King and Kingdom (9 page)

“I can't just call right now,” Chey said, protesting. If she was honest, her nerves were shot. She didn't know what she would say first.

“The sooner the better. They have these old sayings for a reason. Now call while I'm here to be your shoulder for support.”

Chey rolled her eyes and picked up her cell phone. Would she really be able to get through? She thought ahead to the time difference and what Sander might be doing later in the day.

“Go on. Give him a ring.”

“Okay, okay. Pushy. Give me a minute.” Chey blew her nose twice more and took a drink from the tepid bottle of water sitting on the end table.

Wynn watched her like a hawk.

“I'm calling,” Chey said, picking her cell up off her leg.

“I know. I'm waiting.”

“I can feel you staring at me.”

“If I don't, then you'll chicken out and wait until tomorrow, and then tomorrow you'll talk yourself out of it again because of the time difference or--”

“Oh my God.
I'm calling.”
Chey tapped the phone to life and brought up the keypad screen. With her thumb, she pressed in Sander's private number. What was she going to say when he answered?
Hi, I think my champagne was drugged
sounded melodramatic and desperate. Even if she thought it was true.

A click on the other end made Chey catch and hold her breath. She didn't realize how much she wanted to hear Sander's voice until the click.

“
You have reached a number that has been disconnected and is no longer in service. If you have reached this number in error--”
Chey hung up before the automatic message could finish.

“What was that?” Wynn asked, frowning.

“They changed his number.”

“Already?”

“It appears that way.” Chey stared down at her phone. She should have known it wouldn't be that easy.

“Did you memorize anyone else's?”

“I didn't. I figured it wouldn't matter if I memorized Mattias's number or not.” They might have changed his, too, just so she wouldn't have access to anyone.

Wynn leaned back against the seat and withdrew her arm from around Chey. “You can't let that stop you.”

“What do you mean?” Chey glanced aside at Wynn. The girl had that determined gleam in her eye that Chey usually wore. It was one reason they'd gotten along so well through the years. Each was as stubborn and bull-headed as the other. Today, Chey just felt like a wet rag and wasn't up to her old stubborn antics.

“I mean you need to take action. Let's go to Latvala. Don't let him get away without trying to save your relationship.”

Chey gasped. “Are you crazy?”

“It's the same thing
you
would tell me to do if the situation was reversed,” Wynn said with a wry twist of her lips.

Chey realized she was right. It was exactly what Chey would tell Wynn to do. In fact, it was probably what Chey would have considered after another day or two of feeling sorry for herself and her circumstance.

“We can't just pick up and go to Latvala,” Chey said with a dubious expression. Yet the seed had been planted.

“Yes we can. I have a passport. As long as you have one, and I suspect you do if you've already been over there, then we just need a flight.” Wynn surged up off the couch and clapped her hands like a drill sergeant. “C'mon, c'mon, c'mon. Let's go, let's move!”

“They probably took that along with my private phone.” Chey wouldn't doubt it. She got up off the couch however, more tissues spilling onto the floor, and crossed to the small purse that sat next to her luggage. Picking it up, she rooted through, expecting to find the passport long gone.

Much to her surprise, it was there with her lipstick and other minor belongings.

“It's here. I'm shocked they didn't take it,” Chey said.

“They probably knew you'd need it going through customs, even if they do it privately or whatever for the Royals.” Wynn brought a trash bag from the kitchen and began to scoop piles of tissues in.

“I can get that,” Chey said. Wynn knew her well; Chey wouldn't be able to depart with her apartment in its current state. She needed to hang the dress up and straighten the cushions on the couch as well as clean the mess from her crying jag. Wynn was already on it.

“You go do whatever else you have to. Call and get flights. Use my credit card.” Wynn paused to point toward her purse on the floor.

“No, don't worry, I've got this one. If you're coming with me, the least I can do is get the flight. Besides, the Royals can pay for it.” Technically, although Chey shouldn't be spending the money in the bank. There was only so much left after paying her rent so far in advance. Still. Right now, she didn't care.

Gathering the dress off the couch, she hauled it into her bedroom and hung it up in the closet.

Then, she took the bull by the proverbial horns and made flight arrangements to Latvala.

Chapter Six

“What am I doing? Is this even the right decision? Sander told the men to tell me that this was best, that it was over. Are we wasting a whole trip for nothing?” Chey suffered a panic attack about returning to Latvala as they settled into the seats of the Boeing 747 two days later. Stowing her overnight bag beneath her feet, she buckled in and exhaled.

“Yes, it's the right thing to do. Look, if you don't at least clear the air, and get the answers you need, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Can you imagine trying to move on after this? You'll question everything and it might ruin whatever relationship you try to get into from here.” Wynn clipped her buckle with a smart snap and laced her hands in her lap.

“You make a good point.” Chey knew Wynn was right. It was nerve wracking, however, to take matters into her own hands and chase down a Prince of all things in a foreign country she'd only visited once. Maybe what she was really afraid of was that Sander would tell her to her face that he didn't want anything to do with her. That they were finished. It would break her heart.

At least she would know.

The flight to Latvala went without mishap. It was long and arduous, with two stop overs and plane changes. Wynn was, as ever, great company. Upbeat and enthusiastic, she insisted on taking pictures with Chey in front of terminals and iconic signs as they passed from one country to another. The closer they got to Latvala, the more Chey felt like it was coming home.

