“Alice!”
I snapped back to reality and hurried over to retrieve the cardboard tray of coffees. “Cheers.” My polite smile went unnoticed as the young man turned his attention to the next order. Business was brisk today, it seemed. Must have been a popular day for falling ill.
It was going on three hours of waiting now and no word from the surgeon yet. Carl’s surgery was meant to be a relatively simple procedure, but you never knew with these things. An innocent trip to the chemist could end in a four-car pile-up, just as an ascent on a ladder to hang holiday lights might result in a broken back or a sprained wrist at the very least.
There was an article just last week about a perfectly healthy twenty-two-year-old woman who entered hospital for rhinoplasty and never left. One minute, she was planning her new life with an attractive ski-slope nose, and the next she was gone. Poof. Just like that.
And it’s not as if Carl Green was a paragon of healthy living with his diet of beer and cheeseburgers and those size double-extra-large coveralls. For heaven’s sake!
I swallowed hard and forced myself to breathe. One in, one out. Two in, two out. You’re in a rainforest surrounded by the sweet chirping sounds of the birds and insects. Three in.
“Hey! Over here!”
I turned to see that Ruby and her cousin, Sadie, had moved from our previous spot sitting vigil outside the surgery ward to a pair of small plush sofas and a coffee table that must have just recently been vacated.
“We scored the good seats.” Sadie smiled, reaching her hands out to help with the coffees while Ruby spread her arms over the back of her sofa and dropped her head back.
“Finally. My ass was falling asleep,” she said with her distinct North Carolina accent and usual straightforwardness.
“Any word?” I dropped down onto the seat next to Sadie, careful not to spill my medium roast as I settled my bag next to me. The scent of coffee was a vast improvement over the stringent antiseptic odor lingering near the surgery doors.
“Still nothing, but don’t worry,” Ruby reassured, righting her head once more to send a small smile my way. She looked effortlessly beautiful, as usual, with her denim shorts, sleeveless top, and mounds of hair secured on top of her head with a handkerchief.
“It was sweet of you to come.” Sadie laid a hand on my arm, and I had to remind myself not to pull away. It had been almost four months now, but I was still somewhat unaccustomed to how tactile Americans were. Or perhaps it was just these Americans. The Green women doled out hugs like sweets on Christmas, something I was coming to not only accept, but appreciate as well. “I can’t imagine your new boss is too thrilled to have you skip out on work.”
Using my free hand, I dug in my bag for the cardboard coasters I kept there and then arranged them on the table before setting my coffee down. “According to her, I work too many hours as it is.” It was true I’d only recently found employment here in North Carolina after a visa issue required me to abandon my original post in Washington D.C., but I’d always been a hard worker, and that hadn’t changed. “And of course I came. If anything happened to Carl, who would call me ‘tiny girl’?” I asked, referring to the big bloke’s pet name for me.
Easy smiles spread on both Ruby and Sadie’s faces as they shook their heads in tandem. “I still don’t know what you did to own him like you do. He’s turned into a regular old softie.” Ruby laughed.
I merely grinned in return because I hadn’t a clue why Carl and I had hit it off so famously from the very start. He was a fifty-year-old, two-hundred-and-forty pound car mechanic with barely a secondary school education and a reputation of a quick and dirty temper; while I was a petite, bespectacled, twenty-nine-year-old Feldish executive assistant who did crosswords for fun and never made a move before considering it from every angle and then some. We were polar opposites, but it did nothing to stop me from adoring him.
And now he was lying on a surgeon’s table, probably fighting for his life while I sat here drinking a flipping coffee and having a chat. The thought had me springing to my feet just as a woman in a white lab coat approached our trio.
“I’m so sorry,” I apologized, taking a step back out of her personal space, but she didn’t appear bothered. In fact, her lips curved in a bright smile, sending my shoulders slumping in relief.
“The surgery went beautifully, and your father is in recovery,” the surgeon addressed us all, and no one bothered correcting her as collective sighs filled the air. Sadie was Carl’s only daughter while Ruby was his niece. I filled the role of new family friend, I supposed.
The surgeon crossed her arms, clipboard hugged to her chest. “I apologize it took so long. We were a little more backed up than I’d realized.”
“Thank you so much. Can we go see him?” Sadie’s tone was one of combined relief and eagerness.
The surgeon’s eyes skipped among us. “Only two at a time, I’m afraid.”
I immediately resumed sitting, as there was no question of who would see Carl first.
“Are you sure?” Ruby glanced my way, biting her lip, her keenness to check on her uncle impossible to miss. After all, he’d been her father most of her life, for all intents and purposes, and it had been a stressful day.
“Of course!” I shooed them away. “I can see him later. Go!” My smile was genuine and I hoped reassuring enough to not have them troubled by any sort of guilt. It was just a brief hello to check in on him, not a one-time chance to say goodbye or anything so dramatic as that.
My eyes followed the Green women until they turned the corner, holding hands as they followed the surgeon. And then it was just me and the sofas and the three cardboard cups of coffee. I sighed and lifted their coffees to reposition the coasters, and then filed the coffee receipt in my wallet before ensuring my bills were properly sorted. American money was pitifully unattractive. Where was the color? The artistry? With nothing left to do besides bemoan the state of American currency, I pulled my phone from my purse to check work emails.
But I froze at the notification staring back at me from its screen.
“One missed call from No Never Don’t.”
The pumping of blood in my veins roared through my ears and throbbed at the pulse point in my wrist as I held the phone on my lap and tried in vain to keep my mind from racing along with it.
Why, oh why, couldn’t my life be simple?
Breathe in. You’re lying on a feather bed with fresh silk sheets, looking up through a skylight at the night sky. Breathe out.
Why couldn’t he leave me alone?
In. Out.
Why did I let myself give the slightest consideration to impossible, impractical, foolish notions?
In. Out. In. Out.
And why was it so bloody hard to resist ringing back the man I loved?
In. Out. In—Oh, sod it.
To be fair, I didn’t always love Malcolm Baxter—otherwise known as Malcolm Nicholas Christoff Baxter or simply, Your Highness. In fact, my first impression of him was that of a spoiled, lazy simpleton with an over-inflated ego and not an inkling of what it meant to be a functioning adult. But over the course of my four years working for him, I began to view him differently.
It was one of life’s random strokes of luck that had landed me the position in the first place. Had I not been the daughter of one of King Gregory’s former housekeepers, I’d never even have been considered. While I’d managed to complete my bachelor’s degree at night school, these positions as direct aides to royal family members were normally reserved for children of monied families or experienced secretaries and assistants who’d worked their way up from less prestigious members of high society or royalty. But the king’s apparent regard for my mother persisted after her untimely death, a fact I knew nothing of until I was approached several years later by a member of the royal family’s security team—a man called Trevor Northam who would come to be a close and respected colleague. The king had kept our family in his thoughts and wished to offer me an employment opportunity with the royal family. Thus had begun my employment as Prince Malcolm’s primary assistant.