fifty percent for quick sale, from the wall to her right. The mirrors reflected multiple images and she really didn’t want to see herself just now.
With a grimace she reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. It didn’t stay, of course.
Her hair was naturally blond, not always an asset, and naturally curly, which meant it did as it pleased. On an impulse she couldn’t explain, she’d had the long tresses cut off last week.
A mistake, that. Now it lay in ringlets around her face, making her look about seven instead of twenty-seven. She was also cursed with big blue eyes and a natural fringe of dark lashes that curled at the tips just like her hair.
The combination lent her a fragile innocence that was sometimes useful in business, but was mostly irritating as people took her at face value.
Because of her looks, she’d been treated like a pet or a doll all her life. By family. By teachers. By boyfriends who’d been protective and possessive, as if they wanted to put her in a pocket and only let her out when it was convenient. For them.
Except for one man. Once upon a fairy tale time out of time, she’d met her prince—a man who’d treated her as a woman, a very desirable woman, an equal in wit, intelligence…and passion.
Oh, yes, passion. A faint tremor ran through her blood, the first warning of the volcanic explosion that was to come. Just the thought of him, six weeks later, could do that to her.
Max. I need you.
No, she mentally chided. She was an adult and she could figure this out. But first things first, as one of her business professors used to say. That was why she was at this pharmacy in a strip mall where she wasn’t likely to be recognized.
Her many images glowered at her from the mirrors. She smoothed out the frown and laid her purchases on the counter. She’d gotten lotion and shampoo and a couple of other things she didn’t need in hopes that no one would notice she’d also gotten a pregnancy test kit.
“Sorry, I have to change the tape,” the clerk said, opening the top of the cash register and removing the spent roll of paper. When she attempted to thread the new roll through the machine, it jammed. The woman muttered a curse.
Ivy tamped down the impatience that made her want to turn and walk out as fast as she could. She’d stood in line this long, what was a few more minutes? Besides, she would have to do it all over again someplace else.
Schooling herself to calmness, she absently glanced over the tabloids while she waited. The headlines were amusing as usual—Woman Gives Birth to Martian and other interesting tidbits.
She skimmed the large print. A movie star was getting a divorce. Ho-hum. The Lion Roars, proclaimed another above a picture of a handsome man holding the arm of a fragile beauty—
Ivy gasped. She grabbed the edge of the counter as the room went into a dangerous spin.
“Are you all right?” the clerk asked, leaning close and peering into her eyes.
Ivy blinked several times and the world righted itself. Except for the abyss giving way under her feet. “Yes, just a…a sort of…of a dizzy spell. I’m fine now.” She smiled to prove that she was.
The clerk nodded sympathetically. “When I was pregnant with my first, I fainted at the drop of a hat. Blood was especially bad. My sister cut her finger one night when we were having dinner at her place. I fell right out on the kitchen floor. Scared my husband to death. He didn’t know I was expecting. Neither did I, come to think of it.”
Ivy dredged up a smile while the clerk and the woman behind her in line laughed nostalgically. “I’ll take this, too,” she said, and put the tabloid on the counter.
By the time she’d paid cash for her purchases and rushed to her car, every nerve in her body was quivering like an aspen leaf in a playful breeze. As she got in, she tossed her purchases into the passenger seat, grabbed the tabloid and read the article that went with the headline.
Her eyes widened and narrowed by turns as she skimmed through the hyperbole to get to the meat of the story. It seemed Prince Maxwell von Husden, Crown Prince of Lantanya, who was soon to be king, had been seen at a popular tourist resort in the tiny country with a mysterious beauty in July. After a romantic night of dining and dancing and passion, the woman had disappeared.
Ivy gasped and felt faint again. How could they have known about the passion?
Reporters always made up the stuff to fill in the blanks, she decided grimly, trying to calm the emotions that roared through her like a tsunami. She read on.
The prince was furious that the woman had slipped out on him before he grew bored and dropped her, according to one “close palace source.” Another source contended that the prince was heartbroken but covering it with anger.
Ivy pressed a hand to her thundering heart. “Liar,” she said. She’d been right to leave without waking him the next morning, although it had been difficult to do.
He’d looked so handsome lying in the king-size bed, his hair mussed and a morning beard shadowing his face, his expression one of contentment. She’d contemplated kissing him goodbye, but she’d had a plane to catch and she wasn’t sure they could stop at one kiss.
Again passion flared at the memory. She clenched the steering wheel and closed her eyes, slowly winning control of the hunger running through her.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” a voice asked through the window.
She opened her eyes with a jerk and stared at the woman who’d been in line behind her. “Oh. Oh, yes. Thank you.” She smiled brightly, her heart pounding so hard she could hear each beat in her ears.
The woman, who looked fortyish and had a certain world-weariness in her eyes, smiled, too. “Take care of yourself,” she advised in a kindly tone and walked to a car in the next row.
Ivy composed herself and drove out of the parking lot to an apartment complex recently built on the outskirts of the city. Portland General Hospital was the next exit off the highway. At least she was close to medical care in case her heart gave out completely.
The cynical thought evaporated after she got inside her place, the door closed and locked as if a whole platoon of reporters might come charging after her.
She read the article again, then looked through the whole tabloid in case there was more information. There wasn’t. All the reporter really knew was that she and Max had had a late supper at the resort. And that the prince seemed to have been in a bad mood of late.
For a while she sat there in a stupor, shocked that the handsome, humorous, beguiling man she’d met wasn’t Max Hughes, a foreigner attending to business matters in Lantanya the same as she was. She stared at the grainy print as if that could change the images in the photo that was snapped without her knowledge six weeks and four days ago.
However, the woman, whose face was partially turned from the camera, was her, and the man, who was smiling right into the lens, was apparently the man who was due to be crowned Maxwell V, King of Lantanya, in a few weeks.
The tiny island country was nestled in the Adriatic Sea, a perfect Brigadoon hidden from the rest of the world and far from reality.
Way far from reality,
