Once Upon a Time: Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka

by Blair Babylon

  He shook his head. Wulfram was some kind of mathematical genius, but Einstein didn’t have to run a small army while he was working on relativity. Wulf didn’t have time to manage the Welfenlegion, and it showed.

  His phone rang, and he flipped it over to look at the screen before he answered it.

  His pulse jumped when he saw the word on his phone screen: Durchlauchtig.

  He should probably change that. Flicka would be angry if she saw it, and he understood why.

  Yet he liked seeing it.

  He swiped the screen. “Yes, Flicka?”

  “The placenta previa problem has fixed itself,” Flicka told him. “We have six days to pull this wedding together. Ceremony and reception will be this Saturday.”

  Dieter said, “I’m on it.”

  “And Dieter?”

  “Yes, Flicka.”

  “I—” a pause stopped his heart, “I’m flying to Montreux in a few hours to begin the arrangements there. Do you want to leave for Montreux, so soon? Essentially, it’s the advance team.”

  “Yes,” he breathed.

  “It’s just for expediency and their security. I don’t want anything to happen to them. I want you to have every opportunity to surveil the sites and put the appropriate security in place.”

  “I understand,” he said, “and I don’t want anything to happen to them, either. Even a few extra hours on the ground might make a difference. I appreciate it, and I think it’s a good idea.”

  “Okay,” Flicka said.

  “If there isn’t room on your plane,” he said, giving her an out, “I could head to the airport and hop a commercial flight.”

  “No need,” Flicka said. “There’s more than enough room on Pierre’s little jet.”

  “Right, and thank you again.”

  Dieter hung up.

  So now he was flying on another man’s jet with her.

  The same as it always was.

  But he would get to Montreux sooner, and operational security would be better for it.

  Dieter sent a mass text to the operators of Rogue Security: Operation Impossible Dream is a GO for this weekend, Saturday. Repeat: Mission is a GO.

  His next call was to one of the nannies that Flicka had indeed hired for his daughter. Alina loved the fifty-something, ex-kindergarten teacher Suze Meier more than all the other nannies put together. Suze had offered to let Alina “have a sleepover” for a few days while Dieter worked night and day at the wedding.

  Alina giggled the whole way over to Suze-Mama’s house and had waved bye-bye without turning away from the blocks she was stacking.

  Dieter would have liked a little pouting from his daughter when he left, but it was probably for the best.

  Blue Skies

  Dieter Schwarz

  I understood.

  Dieter stretched his legs while sitting in one of the rearmost seats of the private airplane. Papers and a computer were spread out in front of him on a table that seated four.

  Up near the plane’s cockpit, Flicka dashed through the open door of the little jet last, still talking on the phone that was pressed against her face. She had changed into a business-casual pantsuit, and her long legs stretched in pale green slacks as she strode through the airplane.

  Faint aromas of cigarette smoke and whiskey lifted from the leather seats. Dieter was sensitive about cigarette smoke. He hadn’t slipped and smoked for a few months, but he could smell even the faintest trace.

  Near the front of the plane, another four-chair table stretched. Single seats lined on the other side of the plane, giving the jet enough seats for twelve people.

  Essentially, Dieter had wedged himself into a corner of the plane, leaving it up to Flicka to sit as far away from him as she preferred.

  She hung up the phone and marched right toward him, her blond curls bouncing around her shoulders. There was anger in her stride, but less than even last month. “Look, we have to work together for another week. Let’s just pretend all that never happened for a week or two, all right? We’ve been doing a good enough job of it.”

  “There’s one more thing.”

  “Please, no.” She sat down in the seat diagonally from him, but she was staying.

  “I want you to know—”

  “Get off my airplane.”

  “—that I met Gretchen after I left London,” Dieter said. “After I arranged for security for you, I flew to the States the next day. I met her in Chicago. I didn’t know her when we lived in London.”

