In A Faraway Land (Runaway Princess: Flicka, Book 3)

by Blair Babylon

  She leaned in. “They weren’t FBI. I’m not a criminal, I promise.”

  Bastien’s face fell. “Oh. I was so enamored with my dream that you were a fugitive bank robber or international assassin, working incognito.”

  She laughed again. “Just a cocktail waitress with a problem ex.”

  That wasn’t even too far from the truth.

  “Well, then,” Bastien winked one of his pale, blue-gray eyes at her, “as I said, if you ever need protection, I am at your service.”

  “You’re a sweetheart, Bastien. I’ll bring your drinks. Word to the wise, though: order easy drinks. This bartender gets a little random.”

  “Are martinis safe?”

  “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  “Excellent.” He tossed another black chip in her glass.

  “Thanks, but you don’t have to do that.”

  He winked at her. “I haven’t seen you for a week. I have to make sure you’re taken care of.”

  “I’m fine, but thanks.” She felt like she might be leading him on, and he was getting a little stalkery, following her between casinos like that.

  “It’s my pleasure, liebling Gretchen. That enormous blond giant who ran off with you at the Monaco, is he here?”

  Flicka cranked her mouth into a smile even though mice were crawling up her spine.

  Bastien had been watching her entirely too closely.

  That question was crossing the line into creepy.

  And yet, it wasn’t an altogether creepy-stalker question, considering that she had been standing right next to Bastien when she had thrown her tray laden with glassware to the floor and sprinted away, yelling Dieter’s name, and then Dieter had jumped up and run with her. The drinks had probably splashed him with alcohol, beer, and soda pop.

  She said, “That guy was just house security at the Monaco Casino. I don’t know anything about him.”

  Bastien glanced to where Dieter was sitting at the Texas Hold’Em table, his strong back toward them, and then turned to his cards lying on the green felt in front of him. “If you say so. I shouldn’t keep you, and these poker chips aren’t going to lose themselves.”

  At the Swim Lesson

  Flicka von Hannover

  Dieter did look good in a swimsuit,

  so the swimming grandmothers weren’t wrong

  to catcall him like that.

  A few days later, Dieter asked Flicka if she wanted to come along to Alina’s swim lesson. “They have a lane reserved for laps if you want, or the sun is nice.”

  The Nevada summer sun would peel the paint off a BMW, but the thought of swim lessons for a toddler who was still working on staggering around the room more than three times seemed to be an amusing proposition. Flicka found a cheap swimsuit at one of the shops in the Silver Horseshoe where she could use her employee discount and tagged along one searing September morning.

  Even considering that the swimsuit had been on sale, it seemed like quite a bit of money for the small amount of cloth involved.

  When Flicka tugged Dieter’s oversized tee shirt over her head, revealing the red bikini on her pale skin, Dieter looked her up and down, taking her in, and then he gazed in her eyes for a moment, his gray eyes turning darker, almost smoky.

  Flicka didn’t look away, but her breath felt a little shallow in her chest.

  Alina tugged on Dieter’s hand, pointing toward the pool. “Dada? Pool. Want pool. Dada? Pool.”

  Dieter stripped off his tee shirt, revealing his muscular physique that Flicka loved to look at but couldn’t quite touch. The sun was tanning him during these swim lessons, she noticed, because his skin over his strong shoulders, round biceps, and heavy chest was turning golden. The deep crevices pointing from his waist to the waistband of his swim shorts seemed darker, not to mention the furrow running between the hard bricks of his abdominals.

  From the pool, feminine voices hooted.

  Flicka glanced over.

  A bunch of white-haired ladies were holding toddlers in the pool, splashing around with them, and they catcalled and whistled at Dieter, standing there shirtless.

  The instructor, a whipcord-tough woman in a red lifeguard swimsuit, trotted across the hot deck and leaped into the pool. She called, “Raphe! Bring Alina. It’s time to begin.”

  “Dada? Pool, p’ease. Time for pool.”

