“Although, as you and Alexandre have stated you will not accept the crown, I am next in the line of succession after his sister, Christine.”
“Yes, Prince Jules.”
“And the Crown Council must offer the throne to each successor in order.”
“That is the tradition,” Maxence said.
The tone in Max’s voice prickled the back of Dree’s neck, a grind that resonated like the adamant denials of a drug addict.
“And it’s in the constitution.”
“As you said.”
“Anyway, I don’t want to keep you. You must’ve had a tiring trip, with your flight and having been in the wilds of Nepal for a month. I wanted to be the first to greet you, Prince Maxence, upon your return to Monaco.”
“Thank you for greeting me upon my return to Monaco, Your Highness, Prince Jules. I look forward to working with you and the Council as we elect and crown a new Prince of Monaco.” Maxence bowed slightly from his waist, a sharp movement that Dree was surprised wasn’t preceded by Maxence tapping his heels together like a graduate of an old German university.
Maxence turned and walked away from his uncle.
That icy formality was the creepiest thing she’d ever seen Maxence do.
That curt wave of Max’s hand must be a signal for Dree to catch up, so she swung her backpack over her shoulder and trotted after him.
They walked through the small terminal of the heliport, a utilitarian little building with vending windows for selling tickets for the helicopter rides and large posters of scenic Monaco, and out the front doors where a line of limousines was waiting for them.
He didn’t look at her the whole time.
A rear door was already being held open for Max by a chauffeur in a black hat.
Maxence muttered under his breath, “You’ll ride with the other staff.” He folded himself into the back seat of the limo.
The chauffeur slammed the car door behind him and gazed down at Dree impassively with a blankness that bordered on a sneer.
Dree was so lower-class that she didn’t even fit in with the royal servants.
She plodded toward the rear of the line of limousines, her thumbs hooked under her backpack straps.
Even the license plates on every car had that squared-off, checkerboard shield that was on his arm. It was everywhere.
She found a seat on the minibus sent for the security guys.
The lower-ranked bodyguards filed onto the bus and crouched as they walked toward the back, joking and talking to each other as they collapsed onto the bench seats.
Dree sat directly behind the driver, her arms wrapped around her backpack resting in her lap in case somebody needed to sit on the seat beside her.
The minibus rumbled to life and jerked as it accelerated in the small traffic circle in front of the terminal. Dree swayed as it drove on the exceedingly narrow streets past soccer fields where children were practicing. The young kids out there, probably eight or nine years old from the look of them, were significantly better than the varsity team at her high school.
An enormous sports stadium loomed on the other side of the street, just feet away from the whizzing traffic. A sign on the front read Stade Louis II.
A tap on her shoulder surprised Dree, and she flinched.
When she turned, the guy behind her was smiling. “So, are you to be quartered in the palace?”
Dree shrugged and hoped she didn’t look too much like a wide-eyed country bumpkin, even though that’s what she was. “That’s where I was told I would be staying, but I have no idea what I’m doing.”
The guy chuckled. He was about her dad’s age, maybe fifty, although he was a heck of a lot more fit than her dad was. “That’s where they’re dropping us off, too. I know where the staff office is. I’ll make sure you get there.”
The minibus rolled through the narrow, winding streets of Monaco. Dree was glad that she was in a large, safe vehicle. Cars that she had only seen in James Bond movies like Lamborghinis and Ferraris whipped through traffic, attaining ridiculous speeds in only a few hundred feet before slamming on their brakes. Other low-slung cars that she could not begin to identify clung to the pavement as they snaked around corners.
The engine of the minibus labored as it climbed hills and sped through traffic. Even though it was nearly January, most of the trees lining the street or in the gardens were green and lush.
The guy tapped her shoulder again and gestured out the window. “That’s the palace.”
Outside her window, a sheer cliff rose from the ground as if the road were winding along the bottom of a canyon. Dree craned her neck to look up. Medieval fortifications perched on the top of the cliff, a literal castle on a hill.
She twisted to look at the guy sitting behind her. “This bus isn’t going to be able to climb that road.”
The guy laughed. “There’s no way to drive up from this side. We’ll go through the tunnels. There’s an area below the castle where we’ll get out.”
Just then, the sky turned black as the minibus dove into a tunnel and sped deep into the earth.
Dree held onto the back of her seat and a pole beside the driver as the minibus navigated the flying traffic. One quick turn led them into a small side tunnel.
The security guys all stood and grabbed their packs, so Dree did the same.
The bodyguard led Dree up a stairwell to a small office and explained the situation to the people there.
A reed-thin man wearing a pale gray suit pursed his lips and looked Dree up and down. “And who told you that you would have accommodations in the palace?”
