The Star Princess Page 3

  Ché ran his fingers through his hair again. “Is there anything else?” he asked Toren.

  The councilmen all shook their heads.

  Ché stood, muttering to his hovering, openly sympathetic advisor, “I cannot believe I have been sitting here arranging my own marriage over tock and pastries.”

  The whole business was rather depressing.

  He walked to the edge of the balcony. There, he clasped his hands behind his back and gazed out to sea as the council members conferred in hushed voices behind him, working out the finer details of his future.

  He tried to conjure recollections of the eligible women, princesses, and ladies—virgins all—that he’d met at court on his world and abroad over the years. None came to mind. All were lost in a blur of stilted conversations made while sipping expensive liqueurs and wearing stiff ceremonial uniforms. Not one woman had conjured in him more than a passing interest.

  But, then, he’d been promised. He hadn’t been looking at the women as marriage candidates, or perhaps he would have viewed them differently, considered each as the possible mate to whom he’d be faithful for the rest of his life, the woman who would share his bed, her body, their children. His heirs.

  He wondered offhandedly if he’d come to love the woman Toren and his cronies chose for him. His parents, while not demonstrative of affection as some couples were outside their private chambers, appeared to have come to respect and love each other after many years together.

  And what did they, his parents, think of this plan? Toren said he’d come here without the knowledge of Ché’s father, the Vedla king, but Ché suspected otherwise. The king was a Vedla in the truest sense of the word; he’d want the historical superiority of the family to remain intact. He would not disapprove of this meddling.

  Meddling? Rather, it was planning. That was the better term, yes. Ché’s life had always been predetermined by others, mapped out from start to finish, even before his birth. He operated on the principle of duty over personal desires. The good of the people outweighs that of the individual. It said so in the Treatise of Trade. He followed that document to the letter, lived the prescribed life, pleased his elders, all with the amelioration of an opulent lifestyle.

  An opulent lifestyle that had become curiously bland.

  The sea glimmered in soft tones under a muted pale purple sky. Eireya was an endless, wide-open panorama, and yet he felt so very penned in.

  Ché turned his attention back to the councilmen huddled together with his advisor. The scene typified his life’s perpetual condition, the constant coddling and others’ desire to please him, their relentless scrutiny. He wouldn’t mind escaping it all for a time before he surrendered to it for the remainder of his very public life.

  His pulse jumped. This was perfect timing for a getaway, actually. His father would soon be home and would take over responsibility for the household. Palace security would continue to monitor Klark. Ché’s presence at the palace would not be needed for weeks, likely months.

  Yes, this wife-hunting would take the councilmen far longer than they thought, what with the intricate promises and alliances binding the eight families together, and the fact that all of their maneuvering would have to be done under the cloak of utmost secrecy. It would not do to have it appear to the entire Vash Nadah that the rejected Vedla prince had to beg for a bride. Their predicament would give Ché plenty of time to take one last swing around the galaxy before he found himself tied down for good with a woman he may not like but was required by law to worship and protect.

  And yet, where could he go? A Vash resort didn’t hold appeal. He sought a reprieve from this pampered lifestyle he’d come to find tedious. He also didn’t want something too remote or primitive. He enjoyed an escape, yes, but appreciated a hot bath and a fine meal at the end of it.

  He lifted his hand, tapping one finger against his lips. And then it came to him—a world that wasn’t at the edge of civilization, but close enough to have a view of it:

  Earth.

  A quick triumphant laugh escaped him. Earth was the last place his staff would dream of finding him, living amongst its “barbarians.” And plaguing him from the day he’d returned to Eireya was the sense he’d left Earth without exploring or experiencing all he might have wanted.

  An image he held of Earth’s blue sky coalesced into a pair of eyes of an equally unusual, arresting hue. Ilana Hamilton, the crown prince’s sister, lived on Earth. The world rather fascinated him, its brashness, its novelty, its spirit.

  Does Earth fascinate you, or does the woman?

