Prince and Future... Dad? Read online

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “I can hardly be governor of California if I’m living in Gullandria.”

  “Ah. You’re willing to discuss where we’re going to live.”

  “What’s to discuss? I’ll live here. You’ll live there.”

  “Hardly my idea of a marriage.”

  “But Finn, I’m not going to—”

  “Shh.” He laid a finger against her mouth. And then that finger lightly brushed over her cheek and into her hair. He cupped the back of her head, brought his lips so close to hers…

  How could she resist? She gave him her mouth and he gave her another of those lovely, deep, wet, lingering kisses. The swing softly swayed. The crickets sang in the grass.

  Sometime later, she rested her head on his shoulder and whispered, “When my sisters and I were little, on nights like this, we’d take our sleeping bags out to the backyard, roll them out on the grass and spend the night under the stars. We’d pick out the constellations and tell each other scary stories. Even at the age of seven or eight, Brit could tell a scary story with the best of them. More than once, she had me so terrified I would have given just about anything to wiggle out of my sleeping bag and run for the safety of the house.”

  He nuzzled a kiss into her hair. “But of course, you couldn’t.”

  She pulled back a fraction so she could look at him. “How did you know that?”

  “You would want no one—not even your sisters—to see your fear. They might think you weak. You despise weakness in yourself, though I’d guess you would be willing to tolerate it, to an extent anyway, in those that you love.”

  He had it exactly right. She smiled at him through the darkness. Then, with a sigh, she rested her head on his shoulder once more.

  “I have to go in,” she said a long time later.

  He caught her chin, guided it up and brushed another kiss across her mouth. “I’ll come in with you….”

  “It’s tempting. Very tempting.”

  “So why resist?”

  A few hours ago, she would have had an instant answer to that one. Now she was finding herself perilously close to agreeing with him.

  They were both adults, both—since she had said goodbye to poor Simon—unencumbered by other commitments. And they wouldn’t be doing anything they hadn’t done before.

  But she whispered, “No,” anyway. Tenderly. With regret.

  The next day, as Finn sat in the office room at Ingrid’s house, checking his stocks and speaking with a London broker he often used, the other line blinked red.

  He looked at the display and recognized the number. “I’ll ring you back,” he said to the broker. He punched the second line. “Your Majesty. I am honored.”

  “How goes it?”

  Finn sat back in his chair and stared, unseeing, at the columns of figures on his computer screen. He thought of the night before, of all the lingering, maddening kisses. Of how, in the end, Liv had sent him away. “She’s an amazing woman, your daughter.”

  The king grunted. “She has yet to say yes.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “The World Tattler says otherwise.”

  Finn chuckled. “Sadly, the Tattler’s sources are often untrustworthy.”

  “My sources tell me my daughter is…softening.”

  “Softening.” Finn pondered the word. “Yes, sire. I think I can safely claim that to be so.”

  “We have reason then, to be optimistic?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. I believe we do….”

  Chapter Nine

  That evening Liv and Finn went to the movies. The night after that, they ordered in. Friday, they went to a play in the park. And Saturday, they rode up into the foothills. Finn drove. He kept the music up way too loud. And he made jokes about that extra brake pedal she appeared to have on her side of the car.

  Liv found Nevada City as charming as ever, with its adorable Victorians in close rows, the slopes of the hills blanketed in tall evergreen and the oaks and maples thick with their summer leaves. They wandered the steep streets of downtown, window-shopping, stopping to look inside when a particular store caught their fancy. Later they shared a picnic in Pioneer Park.

  It was after dark when they got back to the T Street house. Finn came in for a couple of hours. They watched a movie, a bowl of popcorn on the couch between them, losing track of the story as they kept bending across the bowl to enjoy an endless string of lovely, salty kisses. Somehow, though, she managed to send him away before bedtime.

  It wasn’t easy, keeping Finn out of her bed. He was so very skilled at tempting her to let him in. Liv spent more time than she would ever admit dreaming about doing with him what she kept insisting they weren’t going to do. Mostly, she was able to confine her dreams to the appropriate situations: mornings, over a cup of herb tea; when she was in Finn’s arms—and at night, after she sent him away.

  Happily, fantasies of making love with Finn brought only pleasure now. They didn’t torture her in daylight, or keep her awake too long at night. She was sleeping well and she was pulling her weight at work again, word processing with the best of them, answering phones with cheer and efficiency, ready and willing to “gofer” whatever needed getting.

  On Monday, she saw the new issue of The World Tattler on the table in the break room. She couldn’t resist thumbing through it.

  She and Finn didn’t rate their own article in that one. Just a couple of snapshots in a spread titled Young Royals In Love. There was a shot of them walking up Commercial Street in Nevada City, hand in hand, their heads turned toward each other, both of them grinning. And another of them sitting close together at the Land Park amphitheater, eyes forward, focused on the play.

  It wasn’t so bad, really. At least they’d only been caught during their more…public moments. She didn’t find a single shot of them locked in a torrid embrace on her front porch swing or anything.

