Undercover Princess

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Yeah,” he said. “I never really expected it, either, and then today it was just suddenly so obvious.” He kissed her again. “Kathy, you make me so happy. Just seeing your smile…”

  It wasn’t “Kathy, I love you,” but it was close enough.

  She had to tell him who she was. And she had to do it now.

  “Do you remember when you asked me how I had met Princess Alexandra?”

  He nodded, clearly bemused. “I know she’s a friend of yours, but I was thinking we should probably get married quietly. And any wedding that has a princess as a guest isn’t going to be exactly quiet.”

  Oh, dear. “Well—” she began.

  And the screaming started.

  It came from Doug’s room and got louder and louder and—

  Dougie burst into the playroom, wearing only his underwear. “There’s a killer bee in my room!”

  Trey stood up and caught Doug around the waist, covering his mouth and cutting off the siren effect. “How could there be a bee in your room in the middle of winter?”

  “I don’t know,” Doug continued at full decibel level. “He was in my closet! He tried to kill me when I opened the door!”

  Katherine stood up.

  “I’ll take care of this,” Trey said. “Go get ready for my mother’s party. Please? We’ll finish talking later.” He gave her a long look. “You might as well say yes now. I’m one hell of a negotiator, and this is one negotiation I don’t intend to lose.”

  “But, Trey, I really have to…”

  He was already out the door.

  Chapter 18

  It had only been a moth.

  Doug had pulled Trey away from what was quite possibly the most important conversation of Katherine’s life, and his terrible man-eating bee had turned out to be only a very large moth.

  Katherine stood at the edges of Penelope Sutherland’s vast living room, feeling sadly out of place in a blue-patterned dress that she’d bought while shopping with Stacy at the mall. It was a little too casual, a little too feminine in an earthy kind of way. The softly flowing skirt went all the way to her ankles, and it had long sleeves, but the neckline was low, making her look even more generously proportioned on top than she in fact was.

  It was the kind of dress one might see on a beautiful, solitary woman walking on a windswept beach.

  “I love this dress,” Trey whispered in her ear as he came up behind her. “I can’t wait until later, when I can take it off you.”

  She laughed.

  “You have a beautiful neck. Think anyone will notice if I kiss it?”

  She turned to face him, afraid he just might do it. “Yes!”

  His gaze was nearly scalding as he handed her a glass of champagne. “All you have to do is say yes one more time, and I’ll make the announcement right here. And then it doesn’t matter who notices if I kiss you. We can spend the rest of the evening necking in the corner and everyone will say, ‘Oh, how romantic.’”

  Katherine looked around. This was hardly the place to be telling him secrets, but this was the closest to alone they’d been since being interrupted in the playroom. “Trey, there’s a reason I haven’t just gone ahead and accepted your proposal.”

  “Please don’t tell me you’re already married.”

  “No!”

  “Thank God.” He edged closer so that she could feel his body heat, so that he brushed against her. “Look, dinner’s not going to start for another hour. What do you say we pretend to mingle and then break away from this crowd. We can meet upstairs, lock ourselves into one of the bathrooms and—”

  “I’d love to.” There, in privacy, she’d be able to tell him the truth about who she truly was.

  But it clearly wasn’t the response Trey was expecting. “Really?” he said, then, “Really? I was kind of half teasing, but, if you really want to…” As he laughed, the look in his eyes nearly lit her dress on fire.

  “Ten minutes,” she said. “Upstairs.”

  Nine and a half minutes.

  Trey tried not to stare at his watch, tried not to map out his route to the stairs as he went to the bar and freshened his drink.

  It was amazing. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually enjoyed one of his mother’s parties. And he had a feeling that in…nine minutes and ten, nine, eight seconds this party was going to be off the charts as far as enjoyment went.

