A Thoroughly Modern Princess Read online

  Their faces were inches apart, eyes locked together.

  “Famished.”

  He leaned closer still.

  “Remi . . .”

  “Josephine . . .”

  She felt his mouth brush hers, ever so lightly. She could smell spearmint toothpaste on his breath, mingling with the sweet taste of raspberry on his lips.

  She trembled, her eyes closed, wanting more . . . so much more than this.

  “I wish . . .”

  Her eyes snapped open.

  “What, Remi? What do you wish?”

  “Never mind,” he said, drawing away. “It doesn’t matter what I wish. Wishes are for commoners.”

  I wish I had cab fare, Granger thought as he and Emmaline emerged from the diner two hours later. The rain had turned into a deluge.

  To his astonishment, Emmaline—who had trudged gingerly there on the way over—splashed right out onto the sidewalk.

  “Here, wait, you can put my jacket over your head,” he offered, hurrying after her.

  “No, it’s fine,” she said, tilting her face up to the overcast sky. There was nary a hint of light; dawn was still a few hours away. He had yet to sleep a wink but he wasn’t the least bit weary.

  “You’re going to get soaked,” he advised Emmaline, who didn’t seem to mind.

  “I got soaked on the way over,” she said with a shrug. “It wasn’t so bad.”

  He marveled at this bold turn. She seemed to have lost every ounce of restraint. She had ordered like a famished trucker, eaten every bite with gusto, laughed uproariously at all Granger’s jokes . . . and now here she was, standing in the middle of the street in the rain.

  It was as though she didn’t care who saw her—or what anyone thought, including Granger.

  Granted, the narrow block was off the beaten path and all but deserted at this hour—though as he had predicted, the diner had been busy. He had also been right about nobody giving Emmaline and her wig and sunglasses a second glance.

  Maybe the anonymity had reassured her.

  Or maybe just the sweet taste of freedom. Of what life was like outside the cage.

  Granger leaned against a street lamp and folded his arms across his chest, watching Emmaline.

  Thunder rumbled overhead. Rain poured down on her as she stood, face tilted up and arms outstretched. She opened her mouth and caught raindrops on her tongue. He saw streaks of black makeup appear on her cheeks below the rims of the sunglasses.

  “Shall we go?” he asked.

  “Do we have to? This is glorious.”

  “We’ll take the long way home,” he promised.

  She pouted. “I wish we never had to go back.”

  “We can go out again tomorrow night.”

  Her face lit up. “In the rain?”

  “If it rains. If it doesn’t . . .”

  “We’ll go out anyway. I’ll probably need more bacon.”

  “After the pound you just ate?” He grinned at her. “What’s gotten into you, Princess?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think I do.” He lifted her sunglasses and looked into her eyes. “It’s passion.”

  “Passion?” she echoed breathlessly.

  “Passion for food, for life, for—”

  “For you?” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. On the lips. With passion.

  Granger kissed her back. With passion.

  And they quickly concluded that it was best not to take the long way home after all.

  Nine

  Oozing contentment, Emmaline lounged on the couch, eating bonbons and waving her bare feet, toes separated by cotton balls, in the air as her cherry-colored polish dried.

  “Look at that—Sultri has gained at least ten pounds,” Brynn announced, transfixed by the television screen.

  “Which one is Sultri?”

  “The brunette. The other one is Jasmine, Eva’s long-lost half sister.”

  “Who is Eva again?” Emmaline asked. They were watching Dusk Till Dawn, Brynn’s favorite soap opera.

  “Eva is the blind one. She lost her eyesight in the plane crash that killed her new husband, and then, just when she was getting the hang of her disability, her seeing-eye dog was hit by a steamroller driven by her ex-husband, Dirk.”

  “Isn’t Dirk the one she was kissing in the last scene.”

  “They’ve reconciled,” Brynn said solemnly, popping a bonbon into her mouth and offering the box to Emmaline, who helped herself to another.

