It didn’t work.
She made a noise like a rabid wolverine. “This is the problem!” she squealed. “I’ve been locked up here for weeks being force fed super healthy gross organic bullshit with no distractions. Then you show up and order me to eat yet more food I don’t fucking want, with the worst imaginable company. So, no. My answer is no. Shove your nasty-ass lobster up your butt and kindly get out of my face. I hope you develop a shellfish allergy and have to explain to the doctor that you have a lobster up your rectum. I hope he has really big hands and has to pull it out of you while you scream.”
“I can see the pregnancy hormones have kicked in,” I remarked, fighting back a laugh. What a lovely mental image. Creative. I wouldn’t be forgetting it any time soon.
Isabelle made the rabid wolverine noise again. “Fuck you!”
“Isabelle,” I said as patiently as I could, “please come eat dinner with me.”
She blinked. “Well… on second thought,” she said hesitantly, “because you asked so nicely,” she nibbled on her bottom lip and my hopes rose, “the answer will just have to be… fuck no!”
My patience wore out. “Dammit Isabelle!” I yelled back at her. “Why are you being so difficult?”
“Read your emails next time,” Isabelle screeched. “And no more goddamn kale!”
“You’ll get nothing but kale if you don’t listen to me,” I threatened. My temper was never long, and she’d exhausted it several snippy comments back. “Kale smoothies for breakfast, kale salad for lunch, braised fucking kale for dinner. Apparently, you need the damn fiber to help loosen up that stick up your—”
Isabelle had been looking more and more horrified, and she cut me off by slamming the door in my face.
Or she tried to, anyway.
I stopped it easily. She pushed, but the door didn’t budge. She’d need to put on sixty pounds of muscle if she wanted to out-shove me. Her mouth fell open in surprise. A slender ring of white was visible all the way around her brown irises, but she just squealed again in fury. “Out!” she said. “Get out.”
“You don’t make the rules here,” I reminded me. “We have a contract.”
“You want to guess where I think you should put that contract?” She asked. “I’ll give you a hint. There’s already a lobster in there.”
“Isabelle. Be reasonable. Let’s just have dinner and talk this through. Whatever issues you have, we can discuss them like reasonable adults over a nice meal and not like screaming children.”
She was steaming mad, but something must have broken through to whatever inner core of rationality was still in her brain. She paused. Her eyes searched mine for a moment and she dropped back. The pressure of her bodyweight on the door subsided. She took a deep, calming breath.
“Fine,” she said sullenly. “I’ll go to dinner with you. But I’m not going like this.” She looked down at herself self-consciously. “I need to be wearing real clothes. Surely you can understand that, right? I don’t want to be half-naked.”
I nodded. Of course. She was probably embarrassed by her appearance at the moment, sexy as it was. I wouldn’t want her to see me in just a robe, either. Her vulnerability might be contributing to her terrible mood. “Okay. Go get changed.”
She nodded meekly. The total change in her demeanor was intense, but I could explain it with pregnancy hormones. The books all said I should expect sudden mood changes. Apparently, they weren’t kidding. I took a deep breath of my own.
“I’m not changing with the door open,” she said a moment later. “Give me five minutes?” Her voice had turned from hostile back to the normal, sweet tones she usually used.
I exhaled in relief.
It was possible to get through to her, even through the haze of the hormones. That was good. “Fine,” I told her. “I’ll wait right here.”
“Okay.” Isabelle closed the door gently and locked it. Then, from behind it, she laughed maniacally. “Hold your breath while I change,” she crowed between bouts of villain laughter. “I’ll be ready in about eight months, lobster boy.”
Lobster boy? Oh no. That was not my new nickname.
I banged on the door angrily, but I’d just been masterfully outplayed and we both knew it. She was tricky. “Isabelle!” I yelled. “Stop this!”
She ignored me until I went away.
12
Isabelle
The Guest
Another vile tray of something leafy green and healthy was delivered to my room, but I couldn’t eat it. I just couldn’t. I wanted something… bad for me.
