The Surprise Princess (8 page)

“It’s you and Brad. You telling me it’s not about basketball?”

After that, it seemed smarter to give him the requested rundown, though she skimmed over certain elements and emphasized basketball.

And what was the first thing he said after she finished? “So Brad took you to meet Andy.”

She’d said absolutely nothing about that side trip. If C.J. Draper weren’t such a good boss, he’d be downright annoying. “He stopped to see his grandmother on the way and I happened to be in the car with him.”

“You know she and her husband took him in when he was in middle school?”

“I, uh, gathered there was something. But since it’s none of my business—”

“You’ve seen how he gets along with his mom and step-dad, so it’s okay now. But it was pretty rocky when he was younger.
He
was pretty rocky. His dad was out of the scene early. Then his mom remarried when Brad was a kid. And they started having babies.

“His step-dad’s a nice guy, but kids don’t always appreciate nice. Especially not at that age. When Brad hit the age to rebel, there was his stepfather, along with half-siblings ready-made as a magnet for his discontent. He was heading down a bad road. His grandparents agreed to take him on. That was the first step.”

“Andy credits you for the rest.”

“Me? No way. That was Coach Brezyinski. His high school coach. Tough old Marine who took Brad by the scruff of the neck after his grandfather died, shook him good, then set him back down on his feet.” He shook his head. “Coach B scared the bejeebers out of me. He told me I was going to offer Brad a scholarship, and that was that.”“That’s not what Andy said.”

“She’s got her story and I’ve got mine. Besides, Carolyn was the force to be reckoned with for Brad when he got to Ashton. She always said he could do whatever he wanted when he set his mind to it, and she decided he was going to set his mind to a lot.”

“Even if he had to be suspended a few games.”

He grinned lopsidedly. “Yep. And wasn’t that some kind of fun? Wouldn’t want to go through those weeks again. But it did him a world of good.”

They sat in silence a moment – as silent as a room could get with the team no longer occupied with eating. She was too absorbed in considering what he’d told her to wonder what he was thinking … until he turned to face her.

“So, with all this talk of Brad’s history I forgot what I started out wanting to know. How’re you doing, Katie? What with getting out of the office, out of your comfort zone. You tend to resist that.”

Why did she have the uneasy feeling he was shifting the context from this trip to something broader. “I’m capable of expanding my comfort zone. For something I want to pursue.”

“As long as nobody sees you doing it,” Brad murmured from behind her.

She jumped, shot C.J. a look, wondering if he knew how long Brad had been there.

“It’s like you’re allergic to being noticed,” Brad added as he took his chair.

Her mother’s hand tugging her back, keeping to shadows. No notice. Draw no notice.

“I don’t want to be noticed.” She regretted the words immediately.

“Why?” C.J. demanded.

“Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be,” Brad said before she could answer C.J. without truly answering.

“Not everyone’s like—” She stopped, waving her hand, wiping away the words.

Instead of accepting her implicit request that her words be ignored, Brad said, “Not everyone’s like me?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Sure you did. But that’s okay. Sometimes not being noticed backfires.”

“Because I won’t get promotions?” she said dryly. “I’ve had offers. I’m happy with things the way they are.”

“Are you?” His voice sounded peculiar.

Before she could examine that, C.J. muttered, “You’re a fine one to talk, Spencer.”

“Not the same thing at all. I’m talking about someone who hides out as Cinderella, then suddenly shows up in all her glory for the ball and doesn’t realize it can give the wrong kind of guys the wrong kind of ideas.”

“Now, that sounds interesting,” C.J. said.

“There was nothing—”“I’ll tell you about it later, Coach, when she can’t claim she was blind to a bunch of hounds drooling over her.”

“It wasn’t a bunch—”

“Hah! So you admit there was drooling going on.”

“I don’t admit anything. You’re being— Where are you going, C.J.?”

“Gotta call Carolyn. Got a question to ask her.”

He asked about the kids first, as always. They were fine.

“How’d you like a set of wooden salad servers from the gift shop, Carolyn?”

“You didn’t call to ask about wooden salad servers. Why are you distracted, C.J.?”

