by Pippa Grant
“I require a word with Miss Diamonte.”
“She appears otherwise engaged.” Viktor-speak for that’s a terrible idea.
We compete in a stare-down that ends when Lavoie spots me. “Yo, Frey! Brought you some cookies.”
Cookies.
Heaven above, if he’s brought cookies with his genitalia printed on them, I’ll have to hope Elin’s impressed.
Lavoie is, after all, one of the highest-paid professional hockey players in America. Despite his personality shortcomings.
“I’ll get a knife,” I tell him as I deliberately force myself to walk past Gracie without looking at her. “I suspect your cookies need some slicing.”
“Fuck, man.” Lavoie shifts in his space cowboy costume and covers his family jewels. “What’s wrong with you?”
Murphy chortles. “He’s a bloody Viking, old chap,” he says in a terrible impersonation of a native Stöllander.
“Is that Liv Daniels? In the Catwoman suit?” Lavoie wants to know.
“Quite likely,” I tell him.
I’ve no idea. I haven’t taken tally of the guests, and I have no wish to. Every bloody king in the world might be standing in my living room, and I’d be tongue-tied. Brain-tied.
Because I can feel Gracie behind me. Her gaze. Her presence.
I can hear muted fragments of her conversations. And I swear I can detect her sweet vanilla and peaches scent.
The woman is a drug.
I text Viktor a repeat of my request to have Miss Diamonte escorted to my private quarters for a brief conversation while Lavoie and Murphy trip over themselves to go meet Catwoman.
Elin is struggling to pull off her role as a charming hostess. Were we back in Stölland, both her father and mine would have blown their tempers over her skimpy silk toga. Most of her abdomen is exposed. Nearly her entire left leg as well, with the gold clasp holding her costume together strategically placed to draw the eye.
When she knocked on the door to my quarters to insist that she arrive at the party with me—as though we had bloody far to go—I couldn’t decide if she were trying to bait me into seeing her as a sexual being, or to flout what I’ll never be allowed to touch.
As though I might actually want to touch her, which I do not.
I’d told myself it was my duty to see her as the mother of my future children.
And then I’d immediately imagined myself making an entire bloody hockey team’s worth of babies with Gracie, her beneath me, above me, beside me.
Writhing in pleasure as I devoured her sweet pussy.
Lathering her perfectly proportioned breasts in the shower.
Waking every morning to the grind of her sweet bottom against my cock.
Whether Elin had seen the swelling of my shaft or if I’d given some other sign, she’d grimaced as though she found me as distasteful as I found her, and then brushed past me to barricade herself in the bathroom for a full forty minutes.
Now, I hear Gracie laugh—a booming, throaty, full laugh of sheer joy—as I watch several of my guests openly ogle Elin, who is passing her drink glass between her hands, the only hint of nerves in her otherwise regal bearing.
“Didn’t expect to see Zeus and Fireball,” a helium-colored voice says beside me.
I extend a hand to Panther-the-mime while I sneak a glance at Gracie’s reflection in the wall of glass windows. She’s stroking her belly with one hand while gesticulating with the other, shifting from foot to foot and charming the utter hell out of Sokolov.
Who’s still wearing some kind of brown sauce from the food mishap but smiling like a giant oaf who’s been promised cupcakes and lemonade and a puppet show.
“Quite convincing, aren’t they?” I manage.
“They’re not playing Zeus and his lady friend,” a seven-foot-tall blow-up penis tells us. He trips over his blow-up bollocks and rights himself. “They’re a shotgun wedding.”
Panther chokes on the helium he’s sucking out of a balloon that matches the black paint around his eyeballs.
My red haze returns. The penis voice is somewhat familiar—one of my teammates, I’m nearly positive, which is confirmed when an inflatable vagina with killer legs, red heels, and a rack undisguised even beneath her costume rubs herself against the penis. “Come on, Bobby, I want to try the mead.”
Bobby Gregor’s bunny of the week. Or fanny of the week, if you rather.
