by Leslie North
“No! Fuck, that was a completely illegal kick,” Simon shouted, eyes locked on the screen in front of him. It made Pen’s heart happy to see him cheering the Esconian team, even though there was a Danovian match on the screen over the bar.
“Ugh, seriously?” yelled a man at the table next to theirs. “That kick was totally legal!”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Simon shot back, eyes still on the screen.
“Maybe it’s time to get out of here,” Pen murmured to him. This date was supposed to be fun and relaxing, but if they stayed much longer she was afraid they’d get into a bar fight. Security would step in and stop things before they escalated too far, of course, but the last thing she wanted was for their private escape to be plastered all over the news. She’d made the news enough lately, and if she wanted her country to take her seriously, she needed the next time they saw her face on TV to be for something positive, not a brawl.
“Yeah dude, listen to your sweetheart, time for you to fuck off and let some real rugby fans enjoy the game,” chuckled a man from the other table, overhearing.
Simon tore his eyes away from the TV and stared the man down. “Who are you to define a real fan? People can like whatever the hell they like. I don’t have to prove myself to you.”
She cleared her throat, trying to signal him, but he stubbornly refused to look at her.
The other man took a sloppy swig of his beer and stood up. “I say you do,” he argued.
Apparently Simon’s adrenaline was pumping as much as if he’d been playing in the game himself, because he stood up too. “Yeah? Come over here and make me.”
Two more guys stood up. Pen tugged at Simon’s arm, eyes wide, but he refused to budge. “I swear to God,” she hissed, “if you ruin our date I will make you pay. My chances at normalcy are few and far between now, and I need this one to go well.”
“It’ll be fine,” he said, shrugging her off. Damn it, why did he have to get all intense now? It was sexy as hell, but the worst timing ever. She glanced around the room, picking out the members of castle security. They were watching carefully, but no one wanted to blow the King and Queen’s cover, so they’d only interfere if absolutely necessary. Which, according to Pen’s best guess, would be in about fifteen seconds when Drunk Dude-Bro Number 1 and his two goons reached their table.
“Simon,” she hissed again.
“Listen to your little lady,” mocked Dude-Bro. “Although she’s way too pretty for you. Are you sure you don’t want to get a drink with me, baby doll?”
The people around them stopped pretending to watch rugby and turned their full attention to the swiftly escalating altercation. Pen stepped forward, disgusted, and started to tell him off—but Simon moved in front of her, pushing the other guy back firmly. That was all the encouragement Dude-Bro needed, and he pulled back his arm to throw the first punch.
Simon easily dodged the fist, picked Pen up around the waist, and carried her out of the bar without a backward glance.
Stunned, she didn’t move until they were already out the door. Through the windows she could see the plainclothes security members wading into the dude-bros along with a bartender, de-escalating the would-be melee into sullen cursing. Pen struggled in Simon’s grip. “Put me down,” she ordered irately, but her feet didn’t touch the ground for another block and a half. “Listen here, you,” she said, poking a finger in his chest when he finally obeyed. “First of all, you should enjoy dates with me, not spend them yelling at a TV screen and starting bar fights. Second, don’t get so angry over rugby. It’s a game, for crying out loud. And third—do not carry me places unless I ask you to lift me off the ground.”
His eyes softened and went molten. His gaze slid down her form and back up. “What are the chances of that happening sometime soon? Because I have to admit, I kind of liked it when your feet were off the ground a few nights ago.”
She crossed her arms. “Don’t you dare get turned on right now,” she said as frostily as she could manage. “I’m trying to tell you off.”
He bit back a smile and swept a deep, aristocratic bow. “Apologies, My Queen. I promise to not pick you up again. Unless you ask me to.”
She nodded firmly. He waited. She lasted about ten seconds before she gave in with a huff, leaning in close so the people winding around them wouldn’t hear. “What exactly do you want me to ask you to do?” she asked in a low voice, intrigued despite herself.
He smiled and put his mouth to her ear, telling her exactly what he wanted her to ask him to do to her, and she nearly wrapped herself around him right there in the middle of a public sidewalk.
“I think I could manage to put in a request for all of that,” she managed.
“Good,” he said, his husky voice sliding deep into all her senses, intoxicating her.
Their ride, a black limo, pulled up to the curb. He gallantly opened the door and waved them in. When they got back to their rooms she spent a good portion of the rest of the afternoon with her feet quite pleasantly off the ground while he made love to her with all of the intensity he’d had in the bar. She’d never been happier to be proven wrong about what she wanted.
13
The next day, Simon asked Penelope to stick around the castle and work on the treehouse prototype with him. Since the sports bar date had been a bust, they were still in need of some R&R, plus successfully finishing these designs might lend Pen more confidence in her ability to follow through. He still hadn’t quite been able to get her words about her rule being a “test run” out of his head.
“No, the rafters should be aligned north to south,” Pen was insisting a few hours into the project, narrowing her eyes at him.
“East to west,” he said stubbornly, “or the roof won’t sit right.”
