Once Upon a Prince (26 page)

“No, you are not right,” Nathaniel huffed, crashing back against his seat, staring out his window at the night sky. Was Jon right? Was Susanna just this decade’s Lady Adel? Was he doomed always to lose his heart to a woman who didn’t love him? And make a fool of himself in the midst of it?

“Nathaniel, it’s a security risk for you to go to the airport. Liam?”

“I have to agree.”

“She did leave without a word to me. I suppose that says more than a thousand words.” Nathaniel frowned at his aide, his heart heavy and sad. “You’re right too often these days.”

Jon faced forward, shaking his head. “Sorry, Nathaniel. I know she meant a great deal to you.”

Yeah, whatever. He closed his eyes, breathed deep and tried to focus on the night ahead, his responsibility, his duty to Brighton. “Stratton Palace, Liam. I’d like to dine and change before the street stroll.”

As Liam motored through the crowded, festive city toward home, Nathaniel watched the celebrations from his window.
Pints were being raised in his honor. Music and dancing celebrated him. But it all seemed stars and moons away.

Did they know, under the banner of their merriment, his heart was breaking?

Tomorrow evening would be the Grand Coronation Parade. He’d ride in a gilded white horse-drawn carriage—alone—toward the palace through a city overflowing with citizens wishing him well.

The day after that, life would return to normal, and Nathaniel would settle into his duties. Settle into a life without Susanna Truitt.

S
usanna wore the gold Louboutins out of Parrsons House and into the taxi, through airport security, and down the long thoroughfare to their gate for home.

Brighton to Atlanta. Nine hours. All while wearing the magic,
stupid
shoes. A reminder never to believe in fairy tales, nor the wild musings of a half-sane homeless woman. Even if she was a millionaire.

“You look ridiculous.” Avery pointed at the shoes, her elbows propped on her knee.

“Do I look like I care?” Susanna crossed her legs, exposing her right shoe in all of its crystal and glitter glory, pumping her leg up and down as she flipped through a magazine.

“What if someone recognizes you?”

Susanna tugged the brim of the wide hat she’d purchased at a souvenir shop in the airport. “They won’t be expecting me under a hat.”

“I can’t believe this.” Avery stood, flapping her hands against her thighs. “Colin said he’d bring us around when the flight actually left. But no, we have to sit here all day like a couple of jack wagons.”

“I’m sorry, but we have to get out of here before it gets
worse.” While packing, Susanna had turned on the television to discover she was the topic of a TV show.
Madeline & Hyacinth
went on and on about “the American,” playing the coronation video where Susanna stood instead of kneeling and popping up pictures of her this morning at St. Stephen’s in Nathaniel’s arms.

“He was going to take me riding.” Avery pouted, kicking at Susanna’s chair.

“You don’t ride.”

“If I can stand on a board and ride an unpredictable wave, I think I can manage a horse.”

“Aves.” Susanna flipped the magazine closed. “We’re going home. Stop complaining.”

With a sigh, Avery flopped back down to her seat and peered at Susanna through a reddish sheen of her chestnut hair. “We were living a fairy tale, weren’t we? Just for a moment.”

“For a moment,” Susanna said, “though I never wanted the fairy tale thing or to be a princess. I just wanted true love. The one.”

“You just happened to find a real prince.”

“But not true love. Not
the
one.”

Avery sat up and gripped Susanna’s forearm with her hands. “You are such a liar. You do so love him.”

“I don’t, and I told him I’d never marry him.”

“You did not … Susanna, come on, he loves you.”

“What difference does it make, Avery?” Susanna leaned right up to her ear. “He can’t marry me.” The tears she’d been bottling up fizzed and hissed. “I’ve told God I’d go anywhere, do anything, be anyone he wanted. But I’m not staying here to make a mess of things. Make fun of me if you want but not of him.” She dabbed her cheeks with the back of her hand. “He doesn’t deserve it.”

“Oh, Suz.” Avery dropped her arm around Susanna and rested her cheek against her shoulder. “You do love him, don’t you?”

“And not because he’s a prince.”

“King.”

“Whatever.”

A commotion a few gates away interrupted the sisters’ conversation. Susanna peered down the thoroughfare. A cluster of men with cameras scurried toward her gate, elbowing each other for first place, flowing against a stream of travelers heading for alternate gates and baggage claim.

