It took him a moment to decide if he was amused. He was; I felt him relax, saw the mask slip away. I stepped back.
“But only for the second hour, Tom. For the first half of the show, it’s just you and Kit. Believe me, it will be stronger that way. You’ll have a better chance of getting people on your side.”
Maybe this prince did have a future in world politics: He saw the deal and knew it was a good one. Tom nodded. He checked his watch. Then he looked up at me, smiling for the first time since he’d been eating pie. “For a few more hours, then, I’m still all yours. What are we going to do now, Delivery Girl?”
Sleep would be nice. Once upon I time I would have thought nothing of making a bed on a park bench or in the shelter of a tree. But that was no way to host a prince, not if there were other options.
*
The trees on Kit’s block were like sentinels, shadowy guards neatly spaced one to a house all the way down the street. “Which house is yours?” Tom said.
I pointed. “Second one in from the far corner, across the street. The corner one next to it, the one with the big porch? Vice President Ripley and his wife live there. Careful, don’t step into the streetlight; stay close to this tree. I don’t think we can go in.”
He moaned. “Kelly, I am getting so tired of this hide- and-seek. Do you really think they might be watching your aunt’s house at this hour?”
“See the corner room on the second floor, the one with all the lights on? That’s my room, Tom. I never leave lights on and Kit never goes in there.”
“So you’re saying that’s significant? Are you saying that your aunt turned your lights on as some sort of signal?”
“Lower your voice, okay? Sit down.” I pulled him to the ground, and we leaned back against a tree trunk, blending into its silhouette. “It is a signal. She wanted me to think twice in case I came strolling home with you.” I pointed. “I bet she was hoping I’d notice those two big black cars. I’ve never seen those cars parked on this street. Oh look, in the far one—someone just lit a cigarette.”
He sighed. “What does it matter now? I promised you I’d be on your aunt’s show. She gets the interview, Kelly. Don’t you believe I have enough influence to make that happen? You think I’m that powerless? Why are you looking at me like that? What are you thinking, Kelly? You’re holding back something you don’t want to say; it’s on your face.”
I was so tired, I was beyond digging up the energy to keep lying. So tired from running and leading him along all night that I knew without a doubt I had used up all the lies forever. So I told him exactly what it was that had popped into my sleep-deprived brain. I said, “Has anyone ever called you Tommy?”
He won my heart forever: He didn’t laugh. Just rested his head against the tree trunk and said, “Yes. One person. Isabel Fuentes. Lovely Isabel. Lovely brown-eyed, big-breasted Isabel.”
Something about the way he said…the name. “Girlfriend?” I asked.
He was gone somewhere, a sweet memory ride. His eyes were closed and his thumb tapped a beat on his knee. “Even better than a girlfriend. Isabel was the world’s best cook—my stepfather’s cook, in Fort Worth. I can hear her now, hear her voice as she’d swat me on the head: ‘Tommy, you little devil, get that brown Gypsy ass out of my kitchen before I make it black and blue.’”
This time he had to shush me. I was laughing. “Gypsy?” I asked.
“Of course. My great-grandmother was part Gypsy. You mean you don’t have that fact filed away up there?” Okay, so he didn’t really stroke my head, but it wasn’t exactly a chaste tap, either.
I held still; so did he. The mysterious scent had been replaced by a warm male musk. That was nice, too.
His hand fell away. “We’re part of it all, we Teronoviches. Muslim, Catholic, Lak, Memot, Gypsy. We belong to everyone and—just by existing—we can offend everyone. The perfect choice for a not-quite-figurehead monarchy. Any wonder they voted to bring us back?”
“They brought back your family because your grandfather and great-uncle spent World War Two undermining Nazi control, and then when those bastards were gone, they held off the Soviets longer than any other Balkan nation.”
“You do know the facts, Delivery Girl. Yes, all that happened. Before they were banished by the Soviets and settled down to fifty years of dissolute living. And now things are so bad that we’re considered the last best hope for unity: the one Lakverian family with mixed blood. The mongrel royal family. Of course, no one’s saying aloud the truth: that our blood is mixed blood because my forebears were wildly promiscuous.”
