Chapter 44
A
n hour later, dressed in a pair of designer jeans and an absurdly expensive T-shirt, I gently nudged Lollie awake, careful to avoid the right cross she threw my way. “Hey,” I said, shaking her again. “Get up.”
One long-lashed eyelid rose. “Coffee?”
I grinned, passing her a cup of her favorite sweet, milky brew. “Fresh from room service. Now get moving. Karl will be—”
Before I’d finished my sentence, Lollie was out of bed, searching the floor, lampshade, and finally the balcony for the clothes she’d worn last night. As she located each wayward piece, she glared at me. I shrugged innocently. Picking her bra out of the mini-fridge, she raised an eyebrow.
“What?”
Rather than comment, she rolled her eyes and quickly finished dressing. “So what now?” she asked, pulling on her combat boot still stained with ash from the fire.
I took a deep breath, feeling guilty as hell. “Apparently Spindle contacted Elly. He wants two hundred thousand dollars or he’ll kill Beauty.” All last night, while I was making love to Lollie, my soon-to-be bride had been in the hands of a madman; whether by her choice or not, the point was moot.
“What! A ransom? That can’t be.” Lollie reached for my arm, but I twisted away, my eyes burning into hers. Lollie knew too much to play innocent now.
“Why would Elly lie?” I scratched my head. “To me?” The “unlike you” part of the statement hung in the air between us. I was finding it hard to keep track of the sheer number of mistruths Ms. Bliss had supplied in the last few days.
Lollie’s lips curled into a snarl. “I have no idea. Perhaps she’s merely mistaken, but I swear to you, Jean-Michel, Beauty is safe. Spindle won’t hurt her.”
“Nice try, Lollipop,” I straightened to my full six-foot height, “but it’s time I met your boyfriend, man to man.”
She snorted, not an attractive sound, but it turned me on nonetheless. Yeah, I was hopeless. I sighed. “The ransom drop is at a warehouse downtown. Spindle wants me there in an hour.”
“Don’t go.” Her nails dug into my arm, leaving half-moon welts along the vein. “It’s some sort of setup.”
“I have to.” I peeled away each of her fingers. “I can’t risk Sleeping Beauty’s life.”
“Are you serious?” Her eyes flashed with violence. “You’re still on this Sleeping Beauty thing? After everything that happened?”
I glowered, taken aback by her quick change of mind regarding our relationship. “Wait. What? Last night you said—”
“I know what I said.” She stomped from the bed and into the living room. “I wasn’t talking about last night. I was referring to yesterday. Remember the big explosion? Me almost dying? Ring any bells, Quasimodo?”
“Hold on.” I trailed after her. “First of all, are you implying that Sleeping Beauty had something to do with the explosion yesterday? Second and most importantly,” I patted my back, “does this shirt make me look like I have a hump?”
“No.”
“Good.” I nodded, relived. Turning back into a frog was bad enough, but a humpbacked frog? I’d never get laid again.
“I wasn’t implying it, Kermit.” She spun toward me, her hands fisted on her hips. “I’m outright saying it. Someone blew up the Rose, and it wasn’t Spindle. You do the math.”
“Are you crazy?” I giggled. “If anyone blew anything . . .”
“Don’t you dare say it!” She poked me in the chest, hard. “I’m not in the mood for your lame attempts at humor. Not after I’m going to have to spend the day on the phone with my insurance company.”
So much for the afterglow. “I was going to say,” I paused to gain her attention, “if anyone blew anything up it
was
Spindle. He wants you out of the way, Lollie. Whatever the two of you had is over. Can’t you see that?”
“Really?” Her finger scraped the collar of her shirt.
“Why? What’s Spindle’s motive? According to you we’re lovers, remember?” Her words sent a spark of pain through the center of my chest. “Isn’t it far more likely that your demented fiancée blew up
my
shop to try and kill you?”
Goldie’s warning echoed in my head, loud and insistent. Beauty was a cold-blooded killer. “But I wasn’t even there,” I said.
“But you were. Yesterday morning.” She dragged her bottom lip through her teeth. “The bomb was meant for you. No one else.”
“How can you be so sure?”
She took a deep breath. “I never saw Sleeping Beauty or her phone, Kermit. I swear it.”
If Lollie was telling the truth and Sleeping Beauty was in on yesterday’s explosion, my impending froghood looked more and more like a possibility. I didn’t want to eat flies and poop in a swamp for the rest of my life. After all, frogs, even the princely ones, got mold in some very weird places.