“Paparazzi,” Avery said.

Susanna tugged on her hat. “Get your stuff. Slowly. No quick moves. Put your hood up.”

She’d just settled her backpack on her shoulders when she heard the shout, “There she is!”

A chorus of clomping shoes echoed in the thoroughfare as the troop of photographers charged, the lead man toppling a woman and her carry-ons.

“Aves, go, go, go.” Susanna held onto her hat and sprinted, her body moving twice the speed of her slick-soled Louboutins.

“There’s the elevator.” Avery ran ahead, dashing through a cluster of kids dressed in matching royal-blue T-shirts.

“Suz, come on.” She pinched between the closing elevator doors and pried them open.

Susanna slipped inside and collapsed against the elevator’s handrail, gasping, catching her breath.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the doors … slid … closed.

“Susanna?” A photographer raised his camera, and the shutter whirred just as the doors closed.

“Oh my stars.” Susanna sank down the wall, her quivering legs refusing to hold her up. “I can’t breathe.”

The elevator stopped with a ding, and before she could collect herself, the doors opened to another battalion of photographers.

Avery pressed the Close button, then held her palm toward the photographers, belting out a deep “Leave us alone.” Then she knelt next to Susanna. “Know what? We’re going back to our
gate. Forget them. What can they do to you? Besides, you can’t run from everything, Suz.”

“Run? Me? Ha.” She was coming to life now. “When do I run? I’m the one who stays. Remember? Adam? Twelve years?”

“He was all about you running from your past, your fears of growing up with Mama and Daddy fighting.”

Susanna made a face. “Where did you get such a cockamamie idea?”

Avery tapped her temple. “Right here. I’m right and you know it.”

“I’m not running from Nate. I’m just going home. He can’t be with me anyway, and I’m complicating things for him by being here.”

“You’re complicating things by running.” The elevator jerked to a stop, returning Susanna and Avery to the beginning of their escape.

As much as she believed she was a control freak who hated change, Susanna also hated confrontation. She hated pain. She ran. Hid under covers. In dark, small closets that transformed into magical gardens.

Avery grabbed her hand as the elevator stopped. “Ready?”

“Ready.” Susanna squeezed her sister’s fingers. “Thank you.”

“By the time we get home, I’ll be the most popular girl in school, maybe all of south Georgia, thanks to Facebook.”

“Might as well do this right.” Susanna whipped off her hat, fluffed her hair, and stepped off the elevator as the doors opened.

The photographers swarmed.

“Susanna, are you in love with the king?”

“Did you spend the night together, Susanna?”

“Are you having his love child?”

With Avery, Susanna cut a swath toward their abandoned seats. The photographers continued to digitally document the event, shouting questions.

“Will you be back, Susanna?”

“Suz, is that your nickname?”

“What do you think of Lady Genevieve?”

But Susanna sat where she’d left her bags and didn’t answer. She had learned from this morning.
Don’t feed the jackals
.

“Susanna, how about a smile?”

Enough. Susanna stood in her chair, towering over the photographers. “Please, we just want to wait for our flight in peace.”

“When will you see the king again?”

“Is he coming to say good-bye to you?”

“How did you two meet?”

“Psst.” The woman waiting in the chair next to Susanna tugged on her jeans. “Who are you anyway?”

Yeah, just
who
was she anyway? Nobody. A small-town south Georgia girl. Loving Jesus. Loving Nate Kenneth.

Her fifteen minutes of fame ended right now.

“Okay, y’all …” The cameras whizzed and clicked, flashing. “First of all, thank you for giving my sister and me a heart attack. Have you ever tried to run in Louboutin spikes?”

The photographers laughed. Passengers slowed and added to the crowd.

“I’m no one of acclaim or interest. I was your king’s landscape architect on his father’s garden on St. Simons Island. We became friends. His mother and brother invited me to the coronation. I came. I saw. I’m going home. End of story.”

Susanna tugged on her hat and dropped down to her seat. Now, if they would shoo, leave her alone. She was tired, drained, and ready to go home.

“One last question, Suz.” A skinny photographer bent toward her with a friendly smile. “What did you think of our great sapphire isle?”

She sighed. That question was easy. “It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.” She peered toward the window, lit with the golden edge of the Cathedral City lights. “It felt like home.”

