Free The Runaway Princess by Hester Browne Page B

instant, I caught movement from the steps down to Marigold’s basement flat—what had been the servants’ entrance in ye olden days—and stumbled as I got to my feet. Someone was making his way up, presumably having failed to get any answer from Marigold’s doorbell.
    I froze. Was this Kit Pike, come for the horse’s birth certificate? What was I supposed to say?
    Badger carried on with his guard dog routine, barking like a much bigger dog, and pulled so hard I dropped the lead. He made a dash for the top of the steps, yapping furiously; then, when the man didn’t stop coming up, Badger started snapping at his trouser legs, to my mortification.
    “Badger!” I yelled. “Knock it
of
f
!”
    “Hey! Enough of that!” the man said, much more mildly than Badger deserved—I was already saying a lot worse, in my head—and I recognized the voice at once.
    A searing blush started around my forehead and spread rapidly across my whole body.
    It wasn’t Kit Pike. It was Leo.
    As he emerged from the steps, he looked a bit different in a work suit than in the jeans and shirt I’d seen him in on Saturday night, but everything else was very much the same. The teddy-bear blond hair, the shy smile, the arresting blue eyes.
    Actually, he looked better in a suit. He looked like a suit model, but capable of doing whatever job he needed to wear the suit for.
    Predictably, my brain went into standby mode, just when I needed it.
    “He won’t bite,” I babbled, “he’s just very barky and— Badger! Stop it! He has a thing about deliverymen—I think one must have kicked him when he was at my gran’s—not that I’m saying you look like a deliveryman, obviously, or that you kicked him— Badger !”
    I finally stamped on Badger’s lead just as he launched forward again, but not before Leo stumbled back to avoid him, and fell into the railings running alongside.
    He spun, then sat down with a thump on the stone front steps, and I grabbed the growling Badger and scooped him under my arm. I wished there were some kind of rewind button I could press to do this the way I’d been imagining it in my head for
the past four days
. Most of those scenarios had ended with Leo laughing at my ready wit, then taking me out for dinner. None of them had involved this much apologizing before we’d even begun.
    “I’m
really
sorry. Are you okay? He didn’t rip anything, did he?” I went to help him up, then thought better of it, in case Badger went for his tie. It looked like a really expensive tie; I had an awful mental image of Badger swinging from it by his teeth. “This is Badger. My dog. He’s a bit protective of me and Jo. Thinks he’s the man of the house!”
    “Well, I guess he’s cuter than a burglar alarm.” Leo nodded at him warily, and got up, brushing dust from his trousers. “Unless you’re a burglar. Does he do that to everyone?”
    “Just, er, deliverymen.” I shook my head, and put Badger down, clamping him between my feet for safety. “And men with hats. And men who look like the dodgy handyman who lived next door to Gran. That’s why he wasn’t invited to the party—he operates a really strict door policy.”
    “You mean, he wouldn’t have let Rolf in?”
    “Not if he was wearing a hat, or carrying a parcel, no.” I grinned nervously. “Santa gets a hard time of it. That’s why he uses the chimney.”
    Badger was sniffing the air between him and Leo, and I could feel his wiry body trembling through my jeans; but then Leo made some kind of clicking noise and, to my astonishment, Badger sat down and looked balefully up at him through his sparse white lashes.
    “Wow,” I said, amazed. “How did you do that?”
    Leo raised an eyebrow. “Deliveryman trade secret.”
    I took a deep breath and noticed, out of the corner of my brain, that the air was tangy with the scent of next door’s winter honeysuckle, which bloomed early every year. I could smell spring in the air, even though it was still winter.