Princess in the Making. Michelle Celmer

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СКАЧАТЬ bedroom, and if he had a problem with that, she would just sleep in the nursery until Gabriel returned. Hopefully it wouldn’t be more than a few days.

      “If there’s nothing else you need,” Marcus said, edging toward the door. He really couldn’t wait to get away, could he? Well, she wasn’t about to let him off the hook just yet.

      “What if I do need something?” she asked. “How do I find someone?”

      “There’s a phone on the desk, and a list of extensions.”

      “How will I know who to call?”

      He didn’t roll his eyes, but she could see that he wanted to. “For a beverage or food, you call the kitchen. If you need clean towels or fresh linens, you would call the laundry … you get the point.”

      She did, although she didn’t appreciate the sarcasm. “Suppose I need you. Is your number on there?”

      “No, it isn’t, and even if it were, I wouldn’t be available.”

      “Never?”

      A nerve in his jaw ticked. “In my father’s absence, I have a duty to my country.”

      Why did he have to be so defensive? “Marcus,” she said, in a voice that she hoped conveyed sincerity, “I understand how you must be feeling, but—”

      “You have no idea how I’m feeling,” he ground out, and the level of animosity in his tone drew her back a step. “My father asked me to get you settled in, and I’ve done that. Now, if there’s nothing else.”

      Someone cleared their throat and they both looked over to see the nanny standing in the doorway.

      “I’ll leave you two to discuss the child’s care,” Marcus said, making a hasty escape, and any hope she’d had that they might be friends went out the door with him.

      “Come in,” she told Karin.

      Looking a little nervous, the girl stepped inside. “Shall I take Mia so you can rest?”

      She still wasn’t sure about leaving Mia in a stranger’s care, but she was exhausted, and she would have a hard time relaxing with Mia in bed with her. If Vanessa fell too deeply asleep, Mia could roll off and hurt herself. And the last thing she needed was Marcus thinking that not only was she a money-grubbing con artist, but a terrible mother as well.

      “I really could use a nap,” she told Karin, “but if she wakes up crying, I’d like you to bring her right to me. She’s bound to be disoriented waking up in a strange place with someone she doesn’t know.”

      “Of course, ma’am.”

      “Please, call me Vanessa.”

      Karin nodded, but looked uncomfortable with the idea.

      “Mia is asleep on the bed. Why don’t I carry her, so I can see where the nursery is, and you can bring her bag?”

      Karin nodded again.

      Not very talkative, was she?

      Vanessa scooped up Mia, who was still sleeping deeply, and rolled her suitcase out to Karin, who led her two doors down and across the hall to the nursery. It was smaller than her own suite, with a play area and a sleeping area, and it was decorated gender-neutral. The walls were pale green, the furniture white and expensive-looking, and in the play area rows of shelves were packed with toys for children of every age. It was clearly a nursery designed for guests, and she supposed that if she did decide to stay, Mia would get her own nursery closer to Gabriel’s bedroom.

      The idea of sharing a bedroom with Gabriel, and a bed, made her stomach do a nervous little flip-flop.

      Everything will work out.

      She laid Mia in the crib and covered her with a light blanket, and the baby didn’t even stir. The poor little thing was exhausted.

      “Maybe I should unpack her things,” she told Karin.

      “I’ll do it, ma’am.”

      Vanessa sighed. So it was still “ma’am”? That was something they would just have to work on. “Thank you.”

      She kissed the tips of her fingers, then gently pressed them to Mia’s forehead. “Sleep well, sweet baby.”

      After reiterating that Karin was to come get her when Mia woke, she walked back to her suite. She pulled her cell phone out of her bag and checked for calls, but there were none. She dialed Gabriel’s cell number, but it went straight to voice mail.

      She glanced over at the sofa, thinking she would sleep there for an hour or so, but the bed, with its creamy silk comforter and big, fluffy pillows, called to her. Setting her phone on the bedside table, she lay back against the pillows, sinking into the softness of the comforter. She let her eyes drift closed, and when she opened them again, the room was dark.

      Three

      After leaving Miss Reynolds’s suite, Marcus stopped by his office, where his assistant Cleo, short for Cleopatra—her parents were Egyptian and very eccentric—sat at her computer playing her afternoon game of solitaire.

      “Any word from my father?” he asked.

      Attention on the screen, she shook her head.

      “I’m glad to see that you’re using your time productively,” he teased, as he often did when he caught her playing games.

      And obviously she didn’t take him seriously, because she didn’t even blink, or look away from the cards on the screen. “Keeps the brain sharp.”

      She may have been pushing seventy, but no one could argue that she wasn’t still sharp as a pin. She’d been with the royal family since the 1970s, and used to be his mother’s secretary. Everyone expected she would retire after the queen’s death, and enjoy what would be a very generous pension, but she hadn’t been ready to stop working. She claimed it kept her young. And since her husband passed away two years ago, Marcus suspected she was lonely.

      She finished the game and quit out of the software, a group photo of her eight grandchildren flashing on to her computer screen. She turned to Marcus and caught him in the middle of a yawn and frowned. “Tired?”

      After a month-long battle with insomnia, he was always tired. And he wasn’t in the mood for another lecture. “I’m sure I’ll sleep like a baby when she is gone.”

      “She’s that bad?”

      He sat on the edge of her desk. “She’s awful.”

      “And you know this after what, thirty minutes with her?”

      “I knew after five. I knew the second she stepped off the plane.”

      She leaned forward in her chair, elbows on her desk, her white hair draped around a face that was young for her years, and with no help at all from a surgeon’s knife. “Based on what?”

      “She only wants his money.”

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