Princess Ever After

TWENTY-TWO





Okay, tell me this.” Regina reached for another chip, or as she called them, French fries. “Hardest laugh ever. Like a you-couldn’t-breathe laugh.”

As they ate, Reggie grilled him with questions about his family, friends, favorite movie, and telly show. Now, his hardest laugh.

“Let’s see . . . hardest laugh.” He watched her, thinking. The passion between them when he held her had faded, but in its wake an emotional door stood wide open. Cautiously, Tanner stepped through. “I guess it’d have to be when I was in school, messing about with my mates, getting into business we ought not.”

Really, it was hard to think with her sitting in a chair not two feet from him, paralyzing him with her blue eyes and unkissed but oh so kissable lips.

“Did you attend boarding school?”

He focused on her words, not her lips. “What? Oh yes, boarding school. Naturally. I’m European, after all.” Then he remembered a funny moment. “When I was first at university, I ran on the track team and one of my mates, Will, thought if he lost a few pounds, he’d run faster. He all but starved himself up to the day of the race. Lost the last five pounds he had to spare. Reed thin. Weak as a babe.”

“He must have really wanted to win.” She dipped another fry in a crystal bowl of ketchup.

“He was a competitive chap, no doubt, and had been studying aerodynamics. He shaved his head, his entire body . . . he looked like a billiard ball stuck on a cue.” He laughed as the mental memory surfaced. “His shorts wouldn’t stay on. He’s five minutes from his race and he’s gripping them, like this,”—he made a fist at his waist—“and when the gun goes off, he fires out of the blocks like a madman, but he can’t hold on to his shorts anymore, so down they go. He’s trying to stride long, but the shorts are slipping lower and lower”—Tanner laughed—“along about his knees, and he trips and rolls down the track, hops up, sans his short trousers, mind you, and keeps on running.”

“You’re kidding.” Regina dipped another chip in her ketchup.

“But here’s the kicker. In his effort to be as light as possible, Will didn’t bother to slip on his knickers too, you see.”

Regina’s eyes popped wide and she laughed behind her hand, a soft pink tint on her cheeks. “Oh mercy, Tanner.” Then she made a face, fanning the air with her fingers. “I’m trying not to picture it.”

“I suppose it is a rather tawdry story. But ’twas the hardest I ever laughed. I thought I might be sick.”

“Did he win?”

“No. He came in second, quit the team, grew his hair down to his shoulders, and became a café singer. Which he claims was what he wanted to do in the first place. So now you know my hardest giggle. What about you?”

She sobered, taking a sip of her Diet Coke. “Mama was a great laugher. Always telling Daddy a funny story. If there was no laughter in the house, she’d get something going. Make up a game or something. When she died we didn’t laugh for about a year. Poor Gram. Her final months had very little laughter. But when we started going to Al and Miriam’s most nights for dinner, Al started every meal with a story. Lots of times about being best friends with Daddy in the ’60s in a segregated South.

“But hardest laugh?” She took another drink, eyeing him over the rim of her glass. “I don’t know. Seeing you walk the streets of Hessenberg dressed like Sonny Bono was pretty hilarious.”

Merriment sparkled in her eyes and Tanner’s heart knocked on his head. Let’s fall in love, mate.

Blast it all if he wasn’t one pulse away from drawing her to her feet and kissing those blessed, delicious, laughing lips. “It didn’t feel so funny at the time but now . . .” He grinned. “It was quite a giggle, was it not?”

“Yeah, it was fun.” Her gaze met his for one long, glorious moment. “So,”—she cleared her throat, shifting her gaze, wiping her hand on her napkin—“I’ve done all the talking. Wh–what was it you said the king needed from me? Take the Oath of the Throne?”

“Yes.” Tanner reached for his soft drink, drowning his sizzling image of kissing her. Don’t go there, ole chap. It’ll only lead to heartache. “He wants you to go ahead, get on with the swearing in, as it were, style you Princess of Hessenberg, and establish the House of Augustine-Saxon. Then in six months to a year, whenever you’re ready, when the government is more established, we’ll hold the coronation for you to be Grand Duchess. He and the prime minister believe it’s a strong countermeasure to the muck Seamus is stirring. We’ll organize some good press.”

“But I’ve not even been here a week.”

“I know. We wanted to give you time. But showing strong support for the entail, for your uncle’s wishes, for the king and current government, will stabilize the people.”

