A Nordic King(85)

“Jesus,” she swears, shaking her head. “Aksel…I don’t know what to say.”

It’s getting hard to swallow. Suddenly the fear is so real, that I will lose her. That she’s finally seeing who I am, the man beneath the crown and behind the mask.

Then she shifts and puts her hand on my thigh, squeezing it. “Thank you for telling me that. It must have been weighing on you so much. I wish I had that kind of courage.”

“Courage,” I scoff bitterly. “It’s not courage. It’s just that I can’t stand to keep anything from you. If you’re going to be with me, you need to know exactly who I am. A coward.”

“A good, brilliant man,” she says. “That’s what you are. Smart and funny and sexy and such a good father. You’re so many things, Aksel, and you’ve been through so much and being a coward isn’t one of them.”

“I feel terrible. All the time. Living this lie.”

“But it wasn’t your fault, you said so yourself.”

“It wasn’t, but it was me who picked them up, angry, me who drove them. I should have just…found another way.”

“But you didn’t mean to kill her. You almost died yourself.”

“I know. But facts don’t absolve guilt. Truth feels like a lie sometimes.”

“It’s because of Nicklas,” she says. “He constantly reminds you of what happened. God, how can you work with him? He was fucking your wife!”

I put a finger to my mouth to remind her to keep it quiet. Thankfully I don’t think anyone can hear us. “He was, and I hate him for it. I hate him for a million reasons. But if I fire him, he’ll tell the world the truth. And even if I am thrown under the bus, which I do deserve, my children do not. More than that, the truth about his affair with Helena will come out and that’s the one thing I swore I would do, protect her reputation until the very end. No one must ever know about her and Nicklas. She must remain an angel in their eyes.”

“So what are you going to do? He has something over your head every day. What is stopping him from writing a book or doing an interview?”

“The fact that people won’t believe him.”

“That hasn’t stopped other people before.”

I shrug. “Maybe he feels guilty.” Maybe he’s biding his time. “He is the one who hit me while I was driving, his actions made me lose control of the car. So, there’s that. And he knows it. That’s the only reason he accepted taking the fall for it, so as long as it was always known as an accident. And it was an accident, it’s just the roles were switched.”

She lets out a long breath of air, shaking her head slightly. “What a complicated mess.”

“It is.”

“No wonder you’re such a grumpy pain in the ass.”

I give her a look. “You watch yourself, kid.”

She looks around and then gently puts her head on my shoulder.

“You probably shouldn’t do that,” I say softly, taking another puff of the cigar. “The guard on the other boat might see.”

But then I put my arm around her anyway and hold her close to me.

I’m just comforting the nanny.

There’s nothing to see here.

And yet there’s everything.





Chapter 20





Aurora





June





It’s June 5th.

A date that used to have no meaning to me whatsoever, except that in France it was around the time that the tourists started to descend in droves and the weather was getting cracking hot.

But here, in Denmark, it’s their day.

As in their constitution day.

Denmark Day does have a nice ring to it, but they call it Grundlovsdag, which doesn’t have a nice ring to it.

Anyway, it’s a big ass deal to the Danes and as such it’s even a bigger deal to the royal family. I woke up at the crack of dawn this morning to get Clara and Freja dressed into their traditional Danish costumes.

“Why do I have to wear this?” Clara complains as I pull her hair back into a braid, pinning it to her head before trying to attach a white bonnet/veil type thing.

“You love dresses,” I remind her.

“Yes, but this one is scratchy and hot,” she says, picking at the dark patterned skirt. She’s also wearing a full white blouse, red vest, and sash.

The kicker is, so am I.

“Hey, I’m wearing it too and you don’t hear me complaining.” I give her a big smile in the mirror we’re standing in front of. Of course, I am complaining in my head, because it’s June now and Copenhagen is going through a heat wave and this costume really is hot and itchy.

But when Aksel suggested it might be cute for me to spend the day in traditional gear, I went along with it. Because as much as I love keeping Aksel on his toes, I also like to please him, and I thought this might make me feel like an honorary Dane, not just an honorary goddess.

There’s also a ball tonight. Most of the public don’t celebrate that hard since some don’t even get the whole day off, but for Aksel and his family traditions, there’s a royal ball that they always put on in the palace.

I’m excited. I’m excited because I’m invited. Being the girls’ nanny means that I’ve missed out on countless occasions and events that Aksel and the others have attended but for this one, the girls are expected to be there, and so I will be there by default.