Inconceivable! Read online

  “No. It actually felt good to see you in here dancing and making Astrid and the others so happy.” He stood and reached his hand out to help me up. “Hatty, will you dance with me?”

  “I’d love to.”

  Flipping on the turntable, he delicately placed the needle, and I again noticed how adept he was with his fingers. The opening notes of Journey’s “Open Arms” engulfed us. We leaned into each other, and I rested my head on his shoulder. Even in this hushed moment, the heat between our bodies intensified as we swayed. It was like a scene from Dirty Dancing, minus the dirty. Instead of acting on the attraction that connected us like a live wire, we simply held each other.

  After a few minutes, he sniffed loudly and looked at me. “If you’ve forgiven me for my lack of manners last night, I’d love to take you for a ride.”

  “In the woods behind the palace?”

  “As you wish, my dear,” he said, placing an unruly lock of hair behind my ear.

  When we got back from our horseback ride and picnic (thank goodness the rain held off), I packed. My dread of leaving John grew heavier every time I added something to my duffel. Suck it up, Hatty.

  A knock on the bedroom door interrupted my little pity party. John walked in, a hint of sadness evident in his eyes.

  “Here. Let me take this downstairs for you.”

  “Don’t you have people to do this kind of thing?” I teased him as he grabbed the handle of my duffle bag. “Hey, before we take my bags downstairs, I want to give you something.”

  “This sounds important. Should I sit?”

  “Sure.”

  I grabbed his gift from the wardrobe where I’d kept it since my arrival. Holding it behind my back, I perched on the edge of the bed beside him.

  “This is for you.” I placed the quirky little camera in his hand. “It’s a Rollei 35 millimeter that belonged to my grandfather. When he died, my grandmother gave it to me. My granddad took pictures of me with it when I was little. He called it his ‘off-the-clock camera’ because it was so much smaller than the ones he used at work.”

  “Hatty, I don’t know if I can accept such a special gift. Do they even make this camera anymore?” He turned it over in his hand, looking at it from different angles.

  “I doubt it, but it’s loaded with film and ready to go. Since I don’t get to be with you very often and all this is so new to me, I thought it would be cool if you took some photos while we’re apart. That way, I can see what I miss.”

  He gently set down the camera and gave me a fierce hug. “Hatty, this is one of the best gifts anyone’s ever given me. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. I can’t wait to see your photos.”

  “I can’t wait to see you again.” But he hadn’t said anything about when or where our next date would be. With this realization, my heart sank.

  He gave me one last hungry kiss. My eyes drifted shut, and I savored the taste of our lips converging. A desperation drove my mouth into motion because I didn’t know when I’d see him again. Soon, I hoped. Very soon.

  hortly after I got home Sunday evening, Tilda and Sara arrived at my apartment to get all the details on the weekend while I did laundry. Such a glamorous life I led.

  Tilda blew into her cup of steaming chai. “Do you think his father and brother like you? Henri seems like such a goofball and their dad strikes me as being entirely too serious.”

  Sara jumped in. “They’re both sexy as hell. If you don’t want them, I’ll take all three.”

  “Tilda, you’ve got them pegged―Henri’s a doll and their father is quite solemn. So get this: I asked his father what I should call him, and he said Leo. Think about his stern face. Can you imagine anyone calling him Leo?”

  “Did you?”

  “Heck, yes!”

  “They probably thought that was cute and folksy.” My Missouri charms I unwittingly put on display from time to time brought Tilda endless amusement.

  “Okay. Who cares about dad and brother? Tell us about the kissing.” For Sara, the world was a romance novel, its pages turning before her eyes.

  “Well. He’s very good at it. When he kisses me, it feels like home. Does that make sense?”

  “Absolutely. A beautiful image. Does he use a lot of tongue?”

  “Sara!”

  “Well?”

  “I guess. I mean, I don’t know. How do you quantify tongue?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Just tell me this: did you do anything else?” Sara leaned closer.