“Tanner, what would you do if you were me?”

He leaned forward, propping his arms on his knees. “I don’t know really. I’d like to think I’d take the oath. But I’m not even remotely in your shoes, Regina. If you choose not to take the oath, then we must believe, hope, something good will come about for our dear duchy.” He smiled at her. ”On the other hand, we found you and that was a very good thing.”

“Tanner,”—she sobered—“I was going over the entail earlier—”

“Were you now?” She proved her worth more every day.

“Do you know anything about bonds associated with the entail?”

“What kind of bonds? Savings? War? Bearer?”

“The text didn’t say.” She hesitated, thinking. “Do you know if there’s money to help out the duchy as it comes into its own?”

“Nothing more than the regular avenues of an economy. However, the duke’s holdings were held in trust by the Brighton royal family. You’ll receive his accounts when you and King Nathaniel II sign the entail, ending the agreement. It’s a sizable fortune.”

“Are there bonds in the holdings?”

Tanner reached for his phone. “Not that I’m aware. But I’ve not looked closely.” He tapped a note to himself. Bonds. “I’ll have Louis collect the data on the duke’s assets.”

“If you were me, you’d take the oath.” Stated. Not asked. As if she were trying to understand her own heart and mind.

“I would. And I’d not fear Seamus. I’d move to Hessenberg and live happily ever after.”

She made a face. “Now you’re mocking me.”

“Am I? The farthest thing from it, Regina. I don’t want you to leave. There. I said it.”

She shifted in her seat, shoving her remaining fries toward the center of her plate. “Why don’t you want me to go?”

“Because I’d miss you.” He slipped from his chair and moved to her, pulling her into his arms. Slowly, he rocked from side to side.

“I’d miss you too.”

Releasing her, he stepped back. “Regina, I should tell you something.” Tanner tucked his hands into his pockets, his heart sounding a full retreat. “This afternoon I went to a birthday party.”

“Gasp! I can’t believe it. A birthday party!” She laughed. “You look so grim.”

“I’m not the man you think I am.” He paced a few steps, then circled back. “I’ve done a horrid thing and to be honest, I’m not sure you’ll feel anything but disdain for me once I tell you the story.”

“Tanner, don’t predict my feelings. It’s annoying. I can’t imagine you’d hurt a fly, let alone do something horrid to anyone. Except maybe to yourself.”

“Trust me, I did something horrid. Now that I have a few years of wisdom and the advantage of hindsight, I can’t imagine what possessed me to abandon my post as a dad.”

“Your post as a dad?”

There, he’d said it. Not as he’d intended, but thanks to his rambling heart he spewed the truth.

“I’ve twin daughters, Regina.” Her eyes widened. But her lack of a visceral reaction urged him to go on. “Bella and Britta. Identical ten-year-olds.”

“Tanner, that’s great. But I don’t get why I should feel disdain for you over twin daughters.”

“Because this afternoon when I went to their birthday party, it was the first time I’d seen them in eight years. They did not even know me.”

“Eight years?” She tapped his arm. “What happened?”

“Their mother, Trude, and I were college mates, friends. Nothing serious. We got on well, ran with the same crowd. After we graduated, the lot of us booked a holiday on the Mediterranean. Near the end of our stay, after a day of boating and swimming, we were all jolly, drinking too much, which I rarely did—drink, that is—and Trude looked tan and lovely. We’d been flirty with one another all holiday and next thing we knew—”


“She got pregnant.”

“One night. One time.” He peeked sheepishly at her but inhaled without the constant dull pain that had been in his chest since he agreed to Trude’s proposition. Confession to Regina was good for his soul. “First for both of us.”

Tanner had purposefully not thought about that holiday in years. Or the night Trude told him in between violent sobs that she was pregnant. He never reminisced about the day he stopped by Dad’s cathedral office to tell him he’d left seminary.

But there was a moment in every day, whether in his conscious or subconscious, he remembered leaving Trude’s flat with the girls tucked in bed, never to return.

“I asked her to marry me. She said no. We didn’t love each other. So I was a W and W dad. Wednesdays and weekends.”

“How did you end up not seeing them for eight years?”

“She’d met a chap. Reese.” Tanner cut his way through the mental weeds and overgrowth of his past. “They got married, and Trude began chatting me up on how the girls would be better off with one mum and one dad. She thought being with me confused and upset them. Then she brought in the force of an army to convince me I should back off and let Reese be the girls’ dad.”