  Ché’s mouth compressed. They’d met but once! Or, more correctly, they’d seen each other once. They were strangers, connected by a highly irregular string of events. Oddly, the same events now led him back to her. Certainly, she’d remember him. She’d remember Klark.

  A shadow passed briefly over Ché’s good cheer. Perhaps he should ask Ian to intercede on his behalf, to notify Ilana of his visit. Decorum demanded it, in fact. But surely the woman would be amenable to showing him to a suitable temporary habitat without her brother’s intervention. Ché didn’t want to tip his hand or cause a huge political situation.

  He’d have to give the matter some thought. Either way, he knew where and how to find Ilana. She dwelled in the Earth city of Los Angeles, and Vedla intelligence would know the precise location of her abode. It would be in the controlled-access database, and Ché would be able to find the information without arousing curiosity.

  There, on the most godforsaken world he knew, he would lose the persona of prince without sacrificing too many comforts, and sort out his life in a blessedly anonymous fashion. Then, when he returned to Eireya, he’d be ready to good-naturedly beat Ian Hamilton-the-Earth-dweller-crown-prince to the altar in the name of Vash superiority.

  Chapter Two

  Ilana Hamilton sat in her car clutching a handdelivered, surprisingly old-fashioned, gilt-edged wedding invitation. She’d finally gotten brave. Or was it desperate? Either way, she’d pulled the letter from her purse—the letter that had languished unopened on her kitchen counter all week, while a small, silly, irrationally optimistic part of her had hoped that denying its presence would cause the letter to vanish without a trace. Instead, it had loomed over her personal happiness like an executioner’s axe.

  She swallowed, her skin tingling. It wasn’t the wedding that was the problem; she’d love to see her twin brother tie the knot. It was the getting-there part she couldn’t deal with. Attending the wedding meant—she squeezed her eyes shut—flying to another planet. Yet another freaky moment in a life that read like front-page, tabloid news in the National Enquirer.

  It hadn’t always been this way.

  When extraterrestrials made contact with Earth, life changed forever for everyone on the planet—but Ilana’s life had to have changed more than anyone else’s. Her divorced mother had married one of the aliens, Romlijhian B’kah, who’d turned out to be a king—the ruler of the entire galaxy. Even seven years after the fact, it still sounded bizarre. It probably always would. But Jas was happy, happier that Ilana had ever seen her, and Ilana loved her stepfather for that. Rom had no children, but treated Ilana and her twin brother Ian as his own, even going as far as choosing Ian as his heir. Which meant Ian would take Rom’s place someday. Her dorky hunk of a brother: ruler of the galaxy. Fact, not fiction.

  Ilana’s lips thinned. She stared at the sealed envelope in her hands. Now another extraterrestrial was joining the family.

  Ian’s fiancée was a head-to-toe rebel who’d knocked the stuffing out of his shirt—a lot of it, anyway—and had showed the guy how to live, something Ilana had never been able to do for her dear, way-too-serious, four-minutes-older big brother…though not for lack of trying.

  Ilana’s stomach clenched. Her brother’s marriage would take place in the same palace on Sienna where her mother had exchanged vows with Rom. Ilana hadn’t returned there in all the years since. When she’d landed back on Earth, she could ha
ve kissed the ground. That the “ground” was the greasy, sun-baked tarmac at LAX said it all. Barfing for a week each way while stoned on valium and seasickness patches had been a singularly horrific experience that she didn’t care to repeat. Ever.

  Fortunately, politics brought Jas and sometimes Rom to Earth and Los Angeles at least once a year. From those visits and conversations using the three-dimensional image-phone installed in her condo, Ilana kept in touch with the family she missed…the family who thought that her budding career didn’t allow the time off that a trip to Sienna required. The family that thought she was a workaholic and didn’t know the pitiful truth. The family that didn’t know Ilana Hamilton was a fear-of-flying school dropout.

  She tipped her head back, digging her fingers into her hair and holding it away from her face. She had to get over this; she had to. She wasn’t a sissy about anything else in her life. She was in control, even daring. But not when it came to boarding a spaceship. She’d tried hypno-therapy, clinics, and classes—even “Fly Without Fear For Dummies.” What fearful flyer could resist a sixteen-week class with a name like that?

