§ § § -- March 5, 2006
Someone dropped to the sand in front of him and he felt hands bracket his face, tilting his head back. "Open your eyes," that voice insisted.
It couldn't be. He slowly opened his eyes and found himself staring at Leslie, who knelt before him with a deeply worried, even frightened look on her face. "How long have you been here doing this?" she demanded.
He was so winded he couldn't even speak; he could only close his eyes again. He had no idea how long he'd been punishing his mind and body; it could be the middle of the night for all he knew. He couldn't muster up the energy even to wonder what Leslie was doing here in the first place. Did she still see him as that peculiar stranger? He let his head fall forward and his body go limp.
"Christian, are you trying to kill yourself?" Leslie cried, catching him as he began to tip slowly to one side. "Look at me!"
"What…does…it…matter?" he got out on raspy exhalations.
He heard her burst into tears. "Damn you anyway, Christian Carl Tobias Enstad," she sobbed. "I never should have given you this fantasy. Look what it's done…"
His eyes snapped open and he stared at her. "Leslie? My Rose?" he breathed, daring to hope for the first time. "You know me?"
She nodded hard, staring up at him through streaming eyes. "That gold-digger at the pool came over to complain about the way you treated her. She said you wished you'd never had this fantasy, so she figured it must be our fault and stood there for fifteen minutes arguing with Father about not getting what she came here for. Some dumb fantasy of hers to find a rich guy, I guess, but anyway…Father looked odd and then he told me I'd better go and look for you. And when I saw you here on the beach, I knew you."
He was still panting but at least he could talk a little now. "You…remember…the whole…weekend?"
She nodded again. "Father said I had to have my memories of you temporarily erased, just like everybody else. I kept asking him if we really had to do it like that, and he kept telling me yes, we did. But all weekend I felt as if something wasn't exactly right…like there was something I was supposed to remember but just couldn't pin down. It was that hole in my memory where you should've been. Christian, I'm sorry." Her face contorted and she started to cry again. "I kept begging him…but he said you needed to figure out on your own how to handle being a nobody."
Christian stared at her, drinking her in. "Poor Leslie," he murmured, almost dreamily, taking the chance to thread his fingers through her hair and savor the fact that he had his wife back. "My darling…it's not your fault."
"I gave you the fantasy, my love," she wailed.
"I could have requested something else," he reminded her softly, relieved that his breath had settled into normal rhythms now. "It was a stupid impulse on my part to ask to be just a common, regular man. Mr. Roarke was hard on both of us, my Rose, but I can see now that he was right. It was exactly what I needed."
She rubbed at tears with the backs of her fingers. "I didn't need a weekend without you. I didn't like it even before it started. I wanted to be there for you—you were an extra fantasy this weekend anyway, and I figured Father could handle our usual guests."
He tipped his head at her and pointed out, "You seem to have forgotten that you're the one who told me I would have to go it alone, with no help from either you or Mr. Roarke. What about that?"
She smiled sheepishly and admitted, "Well, you didn't seem to be listening to Father's caveats, and you sounded like you were so sure you could handle it and it'd be a total cakewalk. It was that arrogant self-assurance that made me say that."
"I do have a way of coming across as insufferable sometimes, don't I?" he agreed with a soft laugh. "I'm afraid I was simply so fed up with the madness of my life at the moment that I wanted my break and I wanted it immediately."
"Yeah, you did," she agreed, and they chuckled and grasped each other's hands. He was so glad she knew him as her husband again that he felt himself trembling; or was that only his badly overworked muscles begging for relief? He didn't care; it was just too good to be back in his real life once more.
"So my fantasy is over, then?" he asked.
She nodded. "Yup. When you've got some strength back, we can go back to the main house and see the triplets."
"Ach, herregud. Whatever happened to them all weekend long?" he exclaimed. "If everyone merely lost their memories for a couple of days…"
"I don't know. Father handled it, but I don't expect him to tell me," she said with a wry little grin. "Father guards his secrets very carefully."
"Never explain anything to anybody, that must be his motto," said Christian and matched her ironic smile. "That's all right. As long as they're there when we get back, it doesn't matter. Ah, Leslie, my Rose, I can't tell you how desperately I missed you these two days. When I first realized you didn't know me, I was sure I'd have a heart attack."
"I thought you were having one," Leslie admitted, wincing at the recollection of that encounter. "But you were a complete stranger to me, even though I still felt that hole in my memory. Father was just so thorough in his efforts that I didn't connect you at all to what felt like it was missing."
They gazed at each other, and then Christian leaned forward and kissed her deeply, simply because he could. He delighted in her ardent response, and they indulged themselves for several long, sweet minutes, till an incoming wave splashed across them and made them break apart with surprised exclamations and then laughter.
"I think I can move now," Christian said and slowly pushed himself to his feet while Leslie sprang to hers, waiting in case he needed any help.
