Page 47 of Once Upon A Time

Flicka shrugged. “I turned out all right, and don’t contradict me on that.”

“How many kids do you and Pierre want?” Rae asked.

“None,” Flicka said.

“But—” Rae’s eyebrows bent down. “—but if Pierre doesn’t have kids, isn’t that a problem?”

Flicka shrugged. “That’s his problem.”

“But you married him,” Rae said. “It’s your problem, too. Did you talk about it before you got married?”

Flicka gazed at her sister-in-law—the sweet ingenue Rae Stone who was raised so very sheltered—and decided that some things didn’t need to be discussed just yet. One doesn’t casually announce that one is going to burn the monarchies of the world to ashes, certainly not to someone who just got her princess papers.

“I just don’t want children,” Flicka said. “I wouldn’t know how to play with them or talk to them or anything. I’d make a terrible mother. I’ll make an excellent aunt because an aunt’s job is to spoil them rotten. I’ll sneak sweets to them, get them up in the middle of the night for ice cream, and give them fast cars as soon as they’re allowed to drive, but no one should ever give me a child of my own. I wouldruina child.”

Her inflection left no doubt that ruination would be the worst fate that could befall a child.

Flicka spun her computer around. “Now, on to more important things, like your colors. Would you like peach and yellow, perhaps? Or red and purple, like at the civil ceremony? We simply must make some decisions.”

Text Me

Dieter Schwarz

I didn’t expect her

to show up in the US.

Dieter was walking through the long corridor ofSchloss Southwestern,theWelfenlegion’snickname for Wulfram von Hannover’s estate in the Apache Tears Ranch housing development, when a woman’s slim form flitted across the hallway ahead of him.

A few months ago, Dieter might have turned aside and taken himself to some other part of the house just out of sympathy, but this time he hurried after her. “Flicka?”

He found her waiting for him just around the corner.

This hallway hidden behind the staircase led to the first-floor offices. Wulfram’s locked and private office was farther down, and Rae had a study room past that. Sconces on the walls threw golden light up to the ceiling. Even though the walls of the entertaining room were entirely glass and the Southwestern sun lanced through at every hour of the day, these hallways were too far back for even that strong sunlight.

When Dieter caught up to her, she said, “Hi,” and was smiling.

Her smile was a little shy, a little hesitant,butshe was smiling.

Dieter had many, many regrets about his affair with her, and her smile salved his conscience a little. “I didn’t know you were expected.”

“I’m planning Rae and Wulf’s wedding. You know about that, right?”

“He told me.”

Just standing with her in the hallway, having a polite and casual conversation, causedzingsof energy to spike through him. Her presence—the air that she moved as she shifted from one foot to the other—brushed the skin on his bare arms, and he swore the hair on his arms lifted with the electricity of it.

“I’m—um—kind of surprised you’re here,” she said, fidgeting with a huge photo album in her arms. “I heard that you and Wulf had a falling out.”

Dieter sucked in some air. “I submitted my resignation as his chief of security.”

“Jeez. I’m shocked he accepted it.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Okay,” she said, looking at the ground. “I suppose I don’t need to know any more. And you’re around here because—”

He grinned. “There’s a soccer game on BBC Sports tonight.”