“I’ll work something out,” he said as he locked our door.
“The tiara is like, the most important part of princessery. Oh, I need to call work.”
“Already taken care of.”
“What?”
“I called Tom and said you were in the bathroom puking your guts out.”
“But what if someone on campus sees us?”
“Relax. You’re not the first student who’s ever played hooky. I’m sure he knew I was making it up.”
“But I need that job, Hunter —”
He cut me off with a finger to my lips. “Princesses don’t stress. They take charge and let other people worry about the details.”
“Fine. But if I get fired, I’m blaming you.”
“If you get fired, I’ll quit.”
“Deal.”
“Deal.”
I let Hunter help me into the car, because princesses couldn’t get into cars without assistance or some such crap.
“It’s so the paparazzi won’t get a shot of your undies.”
“I’m not wearing a skirt.”
“You can never be too careful,” he said seriously.
I made him stop and get me a blueberry muffin and some iced tea. I figured I should really milk this princess thing while it lasted.
“It’s not as good as Hope’s,” I said about the iced tea.
“That’s something they know about in the south. I miss it sometimes.”
“What do you miss?”
“It feels… I don’t know, cozier, for lack of a better term. Not that Maine isn’t like that. It’s just different.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been down south.”
“Well, I’ll just have to take you. I don’t want your first experience to be with someone else.”
“You’re talking about traveling, right?”
“Right.”
We turned south on I-95, which meant we were headed for the coast.
“We’re not leaving the state, are we?”
“Nope. Just going a little ways up the coast.”
“So we’re going to the coast. Interesting…”
I pondered as we drove.
“What, no road trip princess mix?”
“I didn’t plan that far ahead. Pick a CD.” He tossed me a zipped folder that weighed about five pounds. “I still like having them just in case my mp3 dies for some reason. Like having records.”
I shuffled through them and there were quite a few bands I hadn’t heard of that I made mental notes to check out. I grabbed the first thing that made me smile. The Head and the Heart.
He smiled too when he heard the first song. I skipped to Honey, Come Home.
“So you liked that?”
“It should have been totally cheesy, but it wasn’t.” I placed my hand on top of his as it rested on the shifter.
“I was going for non-cheesy. I eliminated a lot of other songs before I picked that one.”
“It was perfect.”
“Well, I was going to go with Love Story, but I figured that would be cheesy.”
“If you’d gone with that, I probably would have had my way with you on the couch while Megan was in the shower.”
“Damn. What a wasted opportunity.” We both laughed as Hunter hit the gas and passed a gigantic motor home.
“Where are we going?” I whined.
“God, that’s a sound I never want to hear again.”
“Tell me where we’re going and you won’t.”
“Nice try, Miss.”
“I think, as the princess, I have a right to this information. Otherwise, this is a kidnapping.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Caldwell. I’m under strict orders not to disclose that information.”
“Asshat.”
“Yes, Miss Caldwell. Whatever you say.”
I gave his shoulder a light punch in response.
He turned off I-95 onto 202 and then onto 1A. Hmm…
“The Coastal Route?” He nodded in response. “There are only so many places you could take me. If we were going to Portland, you would have just stayed on 95. So we must be going to one of the places along the way.” I got out my phone and looked up the names of the towns along the route.
“We just passed Winterport, so it isn’t that. Belfast? Lincolnville? Camden?”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“I think I’m getting warmer.”
“Can’t you just let me surprise you without being curious?” His eyes pleaded in a really sweet way.
“Fine.” I put my phone back in my purse and sat back in my seat.
“It’s killing you, isn’t it?” he said after about two minutes.
“No.”
“Liar.”
“Kidnapper.”
It was kind of fun driving through the various towns, wondering which one he was going to stop at. We went through Belfast and then Lincolnville, going right past the beach. I’d thought of that as a possibility, but it wasn’t.
“Camden. I bet it’s Camden,” I said just as we passed the “You are now leaving Lincolnville” sign.
“Maybe it is and maybe it is.”
“Ha! Okay, so what’s in Camden...?” I racked my brain, trying to remember. I assembled the clues I already had as we passed inns, hotels and bed and breakfasts. Camden had about a million of them. It was a coastal town, but of the hoity-toity variety, with lots of windjammers and fancy shops and such.
Princess, comfortable shoes, a sweatshirt…
“We’re not going hiking, are we?” There were two mountains in Camden, Mt. Battie and Megunticook. I’d hiked both several times with Tawny when we’d been younger and also on school trips.
“We don’t have enough time and I didn’t plan far enough ahead for that, but I thought we could go up the auto road and have lunch.”
“So what’s with the princess part?”
“This,” he said, putting on his turn signal. I looked to see where he was turning.
“Norumbega?”
“The only castle in Maine.”
My mouth dropped open. When I was little and we’d driven through Camden, I’d always begged my mother to stop there, but we were always on our way somewhere else. The Norumbega Inn seemed like the most magical place to my young eyes. It looked pretty damn magical now.
Hunter pulled in front of the building, and we sat and stared at it. It certainly looked like a castle, built in stone, some of it painted in dark green, giving it an almost gothic feel. There was even a turret on one side.
“Come on, princess,” he said, getting out of the car. I followed before he could open my door.
“What?”
“Let’s go in.”
I put my hand on his arm to stop him. “We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“They’re not going to just let us wander around.”
“Take your ring off.”
“What?”
He took my right hand and slipped my ring off, and then took my left hand and put it on my ring finger.
“There. Now we can say we’re looking at places to get married. They’ll be falling over themselves to show us around.”
He took my hand and dragged me up the steps to the front door. He didn’t bother knocking, just went in. I caught my breath. Wow. I felt just as out of place here as I did in Hunter’s uncle’s house. I’d barely gotten to look at the caramel-colored wooden floors and the matching wooden paneling on the walls before a woman in a smart suit spotted us.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes, my fiancée and I are getting married in the spring and we’re checking out potential locations. We were just going for a hike up to Mt. Battie and saw this place and couldn’t resist coming in. Right, baby?”
He brought our linked hands to his mouth and kissed the top of my hand before winking. Sweet Christ.
“Oh, how wonderful. Congratulations. When’s the big day?” She beamed at us.
“March 21, the first day of spring,” I blurted out. Hunter gave me a look. I’d just pulled it out of my ass.
“How lovely. Well, we have a lot to offer when it comes to weddings, if you’ll just follow me,” she said, leading us to the left and up to a huge desk. I couldn’t stop staring at the ornate wooden latticed ceilings and the gilded mirrors. Some of the walls were covered in dark green wallpaper. It gave a cozy old-time study feel to the place.
“I’m Susan, by the way. It’s so nice to meet you.”
“Hunter,” he said, shaking her hand. “This is Missy.”
“Missy. Is that short for Marissa?”
“Yeah,” I said, giving him a glare when she turned to grab a brochure.
“This has all our options and lists all of our vendors. If you want to do the complete package, we can provide you with everything. Food, drinks, chairs, the works. Would you like to take a look at a few of the rooms? What size wedding were you thinking?”
“Small. Definitely,” I said, beating Hunter to the gun. Neither of us had big families. You know, if we were getting married, which we weren’t, because this was just for pretend.
“Less than 25 people?”
“Probably. We hadn’t really sat down and counted yet,” Hunter said. “But it’ll be what, your parents, Tawny, my family, that’s eight, then Darah, Renee, Paul, Megan and Jake, and then Dev and Sean. And a few cousins. Right?” It was like he’d actually thought about it.