The Princess Problem Read online

  This came as a relief, but not as a surprise, to Dalton. As fearless as Diana was, she’d always played by the rules. She had ambition, not a death wish.

  The doctor nodded. “It looks like the safety precaution did its job.”

  Dalton frowned. “Are you sure? She’s lying in a hospital bed and can barely keep her eyes open.”

  “Diana is suffering from a concussion, which is to be expected after taking a hit the way she did. But she’s going to be fine. I’m sure she’s got a monster of a headache, but now that we know there’s no permanent damage, we can start administering something stronger than Tylenol. Still, we’ll want to keep an eye on her at least overnight. We’ll take her vitals every hour and make sure she’s doing well. But those should be precautions. Barring any unforeseen complications, I expect your sister to make a full recovery.”

  “Thank goodness,” Ophelia said. Artem wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close.

  “A full recovery?” Dalton tried to focus on the doctor’s face, but he couldn’t seem to tear his gaze from his sister. “You’re sure?”

  The doctor nodded. “The scans show no structural damage to the brain tissue. She needs time to rest, but soon she’ll be able to do all the things she loves to do. Including showjumping.”

  “That might be a tough call,” Artem said under his breath. “Her horse had to be put down today.”

  Dalton’s gut clenched. He hadn’t known what happened to the horse. He’d been so worried about Diana that he hadn’t even asked about the animal.

  Diamond was dead. Shit.

  His sister would be devastated. Dalton sighed and wished he could go one day, just one, without thinking about loss. Then again, he had, hadn’t he? While Aurélie had been there, he’d been able to let go. Just a little bit.

  He’d lived.

  And now she’s gone, too.

  “So what happens next?” Artem asked.

  The doctor assured them the hospital staff was doing everything it could to make Diana’s stay comfortable. He’d given instructions for the night nurse to call him if anything changed.

  Diana woke up briefly. Just long enough to register Artem and Ophelia’s presence and to answer a few questions for Dr. Larson.

  When her eyes fluttered closed again, he gave her arm a pat. “You’re a lucky girl, Miss Drake.”

  Dalton knew the doctor was right. Diana had been lucky indeed, but he doubted she’d see it that way when she found out Diamond was dead. Part of him wondered if she’d avoided asking about her horse because deep down she knew.

  They all knew.

  No matter how things looked on the outside, the Drakes had never had luck on their side.

  * * *

  Aurélie sat in the backseat, still trying to absorb Dalton’s words as the snowy stretch of Long Island flew past the car windows in a melancholy blur.

  I’m not asking you, Aurélie. I’m telling you. I want you to go. It’s time.

  How could she leave without knowing if Diana was going to be okay? And the horse?

  And Dalton.

  He didn’t mean it. He couldn’t.

  He’d sure sounded like he meant it, though. Everything about his tone, his stance and the glittering determination in his gaze had been resolute. He’d made up his mind. He wanted her gone.

  She had to leave, obviously. She couldn’t stay. Not now.

  Even if she did, what could she possibly do to help? Her presence would only do more harm than good.

  Aurélie had never felt so useless in her entire life, which struck her as profoundly ironic considering she was a princess. She should have been accustomed to not being particularly useful by now, especially in view of the fact that the last time she’d had any communication with the palace, they hadn’t even noticed she’d fled the country.

  Surely they’ve noticed now.

  It was nearly 6 p.m. in Delamotte. Lord Clement had no doubt come and gone in a royal huff. Everyone would be looking for her, including the Crown Prince.

  Any temptation to put the SIM card back in her cell phone and check her messages had died the moment Diana’s horse went down. Aurélie couldn’t think about the palace right now. Or her impending engagement. Or even her father. All those people, all those worries, seemed so inconsequential compared to what she’d just witnessed. How could she possibly be thinking about something as silly as a press release after seeing Dalton’s sister fall headfirst to the ground?

  She couldn’t.

