“My apologies, Miss Wishner. I’m Sir Evan McCandless, your private secretary. I’ve been briefed on your, ah, background, but most of the palace staff are still in the dark. Might I add that it is a relief and a thrill to have you home.”
At least he hadn’t bowed to her. “Thank you.”
“I’ve brought your schedule.” He put a white folder—identical to the one her grandmother had handed over yesterday—on the bed.
“That is very much not the croissant I was hoping for. Also, I already have a schedule.” Somewhere. Or Mallory had it. Honestly, Kelsey didn’t even know which drawer to look in to find her underwear.
“You had a draft.” His blue eyes rolled, as though the very idea of it was absurd. The dry humor in Evan’s tone made Kelsey wriggle up straighter to fully engage with him. “The best we could whip together on short notice. We’ve now had a full day and night to refine it.” He walked around to the other side of the bed and set a considerably thicker binder next to Mallory’s legs. “This is an introduction to royal protocol. It should be a good primer for the two of you.”
That looked—and sounded like—it’d require actual studying. And even when done in a four-poster bed with what Kelsey hoped would be a magically appearing chocolate croissant, studying still sucked. Her brain rocked at the creative. Rote memorization? Not so much.
“On a scale of one to ten, how important is it that we read it?”
Thank goodness, Mallory was a step ahead of her. Hopefully Evan would be like a really good waiter who had the balls to tell you the truth when asked to choose between two items on the menu.
Evan’s personality came blazing out at them as he busted out a snort/eye roll combo. “My advice is to think of it as your full-time job to get up to speed on royal protocol.”
Oh. Oh. Time difference aside, it was Monday now. Which meant her job back in the States had to be told that she wouldn’t make it in today…or any day for the next two weeks. It proved just how upside down her life was that Omni Creative and her stack of clients hadn’t even crossed her mind.
“I need to call in sick.”
Giggling, Mallory corrected her. “You need to call in royal.”
“That’s not a thing, and you know it.”
“It is now.”
“Please, nobody believed Chad had anything other than a wicked hangover when he called in with purported Dengue fever the day after his bachelor party weekend. So I promise you nobody would believe I somehow became a princess since I signed off on Friday.” Kelsey scooted across acres of bed to retrieve her phone from the nightstand. The one that still didn’t have a return text from her parents.
“I should check my emails, too. There’s a day of orientation, a.k.a filling out paperwork this week for my new job so I can hit the ground running. We’ll come up with a more solid excuse than Dengue fever as soon as I come back with my phone.” Mallory slid off the bed and sprinted out the door.
“Evan? Sir Evan? What should I call you?”
“Anything you’d like, Your Highness.” He tugged at the bottom points of his vest. And then winked. “Although a good teacher might point out that if you read the protocol manual, you’d find the answer.”
Kelsey liked his style. “That behemoth’s not getting cracked until I spend a good hour on the internet catching up with my real life. But a good student could be bribed into looking at it this afternoon if you’d tell her how to get coffee. Is there a Keurig in a kitchenette at the end of this wing or something?”
“The ‘or something’ would be a fully staffed kitchen capable of handling a banquet for one hundred fifty, and a reception for six hundred. I’ll have breakfast for you and Miss Wishner sent up.”
“Thanks.” Her mind was already scrambling through what possible explanation she could give to stall half a dozen projects simultaneously. Projects that she’d been excited about. The deadline on one was this week. She’d have to play the family emergency card. Kelsey had the strong suspicion that the contents of the folder didn’t leave her with free afternoons to stay up-to-date on her project list. But she hated lying to her clients and her boss. Hated leaving things undone. Thrusting her responsibilities onto someone else.
Being a princess was complicating everything. Immensely.
Just like kissing Elias had complicated things. Immensely.
Chapter Seven
Elias cupped his hands around the steaming mug of coffee and wished he had some whiskey to doctor it with.
Because it turned out that finally living out the dream he’d had for so many years—that of telling his father that he’d found the missing princess—in no way matched his fantasy.
In his head, Albert Trebanti would’ve fist-pumped the air, given him a rib-cracking hug, and layered on the praise like whipped cream on top of apple strudel.
It wasn’t the accolade so much that Elias had dreamed of. It was finally taking that haunted look out of his father’s eyes. Lifting the shroud of the past the man walked around with every damn day and making him happy. That by finding the princess, his father would turn back into the laughing, lighthearted man Elias couldn’t remember, but had seen in photos.
Yeah, no.
“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, Papa. But duty required the royal family be notified first. You know how that goes.”
“Of course. Our duty to the Villani family is more important than anything.” It was a sentence he’d repeated to his son growing up as often as telling him to comb his hair or do his homework. Albert put a plate of eggs and bacon in front of Elias, then immediately turned back to the stove. Or, more to the point, turned his back on Elias.
As an attempt to stop this conversation, it was laughable. Elias never gave up. On anything.
Least of all, getting to the bottom of why, when his father should be relieved and ecstatic that his twenty-five year ordeal was over, the man was as stoic and closed off as any other Monday morning.
He looked around the small kitchen of the stone house he’d grown up in. White curtains still hung at the window overlooking the mountains. Copper pots still hung from a rack above the wooden table. But the explanation for his father’s relentlessly dour mood was nowhere to be seen. “So you’re not mad I’ve known for four days and only told you now?”
“I’m not mad.”
“You’re not happy, though, either. Not truly.” Eli pushed his coffee away to clasp his hands on the blue-checked placemat. “Papa, you getting this news should be like fifty birthdays and a hundred Christmases all rolled together into one magic burst of happiness. Your honor has been vindicated.”