  It was with high hopes and a dry mouth that she’d gone to that first meeting. All was fine until the instructors began to describe the end-of-course field trip, a flight out of LAX, gushing on and on about how much fun the class would have celebrating their newfound guaranteed-in-writing ability to survive airplane flying. Ilana was close to hyperventilating.

  Flying the friendly skies of United was a completely different ball game from launching her puny, candyass, five-foot-seven body into space in something that looked like a triangular, stainless-steel Frisbee. But she didn’t see the point in hanging around to explain, so she left.

  Er, fled, actually. Dashed to her car, where she’d huddled until she’d calmed down enough to drive home. The memory alone made Ilana’s breathing shallow and fast. Pride kept her from admitting that to anyone.

  She slid her hand onto the passenger seat, searching for a bag of nacho-cheese-flavored Corn Nuts like a chain-smoker groping for a pack of cigarettes. The salty snacks looked and tasted like fossilized corn, but they were healthier than other vices she could name and lower in calories than a container of Ben and Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream.

  Eating them soothed her nerves. Nerves, she knew, that were going to be further frayed once she opened the wedding invitation.

  It was time.

  She opened the car door and swung her legs out, sitting there for a moment until the butterflies in her stomach settled. Then, glumly, she stood and climbed an iron staircase that scaled the outside of a renovated warehouse, her backless, red patent leather shoes clanging as she did.

  On the second floor, she flung open the main door to SILF Filmworks—the film company she owned with three friends: Slavica, Leslie, and Flash—and walked inside. The scene that met her was typical, everyone busy with post-production tasks related to the short film they’d recently wrapped. Ilana had a pile of possible future projects waiting on her desk, but she’d get to that later.

  After her private pity-party.

  Her shoes click-clacked over a polished, high-gloss concrete floor that screamed the truth of the studio’s warehouse origins and yet made it trendy. But it also made it very hard to walk in flat, slippery-soled mules without mincing like a geisha.

  Ilana clutched the envelope and bag of Corn Nuts to her chest, her eyes focused on the quiet corner where she planned to indulge her bad mood. She wasn’t about to feel guilty about it, either. She was entitled to a little moping. It wasn’t as if she did it very often. She was impulsive, volatile, and fickle, according to a now ex-boyfriend, but not moody.

  She climbed onto a tall seat that had been a bar stool in another life. A stool in a biker bar. In the bad part of town. When they’d first rented this studio, all she and his friends could afford were garage-sale and bankruptcy-liquidation furnishings. No one felt they’d made enough profit yet to justify giving up the original furniture, although they’d probably keep most of it for sentimental reasons once they moved on to a bigger and better space. “Never forget your roots,” Slavica always said.

  Roots. Ilana frowned. Hers had been ripped out and transplanted. Her father lived in Las Vegas, her mother and brother in space.

  Space, she thought, glowering at the envelope. With the back of her hand, she shoved her hair out of her eyes, blowing away any stragglers with pursed lips. Her earrings swayed as she shook her head, fluffing out the rest of her hair. Then, taking a deep breath, she tore open the envelope. The ornate goldengraved invitation lay open in her lap like a cracked oyster with no pearl:

  His Majesty King Romlijhian B’kah

  and

  Her Royal Highness Queen Jasmine Boswell

  Hamilton B’kah

  request the honor of your presence at the

  Marriage

  of

  Ian Hamilton B’kah, Crown Prince of Sienna

  with

  The Princess Tee’ah Dar

  Ilana read through the entire invitation, from the gorgeous royal seal on top to the last of the events on the bottom of the second page that she’d be required to attend as sister to the groom, days before and after the actual ceremony. But those events weren’t what upset her; she’d been through them before. She could deal with the receptions and the receiving lines, the constant changing of outfits and the hobnobbing with galactic royalty and diplomats, some of whom even spoke English. It was the getting there that she didn’t want to think about.

  She sagged in her seat. The wedding was in early December. It was already July. The clock, as they say, was ticking.

