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Billionaires in Disguise: Maxence #2
Blair Babylon
Contents
Order
The Gospel of Matthew 25: 31-46
1. Disappear
2. Deacon Father Maxence Grimaldi
3. Mission Team
4. Jumla
5. A Demon in her Ear
6. Choices
7. Monagasquay, Again
8. One High-Tech Preemie Mono-Tasker
9. The Importance of Milk
10. Pashmina
11. Crash and Burn
12. Tattoo
13. Necessity
14. Grace
15. Jumla, Again
16. Renunciation
To the legions of priests and ministers I’ve argued with over the decades.
I still believe in Liberation Theology.
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Billionaires in Disguise: Maxence #2
By: Blair Babylon
Dree Clark thought tall, ripped, thoroughly hot Augustine was her knight in shining armor, until she discovered he was her priest.
Where’s the last place in the world evil drug dealers from Phoenix would look for a girl who owes them money?
Nepal.
Dree is on the run. Her dead ex-boyfriend owes a whole lot of money to some drug dealers, and if they can’t get the cash from Dree, they’ll take it out of her hide. When Catholic Charities offers Dree a mission into the far reaches of Nepal because they need a nurse, Dree jumps at the opportunity and prays she’ll be safe.
Until she meets the Catholic priest who’ll be leading the mission.
It’s Augustine, the sexy guy from Paris, but he has a new name, Father Maxence Grimaldi.
Well, she’d told him to lie to her.
She just never thought he’d lie about being a priest.
Now, she’s journeying far out into the wilds with the hot priest.
And oh God, they’re riding motorcycles, and he’s wearing black leather with a priest’s collar.
And there aren’t enough darned tents to go around.
She’s not going to be able to keep her hands off him.
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Published by Malachite Publishing LLC
Copyright 2020 by Malachite Publishing LLC
When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory.
All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?”
The King will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”
Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.”
They also will answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?”
He will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”
Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.
The Gospel of Matthew 25: 31-46
Chapter One
Disappear
Maxence
Maxence Grimaldi disappeared.
Maxence Grimaldi disappeared because that’s what he always did.
When he’d left Dree Clark sleeping in the enormous bed in the suite of the Four Seasons George V Hotel in Paris, he’d brushed her blond hair with a kiss, showered and packed in the bathroom, and quickly let himself out without waking her up. The hotel had summoned a car to take him to the Orly airport, where he’d boarded a private plane to take him to Kathmandu, Nepal.
A stewardess wearing a scarlet sheath dress with her black hair carefully smoothed back in a French twist leaned down and asked him, “Would you like scotch or wine, sir? Or something else?”
Maxence glanced at his phone, which was receiving a signal from the plane’s Wi-Fi connection. “It’s seven o’clock in the morning.”
She smiled.
Maxence shrugged. “Scotch.”
Her smile turned conspiratorial. “Yes, sir. And for breakfast?”
“Eggs. Toast. Something substantial. Thank you, Malini.”
She walked back to the plane’s galley, her slim figure swaying as she walked between the white leather reclining seats that lined the narrow fuselage of the aircraft.
The engines whined as the small jet drilled through the air, and Maxence spread his hands on the rich, burled wood of the table where he sat. Three more oversized seats, currently unoccupied, also stood around the table. He stretched his legs underneath, enjoying these last few minutes of luxury.
Not minutes, actually. Hours. The flight from Paris to Nepal, even with a private plane and with only a short refueling and reprovisioning stop in Doha, Qatar, was still nearly fifteen hours.
They raced south and east, toward the encroaching night, so his day would be shortened by several time zones. The plane would land in Nepal in the early morning of the next day.
Maxence Grimaldi ruminated for fifteen long hours upon the choices he had made in his life.
Some of that time, he read to deepen his thoughts. Several meals were brought to him, which were of excellent quality, and he ate. The two air hostesses tag-teamed Max to keep him company, sitting across from him at the table while they ate and indulging in polite small talk. The three of them played cards for a little while.
It wasn’t all charity. Long-haul flights weren’t easy on the flight crews, either. They were going to have to turn around and fly this long route again on the way back with an empty plane the next day. Max planned to be in Nepal for at least a month, perhaps two, so there was no use keeping the plane, the pilots, and these ladies stranded at the Kathmandu airport for such a long stretch. His family would surely utilize it in the interim.