  Dieter said, “Yes, Alina. Time for your swimming lesson in the pool,” but he didn’t look away from Flicka as Alina towed him toward the water.

  Flicka swam laps in the designated lane at the far end of the pool. Her body lengthened and unknotted in the cool water. When she clung to the side for a moment, she glanced over at Dieter and Alina.

  Alina was splashing in the water along with the other babies and making short swims between Dieter and one of the grandmothers in the pool.

  Dieter was laughing and encouraging her and the other splashing toddlers.

  The joy on his face and in his gray eyes was amazing.

  When he caught Flicka staring at him, he grinned harder and went back to catching Alina as she paddled to him.

  She’d always thought Dieter was a handsome man—his strong shoulders and slim hips, attractive as hell in a dark suit or ripped fatigues, calm watchfulness or wild adrenaline burning in his gray eyes—but the laugh lines creasing his face as he played with his daughter made him look different to her.

  Better.

  A wistful desire shot through her, though she couldn’t quite place what she wanted.

  Flicka went back to swimming laps to work the waitressing kinks out of her shoulders and back, even though she wanted to just hang on the side of the pool and watch Alina and Dieter.

  Stay At Home Dad

  Dieter Schwarz

  A stay-at-home dad.

  I’m not going to lie,

  I was a little jealous.

  Dieter and Flicka picked up Alina from the daycare center sometime after midnight and rode home.

  The next morning, they all slept late, which he supposed was their new schedule. Waking up next to Flicka was luxurious, though she was lying in bed awake, of course. Even as a kid, she had needed several hours’ less sleep than Dieter unless she was growing. In Switzerland, after tying one on with Wulfram on weekend leave, Dieter often dragged his butt off the couch to find both of them finished with breakfast and halfway through their mornings. That perky insomnia of theirs must be genetic.

  The little townhouse had come complete with a coffeemaker and some mismatched dishes, so he got himself a cup and wandered after Alina, who was hopping at the door, trying to reach the doorknob.

  There was a small patch of gravel that served as a front yard for them, so he walked her down the sidewalk to a small, grassy playground at the end of the block.

  To his surprise, two other tiny girls just about Alina’s age were playing on the baby gyms, and a man was lounging on a bench with a cup of coffee beside him, staring at his phone.

  The guy lifted a hand when Dieter and Alina walked inside the gate. Alina had decided to be shy that morning and was peeking at the girls from behind Dieter’s leg.

  The guy introduced himself as Tinashe Afolabi, and said, “You must be one of the new people at 952 Tam.”

  As their address was indeed 952 Tam O’Shanter, Dieter held out his hand and introduced himself, “Raphael Mirabaud.”

  The name almost stuck in his throat, and it should have choked him.

  Dieter continued, “You can call me Raphe. Yep. Guilty. We rented that townhouse.”

  “Where y’all from?”

  “Germany.”

  “Oh, guten tag. I took some of that in high school. Don’t remember a damn thing, though. I’m from Missouri.”

  “I’ve heard Missouri is nice,” Dieter said, being polite.

  Tinashe snorted. “You heard wrong. The economy there sucks. You have to plant a big garden to get enough to eat. Nevada is better.”

  “Are both those girls yours? Dieter asked, gesturing to the wh
ite toddler dressed in an orange jumper and the black girl, who was wearing a frilly dress.

  “Just the black one, Meti,” he said, shoving his dark forearm in Dieter’s general direction, “the one that matches.”

  “Right. I noticed that,” Dieter said, nearly cross-eyed from the man’s arm right in front of his face. Americans had no concept of personal space, so he didn’t shove the man’s arm farther away from the end of his nose.

  “Good. Being blind is a hard life.” He removed his arm. “The other one is Tabitha. Her mom is a single mother and works days, sometimes twelve hours at a stretch.”

  “That’s nice of you to keep her,” Dieter said.

