Prince and Future... Dad?

by Christine Rimmer

  Ingrid suggested teasingly, “And from this you learned?”

  He laughed. “Absolutely nothing.” He asked Ingrid about her work. Liv’s mother owned an antique shop in Old Sacramento. He listened, rapt, as she described how she’d sold two French Empire armchairs with bronze sphinx mounts and a Winged Victory gilt candelabra.

  And then he turned to Liv. “And how are things at the Attorney General’s Office? Did they manage to get along without you for an entire week?”

  Liv admitted with a good-natured smile that somehow they had.

  There were candles on the table, tall white tapers in her mother’s favorite silver candlesticks. Liv looked across at Finn. His eyes met hers, gleaming more golden than amber with the candle flames reflected in them. She thought of the two of them, on Midsummer’s Eve, dancing like moonstruck fools around that blazing Viking ship, the rim of the red Gullandrian midnight sun dropping at last below the horizon. Her pulse quickened. Her whole body was too warm.

  She felt a smile quiver across her mouth as she accepted the fact that he was here, in Sacramento, that he really did seem to want to make it work between them. And even if she didn’t believe it could work, even if she didn’t really believe she was pregnant, even if the last thing she needed in her life, at her age, with her career goals, was a baby…

  Well, if by some crazy trick of fate it turned out she was pregnant, her choice would have to be to keep the child. She had plenty of money, a loving family to provide emotional support and she was strong and self-directed. For her, it would be a coward’s act to do otherwise. Yes, it would slow her down a little, as far as her goals were concerned. But it wouldn’t stop her. Nothing would stop her. She meant to make a difference in the world, no matter what curves life decided throw her.

  So all right. She would…work with Finn on this, on getting to know him better. After all, if it did turn out she was pregnant, whether they married in the end or not, she would still have to find a way to get along with her baby’s father.

  “Good night, darling. Drive carefully,” Ingrid said, presenting her cheek for a kiss. “Finn will walk you to your car.”

  Liv hardly needed an escort out to the back driveway, but she didn’t argue with her mother’s obvious attempt to throw her and Finn together.

  Side by side, she and the prince walked down the back steps and over to her waiting car. Liv found herself all too conscious of the way his arm twice, and oh-so-lightly, brushed hers.

  The thick branches of an old oak had swallowed the light intended to brighten the area between the porte cochere and the garages. When they reached her car, they were in deep shadow.

  She stopped before crossing around to the driver’s side and leaned back against the passenger door.

  Finn, as if invited, moved in close. “Do I detect a certain…softening in your attitude toward me?”

  “Yes,” she confessed, “I suppose you do. You and my father and my mother have worn me down. I still don’t think I’m pregnant, but I’m willing to accept that it’s a possibility. I’m willing to do what you suggested back in Gullandria, to spend the next few weeks getting to know you better, just in case we end up discovering that there’s a baby on the way, after all.”

  “Clearly a fate worse than death.” He said the words lightly, but there was a note of rebuke in them, too.

  She shrugged. “Well, I have to tell you, a baby was just not on my to-do list for at least another decade or so.”

  “Sometimes,” he whispered, “life refuses to go according to plan.”

  They were quiet for a moment. From the corner of the yard, a cricket chirped steadily. And a block or so away, some lonely dog let out a long, sad howl. The night was clear. And warm. The white disc of a full moon rode high in the sky, partly obscured, from where they stood, by the branches of the oak overhead.

  As the dog’s forlorn howl faded to nothing, Finn laughed. The sound was low and achingly sensual. “I have an idea.”

  She looked at him warily. “Oh, no.”

  He put a hand to either side of her, resting his palms on the car behind her, trapping her gently between his outstretched arms. “Let me come with you to that house on T Street.” He smelled of lovely, tempting things. A hint of heather, a suggestion of musk…

  “How do you know I’m staying on T Street?”

  “I asked your mother. She told me everything I needed to know—address, house phone, cellular phone. I have it all. I can call you or find you at my will.”

