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“I thought we were going to the palace?”
“This is the Skaugum Estate,” he says. “But you can call it a palace if you’d like. Traditionally it was the summer palace.”
I twist in my seat, looking around me at the bucolic scenery, feeling a bit panicked. “But I thought the palace, the estate, was on the outskirts of Oslo.”
“We are on the outskirts of Oslo,” he says.
“But there’s nothing here!” I exclaim.
“Yes. That’s why it’s the outskirts. Don’t worry, it’s only forty-five minutes to the city.” His forehead creases as he turns to glance at me over his shoulder. “Did you think you would be living in Oslo? The king and queen live there at the palace, but Magnus and Ella wanted a more private place to raise their kids.”
Bloody hell, did I ever get this wrong. The reason I didn’t want to go with Eddie and Monica to that tiny island is because I didn’t want to work in the middle of nowhere again. The isolation was fine the first time, but it wouldn’t be good for my mentality the next time, especially in the winter. I wanted to stay around city lights, and people, and women, and traffic.
And yet as the SUV pulls up to a grand white palace, in the middle of nowhere, I realize that I’m about to live in isolation all over again. No more city lights, no more people, no more traffic, or stores, or civilization.
No more women.
Just me and the apparently wacky arm of the Norwegian royal family.
This is not getting off to a great start.
“Well, here we are,” Ottar says, parking the car. “Oh, and look, there are the kids. You can meet them already.”
I give my head a shake, trying to snap out of it and put my misgivings aside, and slowly get out of the car. Lucky for Ottar we’re on packed snow and there’s no way for him to fall.
“Hei, Bjorn, Tor,” Ottar yells over at two kids in snowsuits on the front lawn. “Come say hi to our new friend. He’s going to be living with us.”
I close the car door and look over at the kids. They’re staying put, both of them immersed in building a snowman. Okay, so a woman is building a snowman for them, but her back is to me so I can’t tell who it is, whether it’s the princess, the lady-in-waiting, or the nanny.
One of the kids is pretty young, a toddler, and is sitting in the snow, shoving the white stuff into his mouth; the other is standing by the snowman, staring at me with demon eyes.
Oh. This must be Bjorn.
Ottar hauls the bag out of the back and pauses beside me. “Sometimes they can be shy,” he says. Then he winks. “Appreciate it while it lasts.”
Bjorn rolls up a snowball, while keeping his eyes locked on me, and I’m certain he’s about to throw it in my face.
Then at the last minute he turns and whips it at the woman’s head, bouncing off her down hood, snow flying everywhere.
“Bjorn,” the woman says to him, exasperated, and a string of sternly worded Norwegian follows.
Suddenly my whole body feels like it’s been jerked back into the past. The woman’s voice is so acutely familiar that I have to blink a few times to try to ground myself to the present.
This can’t be.
“Who is that?” I find myself whispering.
“Oh, that’s their nanny,” Ottar says.
And it’s then that she turns around so that I can see her face. I know her name before Ottar can even give it to me.
“Laila,” he says.
Laila stares at me, eyes going wide as the moon, her face paling to match the snow.
I feel like I’m in a tractor beam, stuck here in this staring contest that I know at any minute is about to get ugly. I’m glued in place, locked in her gaze, my body swimming in feelings—lust, desire, even a bit of fear.
Holy shit.