“I’m not distracted.”

“You’re calling me
before
a game.”

He conceded the point by dropping it. “I, uh, I had the strangest notion today.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Sitting with Katie talking. And Brad came up.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what? Yes, as in yes you heard me and want to know what comes next? Or yes as in confirming what I was thinking but hadn’t said yet so you had to be reading my mind again?”

“The latter.” Only then did she chuckle a little.

“That’s a hell of a complication, isn’t it? I mean if she is, you know, what Hunter Pierce thinks she is, what the hell happens then?”

“I suppose that’s up to them.”

They ate Sunday breakfast with the team – happy after last night’s last-second victory in a game they hadn’t been expected to win. The team boarded the bus for the return to Ashton, while Katie and Brad headed to the early matinee game of a junior college tournament.

She read stats to Brad as he drove.

“That’s the last one,” she concluded.

“There’s no reason you shouldn’t want to be noticed more, Katie.”

She should have made up players to keep him from switching to this topic. “Not again—”

But she was too late. He was already going on. “Want to know the first time I noticed you?”

“No.”

“I mean really noticed you. Of course I’d noticed you the way any man notices the new girl in his environment the day you started, but—”

“I was not a girl. I was—”

“Girl.” His firmness overrode any argument. “With that sweater you always wore.”

“It gets cold in the office.”

“The gray shroud. You might as well add some fruit or birds and it’d be what a grandmother—”

“
Grandmother?
” Though to tell the truth, she’d heard that before.

“—would wear. Not
my
grandmother. But some grandmothers. Though Andy might be hurt to hear your tone of outrage at being likened to her.”

She glared. He returned it with an expression of blue-eyed, guileless innocence. Lying with a look. The man was a bald-faced look-liar.

“Anyway,” he said evenly, “what we were discussing before you derailed my train of thought was when I first noticed you.”

Dignified silence might be her best option.

“It was a couple months after you started in the basketball office. You’d smoothed out that mess with the travel office, and we already knew we couldn’t function without you. And—”

He made a turn, and she hoped they were getting close to the tournament site.

“—I saw you out walking on campus. On the paths.”

“I’m on campus a lot. Especially then, since I was taking classes.”

Another turn, this time into a crowded parking lot.

He nodded, cruising aisles for a spot. “So now you’re wondering what about you being on the campus paths made you so noticeable, right? Has you worried, huh? Well, I won’t keep you in suspense. It was how much you didn’t want to be noticed. Stood out like a neon sign in the middle of a park. There were all these other students and staff and faculty streaming along, each one perfectly willing to be noticed and some of them doing their damnedest to grab attention.” He pulled into a space. “And then there was Katie Davis, working so hard to not be noticed that she barely let herself even be
on
the paths. I think if you could have melted into the grass you would have.”

She felt the strangest urge to laugh.
Don’t draw attention
. Her parents had drilled that into her … And perversely it drew the attention of Brad Spencer.

She closed her purse, unhooked her seat belt. “Fine. I’m an oddity. I thought we’d settled that the other day.”

He turned off the car and shifted toward her. “Not an oddity, Katie. A mystery.”

She looked up. Into the lose-your-soul-and-your-mind blue of his eyes.

“I’m not a mystery.”

“You are to me.”

H
is concentration on basketball gave her a break during the game, but she braced for a renewed – what? Assault? Attack? Inquisition?

Instead, he was silent and frowning as they walked to the car while most people remained in the gym for the next game.

As they reached the main road, he sounded stiff when he said, “I’ve got that other stop to make now. Sorry.”

“I remember. It’s no problem.”

“You’ll like these people.” But he didn’t sound happy about it.

And he didn’t look happy as they walked up to the front door of a handsome, inviting house in Evanston, the first suburb north of Chicago. He rang the bell.

Voices – children’s and adults’ – and a dog’s bark preceded the door swinging wide to show a man smiling broadly. “Come in, come in. Quick, before the hordes get you.” He waved them in as the other arm extended back as if to hold off two kids and a fuzzy dog of indeterminate parentage. The kids and dog ducked under the restraining arm with ease, staring up at them with friendly interest.

