Page 8 of Tech Prince Troubles (Runaway Prince Hotel #6)

Chapter Eight

SAM

sounds like a fairytale

I t was a hot day, and the sun was out in full as I exited the café. I blinked against its brightness and made my way across the plaza toward the park to get my bike.

I stopped. There was someone sitting near the fountain. Adri. For once, he wasn’t wearing his hood. He sat on a bench facing the sun, with his back to the hotel, his pale platinum hair striking in this light. He had something in his lap that he glanced at every now and then. Maybe he was working.

I shook my head. In the middle of the day? He worked too much. Did Niren not sleep?

For a moment, I wondered if I should let him be. But I felt the urge to talk to him, to really talk to him, and not just stare at him like a lovesick puppy.

He was beautiful in the sunlight, and for a moment, I thought I saw something shift beneath his skin—shimmering lines glowing faint blue like something from a science fiction movie.

I couldn’t move for a moment; he was so beautiful, so gorgeous.

But I couldn’t help but feel that all he wanted—all our interactions had been about coffee.

While I had seen him chat with Riley, it seemed they were always talking about work.

So I wasn’t sure if he was open to the person making his coffee approaching him when he was working.

At least, I thought he was working; his fingers moved across a tablet.

Heat burned my neck, and I scolded myself for standing in the sun. But I couldn’t seem to force myself to leave. I had time; no one was expecting me for a while. The kids were with Evan, planning their summer vacation.

Not something I enjoyed thinking about, even if it had been my idea for him and Bethany to take the kids on long trips during the summer while I worked.

I always missed the kids for the three weeks they were away.

And then there were the camps. The kids loved them, but our homes felt so empty without them.

We tried vacationing together once, but while it worked for our canoe trips, three weeks in each other’s laps was just too much. We needed our space now and then.

Which is why I took them to my sister’s farm every spring break—often with Tammy.

Rebecca and her husband lived in a warm, close-knit community some twenty miles outside Princedelphia.

Last year, even the little ones helped finish our parents’ cottage, but so far, Dad couldn’t tear himself away from his volunteer work at the paddling club.

Lost in thought, I was still staring at Adri. I cleared my mind, took a breath, and approached him.

He didn’t seem to notice me at first. Maybe he was used to people walking by.

I glanced at his hands, his two long fingers gliding across the screen of a sleek, futuristic tablet.

Lines appeared beneath his fingers. I assumed he was coding.

Instead, the lines turned into shapes—two birds mid-flight, their wings outstretched.

I glanced at the sky. There they were, the birds Adri was drawing when I’d thought he was just basking in the sun.

I sat down next to him, mesmerized. “Hey,” I said.

Adri seemed to tense, his fingers hovering still above the screen. After a moment, he tilted his face toward me, and his posture eased with the barest drop of his shoulders. “Hello. How was your shift?”

I smiled because in all our brief conversations, I’d asked him how his shift had gone, and he’d only given me short answers that felt like he was mimicking me.

“It was good. Busy as always. Had this—” I shut my mouth with a snap, startled by what I’d almost blurted out.

The last thing I wanted was to scare him away.

But the more I tried to hold it back, the harder the words pushed…

until I had no choice but to let them out.

“This handsome Niren ordered an espresso early this morning. The only espresso of the day. Macchiatos are very in fashion, apparently.”

Adri’s skin rippled, as if with goosebumps—a tiny spark of blue, the color of his eyes, shimmering across the surface.

“Too sweet for you, I take it?”

“It’s not the sweetness. I don’t understand wanting to water down coffee.”

I laughed. “You and me both.” Even if I did enjoy a macchiato now and then.

He fell quiet, staring down at his tablet, tracing a line on the screen with a single finger.

“I thought I’d find you here coding or studying schematics or something. I didn’t expect you to be drawing birds.”

“I’m not working right now.” He kept his eyes on his screen. “And I like birds.”

I could see that. At first, his drawing seemed almost too perfect. They looked so real, with the feathers edged in impossible precision and the lights and shadows from the sun. He hadn’t drawn the sun, but I could still see where its beams hit their bodies.

“It’s gorgeous.” I hadn’t often seen him with bare arms, and I couldn’t stop staring at the blue shimmering across his skin as if reacting to what I said. It made me smile. “How did you capture those feathers so accurately when the birds fly around like that?”

“I’ve been drawing birds since I was young. And I remember details.”

“Yeah, I bet you do.”

His lips curled into a hint of a smile. “You burned yourself making coffee this morning.”

I had. Hazard of the job—and wayward trainees. “It’s barely a burn.” Only a vague red splotch. Yet he’d spotted it.

“Was it Gandalf?” Adri turned his body toward me ever so slightly.

“You remember my espresso machine’s name?” I barely dared to move for fear he’d turn away again.

“I remember details,” he repeated. There was no cockiness, no bravado. He was just stating a fact.

“It wasn’t Gandalf. It was one of the newer machines. Cyril had a problem with leakage, and I made the mistake of trying to pull a mug away when the steam pipe burst to life.” And Cyril had kept apologizing the whole time it took to cool my skin and fix the problem.

Adri’s fingers twitched as if he wanted to touch my hand. “I’m sorry you got hurt.”

“I’m not hurt.” The color made it seem worse than it was. This was the least of the scalds I’d earned. I was much worse when I was still learning. “They’re decent kids.”

“You call them kids?” There was a dip in his voice where his synchronized tones met. It sounded like surprise.

The notes tugged at me, even as I shrugged. “It’s a figure of speech.”