  Flicka gripped the armrests. “I can’t deal with this right now. Look, after Rae and Wulf are safely off on their honeymoon, you and I will have a coffee or a drink. Maybe more than one drink. And we’ll figure out how to be okay with each other. But right now, I have a thousand details to oversee, and I need all the coffee to stay awake for three days running to make sure everything is absolutely perfect for my Wulfie’s wedding.”

  Dieter’s lips barely curved. “I’ll hold you to that.”

  “And just so you remember, I’m married.”

  “Flicka, I would never try anything. I would never suggest anything.”

  Three women entered the plane from the door at the front. Dieter had already seen them crossing the tarmac and recognized them as Flicka’s admins who had flitted around Wulfram’s house.

  She said, “I’m married, and I plan to stay that way.”

  “I would never want anyone to betray their spouse or break their vows,” he said. “You know I wouldn’t, right?”

  “I mean it.”

  “Besides, you couldn’t divorce him,” Dieter said, trying to use logic because she thought terrible things about him. “You’re Catholic now.”

  “Yeah,” Flicka said, rolling her crystal-green eyes. “Sure, I’m Catholic.”

  Dieter glanced down at the papers strewn over the table. “You converted to marry Pierre. It was all over the place.”

  “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.”

  “You were married at the Basilica Sacre-Coeur. It’s a Catholic church. They’re funny about that.”

  “Were you raised Catholic?” she asked him, her head tilted.

  “I’m not much of anything.” Dieter knew he had not answered the question she had asked.

  Flicka fidgeted in her chair, pulling her laptop out of her big bag beside her chair. “Well, before the wedding, there was much finagling between our lawyers and Pierre’s lawyers and the Vatican. Eventually, the lawyers and priests decided that a little baptizing would be fine, just in case the baptism I had before didn’t take. You know, the one when I was a few weeks old, the one where my parents, godparents, and the bishop of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Hannover signed the baptismal certificate and then stood for pictures? Yes, just in case that one was less than satisfactory. After the Pope poured a little holy water on the back of my neck, I was able to take their communion and marry the Catholic prince.”

  “That’s lucky,” Dieter said.

  “Pierre loves me.” Flicka frowned with her eyes staring at the ceiling, almost like she was trying to convince herself. “He wanted to marry me. He and the Monegasque lawyers put a hell of a lot of pressure on the Pope and the Vatican. He’s pretty much the last anointed Catholic monarch. They have to negotiate with him, at least.”

  Dieter said, “It was a good thing for Pierre that the Pope was so accommodating.”

  Flicka winced. “I think, if the Pope hadn’t come up with this neat little solution, that Pierre would have wanted to get married anyway, even if it meant giving up his place in the line of succession to the throne. He was so adamant about marrying me despite the Vatican’s objections. He was practically rabid at one of the later meetings, demanding a solution. He understood that I didn’t want to go through the formal conversion process because I feel properly Christian and the Hannover church is very important in our family. It’s one of the fonts of power, you know. The Hannover church anointed the Hannover kings and princes in Germany. There’s a theo
ry that, if I stopped being Lutheran, I would stop being a princess of Hannover, and Pierre would never want that to happen.”

  Dieter nodded. “Wulf told me about the bishop flying in and the church you found. He was happy about it. Even relieved.”

  “Pierre thought it would be too much of a spectacle if I converted. He likes publicity for Monaco but not spectacles. He never confuses fame with notoriety. He’s perfect in that regard.”

  Dieter looked over the ocean outside the porthole window, choosing his words carefully because Pierre Grimaldi was incredibly notorious for many things. “That’s an admirable quality.”

  “So, I get to feel like I’m still Lutheran, and the Lutheran church thinks I’m still a von Hannover, but Monaco gets to think that I’m Catholic enough to marry their prince. It all worked out.”

  “It’s great that it all worked out.”

  “Yes, I think so, too.” She opened her computer as a cabin steward pulled the door closed. They sat at the rear table for most of the flight, working quietly and occasionally telling each other important details about the location or security.