  And besides, wasn’t it something she’d have to get used to—reporters trailing her, asking questions, taking pictures? She planned, after all, a very public kind of life for herself.

  “Lookin’ good, there, Liv.” It was one of the file clerks, peering over her shoulder.

  Liv only smiled. “Hey, thanks, Orinda.”

  In his office room, Finn picked up the phone. “Your Majesty. I trust you are well.”

  “I didn’t call to speak of my health. My sources tell me you’re with my daughter constantly.”

  Finn turned in his swivel chair and looked out the window at a lush-leaved oak in his hostess’s backyard. “Your sources have it right.”

  There was a silence. Then the king prompted, “Well?”

  “My lord, progress is slower than I would wish.”

  “I’m told you always leave her house well before morning light.”

  “Your men are most impressively observant.”

  “Take her to bed. A woman is always more easily led after thorough pleasuring.”

  “Excellent advice, my lord.”

  “Have you taken her to bed as of yet?”

  “Your Majesty, we wouldn’t be in this predicament had I not.”

  “Don’t toy with me, Finn.”

  “My liege, there are some things a man hesitates to discuss, even with his king.”

  Again the line was silent, except for the faint crackle of static. Finally the king said, “Perhaps you have a point.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  “I want to know immediately when she says yes.”

  “And you shall.”

  “And Finn?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty?”

  “Remember the words of Odin himself. ‘The hearts of women were fashioned on a spinning wheel.’ Those of the fairer sex are by nature capricious. Don’t allow her forever to make up her mind. She will take eternity—and then demand another day.”

  “Marry me,” Finn said that night. They were sitting in the porch swing. Swaying. Kissing.

  “Oh, Finn.”
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  He captured her chin. “Tell me that means yes.”

  She wrapped her hand around his wrist and held on. They stared at each other as the crickets sang and a siren started low in the distance, the sound swelling until it passed a few blocks away and then fading off into the summer night.

  He asked, “When you know you’re pregnant, will you marry me then?”

  “I…don’t know.”

  He let go. For a moment, she thought he was angry. And then, very slowly, he smiled. “A week ago, you would have said absolutely not.”

  He was right. But that didn’t mean she could ever, realistically, say yes. She knew that the future she planned for herself could still be made to happen, even if she was pregnant and had her baby without benefit of marriage. Single motherhood, in America, was becoming, more and more, an acceptable way to raise children. In a decade or two, she felt certain, single mothers would be running for Congress.

  But there was no way she’d ever realize her ambitions if she married Finn and moved to Gullandria.

  She whispered, “One thing I do know…”

  He grabbed her hand and laid it flat against his hard chest. “How do you say it? Hit me with it. Right here.”

  “Well, I just can’t see…how it can work. No matter what happens, I’m not running off to live in your castle in Gullandria. I’m staying here. I’m finishing law school. I’m—”

  He put his finger to her lips again, signaling for silence. “I think ‘I don’t know’ is enough for tonight.”

  The next night, he showed up at her door with a home pregnancy test kit tucked under one arm, the instruction sheet open in his hands. “Look, my love. It says here, ‘Ninety-nine percent effective one day after—”’

  She took his arm, dragged him inside and firmly shut the door. “Where did you get that?”

  “Albertson’s Food and Drug, it was called. The pharmacy section. The clerks there were marvelously helpful.”

  “I’ll bet.” People—especially female people—fell all over themselves when Finn needed aid.

  “You didn’t let me finish. It says, ‘Ninety-nine percent effective one day after a missed menstrual period.”’

  “Oh, that’s so lovely to know.”

  He sent her a fond smile. “And when would that be—for you?”

  She wondered why she felt so resentful. It was a perfectly reasonable question, given the situation.

  “Liv?”

  “What?” It came out sounding much too hostile.

  He folded up the instruction sheet and set it and the kit on the entry hall table. Then he turned back to her and waited, arms crossed over that broad chest, feet planted wide apart, as if taking a stand in a strong wind.

  After a stubborn twenty seconds or so, she muttered, “I’d have to look at my calendar.”

  “And where is your calendar?”

  She knew by the expression on his face that there was no way to get out of this gracefully. She also knew there was no real reason she should want to get out of it. Whether or not she was actually pregnant was the main question, after all.

  Still she resisted. “You know, Finn, I think my biological functions should be my own business.”

  He regarded her from under slightly lowered brows. “Darling. Please get the calendar.”

  She had her own feet planted apart now, her arms folded over her middle, in a mirror of his pose. “I do resent this.”

  “You being you, I’m certain you do.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re an intelligent woman. My guess is you already know.”

  They shared one of their stare-downs. A very long one. Out on T Street, a car went by, stereo booming out, heavy on the bases. As the hollow beat faded away, an ice-cream truck rolled slowly past, playing “It’s a Small World, After All” in the usual tinkling organ-grinder style of ice-cream trucks everywhere.

  In the end, Liv was the one who blinked. “I suppose you’ll stand there forever, refusing to budge, until I get you what you want.”

  For that, she got the tiniest lift of one side of his beautiful mouth. And other than that, absolute stillness.