“You won’t be like that.”
He settled in against the tree, drawing up his knees and hugging them. “I won’t. I want to be a good king. With all my heart, I want to help. And that’s why, Kelly Ray, I think I should walk to one of those black cars, turn myself in, and go back to the hotel. I’ll round up every world leader I can find and bring them to your uncontrollable aunt Kit. I’ll make them do it. I know now I can do that if I want to. It’s my country we’re talking about, isn’t it?”
I should have leaped into his arms, right?
“What do you say?” Tom continued. “Shall I round up the politicians and we give Aunt Kit her dream interview? Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I’m worried.”
“I promise: It will happen.”
“I’m worried about Kit.”
“Why? From all I’ve heard, she can more than handle that sort of thing.”
“She can, and that’s what worries me. Tom, I know exactly what she’ll do with a set-up like that: Play those guys, and you, like you’re puppets. Look, she’s all I’ve got in the world. My family, that’s Kit. But I know her. She’ll see her chance and she’ll go for blood. She’ll have the time of her life and that won’t help a thing. It could even jeopardize what you’re trying to get done.” I licked my lips. “Believe it or not, I care about that now.”
“So they were right about her?”
“Yes. They were so very right.” I looked up and smiled, though I don’t know if he could see that in the half light.
“So why should I go near her?”
“Because it’s not the same story and she’ll see the difference. You telling your story, your hopes—that’s a world apart from an interview with the old wise men clearing their throats and being careful about what they say. Be Prince Charming, Tom, and get her on your side. Then she’ll want to get her listeners on your side, and once that happens—once she figures out what they need to hear to understand—you’ll have it. Most of her millions of listeners will head to the phones to tell Congress to pay that UN bill, and you will have what you want.”
“I don’t know,” he whispered.
For twelve hours I’d been one-on-one with this guy and I had been so good. (If you don’t count the lying.) I mean, he was the best-looking guy I’d ever been this close to, and I had been so good about not touching him.
But I touched him now. Reached out to the side of his head and, imitating the very bad accent he had used, said, “Tommy, you leetle Geepsee devil; do it my way.”
Hey, it had worked for Isabel, right? Of course, I didn’t swat him the way he said she always did. Maybe I meant to when I first reached out, but I just couldn’t. I mean, swat a prince? Instead, I ran my hands through that hair, that luscious, wavy dark hair.
Before I could pull my hand back, his head sort of dropped against my open hand. I held still. He closed his eyes.
I looked at the line of his jaw and the curve of his neck, and felt the warmth and the weight on my palm. It would have been so easy just to lean a bit forward and pull him a bit closer…
I’ll never be sure, but I think I heard him whisper (the softest of whispers), “I can’t.”
And I think I whispered back, “I know.”
I pulled my arm away. His eyes flickered open and stared into the dark. And finally he said, “We’ll do it your way, Kelly.”
“Thank you, Tom.”
He
dropped his head to rest against the tree. “But what do we do until then? Go to the station? Or does your instinct for cloak-and-dagger tell you that my uncle’s men are watching for me there, too?”
I checked my watch. “Could be. Probably.” And my temporary ID didn’t allow me access until morning.
“So they’re going to get me any way we do it. Back to square one: I go to the guys in the big dark cars.”
“No. I promise that I’ll get you in the station, and once you’re in Kit’s office, they can’t touch you until we want them to.”
“And how are you going to get me past the international security you imagine is in place? Do you have a plan for that?”
Not yet, but why tell him? “Trust me, okay?”
I had to shush him again, he laughed so hard at that. “‘Trust me’” he mimicked. “As if I haven’t been, and look where it’s got me. Okay, Kelly, I’ll trust you; now back to my question. It’s almost four. What now? Do you at least have a plan for now?”
“I do have a plan,” I said. ‘That is, if you still want to see the sunrise.”