  The closest thing Emmaline had ever seen to an American soap were episodes of Melrose Place on Verdunian cable, a decade after the show had been popular in the States.

  But Brynn was initiating her into the scandalous world of Dusk Till Dawn, explaining the characters and their relationships during the commercial breaks.

  “The great thing about soaps,” Brynn said, and paused to take a long sip of champagne from her half-filled flute, “is that you can miss two months’ worth of episodes, watch for fifteen minutes, and pretty much pick up where you left off.”

  “That’s good to know,” Emmaline said, “because I can’t imagine being able to actually sit down and watch a full hour of this every day.”

  “Why not? What else do you have to do?”

  Emmaline thought about it. “Nothing,” she said, marveling at the uncluttered days that stretched before her.

  For the first time in her life, she was underscheduled. In fact, she wasn’t scheduled at all. And she rather liked the feeling.

  Granger had initiated her into life outside the cage. Now that she had been out and unrecognized in her wig and sunglasses, she had let him talk her into a variety of other escapades.

  For someone who had lived his life in Manhattan’s wealthy circles, Granger was full of ideas for inexpensive ways to show her New York.

  They had taken moonlit walks up and down Fifth Avenue, daring midday strolls through Central Park in broad daylight, and even a round-trip journey through the harbor on the Staten Island ferry. She had glimpsed the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the dazzling city skyline from afar.

  She had eaten hot dogs and pretzels from a pushcart; had seen a Yankee game from the bleachers and second acts of several Broadway shows.

  “Do you miss your old life, Emmie?” Brynn asked, as another soap scene evaporated into a commercial for a feminine hygiene product.

  “I don’t miss it at the moment.” And she certainly didn’t miss being called “Your Highness.” She had never had a nickname in her life, and she found herself reveling in having Brynn call her Emmie. Fenella would have been horrified, she thought gleefully.

  “How about Prince Remi? Do you ever miss him?”

  “Sometimes,” Emmaline said, refilling her own champagne flute with milk. “But not in a romantic way,” she found herself confiding.

  “That’s because you’re in love with Granger.”

  Emmaline choked on her sip of milk. “I am not in love with Granger. I told you—”

  “Yes, I know what you told me,” Brynn said with maddening aplomb. “You and Granger had a one-night stand, and that’s how you became pregnant, and your staying here with him is only temporary and strictly platonic—”

  “It is!” Emmaline protested, glad that Brynn couldn’t read her mind, which was currently replaying an image of last night’s heated encounter. She forced herself to keep her gaze on Brynn’s face, rather than allowing it to drift across the room to the incriminating bed.

  “I don’t buy it,” Brynn said. “I think that the two of you are madly in love.”

  “You haven’t even seen us together!”

  “Well, this is ridiculous. I’ve been here every day, and Granger hasn’t been here at all.”

  Except at night, Emmaline thought. And the last few nights were something she didn’t want to discuss with Brynn.

  How could she possibly explain what was going on between her and Granger when she didn’t understand it herself? She would tell herself, before he walk
ed in the door, that she couldn’t let it happen again. That she should sleep alone in the queen-sized bed and he should sleep on the pullout sofa.

  Then Granger would appear, and their eyes would lock, and moments later she would find herself in his arms.

  “Did you tell him about my offer?” Brynn was asking.

  Emmaline forced her mind back to reality. Financial reality—which was dismal, indeed. “I told him,” she said, “and he said to thank you, but to tell you that it won’t be necessary.”

  “Did you tell him that the money would be a gift, and not a loan?”

  “Of course. He said that he doesn’t want a gift.”

  “Especially not from me. Is that it?” Brynn shook her head. “I know him so well. The man is as stubborn as his grandfather.”

  “He wants to find financing on his own.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Brynn said impatiently, aiming the remote control at the television.

  Emmaline glanced at the screen, where a box of juice with a human head and legs was dancing its way out of the refrigerator. “It is ridiculous,” she said. “Nearly all American television commercials are ridiculous.”