  Dieter knew exactly why she had explained these details of her wedding and marriage to him, to remind him that she was married and wanted nothing else to do with him.

  He understood. He respected that.

  Dieter would behave with utmost decorum while they worked together on the wedding.

  Even if his heart ached the whole time because he had walked away from the love of his life.

  When Gretchen had walked away from Dieter, he had been upset for Alina and their plans, but it was different. He knew it was different.

  Calling Georgie

  Flicka von Hannover

  It was a silly thing to say,

  but sometimes,

  princesses can be passive-aggressive.

  Flicka sat in the back seat of an SUV being driven by Luca Wyss, one of Wulf’s Welfenlegion security people, through the tidy streets of Montreux, Switzerland.

  The comforting Swiss sun glowed through the car window, glaring off her phone screen and dazzling her eyes, but it felt so much better than that nuclear bomb in the Southwestern US sky. For the first few miles outside of Geneva, she’d rolled down the window and let the summer air wash over her, blowing back her hair, and inhaled the cool breeze from the lake that smelled like water and home.

  Dieter was riding shotgun, having retrieved two black duffel bags from the luggage space under the plane and climbing into the front seat of her SUV. She wished that he had chosen another SUV and was relieved that he hadn’t.

  The caravan headed toward the hotel where the wedding was to take place in a few days.

  A few days.

  Which meant that Flicka and her admins needed to make perhaps five hundred phone calls in the next few hours.

  She tapped a number into her phone, calling the next person on the mostly white spreadsheet, though red and green blocks scattered down the long, long list. Another name on the shared document turned green, and the initials MK appeared beside it, meaning that Maria Konner had contacted that prospective wedding guest and gotten an affirmative RSVP.

  Flicka’s phone rang loudly in the rolling SUV, while the Swiss sun poured down on summer-green mountains and sparkled on the lake they were driving past. She held the phone flat on her palm with the speaker on so she wouldn’t have it smashed against her face for hours. Phone sweat made her break out.

  Christine Grimaldi answered Flicka’s call. “Flicka, baby! Are you back in Monaco yet?”

  “Nope, I’m in Switzerland. Wulfie’s wedding is on for this weekend, Saturday late afternoon, in Montreux. Can you come?”

  “Absolutely!”

  “Excellent.” Flicka turned Christine’s square green on the spreadsheet. “And can you provide the entertainment at the reception?”

  “What?”

  “Because we just rescheduled this wedding, we don’t have any entertainment for the reception. We could play that Bach violin sonata that we worked on in upper school.”

  “So we’re going to put on a show?”

  “Yes, we’re going to put on a show!” That was one of their favorite phrases to scream together after a Judy Garland marathon over one weekend in the dorms.

  “Oh, I suppose, then. Anything for you, Flicka, baby. I’ll work on it before I leave.”

  Flicka saved the spreadsheet, started a new document called Reception Conscripts, and added Christine’s name and hers to it.

  She called the next number on the spreadsheet without actually consulting the laptop. She knew all the phone numbers anyway, no matter what she pretended to people.

  Georgie Johnson answered her call, “Hello?”

  Flicka kept her voice perfectly calm, belying the frantic panic churning in her gut at how many damned phone calls she needed to make. “Wulfram and Rae’s wedding is scheduled for this weekend, Saturday late afternoon, in Montreux, Switzerland. Details will follow by email soon. Rae said to tell you that your attendance is ‘requested and required.’ That commoner is getting the hang of this princess thing astonishingly quickly.”

  Georgie dithered for a few moments, citing her prior commitment to play contemporary music with Alexandre Grimaldi’s “rock band” in Rome that particular night.

  Flicka rolled her eyes. Georgie shouldn’t be hanging out with Alexandre Grimaldi, anyway. She replied with perfectly logical arguments that Georgie should get her butt to Montreux and finally ended with, “So you’ll be there?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I can,” Georgie waffled.

  “I’ll put you down as a definite yes, then,” Flicka said, frowning. On the spreadsheet, she filled Georgie’s square in with green.