  “You know no shame.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “And I have to ask…”

  “Anything.”

  “Don’t you have any responsibilities in Gullandria? Can you really afford to just take off out of nowhere and stay on for weeks in another country?”

  “Liv darling, you’ve got your Puritan face on—your eyes narrowed, your nose scrunched up, that beautiful mouth of yours pinched up tight.”

  She stuck out her chin at him, scrunched her nose harder and pinched her mouth up all the tighter.

  “Gruesome,” he said, and they laughed together. Then he explained, “I have estate managers. I pay them. They manage. And should there be a terrible crisis of some sort, they know how to reach me. I also expend a considerable amount of effort—much more than I would ever admit to any casual acquaintance—managing a hefty stock portfolio. For that, in the past few years, all I need is a computer with an Internet connection and a telephone or two. Your mother has been so gracious as to give me one of the upstairs rooms to use as an office during my stay in America.”

  “You’re admitting then, that you actually do work.”

  “Please don’t tell anyone.”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  “Ah. Your lips…” He leaned a fraction closer.

  She brought a hand up, palm out, between his mouth and hers. He made a low, impatient noise in his throat. But he did back off. And she asked, “What about family? I seem to remember, at some point during the time we spent together in Gullandria, you mentioned a sister and a grandfather?”

  “Yes.” He shook his head. “My sister, Eveline, is sixteen. She lives at Balmarran. She’s utterly unmanageable, I’m afraid. She drives tutors and companions away effortlessly, usually on the day my grandfather hires them. And then there was the recent upheaval over the groundskeeper’s boy. The two decided they were in love. The boy is totally unsuitable for her, of course.”

  Egalitarian to the core, Liv put on her most socially superior expression. “Because he’s a mere freeman?”

  “Not really. I think my grandfather and I are enlightened enough to accept that my sister might someday decide to marry a man without a title.”

  “Then why?”

  “You’d have to meet the boy. Cauley is completely uncivilized. He was ten when the groundskeeper and his wife adopted him. It was probably a mistake that they took him on. He was angry and aggressive, couldn’t read or even write his own name. He’s seventeen now. Under all the hair and the surly attitude, I’d venture to say he’s a handsome young man, if a trifle too thin. But he remains woefully undereducated and socially inept. He’s good in the gardens, though. His father has him working with his top assistant, Dag, learning the ropes, as they say.”

  “And he and your sister?”

  “She seems, I’m somewhat relieved to say, to have tired of him.”

  “Only somewhat relieved?”

  Finn shrugged. “I can’t help but pity Cauley. He’s hopelessly in love with her still. She’s hurt him terribly and he’s pulled into his shell even deeper than before.”

  “Back to your sister.”

  “If you insist.”

  “How has she been allowed to become so unmanageable?”

  “My mother died when she was born, and my father soon after, of a broken heart. My grandfather is her guardian. He’s never been able to refuse her anything.”

  There was, she realized, so very much she didn’t know. “Your grandfather
, what’s his name?”

  “Balder.”

  “A true Norse name.”

  He laughed. “How would you know?”

  “My mother taught us the myths—at least the major ones. Balder, as I recall, was the son of Odin and Frigg. He was much beloved by the gods. His mother fixed it so nothing could kill him.”

  “Except a dart made of mistletoe.” He leaned in closer again. “Take me home with you….”

  She breathed in the intoxicating scent of him, admired the shadowed shape of his mouth, felt the pull of his gaze through the darkness. His suggestion did tempt her—far too much. “Uh-uh.”

  He bent closer. “Allow me the opportunity to convince you….” His mouth was an inch from hers. So far, she’d resisted the desire to kiss him. But she was weakening. And with his mouth so close, she couldn’t keep herself from thinking that if she were to move toward him a fraction, their lips would meet.

  “I don’t…” She hadn’t the faintest idea what she’d meant to say next.

  “Like this.” He leaned forward the necessary minute distance. His mouth touched hers—too briefly. And then he pulled back. “What would you like, Liv?”

