Emma and the prince
Emma didn’t have time for romance . . . until she met Byron!
Inching along in traffic, Emma Alastair glanced at the dashboard. 5:15. After a meeting with her editor, she’d hoped to be home and at work in her studio by now. But the road was jammed with cars as far as the eye could see. When the traffic suddenly stopped dead, Emma braked and took her hands from the wheel. She gathered up her long auburn curls, coiled them into a tousled knot, then took a calming breath. Her mind, as it often did, began to wander. Today, it wandered to her afternoon meeting and to the pressing subject of . . . dragons.
Emma had always been a dreamer. When she was younger, her tendency to drift off into daydreams sometimes got her into trouble: “Finish your homework, Emma,” her mother would say when she caught her drawing ponies and princesses in her notebook instead of working on her assignment. “Emma!” her teachers reproved when they noticed her gazing off during class. No one was surprised when the dreamy girl grew up to become an illustrator of children’s books.
She took in his coal-black curls and gleaming smile
This spring evening, stuck in traffic, Emma was also stuck on a problem involving her current project, a fairy tale whose cast of characters included a king, a queen and a headstrong young princess, along with knights, a medieval castle and a dragon. At today’s meeting, the editor had loved all her sketches but one: the dragon. “I don’t know, Emma,” she’d said. “Maybe a bit scary? A bit too . . . reptilian for our readers?”
Emma was eager to get back to her drawing board.
Behind her, a driver honked, and Emma saw that traffic was moving again. With her foot on the gas pedal, she glanced up and noticed the cotton-white clouds drifting across the blue sky had formed into the shape of a plump dragon with puffs of cloud-smoke trailing from its snout. A sweet, chubby, snowwhite dragon! Why not? Her delighted laugh caught in her throat when her car suddenly jolted, hard, into the car ahead of her.
While she was cloud-gazing, traffic had stopped again.
Horns honked behind her. The car she’d run into pulled onto the shoulder, and she followed.
The other driver, a tall, darkhaired man about her age, got out of his car, and as Emma jumped from hers, she cried, “I am so sorry! I wasn’t paying attention—i was looking at the clouds! I’ll get my phone and . . . ”
“Whoa.” the man smiled and held up his hands. “I don’t see any damage to my car. Do you see any to yours?”
Emma peered at the bumpers. “No, actually,” she frowned. “But it felt like I hit you pretty hard.”
“As far as I can see, there’s no harm done.” He shrugged. “What do you say we get back on the road?”
With smiles and waves, they climbed into their cars and eased back into traffic. What a nice guy. Emma wouldn’t have minded exchanging contact info with him. The thought made her smile.
Two days later, Emma broke from work to go to the grocery store. Pushing her cart through the aisles, she thought of the illustration she was working on today—the castle gardens, full of flowers, fountains and fanciful statuary. As she approached the checkout, she spotted a glossy gardening magazine whose cover showed a botanic wonderland of trailing roses, jumbles of bright blooms and an enchanting gazebo. It was perfect! She was pushing forward, reaching for the magazine, when she ran her cart, hard, into the back of the man ahead of her in line. “Oh!” Emma cried. “I’m sorry!” The man turned, and Emma’s blue eyes widened.
“It’s you!” His look of irritation faded, then he scanned the ceiling. “No clouds in here,” he said. “What caught your attention this time?”
Emma blushed. “The beautiful garden on that magazine cover.”
He looked. “It is beautiful,” he agreed, “but there’s the matter of this second collision, which, as a lawyer, I feel we need to discuss.” Pause. “Perhaps over coffee?” he suggested.
Emma’s eyes sparkled, but her face assumed a serious expression. “Of course,” she said. “It’d be unwise to let a careless driver off the hook after a second run-in.”
“Exactly.” The man held out his hand. “I’m Byron.” He smiled. “Yes. Like the poet. My mother was a romantic.”
“I’m Emma,” she said. And as she smiled into Byron’s dark brown eyes and took in his coalblack curls and gleaming smile, she thought he really would make the perfect model for a fairytale prince.
— Jenny Welsh