§ § § - July 7, 1996

Dinner was a jovial affair; at first the threesome mainly talked business, but soon graduated to a little "getting to know you" small talk, during which Leslie learned that Christian was thirty-eight and the youngest of four children. She found herself summarizing her own childhood and explaining, as she had done on any number of past occasions, how she had come to be Roarke's daughter. However, before she could tell him how she'd become assistant, an excited-looking fellow who appeared to be somewhere in his mid-thirties jogged onto the porch, carrying a notebook and pen in one hand. "Mr. Roarke?"

"Good evening, Mr. Schmidt," Roarke said quizzically. "May we help you?"

The visitor stopped short when he realized they were at dinner. "Oh no, I'm interrupting you. I'll come back later."

"No, not at all—we were just finishing," Roarke assured him, smiling.

The man relaxed. "Oh, I see…" Then he spied Christian and stared in amazement. "Mr. Roarke…if I could ask an intrusive question…is that who I think it is?"

Roarke looked puzzled. "Whom do you think it is?"

But Christian understood and laughed. "Not to worry, Mr. Roarke. And yes, sir, I am who you think I am. But don't tell your wife." He winked and flashed that contagious grin again, and sure enough, the visitor responded likewise. "And you might be…?"

"Harry Schmidt," the visitor replied and cleared his throat, as if suddenly reminded of why he'd come here in the first place. "Mr. Roarke, my fantasy's been all it's cracked up to be and more. Mr. Einstein was a real trip to interview, and Mr. Shakespeare gave me some romantic quotes to use on Sandi, so that was a bonus." He looked troubled for a moment. "And I'm trying to learn a few Italian words for when I meet with Galileo tomorrow. Those might impress Sandi too…but anyway." He shrugged off his worried mien and gave Christian a cautiously hopeful look before addressing Roarke again. "The point is, Mr. Roarke, all my interview subjects have been dead for ages. Would it be asking too much if I could have one interview with someone who's still alive?"

Roarke settled back in his chair and smiled again. "Perhaps not, Mr. Schmidt, but that all depends on the availability of whatever subject you wish to interview."

Christian laughed aloud. "I know a request when I hear one. Mr. Roarke, if Mr. Schmidt would like to interview me, I'll be happy to accommodate him." He grinned at Harry Schmidt. "We can arrange an interview time later if you wish."

Schmidt beamed. "Fantastic! Thanks, Mr. Roarke, and thanks to you too, Prince." He sketched a hasty half-bow, shook hands with Roarke and a bewildered Leslie, and then hurried off the veranda.

"Prince?" Leslie echoed, completely at sea.

Roarke raised an eyebrow in Christian's direction, and Christian reddened in response. "I suppose I should have mentioned it before, but I really didn't see any need. In reality, I'm Prince Christian of Lilla Jordsö's royal family. Does that bother you?"

"Another prince?" Leslie said without thinking.

Roarke cast her a look before turning to Christian. "We appreciate your candor, Your Highness. However, I apologize for my daughter. Several years ago, we had the crown prince of Arcolos as a guest here, and he aggressively pursued her, which did not sit well at all with her." Leslie blushed, and Christian's grin appeared again.

"I'm not offended at all, Mr. Roarke, and don't be so hard on Leslie. As I said, I should have told you before. By the way…who precisely was the fellow we saw a moment ago?"

"Ah, yes. One of our weekend guests, Mr. Harry Schmidt of Springfield, Illinois. His fantasy is twofold actually. He wished to interview someone whom it would otherwise not be possible to interview; and he has been trying to reconcile with his wife, Sandi." Roarke hesitated. "You need not have agreed to his request, Your Highness—"

Christian interrupted. "No standing on ceremony, Mr. Roarke. I insist you call me Christian, as I said when I first arrived here. And I was more than happy to agree to Mr. Schmidt's request. I wish only that I could help him with the other part of his fantasy. But I digress. I actually have a very low profile for a royal, so the occasional interview requests don't bother me very much. And Mr. Schmidt seems like a very earnest and pleasant fellow."

"Yes, he's a really nice guy," Leslie said, nodding. "I keep hoping for a chance to talk a bit with Sandi." She focused on Christian. "I'm sorry for reacting the way I did, but the fact is, I'd been thinking ever since you got here that you looked familiar somehow. Now I know why. My friends and I watched your brother's coronation on TV the last week of December, and I remember seeing you among the most prominent dignitaries in the party."

