She rolled her eyes. “Great. Now I can be the hussy that is after the king.”
“But you’re my hussy,” he teased.
Freya appeared from the kitchen and stood with her hands on Bryn’s shoulders. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m staying here to help bake for the festival tonight. Since we sprung it on them at the last minute, they need as much help baking as they can get.”
Sven watched panic leap into Bryn’s eyes. “Festival? Tonight? I thought we had at least a couple days.”
“We do,” Freya and Sven answered at the same time. Sven reached over and took her hand.
“This isn’tthatritual. Tonight is simply a festival to create a way to introduce you to the town.”
Freya nodded. “Basically tonight is just an excuse to have a big party.” She gave Bryn a final squeeze. “It’s been so long since I’ve been in the kitchen. This is going to be so much fun. Just tell Lars to send a car to pick me up later. I’ll let him know when.” She hurried off.
Sven shook his head. “The difference in that woman is amazing. It wasn’t that long ago that she never came out of her room.”
“She seems happy now,” Bryn mused.
“It’s all because of you, I do believe.”
“Me?”
He shrugged. “Don’t ask me how or why, but you put the spark back into her. My grandmother, too.”
“Should I go help them bake?”
“No. I think we need to go off alone and get to know each other a bit before tonight.” The idea excited him more than he wanted to admit.
“Is that safe?”
“We’ll be fine. I promise you, Lars has us covered whether we see him or not. After what happened at the airport, there won’t be a repeat incident.”
“Where are we going so that we’ll be alone?”
He could see that she was nervous,although he couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing. He frowned slightly. “I don’t exactly know yet.”
Bryn took another bite of her pastry. “What about the train?”
“The train?”
“The one that goes through the mountains. We could get our own car, and Lars or whoever could be in the adjacent one in case we need them.” She sipped her coffee. “It’s noisy enough that they won’t be able to eavesdrop.”
The idea was brilliant. Sven pulled out his cell phone and sent a text. “Perfect. Lars can go over and secure the train, and that gives us a couple hours alone.” His pulse picked up just thinking about it.
Bryn hid behind her coffee mug so he couldn’t read her expression. When his phone dinged, he glanced at it before holding out his hand.
“Lars is efficient as always. The train will be vacant except for us.” He texted back to make sure Lars understood they wanted privacy. “The train doesn’t stop, so it would be difficult for anyone to interfere with us.”
Bryn sat across from him as the train pulled out of the station. Sven tried to figure out what she was thinking, but she stared out the window and avoided his gaze.
“Tell me about your sister.”
Her attention snapped to him. “Randi? What do you want to know about her?”
“Anything. Everything. The more we know about each other, the more natural we’ll appear in the public’s eye.”
For a moment, he didn’t think she was going to answer him. Finally, she sucked in a breath and met his eyes.
“Randi is my younger sister. She was always the favorite, at least it felt that way. I don’t know if it’s because she looks more like my mom than I do, or if it’s just because she’s the baby. Where I was always closer to my father, Randi was the princess with the tiara to my mother.”
