Gather them while ye may, he thought, one hair-breadth away from a courtly kiss when his suit coat gaped. His glasses fell out, landing on the princess’s toes. She trilled a startled “Oh, my!” and gave a little backward hop. Her big, jowly bodyguard moved in swiftly, crunching Simon’s glasses beneath his heel before Grundy could wave him off.
Princess Liliane patted the mastiff’s arm. “It’s quite all right, Rodger.”
The guard swung around to glare at Simon. Crackle.
“Dear me, your glasses,” said the princess.
She and Simon knelt at the same moment. “Please, let me.” She lifted the mangled wire-framed spectacles in both hands as if she were cradling a bird with a broken wing. “I’m afraid they’re ruined.”
He plucked them off her palm. Tiny cracks spider-webbed through one of the lenses. “I have another pair at the museum, Your Royal…uh, Your Serene Princess—”
“Please call me Lili.” She looked into his eyes.
“Lili,” he said, blinking.
“Are you nearsighted?”
No, just boggled. “Farsighted.”
“Then I’m too close…” she whispered, bringing her face another millimeter nearer nonetheless.
“For what?”
Her face was youthfully round, her skin like buttermilk. Her smile was generously wide and unaffected, but it was her lips that stole his breath away—they were full and pink and utterly, undeniably kissable. “For you to see me clearly,” she said, suddenly turning her face up and her delectable smile down when Mrs. Grundy reached between them and pulled the princess unceremoniously to her feet, bracing Lili on a protective, sturdy arm as if the young woman were an invalid.
Simon also rose, the glasses dangling from his fingertips. He didn’t need them to see that he was more than boggled. He was enchanted.
What a pain in the patoot.
WITH ALL THE FAWNING and milling around, it took Simon several minutes to sort out that the princess’s entourage, which consisted of a large portion of airline personnel and only two official watchdogs: Amelia Grundy and Rodger Wilhelm, the heavyset middle-aged bodyguard, who kept shooting suspicious glances at Simon, as if museum curators were high on the dangerous-kook list.
Kooks, yes, he conceded, thinking of a colleague who’d paid a cool million for a fake Rembrandt or the poor sot who’d had a scarab stolen out from beneath his nose. Kooks, but not dangerous kooks.
The assemblage moved toward the exit. The princess’s head was on a swivel, as if the small municipal airport was a fascinating tourist site. Simon overheard her telling “Nell” that she’d hadn’t been to America since she was a child. Apparently, her father considered the country an immoral wasteland filled with mobsters, cowboys, homeboys and decadent Hollywood movie stars.
“Well, my goodness, that’s just ridiculous,” Corny said, forgetting that it was bad etiquette to deprecate princely opinions—even those belonging to the ruler of a mostly overlooked sliver of a country that had produced nothing of consequence for the last three or four hundred years of his family’s monarchy. “Your grandmother was an American.”
“Hot dogs!” the princess said.
What a scatterbrain, Simon thought, certain his eyes were glued to her as they’d be to a train wreck. She trotted to the airport restaurant, where a half-dozen shriveled wieners rotated on spits around a feeble warming bulb. They were withered, like an old man’s…finger.
And she was in raptures. “I’ve always wanted to taste a genuine American hot dog, not the pale European imitation. Please, may I have one?”
“Of course,” said Corny, with less than her usual gusto. Doubtless, she was thinking of the tea-and-cake tent reception planned for the princess’s arrival in Blue Cloud.
Simon stepped in. “Trust me, Princess Liliane, you don’t want one of those. We can get better hot dogs at the Blue Cloud drive-in.”
“A drive-in restaurant? Like the one in American Graffiti?” Lili’s eyes widened. They were exotically almond-shaped. Brown, almost black—the color of semisweet chocolate. “Do you promise?”
Before Simon could make the date—protocol demanded it—Grundy interrupted. “We must follow the schedule, Princess.” She literally said “shedjul,” but only Simon seemed to notice. He pressed his lips together, holding back a smile.
“Yes, you’re right.” Lili quickly conceded, allowing them to hustle her away even though she threw a longing glance over her shoulder. At the hot dogs, alas, and not him.
Simon shrugged. There must be hot dogs in Grunberg. The country was a stone’s throw from Germany, home of the bratwurst. In the days of the World Wide Web and supersonic air travel, even a sheltered, pampered princess couldn’t be that naive. Going by the diamonds in her elfin ears, the pale pink designer suit wrapped around her luscious curves and, particularly, her easy charm—well-schooled, perhaps—she had to be more sophisticated than her bubbly personality would have him believe.
It’s because she’s only twenty-two, practically a child, he thought, with all the wisdom and maturity of his twenty-nine years. A bright, enthusiastic child. You can’t have a crush on a child.
Even one packaged in a hoochie-mama body.
“IT LOOKS LIKE a picture postcard,” Lili said as they drove past the rolling green-and-gold fields, quilted by white fences and mounds of trees that grew medievally thick. She was enjoying herself again, after being momentarily distracted by disappointment when only the mayor and a bald, beady-eyed man named Spotsky had accompanied her, Grundy and Rodger in the limousine from the airport. The oddball museum guy with the flashy tie and the quiet chuckle had been left at the curb along with the rest of the greeters.
She’d been subjected to Nell’s running discourse on the history of the town ever since. If the oddball had come along, he would have smirked, devilishly. His eyes would have twinkled and one brow would have arched high on his even higher forehead, and Lili might have gotten the little hitch in her throat again. He wasn’t knock-your-socks-off handsome, not in that awful tie and the terribly wrinkled suit, but there were his intelligent eyes to consider, and the cowlick that distracted from his receding hairline, and the adorable way the two sides of his face didn’t quite match up…
Simon Tremayne, she thought. Not a solid All-American name like Chip or Hank or Dave, but it suited him. She liked him instinctively, even if he wasn’t what she’d expected. Or hoped for.
Lili tuned in to the mayor, who was saying, “My esteemed grandfather, Horace P. Applewhite, founded the Society of Concerned Citizens, putting into action the preservation of the…”
She tuned her out again, careful to maintain a wide-eyed look of interest. It was a talent she’d developed when stuffy state dinners became de rigeur, quickly followed by de trop. Mrs. Grundy would fill her in on the highlights later. If there were any.
Lili let her gaze stray to the window. Despite her longing to emulate her sisters and quit trying to conform to her father’s expectations, it seemed to her that she was always looking at the world out of windows, from a distance. Was it so wrong of her to want to experience her life instead of only observing it in a dull and stately manner? She wasn’t blunt like Annie, nor gutsy like Natalia. All she wanted was a bit of fun now and then.
The limo was entering the town. Lili was delighted by what she saw, even if it was through a pane of glass. Blue Cloud appeared to be the quintessential small American town. There was a spare white church with a steeple on one corner, a stone post office with an American flag on the other. The car passed through a bustling downtown—with parking meters!—populated by gift shops and tourists, who pointed and took photos of the limo. She glimpsed something called a Freezee Treat, a redoubtable bank with