"Guilty as charged," Christian said sheepishly. "My brother is now King Arnulf II. But, since he's the reigning monarch, he gets all the attention, and the rest of us are almost entirely overlooked. I don't mind that, believe me. It allows me to live a more-or-less normal life. So I don't begrudge Mr. Schmidt his interview at all."

"You're very generous, Christian," Roarke said, smiling.

Christian shrugged. "It's a small thing. Mr. Roarke, I thank you heartily for the invitation to dinner, which was most delicious. The company, too, has been very enjoyable." He smiled at Leslie in particular. "Please excuse me, I'm afraid my jet lag has finally begun to catch up with me."

"Of course," Roarke agreed, and he and Leslie both arose when Christian did, watching the prince depart. Christian paused halfway down the veranda to cast a quick look over his shoulder at Leslie, seemed to want to say something, then thought again and continued on his way. Leslie watched him go, wondering.

"Are you all right, Leslie?" Roarke asked.

"Oh, sure," she said, smiling at him with reassurance. "I'll just drop in at the luau for awhile if you don't need me."

Roarke nodded, and she made her way off the veranda in Christian's wake. He in turn watched her, already more aware than she of the seeds of turmoil sprouting rapidly within her. He could see that she had a long emotional battle ahead of her, and though he wished he could spare her that, he knew it was impossible.

§ § § - July 8, 1996

Christian joined them for breakfast as well, producing a few preliminary sketches for pages on the website and asking for their opinions. Roarke glanced over them, but Leslie had come up with a couple of thoughts the previous evening and now broached them at Christian; so Roarke merely listened to their conversation, observing them unobtrusively but carefully. They were both quite animated, involved in a lively give-and-take that seemed to come to them with unusual ease. The discussion moved into Roarke's study and continued there, with Roarke injecting some ideas of his own here and there.

Then the grandfather clock chimed ten, and Christian stood up straight with alarm. "Herregud! I told Mr. Schmidt I'd meet him at the pool at ten for the interview I promised him, and I'm late! I apologize, Mr. Roarke and Leslie…"

"Not at all," Roarke said, chuckling. "By all means, go ahead." Christian smiled with gratitude and rushed out the French shutters; Roarke looked around and noticed Leslie staring after him, looking torn. "Leslie?"

She started visibly and cleared her throat. "Is there anything I should be doing right now, Father?" she asked, sounding hopeful.

"No," Roarke replied, and her face fell. "Not for at least an hour." He gave her a gently teasing smile. "Would you like me to invent an errand for you to run?"

That made her grin sheepishly. "No, you don't need to go that far." She drew in a deep breath and glanced out the doors again. "But since I seem to have a little free time, I think I'll visit Tattoo's grave."

"Very well. Try to be back by noon," Roarke requested. "It will be time for me to take Mr. Schmidt to seventeenth-century Pisa by then."

"Okay," she agreed and slipped out. Roarke frowned slightly, mild concern welling up within him, for he sensed that now she had begun to notice the subtle attraction that hovered between her and Christian.

She made the trip on foot, arriving about fifteen minutes later with a small bouquet of wildflowers that she'd picked along the way and laying them with great care across the top of Tattoo's headstone. He'd been gone barely a year and she still felt his loss in her quieter moments, although the sharpest pain had now receded enough that she found it easier to recall the happier times, as he had requested of her and Roarke. She stood for a moment, gazing unseeingly at the matching azalea shrubs planted on either side of the stone, then mumbled, "Forgive me, mon oncle, but I guess I need to sit with someone else this time." She then turned and hesitantly picked her way across the ground till she found another headstone in a corner of the little cemetery. Engraved on this were the words Teppo Komainen: 1963-1990 – Beloved Son and Husband. She crouched there and settled back on her heels, re-reading the inscription several times over.

Leslie hadn't visited Teppo's grave in longer than she cared to admit, and guiltily she traced the engraved letters of his name. I've been neglecting you, kultaseni, and I didn't mean to, she thought with a heavy sigh. And wouldn't you know it but that when I finally come back to visit you, it's because I'm feeling drawn toward another man. You must be rolling like crazy under all that lovely green grass. She aimed a self-deprecating, twisted little grin at the headstone, then closed her eyes, calling up the day of their wedding, their various walks around the neighborhood where they'd lived, his fruitless and hilarious attempts to teach her to speak Finnish, their endless optimistic attempts to have a child…so many happy times. Yet when she opened her eyes and stared into the treetops, her mind had wandered again.