  Aurélie squeezed her eyes closed and leaned her head against the backseat of the town car. The fall kept running through her mind in an endless loop of catastrophic images and terrible sounds. The thunder of hooves. The thud of Diamond’s elegant legs crashing into the rails. Those same slender bones buckling and twisting into unnatural angles. Diana’s helmet bouncing on the packed red clay.

  But worse than the fall itself had been the look on Dalton’s face when his sister failed to get up. In a shadow of a moment, Aurélie had seen a lifetime of pain etched in the lines around his eyes. Stories he’d never told her, never would. Something had happened to Dalton Drake. Something terrible.

  Diana had to be okay. She had to.

  Aurélie would have given everything she had to be at the hospital with the Drakes, but Dalton had made his wishes clear when he put her in the town car.

  He doesn’t want you there.

  He doesn’t want you. Period.

  It stung. Aurélie knew it shouldn’t. She wasn’t one of them. She and Dalton weren’t a couple. They were two people who’d been thrown together for a few days. Nothing more.

  And now she had no idea what was going on, what had become of his sister or even the injured horse. Not knowing was torture. She thought about asking the driver if she could borrow his phone, but decided against it. If Dalton wanted to get in touch with her, he would.

  Aurélie spent the entire ride back to the city in agonizing silence. At last the steely skyscrapers of Manhattan came into view. “Can you drop me at Drake Diamonds before we go back to the apartment?”

  She no longer wanted the secret egg. Dalton could keep it for all she cared. She hated it now, hated what it stood for—the cheating, the lies. The egg had served its purpose. It had gotten her a few days of freedom. It was her bargaining chip, and now the bargain was over.

  But her mother’s pearls were at the store. Dalton had given them to Ophelia to be restrung. The last time Aurélie had seen them, they’d been lined up on a velvet tray on Ophelia’s desk.

  She prayed they were still there.

  “Very well.” The car rolled past the horse carriages lined up on the curb by Central Park and turned onto Fifth Avenue.

  They passed the elegant entrance to the Plaza Hotel and too soon, the imposing façade of Drake Diamonds came into view.

  “Thank you.” Aurélie climbed out and paused in front of the store, blinking against the snow flurries drifting from the dove-gray sky.

  Just walk inside, get your pearls back and then you can go home and put all of this behind you.

  Her feet refused to move. It felt strange being here without Dalton. Wrong, somehow.

  This had been a mistake. She would just ring Mrs. Barnes when she got back to Delamotte and ask her to return the pearls by post.

  She turned to get back in the car, but it had already been swallowed up in the steady stream of yellow cabs snaking their way through upper Manhattan. That’s right. Even Dalton’s driver couldn’t just park by the curb indefinitely.

  She considered staying put and waiting for him to make a loop around the block and return. It could take mere minutes. Or, given the erratic nature of New York traffic, she could be stuck standing here for half an hour.

  Okay then. She took a deep breath, turned and pushed through the revolvi
ng doors.

  “Oh, thank goodness.” Mrs. Barnes pounced on Aurélie the moment her kitten heels hit the showroom floor. “Where’s Mr. Drake?”

  Aurélie blinked. “Dalton?”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Barnes, whom Aurélie had never seen with even a single hair out of place, looked borderline frantic. She shook her head and tossed her hands up in the air. “Or Artem. Or Ophelia. Any of the Drakes, for that matter. I’ve been calling all three of them for hours and can’t reach anyone.”

  Aurélie wasn’t sure how much she should divulge. It didn’t appear as though Dalton’s assistant knew about Diana’s accident. Or maybe she did, and was hoping for more information about Diana’s condition. “They’re...um...unreachable at the moment.”

  “Yes, I know. They’re in the Hamptons. But I need to speak to Mr. Drake. Now.” Barnes’s gaze narrowed. “I’d assumed he was with you.”

