Undercover Princess

by Suzanne Brockmann

Stacy had said Helena had died suddenly, violently. It must have been frighteningly sudden for a ten-year-old girl to lose a parent like that. And her mother’s awful pain must have seemed horribly violent. Even though Helena had tried to hide it, Stacy was old enough to have gotten hints.

  “I don’t know what Doug thinks,” Trey continued, moving to the windows to look out, “because he won’t talk to me.”

  He looked so utterly lonely standing there, drink in one hand, the other hand rubbing the back of his neck as if he ached down to the bone.

  “Give Doug a little more time,” she told him. She had an idea for how to get Dougie talking again, but she didn’t want to say anything to Trey yet—didn’t want to get his hopes up. Her plan involved regular trips to the dog pound after school, where apparently volunteer workers were needed desperately to help care for the strays living there.

  “His birthday is coming,” Trey said. “He’s going to be seven. I have no idea which of his classmates are his friends, which kids to invite for a party. I don’t even know if he has any friends.”

  “His teacher says he’s very quiet,” Katherine reported, “but there are a pair of little girls, Molly and Hanna, who play with him all the time.”

  “They probably don’t have a dog of their own at home.”

  She laughed. She couldn’t help it.

  Trey turned and looked at her, and for one awful moment, she absolutely could not read the expression on his face.

  But then he smiled. Crookedly. But it was a smile.

  “I’m glad you find us amusing,” he said. “Most people run away from us, as hard and as fast as they can.”

  “I absolutely adore your children,” Katherine told him.

  “Aha,” he said. “So if you suddenly take off, I’ll know I’m the one you’re running from.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said.

  He smiled again. “Silly. Now that’s a word I don’t get called every day.” He looked down at the glass in his hand. “I’m really glad you like the kids.”

  “I like you, too,” she told him. “Very much, as a matter of fact. Mr. Sutherland.”

  He just looked at her.

  “I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea,” Katherine explained. “It seemed to make what I said a little less forward sounding when I called you Mr. Sutherland, didn’t it?”

  He laughed.

  “I’m glad you find me amusing, too,” she told him. “A little laughter can be very good for the soul.”

  He settled back against the windowsill, just smiling at her.

  It was funny. This entire conversation had taken such a bizarre twist. It was almost as if they were flirting—except for the fact that she’d made it very clear that she wasn’t coming on to him in any way.

  And he seemed to realize that this dance they were doing was only a friendship dance, because now he was making a point of staying by the window, clear over on the opposite side of the room.

  “Please,” he said. “Call me Trey all the time. I promise I won’t get the wrong idea. As long as you don’t get the wrong idea when I ask you to save my ass and be my date for some boring awards ceremony that I’ve got to attend Tuesday night.”

  Katherine couldn’t believe it. Trey Sutherland was actually asking her…out? “Boring,” she said, her heart beating just a little bit harder. “When you put it like that, how on earth could I say no?”

  “My business partner is getting some honorary something-or-other, and I’ve got to be there to accept for him, the slacker. And for some reason, my mother thinks there’ll be less gossip about me if I don’t show up to these things alone.” He carried his glass back to the bar, set it on the counter. “I figured we could have dinner with the kids and Anita, then throw on a tux and a sequined gown, and hit the award dinner in time for some fancy French pastries, scoop up the award and be back home before ten-thirty. What do you say? Will you go with me as purely a good deed—save me from having to endure Diana St. Vincent’s company twice in one week?”

  It wasn’t a real date. He’d just made sure that she knew it wasn’t a real date. Still…“Have you been talking to Stacy?” Katherine had to ask him.

  “Stacy?” He was confused.

  “Never mind,” she said. “Just a coincidence. Of course I’ll go with you. Anything to keep Diana St. Vincent from grabbing your rear end.”

  He laughed at that. “That’s not what I said.”

  “Maybe not in so many words, but it was implied.” She hesitated. “But I’m afraid I don’t have anything formal to wear.” Certainly nothing with sequins.