“I’m sorry.” Lollie reached for my hand. “I know how important marrying Sleeping Beauty is to you. But don’t worry. You’ll find the right princess soon. Maybe she won’t be as rich as Sleeping Beauty . . .”
I pulled away from her surprisingly strong grip. “Whoa.” I gave a small laugh. “You think I’m marrying Sleeping Beauty for her money?”
“Of course.” She nodded as if my greed was a foregone conclusion. “Why else would you marry a woman who annoys you, much less wants you dead?”
Maybe it was time to come clean with Lollie. What did I have to lose? Beside my dignity—not like I had much of it left after the second Fairy Sutra position we’d tried last night. Who knew a frog price was so bendy?
Lollie snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Earth to Kermit. Are you going to answer me?”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.” I groaned, erasing from my head the image of Lollie’s long legs wrapped around my ears. “Do you know what the name La Grenouille stands for?”
“Arrogant idiot?” She grinned. When I didn’t share her humor, she rolled her eyes. “I took French. La Grenouille stands for ‘the Frog,’ hence why they call you the Frog Prince. So?”
“So thirty-five years ago my parents fell in love. And I’m not talking the kind of love we shared last night.” Not the sort of love that took a mop and bucket to clean up, not that I’d minded swabbing Lollie’s decks. “I’m talking about the real deal. L.O.V.E. The happily-ever-after kind.”
“Gross.” Her lip curled. “What’s this got to do with your fancy French name or why you’re so desperate to marry Sleeping Beauty?”
“I’m getting to it.” Crossing the room, I stopped at the bar to pour myself a cup of coffee. “A few years into their happily-ever-after, my grandfather ordered my father to give him an heir. My father didn’t want anything to interfere with the time he spent with his bride, but he finally agreed when my grandfather threatened to cut him off.” A sort of family tradition, I supposed, noting my own current financial quandary. The only difference was, I wouldn’t let the Frog King’s money rule my life. I was my own frog prince, damn it.
“It’s not the worst reason to have a kid, I guess.” Her eyes narrowed. “So what happened?”
“A curse happened.” I shivered, my voice thick. “Try as they might, my parents couldn’t conceive. My grandfather grew more desperate, pressuring my father until . . . well, one day, he—”
“I still don’t understand what this has to do with you,” she interrupted as she plopped down on the hotel room couch. “You weren’t even born yet.”
“Precisely.”
“What?”
“My father did the only thing he could think of. He offered a witch riches beyond compare if she would give him a son.”
“Huh.” She nodded. “Your mother’s a witch?”
“No. The witch cast a spell and soon after, my mother became pregnant with me. Mother rejoiced for nine months, until the night she went into labor. The labor was hard. So difficult that my mother . . .” I took a deep breath, the horror of that night infused in every word. “Died. A brain hemorrhage the doctor declared.”
“My God.” Lollie’s hand flew to her heart. “I’m so sorry. I lost my mother when I was young too.”
“If only it was that easy.” I smiled sadly. “The thing is, my mother didn’t stay dead, Lollie. You see, my father, in his great wisdom, did what any fool in love would do. He sacrificed everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Frog King, then only a prince like me, called for his guards to bring the old witch to my mother’s bedside and demanded the witch save my mother. She told him that nothing could be done to save her. But my father refused to listen.” I gave a bitter laugh. “He was next in line to be the Frog King, after all.”
I turned to watch the tourists on the Cin City strip below. My voice sounded odd to my ears, mechanical, as if the story I told was nothing more than a fable. But it wasn’t. It was my life. “My father loved my mother so much that he offered the old witch his most prized possession if she would save his queen.”
“Rookie mistake,” Lollie said.
I nodded. “The witch accepted his offer, waved her hands in the air, and sure enough my mother began to breathe once again.”
“And the witch?” Lollie leaned forward, enthralled with my tale. “Did she take your father’s most prized possession?”
“I wish it was that easy,” I said. “Rather than pay her price, he had the old witch arrested and charged with witchcraft.”
Lollie sucked in a sharp breath. “He didn’t.”
I nodded. “Ten days later, on the morning the witch was to be hanged for her black deeds, my father awoke to find my mother standing over my crib, crying.” My throat tightened. The queen still cried, to this day, locked away in her tower. Inconsolable with grief. I hated my father for that.
“How sad. Your poor mother.” Lollie’s hand covered her mouth. “Why was she crying? Were you missing?”
I turned to face her. “I was there.”
“So what caused her distress?”
“A frog.”
“I don’t understand.”