  “I meant Granger’s refusing to take a gift of money from me—not the commercial,” Brynn said, flipping the channel.

  Emmaline had noticed that she liked to do that—flip from station to station during commercials. Brynn called it channel surfing. Granger did it, too. Americans seemed to have incredibly short attention spans.

  For some things, at least, she amended, blushing as she recalled certain things—pleasurable, erotic things—that seemed to hold Granger’s attention. She felt a stirring in the pit of her stomach and wondered when, exactly, he would be home.

  “What kind of man leaves a perfectly lucrative job and one of the most desirable apartments in Manhattan?” Brynn asked. “Which reminds me . . . did you tell him that the two of you are welcome to move in with me? There’s plenty of room. You can have an entire floor of the brownstone.”

  “I told him, and he said—”

  “Let me guess. He said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ ”

  What Granger had said was that Brynn should mind her own business and stop trying to thwart his efforts to support himself and Emmaline, and that it was obvious she didn’t believe that he was capable of doing so.

  Brynn sighed. “It’s simply beyond me why—oh, Emmie, look!”

  Emmaline looked.

  There, on the television screen, was a close-up of Prince Remi. That, in and of itself, wasn’t unusual. Though the news coverage of her disappearance had let up a bit, the royal wedding saga still made up a good part of the daily cable news coverage.

  But this was fresh, recent footage of Remi—and he was, quite clearly, giving a sit-down interview.

  That never happened. Remi didn’t give interviews. Few royals did, particularly when they found themselves in potentially scandalous situations.

  Suddenly the image of Remi gave way to one of a smiling blond reporter who looked vaguely familiar.

  “I’m Debi Hanson, and you can see my exclusive interview with Prince Remi of Buiron this evening at eight o’clock right here on channel twelve.”

  Emmaline was speechless.

  Brynn, as usual, was not.

  “You know, Granger is good-looking and all, but there’s something about that Prince Remi . . .” Brynn shook her head. “I just don’t see how you could have jilted a man like that. And just think—you would’ve been Emmie and Remi.”

  Emmaline found her voice. “We would never have been Emmie and Remi, Brynn. We didn’t have that kind of relationship.”

  “What kind of relationship did you have?”

  Emmaline faltered. How could she possibly explain it to Brynn? To anyone? Nobody could ever understand what it was like to be engaged to a man you could never love.

  Nor could anybody understand what it was like to be in love with a man you could never—

  No.

  No!

  She was not in love with Granger Lockwood.

  She simply refused to be in love with Granger Lockwood.

  And that, she resolved firmly, was that.

  Granger stepped into Klingerman’s Kopies, carrying a manila folder containing his revised business plan. He’d been using the computer at a midtown library all day, trying to come up with something that would lure potential backers.

  The place was quiet at this hour on a Friday afternoon. Only two of the two dozen or so photocopy machines were being operated, one by a befuddled-looking elderly woman, and the other by a college student with a goatee and several painful-looking piercings.

  At the counter, a teenaged girl in a bright yellow Klingerman’s smock was leaning against a desk and talking on the telephone.

  He checked his watch. His meeting with one of his grandfather’s most powerful rivals was scheduled for twenty minutes from now, forty blocks uptown and across the park.

  He hadn’t originally planned to approach Anderson Lowell. Personally, he couldn’t stand the man. Professionally, he didn’t trust him. But he was desperate.

  He hurried to the nearest machine and began putting his papers in order, ready to make copies.

  “Miss!” called the elderly woman.

  “Yeah, so then I told him to get a life,” the teenaged clerk said into the phone, as she twirled a strand of hair around her finger. “And do you know what he said to me?”

  Granger pressed the Collate button and sent his first document through the machine.

  “Miss!” the elderly woman called, more urgently.

  “Yeah, totally! How did you guess?” the teenaged girl said, oblivious to everything but her conversation. “And do you know what I said to that?”

