A Cinderella Twist: A Contemporary Royal Romance

by K. S. Thomas

  “Since I offered to make breakfast,” Chase adds.

  Mal and I exchange a glance. “Yeah, that might have been said,” she admits after an awkward moment of silence during which we both quietly acknowledge how disturbingly far from reality our speculations of Lachlan’s secret baby daddy took us last night, rendering us unable to recall actual conversations by the time we were done.

  “I’ll go get the pot.” I’m already hurrying for the door and the clear path to redemption.

  Only once I’m back in my apartment do I realize I didn’t come here alone.

  “Do you have a sec?” Lachlan says, closing the door behind him.

  “Do you know you’re not holding a baby?” I ask, wondering how I missed so much in so little time. I only just turned my back on him three seconds ago to come over here.

  “I handed her to Chase on my way out.” He grins. I’m starting to hate when he does that.

  “Then sure.” I turn my back on him again to focus on the coffee. We keep a spare pot to brew a backup for days like today. “I have a sec.”

  “I was wondering if I could hire you.”

  I turn back around. I was mid dumping grounds into the filter when he caught me off guard with his request and I’m pretty sure I dusted half the countertop with brown specs of heaven by accident when I spun back around. “Hire me?”

  “As a nanny,” he explains. “Just for a few hours sometime this week?”

  “Have a hot date while you’re in town?” That doesn’t even make sense. I have no idea why I said that other than I’m currently too scared to ask real questions, given mine and Mal’s track record with them and Lachlan’s personal life in the last twenty-four hours.

  “Don’t know about hot. But I have that meeting with Triston. And I’d rather have my first face to face with him without Monroe there.”

  I nod, gesturing I understand. “Have you met him before?”

  “No. Didn’t even know he was the dad until a few weeks ago.” He shakes his head and I get the sense this is so much messier and more complicated than he’s letting on. “I have to meet with our caseworker first. I’m doing that today. After that, I need to set up something with Triston.” He tilts his head, blue eyes looking at me with hope. “Do you think you could fit us in? I know you have a full schedule with your day job and the audition, but –“

  “It’s not a problem,” I say before he can go on. And before I can think of the reasons it probably is a problem. “Just tell me when you need me, and I’ll watch Mo for you.”

  He sighs with relief, smiling again. “Thank you so much. I was going to ask my mother next, but she’s completely against this whole thing, I’m not sure she’d agree to do anything to help me do it.”

  I narrow my eyes, squinting at him suspiciously. “Should I not be supporting this either?” When I realize I can’t hold his stare, I turn back to finish making the second pot of coffee. “I don’t want to pry. And I won’t. But is there some part of this story that doesn’t play out in Mo’s best interest?”

  The silence which follows is every bit the answer I was hoping not to get.

  LACHLAN

  “SO, I CHECKED HIM OUT,” McKenna says, sifting through a large file depicting Monroe’s life from conception to this very moment. “He’s no prince, but he’s never been arrested either.”

  “Never been arrested?” I scratch my forehead. This meeting is already going badly. “That’s the best thing you can say about him?”

  She drops the file onto her desk and stares at me. “You had your guys investigate him. Why do you care what I have to say?”

  I sit up a little taller. I left Monroe in the play area but sometimes I still catch myself moving like she’s with me. Like now, sitting here, slightly hunched because she likes to nestle into me like I’m a human cave. “I care because this is your job. Deciding who’s fit to be a parent and who’s not. My guys aren’t looking for the same thing you are.”

  She slips backwards into her chair and I can’t help but feel there’s something somehow deflated about the way she’s sitting here. “Honestly? He checks out. On paper he’s a perfectly suitable candidate. No red flags, no reason a judge would deny him his parental rights.” She pauses, picking up a pen and twirling it between her fingers, stalling.

  “But?”

  “But my gut tells me something’s off with this dude.”