  “Well, I didn’t see it, but I know he has one heck of a kingmaker.”

  “How do you know if you didn’t see it?”

  “Use your imagination.”

  “Not a good suggestion. I’ve got one hell of an imagination.”

  We giggled. All we needed was pizza and a handmade fortunetelling game made of notebook paper and this could pass for a high school sleepover. In those days, my friends and I stayed up late sharing every awkward detail about the boys we’d kissed.

  “Back to the important part of the weekend,” Tilda said, glaring at Sara.

  “Hey, this stuff’s very important! We need to know if they have chemistry.” Sara winked at Tilda and shook her booty. Lord help us.

  “Sara, settle down. Honestly. The really important thing is what his brother and father thought of you. Because if you don’t have their approval, your relationship with the prince is doomed.”

  “John said they enjoyed meeting me. Good old Leo asked me a very pointed question about what I planned to do in May, and if dating John figured into my future.”

  “And what did you say?” Sara stopped dancing.

  “I told him it does. But, c’mon, we just started dating. Suddenly, I’m supposed to be thinking about long-term plans? So ridiculous!”

  “I totally get it,” Tilda said. “But you’re not seeing the big picture from their perspective. They’re used to everyone bowing to their whims and following their schedule. And I’m sure they don’t like the fact you’re in journalism. Might do them good to have someone like you around.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll see. I’m going to call my mom in the morning and tell her. She’s going to flip out.”

  Mom hated anything she perceived as getting in the way of my career, and I’d bet that’s how she’d see my courtship with John. Note to self: don’t use the word “courtship” because she’ll hate that, too.

  “Hey, Mom!”

  “Hi, honey! How are things going with the new internship?”

  “Good. They’re letting me focus on my investigative story. It’s the perfect arrangement. Much better than at the Dispatch.”

  “Don’t you miss covering the royals? I thought you did a wonderful job with the blog. Sounded like such a fun assignment.” Oh, mom. You have no idea.

  “Well, that’s actually what I’m calling about. It was a lot of fun spending time with the royal family. Specifically, the prince. John.”

  Awkward pause.

  “In fact, it was so fun, we’ve decided to spend more time together.”

  “What do you mean?” I sensed her hackles awakening in alarm.

  “I mean we’re dating. Me and the prince. The prince and I. Us. Together.”

  “Dating? Is he the reason you left the Dispatch?” Mom cut straight through the bull. No wonder her students both loved and feared her.

  “Well, I couldn’t very well cover someone I’m dating. Once we began our courtship, I moved to Les Valenciennes.”

  “Courtship? What is this, the 1950’s?” Damn that word!

  “It’s just the official term they use in the paperwork.”

  “What paperwork?”

  “I had to sign paperwork consenting to the terms of our courtship.”

  “This sounds absolutely medieval. Why would you ever sign such a document?”

  “Because I like him! A lot. It’s fine. It’s more than fine. I’m glad to be rid of that stupid blog. It was complete fluff. Now, I’m working on a story that really matters.
”

  “As long as you don’t step on any royal toes, right?”

  “My story has nothing to do with John’s family. Can’t you be happy for me?”

  “I’ll be happy when I know you aren’t throwing away your career for a lifetime of ‘Stand By Your Man.’”

  “Trust me. I’m not giving up my career for John. This is the 21st century. It is possible to have a relationship and a job, you know?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know about this, Hatty.”

  I gritted my teeth, determined to show her I could, eventually, have it all―a successful career, an adoring husband, and two-point-five kids. Boom.

  holed up in my corner of the Les Valenciennes newsroom Wednesday, transcribing interviews I’d done pre-prince with some of the neighbors who lived close to the smelter. Leisel de Vries’ voice surged through my ear buds:

  “My husband and I had been trying to get pregnant for months. I finally went to the doctor to find out what was wrong. She did an ultrasound and found polyps in the area outside my uterus. She told me many of her patients from Kortrijk have similar reproductive problems.”