T
he world was quiet except for the sound of the surf roaring in Susanna’s ears as she rode her board toward the shore. A southern storm off the coast churned the Atlantic, exhorting the waves. She’d been home from Brighton for two hours, arriving in Atlanta from New York in the early morning.

Avery hugged Daddy and Mama, talked a mile a minute, and then passed out on the couch midsentence.

But Susanna was restless. Burdened. She donned her wetsuit and grabbed her board. She’d not slept a wink on the flight, but she knew if she lay down, she’d only stare wide-eyed at the ceiling and wonder what
he
was doing.

The long journey home branded an excruciating question on her heart: Did she leave too soon? Should she have waited to say good-bye?

The wave beneath her softened, breaking as it carried Susanna toward the beach. She fished the board with the flow of the current, staying erect until at last she sank through the shallow, cold water to the slippery ocean floor.

She climbed back up on the board, sitting and bobbing with the lap of the waves, paddling the board around to face the northeast. To face Brighton.

In retrospect, she felt like some sort of drama queen—pun on queen intended—skedaddling out of there at the first sign of controversy.

But what would she have done differently? She replayed the morning at St. Stephens in her mind until her head ached and came to the same conclusion each time. She’d have done nothing differently. Besides, after he dropped her off at the puff shop, she never heard from him again.

So why bemoan her own quick departure?

She scooped up a handful of water and washed away the heat of doubt. The water ran into her eyes, and she blinked back the burn. But the salty sting wasn’t from the ocean but her own tears.

She surfed until the tide began to change and the tempest eased in the waves. It was time to go home. Time to move on. Time to eat dinner and begin the first day of the rest of her life. New year. Fresh start.

A recommitment to “I got nothing, Lord. I’m a hundred percent available to you.”

Mama met her in the kitchen when she came home. Avery remained passed out on the sunroom sofa, her burnished tresses flowing over the brown microfiber fabric like molten lava.

“Made some spaghetti. Hungry?” Mama said.

Susanna wandered through the kitchen, lifted the skillet lid, sniffed, then reached for a plate. “Who’s watching the Shack?”

“Daddy, Catfish, and Bristol. How was surfing?” Mama moved in gently behind her. “Go sit, let me fix this for you.”

Pulling out the counter stool, Susanna perched on the edge, chin propped in her hands, eyes drifting to half-mast.

“I’m sorry, Susanna. For what it’s worth.” Mama set the plate in front of her, then passed over a fork. “I have some Italian bread warming.”

“Sounds good.” She picked up the fork and stabbed at her
pile of spaghetti. “I knew the score when I went over. Nate is king. He’s married to a nation.”

“I didn’t mean about Nate, Suz, though I am sorry about him too.” Mama set a glass of tea in front of her, then took a long loaf of bread from the oven. “I meant I’m sorry for how you had to grow up.”

“Mama, please—”

“Your daddy and I were so young, thought we knew each other, but we didn’t.”

“Okay, fine. It’s in the past.” Susanna gulped down her tea. Didn’t she have enough on her heart without digging up her past to find a place to bury Mama’s burden?

“I know it’s in the past, but it doesn’t release me from saying I’m sorry. Asking your forgiveness.” Mama cut a thick slice of bread and passed it to Susanna along with the butter. “We did you wrong. Never did make up for it. Then Miss Thing over there on the couch arrived, and we felt like we had a chance to start over.”

Susanna rubbed her hand over her face. Surfing had drained the last ounce of her energy. “Do we have to talk about this now?” Or ever?

“I know that’s why you stayed with Adam for so long. A steady guy, good-looking, smart, caring, dependable. One of the few good men.”

“Mama, what started all this introspection?” Susanna twisted the thin spaghetti around her fork and shoved it into her mouth.

“Because … well, I did me some thinking while you girls were gone. I never told you I was sorry, Susanna. My pride, I guess. Hard to look at your child and admit you done them wrong, but I’m saying it now. I done you wrong. I wasn’t a good mama when my girl needed me the most, and it breaks my heart.”

The salty burn in Susanna’s eyes was even more annoying sitting in Mama’s kitchen than on the surfboard. “It’s okay.”

“I loved you from the moment I set eyes on you. So did your daddy. Our problems were never about you.”

