“I, uh, I’m honored, but—”
“I know we haven’t known each other long, but…”
Their eyes met and Katie nodded. Yes, they had a connection.
April gate a tiny nod back, then smiled radiantly. “I know it’s usual to wait for the RSVP until you get the invitation, but there’s another reason I want to know right now if you’ll come. We have this tradition in my family— Actually, Paul started it when he and Bette got married, but I consider them family. Anyway, some of the people closest to the couple get together before the wedding and spend time together doing fun things, and I want you to come.”
“But… but…”
“Please, Katie. You see, before I met Hunter I’d let all my friendships wither. I probably would have let my relationships with my family – all of them, like the Monroes and the Dickinsons, but even Leslie and Grady and the kids – wither, too, but they wouldn’t let me. They’ll all be there and I’ll have a great time with them but I want—” She looked a little shy, then determination pushed it aside. “I want a girlfriend, you know? If you can’t a full week, I understand, but maybe you could come in, say, the Monday before the wedding?”
“Monday?”
“Yes, that’s great! We’ll have a lot of fun. I already know a bunch of places I want to take you. And—”
Panic welled in Katie. She’d said Monday as a question, not a confirmation. “April.”
“—things we can do. It’ll be so much fun to—”
“April.”
“—do them together.”
Yes, they had a connection, but she barely knew this woman, much less what April seemed to expect of her. She’d never had a girlfriend—
You don’t think you’re any good at having friends do you?
Katie swallowed, “I’m… I don’t know what to say, except thank you.”
April hugged her and Katie hugged back.
The guys returned just then – Brad with the makings for dinner and Hunter with an update.
Hunter said King Jozef had come down hard on his wife’s nephew. “There won’t be any more efforts to collect your DNA until you say the word, Katie.”
“So let’s make this dinner a celebration,” April declared.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Katie?”
“Hmm.”
She was only a few minutes away from having three full days of a normal work-week under her belt. That was good. Great, in fact. She welcomed normalcy.
April and Hunter had left Monday morning with admonitions about keeping her eyes open, just in case. Brad had left before she’d even gotten up, traveling to see prospects in Tennessee. So she’d only had C.J. and Carolyn being over-protective.
True, there had been a phone call Tuesday. It was King Jozef. He added his assurances to Hunter’s that she would not be bothered again.
He next said he regretted that for security reasons he would not be able to visit her in Ashton as he’d planned to. Before she recovered, he suggested she come to Bariavak.
She quickly declined, citing her work responsibilities.
“Ah, yes. Then I must hope an opportunity presents itself.”
That left her a little uneasy, but he didn’t push, so perhaps it was paranoia.
Brad had returned by noon today. He and C.J. had been shut up in C.J.’s office. Probably going over the prospects Brad had seen. That was another part of normal, although the door had been closed again. There’d been some raised voices, but that was normal too in discussions of players. And it left her in peace to get her work done.
Until now, when they exited the inner office for the main area where she was the last one left, and C.J. spoke her name.
“There’s something you should be up to speed on,” he said.
She looked up from the computer screen, finding both him and Brad standing beside her desk and watching her. C.J. looked very laid back. That got her attention, because he didn’t usually work that hard at looking at ease. Brad didn’t look laid back at all.
“Okay,” she said cautiously.
“There’s been a slight change of plans with the trip,” C.J. said. “The one to Europe this summer.”
As if she could forget about that trip.
“It won’t mean more work for you,” C.J. continued. “The travel company’s handled it all. Administration’s real happy about it, too. So it’s all set.”
“That’s good.” She looked from one to the other. “Isn’t it?”
“Yeah. It’s good – better than good. It’s great. Great opportunity for all of us. An experience.”
“Tell her.”
She had never heard Brad issue an order like that to C.J. Draper.
C.J. shifted his weight. “We’ve added a couple games and a series of workshops. The thing is …”
“They’re in Bariavak,” Brad finished.
It took an instant to make sense. “What? What? No—”
“It’s all set. You don’t have to do a thing but come with,” C.J. said. “All the arrangements are made. The administration thinks it’s great, even the NCAA’s happy about it after Hunt—uh, the State Department nudged them. Good for international relations. No team’s ever been there.”
Brad bit off a curse. She heard him come behind her chair, but didn’t see him, because a dark haze was narrowing her vision to a tunnel. She felt the pressure of his hand gently but firmly pushing her head forward. “She’s going to faint.”
“Oh, God.” C.J. crouched at her side. “Katie, Katie. Can you hear me?”
“I can hear you. I can’t believe you.” She snapped her head up. The fuzzy black walls of the tunnel shuddered, then retreated. Brad’s hand ended up at the nape of her neck, but she couldn’t dwell on that now. “What were you thinking, C.J.? How could you do this?”
He tilted his head to glare up at Brad. “Thought you said she was going to faint.”
“Not now. She’s too pissed to faint now.”
“Tell her you think it’s a good idea, too,” C.J. said, still looking at Brad.
