Page 14 of Nanny for the Alien Prince (Alien Recruitment Agency #4)

“Seven days and all your debts are wiped clean.”

Seven days.

It sounded so trivial.

But seven days could be a lifetime when you handed your body to an Ulsen male. And that was exactly what he was asking me to do.

His offer took me by surprise. With all his money and wealth, what was a measly few thousand credits?

But he was insistent. “You will belong to me for the next seven days and seven nights.”

“I… I need to think about it,” I stammered.

“You have until you leave this room to decide.”

“How long is that?”

“One minute.”

He just stood there, peering down at me.

One minute to decide whether or not to do something that might change me and my life forever…

Could I give myself to him?

Could I sell myself like that ?

I thought of my father and realized that, for him, I would do anything.

Even this.

I raised my chin, met Rayaw in the eye, and extended my hand. “Seven days?”

“And nights.”

I didn’t want to commit to that, but I had no other choice.

“And nights,” I said back to him.

He took my hand and barely shook it. My hand remained where it was, frozen in place.

“But you’ll hire me as a maid,” I added hastily. “I don’t need gossip circulating about what we get up to here.”

He grinned. “A maid? Are you sure you can play the role?”

“I know I can!” I snapped. “And know this: I will not enjoy a single minute of it.”

“You don’t need to enjoy it,” he informed me. “Just make yourself available to me.”

Available to me.

I glared at him as I passed through the door, leaving me alone in the palace hallway—leaving me to puzzle over how on Earth I was going to survive his attacks for seven whole days and nights…

ONE DAY EARLIER

I put my suitcase down on the front step and rearranged the new blouse I’d bought at Glelle. It was frilly and moved constantly like an octopus’s tendrils. It was all the rage and had been what I’d spent the last of my money on.

What little money I possessed in the whole galaxy .

I’d been away for two months, recovering from a series of operations on my hip that allowed me to walk. I never thought I would get to move freely without the aid of crutches ever again. I was even less sure the insurance would pay for it.

Since the accident, I’d been in a lot of pain, limping from place to place. Worse than the limp were the looks I got from passersby.

It was a sure sign that we were desperately poor. Only those with nothing could afford to get the kind of surgery I’d needed.

I checked myself over one more time in the front door’s glass panels. I ran my hands over my pencil skirt and felt at my hip that had, until recently, been the bane of my existence and the source of untold waves of pain.

Sometimes I still felt a twinge—a nipping sensation like some giant monster had seized my leg and twisted it for his own cruel enjoyment. But the pain faded, along with the frown that always came with it.

Ready, I raised a fist and knocked on the door. I could have used the face scanner which would have alerted my father that I had arrived, but I wanted my appearance to be a surprise.

I had returned unannounced and hoped to give him the same thrill that he had given me when he announced the insurance company would pay for my hip operation.

I knocked on the door and waited. I had to repeat it three more times before Dad came to the door.

He opened it and I beamed joyfully, raised my hands above my head, and said, “Surprise!”

It took a moment for him to fully take me in and realize just who I was. Clearly, I was the very last person he expected to see showing up on his doorstep like this.

Then his face registered an emotion…

It fell.

I’d wanted to surprise him… but I didn’t want it to be a negative surprise! He turned pale as the blood fell from his face in a mask of horror. He tried to cover it, but I was too used to reading his emotions to be fooled.

I lowered my arms. “Dad? What is it?”

He smiled, though it was a very sad thing and did little to cover his angst. “Oh. It’s you. I didn’t realize… I didn’t know you were coming…”

“I wanted it to be a surprise. Is everything all right?”

Dad glanced over his shoulder at something inside the house before turning back to me. “Now… isn’t a good time.”

His shoulders seemed to have shrunken a great deal over the past two months that I’d been away. His hair seemed thinner, grayer. He might have aged ten years.

I peered over his shoulder into the dark recesses of the rooms at the back of the house but made out only shadows. “I’ve come home. Can I come in?”