  He took his wallet from his pocket, held out a credit card. “I’ve been meaning to give this to you. I had the bank issue a card to my account in your name. Just sign the back of it. Do you have time between now and Tuesday to pick up something formal to wear?”

  She took the card. It had the name Kathy Wind printed on the front in little gold letters. Oh, dear.

  “If you don’t have time, there are some on-line boutiques that have next-day delivery. Stacy’ll show you how to sign on to the internet.”

  “Trey, I don’t need this. I can buy my own clothes.” Katherine tried to hand him back the credit card.

  “No, this is on me. Go wild.” He went across the room, toward the door. “And go to bed. I’ve kept you up much too late.”

  She slipped the card into her back pocket. She’d hang on to it, but it didn’t mean that she’d use it. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance at all that your business partner will show up at this award ceremony?”

  “As far as Crazy Bill’s concerned, there’s always a chance.”

  “Because, I was talking to my si—” Oh, dear, she’d almost said sister. “Friend. My friend, Princess Alexandra. On the phone. This morning.” Good grief, could she sound any more uncool? She could practically see James Bond standing behind Trey, shaking his head in disgust. She took a deep breath and smiled. “Alexandra thought she may have met your business partner, Bill Lewis, at one time. She wanted me to pass along a message to him, so I was hoping that when he returns, you might let me know so I could give him that message?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Small world, huh?”

  “Very.” He had no idea.

  “I’m going to be up and out early again tomorrow,” Trey told her. “So if I don’t see you, have a good day.”

  “I will,” she said. “Thanks. And you, too.”

  As she left, she flashed him another smile.

  I like you, too, she’d said. Very much, as a matter of fact.

  The feeling was completely mutual.

  And Tuesday night was going to be fun. For the first time in years, Trey was actually looking forward to an evening in town.

  With Kathy Wind.

  His friend, he reminded himself. Friend.

  Chapter 7

  Doug was silent as they hurried into the shopping mall.

  Katherine had promised to take him to the dog pound today, but their plans had changed when she’d gone to pick the children up after school.

  Stacy had gone AWOL.

  From what Katherine could gather, the girl had found Doug in the kindergarten through fifth grade hallway after the last bell had rung, shoved a note for Katherine into his pocket, and had left the school through the back door.

  “Gone to the mall,” the note had said in scribbled letters. Stacy hadn’t specified which mall, how she was getting there, whom she was going with, or what time she would be home.

  After an interminable stop in the headmaster’s office, Katherine finally had the location of the mall closest to the school’s grounds. The Friday afternoon traffic was miserable and, of course, she’d gotten lost. And then it seemed to take forever to find a parking spot. Katherine used the time to pray that they’d find Stacy right away. The thought of having to call Trey and tell him that she’d lost his daughter just a few days into this job was too awful to bear.

  It was odd. Katherine had thought she and Stacy had been
getting on quite well. At breakfast, the girl had been nearly animated as they’d argued the issue of exactly which movie was Leonardo DiCaprio’s best. And while they hadn’t agreed, their debate had been friendly and fun.

  Or so she’d thought.

  Now this.

  It seemed so obviously and openly rebellious. It was almost as if Stacy were testing her—seeing how far Katherine would let her go.

  And there she was. Stacy Sutherland. Standing alongside a small group of teenagers who were sitting at one of the tables in the food court.

  Katherine grabbed Doug’s hand and pulled him with her into a nearby clothing store. Her instant melting sense of relief was immediately sharpened by a rocket-fuel flare of anger. And she knew when she approached the girl, it would be better to appear calm and completely in control rather than blithering and blistering. She needed to be matter-of-fact.

  She caught her breath, pretending to look at a rack of winter skirts, but in truth letting her blood pressure return to as near normal as possible.

  A very large man had followed them into the store, oddly out of place among the women’s clothing. He had closely cropped hair, and he held himself like a soldier. Like Gabe Morgan, the head of the Royal Wynborough Bodyguards.

