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She gave a shout of laughter, then, when he remained solemn, asked, “Are you serious?”
“Quite.”
“You want me to go to Lufthania? Just leave my life behind and go jetting off with some guy I don’t even know on the basis of a ten-minute story I find unbelievable? No thanks.” She laughed and tried to imagine her parents’ reaction to such an announcement and laughed again. They’d probably be up from Florida within three hours. “No way.”
“Are you not even a little curious?”
“No. This is crazy. And even if I were, why couldn’t I just give blood here? Go to my own doctor and have him take blood and send it to your lab technicians or whatever? Why on earth should I have to leave the country for such a routine test?”
“Because we are not talking about a simple paternity test,” he explained patiently. “This is to confirm your position as royalty. The reigning monarch of a nation. There must be witnesses to the blood test, witnesses who can confirm and swear that you were present as the test subject.”
She still didn’t get it. “Can’t you have witnesses here?”
“It would be impractical to fly a number of witnesses here rather than to simply fly you there. To be honest with you, I didn’t anticipate having to persuade you to go.”
“What woman in her right mind would just blindly go along with this?”
“One who is open to the facts. One who wants to know where she comes from.”
“Well, I do want to know, of course. But I’m not prepared to just jet off to a foreign country and dive in as the long-lost princess when I don’t even speak the language. I don’t even know what the language in Lufthania is!”
“It’s German.”
“Well, there you go. I don’t speak or understand one word of German. How could I possibly become the princess there?”
“Your birthright has nothing to do with the language you speak. You have been in this country for nearly a quarter of a century. Naturally, much of your heritage has been lost to you.”
“Much of my heritage,” she repeated, unconvinced. She thought of her father, always practical. What would he do? One answer hit her suddenly. “I’m not even sure of your heritage. Do you have any proof that you are who you say you are?” She should have asked that the moment he walked through the door.
“Of course.” He stopped and pulled a wallet out of the inner pocket of his dark overcoat. He handed it to her.
On top, there was a photo identification card with his name and vital statistics, as well as the designation Secretary in Service of His Highness, Prince Wilhelm of Lufthania.
Amy wouldn’t have known a legitimate Arizona driver’s license if she saw it, much less a legitimate Secretary in the Service of His Highness, Prince Wilhelm of Lufthania ID card, but she couldn’t suppress a laugh. “Did you get this at some carnival or something?”
He did not smile. “I did not.”
She handed it back to him. “Well, sorry, but that doesn’t convince me of anything. I’m not leaving the country on the basis of your story so far.”
“And if I gave you satisfactory evidence of my contention?”
He looked so serious that she had to stop and think. “Maybe—maybe—I would agree to this crazy plan. But I would need to have pretty hard evidence.”
He looked amused. “You’re very like your mother, Amelia.”
“It’s Amy,” she corrected him absently.
“No, it’s Amelia. Princess Amelia Louisa Gretchen May.” He smiled sadly. “However, your parents simply called you Amé.”
“Amé,” she repeated, numb. The name, as he pronounced it, held some resonance for her. It echoed through cobwebbed chambers of her memory. Amé. Amy. She could almost hear it. It was easy to see why the paramedics had assumed the woman was saying “Amy.”
For her own part, Amy had not spoken a word for the first four months after the accident. After ruling out autism, psychologists had attributed her silence to the trauma. If Mr. Burgess’s story was correct, though, it could conceivably be because she hadn’t understood the language.
But that was impossible.
Wasn’t it?
“Are you all right?” he asked, concern etched in his features. “Can I get you some water? Do you have brandy here?”
Despite her shock, she had to smile at the idea of having a bottle stashed somewhere. “No, I don’t. I’m okay. It’s just…obviously, this is all a bit of a shock. Not that I believe it,” she was quick to add. “But I’m willing to listen if you’ll tell me everything.”
He nodded. “I will. But not now. You look very tired tonight.”
Now that he mentioned it, she was exhausted. This brief conversation had taken a toll on her energy. Besides, she needed time to call her parents, to get their advice and opinions. It was late now, but she’d call, anyway. “Can you come back tomorrow morning? With this proof you say you have?”
“Of course. For now, why don’t you let me take you home? I have a car right out front.” He gestured toward the wide plate-glass window, through which Amy could see a long black limousine parked out front.
“No, thanks. I only live a couple of blocks away and, frankly, I could use the walk.”
“It’s quite inclement,” he pointed out.
The snow was falling heavily now, billowed by the occasional gust of wind.
“Then you’d better get that boat out of here before it gets stuck,” Amy said. “Come back tomorrow. I’ll be here from 10:00 a.m. until at least five or six.”