Dad looked over his shoulders once again and, as always, couldn’t find it in his heart to deny his daughter. He opened the door and let me in. “Of course. Just… head straight upstairs. I’m… entertaining someone in the front room.”

Entertaining someone?

Why was it all so cloak and dagger? I wondered. Then a thought struck me: had he been dating while I was away?

Returning unannounced the way I had could have led to me catching them in the middle of something very embarrassing…

I shook my head of the image and couldn’t bring myself to believe it. After Mom died, Dad had taken no interest in other women .

He was good-looking for his age, in terrific shape, and could hold his own with men ten years his junior. There had been no limit to the number of females interested in him, but he hadn’t responded with anything approaching affection.

I picked up my luggage, perplexed and confused, and entered the hall.

It seemed tiny. There was something about traveling that always seemed to broaden the mind, making the things we knew best back home seem a whole lot smaller.

Here I was, expecting a warm welcome, and instead I got a dour one.

“Your bedroom is made up,” Dad said.

As the twenty-year veteran of the Head of the Palace Household, I expected nothing less. Everything ran on time. He might have served in the military. My room, I knew, would be just as I had left it.

I paused at the foot of the stairs, peering over at the door that led into the front room. My mind was a whirlwind of possibilities, curiosity getting the better of me.

Just when I was about to take the first step, Dad eased up under my right shoulder, a movement that, prior to my operation, was the only way for me to get up the stairs.

I beamed at him and said, “No need, Dad. I can do it all by myself now!”

He blinked in surprise. Habits died hard, especially for someone like my father.

I took two steps up the stairs by myself to show him. “See? I won’t be a hindrance to you anymore.”

His eyes shimmered with tears. I wrapped my arms around him, his frame seeming so small and frail now. He cried with equal parts joy and sadness.

Surely he couldn’t be sad that I had finally gotten the treatment I needed? The surgery that had put me back into contention of being in tip-top shape again?

Dad clapped me on the back. “You were never a hindrance. I fear I might be the hindrance now though…”

Something was seriously wrong. And it had something to do with whoever was in the front room right at that moment. I burned with curiosity to see who it was…

“Dad? What is it?”

He shook his head and motioned for me to go up the stairs. “I’ll tell you later. First, you have to go to your room. I can’t keep him waiting any longer.”

Him.

Waiting.

Any longer.

So it was someone he looked up to, someone he respected. That hardly narrowed it down, I thought, as he respected a great number of people in town.

With curiosity burning a hole in my heart, but my respect for my father trumping it, I nodded and kissed him on the forehead. “I’ll be in my room when you need me,” I said.

I headed up the stairs with my suitcase, peering back at my father. He seemed to shrink with each step, then disappeared entirely as I rounded the corner and returned to my bedroom.

I unpacked my things and slid my suitcase under my bed which, before my trip, had been its resting place, undisturbed, for a full ten years. An honest man’s wage was a meager thing on Uhisa, and my father was as honest as they came .

I fell onto my bed and peered around at my room. It’d always seemed so welcoming, so comforting, but now it felt small, cramped, and confining.

What a difference an operation could make…

I hadn’t received a single operation but a series of small ones over a period of a month. My surgeon was a perfectionist and it took longer than expected before he was satisfied.

With cryo-sleep required for me to reach Glelle—the top medical station in the quadrant—and another two weeks in recovery during cryo-sleep on the way back, it left me with a full month to entertain myself in the hospital.

With the regular surgeries happening every few days, I spent my time shuffling through the long hospital hallways, making conversation with the other patients, entertaining myself in the gardens by reading books and getting a feel for the opportunities that were now open to me in the galaxy.

Opportunities that had always been open so long as you were willing and able. Well, now that I’d had my operation, I was certainly able.

And after speaking with the other patients, I had become even more willing.

The most interesting patients I spoke to were the older ones. They talked about adventures and excitement and yes, more than a little disappointment with life. But each was at the hospital to get the treatment they needed so they could live a fuller and more prosperous life.

