like hands-on experience.”

  “I’ll bet with all those Margarita Girls.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Whatever!” I imitated my haughtiest “Divina” voice.

  And he laughed... he laughed at me.

  Whatever did that mean?!

  “Does Sass Know How to Handle Prince Michael’s Equipment?”

  -Gossip Weekly

  “Sass Breaks School Equipment, According to School Insider”

  -Royal Rumor Report

  His rich baritone chuckle stirred my body awake. I focused on a classroom poster plastered on the wall that read: “Hands-On Learning Starts Here.”

  And so another hands-on lesson with this man began.

  He glided his fingers along my bare thigh on their way up to my skirt. A familiar shock jolted through my blood. Hot, electric, a sizzle of raw need. He had that unique sm
ell of musk, of sandalwood, of a man who’d teach me all the secrets the night had to offer… if I’d let him.

  Then his fingers skimmed across that sensitive spot behind my knees. I gasped.

  “Hold tight, my little Margarita Girl,” he murmured. The material of my skirt, shifted back into place by him, rustled louder than his voice.

  Did I hear him correctly? Margarita Girl?!

  My blood crackled with something else… ire.

  It was one thing to dream secretly every night about being his Margarita Girl, and quite another for him openly to call me that. Me—a Stanvard Law hopeful. Not some Tabloid Vixen who bared all my “lucky charms” to men for the cover price of $6.99.

  “Just to clarify”—my icy voice dunked the rest of my body in cold water—“I am not, nor have I ever been a Margarita Girl.”

  “Whoa, easy there.” He came around to face me… well, his chest did anyway. Rather a distraction really when I was trying to prove a point.

  “Calling me a Margarita Girl insults me. Don’t you tire easily of Margarita Girls? Haven’t you had so many of them that you’ve lost count?”

  Well, he’d implied all those things anyway.

  He settled a hand under his chin. “So, you’re afraid I’ll tire easily of you.”

  Blood rushed to my face.

  Yes, Grandpa would’ve loved verbally sparring with this man. I’m sure Grandpa would’ve had plenty to say about his “Sassy Little Genius” being called a Margarita Girl.

  Without breaking my necklace chain, I tried to pivot my body towards him. “No, I’m not afraid because I’m not a Margarita Girl.”

  “Clearly, I know that… although.” He hesitated.

  “Although what?” I snapped.

  He cleared his throat. “You’re wearing red.”

  “I have nothing red on.” White top, with grease streaks, and a pink skirt. No red.

  “Trust me, you do.”

  And then it dawned on me…

  My red panties.

  It was like my first day all over again.

  “Red on bottom”—he took off his jacket—“and top.”

  Only worse than my first day…

  I looked down and, sure enough, my white shirt gaped open and exposed my red lacy bra. That “pop” was a white button from my shirt now a few inches from me on the table.