The Royals Next Door

by Karina Halle

  “Not a problem,” I tell him, picking up my suitcase and carefully walking over to the fence and going through the gate. At least my black boots have an ample amount of tread, which is more than he has. I don’t know why someone here wouldn’t know how to dress for the elements, but I guess I’m about to find out.

  “Mr. Hunter,” Ottar says, smiling hastily as I approach, sticking out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to welcome you to Norway.”

  I stop and shake his hand. “Please, call me James,” I tell him. Now that I’m up close, I can finally get a good look at him. He’s got a black eye and a bunch of scratches along his cheeks. “I don’t mean to pry, but are you okay? You look bloody mangled.”

  He laughs and then points at his face. “Oh right, my face. Long story. But I’m fine. Here, let me get your bag.”

  Ottar takes my suitcase from me and then starts the very long, laborious process of walking alongside the SUV, his hand propped against the car for support as he tries to balance on the ice.

  “I can just put it in the back seat,” I tell him.

  He attempts a dismissive wave, but that movement alone sends one leg flying forward and the other leg flying backward, and it’s only by the grace of a Norse god that he doesn’t end up doing the splits.

  “Helvete,” he says, which I’m assuming is a Norwegian swear.

  “Are you sure I can’t help?” I ask, biting back a smile.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” he says quickly, letting out an awkward laugh. “Just hurt myself the other day, so I’m a bit, uh, overly cautious, as one might say.”

  One might say that he has a reason to be overly cautious, and that the best course of action is to just abandon the suitcase and make it back to the safety of the driver’s seat.

  But I’m a man with my own pride, and I’m not about to interfere with the pride of someone else. So I wait, leaning against the SUV, watching as Ottar very carefully makes it to the back of the car and then opens the trunk, throwing my bag in. There are a few more twists and turns and near splits, and then he manages to pull himself back to me.

  “Shall we?” he asks, opening my door with a triumphant smile.

  And that’s when he totally loses ground, holding on to the handle for dear life while the rest of him slides under the door, heels first.

  Bloody hell.

  I reach over and grab him by the elbows, hauling him up. He’s not light as a feather, I’ll say that much.

  “Tusen takk,” he says sheepishly, his cheeks going pink. “That’s Norwegian for thank you. You know any Norwegian?”

  I step inside the car. “Not a word.” I’d had a brief affair with a wild Norwegian woman, but the only Norwegian she ever spoke around me was in the bedroom.

  “Ah,” he says. He shuts the door, almost falling again, then finally pulls himself into the driver’s seat, letting out a massive exhale of relief. “I’m sure you’ll learn fast. At any rate, everyone speaks English fluently, so it won’t be a problem if you don’t. Except for Einar, Magnus’s bodyguard. But you probably wouldn’t get more than a few words out of him anyway.”

  He starts the car, and thankfully the tires have more tread than Ottar’s shoes.

  “Sorry I was late,” he says to me, eying me in the rearview mirror. “I run on Magnus’s schedule, and that can be off at times. You’ll find out soon enough.” He pauses. “I really didn’t expect them to hire someone this fast.”

  I give a light shrug, looking out the window at the passing scenery. Farm fields covered in white and orderly forests of pine fly past in the dying light. It’s pretty here, I’ll give it that much, even if I feel a bit discombobulated about the whole thing.

  See, Ottar’s not alone in thinking everything had gone so fast. It’s literally been a couple of weeks since my former employer, Prince Eddie of England, told me that he and his wife, Duchess Monica, were taking their daughter, Madeline, back to Canada.

  Now, I’d gone with them before. Four years ago, they’d moved to a tiny island off the very wet west coast of British Columbia to prepare for Duchess Monica’s pregnancy and escape the rubbish media of the UK, and I went along with them as one of their personal protection officers. We did our time there on the island, enjoying the much-needed peace and quiet, then came back to London for baby Madeline’s birth.