*
From Kit’s place it’s a ten-minute walk through neighborhood side streets and along the lake drive to the canoe racks on the north shore of Lake Lucille. I didn’t tell Prince Tom what I had in mind, because I gave it even odds that once he knew my plan involved more physical exertion, he’d drop to his feet and refuse to budge.
The houses bordering the lake were Dakota City’s showplaces, some of them worthy of even a prince’s wonder. “That one?” I pointed as we strolled. “When it was built in 1909, it was the most expensive house west of Chicago and it sat vacant for seven years before anyone ever moved in, because of a divorce dispute. They had them back then, too. The white one coming up? It had the first electric lights in Dakota City. And the house two doors over from it—you can’t see it too well because of the trees—three murders in sixty years, right in that house. Who’d want to live there anymore, don’t you wonder?”
Tom paused and looked at me, eyes wide in amazement. “Do you ever feel like you’re going to explode from being stuffed with so much trivia?”
“I do sometimes. But I can’t help myself, I keep soaking it up.”
“You must not have had a horribly bad habit, Kelly, if your brain is that nimble.”
“Bad enough. The one on the corner? Frank Lloyd Wright. There are three of his on the lake, but we won’t be walking by the others.”
“Why not?”
“Because we stop here. Turn, watch your step. Now be a good boy, sit on this bench for a while, and watch for cop cars while I get the canoe down. I doubt if we’ll get caught, I never have, but still; I’m about to turn you into a criminal, Tom.”
“You’ve got to be kidding, we’re not—”
“Hush, don’t say a thing. Voices carry across the water, and who knows—someone else might be up. And yes, we are.”
There were forty-five canoes stored on the racks. Fifteen stands, three high. My Old Town was on the top bar of an end column. I twirled the numbers on the combination, heard the click, pulled it open. The paddles and life vest I’d secured under a seat shifted free as I pulled the lock and cable. I yanked the life vest out and tossed it to Tom.
“I can swim,” he said.
“I told you to be quiet. And I don’t care if you can; I’m not going to risk a royal drowning.”
“What about you?”
I can swim better, I would have answered, but didn’t for two reasons: One, voices really did carry over water, and two, headlights were zooming along Lake Drive toward us. “Lie down on the bench and be still,” I said just before stepping into the shadows between rows of canoes.
The car passed. As soon as the brake lights were out of sight, I went back to work. I checked that the paddles were still wedged securely under the thwarts, then slid the canoe off the rack, easing it over my head and settling the portage pads onto my shoulders. I backed up slowly until I could turn and head down toward the dock.
Tom whispered “Wow” as I passed the bench. Down on the dock I crouched, jutted a knee, rolled the canoe off my shoulders, and rested it on the knee a moment before lowering it onto the water. Tom joined me, kneeling beside me as I caught my breath. I sat on the dock and kept the canoe in place with my foot. “Wow,” he said again.
“Hold the applause until we’re on the water,” I said.
“Should I ask whose canoe we’re taking?”
“Mine.”
“Then why is this a criminal act?”
He had put on the vest but it wasn’t zipped. I loosened the side straps so it would fit and zipped him in. “Technically speaking, the lake is a city park. And technically, parks are closed from sunset until sunrise. I’ve only ever heard of the police tagging people coming or going. Once we’re out on the water we’re okay, and it will be light by the time we come back.” I held out a paddle. “Let’s go.”
I could tell immediately by the way he handled it that he would be less than useless. I took it back. “Never mind. Get in, sit still, and I’ll paddle. Let’s move. No, don’t sit on the seat, on the bottom.”
He started to whine, but I growled. “You’re less of a hazard sitting low; besides, you can lean back against the thwart and rest. That bar is a thwart. Get in.”
The future king obeyed my command. In seconds we were moving, my long strokes sending us skimming across the still, dark water.
