Page 22 of The Wanted Prince

“We’d love that. I’m Laura Cardona.” She held out her hand, and Pedro shook it. He left a faint smudge of blackberry across her palm. Was this what I’d reduced him to, foraging for berries? Like a kid in a fairy tale, lost in the woods?

“This way,” he said, leading us down a footpath. “Don’t be scared of the bees. It’s their busy season. The hives are down there, just past the goat shed.”

I peered past a shed I’d taken for a hummock, overgrown with brambles and roofed with live grass. Two goats stood atop it, watching us pass.

“Those are your goats?” I said, and felt immediately stupid. Who else’s goats would they be, way out here? But Pedro grinned proudly.

“Yeah, those are mine. And I have chickens, so you know. Fresh eggs.”

“Sounds delicious,” said Laura.

“It’s all better fresh. I used to think shopping organic meant fresh, but there’s a world between farm-fresh and store-bought organic. And this is where we do classes, while the weather holds out.” He made a sweeping gesture, indicating a weeded patch, a twenty-foot by thirty-foot section of lawn. My head spun. Classes? Classes in what?

“The riding trails are out that way. The pond is down there. Hey, can I offer you something to drink?”

“I’d love that,” said Laura.

“Hold on,” I said. “What kind of classes… What is all this?”

Pedro blinked. “Huh? You’re not here for the workshop?”

“No. I came out here to ask, uh… how you’ve been doing.”

Pedro’s grin blazed back to life. “Well, as you can see, I’ve turned over a new leaf. I was standing at this crossroads, and I thought, what do I want? What do I really want, you know, just for me?”

I waited for him to continue, but he stood arms crossed, surveying the tangle of his weedy back yard. A rambling garden patch gave way to scrub, then to a broad swathe of untended forest. I spotted a barn at the edge of the woods, a paddock containing two sleepy horses.

“And what do you want?” I asked.

Pedro laughed. “This.”

I stared at him, trying to square him with the Pedro I’d known. Was he messing with me? Trying to cover his shame? The Pedro I’d known had gotten manicures. He’d worn bespoke suits. Artisan loafers. His watch had been made by some reclusive Swiss master, so meticulous he made just two watches per year. He’d hated dirt, clutter, and most of all, bugs. How was he standing here in a yard full of bees, grinning like this dump was some paradise?

“I restored the farmhouse myself,” he was saying. “Fixed up the rooms ready for guests. They still need some work — new curtains, new floors. But nothing’s sparking or leaking, so I’d say I did good. And my reviews agree, so no worries, right?”

No worries? No worries? Was this a joke? Some elaborate ruse to play on my guilt?

“Cut the crap,” I said. “You hate this. I know you. You used to smack my feet if I put them on the coffee table.”

“Because people eat off that.”

“But you hate mess and chaos. You’d never be happy with a lawn full of weeds.”

Pedro’s brows flew up — shaggy. Untamed. “You bite your tongue,” he snapped. “This is a wild lawn. Native plants. Wildflowers. I challenge you to point out one single weed.”

I pointed at a snarl of windmill-shaped flowers. “Those. Those are weeds. I’ve seen our head gardener pulling them up.”

“Then your gardener’s an idiot. Those are periwinkles.”

“That, then. That yellow thing.”

“That’s a wild tulip.” Pedro got down to cup the flower in his stained palm. “Everything here is here for a reason. No accidents. No chaos. No weeds.” He said it with such venom I almost laughed. That was more like him, the Pedro I knew. Still, I couldn’t fathom why he’d come here, out to the back end of nowhere at all.

“What do you do here, besides, uh, have goats?”

Pedro laughed. “It’s a yoga retreat. People come out here, mostly rich tourists, and I teach them yoga and take them on trail rides. They stretch and they meditate and they soak up the sun. And best of all, they take care of my garden.” He nodded at the sprawling vegetable garden. “They love to pick veggies, then eat them for dinner. Makes them feel, I don’t know, like they could be farmers.”

“And that’s what you wanted? To run a yoga retreat?”

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