Finding Holly

by B. E. Baker

  “You could have learned those things here,” Cole says.

  I shake my head. “It never even occurred to me to try. My leaving wasn’t about that at first, but in the process of surviving after Noel died, I made friends there, Cole. I made a life, one that I liked.” I choke. I almost said one I like more than being here. It’s true, but saying that would be unnecessarily hurtful. “I like who I am as Paisley, a working American girl.”

  “But it’s a lie,” he says. “And it hurts people. It hurts me.”

  He’s right. If I don’t ask my friends for a favor because I’ll have to tell them the truth to do it, I’m hurting my family with my lie. “You’re right. I doubt you heard me tell Mom this, but James found a way I might be able to save Berg Telecom. I need to call a friend of mine and ask for a huge favor.”

  “Which means you’ll need to tell them who you really are.”

  I grit my teeth. I think they know who I am, but I have to tell them where I came from. That much is true. “Right.”

  “Then I’m sorry for attacking you. I didn’t know that, and I didn’t have an agenda, I swear.”

  I snort.

  “Fine, I didn’t have that agenda. I did want you to tell them who you are, because then you’ll come home more often.”

  “Americans are weird about this kind of thing,” I say. “They’re going to treat me differently.”

  “Worried you’ll lose your cushy job?” Cole smirks.

  I slap his arm. “I’m worried I’ll be mocked there. I’m worried—” I pause. “Actually, I’m not sure exactly what worries me. But I’ll have to tell them about Noel, about all of it, or they’ll never understand.”

  He sighs.

  I do too.

  But now I know what I need to do because I know the right thing to do. “I’ll do it after the party.”

  Cole looks at me sideways. He’s a jerk.

  “I really will,” I say. “But I can only worry about one huge thing at a time.”

  “And this party is a huge thing?” He lifts his eyebrows as he turns into our garage.

  “It’s the first party that anyone has thrown for me in ten years. So yeah, I’m going to say it is.”

  He smiles. “Fine. I’ll cut you a day’s worth of slack, but I’m going to remind you Thursday morning that you said you were going to call. And then I’ll hand you the phone.”

  “Not a landline?” I feign horror. “But seriously. Landlines. You should have told Dad years ago what a bad idea that was. We should have been branching out by 2010 at the latest.”

  Cole sighs. “I’m not a business mogul, you know. And Dad spends almost all of his time on government stuff.”

  I know he does. I shouldn’t be so critical. I wasn’t even here. The second I walk in the door, Mom captures me for the longest fitting in the history of mankind. After that, dinner with the entire family takes forever.

  Even so, when I reach my room at eight-thirty, I don’t have a single text or call.

  I think about how we left things. Maybe I’m the one who needs to text first. FEEL LIKE GOING FOR A DRIVE?

  He texts back immediately. HAVE YOU SEEN THE PRICE OF GAS IN EUROPE? ARE YOU TRYING TO BANKRUPT ME?

  I smile. I’LL DRIVE.

  YOU’RE NOT PLANNING TO DRIVE OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE SO YOU CAN HIDE MY BODY, RIGHT?

  PLEASE. I’D JUST SEND THE POLICE FOR YOU.

  Dots. I love the dots. It means he’s typing something long. I’VE BEEN HERE TWO DAYS AND NEVER SEEN A SINGLE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER.

  WE ONLY HAVE NINETY-ONE.

  Laughing emoji.

  PUT YOUR PANTS ON. I’LL BE THERE IN FIVE.

  HOW DID YOU KNOW MY PANTS WEREN’T ON? O.o

  WHAT’S THAT LITTLE O.o THING?

  Laughing emoji again. LUKE STARTED USING IT. I THINK IT MEANS, ARE YOU PEEKING IN ON ME. IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE EYES. I THOUGHT IT WAS A GIRL THING.

  BETWEEN MARY AND AMY, LUKE’S GIRLIER THAN ME. I bite my lip.

  NOTE TO SELF. DO NOT COPY LUKE’S TEXTING ODDITIES. GIRLFRIEND QUESTIONS MASCULINITY.

