The door to her office within the suite squeaked open.
Dieter Schwarz poked his head through the partially open door. “Flicka? My two guys have no idea what the difference between white napkins and unbleached silk would look like, but they brought a couple back with them.”
He held out a piece of white cloth and waved it as if it were a flag of surrender.
Flicka marched over and snatched ugly thing out of his hand. With even the most cursory of inspections, it was obvious that the rag was white polyester, not unbleached silk. “I am holding a sample right here. You cannot tell me that this disgusting piece of fake cloth is new, unbleached silk.”
The manager on the other end of the line squawked, insisting that all their materials were the very finest and exactly what she had ordered.
“You may be able to fool some people, Edger Lane, but you certainly cannot fool me. Either you will have three thousand unbleached silk napkins here within two hours, or I swear I will find someone who will. What’s more, I will make sure that everyone knows their name and that your company did not deliver what was promised.”
Flicka poked the phone and hung it up. She ground her teeth in her skull and looked back at the open door.
Dieter was waving another white polyester napkin at her, but he was also holding a lovely glass of white wine.
Flicka accepted the wine glass from him and knocked back a hearty gulp. She wiped her mouth with the polyester napkin she clutched. Her pink lipstick practically beaded up on the fake fabric.
He asked, his deep voice evoking far too many memories, “What can I do?”
Flicka waved him off, flapping that stupid napkin. “I’m sure you have important security concerns to attend to.”
“Very little has changed for us since the first wedding that was planned. My teams have arrived. Our weapons and ammunition were on the flights with them on the private plane yesterday. I have people sweeping the rooms we’ve reserved for listening devices or other problematic items. I don’t think I could tell the difference between a bad napkin and a good one, but if you need me to shake down a napkin supplier, I could do that.”
Flicka smiled at him. “You wouldn’t.”
His grin grew evil, and he raised one blond eyebrow at her. “Bet me.”
She smiled a little more. “No, you shouldn’t.”
“I will take a tactical team, march into that warehouse, and liberate those unbleached, raw silk napkins they are holding hostage.”
Flicka laughed.
“It might get bloody,” he said, shaking his head ruefully. Sunlight glinted on his blond hair. “I might have to torch the warehouse after we get those napkins out.”
Flicka laughed harder at the image of Dieter leading commandos into a firefight to retrieve napkins.
And she realized that she was laughing out loud, hard, and she laughed more.
Flicka laughed until her ribs hurt and she was sitting on the floor, her knees drawn up to her chest, and her body shaking. She gasped for air and laughed again.
Beside her, Dieter hesitantly patted her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m fine.” She wiped her eyes with that terrible napkin. Pink and beige smears marked the stark white cloth. “I’ve been thinking of ways to brutally murder that napkin kidnapper. I think what I desperately needed was just to imagine you and the other Welfenlegion guys, storming in with guns drawn to get the damned napkins. Sometimes, I just desperately wish I could solve all these stupid problems with brute force, large-caliber guns, and high explosives.”
“Say the word, princess,” Dieter growled, “and I’ll get those unbleached silk napkins for you.”
She chuckled, exhausted from laughing. “If anyone could invade a warehouse and procure napkins, it would be you, Leiblingwächter.”
The pet name had slipped out.
She hadn’t meant to call him that.
But they had called each other Leiblingwächter and Durchlauchtig for a decade before their ill-advised affair.
Surely their friendship, their relationship before the sex, was worth saving.
She slapped his knee to show that she was still in good humor. “Help me up off the floor, Leiblingwächter. I’m going to find a new supplier for the napkins. I can’t believe that, after all these delays, he had extra time to get the napkins right, and he blew it.”
She put her fingers in Dieter’s outstretched hand with their thumbs locked, and he pulled her to standing. She shook off his hand to brush imaginary lint off of her bum and legs.
A smile softened Dieter’s storm-cloud gray eyes. “Anything you need, Durchlauchtig.”
He exited the room, maybe with a bit more spring in his step.
Maybe Flicka and Dieter could be friends again.
Maybe.
In the meantime, she did need to find an alternate supplier for three thousand pristine, unbleached silk napkins, so she called the hotel concierges to start the search.
A Human Resources Decision
Flicka von Hannover
Good admins are hard to find.
A few hours later, Flicka blazed into her suite after being driven to look at a crop of napkins from another napkin supplier. The fine cloth squares were unbleached, but they were definitely not raw silk. Surely, they could do better.
She dropped her purse on the couch and made for the bedroom. These high heels were already blistering her feet, and her feet needed to start the day tomorrow in tip-top shape if she was going to make it all the way through Wulfie’s wedding and reception.
So she needed to change into flats for a bit today.
She shoved the bedroom door out of her way as she blew in.
Two bodies were entwined on the bed, writhing.
The one on top had long, strawberry blond hair that streamed on the white sheets.
Pierre was chuckling underneath the woman.
Flicka yelled, “Damn it, Pierre!”
The woman turned, horror forming her mouth into a round O.