  “Oh, she’s paying me. Running an illegal daycare pays more than my job as an electrical engineer did, and it’s cheaper and better for the parents than a big, sterile box full of snotty-nosed kids. I love being a stay-at-home dad. I’d rather cook lunch for babies than calculate electrical currents. I’ve got some resistance to that, all right. The afternoons are busier, though. I’ve got another boy who comes from five until midnight.”

  “Really?” Dieter said, turning on the bench. “Tell me more.”

  After a sufficient interrogation that included discipline methods, (“I talk to them about Christian love for their fellow man until they are begging to be good. If that doesn’t work, I’ve got a chair in the corner for time outs.”) provided meals and snacks, (Which included plenty of green, leafy vegetables, so Suze Meier would approve.) and naps, (“Oh, God, yes. I’ve gotta check my social media.”) Dieter left with three phone numbers to call for references and a very good feeling about the future.

  Flicka shook her head when she heard about their conversation. “It’s not right that he has to cheat to make a living.”

  “He’s not cheating,” Dieter said. “Raising three toddlers is not easy work.”

  “But he has to work outside the system,” Flicka said. “It’s the black market. If I ruled this country, I would change the whole work structure. Child care workers and teachers should be paid what they are worth, rather than have to do without benefits to make decent money. This country needs a living wage paid by the employer, not ‘tips,’ which means that the employer is counting on his customers to pay his employees so he doesn’t have to offer a fair wage. It’s bizarre.”

  “Yes, Durchlauchtig, you will almost certainly rule the world as a dreaded tyrant and a modern Hannover monarch someday, but in the meantime, we should call these references.”

  Flicka snatched the scrap of paper from him. “Fine, but I want to meet this guy first.”

  “It’s almost like you care about Alina,” Dieter teased.

  Flicka glared at him. “I do care about your daughter, but I care enough to know that I would make a terrible mother or caretaker. I lose my temper too easily, and I run off at the first opportunity. She’s better off with someone else. Trust me, she’s much happier if I just do the logistics. I would be an absolute nightmare for a child.”

  The Brandy Alexander

  Flicka von Hannover

  Oops.

  A few weeks later, Flicka and Scotta were hanging over the bar, watching Frank screw up their drink orders again. The bar smelled like he had mopped up stale beer with a reeking towel. Flicka didn’t rest her arms on the dark wood. That smell might rub off on her.

  The area around the bar was set up with tables and televisions for sports betting and Keno, but the deserted chairs were haphazardly clustered around the tables.

  Scotta pointed at what Frank was doing. “That’s supposed to be a regular martini, not a vodka martini.”

  Frank shot a nasty look at Scotta but started making her a new one. Half of the gin ended up on his shirt cuffs and the bar.

  Flicka was trying hard to be nice while she pointed to a drink that Frank had slapped on her tray. Bright orange fluid floated on a red, syrupy layer. “I appreciate all that extra lime juice in this rum punch, but other people might want some rum in it, too.”

  He sneered, “I put the rum in it.”

  “Honey, I watched you make it. It’s got all the juices, the grenadine, and the nutmeg, but you never reached for the liquor shelves. And you can smell that it doesn’t have any rum in it. Here.” She held out the drink and waited.

  “I hate it how you bitches criticize every damn drink I make,” Frank said, slamming a beer that he had been pouring on the counter. “I hate working here. I hate Prissy, and I hate you two. I quit.”

  He stalked away.

  Flicka stared at him, open-mouthed.

  Scotta yelled after him, “Don’t be like that. Come back and make these drinks!”

  Frank stomped out of the bar. The casino crowd swallowed him.

  “Well, that’s just great,” Scotta fretted. “Now we don’t have a bartender.”

  “I’m going to make a decent rum punch for my guy,” Flicka said, bustling behind the bar and pouring the sweetened fruit juice down the sink. “And I’m going to make Bastien a good martini instead of that vermouth-soaked, watered-down crap he’s been putting up with. And I’m going to pour a decent beer with the right amount of head for Dieter and Larry and Meg out there.”

  Scotta asked her, “Can you make my chick a good martini while you’re at it?”

