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Clearly, Mr. Benz, in his sermon about what there was to do in Witten on the weekends, had forgotten to mention “take baths while gorging on royal room service.”
Her phone dinged. It was an incoming FaceTime from her mom. “How was the trip?” her mom asked.
“Fine. Just getting settled in. Get a load of this place.” Cara reversed the camera and conducted a quick tour of the suite. Her mom made cooing noises over everything and directed her to zoom in on the marble floors. “Those are gorgeous.”
“Add it to the list.” Cara and her mom kept a half-joking wish list of features their future duplex would have. After a lifetime of bouncing around apartments, Cara had saved enough to buy their current house three years ago. But it was merely a planned stop along the way. The end goal was a duplex. She’d live in one side and her parents the other. According to her calculations, with the equity in the current place plus projected raises at work, she’d have enough for a down payment in about four years.
“I bet those floors are cold on your feet, though.”
Cara took her shoes and socks off to test the theory. “Yep, freezing. I wonder if there is such a thing as heated marble floors—addthatto the list.”
“I’m sorry I made things difficult for you this morning.”
Cara took the phone into the bedroom and studied her mother.Her brow was furrowed, but Cara was pretty sure it was from guilt, not arthritis pain. “Aww, Mom. It’s okay. We were all bummed I had to make this trip.”
“I just don’t want you to kill yourself working because you feel like you need to take care of us. We’re fine.”
“I like working.” And theywerefine. Cara knew that. They had beaten back the specter of financial ruin, which had loomed on the not-so-distant horizon for most of her childhood. But they weren’t done.Carawasn’t done. Not until she had the duplex and partnership at the firm.
“I know. You always were so diligent. But you should be having fun, too. You’re young. You should be dating.” Her mom held up a hand. “And before you get your feathers ruffled, I’m not talking about getting married and having babies, although I’m not going to lie, I wouldn’t be mad at any of that. But when was the last time you went on a date?”
Cara didn’t date. At least she didn’t date in the way her mom meant, which was going to the movies and, Cara didn’t even know... probably sharing a milkshake at the Crosstown Diner. In some ways, Mom was a mystery to Cara. She was super-Catholic and, frankly, came off as kind of naive. But she’d gotten pregnant with Cara as a twenty-year-old, when she still lived at home with her own super-Catholic parents—who had kicked her out. She’d been four months pregnant and living in a shelter when she met Cara’s dad. So it wasn’t like she didn’t know how the world worked.
“I don’t think people date the way you think of it anymore,” she said, hoping that would be the end of it.
“How do they date?”
Nope. They weren’t having this conversation.
Cara couldn’t bring men home, since she lived with her parents—though she supposed that since she paid the mortgage, it was more accurate to say that her parents lived with her. Either way, she had roommates, roommates who took a particular interest in her comings and goings. Well, one of them did. Her dad could and did sleep through anything, but Mom had supersonic hearing and would be all over Cara if she sneaked in late at night. Not that it had to happen at night. Theoretically there was nothing stopping her from, say, taking a long “lunch.” It was more that... her mom wouldknow.
Which was, logically, absurd, because her mother was the one all over her to “meet someone.” She just didn’t want Cara to meet someone the way people actually did in the modern world. So it was only on Cara’s trips that she could get a certain itch, an itch that healthy, single, thirty-five-year-old women had, scratched. It was an arrangement that suited her. She was happily married to her job right now, but the odd casual hookup on the road reminded her that she was alive.
But there would be no itch-scratching on this trip. It wasn’t like she could bring a dude into the freaking royal palace of Eldovia for the purposes of hooking up. “Mom, I gotta go. I have to do some prep work for my meeting with the board tomorrow.”
“Sleep tight, my girl, my greatest thing.”
After Cara finished unpacking in her bedroom, she took her suitcase out into the living room, intending to unpack the rest into the office alcove, but the sofa looked so comfy. Deciding to allow herself a moment of respite, she flopped down on it and thoughtof Mr. Benz and his sniffing. Maybe it wasn’t so much that he disapproved of her; maybe he had a secret cocaine problem. Or maybe—
No.Whywas she thinking about Mr. Benz right now? She was supposed to be relaxing.
Thoughhecertainly wouldn’t approve of this. She might accidentally fall asleep and violate the Anti–Jet Lag Protocol.
Okay, enough. Mr. Benz did not deserve this much mental real estate. She would worry about him tomorrow. She unpacked her sudoku book. Time to turn her thoughts to an easier puzzle.
Chapter Two
Matteo had only just started climbing the stairs to his suite when Torkel Renner, the former head of palace security, called. “Good evening,” Matteo said, unlocking his door and kicking off his shoes. “What did you find?”
“Not much. Thirty-five years old. Born in the Bronx, New York, to Saoirse Delaney-nee-McGrath. Adopted at birth by Patrick Delaney.”
Hmm. That Ms. Delaney had been raised by a man who was not her biological father was not relevant for Matteo’s present purposes, but it was an interesting fact. He filed it away.
“Both parents are Irish, obviously. Irish-Irish in the mother’s case—she came over as a child. The father is third-generation. He’s a longshoreman; there’s no employment record for her.”
Such a working-class background did not accord with his image of Ms. Delaney, with her designer suits, stilettos, and bruising handshakes. But Matteo of all people should know that appearances could be deceiving.
“They all live together in a house in the Woodlawn Heights section of the Bronx. It was purchased three years ago. The deed is in her name. Before that they moved a lot—seven times in the previous ten years. Always apartments, always in the same neighborhood.”
