The Princess Test

by Shirley Jump

  He arched a brow.

  “Please.”

  “Okay.” He turned the cover of the book and then shot Carrie a glance. “Seems Belle has picked The Princess and the Pea. You know, the fairy tale about the woman they suspect is masquerading as a princess.”

  “I love that story,” Annabelle said, completely oblivious to the hidden conversation between the adults. “’Cuz it’s got a princess in it. I love princesses.”

  “Then by all means, I think you should read it,” Carrie said to Daniel.

  “I think I should, too. Refresh my memory.” He leaned back against a beanbag chair, and Annabelle curled up next to him, laying her blond head on his chest so she could see the pictures as he read.

  The father-daughter picture before her filled Carrie with a rush of sentiment. On the rare occasions when her mother had been home at night and around at bedtime, she’d made it a rule to read the girls at least one story, sometimes two. Always a fairy tale, because she said those were the kind of stories that taught you to dream. Carrie leaned against the bookcase, as enthralled as the little girl in Daniel’s arms.

  She’d stay just a minute, no more, and only because Annabelle had asked her. She didn’t want to intrude. Or get any closer to this man.

  “‘Then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on top of the pea,’” Daniel read, his quiet voice seeming to spin a magical web, “‘and then twenty eiderdown beds on top of the mattresses.’”

  “Twenty?” Annabelle asked and fluttered her fingers as if she was counting that high. “That’s lots.”

  “It is indeed,” Daniel said, then turned another page. “‘On this the princess had to lie all night. In the morning she was asked how she had slept.’” He paused. “What do you think, pumpkin? Was she a princess after all or another imposter?”

  “What’s a ’poster?”

  “Well, Belle, that’s a person who pretends to be something they’re not.” He closed the book, glanced at Carrie and arched a brow. “Would you agree, Miss Santaro?”

  “I think lots of people pretend to be something they aren’t.”

  “You have a point,” he said. Their gazes met and for a moment, it felt like détente. Like they were starting something. What, Carrie wasn’t sure.

  “Daddy, you gotta read. I wanna know if the princess lives happy ever after. And so does Princess Carrie.”

  Daniel glanced at Carrie and arched a brow. A teasing grin darted across his face. Was he…flirting with her? Or merely playing into Annabelle’s game? “Well, Princess Carrie? Do you want me to keep reading?”

  She waved toward the book. “Please do, Mr. Reynolds. I’m dying to hear how this one ends.”

  His gaze met hers and something hot pooled inside her. “I am, too,” he said. Then he opened the book again and began to read.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “OKAY, new guy, what have you got?”

  At the sound of his boss’s voice, Daniel jerked to attention in his chair. He faced Matt Harrod and the rest of the production team, a motley crew of producers, cameramen and the two hosts who provided commentary for Inside Scoop, all gathered for a quick Saturday-morning meeting. Daniel was the only one with a hard news background, and in the few days that he had been working here, he’d begun to feel like he was living on an alien planet. Everyone at Inside Scoop wanted the next sensational spot, the next media meltdown. They were like vultures hovering over a steaming carcass of scandal. Daniel missed the days when he produced stories that had meaning, the kind that brought viewers an important message or changed a life. The kind that his father had done, the kind that were part of the Reynolds family legacy.

  But those stories came with a job that demanded long hours, frequent and last-minute trips around the world, and a daughter who was raised by strangers. Daniel told himself the job he had now was perfect, and he better start acting like it.

  “I found a princess…or rather, someone who claims to be a princess,” he said to Matt, “living temporarily in Winter Haven.”

  Matt let out a gust of disbelief. “Like real, honest-to-God royalty?”

  “Seems it, though I’m still researching her.” He pulled his notes before him. “This woman, Carlita Santaro, is claiming she’s the third daughter of the king of Uccelli, a country near Italy. I checked, and there is a real Carlita who fits the age and looks similar. Her middle sister, Allegra, ascended to the throne last year, and her oldest sister, Mariabella, is married to an American and spends part of her time running an art gallery in Massachusetts. Her mother spent time here more than twenty years ago, which is what Carlita says drew her to this town.”

