Page 64 of The Wedding Toast
“Why hello, Miss Zia.How are you today?”
“I am very well, thank you.”She looked at the others.“Hello, growly dragon.Hello, other dragon.”
Slade and Xander both chuckled.
She turned to Bentley.“You’re King Cornflower’s best friend, aren’t you?”
Bentley nodded.“I am.”
“And you have another state.”
Jacob smiled at his friend.He assumed the girl meant estate.She’d probably heard people talking about the DuPont estate.
“I do,” Bentley confirmed.
The girl tilted her head to the side.“You’re the one who likes the other blue flowers.”
Bentley looked a little taken aback, but Jacob figured she’d heard people discussing how he’d incorporated bluebells when he proposed to Alyssa in a different but similar way to how Jacob had used cornflowers.
“That’s right,” Bentley nodded slowly.“Just as Becca loves cornflowers, my lady loves bluebells.”
Zia pondered that for a moment.“Then you’re King Bluebell,” she announced, “and your lady is Queen Bluebell.”
Bentley exchanged a glance with Jacob and nodded.“I guess we are.”
“You don’t need to guess,” Zia told him.“It’s decided.”
The others laughed.
As Reaves came to join them, looking a little sheepish, he opened his mouth to speak, but Zia beat him to it.
“This is Prince Daddy.”
Jacob smirked.Xander and Slade laughed out loud.
Zia scowled at them.“Why is that funny?”
Slade looked apologetic as he crouched down so that he could speak to her at eye level.“It’s not funny,” he explained.“We weren’t laughing at you.”He glanced up at Reaves.“Or at him.I just wondered why these two are kings, but Reaves is only a prince.”
Zia scowled at him and surprised Jacob when she went to take hold of Reaves’s hand.“He’s notonlya prince, heisa prince.And he’smyprince.They are kings because they already have their flowers and their ladies.He’s Prince Daddy because he’s not a daddy yet, but when he is, he’ll be the king ofallthe daddies.”
She nodded solemnly, as if the subject were closed.
Reaves just shrugged at them.
“I didn’t think you’d be here this early,” said Jacob.He’d been hoping to let Reaves off the hook by moving the conversation along, but it seemed that he’d embarrassed him.
“Our first flight isn’t for a little while yet, but I wanted to check on Zia.”Reaves glanced over at Alara, who was watching them while she fussed with the arch.
“Did you know that his daddy lives in a castle?”Slade asked Zia.
Jacob bit back a laugh at the way the little girl’s eyes widened.
She looked up at Reaves.“A real castle?”
He squatted down beside her.“It looks like a real castle.”
“It does,” Bentley agreed.“It’s a very cool castle.”
