by B. E. Baker
The party doesn’t start until eight p.m., but Paisley says it’s a one hour flight from Innsbruck to Vienna, plus driving time, plus we need to arrive early. I finish with everything I need to do urgently before noon, so I shower and shave and put on one of my regular suits. I’m sure there will be somewhere for me to change into a tux once we reach this Garden Palace. My assistant has arranged for the rental car agency to pick up my terribly small car, so I drive straight over. When I reach the front gate, the guard doesn’t even make me roll down my window. He waves and lets me in with a smile.
I’m a regular at Vaduz castle. A personal friend of the Princely Family.
Crazy.
I park in the carpark and walk to the front door. Usually I have to wait on their butler, but today the door hangs open while people stream through. I’m not sure why there are so many people here, after all, the event is in Vienna, but since I’ve never thrown a party, I don’t have much of an opinion.
I walk inside behind a woman carrying a bag with some kind of clothing inside. I stop in the entry way and look around, but I don’t see anyone I know. So much for being a family friend. “Uh, hello?” I call out.
“Wer bist du?” A woman in a smart, red business suit and black heels asks.
I blink. Who do I tell her I am? “Ich bin Hollys Freundin.”
The woman bursts into peals of laughter.
Because I said I’m Holly’s girlfriend. I smack my forehead. “Freund.”
Her laughter subsides. “The American?”
“I took a few years of German, but to call it rusty would be a compliment.”
“Ah, Americans. Always good for laughs,” she says with clipped consonants.
“Right.”
“Holly room is at top of stairs on left. Door is blue,” she says. “I’m housekeeper Margaret.”
“Ah,” I say. “Thanks.”
I jog up the stairs, relieved to escape the tide of people ebbing and flowing in the entry. When I reach the blue door, it’s closed. I tap.
Nothing.
I tap harder. Still nothing. Maybe she’s not inside? I’m about to turn around and head back downstairs when Paisley opens the door with a whoosh. “Thank goodness you’re finally here.”
Her hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun and she’s wearing only a bra and very small shorts.
My mind completely shorts out. I can’t breathe, much less think.
“Oh no! You’re not Hilda.” She shrieks and slams the door in my face.
I blink several times, but the image appears to be burned into my retinas. I stand there stupidly, clearly not Hilda, as she already noticed, but unsure what to do or where else to go.
A moment later, she opens the door again, this time wearing a shirt. “Sorry about that,” she says. “I have no idea why I shouted. I was just surprised.”
I open my mouth, but I have no idea what to say.
She grabs the front of my suit and yanks me inside. “Come in. You can’t just stand in the hall all day.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
She giggles. “You’d see me wearing less if we went swimming. It’s no big deal. I was waiting for Hilda to help me choose my dress and do my hair. You’re early.”
“Right,” I say. “Sorry about that. I finished early and thought maybe I could help or something.”
“Maybe you can. Mom always hogs more than her share of time.”
I glance at her hair helplessly. “I’m not sure what I could possibly do.”
“You don’t have to do anything with my hair.” She grins. “Relax.”
“I do know how to zip, and I have a decent hand with a button,” I say. “If that’s all you need. But I’ll probably like every single dress you show me.”
“How are you with necklaces?” she asks. “Because those clasps can be obnoxious.”
I smile. “I think I can figure that out.”
“Perfect.”
Now that she’s smiling and not shouting at me, I glance around her room. It’s fussier than I expected. Embroidered pillows, knick-knacks on every surface.
“Oh no,” she says. “Don’t do that.”
Uh. “Do what?”
“You’re judging me. And this is so not my room.”
“Your housekeeper insists that it is.”
She flops back on her fluffy, massive four poster bed. “I assure you, it isn’t. I haven’t touched a single thing in here since I left.”
“So this is Holly’s room.” I sit down on an embroidered footstool. “What does Paisley’s room look like?”
She blows out a big breath, her hair flying back adorably. “Oh man. Actually, now that you mention it, judge me on this one.”
“You’re not the neatest person?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “It’s embarrassing. Growing up with a bunch of people who clean everything for me every day didn’t leave me very tidy, I’m afraid.” She perks up. “But I like the actual scrubbing and sanitizing part. My floors are always mopped, and my toilets are always clean. I’m just not very great at making my bed, or picking up clothing. I mean, if I didn’t wear it very long, I don’t want to wash it. And is it really that much worse if it sits in a pile on top of my dresser, instead of resting neatly in my drawer?”
I have no idea how to reply to that.
“Oh no.” She groans. “You’re a neat freak.”
I shrug.
“Wow, if you really were my boyfriend, this would ruin us for sure. I would make you insane, I know it.”
“Or I’d hire a team of people to follow you around picking things up.”
She snorts in a very un-princessly way. “I hated that so much.”
“They could come while you’re at work.”
“Brilliant.” She beams. “It’s easy to see why you’re a captain of industry, Mr. Fulton.”
I like it when she says my name.
“Okay, I need to pick out my dress so that I know how to do my makeup and hair. I have three options. Are you ready?”
“I suppose so.”