“Because you’re their manager or because you’re older?”

“Maybe a bit of both. They’re young, and they’re here to learn.”

“And you’re old? ”

“Ouch!” I put my hand against my heart. “That hurts. I’m only thirty-six. I’m in my prime.”

“I’m twenty-eight,” he replied with a faint twitch at the corner of his mouth. “But there’s no direct Niren-to-human age conversion. Our lifespan doesn’t compare. I’m a youngling in Niren culture.”

“Age is never straightforward. Anyway, birds. Do you have more?” I leaned closer, slowly, so as not to spook him. “Would you mind showing me some of your drawings?”

Adri clutched his tablet to his chest, flicking his eyes down… hesitant.

“It’s okay. I get it. Art is personal.” Quinn didn’t show us all their drawings, either.

“I’ve never…” He glanced up through his lashes, then down again.

I held my breath, trying not to fidget while he thought about it. The moment he shook his head and tilted the tablet, my whole body relaxed.

“No. I don’t mind…” For a moment, it seemed he was going to say more. Instead, he smiled—tentative, but genuine, gorgeous—and showed me his work.

He browsed through image after image of beautiful birds captured in motion; lifelike in grayscale.

No colors needed. It drew my attention to our differences.

His iridescent purple skin versus my weathered tan.

My work-roughened hands versus the elegance of his long, tapered fingers.

How fluidly they swiped across the screen as he turned to yet another piece of art.

Which was not just of a bird. “You drew our famed Bartholomew.”

Adri blinked, a slight frown furrowing his pale brows.

“The fountain.” As detailed as the rest of his drawings.

“There was a bird.”

I tried not to laugh at his matter-of-fact tone. “Yes.” Beautiful in flight, water dripping down one wing. But while it was obvious the bird got the majority of his attention, the water flow was just as precise. “It’s gorgeous.”

“Thank you.” His shoulders twitched, and twitched again, as if he was forcing himself to relax.

He didn’t take compliments well, did he? It almost made me pull back my words. Almost. “Layla would really love this one. Do you know the history of the fountain?”

Adri shook his head, grabbing his tablet tight as he glanced at the statue.

“Didn’t read the plaque?”

Another head shake.

“That’s Prince Bartholomew Renversé. Runaway royal. Founder of Princedelphia. Lover of hot beverages. This was his hotel, way back when.”

“He was a prince?” Adri’s voice did that dippy thing again. He was definitely surprised.

“Yeah. I don’t know the entire story. It was a long time ago, but rumors have it he married a barista.”

“Wow. A prince and a barista?”

There was a whole new resonance to Adri’s voice. But with the way he tensed, I couldn’t work out whether it was a negative or positive reaction. Maybe a bit of both. “Sounds like a fairytale, right?”

“Like a story? For children?”

“Yeah.” I let his “children” comment slide. It wasn’t as if I knew anything about Niren literature. Was there even such a thing? “Would you be willing to show it to Layla?”

Adri shook his head. “I’ve never… shared before.”

I thought about Quinn and how she loved drawing, but as much as I enjoyed talking about my kids, something was stopping me.

What if I was misreading him? If he found it difficult to share his art with me, would he think talking about my family was too personal, too friendly, when he was just here for work and coffee?

I leaned back while Adri browsed on. I wondered if I should ask him to stop, until I recognized our lake, and I couldn’t help but say, “So, you’ve ventured beyond the hotel.”

“Yes,” Adri replied, clutching the tablet. “I walked through the park, followed the river to this lake. There’s a bench with a good view. I went back the other way, but that wasn’t as enjoyable. Too close to the road. Too noisy.”

“Yeah, our city isn’t the quietest. Though it’s not so bad up here, is it?”

“This is a good place when it’s sunny. And when there aren’t many cars.”

“And you can’t beat that view of the ocean, right? Have you been to the beach?”

Adri shook his head. “Not yet.”

I waited for him to say more, but he kept his eyes on his tablet. Maybe I should go, but I wanted to give it one last chance. “So, how’s the renovation going?”

The drop of his shoulders told me changing the subject back to work had been the right choice.

“I’m learning a lot about Art Deco.”

He mentioned the delays and glitches. “Not what I’m used to. Here I get to hide our NiraTech behind old plinths to create a dream or a getaway for some people. At least that’s how Riley calls it.”

In bits and pieces—seeming far more relaxed—he told me all I ever wanted to know about energy flow, renovating a hotel, and Art Deco when I was dying to ask him about his family and where he lived.

I’d looked up Niralen—and the Niren—obviously, and I knew their island was somewhere near Micronesia.

It seemed they had dropped to Earth in a meteor crash a long, long time ago.

But the first human-Niren connection had been in the early 1900s.

I couldn’t remember how big their population was, but most of them seemed to either work in tech, IT, or environmental jobs, like the podcast Quinn was so fond of.

Midway through our conversation, after his questions about our coffee machines, Adri abruptly stopped responding and watched the fountain like a hawk. I thought maybe his mind was on his drawing, but then he rose.

“I need to check something.”

“Is something going on?”

“There’s something wrong with the water flow.”

I tried to figure out what he saw. “You mean the stuttering? It happens sometimes. Could be the weather.”

Adri shook his head. “That’s not it. Sorry. This was lovely. Thank you.”

He left without looking back, leaving me staring at the fountain, thinking of his beautiful drawings. And him. So gorgeous. So contained.

Despite his reluctance to share more of himself, I wouldn’t have minded seeing him again.