  “No.” She shook her head. Clearly Mrs. Barnes didn’t know what was going on, and it wasn’t Aurélie’s place to tell her. “Is there a problem?”

  “You could say that, yes. A multitude of problems, actually. We were so busy that we had lunch brought in for the staff this afternoon, and now half of them have fallen ill with food poisoning. The store has never been this shortstaffed.”

  “Oh, no. That’s terrible.”

  “I’ve been working the sales floor all afternoon.” She waved a hand around the showroom, which upon closer inspection, had a rather frantic air about it. “I’ve tied over 400 white bows since two o’clock.”

  “What can I do to help?” Aurélie knew nothing about selling diamonds. Or anything else about working at a jewelry store. But she could learn. And she was pretty sure she could tie a bow.

  Mrs. Barnes eyed her with no small amount of skepticism.

  “Seriously, I want to help.” Please, let me. It was a chance to be useful for once in her life. At a time when she needed it most of all.

  Mrs. Barnes’s apology was swift. “No, no, no. You’re Mr. Drake’s guest. That’s not necessary.”

  “From what you said, it sounds very necessary.” Even an ocean away from Delamotte, people still didn’t think she was capable of doing anything useful. It made Aurélie want to scream. “Please. Please. I’ll do anything.”

  Dalton’s secretary bit her lip and looked Aurélie up and down. “Anything?”

  “Yes.” Aurélie nodded furiously. “You name it.”

  “Okay. I hope I don’t get fired for this, but they’re absolutely desperate for help upstairs. Anything you could do up there would be appreciated.”

  Aurélie swallowed. “Upstairs?” A trickle of dread snaked its way up her spine.

  Mrs. Barnes flicked a hand toward the ceiling. “In Engagements.”

  Not that. Anything but Engagements.

  She’d rather clean the toilets than spend the rest of the day neck-deep in diamond engagement rings.

  But what could she possibly say? She’d begged to help. Refusing would mean everyone was right about her. Her father. Dalton. And as much as she hated to admit it, even herself. How could she fight her destiny if she couldn’t even make herself get off the elevator on the tenth floor?

  “I think every bride and groom in the city decided to shop for rings today,” Mrs. Barnes said. Oh joy. “They need champagne. And petit fours. And gift wrapping. Find the floor manager, and he’ll put you to work.”

  “Right.” Aurélie nodded.

  She could do this. Couldn’t she?

  “I’ll be up to check on you in a bit.”

  Aurélie watched as Mrs. Barnes crossed the showroom floor with purpose in her stride. It would have been so easy to turn around and walk back out the revolving door. So easy to get back in the car, collect Jacques from the pet sitter at Dalton’s apartment and head straight to the airport.

  Too easy.

  She’d had enough of taking the easy way out. She squared her shoulders, marched straight toward the elevator and stepped inside.

  “Tenth floor, s’il vous plait,” she told the elevator attendant.

  He eyed her warily. Not that she could blame him. “Yes, ma’am.”

  The elevator doors swished closed. When they opened again, she exited as swiftly as possible. Maybe she could simply outrun her panic.

  Then again, maybe not. As soon as she found herself surrounded by the glass cases of sparkling diamond solitaires, the familiar tightness gathered in her chest. Her knees went wobbly, and she had trouble catching her breath. Aurélie squeezed her eyes shut, and when she did, she no longer saw herself in a white gown walking down the aisle of the grand cathedral in Delamotte. Her recurrent nightmare had been replaced. Instead, she saw Diamond barreling toward the double-rail jump. She saw him stumble and fall. She saw Diana slamming into the ground headfirst.

  Aurélie’s eyes flew open. This was absurd. Diana was lying in a hospital bed, possibly even fighting for her life. Surely Aurélie could tolerate a few giddy brides and grooms.

  There were more than a few. There were dozens. Under the direction of the acting floor manager, Aurélie brought them flutes of champagne. She served them cake. She oohed and ahed as they tried on rings. She offered her congratulations, wrapped more rings than she could count in little Drake-blue boxes and tied white bows.

