“That private matter was my wife!”
“Come to the house, Dieter. We’ll take care of you and Alina.”
“I don’t need to come there, Wulfram. I can stand on my own two feet.”
“Of course, you can. Just come here. We’ll have a drink or two. Frau Keller can help you with Alina for a short time. Let us help you.”
“That money was for the security agency. She took millions. Without it, I can’t even pay my people this week. I can’t pay on the loan you gave me.”
“There are laws, Dieter. She is entitled to little of it. We will get it back. In the meantime, I will help you with whatever you need. Where are you now?”
The boiling desert sun was still above the horizon, but it was growing as it neared the mountains, its fire threatening to roll over the dry desert and engulf everything. “On the freeway, heading toward the airport.”
“Where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know. After them?” The sun glared off the back windshield of the car in front of Dieter, a sudden white-hot flare of light. The highway and traffic snarls blurred, and he scrubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Do you know where she and Hans went?” Wulfram asked.
“They’re probably heading to the airport. They would probably fly somewhere to get away so I can’t find them. I don’t know where they are!”
“No matter where they went, you can’t go after them seeking vengeance with a toddler in the back seat. Take the next exit. Come to the house.”
“You don’t think he would hurt her, do you? You don’t think it was about the money for him, and now he’ll hurt her?”
Wulfram sighed. “I’m sorry, Dieter. From the little Hans said, it didn’t seem to be about the money for him. I need you to come to the house, now.”
“All right. I’m taking the exit.”
“Good. I’ll stay on the line so I can buzz you into the development. We’ll handle this quietly.”
“Can Rae help with Alina?” he asked. He liked Rae. She was kind and gentle in a way that even made him feel quiet. He could trust her.
“There’s been a problem. She’s on bed rest, and she must not be disturbed.”
Shock zapped him. “Is she all right?”
“So far. And we hope for the best.”
“My God, Wulfram. Was this due to yesterday, at the hotel? Was this why I got the terse email from your sister about the wedding being delayed?” The whole world was in chaos.
“Unfortunately, yes, at least for the second part. About Alina, I’ll ask a favor of Frau Keller for tonight, and we’ll hire a nanny tomorrow. I had planned on adding staff for when our child is born, so you don’t mind if I use Alina as a guinea pig for a few months, do you?”
“You’re joking at a time like this, Durchlaucht?”
“I have alpine ice instead of blue blood, ja? You’ve told me this too many times. Have you taken the exit yet?”
Dieter turned the wheel and coasted down the freeway ramp to the stoplight. “Yes.”
“And you’re on your way to our house?”
Scots Road, which led toward the Apache Tears Ranch development, pointed a dark line between the tan shops and buildings toward the blue and fiery mountains. “Yes, Durchlaucht.”
“Good. Keep driving. Drive safely. Talk to me about what you need for the next few days.”
“I need to go after Gretchen!” They’d had their fights and their differences, but Dieter’s chest was collapsing into shattered bones and pulverized meat. He had thought that they had formed a family, a home together for their child, and now the very sky seemed to be ripping itself apart.
He should have known. That was the worst part: he should have seen her thieving intentions in her body and the way she walked across a room.
Wulfram said, “You’ll need to stay with us for a few days, at least. Perhaps longer. Yoshi is here, too, so the dining table will be crowded.”
Dieter snorted. Wulfram’s dining room seated forty comfortably.
“Where are you now?” Wulfram asked.
“Heading north on Scots Road. About to turn onto Range.”
“ETA?”
Dieter glanced at the navigation app running on his phone. “Six thirty-three.”
“Hold for one moment.” A rustling filled Dieter’s black SUV, and the mumbling was muffled by a hand over the other phone. “All right. We’ll have the necessities here soon. Tell me what you need for the agency for the next week.”
Dieter sighed, and his hands loosened on the steering wheel.
Reason finally coalesced in his head.