  My heart races. It’s fake. I know it’s fake, but yesterday he kissed me with no one around to see it. And now he’s calling me his girlfriend in a private text. Probably ironically.

  But it feels pretty real.

  I MISSED YOU TODAY. I type. Then I delete it. Too much. Too risky. I put my phone down and force myself to walk away from it while I retouch my makeup. Then I borrow Cole’s Range Rover and head for his hotel. James is standing outside staring at the mountains, oblivious to my presence. I admire his broad shoulders and his dark, slightly longish hair before I roll down the window and whistle.

  “You do not act like a princess.” His double dimples still make me swoon.

  “Get in, hot stuff.”

  He opens the door. “It’s chilly here at night. I should’ve grabbed a sweater.”

  “I’ve got a heater.” I roll up the window.

  “Where are we going?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “But I wanted to see you, and I couldn’t invite you over. You’d have been grilled. And I couldn’t invite myself into your room.”

  His grin turns hawkish. “Why not?”

  I shake my head. “Danger Will Robinson.”

  “You’re surprisingly well versed in American pop culture.”

  “That’s basically the entire world over there,” I say. “And it’s not like Liechtenstein has a booming film industry I was raised on instead.”

  He laughs. “But you don’t even have an accent.”

  I put the car in park. “Okay, that’s why I wanted to see you. I’ve decided to call Paul and tell him.”

  James’ eyes widen. “You wanted me in the car for that?”

  “Of course not. But I wanted to do a trial run.” Really, I think I just want him to know, to understand why I left. “I need to know how they might react.”

  “Well, I already know you’re a princess,” he says. “I think I took that pretty well.”

  “I haven’t been lying to you about it for ten years,” I say.

  “True.” He rubs his hands against the dark scruff on his chin, and I don’t want to talk anymore.

  I want to lean across the center console and touch his jaw myself. I lick my lips instead. “I thought I’d tell you why. Then maybe you can help me figure out how to tell them, and who to tell first.”

  James frowns. “I’m not exactly fantastic with the interpersonal stuff.”

  “I gathered that much, Mr. No Friends.”

  “But you’re a veteran at it,” he says. “I’m sure you know what to do.”

  My shoulders slump.

  “Why did you leave?” he asks so softly it’s almost a whisper.

  “You’ve met Cole.” I grip the steering wheel like the car isn’t parked.

  “I have.”

  “Mom was married before she married my dad. Cole’s my half-brother.”

  James puts a hand on the center console. Not demanding, but he’s there. He’s not as bad at the interpersonal stuff as he thinks.

  “But then Mom and Dad had two more kids. An heir, and a spare.”

  “Excuse me?” James asks.

  I turn to face him. “You haven’t heard that?” I can’t help my half smile. “It’s kind of standard, at least, it is here. Every titled family needs an heir and a spare.” My throat closes. Because I’m the spare, and they needed me.

  “Okay. So you have another brother.”

  I nod. “Hans-Noel, and he was brilliant. So funny.” Tears well in my eyes. “Handsome and good, the quintessential prince.”

  “Was.”

  I nod, inhaling deeply to try and hold the tears at bay. I haven’t talked about Noel in almost ten years. “I wasn’t born for three and half years after they had him. He probably should have ignored me, or at the very least, taunted me. Cole did both, in turns, but not Noel. He loved me from the first day, or that’s what Mom says.”

  James
frowns.

  I plow on. “My earliest memory is of him feeding me. He played this game. He would duck below the table, and then pop up, and I would scream. Mom and Dad hated it, but I opened my mouth, and he would shove something inside. No matter what it was, I ate it. Peas. Green beans. Carrots. Whatever.”

  James shifts, but he doesn’t move his hand. “You remember that?”

  “I remember everything about Noel.” My heart cracks a little. “And that never changed. As I grew and Noel grew, we just did more things together. We played hide and seek. I hated dance lessons, but he stepped in to teach me and made it fun. I abhorred piano, so he started teaching my lessons himself. He played like. . . I don’t know. Like a professional.”

  “You play piano?”