  “Sure,” Flicka said, scowling at the disorganized bottles on the shelves. All the bottles were scrambled. They were neither alphabetized nor grouped by liquor type nor by quality. Sheesh. “Do you know if she likes it dry or not?”

  “She keeps saying ‘standard’ to me and emphasizing it.”

  “I’ll bet Frank has been slapping the vermouth on top of the gin in those glasses and not bothering to stir or shake them. Does she want olives or lemon peel?”

  “Olives,” Scotta said.

  Flicka poured the beers for both their customers, made a nice rum punch with clean layers, and then shook up a double batch of martinis for the two glasses. “Come on. Let’s get these out there before Frank changes his mind and comes back.”

  They served the drinks to the customers and raced back to the dark bar at the back of the casino. The televisions were all showing fires and running soldiers instead of sports.

  But still no Frank.

  Scotta told Flicka her orders, and Flicka whipped them up.

  The problem was that three other waitstaff—Minx, Abra, and Charla—had returned to the bar to pick up their orders.

  So Flicka tossed those together before heading back out with her drinks.

  When she went back five minutes later, Scotta was behind the bar pouring the beers. “Come on. We’ve got nineteen orders piled up, and the girls will be back in a second. I don’t know how to do the mixed ones. I never paid attention.”

  “You’re doing great with the beer,” Flicka said, grabbing glasses and shakers. “I’ll do the mixed drinks.”

  Minx ran behind the bar to load the dishwasher, and Charla hand-washed the shakers in the sink because the dishwashing guy had apparently gone on strike with Frank.

  They managed to keep it going for three hours when Prissy did a manager’s tour and saw them all frantically working behind the bar. “Where the hell is Frank?”

  Scotta shrugged and told the truth. “He said he quit and walked out.”

  “Goddamn that asshole,” Prissy said, the wrinkles over her eyebrows wrinkling yet further. Her voice might be shaky with age, but her resolve wasn’t. “He’s fired for good this time.”

  “We’ve been doing our best to keep everything going.”

  Prissy scowled at the situation. “At least you girls have been keeping up the bar, but it’s obviously not working. And I don’t know how many times I’ve told that jerk to not turn the news on. Nobody likes the news. The news just pisses everyone off. People can’t bet on the goddamn news.” She picked up a waitress’s tray that was sitting on the counter. “Can anyone here run a damn bar?”

  Scotta pointed at Flicka. “Gretchen has been making all the drinks, and they’re a heck of a lot be
tter than Frank used to make. People are ordering more of them and gambling more because they’re drunk. Our tips are better because people don’t think we got their orders wrong and the drinks taste good. The dealers are raking in the tips because the guests are wasted and happy, and they’re making stupid bets because they’re having a great time.”

  Prissy’s lip rose in a sneer. “Gretchen—”

  Oh. She meant Flicka. Flicka paid attention.

  “—You just got a promotion for the day. If you can run this bar, you can keep it. I’ll get two goddamn dishwashers out here to support you. And somebody switch these televisions off of the goddamn news. People don’t come to a casino to watch the damned news.” Her wrinkled face pulled into a sarcastic, ghoulish smile. “I’ll take your station today, Gretchen.”

  Flicka redoubled her efforts to make the drinks.

  The other waitstaff scattered into the crowd, but Prissy was true to her word. Three minutes later, two kitchen staff whipped through the load of glasses and barware in the sinks, and the dishwashers hummed happily. As soon as a waitstaff set a glass on the bar, they whisked it away for cleaning.

  Flicka asked for some fresh towels from housekeeping. An hour later, the bar smelled like lemon oil.

  She also turned the televisions away from the awful shrieking heads on the newscasts and found sports.

  Guests began to wander over to the bar area.

  Prissy flitted around the bar, turning on the screens embedded in the tables so the patrons could wager on the sports playing on the televisions. She turned on the Keno games, too.

  Flicka poured drinks for people, relying on her prodigious memory of drinks she had consumed while being a princess at the very upper-class balls and events she had attended.