Landing in Kalev that evening, Chey was both excited and nervous. After waiting an hour to get their luggage, the girls departed the terminal and took a taxi to one of the hotels near the shore. It wasn't the same one she'd walked through with Mattias once upon a time, but a smaller, quaint business a block from the waterfront.

Their rooms were on the highest floor—the fifth—overlooking the ocean. At night, the water glistened like black diamonds. Lights from other city buildings stretched off to their right, offering a pretty vista in the darkness.

“I can't wait to see this place during the day. It's almost impossible to think you're
dating
the man who will one day be King of all this.” Wynn widened her eyes at Chey as the reality of it hit home for her.

“Dated. I dated the man...” Chey corrected. She had the sense of the surreal just like Wynn did, and she'd
lived
it for two weeks.

Wynn waved her off. Like Chey, she'd chosen to travel for comfort: jeans, oversized sweater and lightweight coat in case they hit cold weather. “It's just a temporary break. All epic couples have some kind of separation, then there's a romantic get-back-together thing that makes all the old hearts swoon when you tell the story at Christmas or around a campfire.”

“And you're always telling me I'm the one who's dramatic,” Chey said with a wry glance at Wynn.

The girl lifted her shoulders with a helpless grin then changed the subject without warning. “By the way, how are we going to get close to this heir to the throne, anyway? We never talked about that.”

That very question had been on Chey's mind since before getting on the plane. She looked out the window again, then paced through the room and slouched down on the sofa. “I'm not exactly sure yet. It won't work to take a taxi up to the gates. They'll stop us before we get there and just turn us away. He'll never even know I was here.”

Wynn perched on the arm of a plush chair and crossed her arms over her chest. Bird-like, silky hair bobbing around the slender column of her throat, she appeared to give it great thought.

“Does he do public appearances? I'm sure the Royals would advertise that to draw a crowd, right?” Wynn asked.

“I'm sure they all do. Mattias and I went out that one day and he took pictures with a lot of people, but it wasn't announced beforehand. Then again, it wasn't a planned outing like you're talking.” Chey considered it. “That would be a good place to at least try and get his attention
if
we knew when he was going out, and
if
we could get close enough to begin with.”

“We're here for seven days. We have to make something happen in that time,” Wynn reminded her. “That's a lot of 'ifs' and not a lot of real options. What else? Could we draw him out somehow? What would they do if a citizen specifically asked for their presence at some birth or baby naming ceremony or something?”

“I have no idea if he would show up to something like that, and how would we get the news to him anyway?” Chey eyed Wynn.

“Make an announcement in the newspaper. I will dress up and buy a fake babydoll, wrap it in a blanket so you can't tell from a casual glance, and then we wait like snakes in the grass for him to show up. That's when you pounce.”

Chey couldn't help but laugh. “You come up with the most outrageous things.”

“You forget that you've had your share of outrageous ideas in our time, Chey. You're just on the other side of the fence this time.” Wynn cracked a smile at Chey then grew thoughtful again.

Chey couldn't deny it. She'd been the master planner in some pretty hair raising schemes in their time. A glimmer of memory struck her just then.

“You know, Sander told me once that he takes little forays into the towns without his security detail sometimes. Just goes out among the people. I'm not sure if he meant this town, in particular, or a smaller one nearby,” Chey said.

Wynn's gaze narrowed with interest. “Really. It's still risky to count on that for the next seven days. Maybe he'll be too busy or upset with what happened to leave the castle. It's a shot though, one we shouldn't turn down.”

“That's what I was thinking. Then I wouldn't have to deal with the guards and someone trying to get me away from him before we can talk.”

“We should get a map from the lobby and find out if there are smaller towns that are more convenient that he might visit. This one
is
pretty big. I'd be surprised if he went out too much around here and risked getting Prince-napped or whatever. Word would spread fast.”

Chey's shoulders shook with a laugh. Prince-napped. Wynn just didn't know Sander very well. They would have to be wily nappers to simply make off with the Prince. Overall, however, the sentiment made sense.

“Let's go down and grab a map. While we're looking, we can still think of other ideas.” Chey got up off the couch.

Wynn slid off the arm of the chair. “We'll figure it out. One way or another, we
will
run into Sander Ahtissari while we're here.”

Chey hoped Wynn was right.

. . .

The hotel boasted a quaint restaurant on the lowest level adjacent to the souvenir shop. After purchasing several maps, local newspapers and two tabloids, or 'rags' as Urmas had once called them, the girls settled into a quiet booth surrounded with a high back that gave them a modicum of privacy on three sides. Made to resemble an alpine ski lodge, the restaurant had little skiers on wires traveling overhead from one 'snowbank' to another. A miniature village of shoppes and houses in alpine style lined the walls high overhead, with the utensils all done in heavy metal resembling pewter. Authentic music spilled out of unseen speakers, low enough to be pleasing in the background without drowning out comfortable conversation.

They ordered chicken and herbs, baked new potatoes and the house soup that came in a big pot with a ladle for their use. Crusty slices of bread arrived on wooden platters with the knife sticking out of the rest of the uncut loaf.

In her element, Wynn drank beer from a tall stein and laid the maps out over the parts of the table that didn't have food draped across it.

“Okay, so this is Kalev—it's a decent sized town, too,” Wynn said. “But there are two little villages between Kalev and the castle, which is over here.” She made gestures on the map after wiping her fingers on a napkin.

“Yes. I never visited those while I was here the last time. But I probably saw them from the air when we flew over.” Chey recalled a few smaller settlements close to the shore mid-flight. “It makes sense that he might stick to smaller, less busy towns.”