“Stop acting like I’m not here, C.J.,” Katie demanded, “and get up before your knee causes you trouble for a month and Carolyn has my head for – Does Carolyn know about this hare-brained scheme of yours?”
C.J. rose with enough reliance on the desk that she knew she was right about his knee. “She knows. And she doesn’t think it’s hare-brained. It’s a few days in Bariavak. Some games, some clinics. From what I can tell about their basketball program, they need all the help they can get. In the meantime, it’ll give you a chance to look around. Get a little familiar with it, spend time with King Jozef— What are you doing, Katie?”
She had turned off her computer and stood. Now she gathered her purse, took out her keys.
“It’s the end of my workday, C.J., I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“But the trip—?”
“I’m not going.”
“Katie—”
C.J.’s plea was sliced in half by Brad. “Yes, you are. You won’t let C.J. or the team or Ashton down by not going.” His voice changed as he added. “You won’t let yourself down by not going.”
“I’m not going,” she repeated. “Good-night.”
****
Brad pounded on her front door. Where all the neighbors could see and hear him because of that wonderful, welcoming curb appeal, damn him.
“Go away.”
He’d barely given her time to get inside the house. Much less time to assess this new twist. If she simply kept refusing to go on the trip—
“You know I won’t leave,” Brad shouted from outside her door.
She did know.
She yanked the door open, then walked away.
He came in, all easy-going reason now that he’d gotten his way. “You seem upset.”
****
That might have been the wrong thing to say.
Brad gathered that from the glare Katie pointed at him.
“I left work after my official
ending time. I came home like I always do. Didn’t take a single step on the campus paths,” she added pointedly. “So you have no reason to say I seem upset.”
Katie was battling to hold onto calm.
A calm he needed to do something about if he was going to find out why she’d nearly fainted at the idea of going to Bariavak. If he was going to find out the true reason she’d built walls up against the idea of testing whether she could be this lost princess.
“You know, this reaction worries me more than when you went berserk that first day Hunter showed up.”
“I did not—” She bit it off. He watched her breathe, breathe, breathe.
“Let’s talk this through. There’s got to be a way—.”
“No. I don’t want to talk about it. Understand?”
“No. I don’t understand. Nobody does. I told you before it’s downright weird that you’re putting off finding out if you’re this Princess Josephine-Augusta.”
“I’m not a princess.”
He sliced his hand through air. “Okay, forget the princess part. But you’d know if King Jozef is your grandfather. And going to Bariavak—”
“What purpose could that serve? That baby was taken when she was months old. She couldn’t possibly remember anything.”
“Maybe not. But aren’t you curious? It’s not natural not to be curious. You can go and—”
“If I go, I can’t come back – No.” She turned away.
But he’d already seen how much she regretted the words she’d snapped out. They were getting closer to whatever was tying her in knots.
“What do you mean you can’t come back? Even if you are his granddaughter, King Jozef can’t make you give up your life here. You’re—”
“It’s not him.”
“—an adult. You can make your own choices. What do you mean it’s not him?”
“Never mind. Forget it. Forget I said anything.”
“The hell I will. Katie, tell me what this is about.”
“Go away, Brad.”
“You know I won’t. Tell me, Katie.”
She didn’t. Instead, she turned and headed deeper into the house. After an instant, he followed her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
He wasn’t sure if she was heading somewhere or trying to get away from him when she swung open a door off the kitchen he hadn’t seen opened before. Either way, he was going after her.
As she started up steep stairs beyond the door, he decided she was, in fact, heading somewhere.
The attic, he realized when his eyes came above the floorboards into an area lit by three light bulbs hanging from the ridge pole.
She walked down the center of the space to under the last light bulb and sat on the floor. He followed, crouching to avoid hitting his head, then sat beside her.
“Katie?”
“After the first of the year,” she said in a voice that remained scary calm, “when there were all those stories about April and King Jozef, with everyone telling me how much I looked like her, I remembered this suitcase. I came up and searched. It was way back in a corner with things from my childhood. Things my fa— Bob never would have bothered with. I was about to give up, thinking I’d dreamed the memory of this suitcase. Then I found it. And found …”
A shudder passed through her. She drew a battered suitcase in front of her crossed legs and flicked open the clasps
First, she removed what appeared to be tattered and yellowed tissue paper.
She set that aside and he saw the next layer held something wrapped in fresh, crisp tissue paper.
She carefully folded back the sides of the paper, so they fell down on either side of her palm. Resting there, not much larger than her hand was a piece of fabric.
“What is it?”
“I think it’s a corner cut from a larger piece.” With her other hand she pointed to the difference between two finished edges and two that looked frayed.
“Are those letters written out in thread?”
“That’s embroidery. Silk, I think. The fabric and the threads. I looked up about the gold thread. It’s called goldwork. The thread can have real gold in it, not only the color.”
He looked at her as he pursued the question she hadn’t answered, “You mean the gold where it looks like letters.”