I gesture to the bar, smiling as always despite wanting everyone to get the bloody hell out of my home. “Please. Help yourselves. Stölland does mead so very well.”
The vagina rubs against me as she passes. “Call me, Your Highness. Bobby’s getting bored. And so am I.”
A feminine snort of laughter sounds behind me.
A glance at the windows confirms Gracie’s not even looking at me. No, she’s helping Loki tie on the bandana Ares had been wearing around his head.
I’m so busy watching Gracie’s reflection that I miss Cleopatra’s approach. “My, my, what have we here?” she purrs. “A gladiator for my own personal amusement?”
A year ago—bloody hell, three months ago—I would’ve welcomed the talons trailing down my chest, and probably taken the woman up to my bed.
Tonight, her touch makes my skin recoil, and once again, I find myself searching the windows for Gracie’s reflection.
“So many superheroes to choose from, madam.” I remove her hand from my chest and gesture to Panther, rock god three nights a week, bloody disaster all the rest. I quite like the fellow. Usually. “Have you met my friend, Ninja Mime?”
“Ninja Mime?” Cleopatra’s eyebrows attempt to stretch to the ceiling.
“Terribly sorry. The ninja part was supposed to be a secret.”
Panther mimes something that is either a desperate plea to show him to the nearest privy, or a demonstration of his ninja skills.
“Can’t go wrong with the silent type,” I add. “Please excuse me, I believe I’m required in the kitchen.”
Because Gracie is piling a plate of food with Ares’s help, and if I don’t speak with her, I may very well go mad.
Or challenge Ares to a wrestling match for her honor, which will be quite painful for both of us, because the man outweighs me by well over a hundred pounds, but I have no intention of losing when Gracie’s honor is on the line.
Before I reach the kitchen, another guest intercepts me. And another. And another. Two ask after Elin, including Alberto Jimenez, former star pitcher for Boston who now co-owns a baseball team of his own in addition to a chain of brewpubs across the Northeast.
“Yes, she is lovely,” I tell him. I clap him on the shoulder. “Quite worldly and cultured. Enjoy yourself tonight, old chap.”
He angles toward her as soon as we end our conversation, and I look around for Gracie once more.
Ares is doing leg lifts beneath my dining room table while more and more guests pile on the table to see how many humans his legs can handle before he gives up. The monkey, draped in toilet paper, is cheering him on. Panther and Cleopatra are sharing helium. The penis and vagina are attempting to simulate intercourse in the center of my living area while mead flows freely, giant spiders lower and raise from my ceiling, and spooky techno music drifts through the sound system.
But there’s no Gracie.
Viktor is standing silent in the hallway leading to the bedrooms. I catch his eye, and the man gives nothing away.
Is Gracie down the hall?
Or has he shown her to my bedroom?
A laughing couple is weaving toward the kitchen, sloshing cups in hand. I accidentally-on-purpose step in their path at just the right moment, and oh dear.
For shame.
My gladiator skirt appears to be ruined.
I’ll have to change.
Bloody weak, wimpy excuse, but I wish to find Gracie. Gracie and that plump belly, her generous laughter, her sparkling brown eyes. Her heart of gold.
Her everything that will never be allowed inside the Stölland palace
walls.
Because she deserves so much more.
23
Gracie
When Viktor murmured to me that His Highness required a word and nodded to the spiral staircase going up to Manning’s room—rooms, really—I wasn’t actually convinced it would be Manning coming to see me.
Both he and Elin were downstairs still, and considering they’d been together—and both of them nearly naked at that—when they descended to the party, I half expected Elin herself to be issuing orders to the guards and for me to find myself in the middle of a mud-wrestling match with Manning’s fiancée.
Minus the mud.
Plus, Elin strikes me more as the sucker-punch kind of person.
Which is why I’m treading carefully through the foyer as I shut the door behind me.
Seriously.
Manning’s bedroom has a foyer. And a sitting room.
