The Frog Prince (18 page)

His wife, Mary–whose real name is something unpronounceable like Murugeswari–is a first generation American whose parents were originally from India. Her in-your-face humor is jarring at first, coming from such a petite and sweet-looking woman. I suspect that’s the reason no one ever takes offense at her biting sarcasm.

“Excellent,” says Roman.

“Oh…wait.”

“What?”

“I don’t have a passport,” I say. “Is there enough time for me to get one?”

Roman reaches for the phone on the desk. “There is when you know people who know people who know the Secretary of State!”

“On a Saturday?”

He shrugs, “People shouldn’t say ‘call me if you ever need anything’ if they don’t want me to eventually call them when I need something.”

I glance at the door that leads via the retractable bridge to the other house. “I don’t suppose you can let the drawbridge down over the moat so I can go get my bag?”

Roman hangs up the phone. “It’s still connected from last night,” he says, walking to the window next to the door and peering out to confirm it. “I’ll go get it for you.”

I scramble from the bed and over to the door. “That’s okay, I can get it,” I say, reaching for the doorknob.

He grabs my hand and pulls me away from the door. “Leigh, it’s only twenty degrees outside.”

I look down at my long-sleeved shirt and my bare…everything else…and see his point.

He takes my other hand and pulls me into him, wrapping me in a warm hug. “I’ll get the bag, and you can do whatever you’re going to do while I make us breakfast.”

“I’m taking a shower,” I say, as he slowly twists our connected bodies around from side to side. “Then I’m getting something a lot warmer on.”

“That’s too bad,” he says, nuzzling his face against my throat. He slides his hands from my back to just under my shoulders. I shiver as he moves them slowly down, skimming the sides of my breasts and the contours of my waist.

I turn my face just in time to connect with his lips. After a few long, lingering kisses I pull myself away. “So…where do you sleep?” I say with a mischievous smile.

He smiles back. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Chapter Sixteen

Stockholm, Sweden

Three weeks later

A heavy pounding of fists against thick metal works its way into my unconscious state. I open one eye. The digital clock on the nightstand vouches for the time being four thirty. A faint silvery glow through the glass of the French doors–a combination of the reflection of Stockholm’s city lights off the snow below and a sliver of illumination from the crescent moon above–provides just enough light for me to confirm that Roman is not in the bed next to me.

Normally a stranger pounding on my hotel room door in the middle of the night would prompt a panicked call to the police. However, despite what my eyes are telling me, I know that it’s not the middle of the night, and the person at the door is probably not a stranger.

I groan and sit up in the bed. “Coming!” I yell, my voice raspy and thick with sleep. I lurch in the general direction of the door and yank it open.

“How are you holding up?”

Mary Morst is standing in the doorway of my hotel room, holding out a Styrofoam cup of something. Her face is creased with sympathy.

I mumble “come in” and shamble back into the room, flopping my body across the king-sized bed. She follows me in, setting the cup on the nightstand.

“Is it okay if turn on a light?” she asks.

“I hate this country!” is my muffled response from deep within a pillow.

Mary interprets this as a “yes” and flips on the lamp.

“Roman says you still have pretty bad jetlag,” she says. The mattress tilts slightly as she sits on the edge of the bed.

“It’s worse than that,” I moan. I roll over, squinting my eyes against the bright light. “I feel like I have Seasonal Affective Disorder and jetlag all rolled into one.” I point at the dark sky outside the French doors. “Look at that, Mary! That’s
the moon
!”

Mary shrugs. “We’re in the Land of the Midnight Sun.”

I snort. “A sun at midnight would be an
improvement
. This is the Land of the Noontime Moon. Or maybe the Land of the Living Dead.” I groan. “I’ve tried for four days and I can’t convince my brain that it’s four thirty in the afternoon.”

“You missed all the morning and afternoon workshops,” says Mary. “Roman wanted me to make sure you were up and dressed in time for dinner and the dance.” She starts bouncing her rear end on the bed when I don’t answer, making it impossible to fall back to sleep. “C’mon, Leigh, it’s New Year’s Eve!”

