by Maren Smith
Norah wasn’t there. There wasn’t even a place set out for her, although I realize it was probably because one of the three servants standing silently up against one wall had most likely cleared her used dishes away. That left two empty sets of dishes waiting: one for me and, of course, one for my father, seated and waiting for me at the head of the table.
He was at once nothing and yet everything like I’d been expecting. Here was the man whom I had believed all my life to be dead, dressed resplendently in a black three-piece suit, with a brightly patterned red and gold sash slung across his chest from shoulder to hip, and a kufi hat that matched it. When I walked in, he looked up from the digital tablet he was reading and quickly took the wire-rim glasses off his nose. The man cut a regal and imposing figure, and that only grew more pronounced as I followed Jax down the length of that impossibly long table. I only saw hint of his age when I neared his chair and he tried to stand.
An attendant immediately rushed forward, offering a steadying hand, which the king took without acknowledgement. His eyes were solely on me and his smile as I came to him was both aggravating and painful to see.
For all that I tried my best to hide my growing anger, he must have sensed it because although I thought he might want to, he made no move to hug me. Instead, his smile gentled and he tipped his aged head in a nod of greeting.
“Thank you so much for coming,” he said. “I realize how upsetting this must be.”
I stood beside the chair where my empty dishes were waiting for me, directly next to the parent I didn’t know, surrounded by all the trappings of the kind of money I’d have given my left nut for back when my mother needed it for her treatments, and I had no idea what to do or say. Good morning? No, because it wasn’t. Far from it.
I started shaking. I didn’t want to look at him, but I couldn’t make myself look away. More than anything, I wanted to get out of here, but my feet were planted and refused to move. I couldn’t even yell at him. I was afraid once I started, I’d be unable to stop.
And through it all, he just stood there, watching me with such sympathy in his dark eyes. Eyes that looked just like mine, I might add.
I had my mother’s nose and mouth and my father’s eyes, and it was killing me.
“Mazi,” he said with quiet compassion, “it’s all right to be angry.”
The man could not have gutted me harder had he used a knife.
As evenly as I could, shaking as badly as I was, I said, “I don’t think I’m ready for this.”
I glimpsed only a hint of disappointment before the king hid it behind another gentle smile. “When you are ready, I will be here.”
So yeah, my first day in Osei, I walked the length and breadth of the palace to have breakfast with the man who was supposed to be my father, only to turn right around and walk all the way back to my room again. I did, however, manage to make it back safely behind closed doors before my rampaging emotions got the best of me.
Some Daddy dom I turned out to be.
* * *
I thought I would see Norah later that night. I have no idea exactly what her job was or what she was doing for my father, but whatever it was, it kept her late into that first night and I didn’t see her again for three damn days. Daddy was not a happy camper.
After my disaster of a breakfast, I waited all day as if on tenterhooks for her to come, dare I say, home? We’d shared an awesome night, but I was painfully aware that that didn’t exactly put us on ‘relationship’ terms. The last thing I wanted to do was jump on her—well, okay... that was actually the first thing I wanted to do to her, but I didn’t want to unload all my messed-up bullshit on her and possibly drive her out of my life. I’d have to confess who I really was, and I was not ready for that any more than I was ready to talk to my father.
Fortunately for me (or not), I never got the chance, because she never came over.
The next morning, bright and early, I got up and knocked on her door. My thought was coffee and fruit, and maybe some raw, hot sex to take the edge off, since I’d pretty much walked the floor all night long, but she didn’t answer.
She didn’t answer that night either. I posted a vigil on the balcony, so I knew someone came into her room at around midnight, Osei time, but she never came out onto the balcony and the lights never stayed on long enough even for me to cut back through my room and walk over to hers. She must have been exhausted (or just that desperate to avoid me) if she went to bed that quickly. I let her sleep and went back to walking the floor until exhaustion finally put me to bed too, somewhere around two or three a.m.
After two days of receiving food trays in my apartment because I refused to leave it, Jax paid me a call. I ignored most of the lecture that followed, but between words like ‘sullen, sulking brat’ and ‘act your damn age,’ I began to realize I needed to do something different. The last time I’d felt this way, I was thirteen years old and my mother had grounded me for sass.
So fine, I decided I’d sulked enough and I began to explore—the palace, the grounds, the village. I found a lovely little shop that sold condoms and the man behind the counter had a great time poking fun at me to his buddies in another language as he rang me up, but that was fine. Everywhere I went, I found myself watching for her and constantly finding reasons to wander in different areas on the off chance that I might catch a glimpse. Now that I had condoms, I was even hoping I might catch more.
On morning number three, immediately after an exciting breakfast of fish, porridge, puffed coconut breads, and Jax’s most recent insight on what he thought of my behavior, I decided I’d had time enough to try to wrap my brain around all this. I decided it was time I met with my father and, maybe this time, give him a chance. So, I decided to go in search of my father, the king.
I wasn’t sure which part of that I was having a harder time getting used to. My whole childhood, I’d never known what it was like to have a father, and now that I was on the wrong side of thirty, it seemed a little late in the game to be learning this particular trick. He seemed nice enough, especially for a king. And, he was trying. So, I tried to let him try. It wasn’t much, but it was a start, and frankly, it was all we had.