The woman was Flicka’s admin Alcide, because of course she was.
“Alcide, get up! Get out of that bed!” The next words on Flicka’s tongue were, you’re fired, but it was always the woman who bore the brunt of workplace indiscretions. Knowing Pierre, he’d probably offered her expensive gifts, the kind that surrounded Alcide but she probably wouldn’t ever be able to afford.
Also, Pierre was still ripped, stacked, and hot as sin.
Yeah, Flicka could see the temptation.
She said, “Alcide, get out there and work that phone. I need an alternate napkin supplier, and I need one right now. I can’t believe you were in here screwing Pierre when you know that this napkin problem is a catastrophe waiting to happen.” Flicka pried off her high-heeled pumps and nudged her toes into a pair of ballet flats. “I need you out there. Go now.”
Alcide dragged the sheet off the bed, wrapping it around herself in a kind of ersatz sari, and scooped her clothes off the floor as she ran to the bathroom. Her eyes were still huge with embarrassment and mortification.
Yes, well, good.
When Alcide closed the door of the bathroom, Flicka turned back to Pierre, who was grinning from the bed, having pulled the comforter up to cover himself. She asked him, “Did you get your rocks off?”
“No,” he said, good humor sparkling in his dark eyes. “Now whatever shall I do?”
Flicka wiggled a shoe onto her foot. “Serves you right to have a case of blue balls. Keep your dick out of my admins, Pierre. Good admins are hard to find.”
The Prince Arrives
Dieter Schwarz
The operation begins,
and the Welfenlegion were sloppy.
Bad luck.
Dieter glanced at his phone’s wristband and noted the time.
Damn it, they should have arrived already.
He loitered in the hotel lobby near the base of the grand staircase that spilled down from the upper floor. The parquet floor was inlaid with al
abaster and metallic gold tiles. Laser-like reflections glared where the morning sunlight hit the bright gold in the floor and dotted the white walls.
A firefight in here would be a nightmare. Those glares would distract Dieter when he should be looking for muzzle flashes and laser-sight dots.
He stood just to the side of the staircase, wide enough for eight people to walk up shoulder-to-shoulder, and rested one hand on the black wrought iron railing. The twisted metal cooled his palm.
And he waited.
The flowers in here were different today. They were whiter, smelled sweeter, and most importantly, were taller. They blocked his view of the room’s corners and from the doors to this staircase.
Operational security was always changing.
Luca Wyss had checked in with Dieter when the von Hannovers’ plane had arrived at the Geneva Cointrin airport, but that had been hours ago. The caravan should have arrived at the hotel before this.
Dieter was just about to call that damned Luca Wyss and ask what the hell was holding them up, when the concierges and hotel desk staff stood a little straighter, brushed any lint off their clothes, and looked alert.
Someone important had pulled up under the sunny yellow awnings that shaded the front of the hotel.
Dieter relaxed.
A few moments later, the point of the Welfenlegion team entered the lobby of the Le Montreux Palace hotel, spreading to control the area. Friedhelm was in the lead.
It wasn’t a bad maneuver.
But they were too relaxed. Their legs strolled instead of marched. Their arms swung instead of hovering near their weapons. Yes, they were looking around the lobby, but they weren’t scanning for where the trouble was.
Time to see just how alert they were.
He ducked out of his hide and strode toward the party, his long legs covering the flashing floor quickly.
More security men entered the lobby, looking up and around, followed by Wulfram and Rae von Hannover.
Rae caught sight of Dieter moving in first. She instinctively drew back and toward Wulf, who whirled her behind himself and was reaching inside his jacket.
Dieter grinned and raised his hands, showing no harm. He called out in Alemannic, “Do you think they’ve noticed me yet?”
Wulf relaxed, and his hand dropped away from his suit coat.
And then Wulf’s security guys contracted their circle to protect Wulfram and Rae.
Dieter didn’t like it and pushed through those slow assholes.
He clapped Wulf on the shoulder as they walked, still grinning, and he switched to English. “Such a sloppy maneuver. Half of them didn’t even have their weapons at the ready. I would have docked all their pay, every one of them.”
Wulf chuckled, and the guys started grumbling.
Jesus, it wasn’t like Dieter had rappelled from the ceiling or something.
Even if he had, they should have seen him coming.
He shook Wulf’s hand, aware their arrival signaled the end of Dieter’s few days with Flicka.
Wulfram and Rae would marry at the Lutheran church at four o’clock that afternoon, after which would be the evening reception, and then Flicka would fly back to Monaco with her husband.
His Serene Highness Pierre Grimaldi had arrived the day before.
Not that Dieter was jealous. Not that he had any right to be jealous.
It just meant that his Rogue Security personnel now contended with Pierre’s Monegasque Secret Service operators, which complicated the personal protection maneuvers.
That was all.
Nothing more.
Tomorrow, Dieter would go back to his daughter, Alina, and their very empty house.
He might not see Flicka again until Rae and Wulf’s child was born around Christmas.
Or maybe years.
Rae asked him, “Where’s Flicka? She said she would meet us here.”
