Cordinas Crown Jewel Read Free Page A

then only to my family.”
    “I don’t like it, but I promise.”
    “Thanks.” She hefted the tote then walked over to pick up the suitcase.
    “Wait. Don’t walk like that.”
    Baffled, Camilla turned back. “Like what?”
    “Like a princess. Slouch a little, swing your hips a little. I don’t know, Cam, walk like a girl. Don’t glide.”
    “Oh.” Adjusting the strap of the tote, she practiced. “Like this?”
    “Better.” Marian tapped a finger on her lips. “Try taking the steel rod out of your backbone.”
    She worked on it a bit, trying for a looser, easier gait. “I’ll practice,” she promised. “But I have to go now. I’ll call in the morning.”
    Marian rushed after her as Camilla headed for the bedroom door. “Oh, God. Be careful. Don’t talk tostrangers. Lock the car doors. Um … Do you have money, your phone? Have you—”
    “Don’t worry.” At the door, Camilla turned, shot out one brilliant smile. “I have everything I need.
A bientôt
.”
    But when the door shut behind her, Marian wrung her hands. “Oh boy.
Bonne chance, m’amie
.”
    *  *  *
    After ten days, Camilla sang along with the radio. She
loved
American music. She loved driving. She loved doing and going exactly what and where she wanted. Not that the interlude had been without its snags. She knew her parents were concerned. Especially her father, she mused.
    There was too much cop in him, she supposed, for him not to imagine every possible pitfall and disaster that could befall a young woman alone. Especially when the young woman was his daughter.
    He’d insisted she call every day. She’d been firm on offering a once-a-week check-in. And her mother—as always the balance—had negotiated between the two for every three days.
    She loved them so much. Loved what they were to her, to each other. What they were to the world. But it was so much to live up to. And, she knew, they would be appalled that she felt so strongly she had to live up to anything, anyone, but herself.
    Other snags were more practical than emotional. It had struck her the first time she’d checked into a motel—and what an experience that had been—that she couldn’t risk using a credit card. If any clever clerk tagged the name Camilla MacGee and realized who she was, with one call to the local papers she would be—as her brother Dorian would say—busted.
    As a result, her cash was dwindling quickly. Pride, stubbornness and sheer annoyance at her own lack of foresight prevented her from asking her parents to front her the means to continue with her journey.
    It would, after all, negate one of the purposes. A few precious weeks of total independence.
    She wondered how one went about pawning an item. Her watch was worth several thousand dollars. Thatwould be more than enough to see her through. Perhaps she’d look into it at her next stop.
    But for now it was glorious to simply drive. She’d headed north and west from Washington, and had enjoyed exploring parts of West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
    She’d eaten in fast-food restaurants, slept in lumpy beds in highway motels. She’d strolled the streets of small towns and larger cities, had been jostled rudely in crowds. And once had been ignored, then snapped at by a convenience store clerk when she’d stopped for a soft drink.
    It had been marvelous.
    No one—absolutely no one—had taken her picture.
    When she’d wandered through a little park in upstate New York, she’d seen two old men playing chess. She stopped to watch, and found herself being drawn in to their discussion of world politics. It had been both fascinating and delightful.
    She’d loved watching summer burst over New England. It was all so different from her homes in Cordina and Virginia. It was all so … liberating to simply drift where no one knew her, where no one expected anything of her, or caught her between the crosshairs of a camera lens.
    She found herself doing something she did only with family, and the