Once Upon a Time: Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka

by Blair Babylon

  “I don’t trust those Monegasque Secret Service guys. Neither does Wulf.”

  Flicka glanced around them, finally remembering some operational protocol.

  She said, “Dance with me.”

  Dieter looked out over the crowd of targets and potential perpetrators. “I’m on duty.”

  “Everyone is looking at us because we are just standing here, arguing. We’re too conspicuous. Dance with me so people will stop staring.”

  He had never danced with her in public. The lapse in protocol would have been insane. “It’s your wedding reception. You just married your husband. You should be dancing with him and mingling.”

  “I have mingled and made the rounds and greeted until even I, a classic extrovert, am terribly tired of peopling.”

  “Dancing with me would be inappropriate.”

  She laughed. “Everybody thinks you’re like an uncle to me.”

  That felt like a punch to the gut on so many levels. “Could you say anything to make me feel worse?”

  “Even Wulf thinks that.”

  “And there it is.” The banter felt friendly, even normal, and he succumbed to it.

  “Come on. Dance with me,” Flicka insisted and held her arms out for him to slide into the waltzing position.

  Not taking her in his arms would look more suspicious than just accepting.

  Dieter Schwarz, son of no one and owner of nothing, former military officer with no past known before his conscription as if he had dropped out of a cloud onto a Swiss mountain peak, took the hand of Her Serene Highness Friederike Augusta von Hannover and rested his hand on her waist.

  The bandage on his arm where the bullet had creased his biceps that morning bulged under his suit jacket.

  The tiny beads encrusting her reception dress were sharp against his palm and fingers, and her other hand was as delicate as a breeze in his.

  Twice, that day, he had felt her skin against his flesh.

  He hadn’t touched her for two years.

  Only a thin layer of silk and glass beads separated his palm and fingers from the soft skin of her back.

  That morning when he had seen the sunlight flash on the telescopic sight atop the gun, he dove for Flicka and gathered her body and limbs under his. He’d pressed his cheek to her forehead as bullets slammed the ground around him and burrowed through the meat of his arm.

  And now, this innocent dance with the bride of the evening, her slender body bending in his arms and her hand clasped in his, was the second time he had touched her today and in as many years.

  Every thought drifted away from him except that Flicka von Hannover was in his arms again.

  Everyone thought he was like an uncle to her.

  Everyone except him and her, who knew better.

  Her lithe form swayed inches from his chest. Roses perfumed her skin, and he breathed in that familiar, maddening scent.

  Dieter’s attention drew back from the crowd and the vantage points above and the jackals in the room. He focused on Flicka’s warmth in his hands.

  The orchestra was playing a waltz.

  Dieter stepped toward Flicka as she stepped back, and he steered her through the crowd.

  Flicka asked, “Is he going to ask her to marry him tonight?”

  “He told me he would.”

  “He shouldn’t do that.”

  “Why shouldn’t he? You’re married.”

  “I married someone appropriate.”

  “Don’t tell me you swallowed that elitist bullshit your dad was spouting.”

  “Of course not. Besides, his idea of what is appropriate and mine are entirely different.”

  “Wulf seems to think that Rae is appropriate.”

  “She’s not, not at all,” Flicka grumbled.

  “I thought you liked her.”

  “I do. Very much.”

  “Surely it’s not that she doesn’t have an appropriate royal pedigree.”

  “Oh, heavens, no. I don’t care about that at all, and I suspect he doesn’t, either.”

  “If that’s not it—”

  Flicka lifted her head and stared right at him. “Wulf needs to marry someone who won’t be devastated when the assassin steps out of the crowd and finally gets him.”

  Dieter almost stumbled backward. “But if you love someone, you’re devastated if they die. Surely you don’t want him to marry someone who doesn’t love him.”

  “There are different kinds of love.”

  “Not really.”

  “It’s perfectly logical.”

  “Pierre would be devastated if something happened to you.”

  “Pierre has a country to run. He has actual influence in Monaco. He’s not just a royal ‘claimant’ waiting around for the photographers and the media crew. If anything happens to me, he’ll pick up the next day and go right on.”

  Dieter looked down at her. “He doesn’t love you?”

  “Of course he does. In his own way. But it’s not a disabling kind of love. It’s not the kind of relationship where, if something happened to me, he would fall apart and lose his damn mind.”

  “You should be with someone who would fall apart and lose his mind if anything happened to you,” Dieter said.

  “Oh, nonsense,” Flicka tutted at him. “Why would I do that to someone?”

  “Because living in a marriage without love is just torturing each other,” he said. “Without love, you fight and hurt each other, and whichever of you is weaker gets used.”

  “Oh, don’t be so dramatic.” Flicka leaned back in his arms to look at him, concern creasing the skin between her eyebrows. “Is my brother all right?”

  Dieter chuckled. “Wulf is fine. Rae is the sweetest, kindest woman I’ve ever met.”

  “I am standing right here.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Asshole.” She moved a little closer to his chest.

  Dieter slid his hand farther around her back. The tiny beads felt rough on his palm and caught on his calluses. “Rae doesn’t want to burn the world down.”

  Flicka shrugged. “Occupational hazard.”