She ducks into her closet and emerges a moment later in an ice blue dress that bares her shoulders and back and hugs the rest of her body from her chest right down to the ground. This is worse than when she answered the door in her underwear. I can’t talk, I can’t think, I can’t even smile.
“Can you zip me up?” She walks toward me and spins around.
I’m suddenly faced with two feet of the most gorgeous skin I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m supposed to do something with it, but I can’t. I just stare.
“James?” she asks.
“Yeah?”
“I said, can you zip me up?” her voice sounds funny.
I clear my throat. “Right.” Work, fingers, work. I reach for her zipper, my fingers stiff, and finally manage to tug it up about three inches.
“Is it stuck?” she asks. “Because if this dress is too tight, I might die of embarrassment.”
I pull harder and the zipper flies all the way to the top. “Got it.”
“Great.” She spins around and smiles at me. “What do you think about this one?”
My mouth is so dry I can barely speak, but I force out the words. “I like it.”
“Well that’s not what I’m going for,” she says. “Unzip this so I can show you the next one.” She spins around again.
I put one hand on her shoulder and turn her back to face me. “I don’t want to see any others. This is the dress.”
Her eyebrows rise and her mouth parts a tiny bit.
“Okay?”
“Sure,” she says, her mouth curving up in a smile.
“Now what?”
“Well,” she taps her lip. “I need to take this off and put it in a bag to take with us. And then I need to do my hair and makeup. But honestly, that’s pretty boring to watch. Maybe there’s a video or a podcast you can watch on your phone.”
“I doubt I’ll be bored. I’ve never watched anyone do their hair.”
She cock
s her hip. “Never?”
“No girlfriends,” I remind her.
“But you do your own hair.” She eyes it thoughtfully. “It has something in it—gel or mousse or, I don’t know.”
I run my hands through it. “Nothing. I do pay a ghastly amount for my haircuts, which I’m overdue to get.”
“Life isn’t fair.”
I look away from her when I unzip her dress this time, and I keep my eyes averted while she returns to her closet. Thankfully she comes back out in black pants and a blue blouse. No more show stopping dresses or bras and tiny shorts. My brain might go permanently offline.
I follow her to her bathroom then, where she appears to have multiple burning-type things plugged in. “What is all of that?”
“This is a flat iron.” She holds up tongs. “And this is a curling iron.” She holds up a long rod. “But you should know this last one. You can do it, I know you can.”
“I do recognize a blow dryer,” I admit.
“Well, Mr. I Won’t Get Bored, here we go.” She turns on the blow dryer and pulls her hair out of the messy knot on top of her head. I’m surprised by just how much hair she has. It blows fifteen different directions, and it’s impressively puffy by the time she’s done.
Then she uses the flat iron for two seconds, it appears, to do something to the hair in the front of her head, and after that, she’s off with the curling iron. In twenty minutes, she looks like an adult version of Shirley Temple.
“That was not boring,” I say. “Also, I can’t believe your hair curls like that.”
She shrugs. “The upside to having way too much unruly hair is that when I take the time to do something with it, it holds.” Then she pulls out a brush and begins to pull it through her hair.
“Whoa,” I say. “What are you doing?”
“I curled it so that it would have the right amount of body,” she explains. “Now I’m putting it up.”
I take two steps to where she’s standing and touch one of the curls. “Don’t.”
She freezes. “Don’t put it up?”
I shake my head. “It looks so pretty down.”
“I look like I’m five years old,” she objects.
“Even in that old t-shirt,” I say. “You look nothing like a child.”
She glares at me. “I want to make my boyfriend happy, but I can’t go to my party like this.” She points to her reflection in the mirror. “It’s way too curly.”
“It’ll relax, right?” I ask. “I heard that once. Curls fall out.”
She shakes her head. “Mine don’t.”
“Fine.” I sit back down on the footstool.
She pulls the brush through her hair a few times and then sets it on the table. Then she spends a few minutes with a teensy tiny black brush and some wands doing things to her eyes. She picks the hairbrush up again and then sets it back down. She puts a few sparkly pins in her hair, a few near her temples, and another on her crown. “Alright. It’s not so bad with my makeup done. If you like it, I’ll leave it.”
I stand up and grin. “I do. I really do.”
She spins in a circle. “It covers the neckline and back of my dress.”
“Trust me,” I say. “Its fine. But, do you need a crown or something?”
She laughs. “We lost our crown somewhere. Dad thinks Grandmother had it made into some other kind of jewelry, but she would never admit it.”
“A princess with no crown,” I say. “That seems wrong somehow.”
She ducks her head. “I’m not much of a princess, honestly.”
I lift her chin with two fingers until her eyes meet mine. “I disagree.”
“I don’t think I’ve thanked you enough for coming,” she says. “I don’t think I could bear being thrust at a whole line of men like some kind of burnt offering. I was too young before, but I think Mom’s trying to make up for lost time.”
“I’m happy to help.” I doubt that I like the ‘line of men’ idea any more than she does.
“We better get downstairs. Let me just grab my necklace.” She ducks back into her closet and comes out with a sparkly silver locket.
“A locket?” I ask. “Do I sound terribly American if I say that I was expecting a huge diamond rope? Or maybe rubies as large as my thumb.”
