Page 20 of Trapped with the Undercover Prince

Chapter Four

Zar’s laugh did funnythings to her middle. Happy, effervescent, rousing things.

“Don’t worry, my rooms have more than enough space for a guest who travels with just a backpack.”

She had to yank her wandering imagination away from what they might do in his bedroom at his palace and glanced at her bag. “I don’t have any fancy clothes in there. People are going to think you picked up a vagrant.”

“Or a bohemian princess.”

She looked down her nose at him. “I’m from Boston. We don’t do bohemian.”

“That’s not what I see.”

“Maybe you need glasses?” Her humor died. “Getting back to the issue at hand, what do you need me to do?”

He stared at her for a moment before breathing out a relieved sigh. “Thank you. It’s not complicated. We need to be seen in public together.”

“Together, together?”

“Nothing too overt, or the press will wonder why we’re trying so hard. But, yes. A romantic relationship. If you’re willing, we’ll travel together to Lerasia via a different route tonight.”

“Allowing for a photo-op?”

“Exactly. Once we’re there, I’ll show you all the sights and introduce you to a genealogy expert I know. She can help you find any records of your family, if they exist. The Germans destroyed some of our archives before they left the country at the end of the second world war. We’ve tried to reconstruct them by interviewing survivors, but sometimes there wasn’t anyone left to fill in the blanks.”

“Wars do that no matter where they happen,” she said. “As a species, we don’t seem to learn that lesson no matter how many times it’s been delivered.”

“True.”

They were both silent for a few seconds.

She realized he might need to know why she was searching for any hint of her family in Lerasia. “My grandmother said she was part of the underground in Lerasia during the war.”

Zar’s face lit up. “Really? Did she talk about it?”

“A little while she was in palliative care.” Even though it had been months since her grandmother had passed, tears still threatened.

Sympathy pulled the smile off Zar’s face. “I’m sorry.”

Anna shook her head. “It’s okay, she had a long and interesting life. She met my grandfather while trying to hide him from the Germans. His plane had been shot down, and he survived the crash. They fell in love, and she became pregnant. But he was killed before they could escape to the United States.”

“Amazing.”

“Yeah, she was a total badass.”

“What happened when she reached the United States?”

“My grandfather had told her how to contact his family, so she showed up on their doorstep, pregnant and wearing his high school ring. They took her in, no questions asked.”

“My grandmother also aided the resistance during the war,” Zar said. “She’s nearly one hundred years old now but still likes to tell stories of that time. She claims she smuggled a very skinny American soldier she found on the palace grounds into the castle during a party the top Germans in the area were at.” Zar leaned forward and stage whispered, “She claims to have hidden him under her skirts.”

Anna found herself leaning forward, too. “No way.” She wanted to ask him questions about his grandmother, but Zar’s men came back. “Sir,” Jean Paul said as they entered. “Travel arrangements have been made. We depart for Cime in three hours.”

“From which station?” Zar asked.

The name Jean Paul gave him was very French, and he continued to speak in that language.

Zar didn’t look happy about something.

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