  “How many girls’ schools are you going to build with the proceeds from tonight?”

  Flicka glanced up at him, a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Three, probably. Five at the most, depending on the final numbers.”

  “That’s amazing. You did fantastically well.”

  “Just doing my job,” she said.

  “And how many have you built overall?”

  She shrugged. “Almost a hundred, I think? I’m not sure.”

  Her modesty usually surfaced in the form of feigned absentmindedness, Dieter knew. Wulf had told him that she had financed one hundred seventy-three schools, and Dieter bet Flicka knew it and, if pressed, could name them all. She had an interesting memory. He’d known about it for years.

  Dieter asked, “And how many students?”

  “At least a hundred kids at each one, so a few thousand, probably?”

  Over twenty thousand students were enrolled in her schools in Asia, South America, and Africa, according to Wulf. Dieter’s heart warmed. “If Wulf ever let you into your trust funds, you would blow it all in a year.”

  Flicka grinned. “An afternoon. It’s all set up, just in case he ever slips.”

  “And then what would you do with no money?”

  She shrugged. “Get a job as a party planner? I can organize a party better than anyone else.”

  He looked around the Louvre, from the clouds of fairy lights to the sophisticated table linens to the perfectly organized menus and entertainment. “That, you could. You could probably run a war better than most generals.”

  “It’s in my blood. We Hannovers have been warrior-princes for generations.”

  Dieter believed that Flicka would win any war she commanded. She was a natural. He had caught her reading his military strategy books often when they had lived together in London. “Rae will fit right in with you murdering princes, then. Sh
e really is wonderful.”

  “Sounds like somebody’s got a crush,” she teased.

  Dieter laughed again. “She’s perfect for him, not for me. Besides, as everyone tells me, I have terrible taste in women.”

  “Again, I’m right-the-hell here!”

  “But in that particular case, it was you who had terrible taste in men,” Dieter whispered to her. “Wholly inappropriate taste. But even I can tell that Rae is a lovely person.”

  “Seriously?” Flicka asked. “I mean, I liked her, but I like everybody. I’m a terrible judge of character.”

  That wasn’t true, either. “She’s perfect for him. The two of them can psychologically dissect everyone they meet with far more efficiency than they do individually. She doesn’t panic in emergencies. If there’s problem, she’ll grab him and pull him down. I might even be able to talk sense into him, someday, about staying home with her when there’s wet work to be done. Everywhere he is clueless, she’s smart.”

  “Wulfie’s not clueless at anything,” Flicka insisted.

  “You’ll stick up for him at every opportunity, won’t you? He’s bollocks at operational security. Last week, he opened a hotel room door to a knock without even looking out the peephole. Friedhelm chewed his ass out, and he laughed. Plus, Wulf thinks he’s the most evil man on the face of the Earth, that everyone else must be a better human being than he is.”

  Flicka laughed. “He’s not even the most evil person in the family!”

  “We’ll pretend you’re talking about your father,” Dieter said.

  “Oh, my father means well. He would have been a perfect grand duke in the sixteen-hundreds, nowhere near power but snottily looking down his nose at the royal court and insisting that everyone adhere to protocol.”

  Dieter laughed. “You’ll even stick up for your father.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m a sucker. I’d even stick up for you, if the situation called for it.”

  “Would you?”

  “Of course. You’re perfect at protecting Wulfie, and now Rae, too. If anyone else were in charge of them, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. If someone said anything to the contrary, I would slap them right down.”

  His heart swelled, and he flexed his fingers on her back. “That’s good to know.”

  “I haven’t properly thanked you for taking a bullet for me this afternoon.”

  He would have gladly taken one to his thick skull or his hard heart for her. “Just doing my job.”

  “I appreciate it,” she said.

  He leaned down just a little and whispered near her ear, “I have always said that I will always protect you in every circumstance.”

  Flicka cleared her throat. “Well, just in case I didn’t say it enough, thank you.”

  “Anytime, ma’am.”

  “Please don’t do that.”

  He pressed against her back a little bit with his arm, not like he was dragging her toward himself, but like the most subtle of embraces. “Anytime, Flicka.”

  They waltzed through the crowd, holding a correct distance between them as befitted a young bride and the man who was generally seen as an uncle-like figure in her life.

  Dieter tried to hold the image in his mind—her brilliant green eyes and luscious mouth smiling at him, her body warm and pliant in his arms as he danced with her—to remember.

  At the end of the piece, the orchestra faded out. The dancers turned and applauded.

  Dieter couldn’t quite let go of her hand yet. An ache spread from his cut-up arm to his chest.

  “You dance well,” Flicka whispered to him, pressed against his side in the crowd and still holding his hand. “We’ve never danced together, have we? We were never seen in public together.”

  “Of course not,” Dieter said. “Someone would have guessed.”

  “Where did you learn to dance so well?”

  “It was a long time ago. I hardly remember.”

  Flicka dropped his hand and stepped away, starting to leave him, but she turned back just a little. “This was nice.”

  She meant that they were talking and comfortable with each other, not like it had been the last two years.

  “Yes,” he said. “It was nice.”

  “I’ll see you around, Dieter.”