  As Katherine watched, the man took a silk dress and a shimmery gold blouse from the racks, and carried them to the back of the store to, what? Try them on?

  Katherine laughed, but then found to her horror that she was very close to dissolving into tears.

  Doug, in a burst of empathy, gave her a hug. “You okay?” he asked, his brown eyes enormous in his elfin face, for the first time actually uttering two words in a row that weren’t Lucky and Charms.

  Katherine bent down and hugged him as fiercely as he was hugging her. “Yes,” she said, kissing the top of his head. “I’m okay now. Thank you so very much.”

  She took several deep breaths and was actually able to smile by the time she and Doug went back out into the mall. And she knew precisely when Stacy saw them coming. The girl’s shoulders tensed, as if she were bracing herself for World War Three.

  But Katherine just kept on smiling. She fully intended to lay down every little last detail of the law with the girl, but not here and now. And certainly not in front of Stacy’s friends.

  “Good afternoon,” she said, managing to sound quite cheerful and not at all put off by this unplanned, frantic expedition to the mall. “I’m so glad we found you. I wanted to make sure you had a little bit of spending money.”

  The look on Stacy’s face would have been well worth filming. Her defensive look crumbled into confusion and finally a rather stunned disbelief. She’d expected to be yelled at.

  “I…had a five in my pocket,” Stacy said.

  “Oh,” Katherine said, giving her another smile. “Good, then.” She glanced briskly at her watch. It was already after four. There was no way they could get all the way across town to the dog pound at this late hour. It closed early on Friday afternoons. “What do you say we meet by the main entrance at five?”

  The three boys and four girls sitting around the table didn’t look particularly clean-cut and studious, but then again, neither did Stacy with her badly dyed hair and dark liner around her eyes. Two of the boys were old enough to have facial hair—or at least something resembling facial hair—growing in strange little tufts beneath their lower lips. The other boy had very long, very light-blond curls and narry a single prospect for facial hair in sight. He was smoking a cigarette—possibly to make up for the fact that, unlike the other boys, he actually looked his tender age of thirteen or fourteen.

  “You from England?” he asked, squinting at her through his smoke.

  “Wynborough.” She smiled at him, prepared to introduce herself and ask his name. “I’m—”

  “Crazy,” he interrupted. “You’re definitely crazy. Or dumb.” He nudged one of his friends. “They gotta ship in their hired help from overseas,” he said. “No one local’s dumb enough to work for a murderer.”

  Two of the girls laughed.

  “Shut up, Craig.” Stacy’s shoulders tightened, and Katherine knew that these boys and girls weren’t her friends. On the contrary. They were completely antagonistic. And horribly rude.

  “You shut up, freak.” The boy—Craig—flicked his still smoking cigarette butt at Stacy. “What? You afraid I’m gonna tell your nanny that your daddy killed your mommy? She’ll find out soon enough. Like when your old man comes after her some dark and stormy night.”

  “Come to think of it,” Katherine said, turning to Stacy. “There’s a lot to do at home—I think we should probably leave now.”

  Stacy ignored her completely, bristling instead at Craig. “That’s not true. Don’t you dare say things like that in front of my brother!”

  Craig just laughed. “What, you think he doesn’t know? Look at him, he’s a freak, too.” He leaned toward his friends. “My little sister’s in his class at school, and she says he doesn’t talk. He just barks like a dog. A total freak.” As they laughed, he turned back toward Stacy. “I think he saw it happen, and it turned him into a retard.”

  Stacy was livid. She was bigger than Craig, too, and Katherine knew that she had to say or do something fast before Stacy pulled the awful boy out of his chair and thrashed him soundly.

  Not that he didn’t need a sound thrashing.

  And Craig wasn’t letting up. He was talking directly to Doug now. “How’d your daddy do it? Did he use a knife? Bark once for yes, freak, twice for no.”