  “I play chopsticks,” I say. “But Noel helped me memorize enough songs to satisfy Mom and Dad.”

  “What happened to him?” James asks.

  “He got cancer,” I say. “Chronic mylogeneous leukemia. It was horrific. Our hospital in Vaduz. . .” I shake my head. “He had to go to Zurich.”

  “How long was he in treatment?”

  “Almost two years. Luckily I was a bone marrow match.” I shudder. “He went into remission.”

  James doesn’t look optimistic. He knows where this is headed. “I’ve heard bone marrow donation is miserable.”

  I shrug. “It wasn’t a big deal, really. For once I was doing something for him. I would have done—” I choke. “Anything.”

  “How long did his remission last?”

  “Eighteen months,” I say. “He ended up with cataracts thanks to the chemo, and during the treatment for those, they realized it was back. Everything had to start all over again. He hadn’t even been in remission as long as he’d been sick.”

  “What did he do?” James asks.

  How does he know Noel did something? I wipe at my cheeks. “We did another bone marrow transplant, but it didn’t work. Noel went on Gleevec.”

  “What’s that?”

  I take his hand, his fingers warm and strong. “It’s a cancer drug, but it kind of holds things on pause where they are. Or it would have.” I squeeze, and James squeezes back. “His face swelled up. He threw up. A lot. Then he got a rash.”

  “He stopped taking it.”

  I turn to face James so fast it gives me whiplash. “How could you possibly—”

  “I would have, probably.”

  My hands shake and James leans closer and wraps his arm around me.

  “He died because he just gave up,” I say. “He could have stayed, he should have kept fighting. He didn’t even tell us—he didn’t even tell me. He hid his pills, and he got worse and worse and then he died. And then I was alone, so alone.”

  “You were angry,” James says.

  “I shouldn’t have been angry,” I whisper. “I saw him. He was miserable. I know why he did it. But he could have told me. I would have understood.”

  “You would have done anything, you said. I’m guessing that means you would have tried to stop him.”

  Sobs wrack my body. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “After he died, you couldn’t stay?” James asks.

  “No one believed that I didn’t know,” I say. “They all blamed me, and I blamed me. I should have noticed. I should have done something. And every single place I looked, Noel was there. Suddenly I wasn’t the spare. I was the heir, and I sucked at it. I dropped things, and I said the wrong stuff, and I hated everything. I had our Deputy Prime Minister make me a new identification, with Paisley as my only name. I told him I needed it to surprise Mom and Dad, and he believed me.” I lean against James’ shoulder. “They were furious with him and with me when they found out, but I used it to apply to a dozen schools in America.”

  “That’s where you met Geo and Trudy and Mary?”

  “Atlanta, yes. I met Geo first. I didn’t have a plan. For once, no one was telling me what to do. And no one knew about Noel, or who I was. I could bumble, I could mess up, and no one cared.”

  “How often did you come home?”

  “This is my first time back.”

  James whistles. “Seeing a little more why your mom wants to throw you a party.”

  “They want me to stay.”

  “I guess so.”

  “And I’m realizing that what was better for me must have been harder for them.”

  “They lost that heir and their spare at the same time,” he says.

  “I know,” I whisper. “I’m a terrible person.”

  James shakes his head. “You were suffering from trauma. The rules of triage are that first you treat what is the most critical. You had to survive. They had to do the same thing.”

  “I can’t tell Paul all this on the phone.”

  “I get it now,” James says. “Why you didn’t want to tell them.”

  “But I’m going to do it.” I sit up straight and James relaxes his arm and leans back. “You’re still coming to the party tomorrow night?”

  He meets my eye. “Of course.”

  Phew. “So once that’s done, I’ll call and tell them Thursday morning. But should I call and explain all of this to Trudy? Or Mary? What do I do?”

  “You met Geo first,” he says. “I’d call her first.”

  Right. Of course. “Then I’ll call Mary. I can reassure her that I’m not quitting, and then I’ll call Trudy. Once they’ve had a day or two to process, I can hit Paul up for my favor.”

  James leans his head back in the seat. “That sounds like a good attack plan.”

