LITMIR.BIZ

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      “PEANUT BUTTER,” Lili said to herself, gazing beyond the wisps of vaporous clouds. The airplane was beginning its descent.

      Soon, she, Liliane Brunner, Her Serene Highness of Grunberg—oh, my, my. La-di-da!—would have her first taste of genuine American peanut butter. To be excited over such a silly little thing was not at all grown-up or sophisticated. Even though Lili had sworn to her family that she’d behave on this trip, at the moment she didn’t give a fig about what a proper princess would do. There were peanut butter jars to explore! Childish or not, she’d wanted to stick her finger into a jar of Skippy or Jif ever since she’d heard of the exotic brands.

      And grab a handful of M&M’s, she added silently, leaning closer to the small window to get a glimpse of land. Oh, and I mustn’t forget hot dogs, slathered in mustard and ketchup and relish and sauerkraut and pickles and five-alarm chili…

      Perhaps it would be best not to try it all at once!

      Lili smiled, propping a fist beneath her chin in a gesture left over from her storybook childhood, when life at the royal castle in Spitzenstein had been one grand entertainment after another. Her mother’s death in an avalanche in the Swiss Alps had changed all that. Lili had been nine. Her father had grieved deeply, withdrawing from the world for several years. Afterward, he’d become far more restrictive about what he allowed for his three young daughters. Lili and her two older sisters, Natalia and Andrea, had grown up as sheltered as possible in the modern day.

      Despite her mother’s tragic demise, Lili’s optimism and outgoing personality could not be stifled. She tried to be good to please her father—especially since Natalia, the eldest, had grown into a rebel, while Andrea played the nonconformist—but being good was terribly boring. Lili loved life—all of it! She wanted to experience everything. This was her first trip to America as an adult, and she was practically light-headed, her anticipation so fizzy it was as if she’d been guzzling expensive champagne straight from the bottle.

      Lili nipped the tip of her tongue to quell an eruption of sheer excitement. If she let it out, she might not be able to stop…and it wasn’t very princessy to giggle in first class.

      Then again, why should only she have to behave? Prince Franz, her father, was spending a weekend in Cap d’Antibes with his va-va-voom mistress—though Lili wasn’t supposed to know that—while Andrea, the tomboy, and Natalia, who was Lili’s role model for mis behavior, completed preparations to attend a wedding in the American Southwest. They had been enlisted to lecture Lili about the importance of maintaining proper royal comportment, but really… Was she seriously expected to take instruction from Natalia, with her leather miniskirts and bite-my-heinie attitude? Or Annie, who knew her own mind and spoke it frequently?

      Lili was the baby at twenty-two. Old enough, in her opinion.

      Her father had another, however. She was considered too capricious to handle vital duties. For her first overseas outing as a solo representative of the royal family, the opening of an exhibition of the royal jewels in a diddly-squat museum in Middle America was as safe and insignificant an assignment as Prince Franz could find. Lili didn’t mind. She’d been waiting for any opportunity to strike out on her own.

      At her first glimpse of land, Lili nearly bounced out of her seat. She’d spotted green trees and golden-hued fields far below. Those had to be the “amber waves of grain”—a phrase that had piqued her curiosity far more than “purple mountains majesty.” She’d seen plenty of those in her homeland, a pocket-sized principality tucked between the Swiss Alps and the Austrian border. America was a thousand times the size of Grunberg, whose citizens were so stuck upon their traditions they didn’t even have the Golden Arches.

      Too thrilled to keep silent, Lili turned to her traveling companion, Mrs. Amelia Grundy. “This is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me.”

      Mrs. Grundy, a solid British sort not given to hyperbole, shook her head at the young princess. “Surely, sweet child, it’s not better than the time the sheikh from Abu Dibadinia offered Prince Franz two hundred camels and a sixty-carat ruby for your hand in marriage.”

      Lili let out a huge smile. “Oh, much better. You know red’s not my color. Besides, he offered three hundred camels for Natalia. I was highly insulted.”

      “What about when you ran off with the young Scottish laird of Kirkgordon to the topless beach in Monaco?” Mrs. Grundy had heartily disapproved of the escapade, even though her eyes had twinkled while she’d scolded the young princess. Lili was certain that she brought it up now only to remind the princess of past transgressions.

      “That should have been exciting,” Lili mused, her lips curving into a reminiscent smile, “but poor Johnnie, with his unfortunate red hair and all those freckles—he wasn’t prepared for the hot sun of the Riviera.”

      “And a lucky sunburn it was for you, young lady. Because of the lad’s solar allergy you made it off the beach in the nick of time. The papparazzi arrived a full five minutes before the palace bodyguards.”

      Lili put on a pretend pout. “I never even got to take my top off.”

      Mrs. Grundy rolled her eyes heavenward. “Goodness, no. Remember, my dear, you promised. There will be no mischief on this trip.”

      Lili opened her mouth. How very dull that sounded! “But—”

      “No ifs, ands or buts about it, Your Serene Highness. You know what I always say—”

      “Not to worry.” Lili interrupted before the dear woman repeated one of her favorite expressions. It was always a bad sign when Amelia Grundy launched into the Your-Serene-Highness song and dance.

      Lili glanced sidelong with a foxy smile. “I hear that Americans still emulate the Puritans when it comes to nudity…and other regards. It’s extremely unlikely that Blue Cloud, Pennsylvania, will offer me a single opportunity for naked shenanigans.” She gave an airy sigh. “What a pity.”

      “If I didn’t know that you’re teasing me…”

      Lili gripped the older woman’s hand. “Of course, I am, Amelia. I remain as pure as the driven snow.” In spite of my best attempts.

      Amelia Grundy’s stern but kindly face crinkled into dubious speculation. She was sixtyish, rather tall and formidable, built as round and solid as a ski mogul, with keen blue eyes and silvered hair she wore on top of her head in a pouf. A widow, she’d been with the royal family since before Lili was born, acting first as the three sisters’ nanny, then—when the princesses chafed at being overseen by someone who bore such an old-fashioned term—as their combination escort, companion, social secretary and lady-in-waiting.

      “Perhaps you are pure in deed,” Amelia said, “but not, I fear, in thought or intent.”

      Lili scrunched her nose. How true! She never could manage to fool old Grundy, who had an almost mystical omniscience when it came to the three princesses. Many a time she’d shown up where least expected, just at the right moment to stop one of their wild adventures or dangerous stunts. Or facilitate a dignified exit when none seemed possible. The sisters had come to accept, and even rely upon, their former nanny’s more “magical” abilities.

      Now that Lili was an adult, Amelia’s way of knowing what was on her mind—often before she knew it herself—could be as annoying as it was helpful. When a girl was trying to lose her virginity, it didn’t help to have a nanny overseeing her. Transcendentally or not!

      “It’s the twenty-first century, Mrs. Grundy. These days, no girl stays a virgin until marriage.”

      “Unless she is the daughter of His Serene Highness, Prince Franz Albert Rudolf of Grunberg, and subject to public scrutiny in all that she does.” Amelia nodded complacently, as if the subject was settled, and reopened the romance novel she’d been reading all the way across the Atlantic.

      Lili sighed to herself. Upon their official debut into European society, she and her sisters had become known in the tabloids as The Three Jewels. Although their country

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