As the hours passed, the air hostesses spent less time with him, as they always did, and Maxence spent more time reading and contemplating.
The plane raced toward midnight and the spot on the horizon where the sun would rise.
When it grew dark, Maxence asked for turndown service, and the air hostesses reclined one of the couches into a dou
ble bed and laid sheets on it before closing the window shades.
The turbulence of his thoughts would not allow him to sleep. He didn’t feel regret. He never did after one of those interludes when he slipped sideways and fell into temptation and his life as it might have been. But his lack of discipline and the depths of his own depravity disgusted him. He should not indulge like that. He should not lose discipline.
Although, if he hadn’t met Dree Clark, who had captivated him for those few days, it probably would have been worse.
It certainly would have included a greater number of women.
He probably should have thanked her for keeping him from having to perform even more penance, which was another item he would have to deal with when he reached the rectory in Kathmandu.
Two hours before they arrived in Nepal, Maxence arose from where he had reclined but not slept, and he took a small suitcase from the back of the plane, where it had been stowed for this purpose. He shooed the air hostesses back behind the curtain that shielded the galley for a few minutes of privacy. Malini wouldn’t let the other woman peek, not that Max cared.
Maxence was a large man, six feet four inches, and packed with a generous amount of muscle. For him, trying to change his clothes in a tiny airplane bathroom was an invitation for disaster. He would at least break the mirror when he stretched, if not accidentally tear a cabinet off the wall when he tried to put on a shirt.
He removed a suit of unrelieved black clothes from the suitcase and set them aside. He shrugged off the black Armani suit jacket he wore and unbuttoned the white, silk-blend shirt underneath.
Under his shirt, he wore a slim platinum cross on a thin chain that he didn’t take off. He’d hung it around his neck directly before he’d left the hotel and Dree sleeping like an angel in the crisp, cotton sheets.
As he removed each item of clothing, he folded the clothes neatly and tucked them inside the empty luggage.
After a quick shower in the private plane’s minuscule stall, he donned the other set of clothes, which was just as finely made and also Armani, but tailored in a more subdued style. He tucked the platinum cross inside the shirt, next to his skin.
The shirt’s collar was a high, ecclesiastical band into which he inserted a white tab.
It felt less like a baptism and more like a snake shedding its worthless skin.
When Maxence looked up in the mirror, a Catholic priest—or almost-priest—wearing a Roman collar looked back at him, judging him for the way that he had spent the month since he had last worn ecclesiastical garb.
It was a harsh judgment, as it should be.
Also, his black hair fell in curls over his forehead and around his ears. He really should’ve made time for a haircut while he was in Paris.
When he returned to his seat, he slipped on a suit jacket that matched the slacks, also in sober black and as well-tailored as everything else he owned.
Back at the suitcase, Maxence removed a fine gold crucifix on a string of black rosary beads from a side pouch of the bag and stuffed it in one of his pockets. He looped a different cross around his neck, a slightly larger one made of iron on a matte, metal chain.
As the plane began to descend to Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport, Maxence took the opportunity to utilize the plane’s Wi-Fi to check his messages.
His cousin Alexandre had texted a long diatribe about their family’s political machinations and how much of his time these intrigues required. Alex also said he was on his way home because a particular errand required his presence, which seemed menacing, and he suggested that if Maxence wanted to attend their dying uncle’s funeral, he might want to start finding his way home because it would happen soon. Alex also mentioned that his wife, Georgie, had been in touch with her college friend who had married the notorious Wulfram von Hannover, and unmentionable plans had swung into progress re: Flicka.
That was even more menacing, but Alexandre had a flair for seeming a bit of a dangerous psychopath. His reputation for the occasional brutal murder had probably kept him alive. The Grimaldi all had their tricks.
Maxence inhaled a steadying breath and, for the first time in days, checked his limited, private social media and the newsfeeds.
He found a picture on his social media feed that stopped his heart.
Max’s ex-girlfriend, Flicka von Hannover, the one who got away, stood beside his older brother, Pierre, and they posed for the cameras as the happily married couple they were purported to be. Her smile was not the joyful grin Maxence had seen directed at himself so many times, but she wore the formal, seamless mask she used for important engagements and when she was weeping inside.
A bump of turbulence jostled the airplane, and Max’s arm swayed with the phone as he tried to compensate.
