was obviously a very new buzz cut (something he’d done, he told me, to make himself less recognizable during his undercover journey) and a girl with wavy brown hair that she’d tried—and mostly failed—to force into a neat ponytail. A guy who was much taller than his girl, but slowed his strides to make it easy for her to keep up with him. A girl dressed like everyone else in Chicago, complete with the flip-flops that everyone wore during the summer, while the guy was dressed slightly more formally, wearing his jeans and T-shirt like they didn’t quite feel natural to him, yet. Both of them laughing at something one or the other had said and pointing at this and that as they walked.
Sure, we would have looked like any other couple in love. Nothing about us would have indicated what we actually were: A foreign prince on the run from his brother, the king, and the girl he’d gotten pregnant on the first weekend they’d met. A guy who was currently hiding from the brother who wanted him to settle down and start taking his responsibilities seriously… and the girl who was on the verge of introducing a whole big new responsibility into his life.
No one would have realized that what we were actually talking about as we walked through the butterfly enclosure and toward the carousel—Francisco laughing and ducking as butterflies tried to land on him, and me giggling at his antics—was how we were going to tell my parents that we were having a baby.
Or even whether we wanted to.
I’d told him already that I hadn’t spoken to them in a year and that I wasn’t positive whether they would want to hear from me at all—regardless of whether I was sharing news about a new addition to the family. For all I knew, that was one more thing they’d be disappointed in me about. One more area where they’d think I’d failed them.
They’d had plans for a daughter who went out there and made a big splash in the world. They’d thought they were helping me go to college so I could travel the world and make music. Not so I could become a bartender and then get pregnant out of wedlock.
They’d certainly been clear enough on the bartending point when we fell out a year ago. No, they hadn’t gone so far as to assume I was going to get pregnant, but they’d definitely expected that I would walk down the wrong path once I started working in a bar.
I’d told them again and again that I had no intention of letting the job define me or dictate the way I was going to live my life. I hadn’t planned to sleep with every other guy who came through the door. I hadn’t even planned to sleep with any of the guys who came through the door of the bar.
Of course, then I’d met Francisco. A guy who had actually come through the door of my bar. And everything had changed.
I watched him as he ducked and wove along the pathway ahead of me, laughing because he knew how ridiculous he looked, and I laughed myself. If I’d known he had such an aversion to bugs, I wouldn’t have suggested we hit this particular encounter first.
Though if I was being honest, watching him, a freaking prince, looking so silly almost made the whole thing worth it.
In fact…
Without even thinking about it, I pulled my phone from my back pocket and started videoing the dance that Francisco was doing in front of me. I made sure to get the faces of the people around him, too, as they laughed and got out of his way, all of them trying to figure out what exactly he was doing, and why.
And before I knew it, most of the people in the exhibit were laughing and stopping to watch him, all of them enthralled at the laughter and antics coming from the man who evidently considered butterflies to be the most dangerous creatures in the entire world.
I followed along after him, videoing and laughing, trying to keep the phone still so I didn’t miss anything, and by the time we got to the enormous screened doors—followed by what I thought of as a clean room, where a zoo employee checked us for any hitch-hiking insects—and then out the doors into the outside world again, my belly actually ached from how hard I’d been laughing.
Francisco turned to me, grinning and