  “Flicka,” he said.

  He watched her sway into the crowd until the satin ballgowns and black tuxedos engulfed her.

  His hand was still warm from holding hers while they danced.

  It wasn’t cheating on his wife to have an utterly decorous dance with an ex on the day of her wedding to another man, in full view of probably a thousand people. His pinkie finger had not strayed below her waist. His gaze had not fallen below her collarbones.

  He had been the soul of propriety, as he always had been when the two of them were in public.

  God, he missed her, but he deserved every moment of hell she put him through.

  Dieter’s phone buzzed, and he glanced at the text.

  The message to him and Mrs. Keller, Wulf’s head of staff, said simply, We’ll have another wedding tomorrow morning for Ms. Stone and myself.

  Dieter hadn’t managed to finagle his way out of any of his wagers, and so he owed somewhere around six months’ worth of his salary to various people.

  His wife would be entirely displeased with that turn of events. They fought over money more than anything else. She insisted that every spare penny must be deposited in the accounts that he would use to start his own security firm someday. She was blindly insistent on it, even borrowing money and racking up credit card bills rather than touch those funds, which meant that they paid interest on the debt. Dieter wasn’t sure that was financially sound.

  He supposed he should be pleased his wife supported his ambition, but her unyielding insistence irritated him.

  And these lost wagers would set back their plans even further.

  Which meant they would fight more.

  And it had happened while he was traveling and therefore unable to help with their toddler, Alina, all that week.

  Which meant that the fights would be truly vicious.

  Sheisse.

  Christine Grimaldi

  Flicka von Hannover

  Christine, baby!

  Flicka threaded her way through the crowd at her wedding reception, looking for Pierre. People jostled her as she wormed through, but everyone was laughing at the tight fit.

  The orchestra was taking another break, so quiet music was leaking through speakers around the cavernous Louvre lobby. The crowd’s chatter echoed and redoubled on the glass ceiling high above and was like thunder rolling over the crowd.

  Her new husband, Pierre, had to be around here somewhere. His personal Secret Service guards were still dark forms on the dais and balconies, looking over the bobbing dancers, so he hadn’t left.

  As she made her way toward the bar instead, Flicka’s old school friend and Pierre’s cousin, Christine Grimaldi, stepped out of the crowd, wearing a pale blue ball gown with a matching bolero jacket. Her shining dark hair was twisted up in a chignon. They had been close friends at Le Rosey boarding school for years and had even shared a driver to transport them to their music lessons, first in separate places but then together at a local university, for a decade. Having an hour and a half alone in a car together to talk three times a week does wonders for girl-pals. “Flicka, baby!”

  “Christine, baby!” They mimed air kisses so they wouldn’t smear lipstick all over each other and then hugged for real. “I’m so glad you found me.”

  “This is beautiful, Flicka,” Christine said, fluttering her slim fingers at the dense crowd. “You did a fantastic job.”

  “It’s nothing,” Flicka demurred, but she had to demur loudly so Christine could hear her over the cackling, chattering crowd shoving around them.

  They stood right on the edge of the dance floor, and a duo bumped Christine from behind, throwing her at Flicka.

  Flicka caught Christine before she slammed into the f
loor and laughed at her. “You okay?”

  Christine was giggling as Flicka steadied her on her feet. “Just bruised my dignity. Come on, let’s dance!”

  “What!”

  But Christine had already grabbed Flicka around the waist and used their already clasped hands as leverage, and shoved her out onto the dance floor. Dancers around them parted as Christine led Flicka through some lovely steps and twirls, both of them laughing their asses off. Flecks of light glittered over Flicka’s ivory dress and Christine’s pale blue one as they waltzed.

  Christine spun her across the floor. “When you officially move into Monaco, we’ll have to hang out more. I haven’t been able to travel since I joined the Monaco Philharmonic.” She was the third violinist for the Monaco Phil.

  Wistful nostalgia wafted through Flicka like whiskey fumes. “I’m so proud of you. You’re doing so well.”

  Christine frowned at Flicka, though she was still laughing. “Third chair, ‘doing well,’ right. Dip!”

  Flicka let herself fall backward against Christine’s arm as they both laughed.

  Christine said, “You should attend the Philharmonic with Pierre. Afterward, come backstage, and I’ll introduce you around. You know, make contacts. Contacts are important.”

  Contacts were important if one was actively pursuing a music career. It didn’t feel like Flicka was doing that anymore. “It would be great to hang out with you, but I don’t think I’ll need contacts anymore.”

  “Why not? Dip again!” Christine pushed Flicka backward over her arm.

  “Because I married Pierre, Christine, baby! It’s just so busy. There are so many things to do.”

  Christine stopped moving, and Flicka stumbled at suddenly being held by an immobile object. “Did we time-warp back to the sixteenth century or something?”

  “We don’t appear to be doing the time warp at all,” Flicka laughed. “But maybe later when everyone gets a little drunker.”

  “Are you giving up music?” Christine demanded.

  “Well, I’ve hardly had time to practice this last year, between the wedding planning and all the charities that had to be involved. It’ll take another six months to finish setting up the schools that will come out of this. I want them open next September.”