After walking the corridors for what felt like an hour, I finally found the man in his own conference room. He wasn’t alone either. Norah was with him.
I startled when I saw her, and I’m not so macho that I won’t admit my breath caught in my chest. She glanced up when I walked in, then did an abrupt double-take when she recognized me. Surprise took a sharp backseat to her professionalism, however. Though her brows knit quizzically, she returned her attention back to the notebook in front of her and finished copying down whatever it was my father had just told her.
“Mazi,” my father said, pleasantly surprised. “Come in, come in. Please, sit down.”
Seated at the head of the table, he gestured for me to take the empty chair beside him. It was directly across the table from Norah, and I took it just as the door opened and a maid wheeled in a cart well-stocked with coffee, tea, water, and assorted pastries. We had all just had breakfast, but my father was nothing if not a proper host.
“I’m so glad to see you,” he whispered, as if Norah were not right there and perfectly capable of hearing us.
I flushed, a little uncomfortable that he would be that happy. “I thought maybe we could talk,” I said, striving hard to keep myself in a nonjudgmental mood. Gesturing to both him and Norah, I quickly added, “After your meeting, of course. In fact, I should probably leave—”
“No, no, no,” my father assured me. “These are things you should know about the place that is your home.”
Norah’s eyebrows quirked together, but she quickly went back to all business note-taking when my father turned back to her and, apparently, continued talking where they’d left off.
“So, after seven generations, now my kingdom is failing,” he said, and it seemed Norah took down every word. “Our economy is struggling to remain self-sufficient.
Tourism has declined. After a few isolated terror attacks in the village last year, it seems people have forgotten about the beauty our country holds.”
I listened, trying to feel nothing about the verbal picture he was painting. Two weeks ago, this place had been nothing more to me than a picture my mother had painted out of a magazine. It surprised me to find I was already growing a little more emotionally involved than I wanted to admit.
Osei was a beautiful place. It was peaceful. So far, I’d enjoyed every walk I’ve taken around the grounds and down in the village. Before I left, I had every intention of strolling the entire island. I had a month to commit this place to memory before I returned to my home in New York. Angry as I was—well, more hurt now, I supposed, than angry—regardless, it hardly made me happy to know it would all fall apart after I left.
Norah was all business. She just wrote it all down. I was starting to wonder if my father wasn’t dictating his life story and perhaps Norah’s job was to ghost write it, when the king suddenly turned to me and said, “Were there something you could do to stop all that, my son, would you?”
Norah’s pen stopped scratching out words immediately. My stomach sank at her sharp intake of breath when he called me his son. She looked at both of us, her violet eyes ricocheting back and forth while all I could do was rub my face with both hands and regret whatever impulse had brought me down here in the first place. I’d been naïve to think I could keep who I was a secret. Especially if she really was writing out his life’s story. Hell, we were all probably lucky it wasn’t headlining in the local newspapers: Long Lost Prince New York City Stripper.
Sighing, I let my hands fall into my lap. I looked at her, wishing we’d had a little more time before the truth fouled it all up. But then, she’d been ignoring me for three days now anyway. So really, how important could ‘Daddy’ be?
“I’m only here for a month,” I said, one eye on the king’s reaction and one eye on her. “But, I suppose, if there was something I could do...”
My father smiled. “I was hoping you would say that.” It wasn’t until he peered over the top of both me and my chair that I noticed Jax quietly standing beside me. The elderly assistant gave my elderly father a nod of encouragement, something that filled me with unease. What the hell was going on here? And why did it feel like I was about to have a bomb dropped in my lap, right here in front of Norah?
I looked at my father and in that instant as he opened his mouth, I suddenly noticed a half a dozen tiny things I’d been too angry to care about before now. Like the thinness of him. The frailty. The way his hands trembled and the slightly hunched posture that spoke of weariness more than any degenerative condition of his back. I knew this hollow-eyed look. I’d seen it before, on the face of my mother when her battery of treatments came to their reluctant end.
“I’m sick, Mazi,” my father said.
Don’t react, I told myself even as I lost all my breath in a single, deflating whoosh. I opened my mouth, searching for some kind of sympathetic response, but I just sat there feeling sucker punched instead.
“It’s cancer.”
Jesus Christ, not again. I rubbed my face again.
“My doctors are the best in their fields, but even so, there’s not much more they can do.”
Emotions were at war within me—anger at a disease I knew too well, bereavement at the knowledge that I would soon lose the father I had only just gained and wasn’t even sure I really wanted to know, and dread mounting upon dread at whatever he was about to say next. I knew there had to be more. His words were like an oncoming train, and I was tied to the tracks.
“You are heir to my throne, Mazi. Osei needs you.”