  “I think I heard about the art chick. She was in the news last year. Wish I’d gotten that scoop.” Matt made a few notes on a pad of paper. “So what’s number three doing in Indiana?”

  “Her country makes wine. And she’s running a small wine shop that is the first in the United States to sell Uccelli wines. Sort of a test market with the tourists.”

  “You sure she’s the real deal?” Matt asked.

  Daniel shrugged. “So far, her story checks out.”

  “So far?” Matt arched a brow. The rest of the production team turned toward Daniel.

  “Well, there’s not much information on Carlita Santaro.” He opened the folder before him and withdrew the few pictures he had of Carrie in her royal element. He scattered them across the long conference table while he spoke. “Partly because she has always shunned the spotlight and partly because she’s the third daughter, and thus not as interesting to the media. So it’s been a bit of a challenge proving this Carlita’s story.”

  Matt picked up one of Carrie’s headshots, this one a few years old and a little grainy. “Did you run a blood test?”

  Daniel chuckled. “Seriously? I can’t do that.”

  “Seriously. I don’t want to put this station on the line for some half-baked crazy who thinks she’s the latest Romanov descendent.”

  Daniel bristled, and forced himself to tamp down his anger. This was his job here—his first chance to prove himself to his new boss—and he needed to stay in control. Good paying media jobs in the middle of the country weren’t exactly plentiful, and if he didn’t succeed at this one, he’d be forced to move back to the coast and put Annabelle back into the same nanny/day care/absent father nightmare he had worked so hard to leave behind. That was assuming he could find another job in the news, considering how his reputation had fallen apart last year. He’d applied to twenty places with no luck before he’d been hired here. He needed this job, as much as he hated that his options had narrowed to this. “The stories I read about her fit the woman that I met. I’m not a hundred percent positive she’s the real princess yet. I still need to do a bit more legwork to make sure.”

  Matt considered the information for a while, twirling his pen between his fingers as he thought. His face was filled with skepticism, and the trademark scheming that had helped his show rise in the ratings. Whatever he was thinking, Daniel was pretty damned sure it was going to be some harebrained idea, and undoubtedly something Daniel wouldn’t like. In the two weeks Daniel had been working here, he’d watched Matt cross the journalism line a hundred times. In fact, Daniel wouldn’t call much of what Matt did journalism.

  Daniel had met interns out of college with more tact and experience. But this was the job he had, and that meant he had to buck up and tolerate Matt’s insensitive personality. For now. Soon as he had a success back on his résumé, Daniel was heading for a job that had more meat than sugar.

  “All right, we’ll give it a shot,” Matt said. “But I don’t want to do the typical profile piece.” He mocked a yawn. “We need something that will put us on the map. The kind of piece that the other stations will want to run on their shows. Something that really puts Inside Scoop into the public eye. I want to go global, baby, and this is the kind of story that can help us do that. World, here we come!”

  “Okay,” Daniel said. “I’ll think of an angle that—
”

  “I don’t want an angle. I want something that says wow. Something like…” He twirled the pen some more, and then his face brightened in a way that Daniel knew meant something bad was coming out of Matt’s mouth. “A test.”

  “A test?”

  “Yeah, like that fairy tale. What is the name of it again?” He smacked the arm of the young male intern beside him. The kid—no older than twenty—jumped.

  “Uh…Cinderella?” he said in a squeaky voice.

  “No, no, the other one.”

  “Snow White,” Emily, the female half of the cohost team, volunteered.

  “No. God. I work with a bunch of idiots.” Matt cursed. “What the hell is the name of that fairy tale? The one where they test the princess. Make sure she’s Grade A.”

  “The Princess and the Pea,” Daniel said, then hated himself for supplying the answer. He could already see the road ahead and he didn’t like the direction Matt was traveling. As much as anyone, he wanted to prove—or disprove—Carrie’s claim, but not in some sensationalized circus.