  I snort. McKenna’s two years younger than I am with all the passion of a newly crowned social worker and none of the professionalism of a seasoned veteran. Some days, it’s hard to take her seriously. “That’s your professional assessment then? Something is off with this dude?”

  She scoffs, pulling herself into a more regal position again. “No. My professional assessment is he checks out. He’s a perfectly suitable candidate for fatherhood based on the standards of the department of children and families. I already told you that. You wanted more. You wanted my opinion.” She deflates again. “Listen Lachlan, I get that this is a really shitty spot to be in, and I also get you’re looking for me to make it easier. So, if what you want to hear is, yes, he’s a responsible choice which will allow you to hand over your daughter and move forward without guilt or worry, then sure, I can say that. I have the documentation to back it up.”

  “I really prefer when these meetings with you are long distance via video chat,” I grumble, trying to stave off the thoughts she’s triggered with her little speech just a moment more.

  “I know you mute me on those, by the way,” she says dryly. “I can tell when you keep smiling and nodding even while I’m insulting you. Which I do a lot once I realize I’m muted.”

  “I’m aware. Sometimes I catch the tail end of your insults when I turn the sound back on.” I never mind though. She’s one of the rare people who will actually tell me what she thinks of me, it’s refreshing even when it’s offensive. “Fine. Let’s hold off on any next steps until after I meet with him myself.”

  “Good.” Her mouth turns thin. “Because you’re running out of steps you can undo the farther into this we get. Once his parental rights are legally recognized, no judge in their right mind will undo it and gift them back to you just because you change your mind. Once it’s done, it’s done. Your time as her father will be over. Monroe won’t be your daughter anymore.”

  She’s been doing this a lot. Ever since I first told her what I was considering. She just keeps saying the same thing over and over while using different words to say it every time. Like maybe she doesn’t think I understand it yet. Like she’s still searching for the right way to get the message across to me. It’s unnecessary. I understood the tragic depths of my decision long before I even called her.

  “I get it,” I assure her for what feels like the hundredth time. “Now can you stop talking to me like I’m your friend and go back to treating me like you’re my caseworker?”

  She makes a face. “You are my friend. Just not one I like very much. And I have to tell you, my caseworker self is even less impressed with you right now.”

  “Yeah,” I gathered as much, “but she’ll still be polite about it.”

  McKenna responds by yanking a paper from the file and thrusting it at me with a huff. “Here. You’ll need this when you go see him.”

  “What is it?” I don’t even look at it. At the present, my brain is in no state to comprehend the things it reads.

  “It’s the checklist I use when I inspect a home and meet with parents. It’s not going to tell you the important stuff, but it’ll organize your mind enough to quiet the crazy thoughts and let the worthwhile ones surface. Just trust me.” She nods at the paper still hanging limp in my outstretched hand. “Use the list.”

  I nod, finally retracting my hand. I fold the list twice to make it pocketsize and shove it in my pocket.

  “Is that it?” I ask. It feels like we’re done, but I’ve been wrong with McKenna before.

  “It is.” She spins in her chair until she’s facing her computer screen inst
ead of me. “Make a run for it while you can. Any second I’m going to reboot and give you another speech about how you’re about to screw up everything that matters most to you.”

  I rap my knuckles over her desk as I get to my feet. It’s the only goodbye I can manage before I make my escape out of there and head back to the play area and Monroe. Despite what McKenna thinks, the only reason I’m doing any of this is to keep from screwing up everything that matters most to me.

  After we leave the department of children and families, I take Monroe to a coffee shop we passed on the way here to grab a snack for her and an exceptionally large, extraordinarily strong coffee for me.

  When we step back out onto the sidewalk a few minutes later, her with a giant sugar cookie in hand and me sipping my java, the sun is bright, the sky is blue, and the air is a perfect September crisp.

  “We should go to the park,” I tell Monroe. “You wanna go play on the swing?”