“Okay, okay, I’m up.” I sit up, dreading the walk from the bed to the bathroom. The floors are wood, covered only with a thin area rug. Two metal radiators on the wall sporadically throw off enough heat to keep the cellular processes of my body from stopping altogether. I sigh, fully expecting to see my breath when I exhale.

“Good,” says Mary. She stands up and points at the night stand. “I bought some hot tea for you. Roman says I can’t leave until I physically see you standing and getting ready to get in the shower.”

Dammit
, I think. Turns out that there’s a downside to having a boyfriend who knows you this well. I trudge to the bathroom, reaching around the shower curtain to turn the hot water on.

Mary eyes me from the doorway as I test the temperature with my hand. “I’ll be back in an hour to get you,” she warns, closing the bathroom door as I shuck off my pajama bottoms. “Don’t you dare go back to sleep!”

I hear the thud of the hotel room door closing, and consider burrowing back under the covers for, say, fifteen minutes. Instead I finish stripping off my pajamas and throw myself into the hot spray of the shower. I stand there for awhile, with my eyes closed, thinking warm, sunny thoughts, trying to convince myself that it’s late afternoon and not the middle of the night.

I’ve been in a narcoleptic stupor ever since we landed in Stockholm. I’m not sure what’s screwed up my circadian rhythm more: the six hour time difference, or the fact that the sun rises at nine o’clock in the morning and sets before three in the afternoon. I find that I want to sleep either because it’s bedtime in Denver, or because it’s dark in Stockholm.

One hour later Mary is back. This time she’s bundled up like an Arctic explorer.

I wrap a scarf around my neck and pull on some gloves and my full-length coat. “I hope we’re not going far,” I say with a large yawn. “The shower barely warmed me up.” I grab a bag with my dance clothes and shoes from off the bed.

She shakes her head. “Just around the corner.”

We leave the hotel through a revolving door, and I brace myself for the shock as the cold air hits my face. Roman assures me that it isn’t any colder in Stockholm than it is in Denver, but that the air is wetter since the city is right on the water.

Whatever.

This section of Old Stockholm hasn’t changed since the eighteenth century, or so I’ve been told about fifty times since I arrived. The cobblestone sidewalks are about the width of a piece of toilet paper, so everyone walks in the cobblestone streets of
Stortorgets
Square.

It’s too dark to see the buildings we’re walking past, but I’ve seen them in what passes for daylight around here (in Denver we call it “dusk”). Most of the architecture looks like something straight out of
Hansel and Gretel
...well, if the wicked witch had decided not to cook and eat the kids, and instead devoted her resources to building five or six story walk-ups. Everything is breathtakingly picturesque.

And very, very cold.

The streets are busy with people leaving work or hurrying off to New Year’s celebrations. Holiday decorations—lots of holly and white lights in the shape of stars still hang from the building exteriors—lift my spirits a little. A very little.

My teeth are rattling together by the time we’ve worked our way through the swarms of people and rounded the corner to see Roman’s and Patrick’s silhouettes under an old-fashioned lamp affixed above the doorway. Roman looks behind him and scans the passing streams of humanity before raising his hand to us. After a second, the two of them start walking to meet us.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty!” Roman says, bending his head to give me a gentle kiss on the cheek. “I wasn’t sure if we were going to see you before midnight.”

“You mean it’s
not
midnight?” I grumble.

Roman laughs. “Remind me not to bring you to the Snow Ball next year.”

“They need to move this closer to the equator and rename it ‘The Sand Ball.’ Then I’ll be all in.”

Roman kisses me on the mouth and puts his arm around me, pulling me after Patrick and Mary in the direction of the restaurant. “Liquor and dancing will warm you up,” he says, rubbing my arm through my coat.

“It wouldn’t hurt if we went somewhere for dinner that had actual heat too,” I say, crossing my arms against the cold.

“I’ve got it all taken care of,” he says absently, craning his head over his shoulder to look behind us.

I stop walking and turn around. “Are we waiting for someone else?” I say.

His answer comes a little too quickly. “Nope, just checking out all the people.”