She hands it to me. “Noel gave me this the Christmas before he died.”
I’m an idiot.
She lifts her hair to expose her neck. I’m struck with a sudden impulse to run my finger from her collarbone to her ear, just to see if her skin is as soft as it looks. Luckily, I’m not that big of an idiot. I manage to work the clasp well enough to put it on her, and she drops her hair. She throws a smile over her shoulder at me.
“You ready to go?”
I nod dumbly.
“Maybe we should come up with a story?” she asks. “Before we start getting hit with everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re about to suffer through half an hour in the car, and an hour on a plane with my parents and my brother. I’m worried they’ll pelt us with questions, like, where we met, and when we became a couple.”
“Oh.” I lean against the wall, bumping into a picture of a winterscape featuring a bright red bird. “Well, we keep as close to the truth as possible. We met at your friend’s wedding. But instead of being an idiot, I actually called you.”
Paisley looks at the ground. “Why didn’t you call?” She touches the locket at her throat. “Are you not done with Paul?”
“I dropped that,” I say. “I think I would have anyway. Trudy is working for me still, you know.”
“Is she?” She looks up at me.
“She even does some research for me from time to time. She has a quick mind.”
She gulps and frowns, for some reason. “That’s nice.”
“I don’t know why I didn’t call.” I can’t tell her it’s because I’m not good enough for her. No reason to point that out, in case she hasn’t noticed.
“Well. Okay. So we met then, and you called me, and took me out when?”
“Oh I’d have taken you out right away.”
“How?” She frowns. “You live in New York, remember?”
“I have a private jet,” I say. “I don’t use it all the time, but I flew here on it. I just sent my team to the appointments I’m skipping in that, so I’m flying home commercial.”
Her mouth rounds into the cutest little o I have ever seen.
“I flew right out to take you to dinner at your favorite place.”
“Home Grown.”
“Sure,” I say. “In May. But we decided not to tell anyone, because we didn’t want our friends to get too involved.”
“That sounds good,” she says. “But you come visit me whenever you have time away.”
Which has been never in the past few months. “Sure.”
“Okay.”
I take her hand in mine. “I think I can sell this. Don’t worry.”
She inhales quickly and I want to kiss her so badly it hurts. I want to kiss her until the frown is gone. I want to kiss her until her hair is messy. I want to kiss her until she begs me never to stop.
Because I’m a terrible person who destroys things, which is exactly why I shouldn’t kiss her like that. I walk toward the door. “Ready?”
She follows me out and then down the gracefully curved staircase, her dress in a bag over her arm. “Should I drive to the airport?” I ask. “Or ride with your family?”
Paisley hooks her arm through mine. “You’re stuck with me.” She drops her voice to a whisper. “At least until tomorrow.”
I hate the thought of this all ending tomorrow, but I suppose there isn’t much point to the charade once I leave. My fingers itch to text my assistant and extend my stay. But what reason would I give to her? The next step for her company is to call Paul, and I certainly won’t help there. “If Paul can’t help,” I say. “Let me know, and I’ll work my contacts.”
Paisley smiles up at
me, and I can’t help but smile back.
“Thank you for being willing to come at this from another direction,” she says. “It means a lot to my family.”
“We really do appreciate it, brother,” Cole says with a smirk.
“Seriously, Cole.” Paisley rolls her eyes. “No odd nicknames. You’re going to have him running for the exit.”
Cole drops his suitcase. “I don’t think he’s a runner.” He swivels toward Paisley. “You’re the runner. Watch out Jim. This one sprints away at the first sign of trouble.”
Paisley ducks her head and I realize that’s what she does when she’s embarrassed.
“Actually,” I say. “I heard she only runs when chased by someone big and scary.”
Her eyes cut toward mine, the corner of her mouth quirking upward.
“But either way, I’m not worried. I run fast enough to catch her.” I snag her bag and toss it over my shoulder. “Now where are we taking our stuff? Because I have a lot of crap in my car outside.”
Cole doesn’t poke at Paisley while we load up, and she perks up enough that I don’t actually step on his foot like I was considering. When Cole climbs into the driver seat and her parents climb into the back, I glance at Paisley.
“Where are we supposed to sit?” I whisper.
“Do you want to chat with Cole in the front?” she asks.
“I’d rather talk to you,” I say. “Don’t you have a guard detail or something? Maybe one of them can sit by him.”
“I told you the entire country only has ninety police.” She smiles. “Did you really think we had guards? It’s not Serbia.”
“There’s no unrest in the country?” I ask. “None at all?”
“Our people love us,” Cole says from the front. “But you can sit in the middle and canoodle with my sister. It’s cool.”
“Canoodle?” Paisley snorts. “That’s not a word Americans actually use. Please delete that from your English vocabulary immediately.”
“Noted,” Cole says. “But seriously. I’ve got podcasts to listen to up here.”
I don’t waste any time arguing with him. I slide into the middle seat, and Paisley climbs up next to me. After we buckle, I take her hand. Got to keep up appearances with her parents, after all.
“You two make a cute couple,” her mom says.
“Thanks,” I say. “I agree.”