“Is something wrong?” Jimmy asked when he saw my face. He and Luc had delivered my food together, which was super weird since usually a maid brought it.
“I’m hungry,” I told them both. “I don’t know if you heard the shouting match Connor and I had earlier—”
Luc’s laugh interrupted me. “Isabelle, Chicago heard the shouting match you and Connor had earlier.”
I winced. “Fantastic, well then you heard how much I don’t want another prebiotically optimized, leafy green with just the right amount of lean protein meal. I’m pregnant. I’m eating for two. I want ice-cream, Cheetos, and all the junk food, dammit. I’m not saying I won’t eat right ninety nine percent of the time, but right now I’d eat a four-year-old Twinkie if it got me away from salads.”
Luc and Jimmy exchanged a look.
“Come with us,” Jimmy said. He looked… mischievous. I hadn’t realized that Jimmy could be mischievous. He was usually so meek. I was intrigued.
“Where are we going?” I asked as I was led down a side staircase I’d never used before. This area of the castle was even more poorly maintained than the rest of it, but I’d not been here, so at least it was new. I’d pretty much explored the entire castle at this point. There was nothing else to do. The only area I hadn’t visited was Connor’s wing, which apparently just contained a movie theater that was being used for storage.
“We’re going to the butler’s pantry,” Luc said. “We’ve arranged a little surprise for you.”
I froze. “If Connor is down there with his goddamn lobster—”
Jimmy giggled. “He’s not. I distracted him with an emergency.”
“What kind of an emergency?”
Jimmy giggled again. It sounded a bit satanic. “The kind he’ll figure out isn’t actually an emergency after he goes through the spreadsheet of his finances for about four hours.”
I grinned at Jimmy. “I like you,” I told him. “I wasn’t sure I would at first, but I really do like you.”
He smiled back at me shyly.
Luc pushed the door ahead of us open to reveal… a feast. “We like you too, Isabelle. We want you to be happy here. We know Connor can be hard to take sometimes, and we know your first couple of weeks here have been a bit difficult. That’s why we’re breaking all the rules for you. You must never tell anyone about this, or we’ll both get in big trouble. Now eat up.”
My mouth dropped open. In front of me, the butler’s pantry (which apparently was just another word for a kitchen) was laid out with everything. Everything a pregnant woman’s heart could ever desire, and more. Much more.
There was pizza. There were dumplings and orange chicken and sesame beef. Egg rolls. Dan dan noodles. I also saw Pad Thai. There were nachos and hotdogs. Pickles and French fries. Cotton candy. I saw other types of candy too, plus potato chips, and tacos loaded with guacamole and cheese. Speaking of cheese, there was all the cheese. Literally all of it. Every type of cheese I could name, and several I’d never seen before. I also saw cake, and pie. Sweet baby Jesus, there was even funnel cake. I’d had dreams lately about funnel cake.
“Oh my god,” I stuttered. “This is… incredible.”
I didn’t have words to express the feeling of unimaginable hunger the food in front of me produced. The baby inside me, even though it was probably still the size of a grape, wanted this food. No. She needed this food. We needed this food.
“You like
it?” Luc asked. “We tried to cover all the bases.”
“I love it.”
Luc and Jimmy high fived.
As they congratulated themselves, I descended on the food like Godzilla approaching Tokyo. Like the Xenomorph approaching Ripley. Like my amazing damn werewolf puppets approaching Ashton date-rape Radley.
“This isn’t going to be ladylike,” I warned my companions. “You might want to look away.”
Nine thousand calories later, I was better. I might have just consumed a week’s worth of food for an ordinary person, but I actually felt just fine. A bit tired. But eating is hard work.
Luc and Jimmy were staring at me, either with admiration or horror. Maybe a bit of both.
“So, you liked it?” Jimmy asked, surveying the damage.
I patted my tummy. “We loved it.”
He nodded approvingly.
“You can’t ever tell Connor about this,” he said, looking typically nervous. “Seriously.”