“I’ll be here early. I hope you’ll be ready to go.” Before she could object, he raised a hand. “Just in case the evidence is sufficiently persuasive to you. You must be open to that possibility.”
He was a hard man to refuse. “Okay. I’ll try. But I’m not making any guarantees.”
“Very well.” He gave a short bow. “Until tomorrow.” With one last lingering gaze, he turned and left the shop. The driver hopped out of the car to open the door for him, but he waved him off and opened it himself. He looked back at the shop before closing the door behind him, and for one insane moment, Amy wondered if she’d dreamed the whole thing.
Then the wind blew again, pushing the door open. Amy ran to close it. The small spots of cold snow that landed on her skin assured her that she was awake.
She closed the door and turned the dead bolt. How was it she’d managed to forget to do that earlier? She always locked the bolt after she turned the sign to Closed.
She leaned her back against the door and closed her eyes. The only thing wrong with his story—the only part that didn’t tug at her heart—was the part about being royal. If he had come along telling her he had evidence of her biological family and that they lived in Cleveland, she would have been thrilled. But this business of royalty tipped the story into the realm of fairy tale, making it something she couldn’t entirely believe.
Yet…what if it were true? What if the wind outside had brought something magic along with it, something other than snow and power failures?
A handsome stranger.
And her own past.
Chapter Two
Franz Burgess, known as Will to his friends, went outside into the damp, cold air and got into the waiting limousine. He’d hoped to feel relieved by this point, but he’d known, going into this, that he might be disappointed. With everything he knew about Amy Scott—and he knew a great deal—he should have known her intelligence would make her cynical, at least give her a cynical reaction to his story.
One thing he had not known, or prepared himself for, was his own reaction to her. From the moment he’d laid eyes on her he’d been captivated by her. He could have stayed all night, watching her eyes flash when she spoke, listening to her voice, observing her movements and the way her clothes hugged the soft contours of her body.
It wasn’t simply that she was attractive. He had plenty of access to beautiful women. At times, he was even tired of beautiful women. They all seemed so vacant. But Amy Scott was different. Her coloring was like that of many women from his country, the pale skin and faintly pink cheeks. Yet she had something different, something extra. It was an unexplainable quality of magnetism that he’d rarely encountered. It was easy to imagine himself watching her for many years to come.
If only he could persuade her that the story he’d told her was true. She was so perfect for the role. Her sharp intelligence, combined with her beauty, would make her an excellent princess. Yet she was skeptical. And despite financial difficulties that he knew about, she was strong enough to resist the temptation of being told she was a princess and would thus have no more bills and debtors to worry about.
So he was going to have to bring out documentation, to try to convince her to accompany him back to Lufthania. It wasn’t going to be easy, he knew that already. But he’d budgeted time for that possibility.
However, he hadn’t budgeted time, or prepared himself mentally, for the possibility that he couldn’t convince her. That would be a disaster for him. Yet it was looking entirely possible that he wouldn’t be able to. He didn’t know what he’d do if she didn’t come back to Lufthania with him.
His entire life depended on it.
The first thing Amy did after Franz Burgess left was call her parents. They both got on the line and for half an hour they discussed the situation. Amy was surprised that her parents didn’t immediately dismiss the idea that she might be a princess.
To the contrary, her mother was ready to believe it. “I’ve always thought you were more regal than most people,” she said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, you were never too fond of doing the dishes, and it was darn near impossible to get you to clean your room.” She laughed. “I always thought it was a queen complex, but princess will do.”
Amy was glad for the levity. In the end, they agreed that Amy would see Franz Burgess’s evidence in the morning and make a judgment based on that. If he was on the up-and-up, they reasoned, he must have some pretty compelling evidence. She could hear him out and call them back with the additional facts.
Meanwhile, her father would call the Lufthania embassy and see if he could verify the existence of Franz Burgess.
After that, they would decide together what Amy should do.
This plan made Amy feel a lot better, and she spent the rest of the night looking for any information she could find on Lufthania.
First, she checked her stock for any books that might make even slight mention of Lufthania. Since it was a very small country and didn’t hold the international cachet of, say, Monaco, no books were devoted to it entirely, but she recalled several references to it in some of the books on Germany and Switzerland. It was little more than a footnote, but when she looked through an out-of-print volume on the region, she was able to find a slender chapter devoted to the country and its history.
The book was written in the late 1940s and had no reference to the coup d’état Franz Burgess had told her about. However, it did go into a bit of detail on the royal family, Prince Josef, Princess Lily and their daughter, Princess Amelia. The young princess was pictured playing in the snow with a St. Bernard puppy.
