A hand grabbed my shoulder and I screamed like a little girl. I spun to face the threat, nearly wrenching my spine in the process. The flashlight fell to the floor, casting an eerie glow throughout the room. Yet it emitted just enough light to see into my future, and trust me, what I saw wasn’t Pretty, but her older sister and my forthcoming wife, Beauty.
“Hi.” Beauty opened her arms in welcome, yawned, and then punched me in the nose.
Pain exploded behind my eyes as snot leaked from my injured nostrils. I stumped back, holding my face until my eyes stopped tearing. “What the hell was that for?”
“Took you long enough.”
“What?”
“To find me.” Her arms crossed over her chest and she tapped her foot. “Well?”
“Well what?” What did this crazy woman want from me? Blood? Apparently so, I thought as I wiped away a stream of red pouring from my nostril.
Her sigh reverberated around the empty room. “Apologize.”
“For what?” Shit. Did she know I hired Spindle to kill her? If so, I had a hell of a lot of explaining to do. Not that I even knew where to begin. “Sorry” didn’t quite seem to cover it, especially since I’d spent last night in the arms of another woman while Sleeping Beauty spent the night locked away with a madman. Or had she? Was she a victim or villain? Not that it mattered; I would marry her either way.
Her drawn-out yawn brought me back to the matter at hand. “Apologize for taking so long to rescue me. I’ve been waiting,” she glanced at her bare wrist, “for a really long time for . . . you to come.”
“Are you all right, mademoiselle?” My eyes roamed over her from head to toe. She wore a white robe that covered her from neck to ankle. She didn’t look hurt. In fact, with the exception of a small emblazed “A” on the lapel of the robe, Beauty appeared as fresh as snow. I frowned at the lapel, trying to remember where I’d seen it before. Nothing came to me.
My gaze moved to Beauty’s face, hidden partially in shadows. One lone purple-lollipop eye stared out at me from behind a veil of kinky blond hair. “Did Spindle harm you in some way, mademoiselle?” I asked, motioning to her obviously demented head.
“No,” she said with a bright smile. “I’m fine. Just a little sleepy. I’m glad you’re here.” She finished with a loud yawn.
“I see.” I raised an eyebrow. “And in your excited gratitude, you punched me in the face?”
Her sigh was so forceful a cloud of dust swirled to life. “I was waiting a really long time.”
I bowed low. “For that, I do apologize. Now, if you don’t mind,” I reached for her arm, propelling her forward, “we should really get out of here before Spindle decides to kill us.”
Her eyes narrowed as if I was now the crazy one. “Kill us? Why would anyone kill us? We’re very nice,” she said, nodding for emphasis. “At least I am.”
“Be that as it may—”
She pulled to a stop. “Say it!”
“Say what?”
“Say I’m very nice.”
What was wrong with this chick? Serial killer my ass—the only way Beauty was capable of murder was if she annoyed someone to death. Her missing fiancés suddenly made sense. The poor bastards had faked their own disappearances to keep Beauty away.
Oh, how I longed for a tower.
Or a gag.
“Well?” she prompted when I failed to respond to her previous demand.
“Well what?” I held my hands up. “Fine. You are a very nice princess. Happy now?”
“Ecstatic,” she mumbled.
I rolled my eyes, again taking her arm and heading for the stairs before Spindle arrived on scene to slaughter us. Which was odd. Where was Spindle? He’d orchestrated this whole thing, dragged me to this abandoned warehouse with two hundred thousand dollars . . .
Lollie.
“Son of a bitch.” I stopped fast, Beauty knocking into my back. She gasped and her hand flew to her mouth. “Forgive my language, mademoiselle,” I said with a frown, wiping at a red spot on my T-shirt, a spot over the B-shaped birthmark covering my heart. “I did not mean to offend—”
“Look out,” she screamed, launching her body at mine. We tumbled to the floor. The blackened window in front of us exploded as a swarm of high-powered bullets fractured the glass like the mirror, mirror on the wall after a full frontal view of the ugliest stepsister in a bikini.