  But instead of hauling off and hitting him, Stacy turned around. She grabbed Doug’s hand instead of Craig’s hair, and pulled her little brother away from there, as fast as she could move.

  Katherine fixed Craig with her best royal glacial stare. She stood there, perfectly still, until he finally looked up.

  “Stacy’s mother died of cancer,” she told him very, very quietly. “You go home tonight, and you think about that when your own mother lets you know how much she loves you in dozens of little ways. You think about her not being there, think about what it would mean to you if you lost her. And then you think twice about being cruel the next time you see Stacy.”

  Craig sneered and told her to do the anatomically impossible.

  Katherine didn’t move. “As awful as you try to be, your mother probably still loves you. Imagine losing that.”

  She could hear them laughing as she walked away, but it was forced laughter. She doubted that she had gotten through to Craig, but maybe one of the others had listened. Maybe they would think twice before being so dreadfully cruel to Stacy.

  And maybe Bill Lewis would actually show up for this award ceremony on Tuesday. Maybe every one of their problems would have easy, simple solutions. Bill would turn out to be the missing Prince James. Stacy and Trey would break their pattern of fighting and listen to each other when they talked. Craig would search his heart, realize how cruel he had been to tease Stacy and Doug, enter the priesthood and devote his life to helping starving children in Africa. And she would find the man of her dreams, find a love as powerful as Trey’s had been for Helena, and live happily ever after.

  Right.

  Stacy and Doug were nowhere in sight. She hoped they’d have the wherewithal to meet her at the main entrance.

  She moved swiftly through the crowds and…

  There he was again.

  The man who held himself as if he once had been a soldier.

  He was pretending to look in a bookstore window, but Katherine knew better.

  He was following her.

  He was doing it quietly and inconspicuously, but he was following her.

  He was no doubt a bodyguard, sent from Aspen, sent to see that she stayed out of harm’s way. She didn’t recognize this man, but that didn’t mean a thing. There were many royal bodyguards, many she hadn’t met, many she had met whom she wouldn’t recognize in a mall in Albuquerque.

  Katherine had asked Laura Bishop to talk to Gabriel Morgan, who
’d been sent to keep an eye on the princesses while they were in the United States, to convince him that she would be perfectly safe while in Albuquerque without a bodyguard.

  Obviously, Gabe had decided Princess Katherine had needed a baby-sitter after all.

  Katherine glanced again at the man, and he turned away. Good, he wasn’t going to acknowledge her. She didn’t mind him following her quite so much, as long as he stayed nearly invisible.

  She hurried toward the main entrance, and, yes, there were Stacy and Doug.

  As she drew closer to Stacy, she could see the girl’s face was tight with anger. She was carrying Doug as if he were a toddler, his arms around her neck, legs locked around her waist. Still, as Katherine approached, she realized that despite Stacy’s tense face, she was singing to Doug. Softly. Soothingly. How much is that doggie in the window.

  “What did you say to them?” Stacy said, interrupting her song. “You know, they only get worse when a grown-up butts in.”

  “Why were you even talking to them in the first place?” Katherine knew knowing why wouldn’t do a bit of good, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking.

  “Where’s the car?” Stacy asked impatiently. “Because, like, he’s getting really heavy.”

  Poor Doug had streaks of tears on his face.

  “You okay?” Katherine asked him.

  He nodded. He looked about as exhausted as she felt. What a dreadful afternoon this had been.

  “How about we get out of here?” she asked him. “How about if you walk? On two legs?”

  He nodded again, and Stacy let him slip down to the ground.

  “It’s a bit of a hike to the car,” she told Stacy briskly. “Shall we get started?”

  “I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”

  “That depends on your definition of trouble,” Katherine said. “If trouble means you and I are going to sit down and have a lengthy chat, then, yes, indeed, my dear, you are.”

  She pushed open the door, and they all went outside. Katherine. Stacy. Doug.

  And several moments later, the royal bodyguard followed, a little more visible than Katherine would have liked him to be.