  And it wasn’t altogether terrible.

  Granted, she got a little misty eyed if she paid too much attention to the way the grooms looked at their brides-to-be. So much unabashed adoration was a little much to take, especially when she almost allowed herself to believe Dalton had looked at her in the same way during the quiet moments before Diana’s accident.

  But that was just crazy. Wishful thinking, at best. Delusional, at worst. She didn’t want to fool herself into believing Dalton cared about her, maybe even loved her, when he so clearly didn’t.

  Dealing with the grooms got easier when she focused her gaze on their foreheads rather than their lovey-dovey expressions. Before long, the smile she’d plastered on her face began to feel almost genuine. She’d just wrapped a satiny white ribbon around a Drake-blue box containing a cushion-cut diamond solitaire in a platinum setting when the overhead lights flickered and dimmed.

  “What’s happening?” she asked the salesman as she handed him the box.

  “It’s closing time.” He sighed. “Finally. It’s been a day, hasn’t it? Thanks for all your help, by the way. What’s your name, again?”

  Her Royal Highness Princess Aurélie Marchand. “Aurélie.”

  He nodded. “Thanks again, Aurélie. Good work.”

  Good work.

  No one had ever uttered those words to her before. It gave her a little thrill to be praised for something other than showing up at an event with a tiara on her head. “No problem. Can I do anything else?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve got to close out the registers and get the place cleaned up, then we can all go home.”

  Home.

  Aurélie’s throat grew tight. She’d managed to stay so busy for a few hours that she’d forgotten she was supposed to be on a plane right now.

  She let out a shaky breath. “I’ll help you. I’m not in any hurry.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said and handed her a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels.

  One by one, the customers left. It was strange being in Drake Diamonds all alone after hours, peaceful in a way that caught Aurélie off guard. After so much noisy activity, there was a grace to the sudden silence. The gemstones almost looked like holy relics glowing in the semi-darkness, the sapphires, rubies and emeralds like precious stained glass.

  It was soothing, therapeutic. Almost hypnotic. Aurélie didn’t realize how lost she’d become in the simple act of dusting until she heard the salesman’s footsteps again.

  She gave a start as he walked up behind her.
“Sorry. I’m afraid I’m a bit startled.”

  “As am I.”

  She froze, unable to move. She could barely even breathe.

  That voice.

  She knew the particular timbre of that voice. It didn’t belong to the salesman. It belonged to the person she wanted to see more than anyone else on earth.

  Heart beating wildly in her chest, she turned around. “Dalton.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dalton thought he might be hallucinating at first.

  He was bone-weary. Diana’s accident and its aftermath had exhausted him on every possible level—physically, mentally, emotionally. When he passed through the darkened corridor of Drake Diamonds and glanced toward the Engagements showroom, he didn’t think for a second that what he was looking at could possibly be real.

  Aurélie was supposed to be on a plane. She couldn’t be standing in his store after closing time. Even if she’d ignored his request and stayed in New York, she definitely wouldn’t be milling about in Engagements, of all places. When his gaze landed on the dust rag in her right hand, he was sure he was seeing things.

  He was wrong of course. But what surprised him even more than Aurélie’s presence was the wave of relief that washed over him when she turned around and said his name.

  Dalton had never needed anyone before, and that was no accident. He’d arranged his life so that he was self-reliant in every way. He always had been. He didn’t want to need anyone or anything.

  But right now, he needed her. Aurélie. He needed her so badly it terrified him to his core.

  He didn’t know why she was here. Or how. All he knew was that he felt like falling to his knees in gratitude that she’d ignored him when he’d sent her away.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets to stop himself from reaching for her. He couldn’t be trusted. Not in the state he was in. If he touched her now, he wouldn’t be able to stop. “What are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same thing.” She fiddled with the rag in her hands, nervously wadding it into a ball.