After a pause, she murmured, “Uh-huh.”
“That second letter’s an A. The first one … If I had to decide, I’d say a J.”
Josephine-Augusta.
He concentrated on drawing in oxygen to lungs that suddenly felt as if he’d been playing one-on-one for hours straight.
He forced himself to continue. “And up here?” He pointed without touching. “A crest, right? Bariavak’s?”
Her silence was an answer.
A princess’s monogram embroidered in silk. In an attic in Ashton, Wisconsin. In Katie’s attic.
“My God, you really are. You are a princess.”
No longer a kid … now a princess. Even more untouchable.
But that was for him to deal with. Now was about her.
“Knowing this, why on earth are you holding back from taking the test? To let the world know – your grandfather—”
“I also found this,” she said evenly.
With her head still down, she covered up the fabric piece again, then retrieved a folder from beneath another layer of new tissue paper and handed it to him.
He opened it to see what appeared to be Katie’s birth certificate on top. Next, he found yellowed newspaper pages. Not complete editions, but a few pages from several dates. Nothing to do with the rebellion or the missing princess, which had been his first thought.
These were obituary pages. Faded circles marked at least one notice on each page. The circled notices were all for babies. All girls. On the third page he spotted Katherine Mary Davis, two months old, daughter of Robert and Annette Davis.
He checked the date of the paper, subtracted the two months and came up with Katie’s birthday.
When he looked up, she was staring at him, tears glistening her eyes, but not falling.
“Now do you understand?”
He was beginning to.
He had to think this through. For her sake. No sudden leaps. Step by step.
“You think they gave you this baby’s identity? Your par— The people who raised you.”
“I don’t know.”
“It sure seems reasonable as a working hypothesis. Though why they’d keep these newspapers… The embroidery, maybe, if they wanted to prove someday that you—” He bit it off after a glance at her. “But why the newspapers?”
“It was her. My… Anna. He didn’t know she’d kept any of this. I’m sure of it. The one time she got really angry at me was when I tried to get in this suitcase. But I think it wasn’t me seeing it that made her that way, but that he might have seen.”
He sat back on his heels.
“You’ve known this since January. Before Hunter Pierce ever showed up, you’d seen all this, you’d known… Why haven’t you told—” He shifted in mid-question, suppressing the word he wanted to use and substituting, “—anyone?”
“I don’t know anything. It could be nothing. It could be coincidence.”
“Coincidence? That’s stretching it, Katie. What about this crest. Did you look it up? It’s Bariavak’s, isn’t it?”
The smallest nod possible confirmed his supposition. “According to the Internet, anyway.”
“DNA would tell you for sure.”
“It might not. You heard what Hunter said that day at the Monroes’. And I’ve looked it up since then. It might not provide a definite answer. So I could be nobody—”
“Bull. You’re Katie. You’ll always be Katie.”
She’d let his voice override her, but now she said, “Nobody with no country.”
The despair as much as the words brought him up short. “Of course you have a country. Hell, you’ve got two. Bariavak and here—.”
“No.” Her head jerked
in a sharp shake.
Then he saw it. “Illegal. You think you’re illegal.”
She nodded. “If this—” She gestured toward the folder still in his hands. “—means what it seems to mean, then I wasn’t born here. I was brought here as an illegal alien, presumably smuggled in by two other illegal aliens who stole an identity for me.”
“Through no fault of your own. You had no way of knowing—”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve talked to three immigration lawyers and they all agree. I’m not a citizen. I’m here illegally. I could get kicked out any time.”
“Only if someone has a reason to dig into—”
“Someone? A reason? Like the State Department or King Jozef’s people or the media or the king’s nephew or someone else who’s interested in whether I’m this lost princess? And that’s if Ashton’s travel office doesn’t find out first.”
“Travel office? Why would –?” He breathed out a curse. “Your passport.”
She nodded. “The passport I don’t have and I’m afraid to get.”
“This is why you’ve been trying to hold everybody off? This is why you’ve been so adamant you’re not the princess?”
“I sat up here in January and thought it through. I decided I would never tell anyone about any of this.” Her gaze flicked to him, then away. “The day Hunter first came I was up here preparing to destroy it all when you showed up at my door with Chinese food. Afterward I decided to wait. I’ve kept stalling, and now they’ll find out without this.”
“You’re worried they’ll find out your documents are fake?”
“They already suspect. Michael Dickinson said it flat-out that day at the Monroes’. How long would it take an expert to confirm it? That would mean I’m not a citizen. Worried? I’m more than worried. Wouldn’t you be?”
“Yeah, I might. Even if you get the passport and get to Bariavak, if something comes out about your being here illegally…”
“I would have to stay in Bariavak. Whether I belong there or not. Whether I’m… It’s not that I don’t think King Jozef would be kind, but I couldn’t come home. Ever.” Her voice broke on the final word, but no tears fell. “And even if I went and came back okay, I’d know that at any moment…”
The Surprise Princess Page 11