He reached over to the passenger seat, pulling a baby bottle of juice that his neighbor Lupe had given him out of the diaper bag and dangled it into the back seat. Tiny hands grabbed it out of his fingers, and noisy sucking replaced the wails. “It’s mostly money, Durchlaucht. I need to pay my staff this Friday, plus the mortgage on the office and the warehouse.”
“I’ll take care of that. Anything else?”
“I don’t know what will become of my daughter without a mother. Gretchen’s note said that she wanted nothing more to do with either of us, that she needed to be free to live her own life.”
“We’ll contact a lawyer tomorrow to establish separation and sole custody, and I know some things about raising a child without a mother. It’s difficult, but Flicka turned out all right.”
Dieter said, “That’s true.”
Over the SUV’s speakers, Wulfram said, “We’ll make it all right, Dieter. Where are you now?”
A long, iron gate crossed the road. Dieter parked the SUV in front of it and flipped his wallet open to his driver’s license. A guard ambled out of the air-conditioned shack toward his vehicle. “I’m at the development’s gate. I’ll be inside in a few minutes.”
As soon as Dieter rolled his darkly tinted window down, the guard grinned at him and flicked his hand at the gate, retreating quickly into the guard shack. Heat rained down all around them, blowing into the SUV through the open window, and it was far too hot to stand on the asphalt for any length of time.
Wulfram said as clearly as if he were sitting in the passenger seat, “Friedhelm will meet you at our gate to escort you up the driveway. What else do you need tonight?”
“Just someplace to rest, Durchlaucht.”
“You have that.”
Dieter turned the SUV around a corner. A second gate slid smoothly away from the road. Another black SUV idled, waiting for him.
As Dieter followed the other SUV up the long driveway to Wulfram’s house, the air conditioners seemed to blow colder air, cooling his face.
He and Wulfram had had each other’s backs ever since that long night in the Swiss Army barracks. Dieter had been blindsided by the end of his first disastrous love affair, and Wulfram had listened to him talk that night, all night, rather than leave him when he might have done something very foolish. They had agreed that Dieter had terrible taste in women, for he had been drawn to Ira’s wildness and abandon, and they had agreed that Dieter fell in love too fast and too hard, leaving nothing of himself behind.
This evening already felt like a horrible replay of that night.
The liquor would probably be better than that rotgut Finnish vodka Dieter had smuggled into the Swiss barracks so many years ago.
Dieter and Wulfram shared a long friendship, over twelve years now. They had stared down rifles at the same targets and seen those targets aiming back at them. After they had mustered out of the Swiss Army together, Dieter had headed Wulf’s security detail for a decade, and Dieter had been excruciatingly aware that he had held Wulf’s life in his hands every day. Wulfram had been Dieter’s best man when he had married Gretchen two years ago. To save Rae’s life, they had killed two men, sniping them from a high hill using those Swiss Army skills, and they had gotten drunk a few nights later and dealt with those demons together, too. Dieter had stood up with Wulfram when he had legally married Rae in Paris a few months ago
and would be best man at his religious wedding when it happened, if it happened.
Nothing could break their deep bond.
Well, almost nothing.
Math
Flicka von Hannover
When I did the math,
I knew.
Wulf strode out of his bedroom, sweeping Flicka and Yoshi ahead of him. Flicka slid her hand down the oak banister and, because she was wearing heels, was the last down the stairs.
She was on the last step when Wulf opened the front doors. Sunlight poured in. Desert heat roared in, shoving the air-conditioned coolness aside.
Dieter stomped in, followed by Friedhelm, who closed the doors behind them.
In his arms, Dieter held a very young child.
Not a baby, but a child.
The child’s pale blond, almost silvery, hair curled around her ears, and she clung to Dieter’s neck with chubby little arms. Her dress was pink gingham with lace.
Wulf reached out to him. “We’ll take care of it. We’ll take care of you and Alina now, and we’ll take care of the problem.”
