“Sadie? Sadie? Where are you?”
I rose from the rock and threw the High Prince’s bear a rueful look.
“That’s my cue. Thanks for the ear, as always. Here’s your muffin.”
I held out the muffin, and he plucked it out of my hand.
“And hey, this is also for you.”
Not sure where else to put it, I set the carving I’d just finished down on the rock.
“But this is not for eating, okay? It’s a carving I made of you. See the little streak I did with the gouging knife Tadhg got for me?”
The bear glanced at the carving, then back at me, his expression confused.
He was probably going to eat it as soon as I turned my back.
Still, I smiled and said, “You know what, do what you want with it. It’s yours. I just wanted to thank you… for everything. Yourfriendship over these past few weeks has really meant a lot to me. Brigid could not be luckier.”
The bear’s eyes narrowed in a way I couldn’t read—not that my other reads of him probably weren’t all in my mind.
“Sadie? Sadie? Are you out here?” Tadhg’s voice was much closer now. So close, I could hear his sneakers displacing the leaves on the ground. “I thought we’d go back into town for tea again, but if you’re not done, I can always come…”
His last word trailed away when he emerged through the copse of low-hanging tree limbs and found me there with the High Prince.
Now his eyes narrowed.
“I was just talking with your brother-in-law again,” I explained. “Hey, do you have a muffin on you? He loves muffins.”
Tadhg’s narrowed gaze switched from me to the bear, back to me again, then back to the bear before he answered, “No, I do not have any muffins, Strawberry. ’Fraid I’m clean out. In fact, there won’t be any more muffins, I’m told, if the High King doesn’t put in an order soon.”
He was talking to me, but his eyes stayed on the High Prince.
Also…
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “It’s just bread, milk, eggs, and whatever fruit. Why would Chef Pascal need an order to make them?”
“Because the High King can be a pain in the arse when it comes to letting someone else take control. Wants everything in his world nice and orderly. Even when it’s obvious the time for niceand orderly has come and gone, and there’s nothing he can do about it.”
Well, that wasn’t a very nice thing to say. Especially in front of someone’s younger brother.
I glanced nervously at the High Prince. Who just glared at Tadhg… before lumbering off toward the lake. Leaving behind the bear I’d carved for him.
What was that all about? Did Tadhg and the High Prince not get along or something?
“C’mon, Strawberry.” Tadhg rolled up my whittling bag and took me by the hand.
He didn’t walk through the woods but pulled me directly onto the lawn on the palace side of them, striding so fast I nearly had to jog to keep up.
“I thought we were going into town,” I said when we passed by the golf cart still parked outside my room and came to a stop in front of my door.
“Change of plan.” Tadhg’s eyes burned over my body. “Tell your door to open.”
“Open,” I commanded, ever dutiful.
But after we entered together, I turned to ask, “Tadhg, what’s this all about—mmh!”
Suddenly, it wasn’t just his eyes on my body—it was his lips, colliding into mine.
