Joan Pickart - Royal Weddings

Elli gulped and dragged her gaze up to meet those watching eyes. “Uh. Yes.” Carefully, tugging on her sleep shirt that had ridden up much too high, she rocked back so she sat on her knees. She tipped her chin to a proud angle and tried to look dignified, though she knew her cheeks were tomato-red. “I… didn’t see you,” she stuttered lamely. “I was wondering where you’d gone.”

He lifted an eyebrow and held up a thoroughly modern cartridge-type razor. She stared at it for a moment, thinking that it looked toylike and strange in his big hand. But what had she expected, that he’d shave with his black-handled knife?

“As you see, I am here. Anything else?”

“No. That’s all.” She gave him a backhanded wave of dismissal. “Go on and, uh, finish up.”

Elli dressed and made breakfast for both of them. Once they’d cleared off the table, she returned to the bedroom, Hauk close behind. He sat in the corner chair as she unpacked her suitcase.

When she was finished, she set it, empty, back against the wall.

“When will you pack?”

She looked at him, surprised to hear his voice. He’d said hardly a word since she’d called him, half-shaved, from the bathroom earlier. “I’ll get to it. I have plenty of time.”

He didn’t say anything more, but she knew he didn’t like it, that it bugged him, big-time, to think she might insist on hanging around in Sacramento till the last possible minute on Thursday. Baby-sitting a princess was not his idea of a good time and he wanted to get it over and done with, ASAP.

Too bad. Let him be bugged. Let him wait and wonder when she would end their constant togetherness and agree to get on the plane for Gullandria. It might be petty—really, really small of her, to torture him when he was only following orders.

But he ought to know better than to follow such orders as the ones her father had given him. He ought to stand up and say, My lord, I’m taking a pass on playing watchdog to your daughter. It’s beneath me and beneath her and I’m not going to do it .

He hadn’t said that, or anything like it. So let him sleep at the foot of her bed and stand by the bathroom door whenever she went in there and march along beside her if she dared to go outside. Served him right, as far as she was concerned.

Elli called a girlfriend, Barb Ferris, at the insurance office where Barb worked. She made that call on speakerphone, at Hauk’s insistence that he be able to hear both sides of her conversation.

Barb agreed to water Elli’s plants, to bring in her mail and newspapers and keep an eye on her apartment. Barb even offered to feed Doodles and Diablo, but Elli said she’d get back to her on that. She was hoping to get her mother to take the cats. Barb said sure, she’d tell the other girls that Elli was taking off for a few weeks and would miss their girls’ night out on Friday. When Barb asked her what was up, Elli said it was a family issue.

“Honest, Barb. It’s nothing too serious. I’ll be back in three weeks. Thanks a bunch for helping me out.”

Next, Elli called Ned Handly, her date for Saturday night. Ned was a doctor, in family practice. They’d met through a mutual friend and Saturday would have been their second date. Hauk stood a couple of feet away, wearing his usual carved-granite expression, as she told Ned she was going away for a while.

Ned said, with real regret, “I was looking forward to this weekend.”

Elli glared at Hauk. You’d think he’d have the courtesy to let her break her date in peace. But no. He had to loom right beside her, listening to every word, every disappointed sigh.

“I was, too,” Elli told Ned. “I hope you’ll give me a rain check.”

“I thought you’d never ask. A family trip, huh?” Elli had given him no details—and not because the stone-faced Viking standing next to her might not approve. News like this would travel fast, and she wanted to be the one to break it to her mother.

Her friends often used her title teasingly, calling her “the princess,” and “Your Highness.” They all thought she was so wonderfully unusual , one of three triplet princesses, her estranged father a king in some faraway northern land. As soon as one of them heard she was off for a visit to Gullandria, they’d burn up the phone lines sharing the scoop. Her mother might get wind of it before tonight. Someone might even let something drop to the tabloids.

Then the stinky stuff would really hit the fan.

So she was keeping the details to herself. “Yes, a family thing. But I’ll give you a call as soon as I get back.”

“Elli?”

“Hmm?”

“You take care.”

“I will.” She disconnected the call and wrinkled her nose at the big guy in black. “Well, now, wasn’t that innocuous and aren’t you glad you heard every word?”

Hauk said nothing. He just stood there, waiting for her to make her next move.

She realized she didn’t have a move. No one had called from the school or the district, so presumably the sub had been contacted and was, at that moment, teaching Elli’s morning class, managing just fine with the lesson plans Elli had left open on her desk.

Except for packing and dealing with her mother, Elli was ready to go.

And it was only ten in the morning—ten in the morning on Tuesday . She looked at Hauk, who gazed steadily back at her.

Elli sighed. “Oh, Hauk. What in the world am I going to do with you?”

“Pack your belongings,” he suggested softly. “His Majesty’s jet awaits you. As soon as you’ve spoken with your mother, we can be on our way.”

Chapter Five

Elli didn’t pack. Her father had agreed to give her till Thursday and, for the time being anyway, she was keeping that option open. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was simply because, with Hauk shadowing her every move, it felt like the only option she had.

She went to the spare room, where she kept her computer. Hauk sat at attention on her futon while she surfed the Net for a while and fiddled with e-mail. Then, for an hour or so, she made a valiant effort to get a little reading done.

But it was no good. She kept feeling those cool, careful eyes on her. She couldn’t concentrate on a book.

They had lunch at one. By then she was aching for a little ordinary conversation. Over BLTs she tried to engage him in a nice, friendly chat.

He was the master of the one-line reply. He’d get it down to a single word if he could, or better still, a low, unpromising sound in his throat. She got a number of curt noes, a lonely little yes or two and a whole lot of gruff grunts.

Finally, she asked him about his family. “Do you have brothers—or sisters?”

“No.”

“And your mother and father?”

He just looked at her.

“Your parents, are they still alive?”

“No.”

“Both gone?”

“That’s correct.”

Well, she couldn’t say she was surprised. It seemed hard to picture that he’d ever even had a father or a mother. With his huge, hard, smooth chest and his infomercial abs, his deadpan expression and his lightning-bolt tattoos, Hauk FitzWyborn seemed someone not quite mortal—someone who had never been something so vulnerable as a little boy with parents who loved him. He seemed more like a creature sprung from the Norse myths, like Odin, Vili and Ve, brought into being out of ice.

“Um, your father? Tell me about him.”

He gave her the lifted-eyebrow routine.

She tried again. “What was your father like, Hauk?”

“I told you. My father is dead.” He’d finished his sandwich. He stood, carried his plate and empty glass to the sink, rinsed them both and put them in the dishwasher.

She refused to give up. “I’m sorry, Hauk—that he’s gone. Do you…miss him?”