  Trey didn’t look at his watch, didn’t look toward the stairs, but it was impossible not to stand there and watch Kathy. She stood across the room, her smile shining as she spoke to Wallace Tippins, the pastor of his mother’s church. Pastor Tippins would probably be pleased to marry them and—

  Kathy looked up and directly into his eyes, as if she could feel him watching her. She smiled. It was a very different smile than the one she’d been giving the pastor. It was a smile just for him. A smile loaded with shared secrets and deeply flowing love.

  He smiled back at her, his heart in his throat.

  He’d loved Helena. He loved Helena still and always would, but it wasn’t like this. Because even though Helena had grown to care for him, she’d never truly loved him. Not the way Kathy loved him.

  It had been so damned ironic. He knew his parents and Helena’s parents had set them up, knew they wanted them to wed, had even bribed them outrageously. But it wasn’t the money that had made Trey fall in love with Helena. He’d taken one look at her, spent one evening having dinner with her, and he’d fallen for her, hard. He’d thought she’d done the same, but she hadn’t.

  The money and the power she’d gain from their union had motivated her. It was true she never would have married him if he’d been boring or cruel, but who he was had been secondary in her decision. And after he knew that, he hadn’t stopped loving her, but what he’d thought of as a storybook life had become imperfect and dissatisfying.

  He’d honestly thought he would never find anyone that he would love as much as Helena. And he’d also been convinced that even if he did, he would never marry again for fear she, too, only saw him as some kind of high-society prize.

  And then he’d met Kathy—who didn’t care about money to the point of turning down the highest salary offer to any nanny anywhere on the planet. Kathy—who loved him with every cell in her body, who loved his children just as fiercely.

  “If you keep looking at her like that, the entire world will know.”

  Trey’s mother was standing beside him. He dragged his gaze away from Kathy, glanced as surreptitiously as possible at his watch. Seven minutes, four seconds, three, two…

  “So.” Penelope Sutherland took a sip of her wine as she gazed across the room at Kathy. “Are you going to do right by the girl and marry her?”

  Trey couldn’t believe his mother would approach the idea of his marrying the nanny quite so calmly. Still, maybe she could tell how happy he was just from looking. “I asked her this afternoon.”

  His mother nodded. “Good.”

  “Good?” He couldn’t believe it. “What’s wrong with this picture? I just tell you I want to marry the nanny, and you say good. Have I suddenly been transported into an alternative reality?”

  Penelope started to laugh. “You are too funny. I know who she is. I knew she looked familiar. And if you think I’d object to your marrying Princess Katherine of Wynborough, then you’re the one who’s in an alternative reality.”

  “Princess what?” Trey was stunned. He looked up at Kathy, who had heard his outburst. His words had apparently cut across the crowd noise—or maybe guilty ears were capable of superhuman hearing. Because she was guilty. He saw it in her eyes as she looked at him. It was written all over her face.

  “Katherine Wyndham, Royal Princess of Wynborough,” his mother repeated. “Look at the way she stands, at the way she carries herself. I can’t believe I actually thought she was a nanny.”

  Trey couldn’t breathe.

  Kathy—no, Princess Katherine’s—face was pale as she wove her way through the crowd toward hi
m. His mother was right. She moved regally. As if the crowd should part to let her pass. Why hadn’t he noticed before?

  “I like her,” Penelope said, still chuckling. “She’s clearly got initiative, posing as a nanny to catch a husband as eligible and wealthy—and as reclusive—as you.”

  The reality of his mother’s words were like a sucker punch to his gut. Now not only couldn’t he breathe, but he was in pain as well.

  He’d been played.

  Kathy had hinted to him that she was a player, but he’d had no idea the scope of the game she was playing. And she’d almost won. He’d almost married her.

  But the pain ran deeper than mere embarrassment at nearly being conned. He was devastated. Straightforward, upfront, honest Kathy had told him nothing but lies.

  He turned to his mother, keeping his voice cool and controlled. “I’m sorry to have to leave before dinner.”

  He turned to Kathy. “Get your coat. Get in the car. I’ll get the kids.”