What surprised me most was that it didn’t seem to matter what age they were—they were all obsessed with living a rich and full life, no matter their age!

One was a blorack, well past his prime, and wanted to scale the mountains of ghizzark! Reaching the peak would almost certainly kill him—if the ascent didn’t do it first. But he was resolute.

Another had the goal of writing a great novel and had been in the process of outlining it before he was put under anesthesia. After he awoke, he was a flurry of activity as he said that while he was under, he saw crazy, magnificent things and wanted to capture them on paper.

I was itching to get started on my own life, although I wasn’t entirely sure what direction it would yet take.

Downstairs, a door slammed and a voice yelled. I rushed to my bedroom door, threw it open, and peered down the stairs.

I caught only a pair of long legs disappearing through the doorway and the slamming of the front door.

My father’s hunched form stood, barely visible, in the living room. He fell against the doorway, shook his head, and ran his hand through his thinning hair.

I wanted to speak out and reassure him that everything would be all right but by his broken and desperate body language, I didn’t think he would want me to see him in such a state.

I backed away from the door and slowly closed it, leaving it on the latch so it didn’t make any sound. I wanted there to be no doubt that I hadn’t seen what had just happened.

I felt angry at whoever had just left. How could they slam the door in my father’s face like that? As if he were nothing.

I paced back and forth, clenched my fists, then released them, and repeated it over and over again. It was meant to help release my pent-up anger, but it only seemed to make me feel worse !

I swore I would get revenge on whoever had made him feel this way.

After ten minutes of furiously pacing, I calmed down. Getting angry wasn’t going to help Dad.

I wondered why he still hadn’t come up to my room to discuss whatever it was that was on his mind. Something serious had taken place while I was away, and I had no idea what it could be.

I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then headed downstairs. I opened the door to the front room and found my father laying in his favorite armchair, sprawled across it in a way I had never seen before.

He was always so straight-backed and alert to his surroundings. Now, he didn’t even notice when I entered the room.

“I’m going to make some coffee,” I said. “Do you want some?”

His head turned toward me, but his eyes were fixed on some point on the floor. “Hm?”

“Coffee.” I made my voice as soft as I could muster. “Do you want a cup?”

“Oh. Yes. That would be… nice. Thank you.”

My stomach wrenched, swirling. Something was very, very wrong and I had to get to the bottom of it.

I knew exactly how Dad liked his coffee. I knew even better how savoring it made him feel better. He liked to take a sip, taste it, and focus on it, concentrating on the sensations as it slid down his throat. Now, he just gulped it down absentmindedly.

He’d always been so mindful of his surroundings, his thoughts and feelings, and what he put into his body. It was the only way a man of his age could remain in such trim shape.

I simply had to get to the bottom of what’d happened.

“How have things been while I was away?” I asked.

“Oh. Fine. The usual.”

His eyes drifted past me before he took another sip of his coffee. This time, he took a little more time with it and tasted it before letting it slide down his throat. He was beginning to relax, I realized, returning to his old self.

I blew the steam off my coffee and looked at him over the rim of my cup. “Who was that who left earlier?”

“Who?”

“The person in the front room. The person you were talking to.”

Dad tightened up once more, his shoulders tensing. “Oh. A… workmate.”

A workmate?

If it was anyone under his command—which was the entire staff at the summer palace, including all maids, mechanics, and everyone else required to run such a large place—he would have referred to them as ‘staff.’

And that meant this someone was either at his level or more senior. Or someone completely new.

I couldn’t take it any longer and didn’t want to keep tiptoeing around the issue. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it.” It wasn’t a question. “Tell me what the problem is. I can see you’re worried about something. It does us good to talk about our problems.”

I was reflecting his own advice back onto him. After Mom died from her illness, Dad had to become both mother and father to me, a job he was well suited for.

As the Head of the Palace Household, he had to be dominant and in charge, which fulfilled the male role of the father, as well as understanding and caring of his staff’s needs, which fulfilled the motherly part of the equation.