  “I…”

  “What do you want?” As if he didn’t know very well. “A kiss?”

  How was she supposed to make a rational decision, with his arms on either side of her and his wonderful, hard body brushing the front of her and his lips no more than a breath away?

  No doubt about it. It was happening again, that distressing problem he so easily created whenever he was near: the problem of a precipitous drop in her IQ….

  And just look what he had done, after tempting her so thoroughly? He’d ended by making it, undeniably, her choice.

  She wasn’t as strong as she probably should have been, as strong as she’d always considered herself until recently—recently being ever since she’d met this particular impossible, too-charming man. “Oh, Finn.” And then she was leaning into him, capturing that wonderful, skilled, hot mouth of his.

  He took care of the rest. Those lean arms closed around her and his body pressed close. And his mouth….

  With a small, lost cry of surrender, Liv wrapped her arms around his neck.

  His tongue entered quickly, sliding along the top of hers, pushing all the way in, then slowly, teasingly retreating.

  No way could she stop her own tongue from following, into the hot, wet cave beyond his lips. His teeth closed, lightly, and her tongue was captive. And then there was his tongue again, slipping beneath hers in a liquid, oh-so-lovely caress.

  Oh, how did he do it? When Finn Danelaw kissed her, she went spinning, deliciously, out of control. His hands moved, pressing, rubbing, down over the curve of her bottom, and back up, insinuating themselves under the hem of her gauzy blouse, so he could rub and stroke her up and down her spine. Her skin burned and tingled everywhere that he touched. His mouth held hers captive as his tongue worked its hot magic. One hand curved possessively at her waist while the other was slipping around to the front of her, then moving, oh-so-slowly down….

  And down…

  And if they kept on like this, they’d end up stretched out naked on her mother’s driveway.

  Uh-uh.

  From some source of good sense she’d almost forgotten she possessed, she slid her palms down to his chest and exerted a light but definite pressure.

  After a moment, with obvious reluctance, he lifted his head. She saw the white flash of his teeth in the darkness. “Change your mind?”

  What mind? “About?”

  “Allowing me to come home with you.”

  She sucked in a calming breath, let it out very carefully and shook her head.

  He looked at her for a long moment. Finally he asked with rueful good humor, “That wasn’t a no, was it?”

  “It was.”

  “How discouraging.”

  “But tomorrow night—”

  His teeth flashed again. “At last.”

  “You didn’t let me finish.” Her lips felt swollen, tender. Hot. She had to resist the urge to raise a hand and touch them. “I was going to say we’d go to dinner, if you’d like.”

  “Dinner.” It clearly was not what he’d had in mind.

  “Yes, dinner. We’ll talk. We’ll…enjoy each other’s company.”

  “I’m all for enjoyment, in any form.”

  “It’s a date, then—say seven-thirty, my house?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  She felt his heart beating under her hand. And it was crazy, but she could have stood there forever, with Finn, in her mother’s driveway, surrounded by warm summer darkness, beneath the old oak tree. “I…well, I guess there are things to be said for relentless pursuit.”

  He caught one of her hands and kissed the tops of her knuckles, causing them to tingle in a heady, lovely way. “I assure you, my darling, I have only begun to assail the walls around your stubborn heart.”

  Chapter Eight

  Liv’s cell phone rang as she was pulling in beneath the carport at the back of her borrowed house on T Street. She dug the thing out of her purse and flipped it open.

  The number in the display was to Simon’s cell.

  For a moment of which she was not the least bit proud, she considered not answering. Then, thoroughly disgusted with herself, she pushed the talk button and put the phone to her ear.

  “Liv?”

  “Hi.”

  “At last, I caught you.” He sounded…she couldn’t tell. Worried? Suspicious? Maybe he had read about her and Finn in the tabloids.

  “Liv? Are you there?”