“I still can’t believe I didn’t see it.” Dieter set the child on the floor, where she glared at her unsteady legs. “How could I miss something like this?”
“No one wants to believe such things,” Wulf told him. “We’ll take care of it.”
Flicka couldn’t take her eyes off the child.
The very little girl.
The baby toddled over to Flicka and patted her knee with her baby hands. She said, “Mama?”
Flicka looked up at Dieter, who was watching her even though Wulf was still talking to him. She asked, “Who is this?”
“My daughter,” Dieter said. “Alina.”
“Your daughter?” Flicka asked. “I didn’t know.”
The baby said, “Mama!” and patted Flicka’s knee more insistently. When she saw Flicka was looking at her, she held her arms up.
Even childless Flicka knew what that meant, so she picked the baby up, bracing her against her hip. “Hi, baby.”
“Hi.” Baby Alina patted Flicka’s shoulder. “Hi, Mama.”
“Why does she keep calling me Mama?” Flicka asked Dieter.
“She’s just a baby,” he said. “She doesn’t know names. Everybody is Mama or Dada.”
Alina stuck her fingers in her mouth, pulling her lips aside to reveal tiny pearls inside. “Toof!”
Flicka bounced the child on her hip a little, and the baby’s green eyes creased as she grinned.
Wow, if Flicka had been the guy and Dieter had been the girl, she would have accused him of being knocked up when they broke up two years ago.
Two years ago next week, as a matter of fact. It had been right after her big June cotillion that Flicka had thrown in London every year except this one.
Flicka asked Dieter, “How old is she?”
He said, “Fifteen months.”
“Fifteen months?”
Flicka did the math quickly, almost instantly.
The baby was fifteen months old.
Her mother would have been pregnant for nine months.
Twenty-four months.
Two years.
Exactly two years.
Dieter had impregnated this child’s mother right around the time he had broken it off with Flicka that terrible night.
Maybe shortly afterward. Very shortly. Like during that first month when Flicka had sobbed herself to sleep in Kensington Palace every night.
He must have knocked up Alina’s mother within days of walking out on Flicka.
Maybe even before.
Maybe that was why he’d walked out on Flicka, because he’d been screwing around and knocked up another woman.
Flicka carefully slid the child to the floor. “Go to Daddy.”
Alina bobbled across the wooden floor toward Dieter.
Flicka turned on her heel and marched up the staircase to go see Reagan.
Inside, Flicka was a broken twenty-one-year-old girl again, weeping in a heap on the floor, but her shiny suit of armor marched right the hell up the stairs, her face immobile, to do what she was here to do.
Flicka had left Montreux and come to the Southwest to keep Reagan company, and if—God forbid—something happened to Rae, to make sure her brother didn’t follow his wife into the abyss.
Flicka’s problems didn’t matter at all.
Not at all.
She was married to Pierre now, and it looked like the best decision she had ever made.
Evidently, there was no way things could have ever, ever worked out between Flicka and Dieter Schwarz.
Behind her, both Dieter’s and Wulf’s voices called her name, but she kept climbing the stairs.
Sisters
Flicka von Hannover
Anything.
Absolutely anything.
Flicka reached the door to Wulfram’s—now Wulfram and Rae’s bedroom—and pushed it open. Bookcases lined the walls, the books arranged in a flowing rainbow of color. The wall of windows overlooked the sparkling lap pool in the center courtyard.
A lumpy bundle was lying on the bed.
When Flicka came in, Rae lifted her head quickly, surprised. Her coppery hair was mussed and wild.
Tears streaked her face, and her nose was blushed pink.
She said, “Flicka,” and reached her hand across the sheets.
Flicka ran to the side of the bed and dropped to her knees beside the mattress. She grabbed Rae’s warm hand. “Oh, honey. I came as soon as I could get here. Don’t you worry about the wedding arrangements. I’ve called the important people, and I’ve got five admins working on the rest. We’ll do this later. I’ll make it perfect for you, I promise.”