  Her face lights up at the mention of them. They’re her favorite. She can spend hours in those little seats being pushed to swing to and fro, feet dangling and giggling every time her tummy flips on the descent.

  With my kid resting on my hip, I carefully transfer my coffee to the hand attached to the arm holding her securely in place, so I can use the other for the more involved task of making a phone call.

  “You know I’m at work, right?” my brother answers.

  “Apparently you don’t follow your own no phone rule in the classroom though,” I counter.

  “There’s some assembly thing happening in the auditorium, surprise visit from some speaker here to educate everyone on bullying. Not really a surprise though, mostly just insanely overdue. You should see the shit kids put each other through these days. It’s insane. Total torture for the sake of entertainment. Thankfully, drama class doesn’t attract the cretins, mostly just the kids they like to terrorize.”

  My brother was one of those kids once. I think it’s the biggest reason him turning to teaching made sense to me when it seemed completely out of the blue to everyone else. I was there with him. I saw. Did what I could to protect him. Until I turned eighteen and was forced to leave. He had two years of high school left to finish on his own. And even though he never said it outright, I could always tell in his voice on our calls, it wasn’t pretty.

  “Speaking of kids,” I make my segue to why I’m calling, “where can I find a nice, clean, safe, toddler friendly, playground around here?”

  “How would I know?” Chase sounds perplexed.

  “You work with kids all day long,” I point out what I thought was an obvious connection.

  “My kids don’t hang on the slides and teeter-totters for fun anymore. Any playground that attracts them has some sort of fort or playhouse suitable for smoking, drinking and canoodling in without being seen.” I can hear a stack of papers hit his desk. “Still want me to tell you about the parks I know?”

  “Nope.” I take a breath and try to regroup, even as I’m walking through a crowd of people to get across the street along with the rest of the trampling herd. “I’ll just Google it, I guess.”

  “Greer it,” he says instead. “Forget Google. You want real, reliable recommendations, call the nanny.”

  I was making a very intentional effort not to call her, but now that the obvious answer is out there, spoken aloud, it’ll be hard to explain to my brother why I didn’t want to call her.

  “The nanny. Of course,” I mumble. “Good thinking, thanks.”

  “It’s not really that excellent of a thinking effort, Lachlan,” he says dryly, and I’m pretty sure he’s about to call me out. “In fact, it’s so not excellent, or even good, or even average, I have to conclude you already had this very thought about calling Greer and then chose not to.”

  “Or maybe I’m just too stressed out with everything going on right now to have even basic good thoughts,” I counter. “Why wouldn’t I want to call Greer?” As soon as I pose the question, I know it’s a mistake. Chase will be more than happy to answer it.

  “Generally speaking, no one should ever want to call Greer,” he says, surprising me a bit with his angle on things. “She hates answering but has to, given she’s always waiting on some callback or another, only most of the time, all she gets when she picks up is some spammer or telemarketer. So, at some point, she decided to make a game of things. If she had to answer every call that came in, she wasn’t going to be the only one being tortured. Only now we’re all being tortured because you never get Greer when you call, you get some crazy improv character she’s cooking up on the spot to fuck with you, the levels of fuckery, of course, depending on the purpose of initial contact. I should warn you, the only ones who fare well here, are those calling to offer her a part in something.”

  I blink, crinkling my forehead, not even sure I’ve understood everything he’s trying to explain to me, but I decide it’s irrelevant. “We exchanged numbers this morning, I watched her put my contact info in her phone,” I explain like this makes all his theories about Greer’s bizarre phone etiquette beside the point.

  “So? I mean, I find this of interest, because now I want to know why you exchanged numbers, but other than that, it will have no bearing on your looming fate on the phone and the minutes of your life you’ll never recover once she answers. She doesn’t check caller id before she picks up.”

  “Kind of feel like I’m losing minutes right now,” I mutter dryly.

