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Konstantin reached his hand out toward her. “You and Mickey have dinner with me tonight, please.”
“You eat dinner too late for Mickey.” Her voice sounded harsh to her own ears, but she was compensating for how that please made her feel.
His Royal Highness Prince Konstantin of Mirrus did not plead.
“I will eat whatever time is good for his schedule,” Konstantin promised without hesitation.
She nodded, believing him. “We eat at five thirty.” That was practically lunchtime for Konstantin.
“I’ll be there at four to visit with him.”
Konstantin brought a croquet set with him to visit his son and Emma. It was the first sport he’d learned as a child. A precursor to training for polo. His second had been skiing, a natural sport for an island country that had snow so many months out of the year.
“You do it like this?” Mikhail asked as he swung the mallet at the ball.
The croquet ball went careening across the small courtyard.
Konstantin smiled. “That was a good, strong hit, Mikhail. Well done.”
Mikhail beamed and Emma smiled with approval. She was dressed in what he considered her bohemian Southwestern chic again. He was developing a real thing for turquoise and silver.
“Do you want to come to the park with us tomorrow?” Mikhail asked Konstantin. “It has water fountains. It’s lots of fun, right, Mom?”
“I’m sure your dad is going to be busy tomorrow,” Emma said gently. “He’s here on business, Mickey.”
What she did not seem to grasp yet was that no business could take precedence over Konstantin’s newly discovered family.
“You don’t live here now?” Mikhail asked, his face falling like an express elevator on its way to the ground floor. He turned to Emma. “Mom, he doesn’t live here! He’s going to go away, like Mr. Jensen.”
“I am not leaving you, Mikhail,” Konstantin promised, dropping to his knee beside his son. “I have just found you. You are my very precious son. We are family.”
“Mr. Jensen went away from his family,” Mikhail said accusingly.
“Who is Mr. Jensen?”
Mikhail didn’t answer. He threw himself at Emma, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in her stomach. She hugged their son, but looked up at Mikhail. “Mr. Jensen is my former employer. He traveled a lot for business and the year before Mickey and I moved out, he left the family to be with a woman he’d met on one of his trips.”
Konstantin tapped Mikhail’s shoulder. “Moj mal’chik, look at me...please.” That word again. Pleading with his son and his former lover was becoming a habit. “I am going nowhere. I want no other woman but your own mama, Mishka. I promise you. Now that I have found you both, I will not leave you.”
Mikhail turned around to face Konstantin, but held on to his mother. “What did you call me?”
Konstantin had to think, to remember what he’d said, his brain scrambling to keep up with the emotional upheaval. He had known his child for two days and it gutted him to see the little boy upset.
“I called you my boy in Russian.” He ruffled Mikhail’s hair. “And Mishka is like your mother calling you Mickey.”
“Okay. I like Mishka better than Mickey, but Mikhail is best.” The little boy gave Emma a significant look and she shrugged back.
Like they’d had this discussion before and she wasn’t giving up Mickey anytime soon.
“But you don’t live here,” Mikhail said accusingly, showing he had not forgotten his worry in his curiosity. “We do.”
Konstantin looked up at Emma, feeling helpless in a way he never did.
Emma’s expression wasn’t her usual confident, calm mom face. She looked just as lost as he felt.
Although she had said she was willing to relocate, they had made no firm plans. He had not even told her that he was scheduled to return to Mirrus the next day. Not that Konstantin planned to go, but he did not know realistically how long he could stay in Santa Fe.
Until Emma agreed to move, his heart insisted while his brain said that was not practical. He had business commitments.
