Once Upon A Tiara. Carrie Alexander
lack thereof, Lili thought, squirming against the restraint of the safety belt as she peered out the window. They were circling the airport now. She was mere minutes away from freedom. Or as close to freedom as she could get with both Amelia Grundy and Rodger Wilhelm, the bodyguard her father had insisted she take along, watching her backside as if it were spun from glass and subject to shatter at the merest touch. Natalia and Annie were better off; they’d been granted permission to travel on their own. As the youngest, Lili was babied more than she liked.
But no more. She was determined about that. This trip would be the start of something tremendous for her. She could sense it.
Peanut butter, M&M’s, hot dogs and hamburgers, Lili chanted to herself. America was so diverse, so raw, so much an adventure-in-waiting. Hip-hop, bebop, shop till you drop. Drive-ins, push-ups, hoedowns and take-outs!
As the plane dropped toward the runway, anticipation rang in Lili’s ears. This was her chance. She would have herself an authentic American experience or her name wasn’t Liliane Marja Mae Graf Brunner.
Why, she wouldn’t even say no to a daring whirlwind fling with a dashing American playboy!
“WITH ALL THAT’S going on at the museum,” Simon Tremayne said as he waited for the first passengers to disembark, “meeting a spoiled princess from some backward little European country no one but us has ever heard of is the last thing I have time for.”
“Take off your glasses,” said Cornelia Applewhite, the mayor of Blue Cloud, who had a tendency to ignore all complaints, which made it easier to bulldoze her constituency. “You’ll look less like a nerd and more like a dignitary.”
Simon did so, pretending there was a smudge. After he’d finished wiping the lenses with the end of his tie, he slipped the glasses into the breast pocket of his suit coat. Who knew why? It couldn’t have been because in photographs the princess was young, blond and cute as a buttercup.
“I suppose I have to kiss her hand?” he said, making sure to sound long-suffering.
“Didn’t you read the protocol report I faxed over to the museum?”
“I intended to.” It was on his list, right after Put On Clean Underwear.
“Si-mon!” the mayor pealed.
He winced. Cornelia—you had to remember to pronounce it Cor-nell-ia, and saints preserve the person who shortened it to Corny—was a short woman with a voice and figure like Foghorn Leghorn. Speaking in a normal tone made her vibrate. When she turned it on full blast to give orders—and she lived to give orders—her entire body swayed with the effort, from the tassels on her pumps to the rooster fringe of her upswept hairdo. Simon wondered if it was considered good protocol to megaphone greetings forceful enough to puncture the princess’s eardrums.
“They’re coming,” Cornelia said to the small group of Blue Cloud VIPs she’d recruited to greet the princess. “Look sharp, people. Pretend you know what you’re doing. And you, Simon, tuck in your tie.” She took a closer look. “King Tut? Couldn’t you have gone for a nice sedate blue or gray?”
“Too late now,” he said, tucking Tut in. The greeters murmured with excitement. The princess and her entourage had naturally been deplaned first. Between the oncoming phalanx of tall, stern people in dark blue suits, all Simon caught of the princess was a flash of pink and a glimpse of ruffled corn-silk hair.
The blond head bobbed. Several times. He chuckled. The petite princess was on springs.
Cornelia said “Shush,” to him in her normal tone—loud—just as the princess’s plaintive voice announced, “But I can’t see anything!”
Everyone hushed.
A small feminine hand appeared on the broad shoulder of the closest bodyguard. Next, a blond head with short hair going in six different directions pushed past the woolen sleeve of a woman who looked as starched as her collar. The princess peeped out at the group from Blue Cloud. She blinked several times. Long spidery lashes curled back from her eyes like stamens.
The greeters returned the stare in complete silence.
“My goodness,” she said. “I do hope you weren’t shushing me. I haven’t been shushed since boarding school, even though I suppose there were plenty who might have liked to.”
She smiled, very prettily.
And Simon’s heartstrings went zing.
Fortunately, Cornelia began booming her practiced welcome speech, and he was able to classify the electric thrumming in his veins as sound-wave reverberation. Corny’s reverb had been known to register on the Richter scale.
He had neither the time nor the inclination for dallying with princesses, even when they were cuddly little blondes built for the boudoir. The very idea was absurd, particularly when he remembered who he was: Simon Stafford Tremayne, boy genius, college egghead, museum wonk. Before he’d learned to keep activities that required tuxedos and courtliness permanently outside of his comfort zone, his greatest success with the opposite sex was slow-dancing with Valerie Wingate at his high school prom, and that had happened only because she was mad at her quarterback boyfriend and had grabbed the nearest nerd at hand for revenge. That one dance had earned Simon a broken nose, and it hadn’t even been worth it. Valerie Wingate had been so vapid, not even the chance to look down her cleavage was compensation. At least, not after the first thousand or so mental slow-motion replays.
The older woman with the bulk and the bulging leather satchel was shaking each of their hands, taking names, and introducing them to the princess. “Mrs. Amelia Grundy,” she said to Simon.
He gave his hand. “No, it’s Simon Tremayne, actually.”
Her lips crimped. No sense of humor. She gripped his hand a beat too long, staring straight into his eyes. Damned if he didn’t feel the zing again. Well, that was good. That meant the feeling could be anything—static electricity from the carpet or maybe indigestion. He’d inhaled a spicy burrito at lunch. Give him a Tums and he’d be safe from all manner of embarrassing eruptions. Burps to bolts from the blue.
“Cor-nell-eee-yah,” Princess Buttercup was saying, with an ill-concealed mischievous glitter to her eyes.
“Cornelia Applewhite. My, that’s too long a name. I shall call you…”
She glanced at Simon. He arched a brow.
“Nell,” she said. “You look like a Nell to me, born and bred among the amber waves of grain on a wholesome American farm.”
Simon barely withheld his laugh. Cornelia, for once, was too flustered to bluster. She was hugely and loudly proud of her venerable family background, but contradicting princesses was undoubtedly against protocol.
The stern Englishwoman glanced sidelong, her mouth pinched into a disapproving knot.
The princess saw the look and sobered so suddenly it was comical. She drew herself up, tipping the saucy royal chin into the air and taking on a formal tone. “That is, unless you prefer Mayor? Or would it be Madam Mayor?”
The British battleship returned her attention to Simon. “And you are?”
“Boggled.”
Mrs. Grundy frowned. “Is that a distasteful American slang term?”
“No, it’s the Queen’s English.” He’d never been so irreverent in his life, but there was a certain gaiety in the air and he couldn’t resist. “Its definition is to be overwhelmed with fright or amazement.”
“Ah, that sort of boggled.” She looked him over. “You’re not cowering…”
His gaze strayed to the princess, who’d relaxed as soon as Grundy wasn’t looking. She was charming Corny’s cravat off despite the farm-girl nickname. “Maybe I’m amazed.”
“Wings,” Mrs. Grundy said, surprising him. “Paul McCartney. A Liverpool lad.” Simon tore his attention off the princess and refocused