I stared into her dark eyes, so devoid of color like the darkest recesses of my soul. “The witch had her revenge. She took what was most precious to my father. His most prized possession.”
Lollie lowered her gaze. “Your mother.”
“Yes.” I vowed to never fall in love, to never allow someone to wield that much power over me. Being cursed and forced to marry a serial-killing nitwit was bad enough.
“But how?” she asked.
“By turning the queen’s baby into a frog.”
“No.”
I swallowed, afraid, as if saying the curse aloud could somehow make it all the more true. “And she will have her revenge again in a couple of days.”
“How?”
“On my thirtieth birthday, unless I marry the One, the curse strikes again.”
“The One?”
“The woman, well, she was more of a girl really, when we first met at the pond, who broke my curse twenty-two years ago.”
Lollie’s face lost all color. “Sleeping Beauty.”
I nodded.
“Son of a bitch!”
Chapter 45
L
ollie’s reaction wasn’t quite what I’d expected. Rather than run away, disgusted by the fact she’d recently made love to a man who’d once digested flies, she paced the room, muttering, as if my curse was now her burden. I caught the words “pond,” “girl,” and “greenish moron” as she flew by.
I reached for her arm, stopping her mid-mutter. “Are you all right?”
“What?” She ducked her head. “Of course I’m all right. I just need to think.”
“Okay,” I said slowly in the voice I reserved for the village idiot. “I’m going to meeting Karl downstairs so he can drive me to the warehouse. Do you want to join us?” Not that I wanted her within a hundred feet of Spindle or my soon-to-be bride, but it didn’t feel right to leave her locked up in my hotel room either, especially after I just dropped a frogshell like that in her lap.
Besides, what if she was right and Sleeping Beauty really did want to remove both Lollie and me from the picture? Leaving Lollie here would be like inviting an ex-girlfriend to my wedding and handing her a knife to cut my throat as well as the wedding cake.
“You’re going to the warehouse. Now?” Lollie’s face paled and her lips started to tremble. Then her face relaxed as something occurred to her. “What about the money? It will take you a couple of hours at least to gather that much cash.”
I walked to the hotel safe and punched in a four-digit code. The safe opened, revealing stacks of cash, all neatly laundered and pressed, a job I often forced upon Karl when he annoyed me. I picked up a stack, weighed it in my hand, and then shoved it in a black bag. “That should do it.”
Lollie’s eyes grew wide as she stared at the money. “A little walking-around money?”
“Petty cash. Besides, my fairy godmother told me, always be prepared. That’s the frog prince motto,” I said, raising my hand in a Prince Scout salute, which equaled a raised middle finger.
“Hmm . . .” Her tongue flicked out to wet her lips. “In my experience, princes salute in a very different manner.” Her face quickly sobered. “Didn’t your dad disown you?”
“Yeah.”
“So . . .” Her hand motioned to the petty cash and the safe.
I shrugged as my p-Phone jangled. “Hey, Karl. What’s up?” I answered after a quick glance at the caller ID. I listened for a few seconds while he blathered on and on. For a bald, not-so-charming manservant, Karl could talk. I rolled my eyes at Lollie. She grinned back, but her smile slipped as soon as I stepped away. Distress was etched in every inky line on her body. Was she worried about Spindle? The thought caused a small—tiny really, nothing to even be concerned about—pain in my chest.
“Okay, we’ll be down in a few minutes.” I hung up and grinned at Lollie. “Karl ordered you some fresh clothes. Once the maid gets here, you can change and then we’ll be on our way. But, Lollie,” I began, my voice growing cold, “don’t make me regret this. You’ll do as I say. Stay in the car and keep quiet. I don’t want you to get hurt.” The very thought made that tiny ache explode into full-on indigestion.
She beamed up at me, the picture of innocence in a body designed by the devil himself. “You’re the boss, Kermit. Your wish is my command.”
I wished she’d stop saying that. It made focusing on the matter at hand all but impossible. Yet even as she promised complete wish fulfillment, I knew like a punch in the gut I’d regret ever bringing Ms. Bliss anywhere near my bride. Probably had something to do with the evil gleam in Lollie’s dark, almost mauve in color, eyes.
Rolling up to Spindle’s warehouse in an ugly yellow Ford Princess probably wasn’t the smartest move. The car screamed for attention; add a slightly-olive-in-the-face prince, a bald manservant, and a tattooed lady, plus two hundred thousand dollars in unmarked bills, and we looked much more like a circus act than a rescue team.
“Are you sure this is the place?” Lollie asked, her eyes darting around. “It looks sort of . . . abandoned.”
