The Wild Heir(57)

“Baby, I’ll start with you all day, every day.” I grin and reach out for her hand, holding it in mine. “Remember when you let me do this last night? You were such a hussy.”

She bursts out laughing and takes her hand back. “Hussy! Now that’s a word I didn’t think I’d hear you say.”

“The Norwegian equivalents are rather crude.”

“Let me guess, you’re going to teach them to me?”

“Later. And maybe some Swedish, too.”

She frowns. “Swedish?”

“Listen, I have a proposition for you.”

“This better not be a marriage proposal.”

“Very funny. No. But hey, thanks for letting me know where you stand at this point. You know our two weeks is almost up.”

“I’m just joking,” she says quietly, her gaze dropping to the sheets.

“Anyway,” I smooth on over because I’m not about to get bogged down in anything serious. “I just got a call from my friend Viktor. He’s the Prince of Sweden. Don’t hold that against him. He called wanting to get away for a bit, I guess his fiancée and his mother are going to Paris on a girls’ trip.”

“Queens go on girls’ trips?”

“Why not? Anyway, he’s coming over and we’re going to one of the family cabins north of here for a couple of nights. Just to get sloppy drunk, shoot guns into the air, jump in freezing lakes, fish, fall over into campfires, eat junk, that sort of thing.”

“Oh,” she says, and her voice is barely above a whisper. “That’s nice.”

“You’re coming.”

She glances up at me through her long lashes and frowns. “I am?”

I nod. “We snuck you out last night and we can do it again. We’ll have private transportation all the way to the mountain, so we won’t see a soul. And then we hike.”

“For how long?”

“It’s just a couple of hours at the most. It’s easy. Mostly. Unless it snows. It probably won’t.” I pause. “You in?”

She bites her lip in thought. “What if I say no? Will you still go?”

Is she testing me? Fine. I’ll pass.

“I wouldn’t. I’d tell Viktor I’ll see him another time. Look, Ella, we don’t have much time together, and I’m not wasting a single second without you.”

Her brows shoot up. Guess she wasn’t expecting the truth outside of question time.

“Okay,” she says, a small smile appearing on her lips. “Then I’m in. Wait, what about Jane?”

I sigh. The cabin is tiny. There’s a loft and a bedroom beneath, and that’s about it. I’m not sure how the hell we’ll all fit but I shrug. “It’s a tight squeeze for everyone, but I’m sure we can make it work.”

But later when Ella goes to tell Jane about it, Jane quickly declines.

“Do you really think I’m going to go hiking up a bloody mountain and then stay overnight in a cabin that’s probably surrounded by bears? Maybe the princess doesn’t mind roughing it, but in a case like this, I’m very much a lady.”

I didn’t bother pointing out that Norway doesn’t really have a lot of bears, but her point was made. It was also followed up with a salacious winky face, which made me think she was sitting this out for other reasons.

And maybe Ottar got a hint because he also declined.

Which left Einar—who never sits anything out—and Ella.

And Viktor, of course, who arrived at the estate fairly quickly. That’s one good thing about being royalty—you’re treated like royalty. He got on a private jet and landed in a rural airfield not too far from here.

“You made it,” I tell him. Ella and I are standing on the front steps of the house as he gets out of the car I sent for him.

“I bribed the pilot to fly faster,” he says with a wink. Viktor is a tall motherfucker, about six-foot-five and obnoxiously blessed with a movie-star face. When the tabloids would have their “Battle of the Sexy Single Princes,” Viktor always came out on top. I blame his height. And his face. And his charm. You see, if anyone is meant to be king, it’s him, even though I know before he met his fiancée, Maggie, he was second-guessing his role.

As Viktor smiles at Ella and approaches us, I lean into her and whisper, “It’s proper to address him as Svenskefaen.”

“Okay,” she says with a nod and waits until Viktor extends his hand.

“It’s so nice to meet you Your Serene Highness,” he says.

Of course he would know the official way of addressing Ella.

Which makes what she’s about to say that much funnier.

“Thank you, Svenskefaen,” she says.

Viktor jerks his head back and stares at her a moment before erupting into laughter. “What?” he barks. He looks at me accusingly. “You taught her that, didn’t you!”

“What, what?” Ella asks, bewildered. “What happened?”

“I’m sorry,” Viktor says, trying to compose himself. “I’m so sorry. But you just called me a damn Swede.”

Ella goes bright red and then turns to me. “You shitbag!”

I giggle and try to avoid her fists which are currently pounding into my arm. “Hey, you’re an honorary Norwegian now. If you want to be like us, you have to learn how to insult the Swedes.”