Page 10 of The Prince's Castaway Baby

How am I going to let anyone know I’m okay?

Then again, if I had it, how would I charge it? Where do they get electricity from on this island? There must be some sort of generator here, because Billie’s camera is digital. Unless she has spare batteries.

The more I think about it, the more my heart sinks. There’s a strong possibility that everyone thinks I’m dead right now.

Plus, I’ve never been anywhere without electricity before. I don’t think I like the sound of it.

I’ve started pacing the beach like a caged tiger when Billie finally comes back. “Hey,” I grin, glad to see another human being.

She ignores me and heads straight for the cabin, shutting the door behind her.

“Okay. Good to see you too,” I say to myself, biting my tongue against sayingyou can’t ignore the prince of Sólveigr, because she doesn’t know that’s who I am.

It was obvious from the second that she laid her eyes on me. Somehow, Billie doesn’t recognize me. I guess if she spends all her time in places like this, she mustn’t get much news.

And yeah, I might have lied to her, but Jens is genuinely my nickname, and the idea of being treated like any other person, even if it’s just for a few days, by this one woman on this island… well, it’s intoxicating.

At least, the idea of it was fun. In reality, I’m faced with a very angry lady who hates me, not because of who I am, but because I’ve shown up and interrupted her alone time on this island and her pictures of wild birds or whatever it is she does.

Eventually she emerges from the cabin again. I don’t smile at her or even look at her, not wanting to annoy her more.

“Okay, look,” she says. I blink at her, waiting for her to keep going. “I don’t exactly like having you here, and you clearly don’t want to be here either, but youarehere, and I can’t let you starve.”

“Can I use your phone?” I ask.

She starts lighting the fire, turning her back on me. “It doesn’t work out here, sorry.”

“What if you have an emergency?”

“There’s an emergency phone in the cabin. But that’s just for emergencies. Besides, you don’t really get any signal out here. This isn’t exactly apalacehere, not like anything you’re probably used to.”

I flinch as she says it, and clearly don’t recover well enough, because she notices and frowns. She seems to decide against asking me what’s wrong, but I can see it written all over her face that she’s pretending not to care.

Then I realize that the comment wasn’t about me being royal, but a joke about the fact that she thinks I come from money and she’s trying to rile me up into telling her about it. I guess she thinks I’m soft.

“Have you ever heard of Sólveigr?” I say, deciding that giving her this much will satisfy some of her curiosity without giving the game away.

“Sólveigr?” she repeats. “That’s in Europe, right?”

“Scandinavia. We’re a tiny kingdom right up in the north.” I grimace at myself. I shouldn’t have said kingdom. Billie might not recognize me now, but she’s not stupid. There’s a good chance she’ll put the pieces together eventually.

But she glosses over it and says, “A kingdom. I’ve always thought that having a royal family seems so enchanting.” A dreamy look enters her eyes. “I used to wish I could be a princess.”

“It’s not that exciting,” I mutter. Then, noticing her raised eyebrow of suspicion, I quickly add, “Most people don’t care about the royals. If you talk to the average person, they barely remember they exist. It’s really not that exciting.”

“Oh,” she says in a small voice.

A small stab of guilt burrows into my stomach. I shouldn’t have crushed her like that. It’s not exactly going to endear me to her.

She takes a sharp turn away from the conversation and pulls out a camping pot. Carefully, she peels back the tab on a can and empties the contents into the pot.

“What is that?” I say, leaning forward and peering into the pan to see something brown and lumpy start to bubble.

“These are really good. It’s stew,” she says. And that’s all the explanation she offers me.

She stirs it for a minute, then gets up to find some bowls and silverware for us. Carefully, she sits back down, stirs the pot again, then scoops some of the so-called stew into a bowl and hands it to me with a spoon.

I grimace in thanks as I take it and stare down at it. It’s lumpy and brown and smells weird. With my spoon, I poke at one of the lumps and it falls apart.

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