They were at the far end of the castle grounds, its turrets stabbing into the sky above a row of tall hedges a few hundred yards away. Curious guards had been checking in on them all morning, but so far no one had tried to stop them. Simon was glad. This project had given him the chance to see what an excellent building team he and Pen made—she was creative at problem-solving, and he was good at keeping them realistic and on track.
Except when she was being stubborn. Like now. “East to west,” he said again, standing his ground.
She threw her hands up with a huff. “Fine! We’ll do it your way, and when it all collapses like a Jenga tower, we’ll know who’s to blame.”
An hour later, the rafters were in place. Simon crossed his arms to look at them, pleased with the clean lines of the roof. “Were I the smug sort, I’d say something along the lines of I told you so. Because I told you so.”
She rolled her eyes and twisted her rings around on her finger. “Whatever,” she muttered, but good-naturedly.
He glanced at her hands. If she kept twisting her wedding ring like that, she would lose it, and the thing had been in his family for generations. With exaggerated motions, he carefully took his own wedding band and signet ring off and put them securely in his pocket, hoping she would follow suit. Instead, she narrowed her eyes again, rammed her rings down on her fingers nice and tight, and then picked up a hammer to start working on the ladder.
“That’s not the best placement,” he called when she wedged it up into the middle of the treehouse’s unfinished floor.
“Where would you suggest?”
“The far side would be more practical.”
“Oh yes, that’s why people build treehouses—because they love practicality, not fun.” She started nailing the ladder in place with a toothy smile aimed at him.
He shook his head, amused, but by the time they’d finished the treehouse that evening he had to admit she was right. The prototype did look more unique and fun with the ladder coming up through the middle of the floor like that. A guard with good timing brought them a cooler full of beer and Simon waved Penelope over to a bench so they could sit back and take in their day’s work.
“You were right about
the roof,” she said grudgingly after a few sips.
“And you were right about the ladder,” he replied. They tapped their cans together in acknowledgement of a job well done as they admired the treehouse.
“That looks damn good, if I say so myself,” Penelope told him. “And I wouldn’t have been able to do nearly as good a job on my own. How did you get to know so much about treehouse construction anyway?”
He considered how much to tell her. The topic had always been a bittersweet one for him, wrapped up as it was in his father’s death. But he’d seen today how good a team he and Pen made and he decided to trust her with the whole truth even though it made him feel vulnerable as hell. “My dad and I built one when I was seven,” he said, his tone both wistful and heavy. “We spent the whole summer, hammered each and every nail ourselves. We were going to celebrate by spending the night in it right after he got back from a big trip to the Middle East. But he was killed there, and my mother and I were asked to move back to our ancestral lands, as our house had been part of Dad’s allotment for his ambassadorial position. Just like that, the treehouse we’d spent all summer building was gone, just like he was. That was the first time I realized how precarious a home truly is when you’re in our line of work.” He took a sip of his beer, waited a moment for the emotions to fade. It had been decades since his father’s death but every time he told the story a little piece of him felt like he was still standing there, bags packed at his feet, staring up at the treehouse that neither he nor his father would ever see again. “My signet ring is actually made from one of that treehouse’s nails,” he said. “I found a way to keep at least a little bit of my father, a little bit of my home, with me forever.”
Penelope laid a hand on his arm and they sat in companionable silence for a moment, crickets chirping gently around them. “Well, you’re certainly great at building treehouses, and I love how passionate you were about this one,” she said after a moment. “I have to wonder though—since you obviously love building so much, why didn’t you become an architect or an engineer or contractor or something? Not that I’m ungrateful you chose to be my king instead, of course.”
He shrugged. “I chose law because I thought it would help me better serve the Crown. Plus my father was devoted to the same profession and I always wanted to make him proud.” He reached in his pocket for his signet ring, needing to feel it on his finger again, missing that piece of his father and his old home.
It wasn’t there.
Frowning, he checked the other pocket, then his shirt pocket. He found his wedding ring but his signet ring wasn’t anywhere on him. Trying to tamp down his panic, he set his beer on the sidewalk and walked back toward the treehouse, kneeling down to sweep his hands across the grass in the failing light.
“What’s wrong?” Pen asked, standing up behind him.
“My signet ring. It must’ve fallen out of my pocket.” It had to be around here somewhere. He’d get a metal detector, outfit a whole squad of guards with them to sweep the area. He’d find it. He had to.
“Oh no,” Pen murmured, and knelt beside him to help search. But the orange glow of sunset was almost gone, and there was nothing but dirt under his fingers.
“Your Majesties,” said a voice from behind them.
“Not now,” he snapped, unable to keep the growing panic out of his voice.
“My apologies, but this can’t wait.”
Something about the guard’s tone made Simon stop searching and sit up. At his side, Pen did the same. “What is it?” she asked cautiously.
“It’s all over the evening news,” he told them, obviously uncomfortable with the information he was imparting. “A woman is claiming her baby is Nathaniel’s. The Castle is looking into it now, but if it checks out…”
The meaning hit Simon like a load of bricks. He stared at the guard for a long moment before he could manage to voice the words. “Then the baby is the rightful heir to the throne.”
