Chapter Ninety-Five

The Redwood Heights Luxury Lodge was a Hidden Springs landmark. It had been there, well, since Hidden Springs became a top destination for celebrities and the rich to kick back and relax. But lately the town had been losing ground to newer tourist locales such as Sunlit Tides, Monte Vista, Aurora Skies, and, lately, the new kid on the block, Isla Paradiso, which, ironically, was the rumored location of Princess Anastasia's honeymoon.

The city planning committee wanted to do something about that. They wanted to hire an architect to update and remodel the Lodge, to make it more attractive to tourists and locals alike. Who better to hire, then, than a native of Hidden Springs, with a deep understanding of its history and culture?



Princess Anastasia and her fiancé, Lucian, set foot inside the Lodge for the first time since being appointed to remodel it, and decided that indeed, a lot of work needed to be done to it to bring it up to date. Not impossible, she thought, but this place needs more work than I realized.



The views from one of the bedroom windows are spectacular.



Meanwhile, the palace press corps continued to try to lessen the fallout from leaked pictures of Alexandra dancing with a woman at Anastasia's bachelorette party.



The next morning, even Prince Renauld asked Anastasia about them. "Do you know the young lady in the photographs?" he asked her.



Anastasia's first and last instinct was to protect her sister -- at all costs. "No -- I -- I don't know who she is."



"Your mother is very upset about these pictures. She didn't sleep all night."
Anastasia laughed. "Well, she's the one with the problem. Besides, this is entirely ridiculous. I don't see why such a big deal is being made about pictures of someone dancing."

Chapter Ninety-Four

When the Vanderburg twins throw a party, it's an event, and it usually lands on the pages of the gossip magazines.



Anastasia's bachelorette bash was no exception.

Held at the twins' new estate in the Hidden Springs mountains, far away from the palace, the party had a guest list that read as a who's who in young Hidden Springs society, and even included a few of the princess' college friends.



Including one Samantha Grey, the rumored romantic interest of one Andrew Cheesman, Jr.



And designer Tyler Wentworth, rumored to be designing Princess Anastasia's wedding gown.



The first item everyone seemed to be buzzing about was Alexandra's new haircut. The soon-to-be maid of honor showed up with her blondish hair cropped very short, and wearing a slender black dress with a low-cut back.



After Alexandra's well-rehearsed toast to Anastasia and Lucian, the festivities really began.



First, the cake dancers entertained the guests with raucous numbers.





Then, after the dancers left, the guests entertained themselves with music and revelry.





Led by the bride- and groom-to-be themselves, the partying lasted well into the night.

Chapter Ninety-Three

Deep down, Anastasia was afraid. Frightened out of her wits.
She dare not confide her fears to the two closest people in her life, her fiancé and her sister.
With a week to go before her big day, she was afraid of everything going wrong. But even more so, she was afraid of being precisely the kind of mother her own mother had been to her.
Cold, distant, hypercritical. Too busy with matters of state to bother with her own children.
When Anastasia wrote letter after letter begging to come home from Smuggsworth after being mercilessly bullied, the silence was deafening. She received no response. She was forced to continue with her studies there, even though she hated it.
And, as she watched the snow continue to fall and the drifts pile high outside her window, she began to wonder if all she was doing was all worth it.
Was she getting cold feet? Was she even sure this was what she wanted?



As she picked up her new Persian, Duchess, a pre-wedding gift from Lucian, and stroked her, it was clear that she'd have to hold her nerve just a little while longer.



In the midst of her reverie the phone rang. It was the city planner's office.
Anastasia had had her run ins with the city planner, who like all the other government officials in Hidden Springs had been hand picked by her mother. "Hello?" she asked.
The city planner on the other end of the line waited patiently. "As you well know, Your Highness, tourism is the life blood of this town's economy, and the recent snowstorms have put quite a damper on that. We're hoping to revitalize the industry, and we've decided that a facelift on the old Redwood Heights Lodge would be just the thing to start with."
"What are you saying?"
"We've heard of your architectural abilities, Highness, and we'd like you to handle the job."
"Me?" she asked, with a mixture of glee and disbelief.
Gulp.
"If we can put a facelift on the lodge, we can bring the tourists back."
If Anastasia accepted the new job, would she have to postpone her wedding? And what would she tell Lucian? How would she even approach him?

Chapter Ninety-Two

When Alexandra arrived at the palace after work, her cell phone rang. She looked at her caller ID and was surprised. "AJ! I thought you disappeared off the face of the earth!" she laughed. "Maybe got abducted by aliens."
"Been busy."
Alexandra sighed. "Same here, actually. You know my sister's getting married in two weeks --"
"Who hasn't heard about that one?" He chuckled. "Been all over the news."
"Are you coming to the wedding?"
"Me? At a royal wedding?" AJ burst out laughing.
"Yes, you, at a royal wedding. Why not you at a royal wedding? I sent the invite, I surely hope you got it by now."
"Well, Samantha has to go cause she's one of the bridesmaids, but I told her --"
"Then you gotta come."
"I don't have to do anything but watch the whole darn thing unfold from my living room." AJ laughed again. "Best seat in the world. No screaming throngs, no traffic jams. Besides, weddings aren't my thing anyway. Particularly royal weddings."
"But funerals surely are," teased Alexandra.
"Hey -- I didn't know your dad's funeral was going on that night. I just, you know, happened to be in the area and I thought I'd stop by, I took a wrong turn --"
"Nope, it was the right turn," Alexandra grinned surreptitiously. "Listen, remember I told you that my mom made that ultimatum that my sister and I had to get married in 10 days or lose our inheritance?"
"Yeah, that was insane."
"I didn't get a chance to tell you what happened next. So, my sister and I, we came up with a plan to get mom off our back about marriage. We used this top secret formula, called imaginary friend metamorphium, this compound, which turned our imaginary friend dolls that we had since we were kids into real Sims."
"No way, that's impossible. Those things are plush, they can't be made real. My little sister and brother each have one of those."
"With this compound they can be made real. But there's a catch. In order for it to work you have to have built an excellent relationship with it."
"No way, not even." AJ whispered, "So, did it work?"
"Well, there's a wedding in two weeks -- you be the judge." Alexandra let out another chuckle.
"Does your mom know?"
"Of course not. We haven't told her. And I don't want you telling anyone else either."
"Hey, I'm pretty good with secrets."
Alexandra changed the subject. "I have a speech next week at Fort Starch."
"You -- speaking there?"
"Yeah, wild, huh? My brother asked me to address the cadet classes."
"Now that, I'd pay the price of admission to see."
Alexandra sighed. "It's going to be like every other address ever given at Fort Starch -- dry and dull."
"It doesn't have to be. Not with you giving it."
"I'm going to be halfway asleep at the podium, I'm serious. It's one of those state of the union type speeches. Ugh."
"Well, Alex, one thing you can do is, try to talk about something that catches your interest, that might also catch the ear of the cadets, too. Oh, and picture all the cadets in their underwear. That might loosen you up a bit."
Alexandra let loose a hearty, guttural laugh. AJ was good for that. "Oh my gosh, do you want me cracking up on the podium, too?"