“I know.” She did. Honest. But the walls she’d built while hiding in the closet were set in time-proven, emotional cement.

“So, you can let go now. Hear me?”

“Let go?” Susanna cut a pat of butter and spread it over the warm bread. “Of what? Adam? My one-legged business?” She wiggled her fingers in the air. “Poof, be gone.”

“Let go of
you
. You’re safe. Stop holding back.”

“What are you talking about?” She was too exhausted to deal with Mama-come-clean. Not to mention it was a bit freaky.

“Did you tell that prince you love him?”

“The king? No. Nor did I tell him when he was a prince. Why would I do that?”

“Because you do love him.”

“He lives four thousand miles away, and he can’t legally … oh, forget it. Mama, Nathaniel’s a nice memory from the past. Over. Done. Can we not talk about it for a while. For like … twenty, thirty years. And please”—Susanna sighed as she looked up at her mama—“don’t go creating family lore out of this. Or hang a sign in the restaurant, ‘King Nathaniel II cleaned toilets here.’”

“Oh, please, I’d never. Not about toilets anyway.” Mama perched on the stool next to Susanna. “Does he love you?”

“Can we go back to how you wronged me as a kid? What happened to that conversation?”

“This is the same conversation. You shut your heart up good when you were little and now I’m asking you to open it up.”

“I loved Adam. What do you call that?”

“Safety, the high-school-quarterback syndrome. You loved the first boy who looked your way, and by George”—Mama gripped the air and shook her fists—“you were going to hang on. Come what may.”

“So I let go.” Susanna held up her open palm. “I think I
recovered nicely from ‘I found the right ring but not the right girl.’”

“You did and I’m proud. Just make sure you’re opening your heart all the way.” Mama reached for Susanna’s other hand and uncurled her fingers. “You still feel so tense to me. If you love Nate, you got to confess it to yourself before you can ever move on or heal.”

Tears splashed her cheeks.
Oh, Mama
.

“You’re beautiful, Susanna. Before you can lay hold of all God’s got for you, you must forgive your ol’ mama and daddy, and confess to yourself you love Nate. Even more, that Jesus loves you.”

“Mama—”

“You sure are beautiful to your daddy and me. We used to get you out of your crib at night and put you in the bed between us just so we could stare at you.” Mama brushed her hand over Susanna’s hair. Something Susanna watched her do to Avery a thousand times but had no memory of Mama ever doing it to her. “I sure saw how Nate looked at you. He loves you.”

Susanna fell against her and broke, letting the forgiveness out and the truth in.

“I–I forgive you, Mama. And Daddy. Did a long time ago.”

“I needed to hear it. You needed to say it.” Mama’s voice weakened with her own weepy confession.

“And Jesus loves me.”

“That he does. And Nathaniel.”

“Yes, I love him.” Susanna wrapped tight around Mama and buried her burden in her mama’s bosom for the first time in her life. “I do love him. I do. It just hurts so much.”

Locked. Susanna twisted her office doorknob and tried the key again. But it no longer fit. She banged the door with her fist. “Hello?”

Down the outside stairs, she rounded the bottom step to the back door. The kitchen smelled of fresh-brewed coffee and something cinnamon. In the hall toward Jessup’s office, Bonnie, his assistant, intercepted her.

“He’s in a meeting.”

“I just saw him walk in from the parking lot, Bonnie.”

“What can I help you with, Susanna?”

“I’m locked out of my office.” She held up her key. “What’s going on?”

“The lock has been changed.”

“Because?”

“You were sixty days late on your rent.”

“Impossible. I paid a week before Christmas.” A last-minute contract had come in, along with a deposit check.

Bonnie opened her middle desk drawer. “Your payment bounced.” She passed Susanna an envelope. “The notice is inside with a copy of the check.”

“Bounced?” Susanna’s gumption sank like an anchored bolder. “How could it bounce?”

“Susanna, I don’t know how you run your business, but we pay our bills on time around here, and we expect others to do likewise.” Bonnie sat at her desk, a haughty expression on her skinny, overly made-up face. “We work on integrity and honor.” She shuffled her pencil can to the other side of her vase of faux flowers.

“Integrity and honor? Ah, I see.” Susanna tapped the rubber check notification against her fingertips. “Is that what you and Jessup are working on late at night? Honor and integrity? When his wife thinks he’s burning the midnight oil on a case?”