  “Yes! That’s it!” Matt pointed at Daniel and beamed. “New guy, you just earned your keep. I think you’ve got the best story idea out of all these idiots. You run with your princess and get a little background on her. We’ll work on developing the test to prove she’s royalty.”

  “What possible test could there be?”

  Matt grinned, the kind of grin that Daniel knew meant this was going in the wrong direction. Dread filled the pit of Daniel’s stomach and he wondered if it was too late to retract the story.

  “Oh, we’ll think of something,” Matt said. “But whatever we think of, I can guarantee one thing.”

  “What’s that?” Daniel asked.

  “It’ll be great TV.” Matt grinned. “Great, memorable, big bucks TV.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Daniel muttered as he gathered his things and left the production meeting. And tried like hell to think of a way to tell Carrie about this without her wanting to shove that tiara down his throat.

  Annabelle skipped in a circle around the kitchen. She had on her plastic tiara and a purple dress that blossomed out from her waist in a wide bell. He’d tried like hell to talk her out of the tiara, but Annabelle had insisted, and Daniel hadn’t wanted to see a frown on his little girl’s face. Not when she’d just started smiling again.

  “You ready, pumpkin?”

  She stopped twirling and turned to face him. “Uh-huh.”

  She’d been ready and waiting when he got home from the production meeting. Now her excitement shimmered on her face, danced in her eyes. “All right then, let’s go.” He put out his hand for Annabelle. She started toward him, then stopped and grabbed a bright pink bag sitting on the kitchen table. “What’s that?”

  “I can’t tell you, Daddy. It’s a s’prise.” An impish grin spread across her pixie features.

  “A surprise, huh?” He bent down and pretended to try to peek inside the bag. “For me?”

  She jerked the silky bag away. “No peeking, Daddy! It’s not for you.”

  “For Grandma?”

  “No, silly. For the princess.” Annabelle beamed and clutched the bag to her chest. “We’re gonna be princesses together today.”

  Daniel bit back a groan. He wished Annabelle hadn’t found out about Carrie’s identity. But she’d been right there, her four-year-old teapot ears listening in when the library patron had stopped in the children’s department and exclaimed over finding Winter Haven’s resident “princess” in such an ordinary place. Annabelle had been awed and excited, and before Daniel could stop her, she’d been inviting Carrie along on the father-daughter picnic in the park that Daniel had planned for today.

  At first, he’d resisted the idea, then he realized a picnic was the perfect opportunity to get to know Carrie and to find out if she was the real Carlita Santaro or an imposter. Before he went much further at Inside Scoop with the story, he wanted to be sure one way or another. Matt’s test was one method, but Daniel preferred to do things the old-fashioned way. Digging up facts, assembling them, until he got the truth.

  And right now, he wasn’t sure what the truth was concerning the “princess” working the wine shop counter.

  In the pictures of the royal family he’d found, Princess Carlita was either not there or far in the background. Convenient, he figured, for someone who wanted to take Carlita Santaro’s place halfway around the world in a tiny tourist town in Indiana most people had never heard of. Was she here to capitalize on the rumored visit of the queen of Uccelli, more than two decades ago? There’d been little media coverage of Bianca Santaro’s visit—just a few speculating pieces in European papers and a tidbit in the Indianapolis paper—nothing really confirmed. But definitely something he’d spend a little more time researching. Either way, for all intents and purposes, the queen of Uccelli had entered and exited the town while remaining anonymous. Perhaps her daughter wanted to retrace her mother’s visit?

  The photographed Carlita had curled hair swept up into some elaborate hairdo, her dresses so bejeweled they looked like they weighed a hundred pounds. Not the girl-next-door he’d met a couple days ago. Yet, the official quotes from the palace about the “shy” princess contrasted with several media reports about some “adventures,” as the Uccelli media dubbed them. Whichever the case—quiet girl or wild child—it seemed the real Carlita Santaro had shunned the spotlight and done her best to shun her royal life, too. Could the smiling, outgoing woman he’d met be the same one who’d ditched a state dinner, commandeered a castle vehicle and headed into the countryside for a two-day camping adventure with her friends?