  “Oh, all right,” she muttered, then commanded, “wait here.”

  She pounded up the stairs and stomped down the hall to the bedroom that was hers for the duration of her stay in the house. The calendar hung on a suction hook over the small cherry-wood desk in the corner, by the mirrored mahogany wardrobe. She had a palm planner, but she used it for appointments and school and business. She liked a nice big old-fashioned wall calendar for personal stuff—birthdays and dates with the hairdresser and keeping track of her periods.

  She snatched the calendar off the wall and turned to the previous month. She was pretty sure her last one had started a week before she left for Gullandria. It had been Friday, hadn’t it? And she’d had to run to the ladies’ room to take care of the problem.

  However, it appeared she’d forgotten to mark it down on her calendar.

  Well, well. Too bad.

  She started to hang the thing back on the wall, but then she remembered that look in Finn’s eyes. He was truly the most persistent man she’d ever had the inconvenience—and yes, all right, the pleasure—to get to know. Better to simply take it down to him and show him that whenever it had been, she’d failed to make a note of it.

  Finn was waiting right there at the bottom when she descended with the calendar. He watched her come down to him, a gleam of pure suspicion in his eyes. “I’m not sure I like that smile. It’s much too smug. Also, you’ve stopped pounding around like an elephant on the rampage. These are not good signs.”

  “An elephant, huh? That’s not very flattering.”

  “Let me see it.”

  She reached the bottom and handed him the calendar. “Sorry. It appears that, whenever it was, I forgot to mark it down.”

  He studied the page for June, pointed to a small pen mark on Wednesday, the fifth. “What about this?”

  “A smudge. I draw a star in the upper left hand corner of the box for the first day.”

  He looked at her probingly, then accused, “You do remember when it was, don’t you?”

  She didn’t lie—exactly. “It was a hectic month. The end of school, finals, all that, followed by the move here and starting a new job. And then off to Gullandria and my, er, whirlwind week with you.”

  He flipped the page back to May. Pointed at the tiny star in the square for the eleventh. “All right. Four weeks from there.”

  “My. An expert on a woman’s cycle.”

  He met her eyes. He wasn’t smiling. “This is a stupid game.”

  “I’m not the one who insisted on playing it.”

  “Is there some reason you don’t want me to know? Some reason for keeping me—for keeping both of us—in the dark?”

  The question got snagged in her mind and wouldn’t shake loose. She felt a tiny stab—a pin-prick, a needle’s jab—at her conscience.

  The day after a missed period, the brochure had said. According to that, they could know on Saturday. In four days, her life could be irrevocably changed.

  Yes, she did realize that if it was changed, it had happened already. It had happened almost two weeks ago in a small green clearing in the strange half light of a Gullandrian summer night. No home pregnancy test would change what already was.

  Still…

  The simple truth was as Finn had just said. She didn’t want to know. Not yet. As soon as she knew—as soon as Finn knew—decisions would have to be made.

  Oh, not yet, her heart cried. Don’t make me decide yet.

  So strange, for her, Liv Thorson, to be thinking of her heart. She didn’t go there, as a rule. She dated men like dear, sweet Simon. They told each other they cared for each other—and they did. They worked hard to excel. They spent their evenings studying or rallying for social change or discussing America’s rights and responsibilities as the only true remaining world superpower, debating this or that
issue currently before the Supreme Court.

  It was nothing like this magic, this enchantment, with Finn. Yes, she’d had sex before that one unforgettable night with Finn. But not often, and not for a while. Until Finn, she simply hadn’t seen what all the shouting was about.

  She and the men she’d known before didn’t kiss endlessly on porch swings and whisper of romantic movies and tell each other what it was like back when they were children. They didn’t share picnics in Pioneer Park. They’d had more important things to do.

  And it wasn’t that she didn’t value all the same things that had mattered to her before. She did value them, and highly. It was only that she was seeing a whole new side of herself, one that, until Finn, she’d left utterly unexplored.

  Her mother had said it the night Liv found Finn staying at Ingrid’s house. The stop-and-smell-the-flowers part of her needed room to grow. And Finn Danelaw knew better than anyone how to help her with that.

  He’d done, she decided, a wonderful job of helping her so far, in spite of how she’d fought him every inch of the way. She wouldn’t mind at all if he kept helping her, indefinitely—for as long as the magic lasted between them.

  However, just because she wanted something didn’t make it fair or right. Finn couldn’t be expected to hang around in California forever making certain that Liv Thorson had a good time. She had no right to string him along for one minute beyond the day when they’d both know for certain if there’d be a baby or not.

  From the first time he’d proposed, that Sunday morning in Gullandria, she’d told him she’d take a test as soon as she could. It was only fair, only right, that she do as she’d promised. Only fair that he should know when that time would be.

  Liv snatched the calendar from him and threw it over her shoulder. It hit the heavy oak door behind her and slid to the shining hardwood floor.

  He looked puzzled but not especially surprised. “No need to start throwing things.”

  She said, “My period is due Friday. If it doesn’t come, I’ll take the test Saturday morning.”

  Chapter Ten