“My lips are sealed,” I promised. “I’ll take this to my grave. But I’ll also be eternally grateful.” I yawned. “I better get to bed,” I told them both. “I know I should probably help clean all this up, but I honestly better get upstairs before you have to roll me.”
“I hope this has gone a little way toward redeeming this experience for you,” Luc said, walking me to the staircase. “We want you to like it here. I swear. This was never intended to be a prison for you.”
I nodded. “I know.” I shook my head, looking upstairs like I could see through walls to wherever Connor was. “I even know Connor is probably not trying to make me miserable. This is just hard, you know?”
Luc smirked. “I really don’t. I have no idea how anyone could be a surrogate for Connor Prince. You’re tougher than I’ll ever be.”
“You work for him every day.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have to push his baby out.”
I shook my head at him. “Everything has a price, I guess. I’ll just have to figure out a way to reason with him though. There’s got to be a trick or something.”
Luc looked bemused. “Well, if you figure it out, let me know.” He smiled. “Sleep well, Isabelle.”
“Thank you again.”
13
Isabelle
The Other Connor Prince
I went upstairs fully intent on sleeping, but I couldn’t rest. My plush bed, with its silk linens and heavenly feather pillows, was doing nothing for me. I tossed and turned. Maybe it was the food baby and the real baby fighting for territory, or maybe it was my conversation with Luc, but curiosity had taken hold of me. There had to be trick to talking to Connor. A secret handshake maybe? A password? There had to be something. Because otherwise I had no idea how I’d survive the next eight months.
Maybe the key was somewhere here in this castle. Maybe it was in the forbidden zone. Or maybe I was just sick of Connor’s dumb rules and wanted to break another one. I was on a roll so far. No reason to mess it up now. It was two a.m. and I was wide awake. It was time to check out the forbidden movie theater.
The walk over to the movie theater was not a long one. It was just up the staircase opposite my room. If Connor didn’t want me poking around in his area, he probably shouldn’t have put it so dang close to my bedroom. Honestly. It was too tempting. It was a miracle that I’d managed to wait two weeks to break into it.
I did feel a little adrenaline thrill in breaking the rules though. Every creak on the floorboards seemed magnified. The light from my phone that I was using as a flashlight felt too bright. Even my breathing seemed to be weirdly loud. But all of six people lived in this gigantic-ass castle. Nobody heard or saw me. I could have probably danced the whole way naked while banging cymbals and never risked a thing. I still tiptoed though.
The door was unlocked, but it was heavy enough to make a gigantic squeak. I jumped about a foot and then laughed at myself. Of course. Of course, it would give a big, creaky, horror movie squeak. It just wouldn’t be right otherwise.
Luc hadn’t been joking when he’d said it was being used for storage. It looked like every prop and piece of memorabilia from Connor’s film career had been shoved in here, all jumbled up, mistreated, and abandoned. It all had a sort of forlorn look to it. He had been a superstar once. And now all this stuff, this proof that he’d once been one of Hollywood’s biggest and brightest stars, it was just left to rot and decay into dust. Like his manners. Maybe they were in here somewhere. I made a mental note to look for them.
Movie posters hung from the walls, showing a smiling, suave, fifteen-years-younger version of the man I knew. I blinked at them in bemusement. Before he started channeling a Grizzly Adams vibe, Connor sure was hot. I got kind of a Gerard Butler meets young Paul Newman feel from him in the posters, like he could flash his pretty blue eyes at a girl and make her fall in love with him all while punching a bear in the face and diffusing a dirty bomb at the same time.
I was definitely buying what he was selling back then. Now, not so much. But back then, goodness. I’d be eating out of his palm. I pressed a hand to my lower abdomen.
You’ve got pretty genes, I told the baby silently. You’re going to be one beautiful human being. Sorry your dad’s a dickhole though. It can’t be helped.