  Now Eddie and Monica have decided that they don’t want to raise Madeline in the same environment that Eddie was brought up in, so they’re moving back to that tiny island and asked if I would go with them.

  I ended up saying no. As much as I loved working for them, the island felt like early retirement. Suffice to say, I opted to stay behind, which then meant I was out of a job. And being a PPO or bodyguard, it’s not like you can start perusing the job listings on Craigslist and start handing out applications.

  Thankfully Eddie helped out. He nosed around and found out that Prince Magnus and Princess Ella of Norway were looking for a bodyguard specifically for her and their children. I guess one of the kids, despite having his mother and a nanny, is quite the troublemaker and is hard to keep an eye on. One thing led to another, and Eddie arranged for Prince Magnus to hire me without even meeting me. I guess Eddie’s word goes a long way in the royal world, enough so that I only found out I had the job just the other day.

  “I’m grateful that Prince Eddie was able to put in such a good word with Prince Magnus, especially on such short notice,” I tell Ottar. “But from speaking to Prince Magnus on the phone, I got the impression that the role won’t be too dissimilar from what I was doing before.”

  “Yes,” Ottar says, rather uneasily. He gives me a crooked smile. “I can see how you would think that.”

  I frown. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing,” he says, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel. “Let’s just say that I’m sure that when you worked for the duke and duchess, they ran a pretty tight ship.”

  “I suppose,” I say. “Not as uptight as the rest of his family, though.”

  “Right. Well, Magnus . . . does not run a tight ship. Ella tries to, but it’s hard when she’s trying to balance her children and running her environmental group . . . The palace can be chaos on even the calmest days.”

  “I see,” I tell him. This doesn’t really surprise me. Prince Magnus is famous for being the wild prince, especially before he settled down and married Ella. Some media outlets even report that their marriage was an arranged one to try and counteract a slew of bad publicity the prince had gotten. Extreme sports, sex tapes, being a drunken idiot—it was hard to go a week without reading something about Magnus in the papers.

  Now, since he got married and had children, he seems to have calmed down. He’s become a public spokesperson for ADHD, which he has, and runs an organization devoted to eradicating the stigma attached to being neurodiverse, or however they call it. He’s actually one of the most-liked royals there are because of how open he is with the public.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Ottar quickly says, “I think you’ll enjoy working here. Everyone is super friendly. Just . . . be prepared for the unexpected.”

  “Is the unexpected what happened to your face?” I ask.

  He nods, looking chagrined. “The other day Magnus wanted to go cross-country skiing. I’m an awful Norwegian, because I’m not the best on skiis.”

  “You don’t say,” I comment wryly.

  “It’s true. It’s like I have two left feet. Anyway, Magnus then decided to turn it into a downhill skiing expedition, and wherever he goes, I follow.” He gestures to his face. “I had a run-in with a tree. Or two.”

  “You’re not his personal protection officer, though,” I point out.

  “No, but it’s my job to try and keep him in line. When I can. I’d never let him go off and do something like that on his own, even when Einar is with us. I’ve even been BASE jumping, if you can believe it.”<
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  I’m not sure that I can believe it. “Sounds like you have your hands full.”

  He smirks at me. “I do. But so will you.”

  “Princess Ella? Every piece of footage I’ve seen of her, she seems as calm and collected as they come,” I tell him.

  “She is, thank god. But you’re not just protecting her. You’re protecting her and her children, Bjorn and Tor, and they are a handful. Bjorn especially. Takes after his father in every single way. Then there’s Ella’s lady-in-waiting, and the nanny, and they both take the term headstrong to the next level. Now you see? You’re not just protecting Ella, but the rest of them too. In some ways, at least there is only one Magnus.”

  I mull that over. Suddenly everything seems a lot less simple than it did a few days ago. But I’m nothing if not adaptable. I’m sure everything will be just fine, and it’s not like I don’t know how to handle a few headstrong ladies.

