“I do,” Konstantin affirmed.
“Mom said you are a prince, but you know... Princes are only in fairy tales.” Mikhail cast a sidelong glance at his mother, but he didn’t seem worried she’d be upset he was checking on her veracity.
“Do you like fairy tales?” Konstantin asked him.
“Not really. I like...” Mikhail named a popular children’s series about an animal family. “There’s a mom and dad and grandparents and everything.”
“You have a grandfather, two uncles and aunt who will be delighted to meet you. One of your uncles is a king, but we aren’t a fairy tale.”
“Really? Am I a prince?”
“No, but you are an earl.” Though not officially. Not yet. But Konstantin would make sure Mikhail had his rightful place in the family as his eldest child.
“What’s an earl?”
“It is a title of nobility. It means you are a member of the Royal Family of Mirrus.”
Mikhail’s nose and forehead scrunched in thought. “But my mom is not a princess.”
“No.” Not yet.
“That’s good.”
“It is?”
“Yeah. She gets real messy with her paints sometimes and when she gardens. And when she did the floors in my room? She got sweaty, like whoa.”
Konstantin couldn’t hold back a smile at his son’s reply and phrasing. He looked at Emma, sharing the joke. “Like whoa?”
“He picked it up at his preschool day care.”
“My teacher says it,” Mikhail informed them, his tone revealing the boy’s admiration for the teacher.
Emma’s smile for their son was loving and a little amused. “Yes, he does.”
“You don’t think princesses get messy or sweaty?” Konstantin asked Mikhail.
“Do they?’ Mikhail asked rather than answered, his face alight with little-boy curiosity.
“They do.”
Mikhail gave Emma a dubious look. “I guess you can be a princess, Mom.”
Emma laughed, the sound filled with genuine amusement. “That’s all right, sweetie. I’ll stick with plain old Emma Carmichael.”
Not if Konstantin had anything to say about it.
Konstantin paced his hotel room while he spoke in rapid Russian to his brother King Nikolai of Mirrus.
“Yes, she had a copy of the restraining order,” he said to his brother Nikolai now.
“But why would Sir Popov take it on himself to take out a TRO on your behalf? Did you say it is based on testimony given by you?” Nikolai demanded, sounding as judgmental as only an older brother who was also a king and had never done anything stupid like break up with the mother of his child could.
Needing to understand where the TRO had come from, Konstantin had called the senior palace lawyer, Sir Albert Popov, Esquire, before reaching out to Nikolai.
The phone call had been as confusing as it had been illuminating.
Konstantin was trying to figure out why Tiana had done what she had, even while he talked to his brother.