I wandered on through the dark theater, picking my way around boxes. In addition to all the movie posters, there were loads of props and artifacts from his many films in the dusty theater, which I now realized was nearly the size of a commercial one. There were even a bunch of really cool masks and protheses from action movies Connor had done in the early two thousands. There were also a couple of awesome looking robotic props, the kind with fully articulated joints and super gory-looking robot claws. It was an absolute crime that he was letting them languish in here. I shook my head at the injustice of it all.
I could have stayed and inspected the props for a long time, but several large bookcases full of Blu-rays and DVD’s caught my eye. I wandered over interestedly. The man had a lot of movies. A lot of movies. Thousands and thousands of them. All alphabetically organized to boot (someone was OCD).
Nowadays everything streams, but the uncompressed audio and visual on a Blu-ray is still better than most streaming software can approximate. The technology might be going out of fashion, but Connor’s collection was still super interesting to me from a movie-geek perspective. And more than that, it also gave me a little peek into the psyche of fifteen-years-ago Connor Prince. When I was playing with dolls, Connor was watching a lot of action movies. And he was starring in them.
I picked one off the shelf at random. ‘Agent Steve Ranger: Submariner.’ A little lightbulb went off in my head. My friend Lucy, the one who was dating Connor’s nephew Peter, was in a spinoff franchise from this one, the Danger Ranger movies. I’d never seen the original though. The one that started them all. It had been a major hit right about the time I was really into becoming a mermaid and not really into action movies starring hot dudes.
I was into hot dudes now though. Time to take a look.
It took a while to get the movie playing on the fancy equipment, and even longer to get myself situated in the middle of the old, dusty theater, but I managed. Soon, I was pressing play on a twelve-year-old movie starring the asswipe who got me pregnant for cash and then treated me like dirt. I was hoping it was going to be a terrible movie. It wasn’t.
The plot was nothing to write home about. Agent Steve Ranger, CIA, was assigned to investigate the assassination of the UN Secretary General. Antics ensued that then led him on a rollicking adventure with a sexy KGB agent which culminated in blowing up a submarine to save the world. You know, a regular Tuesday afternoon for Agent Ranger. But the action sequences and stunts were fantastic, and Connor apparently used to have great comedic timing and an almost magnetic film presence. Because pretty soon, I wasn’t just watching the movie. I was in the movie.
I was no longer Isabelle Schmidt. I was Agent Ranger’s KGB counterpart, Ivanna Mikhailova. Instead of b
eing little, ordinary, and mousy, I was tall, svelte, brilliant, and as skilled with a dagger as I was at classical ballet (my cover was as a professional ballerina). I could kill a man with my sculpted yet delicate thighs.
Even though I thought I knew my purpose in life (killing enemies of the USSR with a steely glint in my eye and not a drop of remorse in my cold, soviet heart), Agent Ranger had just roundhouse kicked his way into my life. Even though I killed the UN Secretary General, Steve saw the good in me and wanted to save me from my oppressive government brainwashing that made me do it, Manchurian candidate style. Together, Steve and I were going to save the world from the terrorists in the name of democracy and freedom. Or die trying.
At the end, the submarine exploded, but we were able to escape the blast. We survived, but Steve’s shirt didn’t. By the time he helped me crawl ashore the white sandy beach of the uninhabited but also picturesque island, we were both soaked to the bone.
My ruined, emerald silk evening gown clung to my slender form, and only one of my enormous diamond earrings had made it ashore. Steve picked me up like I weighed nothing and carried me out of the water, laying me gently on the soft, white sand. He kissed me, covering my body with his own and claiming me as his. The tension between us had been rising since the ball scene in act two. Especially after we had to take a shower together to make sure we got all the radioactive dust off after we investigated the decaying power plant that the ball had conveniently been right next to.
“Are you alright?” he asked. His voice was husky, and his eyes crawled over my body like he wanted to rip the clothes right off me and have his way with me, then and there. I spread my legs eagerly and he pinned me. “Tell me you’re alright,” he begged. There was a desperate, plaintive noise to his low baritone. It made my body ache for him. “I can’t lose you.”
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