  Either way, he needed more information before he put her on the air. With any luck, this story would be the blockbuster he was looking for and become the kind of thing that netted him a permanent position in Indiana. It wasn’t the glamorous globe-trotting career he’d once had or even the meaty reporter work he’d built his career upon, and far removed from the gritty, Pulitzer-winning journalism of his father and grandfather, but it was the perfect job for a single father who needed a reboot on his life. And to earn a way back into the journalism elite.

  The best way to get an interview subject to talk, he’d found, was to bring them to a casual setting and hope they relaxed enough to spill their guts. A picnic, he’d decided after Annabelle proposed the idea, would be the perfect place. He had gathered enough information on Uccelli and the royal family that he hoped after today’s fact-finding mission, he could either reveal Carrie as a fraud or prove her identity.

  And yes, a part of him was intrigued by this woman with a slight accent and a wide smile. Intrigued on a level that had nothing to do with the story.

  He hadn’t been intrigued by a woman in a long time. After the car accident that took Sarah’s life, he’d wanted nothing more than to be alone. To drop out of the world. He couldn’t, because he had Belle, but there were a lot of days when just getting out of bed was hell. He hadn’t thought about dating—much less marrying—again. Although his marriage had been over except for the signing of the divorce papers before Sarah’s accident, considering another relationship hadn’t even been on his radar.

  And now this woman, a stranger really, had sent his mind spiraling down a path he’d considered sealed.

  A path he had no intentions of taking again. Hadn’t he already done it wrong once before? Nearly losing his relationship with his daughter in the process? No, he decided. Work only. Relationships could wait.

  His mother came into the living room and thrust a small red cooler into Daniel’s hands. “I packed sandwiches, a few bottles of water and some of Annabelle’s cookies.”

  “I could have done that, Mom.”

  She laughed. “You would have forgotten the napkins. And the water bottles. Not to mention your sandwiches would have been some god-awful meat combination.”

  He grinned. “Probably. I’m not very domesticated, I guess.”

  “You’re trying. That’
s enough.”

  He let out a gust and thought of last night, when he’d tried to put Annabelle to bed. His daughter had resisted, whining and complaining and pitching such a tantrum that his mother had finally come in and soothed the waters. There were days when Daniel felt like he had no idea how to connect with his own child. What kind of father did that make him?

  “Besides, maybe I like taking care of my son and granddaughter.” Greta gave him a tender smile.

  He leaned over and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek. His mother had done so much in the past year, and he wondered if he could ever begin to thank her. His gratitude that he and Greta had found their way back to a close mother-son relationship filled his chest. “Thank you.”

  “Daddy, come on!” Annabelle tugged on the sleeve of his button-down shirt. “We’re gonna be late for the princess.”

  His mother smiled. “Better hurry. You don’t want to keep a princess waiting.”

  “Even pseudo ones,” he muttered.

  “Daddy, what’s soo-do?” Annabelle asked.

  He scowled. His daughter heard everything—except words like clean up your toys or go to sleep. “It just means I want to ask her all about being a princess.”

  “Me, too,” Annabelle said. “I wanna know every thing.”

  But as they walked out the door, Daniel knew the answers he and his daughter were seeking were very, very different.

  Carrie had changed her outfit three times before she finally got mad at her reflection and told herself this wasn’t a date. She was going on a picnic, and going with Daniel Reynolds only because Daniel’s daughter had heard the word princess and been instantly enchanted. There was no way Carrie could say no to those earnest, wide blue eyes and Annabelle’s please-please-please. Unlike her father, Annabelle Reynolds was adorable and charming, the kind of child who could melt even the coldest heart.