Page 16 of Once Upon a Royal Summer
Lacey had just been a little tender after her breakup with Mark, that was all. Grumpy Baseball Cap’s dry tone and his questions about her fictitious royal life had been like pressing a fresh bruise. Or, more to the point, like a princess sleeping on a rock-hard pea.
Today was a new day, though—not a pea in sight.
“Lacey, good.” Simon Dole, Once Upon A Time’s general manager, walked toward her as the double doors to the ballroom closed behind her. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“You have?” Lacey glanced around.
The stagehand from the day before was the only other person present in the secret hallway. He gave her a nearly imperceptible shrug.
Weird.
Double weird, actually. Lacey had never bumped into Mr. Dole in any of the employees-only staging areas of the park. He tended to either stick to his corporate office, which Lacey had never set eyes on, or wander the park grounds to make sure things were running smoothly. In fact, she wasn’t sure if she’d even spoken to him before, other than the occasional greeting at Once Upon A Time’s holiday party.
“Yes. I knew Sweet Pea’s Royal Tea Party was almost over, so it only made sense to wait until you were available. Come along.” He turned around and began bustling in the other direction, leaving Lacey no choice but to follow.
She gathered heaps of tulle in her arms and scurried after him. Wherever he was going, he was in an awfully big hurry to get there.
“Now, I know this is rather unprecedented. Nothing about this situation is ordinary, I’m afraid. We’ve been working day and night to get everything in order, and we had all of our i’s dotted and our t’s crossed.” Mr. Dole waved his arms as he spoke, and Lacey had to duck a few times to prevent her crown from becoming a casualty of his enthusiasm. “We had a plan—a proper plan.” They exited the Ever After Castle and turned down the cobblestone path that led to the sleek glass executive offices near the park entrance. “Everything would’ve worked out just fine, but you know, in a delicate situation such as this one, fine isn’t quite good enough, is it?”
Once again, she struggled to keep up as he marched toward the office door and held it open for her.
He glanced at her. “Well, is it?”
A heads up regarding the nature of said situation would’ve been helpful, but Mr. Dole seemed awfully wound up. She wasn’t sure if she should ask him to elaborate. “Definitely not,” she said.
“Right. I knew you’d agree. We’ll have to adjust your schedule a bit, but the second they walked in and I saw that little girl all dressed up as Princess Sweet Pea, the idea hit me. You’re absolutely perfect for this.”
“Thank you,” Lacey said. I think.
The office receptionist smiled politely at them as they entered the building. “Excellent, you’re both here. The guests are waiting in your office, sir. We’ve served them tea and Sweet Pea cookies, as you requested.”
“Very good,” Mr. Dole said and motioned for Lacey to follow him to the elevator bank.
The elevator doors parted, and once Lacey had managed to cram the entirety of her princess gown into the small space, her boss—more like her boss’s boss’s boss—pressed the button for the top floor.
What was going on?
Anticipation fluttered in the pit of Lacey’s stomach, and her hands started to shake as the elevator climbed from one floor to the next. The journey to the top of the building seemed to take forever, until at last, the elevator spilled them out onto a red-carpeted space with swirling gold lettering on the wall.
Welcome to Once Upon A Time
The Land Where Fairy Tales Come True
A massive white door with Mr. Dole’s name on it stood just to the left—the only office within sight.
Lacey swallowed. This was silly. She needed to know what she was walking into, didn’t she? “Mr. Dole, if you could just—”
“Don’t forget.” He gave her a curt nod. “Cinderella hands at all times. I’m counting on you, Lacey. You’re the only princess we have who I know without a doubt is up to this task.”
Then he pushed the door open, and Lacey was ushered into the largest office she’d ever seen in her life.
It was decorated in varying shades of white and gold, offset by the same crimson carpet from the hallway. Definite fairy-tale castle vibes, but Lacey barely had a chance to notice the pristine decor before her attention was drawn to the floor-to-ceiling windows that stretched from one end of the office to the other, affording a stunning panoramic view of the entire park. She could see every ride and attraction Once Upon A Time had to offer, from Jack’s Towering Beanstalk to Rapunzel’s Fantastical Ferris Wheel and everything in between. In the center of it all stood Princess Sweet Pea’s home—the grand, glittering Ever After Castle.
Lacey had never seen the theme park like this, and for some silly reason, it put a lump in her throat. She was truly lucky, wasn’t she? She got to come to work every day at a place that was, for lack of a better word, magical. If only she could go back in time and give her six-year-old self a glimpse of this moment.
But then Mr. Dole cleared his throat, catapulting Lacey back from the past to the very real present, where a small group of people sat around an ornate conference table. She took a deep breath. Every pair of eyes in the room was trained on Lacey and her Cinderella hands.
“Hello, everyone,” she said, dropping into a princess-y curtesy, as her character did about a thousand times a day.