Queasiness filled his stomach, and he swallowed hard.
Maybe it was an old picture because Pierre was pulling a PR stunt. Anything was possible.
He sent a DM to his cousin Marie-Therese Grimaldi, Is Flicka in Monaco?
He waited only minutes for Marie-Therese’s reply. Yeah, she just showed up out of nowhere. I saw that pic, too. When I asked around, everybody’s hush-hush, but they said she’s in the palace. My dad is *pissed.* He thought she had divorced Pierre. And then, you know.
No, Maxence didn’t know what his Uncle Jules would do in that case, and he sure as hell didn’t want to. Jules Grimaldi was a psychopath of the highest degree and a virulent racist and misogynist. Maxence had expected someone to dox him as an actual Nazi for years, but it hadn’t happened so far. Jules had probably never made the mistake of committing his intent and manifestos to writing or the internet because he was diabolically intelligent. However, Max had heard Jules’s sinister diatribes at suppers and repeated from the mouth of Marie-Therese.
He stared at the picture again.
No matter what, Flicka was out in the open now. Both Alexandre, who was a past and potentially future murderer, and Flicka’s older brother, Wulfram, were en route to her.
Wulfram von Hannover was one of the most powerful people in the world in his own quiet way and employed a startling number of mercenaries.
In this situation, Maxence knew to step aside and allow the reputed serial killer and the mastermind who owned paramilitary units to take care of the problem. He swiped out of the window on his phone and turned off the Wi-Fi and cellular signal, essentially demoting it to a camera and an off-line e-reader.
Max would have little reason to use the phone while he was in Kathmandu on the mission that would take him into the interior of Nepal. There probably wouldn’t be any cellular signal, anyway.
He might as well leave it off.
Plus, turning off his phone was one of his most essential tactics when he disappeared, he’d discovered years ago. Palace security had a much harder time tracking him if he didn’t ping a cellular signal everywhere he went.
But the palace and court intrigues and soft, delicious women were behind him now. He was no longer Maxence of the Grimaldi.
He touched the stiff, white square in the collar near his Adam’s apple, reminding himself of who and what he was.
There was no reason to torture himself with what might have been with Flicka or what he’d had with the buoyant, bubbly Dree Clark, whom his body longed for even as he sat in an airplane speeding away from her.
His palms remembered the satin of her skin, and his fingertips recalled the silk of her hair as he clenched it in his fist at the back of her head. His skin grew sensitive, and the rough fabric of his clothes rubbed his torso and thighs.
Maxence drew a deep breath and settled his soul. It was unlikely that he’d ever see her again, or at least never when they could be together. Those four sensual days had been stolen time, a moment that could never come again. That life was behind Max, and he packed the sensations and desires into the back of his mind where they could not touch him.
Sitting in the seat wearing a Roman collar and his pocket heavy with a rosary, that stolen time
was not his life.
Max sought to do good in the world and commune with God instead of indulging his appetites and lusts, which was the usual lifestyle for members of his family. He wasn’t different from them, but he had chosen a different path.
Dawn bloomed like a rising chrysanthemum over the sawtooth horizon, and the irresistible lure of the habits Maxence had cultivated rose within him.
Malini and the other stewardess would be watching, but Maxence would do it anyway. He’d already prayed the Office of Readings in the dark before they’d awakened.
He drew his rosary from his pocket and laid the crucifix so that it dangled over the edge of the table.
In the Liturgy of the Hours—the daily litany of prayers mandatory for Catholic priests, deacons, and religious laypeople—Lauds is the early morning prayer to the rising sun that represents the risen Christ. Praying the Office of the Aurora consecrates the day to Christ.
He consulted the e-book he had stored on his phone months before and scrolled through the text to find the ordained prayer for that morning, Friday, December twelfth.
As always for Lauds, he pressed his palms together, and began, “Lord, open our lips, and we shall praise your name.” He whispered the prayers in his deep baritone voice, and quietly sang the antiphons that buttressed the Psalm, an Old Testament Canticle, and the Psalm of praise for that day. He knew he had a good singing voice. A streak of musicality ran through his family.
The practice rolled through him, knowing that laypeople and priests were facing a crucifix and the rising sun as its light moved across the Earth and repeating the same prayers to dedicate that day and their lives to something greater than themselves.
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