Page 16 of Her Royal Daddy
I tried not to be annoyed by that. It was perfectly normal for her to want to get up and shower, and put on fresh clothes before meeting me, or the king for that matter, for breakfast. Women had standards, God bless them. It’s part of what made them a joy to sit across from at the breakfast table. For my part, both she and the king would be damn lucky if I brushed my hair before staggering downstairs for coffee.
I was just throwing back the blankets to roll myself out of bed when the door swung open and in marched a very hurried Jax. I quickly yanked the blankets back over my lap, covering myself. Although frankly, if the old man didn’t care, I don’t know why I should.
“You’re late,” Jax accused. “The king has been waiting breakfast on you for twenty minutes now. What are you doing still in bed?”
“What happened to my wakeup call?” I protested, staring as he threw my suitcase down on the foot of the bed, zipped it open and began flinging clothes at me. Pants, underwear, a white polo shirt with a blue stripe around the chest and sleeve hems. He paused to glare at each item, as if deeply and personally offended simply by their existence, before casting them at me.
“I sent three people to wake you up,” Jax snapped at me. “I also personally phoned your cell twice. Get. Dressed.”
He paused mid-march across the room to the bathroom, but only long enough to pick up each of my shoes and fling them at me, before continuing on.
“I never heard the phone,” I muttered, wrestling into my underwear and pants.
“I don’t care how strained the relationship,” Jax snapped, reemerging from the bathroom long enough to pelt me with toothbrush and deodorant. “You do not make His Royal Highness wait on you.”
“We spent fourteen hours on a plane,” I grumbled and finished dressing. I found my belt on Norah’s side of the bed where it had fallen off onto the floor at some point last night, pausing in the middle of lacing myself back into it when my plastic razor bounced off my chest. I gave Jax a dark look. “You really need to stop throwing things at me,” I warned. “Has anyone let Norah know? Why don’t you go next door and throw things at her for a while?”
“Miss Baxter met the king promptly at eight o’clock. She has already been shown to her office and is even now receiving instructions on what is expected of her and the job she is to perform. It’s you,” Jax announced, erupting back out of the bathroom for the last time and shaking my own hairbrush at me, “who is remiss in your duties! Be grateful that you are too big and not mine to spank!”
When he threw the hairbrush, I caught it, and that’s how we stood, both of us staring at one another, highly annoyed.
Drawing himself up stiffly straight, Jax schooled his features, gave his uniform jacket a prim tug, and calmly informed me, “I shall wait for you in the hall, my prince. Kindly move your ass.”
He left and I stood there, hairbrush in hand, annoyed with him, annoyed because I was here to begin with, and most of all—probably most irrationally of all—annoyed with Norah for going to breakfast without waking me. Admittedly, we’d made no agreement to go together, so it wasn’t as if I had a right to be irritated. And yet, it was a good thing she wasn’t standing here right now, or I’d have been strongly tempted to put my plastic, short-handled, and completely ineffective-for-smacking-purposes hairbrush to use and spank her with it.
When I saw her again, though, we were going to talk and Daddy was going to lay down some rules.
I finished getting ready, threw everything back in the bathroom where it belonged, gave Jax the full brunt of my annoyance in the form of a withering stare—one which he had no problem returning—and then walked back through the winding corridors of the palace, down the stairs to the first floor, and eventually found myself in a fancy dining hall that was crowned by a massively long table that could easily have accommodated sixty people down each side.
Norah wasn’t there. There wasn’t even a place set out for her, although I realize it was probably because one of the three servants standing silently up against one wall had most likely cleared her used dishes away. That left two empty sets of dishes waiting: one for me and, of course, one for my father, seated and waiting for me at the head of the table.
He was at once nothing and yet everything like I’d been expecting. Here was the man whom I had believed all my life to be dead, dressed resplendently in a black three-piece suit, with a brightly patterned red and gold sash slung across his chest from shoulder to hip, and a kufi hat that matched it. When I walked in, he looked up from the digital tablet he was reading and quickly took the wire-rim glasses off his nose. The man cut a regal and imposing figure, and that only grew more pronounced as I followed Jax down the length of that impossibly long table. I only saw hint of his age when I neared his chair and he tried to stand.
An attendant immediately rushed forward, offering a steadying hand, which the king took without acknowledgement. His eyes were solely on me and his smile as I came to him was both aggravating and painful to see.
For all that I tried my best to hide my growing anger, he must have sensed it because although I thought he might want to, he made no move to hug me. Instead, his smile gentled and he tipped his aged head in a nod of greeting.
“Thank you so much for coming,” he said. “I realize how upsetting this must be.”
I stood beside the chair where my empty dishes were waiting for me, directly next to the parent I didn’t know, surrounded by all the trappings of the kind of money I’d have given my left nut for back when my mother needed it for her treatments, and I had no idea what to do or say. Good morning? No, because it wasn’t. Far from it.
I started shaking. I didn’t want to look at him, but I couldn’t make myself look away. More than anything, I wanted to get out of here, but my feet were planted and refused to move. I couldn’t even yell at him. I was afraid once I started, I’d be unable to stop.
And through it all, he just stood there, watching me with such sympathy in his dark eyes. Eyes that looked just like mine, I might add.
I had my mother’s nose and mouth and my father’s eyes, and it was killing me.
“Mazi,” he said with quiet compassion, “it’s all right to be angry.”
The man could not have gutted me harder had he used a knife.
As evenly as I could, shaking as badly as I was, I said, “I don’t think I’m ready for this.”
I glimpsed only a hint of disappointment before the king hid it behind another gentle smile. “When you are ready, I will be here.”
So yeah, my first day in Osei, I walked the length and breadth of the palace to have breakfast with the man who was supposed to be my father, only to turn right around and walk all the way back to my room again. I did, however, manage to make it back safely behind closed doors before my rampaging emotions got the best of me.
Some Daddy dom I turned out to be.