I promise the opulence will stop getting to me one of these days.
The foyer, sitting room, office, bedroom, and bathroom are all empty. Yes, I checked out his bathroom. I had to pee, okay? And yes, the warm toilet seat still freaked me out, and yes, I am going to bribe Viktor and Kristofer with cookies until they agree to let me sneak in here for a bath, because Manning’s tub has jets in it, which must be amazing.
But not tonight, because tonight, I’m apparently supposed to sit and wait.
I hate waiting, so I snoop instead.
Manning’s king-size four-poster bed is neatly made up with a deep gray comforter over crisp white sheets, and I wonder if he made it himself. I haven’t noticed regular maids, so he probably did it himself.
I briefly wonder if he and Elin messed the sheets beforehand, but then I shake my head. Of course not. They can’t stand each other.
But would that make the sex better?
My teeth are starting to clench. I tell myself to cut it out and concentrate instead on the décor. The columns rising from each of the bed corners are square, not ornately carved like pictures I’ve seen of other fancy beds of the rich and famous, or that bed in Southern Living last month that had pineapples carved in the top, which of course is exotic and luxurious, because when I was little we could never even afford canned pineapple, and old habits die hard, which means I never buy pineapple for myself now either.
Even though I can afford canned pineapple at home.
I tear my gaze from Manning’s bed to the matching dresser and chest of drawers, which speak for themselves. They’re broad and stately and unadorned, with no pictures or evidence of being touched by human hands. They probably magically repel dust too. No keys in a homemade clay pot, no family portraits stuck to the mirror, no mismatched socks lounging about and hoping their mates will be found in the next load of laundry.
His clothes hang in neat rows in his closet, which is no kidding bigger than my entire bedroom. And his wardrobe is huge. Like huge huge. There’s a rack for uniforms that I assume are royal or military. Another beneath it for business suits. The wall across from it is lined with another rack with casual clothes—button-up shirts, jeans and khakis that look as though they were pressed before they were hung. Even his T-shirts and hockey jerseys are stiff and proper.
The man has three times as many shoes as I do—excluding skates—on a floor-to-ceiling rack on the far wall, and I happen to have an impressive shoe collection myself. This closet is so big, there’s also another dresser in here, as well as two sitting chairs on either side of a round end table.
Even his closet has a tray ceiling.
I leave the closet and head to the office, because it’s the smallest of the rooms. It’s still big—everything here is big—but it’s also the least rich.
Also, if I stay in Manning’s bedroom much longer, I won’t be able to look at his bed without imagining him between the sheets. And as soon as my mind goes to sheets, I immediately picture him naked—totally naked—his skin warm with sleep, his eyelids half-mast, his strong lips parted, and suddenly the fantasy goes to full-on sexytimes with the two of us completely destroying the prim and proper fit of the sheets, his mouth on me, his arms holding me tight, his thick manhood thrusting deep into—
I clear my throat, fan myself, and walk through the tall door to the room I found him in earlier.
I’m not here because I’m chasing a man, no matter how attractive I might find him.
I’m here to save him from Elin and to give my child the opportunity to know her daddy.
I can’t stand in his bedroom here in my own country without feeling intimidated by the wealth and prestige and the very fact that he’s a prince. Even if I didn’t say fuck and dabble in dirty cookies, I’d still never fit in at a palace.
I sit in the high-backed leather chair in his office where he was earlier and pretend I can still feel his body heat. I spin it from side to side. It swivels smoothly without even a squeak.
There’s nothing on his desk, but I do spot a picture on the wall, so I rise to look closer, and I feel a soft smile form on my lips.
It’s a wedding picture.
His father’s wedding, I presume. Of course he can marry for love.
Not that I have any illusions about Manning ever loving me or anything. Or that there’s a bitter taste rising in my mouth at the thought. We can be friends, friends who find each other attractive enough to have sex even, but that doesn’t mean we’ll ever fall in love.