  Ottar takes the car off the road and down a long driveway covered by trees.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, staring at the frozen fields beyond the trees.

  “To Skaugum,” Ottar says.

  “I thought we were going to the palace?”

  “This is the Skaugum Estate,” he says. “But you can call it a palace if you’d like. Traditionally it was the summer palace.”

  I twist around in my seat, looking around me at the bucolic scenery, feeling a bit panicked. “But I thought the palace, the estate, was on the outskirts of Oslo.”

  “We are on the outskirts of Oslo,” he says.

  “But there’s nothing here!” I exclaim.

  “Yes. That’s why it’s the outskirts. Don’t worry, it’s only forty-five minutes to the city.” His forehead creases as he turns to glance at me over his shoulder. “Did you think you would be living in Oslo? The king and queen live there at the palace, but Magnus and Ella wanted a more private place to raise their kids.”

  Bloody hell, did I ever get this wrong. The reason I didn’t want to go with Eddie and Monica to that tiny island is because I didn’t want to work in the middle of nowhere again. The isolation was fine the first time, but it wouldn’t be good for my mentality the next time, especially in the winter. I wanted to stay around city lights, and people, and women, and traffic.

  And yet as the SUV pulls up to a grand white palace in the middle of nowhere, I realize that I’m about to live in isolation all over again. No more city lights, no more people, no more traffic, and stores, and civilization.

  No more women.

  Just me and the apparently wacky arm of the Norwegian royal family.

  This is not getting off to a great start.

  “Well, here we are,” Ottar says, parking the car. “Oh, and look, there are the kids. You can meet them already.”

  I give my head a shake, trying to snap out of it and put my misgivings aside, and slowly get out of the car. Lucky for Ottar we’re on packed snow and there’s no way for him to fall.

  “Hei, Bjorn, Tor,” Ottar yells over at two kids in snowsuits on the front lawn. “Come say hi to our new friend. He’s going to be living with us.”

  I close the car door and look over at the kids. They’re staying put, both immersed in building a snowman. Okay, so a woman is building a snowman for them, but her back is to me, so I can’t tell who it is, whether it’s the princess, the lady-in-waiting, or the nanny.

  One of the kids is pretty young, a toddler, and is sitting in the snow, shoving the white stuff in his mouth; the other is standing by the snowman, staring at me with demon eyes.

  Oh. This must be Bjorn.

  Ottar hauls the bag out of the back and pauses beside me. “Sometimes they can be shy,” he says. Then he winks. “Appreciate it while it lasts.”

  Bjorn then rolls up a snowball while keeping his eyes locked on me, and I’m certain he’s about to throw it in my face.

  Then at the last minute he turns and whips it at the woman’s head; it bounces off her down hood, snow flying everywhere.

  “Bjorn,” the woman says to him, exasperated, and a string of sternly worded Norwegian follows.

  Suddenly my whole body feels like it’s been jerked back into the past. The woman’s voice is so acutely familiar that I have to blink a few times to try and ground myself to the present.

  This can’t be.

  “Who is that?” I find myself whispering.

  “Oh, that’s their nanny,” Ottar says.

  And it’s then that she turns around so that I can see her face. I know her name before Ottar can even give it to me.

  “Laila,” he says.

  Laila stares at me, eyes going wide as the moon, her face paling to match the snow.

  I feel like I’m in a tractor beam, stuck here in this staring contest that I know at any minute is about to get ugly. I’m glued in place, locked in her gaze, my body swimming in feelings—lust, desire, even a bit of fear.

  Holy shit.

  It’s her.

  And she’s just as shocked as I am, her unblinking gaze sinking into mine, memories passing through me, making my blood run hot.

  “Wait,” Ottar says slowly, pointing between us. “Do you two know each other?”

  Laila lets out a derisive snort, the first of us to snap out of it.

  “I can’t believe it,” she says, her round eyes going narrow, and that familiar burning sensation of her glare comes back to me. “It’s you.”