"Why on earth did you do that to yourself?" she asked, watching him.
"I've never been so upset and frustrated before," he told her, amazed that he didn't hear his joints squeak as he moved. "I had to run it off, but it took much longer than usual, and I simply felt that it made no difference to anyone what happened to me, so I just kept pushing myself. Things just don't feel right without you, my Leslie Rose. I don't care what Mr. Roarke thinks; my life may have been good before I met you, but there was no purpose to it. I had to find another way to fill that need while you…had your amnesia."
Leslie laughed, wrapped an arm around his waist and sidled along next to him; he slid his arm around her and held her closely. "Well, now you're home," she said.
They passed several people along their way back to the car Leslie had driven over. The natives smiled and nodded, greeting them both by name; the guests invariably did double-takes, their faces filling with amazement as they recognized Christian for the prince he was. And Christian, for the first time in a very long time, welcomed it, smiled and nodded back, returned the greetings.
He glanced across the square as they drove back through it, and sure enough, there was the familiar sign over the storefront, ENSTAD COMPUTER SERVICES. He relaxed in the seat, letting the enervation of great relief claim his tired body. "You're right, my Rose," he said softly. "I'm home now."
‡ ‡ ‡
"Daddy! Daddy!" shouted three small voices as Christian and Leslie stepped into the study; Roarke was at the desk while the triplets had been playing with assorted toys on the floor, and watched now as the children abandoned their playthings and mauled their laughing father. Christian sank onto the loveseat, relieved to let his still-protesting leg muscles have another rest, and gathered his children into his embrace, ruffling their hair and squeezing each in turn. They crawled all over him, still squealing "Daddy!" and patting him everywhere they could stretch their little hands. Then Susanna got a fistful of his hair and blurted out, "Wet!" She and her brother and sister were now twenty-one months old, and their vocabularies had been growing slowly but steadily for the last few weeks.
"You're right, lillan min, my hair is wet all right!" Christian agreed, grinning at her. "I went swimming, and then I went running."
"Wunny?" echoed Tobias, looking puzzled, and Christian nodded. Roarke and Leslie laughed, and that seemed to put the triplets back into motion; they clung to their father like three oversized barnacles, patting, poking and occasionally pinching him.
"Daddy wet, Mommy," Karina announced solemnly while Leslie sat down beside her husband. The little girl was fingering his upper arm.
"Daddy probably would love to have a nice long shower before supper," Leslie said, and Christian chuckled and nodded again.
"Where were you three all weekend?" he asked them, mostly rhetorically, though he knew Roarke would overhear. Despite his conversation with Leslie on the beach, he'd been wondering if there were some chance Roarke would explain after all.
But all Roarke told him was, "They were well cared for, Christian, and in good hands, you need not fear."
Leslie and Christian looked at each other and smiled resignedly at the same moment, and Christian realized that Leslie had no idea where their children had been that weekend either. He sighed and decided he was better off changing the subject. "Well, then, what are we having for supper this evening?"
"Gazpacho and crab-salad sandwiches for us," Leslie said, "and some ham and cut-up veggies for the kids. And Mariki and her staff spent the day making jordsklockor, so you can have a treat for dessert."
"Wonderful," said Christian. "Let me have that shower, and I'll be glad to join you."
A little more than half an hour later, they had begun their meal in earnest, and the conversation turned inevitably to a deconstruction of Christian's fantasy. "I should have asked you for a day with Mother, and let her and Leslie and the children meet each other," he said to Roarke. "Perhaps that would have been safer."
Roarke smiled. "It was no surprise that you requested the fantasy you did. You felt yourself in need of a break from the fame that had become especially pervasive in the wake of events in your home country, and it was only natural that you'd take the chance you had been given. Tell me, now, what you learned."
"I didn't know this was to be a life lesson," said Christian, and Leslie laughed.
"Most people's fantasies turn out to be life lessons," she said. "I think it's Father's way of teaching folks to be grateful for what they have and who they are. There've been a few exceptions, of course, but for the most part guests go away feeling glad they're alive, in their real-life circumstances, even with the problems they have."
"Indeed," said Roarke. "And have yours been put into the proper perspective?"
Christian considered. "Yes, I think so. I've said many times before that the histrionics of the press always die down eventually, and people find other things to obsess over. This may take some time to fade away; after all, it's a major shakeup for my family, and there'll be a great deal of sorting out to do as the fallout settles. But it's not going to dictate my entire life. Those who ask are a nuisance, yes—sometimes an overwhelming one. But it's quite strange, Mr. Roarke…I discovered this weekend that, for me at least, it's rather frightening to be just another nameless human being."
Roarke smiled, but Leslie stared at him in surprise. "Frightening! You've complained for years that you wanted to know what it was like to be nameless. What in the world made you come to that conclusion?"