  Her voice sounded broken and tired.

  I listened to my next question: “Could your doctor remove the polyps?”

  “Yes, but she couldn’t do small incisions. She had to cut me from here to here to remove all the polyps.”

  I cringed. Leisel had raised her shirt to show me the shiny, red line where the knife had traversed her abdomen.

  “How long ago was that?”

  “About a year.”

  “Have you been able to conceive?”

  “Not yet. But we’re hopeful.”

  I paused my recorder and stopped transcribing, letting the seriousness of her situation wash over me. Her desperation rang through every word. Even though pregnancy was the furthest thing from my mind, my heart was heavy for her. She had cried intermittently during our interview. Each time she dabbed at them with a wadded up tissue, I suppressed the urge to say, “We can just stop. You don’t have to keep going.” Painful as it was for her, Leisel wanted to share her story. Before I left, she hugged me, thanking me over and over again for listening.

  Opening my reporter’s notebook, I made a note to schedule an interview with Leisel’s doctor, and then walked over to Sandra’s desk. She was a hard-nosed reporter who had exposed a scheme by two assembly members to defraud a federal program out of millions of euros. I admired her tremendously.

  “Sandra, how easy is it to interview doctors in this country?”

  “It depends, I guess. What do you want to ask?”

  “I want to talk to a particular doctor about trends she’s observing in her patients.”

  “Is this for your smelting investigation?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then she probably won’t talk on the record.”

  “Why not?”

  “Since all the physicians in this country are government employees, and the crown owns the smelting facility, I doubt she’ll comment.” Sandra sounded as if she were explaining something to a child.

  “What do you mean the crown owns the facility?” Not good.

  “I thought you knew. Isn’t that why you left your blog to come work here? So you could leverage your relationship with the royal family to do a worthwhile story instead of gardening updates?” She smirked. The reporters at Les Valenciennes thought my blog was a royal joke.

  “I seriously have no clue what you’re talking about.”

  “The royal family either owns the building for the smelter or they lease it and use it for smelting. We’re not sure, but we’ve been trying to find out for years. They hide and alter public records, you know. Those scientists from your university are going to uncover the truth about the smelter damaging the environment. The Meinrads need to be held accountable for the problems that place has created for the people who live nearby.” She turned back to her laptop.

  My stomach grumbled, issuing a threat. I dashed straight to the bathroom where I lost my lunch.

  I left the newsroom and got in my car, my hand resting over my stomach. Why hadn’t John told me his family was one of the biggest players in my story? This was an unexpected level of douchebaggery from my new boyfriend.

  On my way home, I stopped at Boots Pharmacy. As I stood in line to pay for the antacids, John’s face on the cover of a magazine caught my eye. He had his arm wrapped around the waist of a beautiful woman with black hair. They both smiled conspiratorially, their heads nearly touching as they leaned toward one another. The headline screamed, “The Prince Goes for the Gold!” A little bubble farther down the cover said, “Prince John dumps journalism student for gymnast!” That stinking exclamation point stuck in my craw.

  I grabbed the magazine, paid, and ran out to my car, sensing another wave of nausea settling over me.

  Steadying my breaths, I opened the magazine in the safety of the driver’s seat and started reading:

  Did Toulene’s Prince John really just take journalism student Hatty Brunelle for a ride? It appears so. Only two weeks after he whisked away the wide-eyed, aspiring reporter to Belvoir, Toulene’s Prince Charming was spotted out on the town with Olympic Gold Medalist Adela Zuzen of Spain. The pair canoodled in a booth at the ultra-ace downtown eatery, Go. It was clear these two were planning to stay!

  “I think they wanted to sit in the back so they could snog without anyone seeing them,” said Bie Peeters, Go waitress.