  “Miss!”

  Granger turned to find the elderly woman waving her arms in distress as the color copy machine she was operating spewed out sheet after sheet of paper.

  “Help!” she called frantically. “Somebody, please. I can’t stop this! I only wanted two copies!”

  “That’s exactly what I said,” the teenaged girl told the phone. “And I’m soooo not into discussing it with him any further.”

  Granger glanced at the multipierced student. He was wearing headphones, absorbed in his music and his copies.

  “Help!” The old lady jabbed button after button on the copy machine. “How do you turn it off?”

  “Let me take a look.” Granger hurried over to her and examined the machine quickly before pressing a button.

  The copier abruptly went still.

  “Oh my goodness! You are amazing, young man. How did you do that?”

  “I just pushed this,” Granger said modestly, pointing at a prominent red button labeled Off.

  “Do you work here?”

  No, but if I can’t get my business plan off the ground, I might have to come back with a resumé, Granger thought. Then he shook his head.

  The first Granger Lockwood had built an empire from scratch all those years ago. There was no reason he couldn’t do the same. He was determined to succeed. Actually, desperate was more like it.

  He had to do this. For himself. For his child. And . . . for Emmaline. Definitely for Emmaline.

  She seemed to be losing patience with his daily trek around the city to try and find investors.

  Spending so much time with Brynn was probably rubbing off on her, he decided as he helped the frazzled old woman gather the widely scattered papers. Then again, Emmaline hadn’t exactly been enthusiastic about any of this before Brynn arrived on the scene, either.

  Maybe she was right. Maybe he should stop slumming. Maybe he should do the responsible thing, apologize to Grandfather, and ask for his old job back.

  But was that really the responsible thing?

  Did he really want to spend the rest of his life as Grandfather’s underling? For all the old man’s talk of retiring and turning over the business to Granger, he wasn’t going anywhere for a good, long time.

  “Can I
help you?” the girl behind the counter asked, hanging up the phone at last.

  “I just want to pay for my copies,” the old woman said.

  “Fine.” The girl glanced at a computer screen. “That’ll be one hundred and twenty-four dollars and fifty cents,” she said briskly.

  “But . . . aren’t the copies a nickel each?”

  “The color copies are seventy-five cents.”

  “But . . . I didn’t need color.”

  The girl shrugged. “That’s what you made. And it’s one-twenty-four-fifty.”

  “But I only wanted two regular black and white copies.”

  “Sorry, but I have to charge you for what you made, which is one hundred and sixty-six color copies. It says so right here,” the girl said, pointing at the computer.

  “But I couldn’t figure out how to turn off the machine,” the woman protested.

  The girl shrugged again, as if to say, That’s not my problem.

  Steaming, Granger spoke up. “Look, why don’t you give her a break?”

  “If I give her a break, I have to give everybody a break. I don’t have that authority. I have to charge her for one hundred and sixty-six copies. The system is computerized.”

  “Where’s the manager?” Granger asked.

  “Stuck in the Holland Tunnel. He won’t be in until later. I’m the only one here. Look, I’m going to need one hundred and twenty-four dollars and fifty cents,” the girl told the old woman in a bored voice.

  “But I only have five dollars.”

  “What about a credit card?” Granger asked her.

  “I don’t have a credit card. And I’m on a fixed income. I can’t afford a hundred and twenty-four dollars!”

  “And fifty cents.”

  Granger shot the girl a withering look.

  She ignored him, telling the woman, “Then I’ll have to call the police.”

  “Listen, I’ll pay for it,” Granger said, reaching into his pocket.

  “You can’t do that,” the woman protested.

  “Of course I can.” He pulled out his money and swiftly counted out six twenty-dollar bills and a five.

  “How can I thank you?”

  “You just did.” He smiled at her.

  “I can pay you back,” the old woman said, “as soon as my Social Security check comes. If you’ll give me your address I can—”