A white flag with green lettering reading
Den Gyldene Freden
hangs over a doorway where a smartly-dressed doorman stands just off the edge of the sidewalk. He greets us with a “
God kväll,
” and pulls open the door. Even from five feet away I can feel heat blowing from the doorway. We step into what looks like a medieval tavern with lots of dark wood trim and scuffed wainscoting over chipped plaster walls. There are poinsettias in the windows and candles on every available surface. It is utterly charming.

“
Den Gyldene Freden
is the oldest restaurant in the world,” says Roman. “This place has been here since seventeen twenty-two.” He steps away from us to give his name to the hostess.

I watch, puzzled, as her eyes widen slightly, and she stammers out something in both English and Swedish. She finally collects herself and leads us past the tables and bar of the main floor to two levels of steep, winding stairs. We all descend single-file, Roman and Patrick both tilting their heads sideways in order to avoid scraping their heads against the top of the arched stairwell. The air gets warmer and drier until we finally emerge into a long, windowless room with a brown stone floor and a long, barrel-roll plaster ceiling.

“This is the lower vault,” says the hostess. A fire roars in a red brick fireplace at the far end. The hostess leads us to a cozy table next to the fire, and Roman takes my coat before pulling out the chair closest to the heat for me.

He gives the hostess our coats. She goes back in the direction of the stairs, but not before I see her shoot another strange look his way.

“That girl wants to get in your pants, Roman,” says Mary as she watches the hostess walk away. “I can practically see her bosoms heaving.”

Roman chuckles uncomfortably and starts looking over the menu. “I’m pretty sure she recognizes my name. A lot of people in Europe do. And Sweden still has a monarchy so the people here are a little more attuned to that sort of thing. I should have put the reservation under Leigh’s name.”

On cue, a parade of wait and kitchen staff emerges from the stairway and huddle around the sole service station on this level, whispering to each other and looking our way. At least they have the restraint not to point. Their behavior has attracted the attention of our fellow diners, who are now eyeing us curiously.

Roman looks over his shoulder to see what the three of us are looking at. He immediately turns back to the menu. After a pause he clears his throat and says, “Did you know the Nobel Committee eats lunch here every Thursday?”

This seems like a strange comment to make while a gaggle of onlookers is perched just over your shoulder. Patrick and Mary look at each other, and then across the table at me. I shrug my shoulders; I have no idea what we should do.

I’m about to suggest to Roman that we leave when he suddenly stands up. “Excuse me, guys” he says. “I’ll be right back.”

The three of us watch as he crosses the floor, open cell phone in hand, and disappears up the stairs.

“What the hell is going on?” says Patrick to me. “He’s been like this all day.”

“Would you like it if people gathered around to watch you eat? It’d make
me
uncomfortable.”

Patrick shakes his head. “I’m not talking about
this
.” He waves his hand in the general direction of admirers, most of whom have dispersed back up the stairs, no doubt following Roman. “He’s been acting strange all day, checking his cell phone every five minutes, texting like a fourteen-year-old girl.”

“Jumpy,” adds Mary as she grabs the wine list. “We left the workshop studio and he acted like he was in the crosshairs of a sharpshooter.” She bends over the list, running her index finger down their wine inventory. “He didn’t want to go back to the hotel to wake you up, that’s why he sent me.” She hands the wine list to Patrick. “It was weird.”

“Huh.” I toss my napkin on the table and stand up. “I’ll go see what he’s doing, see if he’s okay.” I make my way back up the two flights of stairs to the main floor of the restaurant and turn in a circle, looking for him.

A nearby server mistakes my pirouette for a bathroom search. “
Toaletten
?” he says, pointing past the bar to the back of the restaurant.

“Thank you,” I say, and head in that direction. I come to side-by-side painted gray doors, both hung with holiday wreaths. They are identical save the gold-metal letters hung above the door handles—“H” on one and the “D” on the other. I speak zero Swedish, and have no idea which of these is the men’s bathroom and which is the women’s. I wander back to the front of the restaurant, hoping I don’t have to use the bathroom later. Finally I see Roman through the windows on his cell phone, pacing up and down the sidewalk.