“Emmaline, come back here!”
“Your Highness . . .”
“Emmaline, where are you going?”
“To find Granger,” she tossed over her shoulder—along with the bouquet of roses, which landed in Josephine’s ready hands.
Back in Brynn’s suite, Granger paced the floor.
He ignored the repeated bleating of the telephone receiver, which he had taken off the hook. It was better to listen to this than to incessant ringing.
Brynn didn’t agree. Declaring that she had a violent headache, she had left the suite in search of ibuprofen, promising to return momentarily.
“Will you be all right without me?” she had asked.
“I’ll be fine.”
But he wouldn’t be fine without Emmaline.
He would go on, yes. He would survive. But he wouldn’t be fine.
If only . . .
If only something would happen.
He couldn’t stand the waiting.
He didn’t even know what he was waiting for . . .
For Princess Emmaline to burst through the door and tell him that she loved him, too.
Which meant that he was waiting for the impos-sible.
Even if, by some miracle, she had seen him on television just now, there was little likelihood that she felt the same way.
Or that she would be willing to tell him if she did.
Or that it wasn’t already too late for that.
Debi Hanson had informed him that Prince Remi had been seen arriving at the palace that morning, followed shortly by a minister from the abbey.
His official reply to that news had been “No comment.”
His unofficial one had been a colorful curse.
Unless he was mistaken, Emmaline and Remi were already married, and he had just bared his soul to the masses.
Should he turn on the television and replace the telephone in its cradle so that he could receive the latest update?
No.
He decided he didn’t want to see, yet again, a blow-by-blow account of his personal life, and Emmaline’s.
Anything was better than that.
And anyway, the longer he kept himself in the dark, the longer he could cling to hope . . .
If Emmaline had stopped to think, she might have done things differently.
For example, she might not have raced out of the palace still wearing the ill-fitting ivory suit. The exertion caused the button to pop off and roll under a shrub as she dashed toward the gate.
Which was where one of her bodyguards caught up with her.
“Your Highness—”
“I have to get to the Traviata Hotel.”
He opened his mouth to protest.
“Nothing is going to stop me,” she informed him with all the deadly conviction of a pregnant runaway bride.
“All right,” the bodyguard conceded. “But we’ll drive you.”
She hesitated.
And then one look at the mobbed street beyond the gate convinced her that he was right.
As the car drove through the crowded streets, trailed by a caravan of reporters, a royal motorcade, and Prince Remi’s limousine, she fought against the wave of panic that repeatedly rose within her.
She knew that Granger loved her.
She knew that she loved him.
After she found him, and told him . . .
Then what?
Love wouldn’t solve everything. In fact, it wouldn’t solve anything.
As far as she knew, Granger was still penniless, and Emmaline had all but turned her back on her family—and her kingdom—just now.
She and Granger would have nobody to turn to but each other.
Would that be enough?
As the car pulled up in front of the mobbed hotel—trailed by more security, her family, Prince Remi, and a media posse—Emmaline wished that she had taken the time to think things through.
“We’ll escort you inside,” one of her guards said.
She hesitated. “Maybe we should call the desk first and let them know that I’m coming.”
“Oh, they know.”
She followed his gaze, past the bloodthirsty reporters—and saw the entire hotel staff lined up expectantly inside the lobby.
Outside there were police officers, and countless reporters, and throngs of curious onlookers. The crowd threatened to swarm the car, and the law enforcement officials were hastily setting up barricades.
It dawned on her that the world was of course following her every move—live on television.
Did Granger know, then, that she was coming?
She scanned the crowded lobby for his face.
He wasn’t there.
Her heart sinking, she looked at the police officers and her own security officers keeping the hordes of people back from her car. She felt like a zoo animal, gazing through the glass at the strangers who gaped and pointed and took pictures of her.
Granger’s words haunted her.
Don’t you think it’s time we found out what we’re made of?
Don’t you think it’s time we found out how regular people live?
Yes.
Yes, it was time.
She knew then that it was going to be all right.
Maybe it didn’t matter if all they had was each other.
Maybe Granger—and the baby—were all she had ever needed in the first place.
“Granger!” Brynn burst into the suite. “You’ll never believe who’s—”
“I know. I know!” He rushed past her, leaving behind the television set and the surreal image of the princess getting out of her car several stories below.
He dashed down the carpeted hallway to the elevator bank with Brynn trailing behind him.
“Granger, it’s a madhouse down there!” she said. “At least wait here for—”
“I can’t wait another second.” He jammed his hand on the Down button.
It lit up.
He waited, beating a staccato rhythm on his thigh with his jittery hand.
“Come on come on come on!” he said.
“There’s a mob scene down there. At least let me go first and create some kind of distraction to divert attention from—”
“No, Brynn, it’s okay,” he said, punching the button again in frustration. “If I could just get to her . . .”
But damned if he was going to wait all day for the elevator.
He spun around, searching for—and finding—the exit door to the stairwell.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m taking the stairs!”