  “In all the royal palaces, in all the world,” I tell her, my voice shaking just a little. “I walk into yours.”

  “So, how do you know each other?” Ottar asks carefully, probably just realizing that we don’t know each other in the best way.

  I give Laila a look, raising my brow to say, Well, do you want to tell him?

  But she learned her lesson from the last time. We both did.

  “We used to work together,” she says crisply, her posture stiffening, a coldness coming into her eyes—the kind that burns.

  Then she turns her attention back to the snowman, like I never existed. I guess she’s had a lot of practice.

  The two of us had what Lady Gaga would refer to as a bad romance.

  And that’s putting it mildly.

  The last person I ever expected to see again was Laila Bruset, my wild Norwegian woman.

  “James?” Ottar says to me.

  I blink, staring at Laila’s back, wondering what the hell I did to deserve this.

  Actually, scratch that. I know what I did to deserve this.

  My stomach sinks.

  I look at Ottar and he gives me a forced smile. “Shall we go inside and meet the rest of the family? I’m sure you’ll have plenty of opportunities to connect with Laila.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I can see her practically bristle.

  “Of course,” I tell him, raising my chin. I’m going to have to pretend that everything’s fine going forward if I want to keep my job. I’m going to have to pretend that the woman I had a very passionate and tumultuous affair with isn’t the royal nanny and my future coworker. Thankfully, I’ve made pretending into an art.

  Ottar takes my suitcase and heads down the driveway to the palace, stomping confidently through the snow. The estate is big, though it reminds me more of a rich person’s country mansion rather than a royal palace. It’s white and sprawling, with pillars, but there’s a bit of a rustic quality to it, like it needs a fresh coat of paint. That puts me at ease, just to know that the royal couple isn’t as hoity-toity as they could be.

  But that ease is short-lived, because I look over my shoulder at the snowman on the lawn and see Laila’s cold eyes following my every move as I go up the front steps, so much so that I nearly trip and fall.

  “Easy there,” Ottar says to me good-naturedly. “It can be slippery. Wouldn’t want you to fall.”

  I give him
a tepid look in response, just as the front doors swing open.

  “Ahh, you found the new recruit,” Prince Magnus says with a flourish as he steps out, arms held as wide as the smile on his face. “James Hunter.”

  I’m about to bow, as is the courtesy when meeting a royal, but before I can even do that, Prince Magnus throws his arms around me and gives me a rib-cracking embrace. While I’m in top shape, the man is built like an ox on steroids. Must be a Viking thing.

  “So nice to finally meet you,” he says, slapping me hard on the back.

  “Likewise, Your Majesty,” I tell him, trying not to wince.

  He rolls his eyes. “Please. Call me Magnus. Not Prince Magnus, not Your Royal Highness, and definitely not Your Majesty. You’re part of the family now.”

  “Right,” I tell him, feeling a wee bit unsteady, like I’m still standing on ice. His energy is pretty intense.

  “It’s nice to have a Scotsman joining us,” he says with a wink. “You know we’re probably related, going way back, since Scotland was the first step for us Vikings.”

  “Back then with all the plundering?”

  “Yes, the plundering and the ravaging of the local ladies and all that unsavory stuff.” He grins at me. Not only is he built like a Viking, he looks like one too. Though he’s wearing a long gray cable-knit sweater and jeans, I know he’s famous for his tattoos. Then he’s got the scruffy beard and the dark wavy longish hair. “Like I said, you’re family now.”

  “Speaking of family,” Ottar says to Magnus as he walks into the house, “it turns out that Laila and James know each other. Gave him quite the surprise.”

  Magnus stops in the front hall and gives me a curious look. “You didn’t know she was working for us?” He then glances at Ottar. “Laila was the nanny for the duke and duchess, just as James was their PPO. I believe they worked together for about two years?”

  I nod, clearing my throat. I hate that this whole thing has caught me off guard. “That sounds about right.”