I wrapped my arms around Beauty, taking the brunt of her weight on my body as we smashed to the cold concrete. The noise of gunfire deafened me, as did the wild beat of my heart. I knew Sleeping Beauty’s rescue was too damn easy. Spindle had set me up. And now I would die with a woman I didn’t even like in my arms.
A woman who’d just saved my life.
Staggering to my hands and knees, glass digging into my palms, I crawled toward the stairs. Beauty grabbed at my leg. “Are you insane? Stay down. Before you get us both killed,” she said, her eyes round with terror.
“Shh,” I said. “I made you a promise, remember?”
She nodded, looking anything but mollified by my statement. In fact, my words seemed to enrage her all the more.
“What did I say?” I prompted when she failed to respond.
A volley of shots garbled her response.
“. . . hurt me,” she finished.
“That’s right.” I reached for her arm. My blood stained the sleeve of her nightgown. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
For the first time in our association, her eyes cleared and she looked real, alive, and even more pissed. “Even you?”
I swallowed, hard. “Even me,” I vowed, which seemed to satisfy her if her nod followed by a yawn was any indication. The gunfire abruptly ended. Gun smoke and dust floated in the air around us.
“Sir?” Karl called out. “Are you dead?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh. Good then,” came his disheartened response. “In that case, maybe we should make a hasty escape before the villain can reload.”
“Great idea.” I glanced at my future wife. “But there’s one small problem.”
Karl bounded up the stairs as nimble as Jack, old college injury forgotten. “Are you hurt, sir?” Real fear entered his voice as he poked his head up from the stairwell. He looked around, a wrinkle forming between his bald brows. “Sir?”
I motioned to Sleeping Beauty, who lay on the floor, her hand curled under her head like a pillow. With the exception of our dire circumstances and the string of drool slipping from her mouth, she looked quite beautiful. A light sprinkle of freckles danced across her nose. “It seems that all this excitement has made my bride a wee bit sleepy.”
Beauty let out a loud snore.
“Oh, I see.” Karl climbed the rest of the way up the steps and helped me lift Beauty into my arms. Her eyelids fluttered, but she didn’t wake. I carried her down the staircase, careful not to bang her head. The last thing Sleeping Beauty needed was further brain damage. She was weird enough as it was.
When we reach the bottom step, Karl offered to take Beauty from my arms. I shook my head. I’d promised to keep her safe, and I would honor that vow. I owed her that much. “Any sign of the shooter?” I asked Karl.
“No, sir.” He peeked through the dingy window.
“You ready?” I nodded through the door to where our yellow ugly Princess was parked on the curb less than fifty feet away. It could’ve been a mile for all it mattered. Once we stepped outside the warehouse we’d be sitting rubber ducks.
Karl swallowed. “Not quite, sir.”
“Buck up, Karl.” I shot him an eye roll as I took a step toward the door, Beauty still asleep in my arms. “If I don’t make it . . .” I paused, my face expressionless.
“Oh, please don’t speak like that, sir.” His voice broke. “You will live to carry on the La Grenouille name.”
“But if I don’t,” I took a deep breath, “bury me in the Armani.”
Karl gasped. “Not the Armani.”
I nodded.
I lifted an eyebrow, and when he still didn’t agree, the other followed.
He sighed. “Very well.”
“Thanks.” I grinned. “I knew I could count on you. Now open the door, and let’s get this over with.” Karl did as I ordered. He opened the door, and we prepared for certain death.
I stepped outside.
Much to our surprise, nothing happened. Even Beauty appeared shocked by the events, if the way in which she lay sprawled across me was an indication. The tired princess blanketed me from head to toe, making walking to the ugly, yellow Princess nearly impossible. I shifted the burden in my arms as I ran the rest of the way to the vehicle.
I froze mid-run, realizing three things.
The ugly Princess was gone.
So was my two hundred thousand dollars in unmarked bills.
And let’s not forget, Ms. Lying Lollie Bliss.
“Bitch!”
Sleeping Beauty awoke momentarily, just long enough to smack me in the nose again before the sandman carried her away.
