She shook her head. “I’m twenty-two, but they still treat me like a child. Ours is a traditional, hidebound monarchy, you see, and my father became very strict after my mother died. I know he’s only worried about his responsibility to me and my sisters, seeing that we have a proper upbringing, but it’s very hard to—” Lili stopped. “Listen to me. Complaining about life in the castle. You must think I’m a spoiled brat.”
“No…”
“You do. Admit it.”
“I don’t know you well enough to judge.”
She looked at him with bright, inquisitive eyes, her clothing clutched to her chest. “Now that you’ve touched my breast, you practically have to take me on a date.”
His eyeballs were on the verge of popping out and rolling across the floor like marbles. “A date?”
“The hot dogs,” she said. “You promised.”
He hesitated. “Would I get to touch the other breast?”
For a moment, she looked as stunned as he. Her mouth dropped open—the sight of the tender, red, swollen tip of her tongue made him feel curiously protective—and then she burst into laughter.
He shook his head, relieved by her reaction, but still appalled at himself. “I can’t believe I just said that to Her Serene Highness of Grunberg.”
She lowered the hand she’d clapped over her mouth. “Honestly, I’m glad you did.”
His brow went up.
“I didn’t mean…not because of…” Her lashes fluttered. “Or maybe I did.” She cozied up to him, one hand tucked into the crook of his arm. “You see, this is my first time out on my own. It’s my chance to assert my independence. I was hoping to meet a dashing American playboy, but perhaps you’ll do.”
He was feeling pretty good, up until the last several words. They made him snap to attention.
He’d do, as a means to an end.
Story of his life. From Valerie Wingate to Paula Manthey, the grad student who’d faked a romantic interest in hopes of securing herself a cushy position on his team of researchers, women would far rather use him than amuse him. They saw him as a social misfit, an egghead scholar desperate enough to accept any female advance, whatever its motive. Sometimes, he even thought that way about himself. Which was why he was better off spending all his time with museum artifacts. Women were a species not even a man with an advanced degree could understand.
And Princess Buttercup was potentially more trouble than all the rest put together.
He’d take her for hot dogs if she insisted, but he’d definitely be ignoring the annoying little zings of his heartstrings.
Because if he didn’t, the beautiful young princess would soon be playing him like a violin. Just like all the rest.
“WOULD YOU LIKE to see the tiara?” Simon asked, after she’d dried her blouse and jacket and he’d met her outside his jumble of an office. They were returning to the outdoors reception. The museum was spacious and silent. Their footsteps echoed as they descended a wide stone staircase to the double-height first-floor entrance hall. Large arched openings on either side led to the exhibition rooms. Everything but the exhibits themselves was new and clean and shining. Lili was accustomed to old and crumbling and venerable.
Worrying the tip of her sore tongue against her teeth, she stopped in the center of a design inlaid on the marble floor. She’d said or done the wrong thing, back in the office. Suddenly Simon had lost his irreverence. He was being stiff and formal with her, like all the rest.
Certainly, they’d been too familiar. If she’d seen what had happened, Mrs. Grundy would have gone into a stuffy British form of apoplexy and probably have put Lili on the next plane home. But Lili hadn’t come to America to play it safe. She’d come for an adventure.
She tossed her head at Simon. “Why not?”
“This way, Princess,” he said, his fingers nearly, but not quite, touching her elbow.
She practiced her royally reserved face as they walked through a room lined with glass cases. Placed on velvet and satin backdrops, lit by subtle spotlights, all the finest pieces from the royal jewels of the Brunner monarchy were on display. Despite her position, Lili seldom had the opportunity to examine the jewels. On formal occasions, the three sisters might be allowed to wear one of the valuable pieces, but that was rare. She wasn’t particularly interested, either. Who wanted to be draped in history so valuable and weighty you had to be escorted by six guards and armed with an emergency panic button?
“It’s in here,” Simon said, exchanging a word with a uniformed security guard before entering a second, smaller room. A case with a glass dome had been set up in the center of the room to capitalize on the “Ah!” factor.
Despite her training, Lili wasn’t very skilled at curtailing her natural reactions. When she saw the famous tiara, nestled on a hillock of watered blue satin, she stopped and gave the obligatory exclamation.
Simon shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. He looked pleased with himself. “It’s something, isn’t it?”
Lili was in awe, as well as ah. “Yes, it’s something.”
“Have a closer look.”
She approached slowly. She’d seen the bridal tiara only twice before, at similar exhibitions in London and Spitzenstein, their capital city. Both times, she’d been a child, enchanted by the story of the long-ago prince who had so loved his betrothed, he’d commissioned the greatest jeweler in all the land to create a bridal tiara with the Vargas diamond, a gem of somewhat mysterious origins, as its centerpiece. Ever since, the tiara was only worn at royal weddings. Each new Brunner bride was given the honor, including Lili’s American grandmother, Adelaide, a simple country girl from Blue Cloud, Pennsylvania, who had married the crown prince of Grunberg exactly fifty years ago.
“It’s beautiful.” A delicately wrought construction of platinum and many tiny diamonds in addition to the spectacular center gem, the tiara was truly a work of art. Lili walked slowly around the case, looking at the piece from all angles. There was a thick velvet rope set up to keep onlookers out of touching distance, but that was mainly a psychological barrier.
She gave a little laugh. “How’s security?”
Simon’s face grew even more serious. He motioned around the dimly lit room. Lili realized that there were two more security guards, positioned in shadowed niches. “The case is alarmed, as well,” he explained. “Breathe upon the glass—it’s shatterproof, of course—and the entire museum will go into lockdown mode, alarms blaring.”
“I see how you were able to persuade my father to let the royal jewels out of the country for their first American exhibition.”
“Our museum is state of the art,” Simon said with pride.
“It’s new?”
“Brand-new. Cornelia Applewhite’s family provided a large portion of the funding, hence the unwieldy name.”
“I wonder what my grandmother would have thought about being celebrated in such a way.” Oversized blowup portraits of Princess Adelaide had been placed here and there as decoration. She’d been a beautiful, kind and graceful woman, but not one who’d enjoyed the spotlight, a vestige of her humble Pennsylvania origins. She had passed away from illness at sixty-one, when Lili was only six, followed in death three years later by her daughter-in-law, who’d perished in the skiing-vacation tragedy. All of Grunberg had mourned the losses.
“Blue Cloud is very proud of Princess Adelaide,” Simon said. “She’s their one claim to fame. The town officials are hoping that a museum dedicated to her memory will pull in the tourists.”
Lili understood. Her country was in much the same position. Her father’s advisors