LITMIR.BIZ

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blur of high school without Hugo at her side—the first sense of feeling adrift without her safety net.

      Her attempt to overcome that feeling—wide-eyed and terrified, landing in New York when she was twenty. Then grabbing that safety net with both hands as, teary and weary, she fled New York and moved back into the palace at twenty-five.

      Her memory had not yet hit the anxious, fractured, out-of-control mess of the past few weeks when she’d spied the driver on the muddy road.

      For time had slowed—imprinting on her mind wind-ruffled dark hair, a square jaw, a face as handsome as sin. A surge of drama at the end. At least the last thing I’ll ever see is a thing of beauty, she’d thought.

      Of course, that was before he’d proceeded to storm at her for a good five minutes straight.

      Quite the voice he had. Good projection. With those darkly scowling eyes and that muscle ticking in his impossibly firm jaw she’d first thought him a Hamlet shoo-in. From a distance, though, with those serious curls and proud square shoulders he’d make a fine Laertes. Then again, she’d had a good grip on that which was hidden beneath the suit. A dashing Mercutio, perhaps?

      Though not in one of her high-school productions, alas. One look at him and her twelfth-grade drama students would be too busy swooning to get anything done.

      That, and she’d been “encouraged” to take a sabbatical from her job the moment she’d become engaged. The palace had suggested six months for her to settle into her new role before “deciding” if she wished to return.

      “Ms,” he said again, and she landed back in the moment with a thud.

      Focus, her subconscious demanded, lucidity fluctuating like a flickering oil lamp during a storm. Her brain seemed to have kicked into self-protect mode, preferring distraction over reality. But, as much as she might wish she was living a high-school play, this was as real as it got.

      “Ms—”

      “Miss,” she shot back, levelling the stranger with a leave me be glance. Oh, yes, she was very much a “miss”. Her recent actions made sure of that. She remembered the rock weighing down her left hand and carefully tucked it into a swathe of pink tulle.

      “As I said I’ll be fine from here. I promise. You can go.” She took a decided step back, landing right on the cusp of a jagged rock. She winced. Cried out. Hopped around. Swore just a bit. Then pinched the bridge of her nose when tears threatened to spill again.

      “Miss,” said the stranger, his rumbling voice quieter now, yet somehow carrying all the more. “You have lost both your shoes. You’re covered in mud. You’re clearly not...well. It’s a mile or more to the nearest village. And the afternoon is settling in. Unless you have another mode of transport under that skirt, you’re either coming with me or you’re sleeping under the stars. Trust me.”

      Trust him? Did he think she was born under a mushroom? Quite possibly, she thought, considering the amount of mud covering the bottom half of her dress.

      Not witness to the conversations going on inside Sadie’s head, the stranger went on, “How could I look myself in the mirror if I heard on the news tomorrow that a woman was eaten by a bear, the only evidence the remains of a pink dress?”

      Sadie coughed. Not a laugh. Not a whimper. More like the verbal rendering of her crumbling resolve. “Bears are rare in Vallemont. And they have plenty of fish.”

      “Mmm. The headline was always more likely to be Death by Tulle.” He swished a headline across the sky. “‘Woman trips over log hidden entirely from view by copious skirts, lands face-first in puddle. Drowns.’”

      Sadie’s eye twitched. She wasn’t going to smile. Not again. That earlier burst of laughter was merely the most recent mental snap on a day punctuated with mental snaps.

      She breathed out hard. She’d walked miles through rain-drenched countryside in high heels and a dress that weighed as much as she did. She hadn’t eaten since...when? Last night? There was a good chance she was on the verge of dehydration considering the amount of water she’d lost through her tear ducts alone. She was physically and emotionally spent.

      And she needed whatever reserve of energy, chutzpah and pure guts she had left, considering what she’d be facing over the next few days, weeks, decades, when she was finally forced to face the mess she had left behind.

      She gave the stranger a proper once-over. Bespoke suit. Clean fingernails. Posh accent. That certain je ne sais quoi that came of being born into a life of relative ease.

      The fact that he had clearly not taken to her was a concern. She was likable. Extremely likable. Well known, in fact, for being universally liked. True, he’d not caught her in a banner moment, but still. Worth noting.

      “You could be an axe murderer for all I know,” she said. “Heck, I could be an axe murderer. Maybe this is my modus operandi.”

      He must have seen something in her face. Heard the subtle hitch in her voice. Either way, his head tipped sideways. Just a fraction. Enough to say, Come on, honey. Who are you trying to kid?

      The frustrating thing was, he was right.

      It was pure dumb luck that he had happened upon her right in the moment she’d become stuck. And it was dumber luck that he was a stranger who clearly had no clue who she was. For her face had been everywhere the last few weeks. Well, not her face. The plucked, besmeared, stylised face of a future princess. For what she had imagined would be a quiet, intimate ceremony, the legal joining of two friends in a mutually beneficial arrangement, had somehow spiralled way out of control.

      She’d had more dumb luck that not a single soul had seen her climb out the window of the small antechamber at the base of the six-hundred-year-old palace chapel and run, the church bells chiming loud enough to be heard for twenty miles in every direction.

      Meaning karma would be lying in wait to even out the balance.

      She looked up the road. That way led to the palace. To people who’d no doubt discovered she was missing by now and would search to the ends of the earth to find her. A scattered pulse leapt in her throat.

      Then she looked at the stranger’s car, all rolling fenders and mag wheels, speed drawn in its every line. Honestly, if he drove a jalopy it would still get her further from trouble faster than her own feet.

      Decision made, she held out a hand. “Give me your phone.”

      “Not an axe murderer, then, but a thief?”

      “I’m going to let my mother know who to send the police after if I go missing.”

      “Where’s your phone?”

      “In my other dress.”

      A glint sparked deep in her accomplice’s shadowed eyes. It was quite the sight, triggering a matching spark in her belly. She cleared her throat as the man bent over the car and pulled a slick black phone from a space between the bucket seats.

      He waved his thumb over the screen, and when it flashed on he handed it to her.

      The wallpaper on his phone was something from outer space. A shot from Star Wars? Maybe underneath the suave, urban hunk mystique he was a Trekkie.

      The wallpaper on the phone she’d unfortunately left at the palace in her rush to get the heck out of there was a unicorn sitting at a bar drinking a “human milkshake”. Best not to judge.

      She found the text app, typed in her mother’s number.

      But what to say? I’m sorry? I’m safe? I screwed up? I would give my right leg to make sure they do not take this out on you?

      Her mother had been a maid at the palace since before Sadie was born. It had been her home too for nearly thirty years. If they fired her mother because of what Sadie had done...

      Lava-hot

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