I scan the picture, take in the king’s smiling face, Manning’s identical smile, the broody smile of his darker-haired brother, the regal smile of the one who also shares his nose and who’s holding an adorable toddler boy.
The bride is lovely—she’s on the taller side, with round dimpled cheeks and bright eyes. She’s not plump, but she’s not waif thin either, and she hasn’t covered the gray streaking through her dark locks beneath her wedding tiara and veil. The woman beside her—Manning’s stepsister, I imagine—is nearly her twin, but twenty or so years younger and far more on the slender side.
A happy royal family.
My baby’s relatives.
It’s just me and Joey left of our family. Not that Joey won’t go way overboard and compensate for being the only aunt my children will ever have, and Zeus will undoubtedly help and offer his family as surrogate aunts and uncles as well—we’re already invited to his parents’ house in Minnesota for both Thanksgiving and Christmas—and Peach will happily act as aunt as well, but there’s something special about a blood bond.
I wonder if the king is the type to bounce a baby on his knee.
His bride certainly looks like she would.
I pinch my lips together as the familiar vise clenches hard and fast around my heart. It’s been just over two years since we lost Daddy, and I swear I miss him more today than I did just after he passed.
He would’ve adored being a grandpa. I nearly picked up the phone to call him again yesterday, because even two years later, it’s still habit.
I swipe at my eyes and turn from the family photo, and an odd angle in the corner of the wall catches my attention.
It’s like the wall isn’t lined up even.
I trail my fingers over the embossed ivory wallpaper as I step closer to the corner.
And what I find makes me as giddy as a kid with a new set of sidewalk chalk.
Manning has a secret room.
A secret room.
I can’t count the number of times growing up that I would stare at my bedroom wall in the middle of the night and wish there was a secret lever I could push to take a secret staircase down to my own special private hideaway. Somewhere Joey couldn’t find me, where I could color all over the walls, with a secret stash of Barbies and baby dolls in a pretend orphanage where I’d play nun and nurse and teacher all in one. And I would’ve also had a Nintendo game system of my very own so I didn’t have to go ask Shelly Morgan if I could play with hers, because Shelly could sometimes be a real snothead.
And here I am, in a fancy-schmancy apartment with a secret room.
I p
ush at the wall, and it easily slides back and into the wall behind it, revealing the seam in the wallpaper masking it.
And if I think having a secret room is cool, what I find inside tops it all.
24
Manning
I take the stairs two at a time after making my excuses to any guests who waylay me between the kitchen and my quarters. Elin notices me disappearing, but not even the disapproving crinkle between her eyes will stop me.
Because Gracie Diamonte is carrying my child.
The only child I will ever have.
And she needs to know how very much she is mine. And that I will be hers.
No matter the cost.
She’s not in the sitting room, nor the bedroom. When I peek into the office, my hot blood suddenly runs cold.
Someone is in my private room.
Someone is gleefully chuckling in my private room.
My shoulders hitch, and I cross to the open wall panel ready to pounce.
No one—not even Viktor—is allowed in my hidden chamber.
Gracie spins amidst my collection, examining everything, her smile wide, blacked-out teeth showing prominently, the beer-can curlers in her hair wiggling, eyes dancing with amusement. She stops when she spots me. “Manning! Oh my dog, I had no idea—”
She stills, and her smile drops off. “Right. I shouldn’t be snooping.”
I realize I’m not smiling.
Nor can I fake one in this moment.
I’ve known joy in my life. Celebrating my father finding happiness. Meeting my nephew. Assisting with the goal that would take my country to the ice hockey final in the Olympics for the first time in history.
But I’ve never known joy in something so small as a collection of children’s toys as Gracie seems to be experiencing right now.
That’s what Gracie is though.
Joy. Light. Happiness.
All wrapped up and braided together with strength and determination and a drive toward that which is right.
I want to kiss this woman every moment for the rest of my life.
“Please.” I swallow against the thickness building in my throat. “Snoop away. Enjoy yourself.”