  “You’re right. And you’re not alone. I have maybe ten minutes of quiet left before the hordes return ready to discuss what they learned from the speaker, or rather what they could have taught said speaker. There will be mockery and outrage and possibly tears, from me, if I don’t make it to the teacher’s lounge and back in time with the leftover lasagna I brought for lunch and still haven’t eaten,” he huffs, like he’s suddenly moving very quickly. “Call Greer. Hell, you may even find her weird monologues entertaining. You certainly find her intriguing enough so far, exchanging numbers and all.”

  “Goodbye, Chase.”

  “You can politely shut me out all you like. I’m just going to bring it up again when you can’t hang up on me.”

  “Bring up whatever you like, but I can’t tell you something that isn’t there to talk about.”

  He chuckles, like he doesn’t believe me. “Good point. I’ll just talk to Greer.”

  “Wait.” I’m pretty sure having him dissect her interpretations of things will only make matters worse. Mostly because I’ll want to know what she said.

  “Peace out, brother.” The line goes dead before I can persuade him to keep things between us.

  “Later, Chase,” I say under my breath, even if he’s no longer present to hear it. Then, I turn my attention to Monroe. “One more call,” I promise, “then no more phones. You have my word.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  GREER

  I’m spotting Aidan on the monkey bars for the seventh time when I can hear my phone buzzing in my ear. I kind of hate always being hooked into my phone with the earpiece, but it’s either this or a lot of potentially important missed calls because my day is filled with moments of four-year-olds dangling several feet in the air and I have to have my hands free to catch them at any given second.

  “It’s about time you answered,” I say in my most dramatic British accent, voice pitching an octave higher as soon as the buzzing stops. “I’ve been trying to ring you for hours. Mum’s gone mad with worry ever since you said you were going to track that bear and get your honey back.”

  Silence. Not uncommon after I answer the phone.

  Then, “Greer?”

  “It’s possible,” I carry on in my accent and unnaturally shrill tone. “But then anything is, isn’t it? It’s the probability factor one needs to consider in these situations. Tell me, have you caught the bear?”

  “I think maybe the bear caught me,” the voice says playing along. I’m instantly intrigued. I’m not sure it’s ever happened before. “But I don’t m
ind because we’re sharing the honey. And he’s letting Monroe ride on his back which she’s quite fond of.”

  “Lachlan?”

  “It’s possible,” he says, throwing my own crazy back at me, “it’s the probability factor you have to consider in these situations.”

  “Probability factor’s pretty high, I’d say. You’re the only one I know who has a Mo.” I laugh. “Wasn’t expecting to hear from you so soon. Do you already have a meeting set up with Triston?” The words are barely past my lips when Aiden decides to release his grip on the bars and freefall into the unknown. Which thankfully, winds up being my arms. “We need to work on our trust issues, buddy,” I tell him scornfully. “You have too much. You need to scale it back a bit.” I tickle his sides as I’m setting him safely on the ground, and he giggles taking off as soon as his feet hit the rubber surfacing.

  “That’s not the sort of thing a guy wants to hear when talking to someone he’s considering handing his child over to, Greer,” Lachlan’s voice rumbles in my ear as I’m breaking into a jog to catch up with Aiden who’s making a beeline for the slides now. Meanwhile, Liz, who’s securely strapped to my back, is squealing with delight as she bobs away to the faster rhythm of my footsteps.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” I explain, slowing down at the slides and making my way to the end of the one Aiden is about to come down. “I’m at the playground with two of my kids, one of which likes to launch himself off of high places without warning.”

  “Oh,” he sounds only slightly less confused than he did when I threw him the accent and the bear. Then there’s a shift in his tone. “Wait, you’re at a playground? Any chance it’s close to Birch and Orange?”

  I pause at this unexpected turn in the conversation. “Yeah. It’s like one block north of there. Why?”

  “I assume this meets your anal boss’s standards?” he answers my question with another question. I hate that.

  “It does. Am I about to see you and Mo stroll up here or what?”