He had become everything to me, my entire world, and to see him like this… It made me very, very sad.

“It’s not something you need to worry yourself with,” he said, raising his cup to take another sip of coffee. “It’s my problem. I’ll figure it out.”

I placed my hand on his knee. “A problem is never just about one person, remember? Your problems are mine, and mine are yours.” I smiled comfortingly at him.

His shoulders relaxed a little before he shook his head. “You are young. You don’t need to concern yourself with the trials of old men.”

“Does it have anything to do with the palace?” I asked.

Dad tensed once more and I realized I had hit a nerve. Before I left, there had been a ton of trouble at the palace due to the new Prince moving in.

The new Prince’s behavior was… unusual.

It was hardly a secret. The entire town knew about it. The young Prince used the summer palace as a meeting place for parties, games, and orgies. At least, that was what the rumors described.

I was always too embarrassed to ask Dad the truth as it seemed so remote from my life. But something had bothered Dad ever since the new Prince had taken up residence.

Dad’s life had always been about order and control. But there was no controlling the new Prince.

Dad shook his head and rubbed his nose with the back of his hands. He clutched them close like a life preserver on a strong and stormy sea. There were tears in his eyes and he couldn’t bring himself to look at me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought I would get away with it… I thought because the others had managed it… But I didn’t… I couldn’t… Oh. Please, Camila. Forgive me.”

Okay. Now I was really worried.

My father had always been a rock in my life, and it never occurred to me that he had to deal with messy everyday emotions, fears, or concerns. Even when Mom died, he seemed to take it in his stride, penting up his feelings like pegging a sheet to a washing line.

But that was a childish way to think.

Of course he had hurt during those years, and with me being so young at the time, he never had anyone to turn to for help. He must be in very serious trouble if he was reacting this way now.

“What is it?” I said. “I’m sure we can fix it, whatever it is.”

I leaned over and squeezed his knee comfortingly, but he didn’t seem to feel it.

“I’ve done something,” he said. “I’ve done something wrong, terribly wrong…”

Now the tears were streaming down his wrinkled cheeks. He covered his face, placing his delicate hands over his eyes to try to prevent me from seeing him cry.

I took the cup of coffee out of his hands as it threatened to spill over with his body shaking the way it was. I placed it on the coffee table and immediately crawled into his lap, bracing my weight on the chair’s armrests.

I wrapped my arms around his head, cuddling him close, gently rocking him back and forth, and making soft shushing noises. We had formed this hugging motion dozens of times over the years whenever I had been in trouble or worried about something.

He would rock me gently in his lap until I fell calm and quiet. But now, I was the one playing the role of the adult.

Two months away, and everything had gone topsy-turvy !

“Whatever it is, it’ll be all right,” I whispered. “I promise. Everything’s going to be okay.”

My biggest fear was that he would catch an illness—that he would slowly fade away before me—but he had clearly said that he had done something, not that he was sick or injured.

But he was injured, I realized. His emotions were tearing him up from the inside.

Slowly, he began to relax, his breath coming in hitched sobs at the back of his throat. “I did something… I did it for the greater good, but I was wrong…” He looked up at me and squeezed my knee.

“What is it?” I said. “I can’t believe it’s anything too bad. You would never do anything to hurt anyone.”

He nodded. “I didn’t hurt anyone. But I… I… stole something.”

The words were like rocks falling into the pit of my stomach.

Stole something.

The greatest sin. My father, the distinguished manager of the summer palace, had punished many of his staff over the years for stealing—often ending in outright dismissal.

“Once someone betrays your trust, there’s no way you can trust them ever again,” he’d always said. It had been his mantra for twenty years.

And now he had been the one to break his own rules?

“What did you steal?” I asked in a steady voice.

“Priceless antiques. Although, when I took them to the pawn shop, it turns out they’re not so priceless after all. Everything has a price when you come to sell them.”

Priceless antiques…

When he told me he had stolen something, I figured we’d be able to replace it. But if it was priceless… and an antique to boot… There might not be another one of its type in existence.