  “Right here. And it’s been pretty crazy, since I got back. I should have called you, I know, but I…” She what? There was no excuse for not having called him. She finished lamely, “Well, it’s been such a zoo….”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I just got home—to the T Street house?” She pressed her fingers to her lips. It seemed as if she could still feel the hot pressure of Finn’s mouth there. Fifteen minutes ago, in her mother’s driveway, with Finn’s arms around her, she’d felt pretty good about everything. She was finally taking charge, dealing with the mess she’d made in a way that everyone involved—meaning herself and her family and Finn and the baby that might or might not be coming—could accept.

  Simon hadn’t figured in the equation. She hadn’t so much as considered him. Which made her feel like something very low—a snail, a slug—something that crawls along the ground and leaves a slime trail.

  “Liv, are you all right?”

  “Fine. Really. And where has the future senator dragged you off to this week?”

  “Right here,” he said, and again named the hotel he’d mentioned in his phone message yesterday. “Remember, the rally today?”

  “Oh. Yes. The rally. Of course.” The one she’d promised to attend. “I’m sorry, Simon. As I said, it’s just been—”

  “Never mind,” he said glumly. “It’s okay.”

  They both knew it wasn’t. She asked, too brightly, “How did it go?”

  “Great.”

  “Well. Hey. Okay.”

  “We’re leaving for Salinas tomorrow. He’s got a speech Wednesday, the UFW branch there. I was hoping, maybe, I could see you tonight.”

  “Ah,” she said, as if that were an answer.

  He asked nervously, “Where have you been, anyway?”

  “Dinner. At Mom’s.” It was the truth, just not all of it. Oh, she despised herself more by the minute.

  “Well,” he said, all glumness again. “It is late. I’m sure you’re tired.”

  No more excuses, she lectured herself. She had to stop putting this off. “Why don’t you come over.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” he said, suddenly firm. “I think I should. I think we need to talk.”

  Simon appeared at the door ten minutes later. Liv saw the paper rolled in his fist and knew he’d been reading about he
r supposed engagement to Finn.

  “The World Tattler,” he said, and tried to smile. “Hot off the presses.”

  The World Tattler was jam-packed with photos of her and Finn at the airport yesterday. The story included the obligatory rehash of the old, sad tale of how her mother, an American heiress of Gullandrian descent, had traveled to the land of her forefathers and met Osrik Thorson, the soon-to-be king. After a whirlwind fairy-tale courtship, they’d wed; she’d borne him five children—two sons and triplet daughters—and then left him, taking the three tiny princesses to raise as Americans. The deaths of Liv’s brothers received mention under the heading, Tragedy Upon Tragedy. And then there was the bit about Elli and Hauk: The Princess And Her Warrior Groom.

  And last but not least, the intrepid Tattler staff had managed to dig up a few pictures of Finn escorting past girlfriends. The caption read, Former Flames Of The Playboy Prince. Liv couldn’t help noting that the women were all gorgeous, much better looking than she. One was a fairly well known Danish actress with absolutely spectacular breasts. All the women seemed to glow from within, as if they’d found true love at last.

  “Charming,” Liv said with a scowl.

  “Liv, what is going on?” Simon looked at her as if she’d stabbed him to the heart. “Are you marrying this guy?”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “Simon.”

  “Yes?” He looked at her desperately, longing for her to explain.

  There was nothing to explain. In fact, there was only one thing to say. “I’m sorry, Simon. I’ve behaved badly. Things are…suddenly all turned around in my life. I asked you here to tell you I won’t be seeing you anymore.”

  “You mean you’re in love with this guy?”

  “No.” She said it far too quickly, as if she had to deny it to herself, which was crazy. Of course, she wasn’t in love with Finn. She was…kind of nuts about him, okay. A little bit out of her head when he was around. It was purely physical, and she was ashamed to admit her own—oh, what to call it—her purely sexual weakness? But as to her heart? It wasn’t involved.

  Simon was still sitting there, waiting for her to make it all clear to him. She tried again. “I mean…oh, Simon. You and I, well, we never had any real commitment. We just shared a sort of un-spoken understanding. And I’ve realized in the last few days that I can’t, um, share that with you anymore.”