  It shouldn’t be so damned difficult to get people to attend the wedding of the season. Flicka’s wedding in the spring had been the wedding of the year, of course, perhaps the decade, but Wulfie’s hurry-up-quickie wedding was certainly important.

  Georgie’s voice shouted through the phone, “Seriously, Flicka!”

  “You can’t do that to Rae. Her health is so fragile. They still haven’t told me what’s going on with her,” she lied, because propriety. “I’m so worried.”

  “No matter what it is, I’ll bet that your brother has gotten her the best care possible.”

  “That’s certainly true, even if he had to kidnap the world’s foremost specialist in whatever-it-is.” Flicka stared at the front seat where Dieter and Luca were ignoring her. “Dieter would do that for Wulfie, too. I think Dieter is gay for him.”

  Dieter, sitting in the front seat, turned halfway around when she said that. He glared into the rear of the car at her, one dark blond eyebrow lowered over his angry gray eyes, though the sarcasm in the glare was apparent to Flicka. He knew she was messing with him and was playing along.

  The driver, Luca Wyss, snickered.

  Georgie’s laugh jumped through the phone’s speaker and echoed around the car. She asked, “Dieter Schwarz, the guy I met in Paris?”

  “Gray eyes? Freakishly stacked? Abs like the rippled sands of Arabia?” Flicka asked, needling Dieter some more.

  Luca took one hand off the steering wheel to slap at Dieter, who was smiling less.

  “Yeah,” Georgie said through the phone. “That guy’s not gay.”

  Dang. Flicka had been hoping to tease Dieter longer.

  Luca said, “Ask her again, just to make sure.”

  Dieter backhanded him on the arm and glared at Flicka some more, a snarl twisting his sensual mouth.

  Flicka asked Georgie, allowing incredulity to raise her voice, “You know that from meeting him for five minutes?”

  “Oh, it didn’t take that long. I have the world’s most highly developed gaydar. That guy is as straight as a laser beam. He is the very definition of the shortest distance between two points. To get any straighter, he would have to be able to burrow through the space-time continuum.”

  Dieter chuckled and turned back to look out the
front window. His blond hair cut a sharp line above his collar.

  Luca laughed as he drove.

  Flicka argued, trying to keep it going, “Then Dieter has an unnatural attachment to Wulfram in some other way.”

  “That might be, but it’s a bromance, not something sublimated. Plus, he’s married,” Georgie said.

  A glass knife stabbed Flicka’s heart. “Like that ever meant anything. Besides, I think something’s going wrong with that. He’s living at Wulf and Rae’s house.” Dieter looked back at her again, his face perfectly composed, expressing nothing. Flicka may have traipsed over the line, there. “At least now I have something to tease Wulfie with.”

  “Wulfie?” Georgie asked, coughing over the phone.

  “He’s my brother, honey. What did you think I called him when I was six? Anyway, be in Montreux on Saturday by noon or I’ll send Dieter after you.”

  “I really don’t think I can,” Georgie said again.

  “Yes, you can attend your best friend’s wedding. She needs you. Get your ass there, missy.”

  “Now, now. Is that how a princess speaks?”

  “A princess speaks however the situation requires. I will see you on Saturday, or else.”

  Flicka hung up.

  Dieter didn’t say a word.

  Neither did she.

  Luca didn’t even look at them all the way to the hotel.

  Flicka tapped the next number to call into her phone.

  Rescuing the Napkins

  Flicka von Hannover

  I hadn’t laughed like that

  for two years.

  Flicka resolved that it would be undignified for a royal princess to throw a cellular phone through the plate glass window of a hotel suite.

  The windows overlooked Lake Geneva. Silver sunlight sparkled on the dark blue water and made the surrounding dark green trees and lawn glow.

  She took a firmer grip on her phone so that it might not accidentally go flying and shatter the window. “But we agreed that the napkins would be unbleached, raw silk. At no time did we specify garish white polyester napkins.”