A bomb exploded behind Bonnie’s eyes. She bounded to her feet, her lean, prissy face a red ball of fire. “Get out.” She pointed toward the door, her lips pressed into a tight, red line.

“I need my office equipment, my computer.” Maybe she
should’ve kept her observation to herself. “Bonnie, um, I shouldn’t have said what I said.” She had no truth or facts, just suspicions and her own bitterness to sweeten it. “I’m just … Look, sorry.”

“It’s all right. Guess everyone has a bad day.” Bonnie’s tight-lipped expression eased up.

“Or a bad year.”

“Your stuff is in the storeroom by the kitchen.”

Sure enough, her entire office was crammed into the triangle-shaped closet. Susanna found her desk folded up, her chair rammed into a narrow space, perching precariously over her new, not-yet-paid-for iMac.

A lifetime had passed in the five days she’d been away, and suddenly she was back to the broken days of running on ice, trying to figure out how the Lord planned to use a girl who had nothing.

Dropping to the floor, Susanna pulled her keyboard from a box jammed with other stuff, muttering to herself.

She logged into her bank account. Sure enough, there were red flags all over the place. What happened to the check she deposited? Susanna launched email to see if JacDel Homes sent word of what happened on their end.

The stale storeroom air clung to her damp cheeks. Stretching out her foot, Susanna shoved the door the rest of the way open, letting light in and the hot air out.

The explanation came a few emails down the list. From JacDel Homes.

Susanna, we decided to go in a different direction. We’re canceling our contract and stopping payment. We’ll send another check with the kill fee
.

She cracked her head against the back of the wall. A different direction? It made no sense. JacDel came to her. Offered her the job with a set price, and she accepted.

“Hey, Jesus, your girl down here doesn’t understand what’s going on.”

Climbing off the floor, she headed back down the hall to Jessup’s office, once again stopped by Bonnie. “If I have the money to him by tonight, can I have my office back?” She’d have to break down and ask Mama and Daddy.

“I’m afraid not.” Bonnie could trademark her smirk. Best in all of St. Simons Island. “He’s already rented it to his nephew. Also a landscape architect.”

Perfect. Susanna started back down the hall. All this day needed was—

“Adam?”

He stood in the foyer, neat and pristine in his fatigues, cap in his hands.

“Hey, Suz.” He smiled shy and tentative. “Your mama said I’d find you here.”

“How are you?”

“Good, good. Can we talk?” He motioned toward the exit. “Maybe grab a coffee?”

“I’m in the middle of something.” She pointed toward the storage closet. “Got to get to work.” On the floor. Of a closet.

“Can I help?” Adam stepped forward, leaning for a look. His woodsy-spicy fragrance wafted up from his olive skin, coloring in her fading memories of him. Of them.

“I think I fell in love with you because you always smelled so good.” She laughed low.

Adam stepped back, made a face, then broke into a grin. “You should’ve been with me in the trenches of Afghanistan.”

She leaned against the wall, arms folded. “I heard you’re engaged.”

“Yeah, Sheree.” He studied the hardwood, nodding. “Do you hate me?”

“Hate you? No.” She started to her closet and he followed. “But you do have twelve years of my life.” Stopping at the storage closet, she pointed at him. “Treat them kind.”

“I never meant to hurt you, Suz. I should’ve called after you left the beach. But you always liked your space.”

“Help me carry this stuff out to my car, will you?” She swung wide the door.

“You moving out?”

“Something like that.” Susanna picked up the box of supplies and whatnot and peered at Adam, who reached for the chair. “You look happy.”

He bobbed his head. “I am.” A red blush stained his cheeks.

“It’s okay, bubba, you can be happy about the woman you’re going to marry.” Susanna kicked open the kitchen door. Know what? She was happy for him. Really.

They loaded her car with her office equipment, wrangling the desk chair into the backseat somehow. Then she leaned with him against the green driver’s side door and let the breeze tangle her hair and unwind her heart.

“You will always be special to me. Always,” he said.

“Adam, when you broke up with me, I knew you were right. I just didn’t want to admit it.” She peered into his eyes. “I know it was hard for you to tell me.”

“I felt sick for a month.”

“But free.”

“Yeah, free.” He kicked a clump of sandy soil. “Who told you I was getting married?”