“Fourteen flights? But that’ll take—”
The door swung closed behind him, cutting her off.
He was halfway to the ninth floor, nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste, when he heard a door open somewhere below, followed by the echoed tap-tapping of heels on the stairs.
Somebody—a female somebody—was coming up.
Running up.
A female somebody was in as much a hurry as he was.
If it’s her, I’ll take it as a sign that everything is going to be all right.
Granger started to fly down another flight . . .
And nearly fell, his foot twisting beneath his weight as he caught himself on the banister.
He cursed as pain exploded in his ankle.
The tap-tapping heels were coming closer, faster.
If it’s her, it’ll be a sign that we’re meant to be together. That we’ll work things out, no matter what.
Gritting his teeth, he limped down another flight . . .
If it’s her—please let it be her—I’ll never wish for another thing as long as I live.
And then she came into view.
“Emmaline!”
Relief washed over him.
“Granger!”
They met on the landing in a joyous embrace.
The phrase spilled from their lips simultaneously.
“I love you.”
They laughed,
kissed, laughed again.
“Where’s your entourage?” he asked. “And the press?”
“I gave them the slip in all the commotion in the lobby,” Emmaline said.
“Commotion?”
“My sister Josephine fainted. I’m certain she’s all right. Remi stepped forward quickly and caught her before she hit the floor. I’m sure that she’s come to by now, and that she’s enjoying her moment in the spotlight. But we have about two minutes before they find us,” Emmaline said. “We’d better go back up to your suite and barricade ourselves inside.”
“I hope I can make it that far. I twisted my ankle.”
“Oh, Granger . . .”
“I’ll be okay.”
“But can you make it up all those flights?”
“That depends on how many there are,” he said. “I lost count.”
They looked around.
He spotted a sign on the landing door.
“Looks like we’re at the seventh floor,” he said. “And my suite is on the fourteenth.”
“You know what that means, don’t you?”
“That you’ll have to carry me up piggyback?” he asked, wincing as he tested his weight on his injured foot.
“No. It means we finally met each other halfway, Granger.”
“I was willing to come all the way down for you, Emmaline.”
“And I was willing to come all the way up for you.”
“Then from now on, it won’t be my way or your way. Just halfway. Deal?”
Flashing a delighted grin, she agreed, “Deal.”
They sealed it with a kiss.
Then they began their long journey—side by side, one step at a time.
Epilogue
“So . . . congratulations, Mrs. Lockwood.”
“Same to you, Mr. Lockwood.”
They smiled at each other over the sleeping blue-blanketed bundle cradled in Granger’s arms.
Alone together at last, just the three of them, they had endured a torturous twenty-two-hour labor and an excruciating delivery. Granger had held Emmaline’s hand throughout the ordeal, compassionately coaching her and occasionally shedding tears of empathy for her pain.
Yet somehow, a mere couple of hours after the birth, the grueling vigil had already taken on a surreal morning-after haze.
“I can’t believe he’s really here at last,” Granger said softly. His fingertip looked enormous with the baby’s impossibly small pink fist grasping it.
“Neither can I,” Emmaline said contentedly.
“And I’ll bet you can’t believe he’s a he.”
“Hmm?”
“You thought he was a she—remember? You told me that when we were living back on Eldridge Street.”
“Yes, but I didn’t really mean it,” she told him. “I had no idea what the gender would be.”
“But you said—”
“I said a lot of things back then that weren’t true,” she told him.
“Like when you told me that you hated my guts?”
“I never said that!” She grinned and reached out to swat him playfully, then winced. “Ouch!”
“What’s wrong, Em?”
“Nothing, just . . . ouch.” With a grimace, she reached for the button that would raise the hospital bed a bit higher, the better to watch her husband beaming over their newborn son. “Do you think they’ll give me something stronger for the pain if I beg them?”
“They didn’t when you were in labor,” he said wryly. “And luckily they didn’t just shoot you and put you out of your misery when you begged them to do that, either. Although I’ll bet that one nurse, Elvira, was tempted when you kicked her in the stomach.”
“You’d have kicked her in the stomach, too, if she were shoving your knees over your ears.”
“She was trying to help you push,” Granger said mildly. “And I think she was quite surprised to hear such unladylike language coming from a princess’s mouth.”
“Yes, well, she’d be surprised about a lot of things this princess does,” Emmaline said, making another futile attempt to reach the bedside switch. “I wonder how long it will be before the stitches don’t hurt every time I—ouch!”
“Here, let me help you.” Carefully balancing the sleeping baby’s cheek against the burp cloth draped across his chest, Granger reached over and raised the bed. “Comfortable now?”
“Yes, thanks.” She sighed and looked at the bedside tray. “Now if only they’d give me something to eat other than that horrid bright pink meat—”
“It’s called corned beef—”
“—yes, and soggy cabbage, and slimy green Jell-O . . .”
“Well, what do you expect, having a baby on Saint Patrick’s Day?” Granger asked with a grin. “You have to get used to our American customs.”