“Now that’s despicable and horrid. You believed her?”

“She hammered me and hammered me. The girls were two and had begun to cling to me, crying, when I dropped them off. I could see it was upsetting to Trude. To all of us. So, yes, I gave in, Regina. Then today she tells me she’s divorced Reese, marrying a bloke named Evan and moving to America. And would I mind taking the girls for a while so she can pop over the pond with her new husband for a few years?”

“Is everything in your life zero to sixty? I think it’s the way you roll.” She laughed, laying hold of his forearm with a gentle squeeze. “Tanner, isn’t this good news? You get to establish a relationship with your daughters.”

“It is good news, indeed.” He smiled at her support. But did she intend to skirt around how he abandoned his daughters? Not call it out, as Dad had done so unabashedly for years after Tanner made his decision? Even Mum reminded him of it every holiday until he told her, enough.

“But if I take them, I told her I’d be in charge of their diaries, their education, the lot. Trude didn’t take well to the notion, so she’s thinking.”

“Tanner, you’d have to be in charge if Trude’s in America.”

“I might have told her that I’d not give them back. They’d be with me until graduation.”

“Zero to sixty.” She lowered her head, smiling. “All girls need their daddies, but they need their mamas too. Trust me.”

“Let me ask you. What would you do if you were me?”

“Ah, turning the tables on me, I see.” Reggie propped her chin in her hand. “All I can tell you is I was a ten-year-old girl once, and I remember two things. I adored my daddy, and I wanted him to adore me.”

“But I’m a stranger to them.”

“Maybe here.” She tapped the corner of her eye. “But not here.” Regina reached up, pressing her hand over his heart.

“Regina . . .” He collected her in his arms.

“Tanner . . .” She stepped back, shaking out her hands. A move that endeared her to him each time she did it. “We both have a lot on our plates. Me with this princess biz and you with becoming a full-time dad—”

“Possibly.”

“No, probably. Maybe we shouldn’t complicate and confuse things.”

“Complicate? Regina, I was a content, neat, solitary man until I met you. Then all of a sudden, I’m restless, unsatisfied, yearning for things I thought belonged to other chaps. What kind of man sits in his knickers at night watching the telly alone? That was me a week ago and now . . . for the first time in eight years I realize how much I want to be the twins’ dad. And I want . . . to fall . . . in love.” He held her gaze for a moment, then laughed softly, staring at the floor. “Zero to sixty.”

“You want to fall in love? With me?” Regina’s tone harmonized with the beat of his heart.

“I might.”

She whipped around, started gathering up their dishes. “Jarvis is probably wondering if we’re going to spend the night in here.” She skirted around him, heading for the ballroom exit. “I’ll go tell him we’re done. Wait, I can just push the cart—”

“Regina.” Tanner touched her arm. “It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way.”

“How can I explore a love that may not be mine a week from now?” Her voice faltered, weak and watery.

“I’m telling you my heart is yours.” He peered into her eyes, sinking deeper and deeper into the truth. “Now. Next week, next year.”

“What if I move home? Then what?”

“Why can’t you just admit you’re our princess, Regina? Hessenberg is home. I need you here, with me.” Raw. Real. Rooted in emotion.

“Tanner, excuse me, but I’m not making a decision about my future because you think you love me. Think you need me.”

“Are you saying you don’t have feelings for me?”

“Look, I–I,”—she shifted her weight, leaning on the cart—“I’m struggling to find my way through the notion of being a princess, of leaving my home, my friends and family, to live in a foreign country. So, no, I don’t know how I feel about you. Exactly.” Regina kicked at the ballroom floor. “Hessenberg is strange to me, Tanner. There’s no Publix or Kohl’s. No Target or Panera Bread. Who knew a princess had to give up so much? And you’re asking me to make a decision about love? I just met you.”

“And I, you, but I’m fairly certain I’m falling for you.”

She reached up and brushed his hair away from his face. “I’m afraid we’re Niagara Falls meeting the Grand Canyon.”

He captured her hand in his. “Two forces of nature to be reck-oned with.” He kissed the back of her hand. “I think we can make it work.”

“Hey, zero to sixty, I may drive fast, but my heart putts along at a steady thirty miles per hour.” She withdrew her hand from his.

“All right.” Tanner gripped the cart handle and pushed toward the door. “At least you’re moving.”

Thirty miles an hour. Straight for his heart.