Penelope would be unseated. The role he’d chosen, the life he’d given up everything for, would be gone. He and Pen would have to divorce and he’d return to Danovar empty-handed, or they’d stay married and he’d have to find the same sort of unfulfilling work serving the new King as he’d faced in his old homeland.
In the space of a single moment his world crumbled around him yet again, and he was a little boy again staring up at a treehouse that would never truly be his.
14
A week later, Penelope stood beneath the treehouse and tried to look regal and calm, even though what she really wanted to do was wring either her hands or someone’s neck. The treehouse had finally been spotted by the castle’s higher-ups yesterday. Apparently they—whoever they were—were worried that it was unsafe for a king and queen to be cavorting in, and they’d brought in a structural engineer first thing this morning to review it top to bottom before Pen would be allowed back in. The woman and her team were up there right now, muttering and measuring, determining whether or not the project she and Simon had so lovingly created would need to be destroyed.
But truth be told, she was at least a little bit grateful to have this distraction—because the treehouse wasn’t the only thing of hers and Simon’s that could be destroyed soon. The two of them, along with the rest of the whole castle staff it seemed, had done nothing but worry and research for the last week ever since that woman had come forward with the boy she claimed was the former king’s heir. It had been ascertained that she was in fact one of Nathaniel’s old girlfriends, and the timeline for the child’s birth did match up for having been before his abdication. So if he was truly Nathaniel’s son, he could in fact be the new King, and Penelope would get the boot post-haste.
As would Simon. And what would he do then? Stay with her even though it meant giving up yet another home, even though it meant finding less fulfilling work? Or would he leave? If it came down to that, she hoped she would have the strength to tell him to divorce her. She didn’t want him trapped in a life he wouldn’t have chosen just for her sake. She knew how much his work meant to him, how badly he wanted a meaningful role in his service to royalty. The thought of their marriage ending tore at her, had been tearing at her all week, but she was resolute. She wanted him to be happy more than she wanted herself to be happy—and in a way, that only made things worse, because it meant she had fallen in love with him just in time to give him up forever.
“Are you almost done?” she shouted into the treehouse. Her voice sounded frayed and snippy to her own ears. Regal and calm, she reminded herself, and tried to moderate her tone. “I’d love to hear any updates.”
“Just a few more minutes. Your Majesty,” called the irate structural engineer without even looking up from her work.
Pen frowned. She’d heard that pause before Your Majesty. She doubted it had been intentional, but the claims of a surprise heir had made everyone uncertain lately. That was why her coronation had been delayed too. She could only hope that the castle’s agents found Nathaniel—who was rumored to be off cavorting in some nudist colony in the Swiss Alps now—quickly, so they could perform a DNA paternity test on the child and get Pen’s life out of limbo. The toddler and his mother had already been secreted away in another wing of the castle until the matter was settled.
Her fingernails dug into her palms and she started pacing in hopes of working off some of her anxiety. Funny how not too long ago she would’ve been thrilled to be booted from the throne. Now, the prospect of losing her post as Queen felt like her whole life was slipping through her fingers.
The ladder creaked as the engineer descended. Pen marched over to meet her and waited, forcing herself to keep her chin lifted and meet the woman who would decide her treehouse’s fate eye-to-eye.
The woman dusted off her hands. “Looks okay,” she said in a grudging tone, and everything in Penelope soared. It was a sign. It was a good omen, it had to be. If the treehouse could emerge unscathed, maybe she could too. “But,” the engineer continued, holding up a hand, pr
obably sensing Penelope’s intent to spontaneously hug her, “when you’re building in higher trees like this one, you’ll need to make a few extra modifications for stability. My team will take two or three days to fix it up and do final checks and then you should be good.”
“I want to see the blueprints,” Pen said immediately. She hoped to sell this treehouse through her toy store. If it needed alterations for higher trees, she’d have to put a kit together for that purpose to go with the treehouse plans.
The woman hollered at a team member and soon Pen was poring over the designs, marking down notes and planning the best approach for her kit. By the time the engineer’s team finished for the day and left, Pen was satisfied she could make the treehouse safe for both low and high trees when she sold the final product. Feeling better than she had all week, she turned to head back to the castle.
Kicked up by her toe, something metallic flipped through the grass. She bent down to examine it. A grin broke over her face when she recognized Simon’s ring, and she scooped it up as gently as if it were a baby bird. He would be so thrilled to have this back. He’d been wrapped up in his research lately, coming to bed late and barely having any time to so much as talk to her, but maybe this could break him away from his worries at least a little.
She turned to head toward the castle again, intent on dragging Simon out of his library cave by force if need be, but spotted him walking toward her before she’d even taken a single step. Her smile widened. Yet another good sign. “Simon!” she shouted, waving her hands to get his attention.
He spotted her and strode over, a grim look on his face. “They found out about the toy store,” he said before she could tell him the good news.