  “Is your team okay with waiting?”

  He laughs. “Does it matter? They work for me.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m assuming this is a tuxedo kind of party?” James asks.

  “It is,” I say. “Which is sort of a shame.”

  “Why?” He raises one eyebrow. A lock of hair falls over his eye and my poor broken, battered heart perks up just a bit. He may not be great at the interpersonal. He may never have had a girlfriend, but he’s been here for me. I’ve sobbed on his chest and he’s been a champ about it.

  “I had no idea how hot you were until I saw you out of that tux. All those muscles wasted under bolts and bolts of fabric.”

  Both dimples. I love the double dimple smile. I reach up and brush his errant hair back, and he catches my hand.

  “Although.” I bite my lip. “Maybe I don’t want anyone else to know how hot you are. There will be a lot of really good looking ladies at the party tomorrow.”

  “I’m taken,” he says. “Right?”

  I gulp.

  “At least, that’s the story.”

  The story. “Yes,” I say. “So don’t forget that. No flirting or asking for numbers, no matter how tempting.”

  “I’ll try my best.” He kisses the top of my hand and then turns it over and kisses my palm. “But don’t forget. I’m a bad guy, so I can’t make any promises.”

  “I won’t forget.” But I wish I could. I’d like to forget he’s just humoring me. I’d like to forget that he flies home Thursday. I’d like to forget all of it. I should tell him that. I should say that I might forget. Would that be so bad? I open my mouth to say it. To tell him I wish it wasn’t fake.

  My phone buzzes and I jump. James hands it to me without looking, without breaking eye contact.

  I look at the screen to see who it is.

  WHEN ARE YOU COMING BACK? Mom asks.

  I groan. Trust Mom to have the absolute worst timing.

  “You should get back,” James says. “Because hawks are always hungry, and we destroy things like adorable little rabbits.” There’s that smolder. The one that killed me at Mary’s wedding.

  I nod my head and turn toward the steering wheel. “Boy, that was some drive.”

  James puts his hand on my arm and my stomach lurches. “We wouldn’t have seen anything in the dark anyway, but I’m glad you came over and told me. I think your friends will understand.”

  I hope he’s r
ight. “Thanks for listening.”

  “I may not be a very good person,” he says. “But my grandmother Greta, Gigi is what I called her, she taught me to listen. Even if you’re not really my girlfriend, if you ever need to talk to someone who won’t judge you, you can call me.”

  I don’t cry again until he’s out of the car and I’m driving back. It’s small, but I’ll take every win I can right now.

  10

  James

  It’s almost easier to work from a hotel than from my office. I accomplish as much in three hours as I usually do in nine or ten back home.

  Or I would have, if I hadn’t spent the morning texting Paisley. Or Holly. I’m not sure what to call her. Her number is now saved in my phone as The Girlfriend, which still makes me laugh a little when it pops up. Gigi’s surely smiling up in heaven.

  Because I wasn’t kidding when I told Paisley I’m not a very good person. I’m certainly not a good enough person to date her for real. When she told me about her brother, I felt for her, I really did. But I was also jealous. I can’t tell whether I was jealous that I didn’t have a sibling at all, or whether I’m jealous at how much she loved her brother.

  Her own brother. I was jealous of how much she cared about her dead brother.

  I’m a terrible person.

  Which is why I’m flying out on the flight my assistant booked out of Vienna on Thursday morning, no matter what. I can’t stay in Europe another second. The more time I spend with her, the more time I want to spend. I care just enough to know that I would be a disastrously bad boyfriend for Holly Paisley von und zu Liechtenstein, Hereditary Princess of Liechtenstein.

  But oh man. If I married her, my parents would both crap a brick. Even the thought makes me laugh. I would need to have the invitation to the wedding hand delivered with a hidden camera. It would be worth any amount of money to see them each open the announcement to attend a ceremony in a palace in Europe. Their screw-up son, the one both of them cut off without a backward glance after Harvard kicked me out, the one who does nothing but knock over blocks, marrying a princess.

  The whole idea, no matter how absurd, makes me smile.