The Job Description For A Princess
Dieter Schwarz
Fighting with her was the last thing I’d meant to do.
Alina was perfectly well-behaved on the flight, playing with her new bear and watching the flight tracker display the flight’s progress on the seatback screen.
Dieter talked to Alina, narrating the flight and discussing the people around them, while worrying aboutFlicka.
Kidnapping scenarios played out in his head: Flicka sitting in an office while commandoes stormed through the front door, Flicka typing on a computer as Pierre strode up and grabbed her arm, and Flicka talking to business-suited clients in a boardroom as men swarmed into the hallway beyond the glass walls.
Work.
What kind of a job could she have been hired for, anyway?
Oh, no.
Theimage of Flicka dancing next to a silvery pole, wearing a few sparkly pieces of a costume pasted on her limber, silken skin while black-suited kidnappers threaded through the crowd of leering men toward her arose in Dieter’s head.
Sheer rage arced through his chest at the thought of those other men seeing her body and touching her as they threw money at her, and the anger warred with his worryabout Monegasque kidnappers or murder squads.
Alina hugged Sweetie Pinkie Bear and giggled at the plane on the screen as they crawled toward Las Vegas.
When they got there, another text from Flicka was delivered to his phone.At the rental office, ask for Indrani. She’ll give you a key. I’ll be home around eight o’clock.
He texted back,Where are you? Go to the house, please!
Dieter watchedhis phone for a reply text while he carried his daughter on his hip and her car seat out of the airport with her pink diaper bag and his duffel swinging from his shoulders. He watched the screen during the cab ride to the address and while he met with Indrani, but Flicka didn’t text back.
He went to the townhouse, let himself in, and looked around while holding his warm phone in his hand in caseit vibrated.
The furnishings in the townhouse were brown and more brown with light brown accents and some other colors, which was fine with Dieter. Brown was fine.
More importantly, the thick, metal front door was studded with sturdy locks.
One of the bedrooms had a king-sized bed and dressers, and the other one—
They trundled into other bedroom, a pink room that Alina was absolutely surewas hers, which was a little girl’s fantasy. Pink unicorn decals and rainbows had been applied to the walls. A mural painted on one long wall showed a castle in the distance. If Dieter squinted just a little, it bore the neo-Gothic outlines ofSchloss Marienburg,the castle where Flicka had spent her early years before she had been sent to boarding school. The forest painted around it looked likethe deep green, shadowy environs of Northern Germany.
His phone finally buzzed with a text from Flicka:On my way.
He swiped back,Where are you? I’ll come get you. Don’t go out by yourself,even though he had no idea what he would do with Alina, who was methodically digging baby toys out of a small chest and dumping them on the floor.
It took Flicka hours to get home, hours and hours whileshe was vulnerable and strangers jostled her and men in vans chased her through the streets and the tracts of desert that infiltrated between the houses.
Dieter paced worn tracks in the thick carpet of the living room while Alina played with a whole chest of new toys.
Inexplicably, the clock on the cable box only counted off twenty minutes.
A key grated in the door lock, and Dieter marchedto the door and yanked it open. “Where the hell have you—”
Outside the small townhouse, fading desert sunlight glared on the bit of gravel that served as a yard and into the street beyond.
Flicka stood there, dressed in something very small that bared her long legs and throat and some cleavage that he sort of hadn’t realized she possessed. A skimpy, black skirt and a white top were wrapped tootightly around her slim body. Her blond hair was bound up in a messy bun with curls straggling around her face, framing her vibrant green eyes that never failed to floor him. Sequins trimmed her clothes.
He was used to seeing her in elegant business suits or floating evening gowns, dressed like a princess. Her regal demeanor shone through this outfit, he was sure, but he had never seen garishclothes liketheseon her.
Or clothes sosmall.Sorevealing.