  “Trey—”

  She was doing a remarkably good job of acting distraught.

  But he didn’t expect anything less than excellence from a princess.

  Katherine had waited too long to tell the truth.

  This was entirely her fault. She’d been dishonest, and she couldn’t blame Trey one bit for wanting her out of his house.

  She’d said goodbye to the children, telling them the truth about who she was and why, because of her deceitfulness, Trey wanted her to leave.

  Doug had been inconsolable, and Stacy had been outraged. Her father frequently concealed his identity when they went on vacation. She didn’t see the difference between that and what Katherine had done.

  Katherine had tried to talk to Trey, tried to explain. About Bill Lewis, about her suspicion that he might be her missing brother. He’d listened, but he’d barely reacted. He’d just sat there, cold as stone, and after she’d done her best to apologize, he’d quietly told her to pack her things.

  Now there was only one thing left to do before she got into the car that was waiting to take her to the airport.

  She knocked timidly on Trey’s office door. Yes, there was no doubt about it. Bold, daring Kathy Wind had vanished. She was timid, mousy, dull-as-dirt Katherine once again.

  “Yes?” Trey’s voice was sharp.

  She pushed the door open just a little bit, peeking in.

  “Ah,” he said. “Your Highness. Come to collect your severance pay?”

  She felt herself flush with indignation. “Trey,” she said. “Please. Let’s not end it this way.”

  “How would you like it to end, Princess? With a business merger between the country of Wynborough and Sutherland-Lewis? You in a veil? Me in tails? And a room full of well-dressed lawyers drafting up a plan to move Sutherland-Lewis—and its three thousand jobs—to Wynborough?”

  His rudeness awakened the spirit of Kathy Wind. “You think you’ve got it all figured out, do you?” she retorted sharply. “Well, guess what, Mr. Know-It-All? You’re wrong. I came here to find Bill Lewis in the hope that he was my brother. Believe what you want, but I didn’t come here looking for a marriage proposal. It was the last thing I expected from you. I’m not even certain my father would allow me to marry you. From his point of view, if we were to wed, you’d be the one getting away with something—an American commoner marrying a Princess!”

  “Well.” Trey’s voice was quiet, his eyes subdued. “Looks like we just uncovered another nasty truth.”

  “My father’s truth,” she told him, tears making her voice shake. “Not mine. I would have married you without a single thought to anything but how much I love you.”

  He crossed to the bar and began fixing himself another drink, his movements jerky. “You know, that’s the problem with liars. You can just never be sure what’s the truth and what’s not. Close the door on your way out, will you?”

  The last of Katherine’s hope died.

  He was right. She was a liar. And even if Trey could forgive her, she wasn’t Kathy Wind.

  She quietly set the ring box down on Trey’s desk and closed his office door behind her.

  Chapter 19

  Katherine kept the shades down in her hotel room at the Albuquerque airport.

  She was pathetic.

  She’d been here for three days.

  Hiding.

  It had started when she’d arrived at the airport to find that the next available flight to Aspen didn’t leave until the morning. So instead of going to Denver and taking commuter flights from there to Aspen, she’d checked into the hotel.

  She didn’t have the energy for anything but a direct flight. She didn’t have the energy to do much besides curl up in the middle of that king-size bed and be pathetic.

  She’d slept for nearly twenty hours, pathetically missing her flight.

  She now sat up in bed, watching TV, unenthusiastically channel surfing. A home shopping network was trying to sell a diamond bracelet. A sports channel was showing car racing. The weather-loon was talking passionately about a storm approaching the Northeast United States on the Weather Channel, but even he couldn’t hold her attention today. A movie channel was showing Gone with the Wind.

  Frankly, Trey didn’t give a damn. Katherine sniffled her way through a few scenes with Scarlett, then flipped to the local cable news. They were showing downtown Albuquerque, and she strained to see Trey’s office building, only half listening to the report on local restaurants being given bad grades by the Board of Health.

