Page 11 of Trickster King

“On?”

I allowed myself a smile. “How long it takes for the wife to catch me. Send word to the kitchen to make sure they’re stocked with pickled peppers and to cover for me.”

Zach raised a brow. “At which point should I reassure the standing agents you’re up to your tricks again?”

“If one of them asks, tell them, but inform them they’re to play along. They can pretend it’s a scenario. The goal is to give me a few days of vacation before I’m scheduled to be my wife’s slave for the remainder of her pregnancy.”

“Understood. Have a good time, try to relax, and for the sanity of everyone in the RPS, please stay out of the bull pasture.”

Laughing, I waved, rolled up my window, and escaped the parking garage. “Do you think he thinks there’s any chance I’m going to stay out of that pasture?”

Randy sighed. “No. We wish you would, but our delusions have been thoroughly crushed beneath your heel.”

“My cruelty knows no bounds. I’m quite the tyrant, really.”

Both RPS agents snorted.

“Just because I keep my tyranny limited to playing with my bulls in a bad pasture doesn’t mean I’m not tyrannical.”

Rather than snort again, both men laughed.

“Just ask my wife. She’ll go on and on about my cruel ways.” I joined them in laughing as Jessica enjoyed yanking my chain whenever possible. “Wait until she realizes I’m not coming home tomorrow without the use of force.”

“Or a come hither, which you can’t seem to resist,” Geoff said.

“But why would I want to resist? You have seen my wife, right? No sane man is going to even bother resisting her come hither.” Sometimes, she used a look. Sometimes, she waggled her finger. The rest of the time, she stole one of my ties and went in for the kill using blunt force.

“The entire kingdom has noticed your inability to resist her as evidenced by yet more royal children on the way.” My wife’s agent heaved a sigh, the kind he used to let us pesky royals know we tested his patience. “She wasted no time getting her hands on you.”

“It’s the royal physician’s fault. One of them told Jessica she was getting too old for more babies. She took that as a challenge.” I muttered curses at the traffic, which promised hell until we escaped the confines of the city. “Whose idea was it to put the damned palace so deep in the metropolitan area?”

Randy chuckled. “Originally, it was half an hour away from the city, but Dallas exploded in size when it became the primary residence of the monarchs. It’s too expensive to move the palace to outside of the city, so everybody bitches about its location. Just be grateful it’s mostly residential for a few blocks. Otherwise, the traffic would be even worse.”

“I refuse to believe traffic can get any worse than it already is.” I settled in for a lot of stop and go traffic, and at the first red light, I reached over, popped open the glove box, and grabbed the baseball cap kept inside for drivers who didn’t want to wear sunglasses. It served as a suitable disguise as nobody would believe I might wear a baseball cap. “Go ahead and laugh at me, especially when this comes up for discussion in the congress. They’ll expect me to come up with some damned brilliant idea to fix the problem. If they want that damned problem fixed, they’ll have to improve public transit. Heaven forbid we invest in our infrastructure! That means the profit margins of the rich are lowered.”

Randy chuckled. “We know you do enjoy when you get to remind the members of the congress that taxing wealthy corporations to pay for public services won’t actually do anything other than inconvenience them. Most wouldn’t even notice a million missing from their billions.”

My wife would adore if I tangoed with the congress to smack down the ridiculously rich corporations again. “That tactic worked the last time I used it, and not a single one of the corporations actually noticed when the tax implications kicked in the following year. Make a note to ambush some annoyance from the congress to propose the bill. Give me a list of candidates, preferably people who need a round of being humbled.”

“Like one of the major investors of said corporations you’d be taxing?” the head of my detail asked.

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“I’ll make a list,” Randy promised.

“Ballpark me. If I sell all the rescues, and I toss in the riding lessons for Stall Blight, how am I doing on the good ranch acquisition?”

“If you sell all the horses, you could purchase two of the ranches without going over your budget. It happens that you put some rather valuable horses on that list. You would also have enough to handle some renovations on both ranches.”

I frowned. “The second ranch’s condition?”

“Decent. It needs work, but you could have it back to functional within two to three months at minimal expense, which the horse sales would cover.”

“And I wouldn’t have to touch my bull fund?”

“You wouldn’t have to touch your bull fund. You might, depending on the buyers, have extra to apply to your bull fund and your vetting account.”

After my wife got a hold of me for running off on her, she might even be happy with me for a change if I showed a general increase to the accounts rather than a constant barrage of charges that kept the damned things barely positive. I never went into the negatives, but I toed the line.

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