“I’m worried about Wulf,” Rae said.
“I know,” Flicka said.
“It’s stupid. It’s too self-important, but if something happens to me—”
“I know.”
“He’s being stoic and strong. I’m scared for him.”
“I know.”
“You can’t let him. You have to help him.”
Flicka gathered Rae’s fingers into both her hands and held them. “You listen to me, Rae. You married my brother, and that makes you my sister now. I will do anything for my sister, for you. I’ll move in here and make sure you stay lying down. I’ll bring you your meals and stay in here to keep you company. I will spoon-feed you, and I used to have my nannies feed my dolls.”
“You don’t have to—”
“In the von Hannover family, the most important thing is sisters and brothers. Wulfram rescued me when I was a kid, and I won’t let him go off the deep end after you. If anything happens, I will do anything for you and to make sure he’s okay. I’ll move here and live with him for a year or longer if I need to. Or forever. I’ll make sure that he’s okay, but for right now, you stay down and protect yourself. That’s the best thing you can do for him.”
“But there’s so much—” Rae protested.
“I will take care of absolutely everything else: the wedding—whenever that is—and anything else you want me to. When it comes time to decorate the nursery, I’ll drag ten absolutely beautiful cribs in here, or twenty, or thirty, and you can pick one. I’ll just keep shoving them around in a huge merry-go-round of nursery furniture until you find one you like.”
Rae held Flicka’s fingers more tightly. “Promise?”
“I promise. I promise I will do everything in the world so that you can stay right there and be okay, and if anything goes wrong, I will make sure Wulfie survives it. Okay?”
“Okay,” Rae said, breathless and still sniffling.
“Besides,” Flicka tossed her blond hair behind her shoulders, “I’m a princess! Princesses live to decorate things and buy baubles and throw parties, right? That’s our whole purpose in life, to make the world a little prettier and show everyone a good time.”
Actually, Flicka had always thought that her purpose in life was to explore music—performing and composing—
and to burn the ruling class down. She loved music, and she hated all the crap that the people she knew imposed on the rest of the world for their amusement.
She’d always thought of herself as The Joker in a hoop-skirted princess dress and glass slippers.
But right now, Rae Stone-von Hannover needed Flicka to be a princess and to rule this household for her, so she would.
Because when she had said that Rae was her sister and she would do anything for her sister, she meant it.
Flicka told Rae, “I’m here for you and him, I promise you.”
Confrontation
Flicka von Hannover
For Rae and Wulfram’s sakes
I needed Dieter.
After Flicka lay on the bed with Rae, just talking about stuff for a while, she went in search of Dieter Schwarz.
Her heart vibrated as she walked, and her legs felt numb.
Dieter was standing in the kitchen, pouring himself a cup of coffee.
Other staff bustled around the kitchen, cooking supper for what had suddenly become a much fuller house.
Pans clanked and slammed on the commercial-sized stove in the back. Mixers screamed, and metal spoons banged on steel bowls. The clatter and chatter overwhelmed Flicka as she got her bearings, and the wafting scents of roasting meat, baking breads and sweets, and frying vegetables billowed through the air.
Most of the activity was near the back of the long room, as the working part of the kitchen with the tall refrigerators, freezers, pantries, dishwashers, stoves, ovens, and storage were all concentrated back there. The front of the kitchen, near the entry from the garage and the house, held a coffeemaker, snack supplies, and a kitchen table.
Basically, the staff could get their work done farther back without being interrupted by civilians looking for a cup of coffee or an apple to tide them over until supper.
Dieter hadn’t seen Flicka come in yet, and she looked hard at him. His wrinkled, white shirt clung to his broad shoulders and lean waist. From the side, his jaw looked sharper and squarer, like his whole body was harder. If anything, his chest was heavier and his legs, leaner, than when they’d lived together, ending almost exactly two years ago.
Once Upon a Time: Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka Page 14