Christian drew in a breath. "I'm accustomed to the life I was born into. All forty-seven of my years, I've had certain advantages and connections that I must admit I've taken for granted. Oh, yes, there were times I had to fight to achieve certain goals, but they weren't the sort of goals most commoners would have understood—the right to live my own life, have my own home, earn my own money. To be my own person instead of merely a tool, or possession, of the state." He shook his head. "I never truly understood what struggle is. I thought I was struggling when I started my business back in the late eighties, but the simple truth is that I was just too famous. People might have looked at my plans as an oddity for a prince who already had all the money he needed to live comfortably, but I was in a unique position even within my family. I had connections I never knew about simply because I was part of the royal family. Before I knew it, I had offers for all the equipment, work space and employees I would ever need. And I was used to having these advantages. When all that was taken away from me and I was truly a faceless human being, it terrified me." He looked at Roarke ruefully. "Perhaps my fantasy was less a success than it should have been. I knew, despite my frustration with things, that it would all come to an end soon. I didn't have time to learn to survive entirely on my own."
"Do you wish that opportunity?" Roarke inquired, in all innocence.
Christian recoiled. "No, thank you!" he exclaimed, and Leslie laughed. "I got enough of a taste of it just for the weekend. There might come a day when I take you up on that offer, when I forget again exactly how good my life truly is despite all the intrusions. But no, I'm quite happy with what I have now."
Roarke chuckled. "As I thought. When you first requested this fantasy, Christian, you reminded me of a particular poem by Emily Dickinson. I quote:
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us—don't tell!
They'll banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!"
Christian smiled wryly. "That would have been me, all right, and on many days it is. But just for now, I'm happy to be somebody. And when I stop being happy about it, I'll remind myself of this fantasy, and tell myself how good I really have it."
"Good," said Roarke with an approving smile. "Then your fantasy was very much worth the granting. Now, suppose we finish the meal."
§ § § -- March 6, 2006
"Where are you going, my love?" Leslie asked in surprise when Christian made a left turn, rather than a right, onto the Ring Road. "I thought we were going home."
"Oh, we will," he assured her, heading for town. "But…there's something I need to do first. It's all right, I don't think it will take very long."
She shrugged. "Okay. Of course, that'll just give everybody in town another chance to ask you what you really knew about Esbjörn's attempted murder."
Christian made a dismissive noise and waved a hand in the air as if shooing off a bothersome insect. "Sooner or later, my Rose, the truth will out. It always does. It's up to the individual whether to believe it, and the smart ones will."
"I like the new attitude," she said and then slanted a teasing look at him. "How long do you think it'll last?" He shot her a dirty look and they both laughed.
"Daddy," blurted Karina just then from the seat behind them. "Man."
Christian caught his daughter's eye in the rearview mirror and grinned. "What man?"
"Man," Karina said again and this time pointed. He chuckled, then looked in the direction she indicated and almost slammed on the brakes. She was right; there was a man standing in front of his office. A very familiar, and welcome, man.
He parked in front of the office and stepped out of the car, and Darius Langford stood up straight for a moment and stared at him, then presented him with a half-bow. "Prince Christian," he said.
Christian paused beside him, wondering what Darius recalled of the weekend. "Good morning," he said, after debating how to greet him. They'd become friends over the weekend, he'd thought. Had Darius' recollection of that been eliminated?
Then Darius straightened up and grinned at him. "You must've had a ball this past weekend, pretending to be somebody else," he remarked. "Just plain old Mr. Enstad, huh? You sure fooled me. Never had a clue who you really were."
Christian, delighted, burst into laughter. "Ah, Darius, my friend, if you only knew!" he chortled. "I'm glad you're here. About that job—if you're interested, I'd like you to be my receptionist. The pay is good and so are the benefits."
Darius looked amazed. "Receptionist? Thought that was a woman's job."
"Listen, if a woman can be a doctor or an astronaut, then a man can be a nurse or a receptionist," said Leslie from behind him, and he whipped around to see who had spoken and then grinned. She grinned back and added, "Nice to meet you."
"Darius Langford," he said, shaking hands with her. "Christian and I got to know each other over the weekend. Just got out of the Air Force and thought I'd see if something was open so I could settle here. I like this part of the world."
"So do we," said Leslie. "Hey, if I were you, I'd go for the job."
"In that case, sold," Darius said and beamed. "Thanks, Christian, you don't know what this means to me."
"I think I do," said Christian and smiled a little, then clapped him on the shoulder. "Welcome to Enstad Computer Services." He looked at Leslie and winked.
A quick request: If you haven't seen the poll on my profile page, then please take the time to look at it and vote. I'd really appreciate it, thank you! And as ever, thanks to my reviewers and readers. (Would love to hear from the "silent" ones!)