Page 45 of Once Upon A Time

Dieter would have predicted that Wulfram would react with cold anger at evidence of such an absolute betrayal. Dieter would have.

Instead, Wulfram’s lips parted, and his breath caught in his chest. “Dieter, what have you done?”

Betrayed you,Durchlaucht, so many times.

A Princess In Charge

Flicka von Hannover

What good is a real-life princess

if she can’t plan a fairy tale wedding

on truly, exceedingly inadequate notice?

In late April,, Flicka arrived at Wulf’s house with her sample book in hand to plan his wedding to Rae Stone.

Decisions must be made.

Details must be attended to.

Reservations must be nailed down.

They wanted the religious wedding, the event of the season, to be held in mid-June, for heaven’s sake.

Yes,intwo months.

Someone was out of their frickin’ mind, trying to plan a royal wedding event in just two months, but Flicka was going to make this wedding happen through the sheer force of her will.

To make it happen, she had absconded with Pierre’s favorite little jet and had already made advance trips to Paris, London, and Montreux, Switzerland to reconnoiter venues before she had even arrived at Wulf’s house in the Southwest to confer with the bride and groom.

The honeymoon in Monaco hadn’t been going so well, anyway. Being the heir to a sovereign prince entailed a lot of duties, every day. Pierre’s real job title should have been something likeTrade Ambassador to the WorldorHead of Federal Publicity.

Wulf von Hannover’s place in the Southwestern US was a cute little abode with just a small staff. Herr and Frau Keller were his head butler and head of staff, of course, and they had a cadre of some cleaning people, and some kitchen help, and of course his security brigade, theWelfenlegion.Perhaps only thirty people were in the house at any one time out of a staff of a hundred or so.

The house only had three short wings around a central courtyard, but Wulf had added onto the garage. Wulfie liked cars.

When she had slapped her samples book on Wulfie’s desk, Wulfram handed Flicka a credit card and told her that, while he would certainly weigh in on anything they would like another opinion on, if they didn’t require his opinion that was just fine, too.

Carte blanche.

Flicka hadn’t had that much latitude when planning her own damn wedding.

Pierre had wanted to have the wedding in Monaco at his palace, of course, but the reception venues in Monaco were too small. Plus, there weren’t enough hotel rooms for the extravaganza that Flicka had planned to subsidize her charities.

Flicka had wantedSchloss Marienburg,but Monaco also had athingabout conquering Germans coming after their throne after two world wars. Fair enough.

They’d negotiated the neutral venue, Paris, because the publicity that was possible there would be tremendous for Flicka’s causes and Pierre’s work in Monaco.

But they were working on Wulfie’s wedding now, not hers.

Rae was still studying for her undergraduate degree in psychology and was loaded with coursework. She and Flicka huddled for an hour or two every few days, but Flicka got to make all the arrangements.

She absolutelylovedit.

After some intense negotiations with Wulfie and Rae, they decided on Montreux, Switzerland, near where Wulf and Flicka had gone to school and a rather central location in Europe.

Flicka loved Montreux. If her own wedding hadn’t been so enormous with over ten thousand guests invited to the various receptions, she would have preferred the gorgeous Swiss Alps and lakes of Montreux to Paris.