“I thought it was an Irish custom,” she grumbled. “And anyway, you know that I adore American food. After all I’ve been through, the least they could do is send up a Big Mac.”
“I’ll run out and get you one,” he immediately offered.
She sighed, glancing at the rain-spattered windowpane high above the Manhattan street. The sill was lined with vases of flowers—roses, dozens of roses—and all of them from Granger.
“No, darling, don’t go,” she said. “It’s pouring out, and besides, I want you here with—”
“Mrs. Lockwood?”
She looked up to see an unfamiliar nurse peering into the room, wearing a strange expression. She seemed to be either blocking the doorway or cautiously keeping her distance from the patient. Perhaps she’d been warned by the bruised Elvira.
“Yes?” Emmaline asked sweetly.
“You have a visitor, if you’re feeling up to it.”
A visitor? Hmm.
She certainly wasn’t feeling up to small talk, but she couldn’t wait to show off the baby to someone other than his proud papa.
She looked at Granger. “It must be Brynn. Nobody else would know where to find us. Is she back in town already?”
“I doubt it. When I reached her on her cell phone to tell her that you were in labor yesterday, she was still in Verdunia, helping your sister with her trousseau.”
Josephine, of course, was preparing to marry Remi next month in what promised to be the royal wedding of the century, joining the two families together after all.
The coastal access road was already nearing completion—with no thanks to Granger’s vindictive grandfather. Lockwood Enterprises had cut all ties with the project last September, after the scandal broke.
Emmaline’s one regret was that she and Granger hadn’t been able to travel overseas for her sister and Remi’s formal engagement announcement in Buiron on Valentine’s Day. Her doctor forbade it. But they had watched the television coverage. Josephine looked radiant, as always, and Remi was positively beaming.
They didn’t even seem to mind when that pushy television reporter Debi Hanson—who was now anchoring her own wildly successful afternoon talk show—had ambushed them with a camera crew on their way to the engagement party in their honor. Of course it was Brynn who stole the spotlight—on the well-sculpted arm of Dolph Schumer, whom she had since decided was a halitosis-plagued narcissist.
Emmaline frowned and asked Granger, “If Brynn isn’t here, then who else can the visitor possibly—?”
Emmaline broke off midsentence, noticing that Granger’s face had gone whiter than the cloth diaper on his shoulder.
She followed Granger’s stunned gaze to the doorway, where an enormous bird hovered.
That pain medication must be causing hallucinations . . .
Emmaline blinked.
The bird was still there.
Furthermore, it was speaking.
A blustery, unfamiliar voice—not a squawk, but a voice—filled the hallway. “Please step aside, Nurse. My hip is bothering me. I can’t stand here all day.”
All right, it wasn’t the drugs—and it wasn’t a bird.
It was a man. An old man.
An old man who had lowered the enormous stuffed parrot he was holding and stepped into the room—then stopped just inside the doorway.
He was staring at Granger. And the baby.
Emmaline could swear she saw a tear glisten in the visitor’s eye, but it had vanished by the time he had cleared his throat noisily and turned his attention to her. “Your Highness, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance at last. I’m Granger Lockwood. The other Granger Lockwood. And now there are three of us once again.”
“Grandfather—” Granger began.
Emmaline cut him off with a warning look. This wasn’t the time. The old man had shown up there out of the blue, clearly ready to make amends.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, too, Mr. Lockwood. And I’m Emmaline. You don’t have to call me Your Highness.”
“And you don’t have to call me mister,” he replied, gesturing at the stuffed bird he held. “I brought this for the baby.”
“That’s so sweet of you. It’s his first gift,” Emmaline said, truly touched.
“Please sit down, Grandfather.” Granger regained his composure and spoke stiffly for the first time, rising from the chair.
“No, you sit with that baby.” His grandfather plunked the stuffed bird on the foot of the bed.
“But your hip—”
“My hip is good as new. I just said that to get that nosy nurse out of my way so that I could see my new namesake—”
“Grandfather—”
“He’s already three hours old,” the old man went on, either hard of hearing or deliberately ignoring Granger’s attempted interruption, “and he hasn’t even seen his great-grandfather yet.”
Emmaline’s thoughts whirled. How had Granger’s grandfather found out about the baby? Had the press somehow gotten wind of the delivery already, despite their elaborate efforts to avoid a news leak?
The initial furor of headlines had long since died down, but the media refused to leave Emmaline and Granger alone—even now that they were mere private citizens living a boring married life in a two-bedroom co-op on the East Side.
Granted, the place was a far cry from the studio on Eldridge Street. Her parents, who had purchased the co-op as a wedding gift for Emmaline and Granger, had insisted on an elevator building with a doorman. And a terrace, so that their grandchild would have access to fresh air.
The king and queen—and of course, the royal aunties—were currently winging their way across the Atlantic, eager to greet the baby.
A Thoroughly Modern Princess Page 26
