She fell into an unladylike squat so they were level with each other. Not only was getting down the first thing a puppy trainer did when approaching a wary animal, but the girl was watching Lila’s mouth with the intensity of long practice. Lila had enough experience with hearing service dogs and their owners to recognize that the girl most likely used a combination of her cochlear implants and lip reading to communicate.

“Are you lost?” she asked.

The girl nodded, her arms wrapped protectively around her midsection.

Lila held out a hand with her palm up to show she meant no harm and held it there. That was another good puppy-training trick. Maybe this wouldn’t be as difficult as she’d feared. “Then you’re in luck. I’m not lost at all.”

“You aren’t?” the girl asked, blinking at her.

“Nope. I have an excellent sense of direction.” She held a finger straight up. “You go thataway.”

The girl’s gaze followed the direction Lila was pointing, but she had yet to take Lila’s hand. “Through the ceiling?” she asked doubtfully.

“Well, no. You have to take the stairs, I’m afraid. There’s an elevator around here somewhere, but I’m not sure where to find it.”

That caused the doubt in the girl’s voice to increase. “You mean this isn’t your castle?”

The Davenport Hotel, where the event was being held, was about as fancy as Spokane architecture got, but it was hardly what Lila would call a castle. “Oh, um. No. I think it’s owned by local real-estate developers, actually.”

Apparently, that was the wrong answer. The girl’s arms clenched tighter around her stomach, a fresh bout of tears starting to take shape in her eyes. “I thought it was your castle.”

Lila had no idea how she was supposed to respond. It wasn’t in her nature to lie to small children, but she didn’t know what else to do. Her sister Sophie would have been able to comfort the girl with kind words and a smile, and Dawn would have had her laughing within minutes, but Lila had always been better with adults than children.

Then again, she’d also always been the kind of woman to dress sensibly and stand her ground when faced with an unexpected encounter with an ex-boyfriend. Clearly, today was an anomaly.

“My castle is much bigger than this one,” she said, casting her scruples aside. “And it’s located in, um, a faraway kingdom?”

It was the right thing to say. A look of relief swept over the girl’s face, the beginnings of a smile taking shape in the perfect bow of her mouth. “You are a real princess,” she said. “I knew it.”