“What else?” I asked, my throat dry. “Did you… take anything else?”

I couldn’t bring myself to use the word ‘steal’ when referring to my father.

“Just antiques.”

There could only be one place he’d taken them from. The palace. Nowhere else in town had so many antiques—besides the museums. And I didn’t think he had it in him to steal from a museum.

Then again, I didn’t think he had it in him to steal from the palace either!

“I’m sure if we speak to the Prince, he’ll forgive you,” I said. “After all, twenty years of service has to mean something.”

“He fired me,” Dad said, his voice quivering, causing another cascade of tears to roll down his cheeks. “He fired me!”

So that was what the yelling was for… Why Dad was so distracted…

The person who had fired him—most likely the new manager of the property, Ges—had yelled and slammed the door on his way out.

But my fear wasn’t that he had lost his job. It was a blow, as my father had truly loved his position in the palace, but the real tragedy was that he would never find another Head of the Household job again—for the same reason none of his staff who had stolen from the palace had either.

There was no second chance for trust.

What concerned me was that the new Prince might press charges. Dad could end up being crushed by a prohibitive fine or, worse yet, have to serve time on a prison planet…

My dad was too old and would not survive such a place. It had become a matter of life and death, and no matter what Dad had done—I didn’t care if he’d stolen the crown jewels—I could not allow him to die.

Now I was the one with tears in my eyes. They stung but did not roll down my cheeks. I held them back. The last thing Dad needed was to see how upset I was. I kept running my fingers through his thinning hair, clutching him close so he couldn’t see my face.

Then I asked the one question that might go some way to answering this entire thing:

“Why, Dad? Why did you steal from the palace?”

“It was the only way…”

“Only way for what?”

Dad wasn’t the type to blow it on sporty cars, women, or upgrade his living standards. What else was there for him to spend the money on?

“I couldn’t bear to see you in pain,” he said. “I couldn’t bear not being able to give you what you so desperately needed.”

What I desperately needed?

All I needed was his love, and that was never in short supply. The only other thing that I ever needed was…

I froze, my fingers coming to a stop, curled in his thin white hair. The words tumbled from my lips. “My operation…”

He gave no sign of affirmation but there was no doubt about it. It was the reason he had taken the risk. It was the only thing that would drive him to commit, to his mind, such a terrible sin as to steal from the royal palace.

To pay for my operation. To help me.

“But I thought the insurance paid for it?” I said, feeling stupid even as I asked the question.

“The company refused. They said it wasn’t covered by our policy. I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t let you suffer because of me.”

He’d always blamed himself for the accident, and I always replied the same way, as I did now:

“It wasn’t you,” I said, believing it more than ever. “You were not the driver who was drunk. He slammed into our shuttle and made us fall from the sky. It had nothing to do with you.”

I had been elated when he told me the insurance company would pay for it, that my future would no longer be curtailed by my affliction. It meant there was a chance I could get to live a normal life.

And now that the money had been spent, how was I meant to return it?

“I saw the Prince’s guests coming every weekend, taking what they wanted, stealing from him and the royal family,” Dad said. “They spend it all on drink and drugs and women… and then brag about it when they return the following weekend. They were going to steal everything eventually and I thought, if they were going to take it anyway, why not do something good with it instead? Something that can help someone who deserves it. And I… I did it.”

I stroked his hair as another sob wracked his body. “Don’t worry,” I said, stroking his head. “I’m sure there’s a way out of this.”

“A way? There is no way. I’ve thought of everything—”

I shushed him gently and stroked his hair. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. We’ll pay the money back. Somehow. ”

And I knew then, making a promise to myself, that I would not allow my father to go on trial, to be persecuted for a crime that although he might be guilty of, he couldn’t go to prison for.

I would speak with the new Prince and convince him to let us work and pay him back.

He would accept the offer.

He had to.

I hope you’re enjoying MAID FOR THE ALIEN PRINCE. If you did, you’ll love the complete book.