  Her stomach did a somersault. Quickly she tossed a Corn Nut into her mouth, careful to suck off the salt before chewing. Repositioning her backside on the stool, she crossed her left leg over her right. Her foot bobbed. Her backless shoe wobbled, clinging to her big toe. When she was anxious, she fidgeted. It drove some people crazy. But that went both ways: anyone that easily irritated drove her crazy, too.

  She lifted her gaze and studied the others in the big room. These were people who knew her better than most, but even they didn’t realize how thwarted she was by the idea of traveling to her brother’s wedding, because pride kept her from revealing it. Ilana’s friends knew her as someone who wasn’t afraid of risk. They thought of her as a gutsy, take-charge chick. And that’s the way she wanted it to stay.

  She’d known Slavica, Leslie, and their male partner Flash since being freshmen at UCLA’s renowned film school. In the five years since graduation, they’d all worked for others, but now they worked for themselves. It was something of which they were all proud.

  The Holt film was a step up for them, too. Until now, their projects had been much smaller. Going big meant bucks. They could have done it sooner, but maxing out their credit cards, taking second mortgages, and begging friends and family for cash—like so many of the struggling independents they knew had done—wasn’t the route they’d wanted to take. The lure was strong; it wasn’t easy finding investors who’d throw tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars into an independent film. Sure, they could occasionally cut sweetheart deals for crew and equipment, but there were certain costs associated with filmmaking that you just couldn’t get around: production insurance, transportation, meals, sound mixing, a lab to process the movie. And they hadn’t wanted to cut those corners or sacrifice quality.

  Then they’d lucked out: the Holt camp had wanted this documentary made, and had agreed to support it financially without stealing the freedom to explore the actor’s imperfections.

  There had been a lot of pressure, making the leap to the big time, but Ilana’s friendship with Slavica, Leslie, and Flash translated well into their relationship as business partners. Everything had worked out fine. So far. They’d created Dust, a documentary following the movie star and former drug addict Hunter Holt’s laborious road to recovery. The film had done well at the regional festivals, and if it gained buzz a
t Sundance, the most prestigious of them all, it would win them notice on the national level. Everyone in the business knew that more notice meant more money. Money meant the ability to hire better actors, and access to better projects.

  Things didn’t always work out, Ilana had seen. Business ventures broke up friendships. And marriages. Not that she had her eye on that particular gamble anytime soon. Unlike her brother.

  Brother. Wedding. Space. Flying. Nightmare.

  Ah! Ilana’s fingers closed convulsively around her bag of Corn Nuts, crushing it. She pressed her knuckles to her thigh. “I really don’t want to do this,” she said. “I don’t want to go.”

  Leslie spoke without taking her eyes off a publicity trailer she’d created for Dust. “Do what?”

  “Ian’s wedding,” Ilana said.

  “You have to go. He’s your brother.”

  “I know,” Ilana wailed.

  All that her juvenile whining won her was a moment of long-suffering silence.

  When it came to her fabulously rich stepfamily, from which she stubbornly accepted no financial backing, Ilana didn’t expect much pity from her friends. She had access to any party, any club. If she wanted, she could socialize with anyone from the King of England to rock stars, all because of who her stepfather was. But the idea of hanging out with people who opened their doors to her only to gain influence with her family was so obnoxious that it was a struggle to come up with words sleazy enough to describe it. Still…

  “A little sympathy would be nice,” she complained.

  Leslie observed her with perceptive green eyes ringed in smoky gray pencil. “I don’t see why you’re stressing about it now. It’s not like you didn’t know it was coming.”

  “Yes, I did.” Ilana agreed. “But now every detail is embedded in my brain.” She dusted salt off her tight, dark-blue jeans, sucking on another Corn Nut. “It amazes me. Supposedly sane people calling me to debate the merits of old lace versus new, hot appetizers versus cold”—she counted off the most recent crimes on her fingers—“whether Uncle Frank will mind sitting across from his ex-wife’s godchild, and if having yellow tulips in the centerpieces will clash with white wine. And then acting as if every single person in the free world cares!”