Karl checked the map on his BlackFerry. “This is the address Elly gave us.”
I waved off any concern. “This is the place. I can smell the greedy bastard lurking inside.”
Lollie raised a perfectly arched eyebrow, a trick only a woman could pull off. When I tried the same expression I resembled Humpty Dumpty after the fall. “Smell him? Really?” She fingered the big black bag sitting on the seat next to her. The same bag I’d found while searching remains of the Rose following the explosion. Or as Lollie put it, “all she had left in the world.” What a drama queen.
Her royal pain in the ass flicked my ear to gain my attention. “Hey, Kermit. Be careful. You don’t understand what you’re dealing with.” Her concern for my continued breathing warmed me.
“And you do, mademoiselle?” I grabbed her chin and kissed her, hard. Pulling quickly away before she could protest and/or smack me in the face. “Stay in the car. Karl and I will handle this. I don’t need you messing it up with your . . . youness,” I ordered, wincing as Lollie glared daggers at me.
Truth be told, I was more worried about how Spindle might react when he found his former lady love now loving my princely self. Not that Lollie loved me. We were just . . . I shook off that particular terrifying line of thought. Besides, if I brought Lollie inside, she could get hurt, and I wasn’t about to risk her life again. One explosion per lifetime was enough. Of course, I didn’t relish the thought of grilled frog legs either. I turned to Karl. “How do you feel about bullet wounds?”
“I’m opposed to them, sir.” He heaved a long, world-weary sigh. “Please try and not get me shot.”
I nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Let’s hit it.”
Before Lollie could comment or throw something, as she was prone to doing, Karl and I piled from the vehicle, the bag of cash in my hands. The street looked as abandoned as the rest of the neighborhood. Cars from the 1970s littered the landscape, a Chevy Aladdin with missing magic floor mats, a Buick Dwarf, one of its two seats ripped asunder. Most of the vehicles lurched to one side, engines, tires, and sometimes even the doors pilfered by villains.
I nodded to Karl, and together we headed for the warehouse and whatever lurked inside, namely my annoying and possibly murderous future wife. I shuddered at the thought.
“Wait!” Lollie leapt from the ugly Princess.
“What?” I ducked, preparing for a pummeling at her tiny hands. Rather than punch me, she wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed the breath from my lungs; her mouth ground into mine while our tongues played a game of ring around the tonsils. My hands tugged at the belt loops of her jeans, dragging her body even closer. She moaned, low and deep in her throat, kissing me as if the world was about to end.
And maybe it was. For us at least.
“Get a room,” Karl said in a bored tone. “I mean, come on, his lordship will be right back. It’s not like he’s running away with the dish and a spoon.”
Lollie pulled away, wiping a string of my saliva from her mouth. “Right. Sorry. But, Kermit, wouldn’t it be safer if you left the money here? With me.”
My eyes narrowed.
“She does have a point, sir.” Karl nodded. “If Spindle is inside, what’s stopping him from killing us and taking the money? If we leave it with Ms. Bliss, he won’t outright murder us.”
“But—”
Lollie’s own dark eyes narrowed. “But what? Don’t you trust me? After,” she lowered her voice, “last night.” Before I could answer, she reached out to take the bag from my hands. “I’ll just wait right here like a good little girl until you give me the all clear.”
I frowned.
“What do you have to lose, sir?” Karl asked with a shrug. Two hundred thousand dollars came to mind, but I could afford it, for the moment. On the other hand, walking into a trap with that much money in hand sounded stupid, even to me, a prince who’d failed Heroes 101 at charming school. When I still didn’t release my grip on the bag, Karl patted my arm. “The sooner we do this, the sooner you can start your happily-ever-after.”
And resume my real life,
I added silently,
one without tattooed beauties much too intelligent to trust.
I took a second to run my fingers across the faint freckles sprinkled across Lollie’s cheek before finally letting the bag drop. “Don’t make me regret this,” I said, voice thick with equal parts lust and suspicion.
Lollie gave me a wink and headed back to the ugly Princess to wait for me. I liked the sound of that, maybe a bit too much. Something shifted in my chest. My feet felt touched by Midas, heavy, leaden, as if I was slowly being swallowed by the concrete below me.
This was it. Once I had Beauty back, safe, we’d get married and I’d lose Lollie forever.
“Sir?” Karl motioned to the warehouse.
“Right.” I shook my head to clear the taste of Lollie from my mind and focused on the task ahead—saving Beauty without dying in the process.
How hard could it be?