“Jesus Christ!” I erupted out of my chair, walking myself in a tight, frustrated circle only to find myself once more back in front of the table, hands braced against the edge, leaning heavily upon it as the full weight and implication of what he was saying sank in.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked him. Across the table from me, Norah was still sitting there, her eyes huge and her mouth hanging open. In sharp contrast, my father’s mouth was closed. If anything, he looked rejected, but that only made me angry all over again. He’d spent my entire life not bothering to let me know of his existence and now, all of a sudden I was his heir? If this was an honor, I didn’t want it. Any of it. And I especially didn’t want Norah to know. “You should have waited to talk to me about this in private. This is personal family”—my voice was hard and biting; I couldn’t believe I was actually using that word—“business and never should have been done in front of her.”
“You dare lecture the ki—” Jax said hotly, but my father cut him off.
“No, it’s all right,” he said, patting the air as if that alone might soothe the volatility in the room, all of which was coming from me. “He has a right to be upset.”
Damn right I did.
“This is a lot of take in,” he added.
It certainly was.
“And, perhaps,” my father admitted with a nod, “I should have waited to discuss this in private.”
Damn straight.
Points for all three go to me, because I was right. So, why did being right suddenly make me feel like an ass?
My father looked at me, all the sympathy of a parent tempered by the responsibilities of a king as he softly scolded, “But you are not making this easy and I don’t have a lot of time left.”
And there it was. I sank back into my seat, Osei’s biggest ass and already regretting it. I could feel it, the weight of an entire country resting on my shoulders, and across the table from me, the girl of my dreams knew it.
“Norah,” my father continued, “is here because it is her job to be. I have hired her as our family’s royal correspondent. For the next year, her job includes bridging the gap between our family and the rest of the world. Not only will she be in charge of heading all important media events involving our family, but it is her responsibility to find ways to create—how do they say it these days?—a buzz about our country, hopefully in a way that will boost our economy and keep us on the tourism map. She will visit local businesses, take in the beautiful scenery, and write things designed to reintroduce Osei back to the world as a place people will want to come and see.”
My baby girl was a reporter, I had hooked up with her at the most sensationally controversial moment of my life.
Right on the heels of that thought came another. She would be in Osei for a year. Suddenly, staying longer than a month didn’t seem like quite the hardship. But then I made the mistake of glancing at her only to find every ounce of anger I’d just gone through alive and well on her face, and directed at me.
Swallowing past the instant tightness in my throat, I forced myself to focus on more important issues. “Is my presence here in Osei and my relationship to you part of what she’s going to be reporting on?”
“Yes, assuming, of course, that things work out the way I am hoping and you agree to take your rightful place as the crown prince.”
My rightful place?
“You don’t have any other children?” It was a question I’d been meaning to ask ever since I got his letter.
“My wife, Irina, God rest her soul, was unable to have children. We were very happy for many years, but...” Pausing, my father swallowed, a sheen of watery tears filling his eyes. He blinked them back, refusing to let them fall. “Children were a blessing sorely missing from our very full lives.”
“A father was a blessing sorely missing from mine.” I should have kept my mouth shut, but I couldn’t help echoing those very bitter words back at him.
I regretted them almost immediately.
I wasn’t anybody’s prince. Combing my fingers back through my hair, I stifled a sigh over my own complete inability to stop being bitter about this. There were so many things I wanted to say, questions I wanted to ask. And yet, I could barely keep myself civil. I wasn’t ready to rehash the past, especially not with Norah sitti
ng there taking notes on my most private and personal thoughts.
I glared at the table, the decision I had to make already smothering me. It should never have been this heavy. They made Hallmark movies with plots like this, for heaven’s sake. New York stripper turns long-lost prince? Hell, yeah, what was the problem? Except it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t what I wanted, and yet I had everything to gain by giving into this and nothing—literally, nothing—to lose.
I could pay off all my mother’s remaining debts and never dance again.
Unless of course Osei was impoverished and I just didn’t know it yet. In which case, I’d not only have my mother’s medical bills, but my father’s now too. I’d definitely still be stripping, I’d just have a fancier moniker and wear a crown while I did it.
Jesus. My hand over my eyes, I gave in. “Fine,” I said, nowhere near as angry as I’d been before, but now unbelievably tired. “You win. I’ll stay.”
In Osei, I meant, but in that moment, I just could not make myself stay in that room. Shoving away from the table, I walked out and was almost to the end of the hall when I heard Norah call after me, “Mazi, wait!”
Mazi, not Daddy. We were in public where anyone could hear her, so that should not have rankled me anywhere near as badly as it did, but I barely kept my temper. As much as I wanted to talk to her, I couldn’t deal with her anger now on top of everything else. I had enough of my own. I was going to explode, and I needed to be alone before that happened.
Unfortunately, she was very motivated and caught up with me at the stairs. When she grabbed my shoulder, I turned on her.
“Not now,” I warned, but her eyes were blazing and she was every bit as beyond reining her temper in as I was.
“You’re a damned prince?” she said incredulously. “When were you planning on telling me?”
“I’m not a prince. I’m just the king’s bastard son. I didn’t tell you because I had no intention of staying. This was supposed to be a vacation, a chance to meet my father, and quite honestly, to tell him where to shove it. He and my mother both lied to me my entire life, and now I’m supposed to save a country? How the hell am I going to do that? And before we get all caught up on me, when exactly were you planning to say your entire job was focused on outing my bastard, incompetent self to the rest of the planet?”