It was difficult to distinguish the girl’s facial features, so when Amy imagined she looked familiar—perhaps similar to the image mirrors had held of Amy some twenty years ago—she chalked it up to an overactive imagination.
Still, she read and reread the pages, scouring for every mention of Lufthania, and she kept returning to the picture of the little girl.
Then she tried the Internet. The story of the coup was there, but no pictures. She also found some official government documents that appeared to be written in a Germanic language, and a couple of personal travel diaries written by people who had happened through a corner of Lufthania on their way to someplace more famous, but that was all. There was nothing solid to persuade Amy to believe Franz Burgess’s story.
Yet as difficult as it was to believe it could be true, it managed to touch Amy’s heartstrings. What could be better for the girl who had spent a lifetime wondering who she really was and where—if anywhere—she’d truly fit in, than to find her family history and home all in one shot? To find a long, documented family tree? One with golden apples, no less.
She read through the night and far into the wee hours of the morning, stopping occasionally to refill her coffee mug, or gaze at the snow in the hazy glow of the street lamp. She’d always enjoyed the cold weather more than the heat. Did that mean anything? Was it significant somehow? Did it prove the fantastic story?
The questions swirled around in her mind like snow on the wind until her eyelids grew heavy and the words began to blur before her.
She fell asleep without even realizing it until the sunny white glare of morning cut through the store windows and woke her just in time to see the long black limo pull up outside.
He was back.
Amy stood up quickly, raked her hand through her hair and threw open her desk drawer to look for a piece of gum to make up for not having time to brush her teeth.
He tapped on the door just as she was tossing the wrapper into the trash.
She took a deep breath and tried to compose herself before walking, as regally as she could, to the door and letting him in.
“Good morning,” he said, a smile in his eyes. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
She feigned surprise. “Wake me? Of course not. I’ve been here for at least an hour.”
“At least.” He did smile then, and reached out and touched her very briefly on the cheek. “You appear to have the imprint of your computer keyboard on your face.”
“What?” She lifted her hand to her cheek.
“And you haven’t changed your clothes since last night. Did you fall asleep here reading about Lufthania?”
An objection lodged in her throat, but she swallowed it. Why bother pretending she wasn’t curious? “Weren’t you expecting me to check up on your story?”
“As a matter of fact, I was.” He held up a valise. “Which is why I brought you all of the documentation I had that led me to you.” He dropped the valise on the desk and pulled off his expensive-looking leather driving gloves, one by one, stuffing them into the pockets of his camel-colored overcoat.
“That’s for me to look through?”
“Please.” He made an expansive gesture. “Be my guest.”
“Why didn’t you bring all of this with you in the first place?”
He gave a brief smile. “I first had to be convinced you were the one. Then I could set about convincing you, although, to tell you the truth, I didn’t think you would need much persuasion.” For just a moment, he looked grim. “I hope what I have here will convince you.”
“We’ll see.” She gave a dry laugh. “I don’t know what kind of women you know, but I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t approach this with caution.”
She took the valise and sat down with it on the other side of the desk. As she unzipped it, she had half a thought that it might not be safe to open anything brought by a man she didn’t know and who—if his story was false, as it must be—might well be nuts.
But it was already open before she could stop herself, and her curiosity was rewarded with a large, neat stack of papers and photographs.
He walked around behind her and bent over her. “If I may explain,” he said. “This is the route Princess Lily and her husband, Georg, along with you, took out of Lufthania. As you can see, they were not yet hiding their identities, so this is unrefuted documentation.”
Amy looked at what could have been a travel itinerary for any of her bookstore customers who were planning a vacation. It was hard to believe it was the escape route of a princess and her family.
“Next you have the affidavit of Ambassador Whisle, and his wife, who took Princess Lily, Georg and Amé into their Washington, D.C., home.”
Determined to be thorough, Amy took the pages in hand and read carefully as he explained each and every piece of paper. Every once in a while, she found herself distracted by his proximity, and the clean, spicy scent of his after-shave—a unique and alluring scent, unlike anything she’d ever smelled before. But each time her mind wandered, she forced it back to the papers before her. After all, this could be—
She couldn’t even finish the thought. Of course it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be anything to do with her. Still, it made for an interesting and romantic story. Perhaps she could put it on her Web site along with recommendations for the books she’d found on Lufthania.
“Amelia?”
“Yes?” she answered absently, then immediately realized her mistake. “Are you talking to me?”
He chuckled softly and nodded. “There is only one Amelia here.”
She glanced at him sideways. “Maybe not even that many.”
He raised his eyebrows and gave a short nod, the traditional expression of touché. “I was going to ask you if you wanted some breakfast. I can send my driver to the shop, if you like.”