“Good to see you again, Brad. And you must be Katie. I’m Paul Monroe. And these two bandits—” He scooped up a child in each arm, setting off waves of giggles. “—are all my fault. Nick and Cassie,” he added, hitching first one then the other higher by way of introduction. “Say hello to Katie and Brad.”

They did, as the man instructed Brad to hang his own and Katie’s coats on a line of pegs by the door.

As they reached a stairway, Paul Monroe set the two kids down on the second step and said, “Upstairs now, and no pestering Anne Elizabeth, the both of you.”

“But Da-ad—” Tried the girl, the younger one.

“We talked about this. Now go.”

The boy said glumly, “We might as well go, he’ll get Mom if we don’t.”

They trudged upstairs.

“As you can see, I’m a fearsome disciplinarian,” Paul said deadpan. “C’mon back and meet everybody, Katie. This is my wife, Bette.”

A woman with the same dark hair and blue eyes as the little girl met them where the hallway opened to a large room. Even before entering, Katie saw a fireplace, comfortable groupings of seating with a number of chairs perfect for curling up in. “Welcome, Katie. We’re so glad you could come. These are our good friends, Leslie and Grady Roberts. And Tris and Michael Dickinson over there putting toys away.”

Both couples had smiles as warm as the Monroes’, though Katie felt a layer of discomfort edged in. Was she picking up a bit of discomfort on their parts? But why?

She glanced over her shoulder toward Brad, who was exchanging low words with Paul. He didn’t meet her gaze.

“And this,” Leslie Roberts said, holding onto Katie’s hand after they shook and using that hold to draw her deeper into the room, “is my cousin, April Gareaux.”

Katie stopped.

Stopped moving. Stopped breathing. Stopped thinking.

Stopped everything but staring at the young woman who had been in the news so much at the beginning of the year. The young woman so many people had said she resembled. The young woman in the magazine she’d looked at so many times.

“We’re here shamelessly throwing ourselves on Bette’s organizing skill to pull together our wedding,” April said with a warm smile. “I’m so glad it’s also giving me this opportunity to meet you.”

Katie looked into her mind searching for a reaction and it was an utter blank except for one fact. Brad had brought her here. To a house where April Gareaux was.
Brad
.

Movement caught her attention, finally breaking her immobility to focus on it. Now she was staring at the man who’d come to stand behind April, one arm going around her.

“Hello, Katie,” said Hunter Pierce of the State Department’s Security Service. “It’s good to see you again.”

Hunter Pierce. April Gareaux. …
Oh, God
.

She turned away, half stumbled, found Brad’s arms around her. “Katie. Listen, please—” She tried to escape from his hold, and almost went down completely.

“Sit here,” Bette said, a hand on her shoulder as she guided Katie to an easy chair. Other voices were saying things, lots of things, all trying to sound reassuring, soothing, persuasive, she was sure. It took several moments for the sounds to begin to sort out to words spoken by individuals.

“We just want to talk to you,” Grady Roberts said.

“That’s not entirely true.”

Katie’s head came up at those words, and she met Leslie Roberts’ gaze. “We don’t just want to talk to you. We want you to listen. And afterward, we want you to agree with us that you should meet King Jozef.”

Katie was aware of someone – she thought it was Tris Dickinson – muttering, “Way to ease into it.”

But she appreciated Leslie Robert’s honesty. It gave her an anchor. “No. I told him—
Him
.” She specified Hunter Pierce. “I’m not the right person.”“Katie.” Brad was there, crouched in front of her. “This isn’t going to go away. And—”

“C.J. and Carolyn?”

“It’s my doing. If you’re pissed at somebody, be pissed at me.”

“But they know. That’s why they pushed this trip. That’s why … this whole weekend.”

He was going to lie. She saw that. And then he didn’t. “Yes. They know.” He took both her hands in his and she was so numb she couldn’t feel it. “Katie, you have to deal with this. One way or the other, it isn’t going away. Face it and—”

“I don’t—”

“We want you to meet King Jozef tonight.”

Katie’s head jerked up to April Gareaux, standing behind where Brad crouched beside her chair.