"Even the cemeteries on Fantasy Island are gorgeous," remarked an amused voice, and Christian settled down beside her, mirroring her posture and grinning. "Is that by accident or by design?"

Leslie laughed despite herself. "I'm not entirely sure," she said. "Maybe a bit of both. What brings you all the way out here?"

"Oh, Mr. Schmidt finished his interview in record time," he said, "probably because his wife suddenly came into the pool area and he couldn't concentrate on anything but her. Poor man. Did you have a chance to speak with her as you wished to do?"

Leslie nodded pensively. "At the luau last night," she said. "Funny thing, I didn't even have to bring it up. I just paused to ask her how she was doing, and next thing I knew she was unloading on me about her marriage. Maybe she just needed an impartial ear to listen to her, I don't know."

"That's possible," Christian said. "She did come over to ask Mr. Schmidt what he was doing, and he seemed a little flustered. So I told her that he was interviewing me, and in a very professional manner at that, and I also mentioned that she was one quite lucky woman to have such a devoted husband. I saw no harm in saying that, because there was no way he could hide his feelings for her. She was sitting at his table and they were talking when I left, and I hope it means things are beginning to look up for them."

"You have a lot invested in the lives of two strangers," Leslie observed curiously, tempering the remark with a smile.

"Yes, well…I've seen enough unhappy marriages," Christian replied shortly, looking away for a moment. Leslie watched him, a little surprised, but held her tongue, and a few seconds later he turned back to her. "I hope I'm not intruding on a private moment." She shook her head, eyeing the gravestone. He followed her gaze and read the inscription, then leaned forward to gauge her expression. "Someone you knew?"

She nodded, eyes unfocused. "My late husband."

"You've been widowed?" Christian asked in astonishment. "But you're so young!"

"I'm thirty-one," Leslie said with a small smile of appreciation. "Teppo and I were married when I was just twenty, and he died five years later. That's when I came back home to Fantasy Island, and as Father was between assistants at the time, he took me on."

"Teppo is a Finnish name," Christian noted. "How did you meet?"

"Do you really want to know? It's a long story," Leslie warned him playfully.

Christian lowered his chin and peered at her. "The longer, the better. Please tell me."

So Leslie spent about ten minutes or so explaining why Teppo had come to the island and what had happened during his stay. Christian, rendered speechless early on, simply gaped at her with his lower jaw hanging. His expression was so funny to her that when she wound up the tale, she started to laugh.

"What are you laughing at?" he demanded.

"You," she giggled. "As undignified as this might sound, your mouth's open so wide I could drive an eighteen-wheeler into it."

Christian snapped his mouth shut instantly in consternation, and she rocked backwards, laughing harder. "I'm sorry," she gasped, but the next moment he was laughing with her, their voices blending and echoing gently through the trees.

"That's all right, Leslie," he said, still chuckling, as their mirth wound down. "I guess the stories about this place are right after all. You must have seen some amazing things here. I'm very sorry about your husband…though I can understand. I've been widowed as well, although it's been so long since it happened that sometimes it seems as if I was never married at all. Her name was Johanna, and it was an arranged match; she was eighteen and I was just a year older. Three years later she was killed in a train derailment while visiting her parents in Norway—that's where she was from. She was distantly related to the Norwegian royal family. We never fell in love—in fact, we had barely anything in common."

"Oh," said Leslie softly. "I'm sorry, Christian."

"It's all right," he said again. His smile, slow and gentle this time, came back, and he shifted his weight to arise. "I think I've been intruding after all, because I could see that you still miss your Teppo while you told me about him. So I'll leave you alone now." He glided back to a standing position and quietly left the cemetery; she didn't protest, but to her own surprise, she felt a sense of loss nevertheless.

Slowly Leslie turned her attention back to Teppo's headstone and stared blankly at his carved name for a good while before finally asking aloud, "Now what do I do?" For some reason, something occurred to her and she thought to check her watch. She had ten minutes to get back to the main house as Roarke had requested. With a gasp, she shot to her feet and rushed out of the cemetery, forgetting the silent gravestones nestled in the grass.