Dieter plastered a grin on his face. “I’m sure she’s around somewhere. I haven’t seen her lately. Something to do with napkins.”
Kidnapped #1
Flicka von Hannover
I slipped away from my security teams one more time that early morning, just to walk through Montreux, just to get away from the wedding chaos that was compounded by security men constantly tugging me away from my friends and consultants and coordinators because I had been stationary in a common area for too long.
Quentin Sault was easy to lose. He was too arrogant about his observation skills, and one little side-step around a plant was enough to shake him.
Jordan Defrancesco, the guy who drove us around most of the time, was harder to lose, but I finally lost him by letting the elevator doors close before he got on. I always felt bad about ditching Jordan. He was younger than the other guys, somewhere around twenty-five, and the older Secret Service guys would probably rag on him for losing me. Jordan had smoldering dark eyes and wore his suit a little more closely cut to his muscular body than the older guys.
Not that I noticed.
Even Jordan Defrancesco was just another bodyguard to lose.
My whole life, black-suited security men have followed me like bats fluttering in my wake. They suffocate me, swirling in the air and isolating me from people and children and birds and air. Instead of being a fairy-tale princess, I have been a fairy-tale witch, trailing vampires and darkness.
Two teams surround me every day: the Grimaldi team from my new husband Pierre’s palace staff in Monaco, where he is the noble heir to the principality, and a Hannover team hired by my brother, who believes that Pierre’s team is either inadequate or might not defend me.
That very thing happened at our wedding.
A man with a gun shot white-hot bullets out of the crowd at us. Pierre’s team threw him into a car and sped away, even as Pierre reached back for me and shouted at them to return.
He fired half of his team afterward in a cold rage that I had never seen before and then apologized to me, swearing it would never happen again.
But I know better. His team answers to his uncle, Prince Rainier the Fourth, the reigning Prince of Monaco. He won’t let his heir be murdered.
The press would be awful.
Trust me, the press gets horrible when princes are murdered. Scathing. Blaming. Aggressive. I’ve read a lot about things like that.
Security threats are always present. I know that. Deeply. From the time that I was a toddler, I knew that I owed my very existence to an act of horrific violence, and someday, another would probably take everything away from me, either by ending my own life or killing someone I loved.
Every damn day.
And yet, still, when both security teams broke formation for just a few seconds in the crowded hotel lobby and they couldn’t push their way through, I darted sideways through a cluster of talking people and around a corner.
I’m good at that. I can get away from anyone.
I’ve practiced my whole life.
After I gave them the slip, I met with the catering coordinator for more than three damn minutes to ascertain that suitable shrimp had been delivered that morning, that we had secured an alternate source of the problematic black truffles for the pheasant main course, and that the roses were indeed one-quarter opened.
Hallelujah. This reception might come off this evening as planned after all.
After that, I rounded up the cosmetics team by throwing out a mass text. We met in an alcove of the lobby to confirm the schedule for the bridesmaids’ and Rae’s hair, primary makeup application, and touch-ups. They had everything down pat and extra pots of all the necessary cosmetics. They had become a well-oiled machine.
Brilliant.
At three o’clock, four hours from now, Wulf’s wedding would begin, and it would be perfect.
By the sheer force of my willpower, I will make this wedding a spectacular success, even I have to bribe, threaten, or blackmail everyone in Montreux to do it. Wulfram deserves a perfect day.
He will remember every detail for the rest of
his life.
Four more hours.
And then I will bend everyone to my will if that’s what needs to be done, and it will be perfect.
But, for those few moments of freedom, I walked along a sidewalk in Montreux that passed in front of the grand hotel that Wulfram’s security team had commandeered for the wedding, ambling toward the concert halls that filled for the jazz and classical festivals here in the summer and fall.
Across the road, a park velveted in summer green stretched toward Lake Geneva, and the scent of mown grass crested the two buzzing lanes of traffic in the street. Shops lined the ground-level of the hotel—a jazz cafe, a coffee place, a boutique—all with their snapdragon-yellow shades retracted for the morning. In the afternoon, these shops and the hotel looked like a yellow tent, sheltered from the summer sun.
Farther down the avenue, a church spire poked into the sky, and some of the concert venues threw glass glares into the street.
More traffic blew by, ruffling my trousers and hair.
Maybe I would stay for the classical music festival. It was supposed to be soon, right? A college friend Ling was supposed to play a piano concerto. I would love to see her again. And Christine Grimaldi, my old friend from school, said that she might play in a violin concerto with someone, too.
Maybe next year, when all the weddings had settled down, maybe I could go back to performing, too. No matter what Pierre thinks, I won’t give up music. His family had forced Grace Kelly to give up her career, but that was a long time ago.
But this year, maybe I can just watch the recitals.
The sun lifted away from the eastern horizon, and the fiery clouds thinned. The sky turned the deep blue of my older brother’s eyes, a good portent. Surely, if anyone deserved a perfect wedding day, he did.
Once Upon a Time: Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka Page 17