Chapter 47
“What do you think of this?” Sleeping Beauty, dressed in a new flannel gown, held up a bouquet of plastic flowers. They looked like tiny petrified roses with fluorescent green stems. I hated them on sight, almost as much as I hated the thought of marrying the woman standing next to me. Four days had passed since the incident at the warehouse. Four days of spending every waking hour with my future bride. Four days of pure hell.
“They’re nice,” I said with a shrug.
Her smile froze. “Nice? Is that all you have to say? Nice?”
“Yeah. Nice.” Was Beauty tired, bitchy, and a little deaf too? I straightened off the gold-plated recliner where I’d spent the last hour relaxing in the king’s library, drinking his private stock, listening to my annoying bride go on and on about wedding this and reception that while a minister in black ordered us around like servants. Less than twenty-four hours separated me from wedded bliss or frog legs. After the last couple of days, I wasn’t too sure which I preferred.
The only time Sleeping Beauty stopped squawking was when she suddenly and inexplicably fell asleep, often mid-sentence, and while standing.
Oh, how I longed for those times.
I pictured the next forty years with my chattering bride. Frog legs looked better and better with every passing second. The king sat on the chair next to me, his gaze as glazed with boredom as mine.
Pretty seemed to be the only one in the room enjoying the pre-wedding festivities, which sent a shiver of suspicion up my spine. Pretty beamed at Beauty. “You will make such a beautiful bride.”
“I know,” Beauty said, fluffing her blond hair. “Too bad I can’t say the same for my groom. I mean, is a haircut and a shave too much to ask? Does he have to look so . . . so . . . ,” she paused, “French?”
I rolled my eyes. For the last four days, I’d tried to see past the flannel and whiny voice to the woman underneath. The woman who’d kissed a frog and broken my curse. The woman who was fated to be my One.
While Beauty was rather beautiful, she couldn’t hold a candlestick to Lollie. At the very thought of her name, something, rage most likely, filled me, churning hot and deep in my gut. I tasted her on my lips, pictured her tattooed skin, pictured her running away with my two hundred thousand dollars in cash.
“Now, after you recite your vows,” the minister paused in his pre-wedding rehearsal speech, “we’ll move on to the ring ceremony. You do have the rings, right?”
I nodded, rubbing the huge five-carat black diamond ring in my pocket. The same ring the jeweler had couriered to my hotel yesterday afternoon. A ring I didn’t remember buying, though the jeweler insisted I’d called him in the middle of the night, blackout drunk, and forced him to come to the Rose to pick up a golden ball I wanted made into the diamond ring.
Whatever had happened that night, the ring was still beautiful, one of a kind actually, or so the jeweler promised. Not that I trusted the guy. After all, he also tried to sell me a bag of magic beans and a Rolex.
Beauty’s sigh brought me back to the annoying conversation at hand. “I want everything to be perfect. I’ve waited so very long to find . . .” Sleeping Beauty’s eyes met mine as she sneered, “you.”
God help me.
The minister rolled his beady eyes. “Good for you. Now, son,” he addressed me. “Will your mother be joining the precession?”
“No,” Sleeping Beauty and I declared at the same moment. My eyes narrowed on my bride’s face. “Excuse me, mademoiselle. How did you know that my mother would not be attending our nuptials?”
“Oh.” She blinked. “I thought we were talking about my mother. She can’t make it. She’s dead.” Without pausing for breath, Beauty asked, “Have you seen the wedding cake? It’s the loveliest shade of jade.” Her eyes bored into mine. “I know how you enjoy the color green.” With that statement hanging in the air, Beauty spun on her heel and abruptly exited the room, leaving the four of us, including the stern minister, staring after her.
My p-Phone rang a few seconds after she’d left. I checked the caller ID. Karl. “I have to take this,” I said, slipping from the library and out the back door to the oddly overgrown garden. My eyes scanned the plant life for any prying ears. Finding none, I answered on the fourth ring. “Did you find her?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “I’ve called everyone I can think of. There is no sign of Ms. Bliss.”