  The Board of Health would no doubt condemn her, as well. Her hair was a wreck, she hadn’t showered in days. No doubt she looked as miserable as she felt.

  And, sister, she felt miserable.

  But everything she was feeling, every ounce of remorse and regret and spine-deep pain, was entirely her own damned fault.

  Trey had called her a liar, and he was right.

  She, Katherine Wyndham, one of the staunchest believers in truth and honesty, had made what she’d considered to be one little white lie, and it had cost her very, very dearly.

  She had loved him.

  She loved him still.

  But if he’d felt anything for her at all, it had been for a woman she was only pretending to be.

  She flipped to the next channel, but then sat up, quickly flipping back.

  Stacy’s picture was on the screen. She raised the volume.

  “…missing since yesterday,” the news anchor reported. “The daughter of Trey Sutherland of Sutherland-Lewis was last seen on the grounds of the Wellford School, getting into a blue Toyota hatchback. Foul play is not suspected at this time, but the police are asking anyone who may have knowledge of the girl’s whereabouts to call their runaway hotline.”

  Katherine nearly fell off the bed as she dove for the telephone. She muted the TV as she dialed. Her hands were shaking so much, she had to start over.

  No way would Stacy run away from home. Not now. Not after the truth had finally come out about her mother’s death.

  “Come on, come on,” she said as she listened to the telephone ring. “Pick up!”

  “Laura Bishop.” The Wyndham social secretary answered the phone.

  “Laura, thank God!”

  “Katherine, where have you been? I called you at the Sutherland estate and the woman there, Anita, said you’d left days ago!”

  “I did,” she said. “But I’m still here in Albuquerque. I can’t explain right now. Laura, I need you to tell me something. Did Gabriel Morgan send one of his men out here to act as a bodyguard?”

  “Bodyguard? No,” Laura said. “You told me you didn’t need anyone, that having someone assigned to you would interfere, so I made certain you were on your own.”

  “Nobody in a blue subcompact—a blue Toyota?”

  “No one at all.”

  Katherine swore pungently in a most unprincessly manner.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Laura, I can’t explain right now. Please forgive me for hangin
g up on you.” Katherine cut the connection and quickly dialed the front desk. “I need a taxi and I need it now,” she ordered.

  She opened her suitcase and pulled out her jeans and a clean turtleneck sweater. She dressed quickly, yanked her hair back into a ponytail, and stuffed her feet into her sneakers.

  Kathy Wind looked back at her from the mirror, strong and capable.

  She grabbed her purse and ran for the elevators.

  “This is about you, Your Highness,” Trey said tightly to Kathy. “Stacy ran away because she was angry that you left.”

  He was mad as hell.

  He was mad at Stacy for running off again, mad at Kathy for showing up at his home like this, mad at himself for having felt that hot surge of hope and pleasure at seeing her again. What, was he nuts? He shouldn’t want to see this woman again, ever. He shouldn’t want to pull her into his arms and kiss her until the room spun.

  But he did.

  And that made him mad as hell.

  She hurried alongside of him as he strode toward his office.

  He had a roomful of detectives waiting for him with a pile of ransom notes, no doubt sent by crazy, greedy dirtwads after they’d seen the news reports about Stacy having gone missing. So far they’d received seventeen different letters, all claiming to have his daughter.

  He was virtually certain she was hiding out at a friend’s house. This was just her way of getting back at him. “She was upset with me for letting you go,” he told Kathy. “As if I had a choice.”

  “You did have a choice,” she said quietly.

  “Oh, what, so now it’s my fault?”

  “You’ve got another choice right now. You can either choose to listen to me, or you can continue to ignore me.”

  He stopped and faced her. “Go home, Princess,” he said. “Go back to Wynborough. Your being here is only going to make it harder when I do find her.”

  “What if she really was kidnapped?” Kathy apparently hadn’t heard a single word he’d said.