  I closed the cover, grabbed my stomach, and suppressed a dry heave. After a few more deep breaths, I started the car, went home, and crawled into bed. Three letters buzzed in my head like a giant neon sign illuminating my brain: WTF.

  fter a night of dreaming about a self-righteous confrontation with John, I woke up exhausted. I showered and got ready to go to the newsroom.

  On my way through the lobby of my apartment building, the doorman handed me a sealed envelope.

  As I walked outside, I tore it open. John was sending a car to get me at 4:00 p.m. Fine. I was ready for a fight. Bring it.

  I seethed, still unsure which made me angrier―his concealing the fact his family owned the smelting operation or his apparent fling with the Spanish gymnast. It was a close contest and the gymnast wouldn’t get the gold this time.

  When I arrived at the palace late in the afternoon, John greeted me with open arms, ready to plant a serious kiss on my lips. Just a day and a half ago, I would’ve felt an undeniable hunger, but now there was only bitterness brewing.

  I let him envelop me in his arms, but turned my head when he tried to kiss me.

  “Hatty, what’s wrong?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Of course. We can go to my room.” His brows pulled together. A sign of worry, perhaps? He knows his girlfriend is a badass from the Ozarks and it’s come-to-Jesus time.

  Behind his closed bedroom door, I got right to it. “When were you going to tell me about your family’s role in making people sick in Kortrijk?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You never told me your family owns the smelting operation that’s apparently causing people to get lung cancer and have miscarriages, if they can get pregnant at all. You make me sick.”

  “Oh, God.” His hand ploughed through his hair. “Hatty, until this week, I didn’t know we still owned the buildings. We lease the facility to a private company that runs the smelter. I thought we sold off that property several years ago. I swear I was going to tell you about it because this creates a conflict of interest for you now that we’re dating.”

  “Conflict of interest? Don’t pretend like you care about my profession. And why is it I’m the only journalist in town who can’t seem to keep tabs on where you go and the women you see?” I tossed the magazine at his feet, giving myself a slow clap in my head and a heaping helping of You go, girl!

  “You’re upset by this?”

  “I need to know right now if you’re dating any other women.”

  “Are you ser
ious?”

  I waited with my arms folded across my chest.

  “No. You’re the only one I’m dating.”

  “Then how do you explain this story?”

  “I met Adela a couple of years ago. She was in town Monday, and asked to see me because she wants to date Henri. And do you know why she was in Toulene?”

  “I have no idea. But wait a minute. She can just call you up and ask to see you, and I can’t?”

  “It’s different because I’m not dating her.”

  “Apparently someone thinks you are. Since you don’t make her follow the rules I have to follow, you get ‘caught’ with her, and now everyone thinks you guys are dating? This is so messed up.”

  “I’m not seeing her. She came to Toulene to host a gymnastics camp for immigrant youth. But of course, that’s not sexy enough for a magazine cover so someone saw us out and took a photo.”

  “They just made up the story to go along with the picture?”

  “I suggest you start acting like a journalist and get the facts right before you burst into my home and accuse me of being a horrible person.” He turned away from me.

  The room was silent, though the air was heavy with our harsh words. I walked out of his bedroom, slamming the door behind me. Astrid was dusting in the sitting area.

  “I’m ready to go home.” She silently led me down the staircases to the entrance I’d used just a few minutes earlier. I got in the black car parked in the curved driveway and waited. A couple of minutes later, a driver came and took me to my apartment.

  A painful aching nipped at my heart, overriding the anger. This breach of trust heralded the end of my courtship with John. This was a different kind of royal flush―our relationship was sliding down the toilet.

  espite my confrontation with John, I slept deeply. It helped that I’d gotten very little rest the previous night.

  Friday morning, I went to my media ethics class where I got into an argument with a Latvian student over whether news bloggers ought to follow the same ethical standards as other journalists. They totally should. Then, I came home, put on sweats, and curled up with my textbook. I read and sipped lukewarm coffee, trying to ignore the hollowness I felt inside. A news ticker of headlines about our breakup ran through my head, a ceaseless ribbon reinforcing my misery.