There are five lakes in Dakota City. Lake Lucille is the smallest—too small for sailing, but ideal for kayaking and canoeing because of its several bays and three islands. Motorized craft are prohibited on all the city lakes. Of course, what Tom and I were doing was also prohibited and, well, here we were. But thankfully, people observed the motor ban.
We weren’t the only ones out. A kayak emerged from an island cove. The kayaker and I raised paddles, criminal saluting criminal.
Our canoe glided on. “See that brick house, the one with the light on the third floor?” I whispered to Tom, pointing with my paddle.
“Mmmm,” he said, nestling down, getting comfortable.
“Every time I’m out here, that light is on, no matter how late at night, no matter how early in the morning. Twice I’ve seen a woman dancing in the room—dancing alone.”
There was more and I showed him all of it. The house with neon blue lightning bolts flashing in the second-story windows. The house with ten chimneys. And of course, my candidate for weirdest.
“Mannequins? A living room full of mannequins?” Tom’s voice cracked in wonder. “And don’t they ever get complaints about those orange lights? Are they on all the time? People must complain.”
“They’re not just mannequins, it’s an art installation. The lights are on all the time. I’ve heard that the only people who’ve complained are some neighborhood birders who say the constant light might disturb nesting patterns for a family of linnets supposedly living in a tree somewhere along here.” I paddled on.
“Do you come out here often?”
Only on the bad nights, I started to say. Then I realized that, at least tonight, that wasn’t true. “Pretty often,” I said.
“Ever come during the day, like normal people?”
“What’s the fun in that? You can’t see into houses.”
He shifted and the canoe rocked. “Steady,” I said. “I don’t want to go in the water. It’s not very deep, and the bottom’s weedy and mucky.”
“So you get your kicks from watching people’s houses. Kinky.” He reached out and dragged a hand in the water.
I pulled in my paddle. We drifted, with only the breeze pushing us along. “I’m not interested in all the houses.” I pointed my paddle; water trickled off the blade. “Mostly that one.”
He looked. “Nice, but compared to the others it’s pretty ordinary.”
“We can’t all live in palaces, Prince Tom. And it’s not ordinary at all. That was my house; I grew up there. Well, I lived there until I was twelve, until
my mother fell in love for the second time and got married for the first time. It belonged to my grandparents, my father’s parents.”
Now he was interested. “You mean your mother—who wasn’t married to your father—lived with his parents until she fell in love with someone who wasn’t their son? That sounds as twisted as European royalty. No wonder we get along, Kelly.”
“They were happy to have us. I was their only grandchild and they wanted me reared properly. That is, what they considered proper. So they opened their doors and sucked us in. No one ever came right out and told me, but I’m pretty sure that they let my mother know they would fight her for me. Live with them—live like them—or lose me. And when it was clear so early on that I could do something special with the violin, well, that sealed the deal. My music was expensive—the lessons, the instruments, the travel. My mother could never have afforded to pay for it. So they…bought us.”
“That’s harsh, Kelly.”
“But that’s how it was. They gave us shelter and paid for my music, and in return they took control. Well, mostly it was her; my grandfather died when I was five.”
“Your grandmother took control of your training?”
“Control of our lives. She meant well, I know, but with every single thing she gave, there were strings attached. That’s a dangerous way to live and love, Tom. After a while those strings get twisted and people get caught up and maybe even strangled.”
“But she was trying to help. You can’t blame her for you being a drug addict.”
“I don’t,” I snapped. “I didn’t say that, and I don’t want you to think for a moment that I’m into passing off blame. I did what I did, Tom; I made the choice. I’m the one who jumped into the deep dark hole and I’m the one climbing out.”
“If your grandmother was so into control, how did she feel when your mother fell in love with someone who wasn’t her son?”
“Oh, she was happy about that. He was someone she liked, a son of a friend. Billy. Imagine: a grown man named Billy.”
“And where was your dad? What say did he have in all of this?”
“None whatsoever. No one had seen him in years. I’ve never seen him at all, not once in my life.” I let him take time to digest it, gave him all the time in the world.
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