Page 2 of Royal Rising

I say that because both Odin and Bo show better manners than their older brother.

“How could you know where I live?”

“I just do. You’re not invisible, you know.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re in the garden all the time with your dad. You could come and say hi.” Kalle gives me a sideways glance and I snap my mouth shut. It’s been hanging open since he said he knows where I live.

“I… I’m working,” I finally manage.

“I see you with your book. You’re not working all the time.”

This may be the first actual conversation I’ve had with Prince Kalle and I’m not holding up my end of it very well. “I… That’s my break.”

Kalle shrugs. “Just saying, you can come say hi on your break. We don’t bite.”

He downshifts as we approach a stop sign. He’s still not great with the clutch but at least this time, he doesn’t need a reminder from me. Which is good because I’m not sure I could get the words out.

Regardless of how I try to pretend I’m indifferent to him, this isPrince Kalle of Laandiatalking to me like he wants me to… I don’t know what. Hang out? Be friends?

I’m the daughter of the man who weeds his gardens. The royal family is not my friend.

“Ok,” I manage.

“You can talk to Mom about flowers.” Kalle makes a face like a man who doesn’t understand the joy of putting hands in dirt.

“Yeah.”

He turns at the stop sign, thankfully in the opposite direction from where I live. Kalle might think he knows where I live, but he doesn’t need to see it. Not that there’s anything wrong with the old farmhouse with the red-painted barn that’s seen better days, but it’s no castle.

The road is a straight stretch, clear and empty at this time of the morning. Kalle wanted early because he had some practice to go to, so I showed up before my shift at Mr. Frosty’s ice cream shop. I help Dad in the gardens on my days off. It’s a beautiful day, already warm and sunny, with a sky as blue as Kalle’s eyes.

It’s impossible not to make the comparison. It’s also becoming difficult not to stare at the way he lounges in the seat like he’s some professional driver, which he clearly is not. His right- hand rests on the gearshift, his forearm tanned and sprinkled with reddish-blond hair. The sleeve of his T-shirt is snug around his bicep. Kalle might only be sixteen but looks older, more like a man than most of the guys our age, with his height—still growing at six-two—and the width of his shoulders.

His arms are impressive.

I whip my attention away from his arm. From him, which is also difficult because the cab of my father’s truck isn’t very big and Kalle’s hand is at an interesting distance from my bare knee.

I should not care about Prince Kalle’s arm or any other of his appendages.

I should look out the window and do my best to ignore him, just like he’s been doing for years.

Only… has he?I see you with your book.

I nibble on a hangnail and focus on an object on the shoulder of the road that is quickly approaching because Kalle is going pretty fast.

I squint into the sun. I think it might be— “Turtle—!” I cry.

“What?”

Kalle swerves—I have no idea why. It happens so fast; one moment, we’re (speeding) down a deserted road, and the next, he jerks the wheel to the left, the tire catching on the newly laid gravel shoulder. He jerks it to the right, horribly over-correcting, so now we’re aiming for the opposite shoulder and the huge turtle trying to cross the road.

“Don’t hit it!”

He misses the turtle but heads straight into the ditch.

It’s a shallow ditch, more of a dip with overgrown grasses and the occasional shrub. We hit two of the shrubs and leave a path of flattened grasses before Kalle comes to a stop only inches in front of a patch of barbed-wire fence.

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