Royal Weddings: The Reluctant Princess / Princess Dottie / The Royal MacAllister. Lucy Gordon

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      But somewhere deep inside, she had a true stubborn streak. She wasn’t leaving until she had to leave and she didn’t have to leave until tomorrow. She shoved the chicken she’d never gotten around to roasting into the freezer and told Hauk they were going out for dinner.

      He didn’t argue. He didn’t say anything. He kept his sculpted mouth shut and his expression closed against her, as he’d been doing for hours by then.

      She took him to a restaurant over in Old Sacramento, where the food was excellent and so was the service. The steward brought the wine list. She waved it away.

      Yes, a glass of wine or two would have soothed her frayed nerves right then. But she couldn’t afford to be soothed. When they went to bed tonight, she would need all her inhibitions firmly in place—and not because she feared that Hauk might make a move on her. He had way too much self-control to do that.

      No, he wasn’t the one she was worried about. It was herself. She would need to fight her own wayward, hungry heart and her yearning body, too, if she planned to get through the whole night without doing something they would both later regret.

      Hauk spoke with the waiter briefly but politely. He didn’t speak to Elli, not the whole time they sat at that table. Anyone watching them probably would have guessed that they’d either been forced against their will to share a meal—or they were locked in some private battle, some intimate tiff, and currently refusing to speak to each other. Both speculations would have been right on the money.

      Too soon, the meal was finished. It was only 8:15. She didn’t want to go back to her apartment, not yet. She wanted it to be late—after midnight at least, when they got there. She wanted to be really, really tired.

      But every nerve she had was humming. She felt as if sleeping was something she would never do again. And she’d made the mistake of drinking two glasses of water with her meal.

      She had to use the ladies’ room.

      Hauk stood outside in the hall. She hoped it embarrassed him, to lurk there by the ladies’-room door. She used the facilities and she washed her hands, glancing now and then at her unhappy face in the wide mirror above the sink.

      She was blowing her hands dry when the small window over the center stall caught her eye. It was a single pane of pebbled glass, roughly a foot and a half on each side, hinged at the top. To open it, you undid the latch and pushed it outward.

      She was reasonably certain there would be an alley on the other side. It wouldn’t be that difficult to hoist herself up there, to slither through it and…

      What? Run away? Go into hiding and terrify her mother and Hilda and her sisters, too? Go to the police? Tell them that her father was having her kidnapped and she needed protection?

      After they sorted it all out, they might even believe her. And just maybe they’d be able to protect her. It was a good chance, with all the publicity that would ensue, with her face and the faces of everyone in her family splashed all over the tabloids, that her father would back off, give up on whatever scheme he was hatching.

      Hauk would be disgraced for letting her get away. And she would stay right here, in Sacramento, where she belonged. She would not see Gullandria—or her father, after all. And she would never see Hauk again.

      The dryer had turned itself off. The ladies’ room seemed very quiet.

      Behind her, the door to the hallway swung open. She turned. It was Hauk. He looked at her and he looked at the window above the center stall and then at her again.

      ‘‘So all right,’’ she muttered. ‘‘I was tempted. But notice I’m still here.’’

      ‘‘Ahem. Do you mind?’’ A short, cute redheaded woman had appeared in the open doorway beside Hauk. She craned her neck to look up at him. ‘‘Read the sign on the door. Ladies. That is so not you.’’

      Hauk retreated and the redhead came forward. The door closed with him out in the hall. The redhead pretended to fan herself. ‘‘Is that yours? Oh, my, my…’’

      Elli let a smile answer for her. She hooked her purse over her shoulder and went out to join her jailer.

      Out in the parking lot, the attendant brought her car. She tipped him and got behind the wheel. Hauk hunched himself down into the passenger seat.

      Elli drove—out of Old Sac, out of town, beyond the city lights.

      More than once, she felt Hauk’s brooding gaze on her. She knew he was wondering where they were going. But he didn’t ask.

      Which was just as well, since she didn’t know, anyway. She held the wheel and watched the road ahead and kept on driving.

      They ended up on the river road, rolling through a string of sleepy little one-stoplight towns. When she was in her teens, she and her sisters and their friends—or sometimes she and one of those two boys she’d thought she loved so much—would come out here.

      With a boyfriend, she’d end up parked by the levee, in the shadows of the cottonwood trees, kissing until her lips hurt, moaning and sighing and declaring undying love—all, of course, without going all the way.

      Back then, Elli and her sisters would talk about sex all the time. They were young and they were curious about all the new and bewildering yearnings their bodies could feel. They had one girlfriend who’d gotten pregnant and had to leave school. And another who had tested positive for HIV.

      Sex was so tempting. And yet they understood it could also be dangerous, that it had consequences, serious ones. They had formed a pact, the three of them. They called themselves the NATWC—the Never All the Way Club. Whenever one of them would go off to be alone with a boy, a sister was always somewhere nearby to raise a fist in the air and announce with pride, ‘‘NATWC!’’

      It had worked. They all three remained full-fledged members of the NATWC—at least until college and then…

      Well, even triplets, at some point, have to make their own decisions about love and sex and how far to go.

      Elli made a turn, toward the river. She parked beneath a cottonwood and she got out and climbed the levee. Hauk, of course, got out, too. He followed in her wake, a shadow—always with her, never speaking.

      The mosquitoes were still out. As usual, they found her delicious. She slapped at them now and then. Sometimes she got them—and sometimes not. The ground beneath her sandals was soft. The wild grasses, still moist and green in early May, brushed at her ankles as she climbed.

      She reached the crest of the levee. It stretched out, a wide path, in either direction. Below, by the light of the fading last-quarter moon, the river looked dark and oily, flowing easily along. There were dangers, beneath the surface. Swirling currents. Undertows.

      But from here, it looked so serene and slow. Hauk stood beside her. As usual, he made no sound. She couldn’t even hear him breathing.

      She turned in the opposite direction and started walking. He came along behind her, but several yards back, as if he wanted to give her as much space, as much leeway, as he could and still follow the orders he’d been given by his king.

      She stopped. Looked at her watch. Ten o’clock.

      Hauk СКАЧАТЬ