“And her cell phone?” I swallowed, hating the emotion that leaked into my voice. “Did you try tracking it?” I remembered the flash of rage in Lollie’s eyes when she’d learned about my tracking Sleeping Beauty’s cell signal and grinned. What would she do if she learned I was doing the same to find her? I doubt I’d like the answer.
“Yes, sir.”
“And?”
“And it’s off.” His tone suggested more than Lollie’s phone was off. “No signal. No sign of the yellow Princess either. The rental company is going to charge us a fortune in fees. I knew I should’ve taken the theft insurance.”
“Forget the insurance. I’ll buy a fleet of those damn cars.” I glanced to the greenish water of the pond. “Just find Lollie. I don’t care what it takes. I need to . . . get the ransom money back.”
“Is that all, sir?”
“Yes.” Something caught my eye, and I peered harder into the overgrown foliage just past the pond. There, hidden in the thick greenery, were rows of tiny wooden crosses, twenty-nine in all. On the very end, in front of the final cross, was a fresh mound of dirt and an empty hole. I glanced from the hole up to Beauty’s bedroom window two stories above. In the reflection of the glass I saw my future, as well as my future bride. She shot me a wicked, knowing smile and then disappeared from view. A shiver ran up my spine.
Shaking off the feeling of impending dread, Karl’s next words caught my attention. “Very well,” he said, pausing as if weighing his words. “I do have a lead on Spindle, sir.” His voice grew soft. “But you have to promise me something.”
“What?”
“You won’t do anything stupid.”
I grinned into the receiver. “Stupid? Give me some credit. I’m not nineteen anymore. I’ve matured. Hell, I will be a married man by this time tomorrow.” Or not, I thought as I read the name on the twenty-ninth tiny cross. The one that said: “La Grenouille.”
“Uh-huh.” He heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Call me when you need bail.”
Chapter 48
An hour later, I found myself on the front porch of a fairly nice cookie-cutter house in a pleasant neighborhood on a much-too-quiet street on the outskirts of Cin City. I checked the address Karl had supplied for the third time. Yep, 1067 Three Bears Lane.
This was it.
Spindle’s not-so-evil lair.
A group of kids played red rover in the yard next door. I bit my lip, consideri
ng the suburban nightmare surrounding me. Karl had to be wrong. There was no way Spindle lived here. Not with its perfectly manicured lawn and yellow welcome mat on the front step.
Yet a tiny part of me longed for its peaceful landscape. This was the sort of place where nothing bad ever happened. A place a frog prince could be happy. A place a frog prince would never be alone again.
What the frog was wrong with me?
My impending nuptials had messed with my head. I wasn’t the wife and two-point-five kids kind of prince. I didn’t buy my clothes at King* Mart, nor get my hair cut at a strip mall. My shoes were Prada not pleather. I didn’t want to spend the next forty years, let alone forty days, waking next to the same woman.
Variety was the spice of a frog prince life.
Lollie Bliss was awfully spicy, the little voice in the demented part of my brain whispered. Not true, I fired back. Lollie was a thief and a liar. She’d used me. I was here for the ransom money. That was all.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
I checked my nose to make sure it hadn’t reached telephone-wire proportions. It hadn’t. My knuckles hovered above the door, poised for knocking.
“What are you doing, Johnny?” Elly grabbed my hand and twirled me around to face her. “You’re supposed to be getting ready for your bachelor party tonight and then your wedding tomorrow.”
I closed my eyes, dreading the thought of yet another dimly lit strip club, filled with dim, naked, barely legal women. I wasn’t sure which I feared more, the bachelor party or the wedding itself. “Elly, I don’t know if I can—”
Whack! Her wand slammed into my right ear with enough force to rattle my teeth. She raised her wand again. I held up my hands to protect my handsome face. “Don’t even think about it,” she screeched. “You will marry Princess Beauty tomorrow. I won’t let you ruin everything for a thieving tattooed slut.”
“Lollie has nothing to do with this,” I lied. “Don’t you want me to have a happily-ever-after?”
“Will you be happy with frog legs, Johnny? Because that’s what will happen if you don’t marry Princess Beauty.”
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