Dree said, “I was a worker on one of Prince Maxence’s charity missions. He hired me away from the charity to be his admin for a few weeks. He said there was somewhere I can stay here.”
The administrator’s lips crawled inside his mouth. “I was not informed.”
Dree started to apologize, but the bodyguard next to her said, “Come on, Sam. She’s been tramping around the countryside of Nepal for a month with Prince Maxence on another one of his charity jaunts. She’s exhausted and needs a room in the palace for at least a couple of days. I’m not sure if she’s going to be here permanently or just while she gets her bearings. In any case, she needs a place to stay tonight, and it needs to be here.”
Sam the administrator-guy shrugged and said, “I can assign her one of the scullery maid’s quarters in the back.”
Dree didn’t even rate being an admin anymore. Now she was a scullery maid.
Story of her life.
The guy clapped Sam on the shoulder and nearly sent him reeling into a wall. “I knew you had space in here somewhere. Now get someone to show her to it.”
A young woman was summoned, a slim secretarial-type wearing a black sheath dress and modest heels. Her dark blond hair was knotted tightly at the back of her head. She clasped her hands delicately at her waist and seemed to be perpetually leaning forward to listen to directions. She smiled faintly and led Dree through the rabbit warren of hallways to a small bedroom with an accompanying bathroom.
Dree slung her backpack off her shoulder and let it fall onto the bed. “Oh, thank God, it has a shower.”
The woman’s faint smile didn’t waver. “And what will you be doing for His Highness?”
She shrugged. “He said he needed an admin. I have a hard time believing you guys don’t have hot and cold running admins around here.”
The woman nodded, a measured movement that didn’t give anything away.
Dree asked her, “Do you know where I can go shopping around here? He said that I had to be ‘professionally attired,’ and I’m not even sure what that means.”
The woman cocked her head almost robotically. “Weren’t you an administrative assistant before?”
Dree shook her head. “I’m a nurse practitioner. I was out in the wilds of Nepal, treating infections and vitamin deficiencies, and now suddenly, I’m here. I’ve never been to Monaco before. Heck, before last month, I’d never been out of the
southwestern United States.”
The woman blinked, and her expression softened to allow the tiniest bit of worry. “Oh, you poor thing.”
“And he just picked me up, told me I was his admin now, and dumped me here with the command to be in his office at eight o’clock tomorrow morning and not look like a slob who’s just gotten back from camping for a month. I have a few pairs of jeans, some thermal underwear, and ski pants. I don’t think that’s going to work.”
The woman looked at her watch. “It’s six o’clock.”
“What time do the shops close around here?”
The woman turned and started for the bedroom door. “The shopping center across the street is open until seven-thirty. It’s the one where we shop at, not the ‘billionaire shopping center.’”
“I don’t have any money,” Dree admitted.
“I’ll get a petty-cash credit card. His Highness said you were to be ‘professionally attired.’ That’s practically a purchase order. My name is Chiara Diallo. You have precisely ten minutes to shower, and then we will leave.”
Twenty minutes later, they were standing in the Centre commercial de Fontvieille, in a dark, narrow corridor lined with small stores. Christmas trees and potted poinsettias overflowed the edges of the hallway.
Dree stared at a storefront full of denim and red bandanas. “We’re in the middle of Monaco, in the French Riviera, in Europe, across the street from a medieval palace, and there’s a store here called Texas.”
“Yes, certainly,” Chiara said blandly. “Monaco caters to many tastes.”
Dree tilted her head, because surely, she wasn’t seeing what she was seeing. “The denim jackets have red plastic arm fringe. This is an abomination of dude culture.”
Chiara was thumbing a text into her phone. Even when she was emergency-shopping, she stood with her feet together and her elbows near her sides, and her red lipstick was perfect.
Dree needed to learn how to do that.
Chiara said, “Nothing in that store would qualify as ‘professional attire.’ We’ll be shopping at Camaïeu Femme for tonight. Surely, I can throw together something for you. We will get shoes at Minelli. Tomorrow, after His Highness dismisses you, I will take you to my little shops for proper clothes. But for tonight, we will make do.” She looked over the top of her phone at Dree and lowered her perfectly groomed eyebrows. “My hairdresser has responded. He is holding his shop open for us tonight, and you have an appointment at eight-thirty for a cut, facial, cosmetics consult, and manicure. I am sorry to say this, but your hair looks like someone chopped it off with a machete.”
Dree nodded. “Surgical scissors. I did it myself about a month ago.”
Chiara’s brown eyes welled with tears, and she blinked. “You poor thing. You poor, poor thing. You don’t worry about it anymore. I will take care of you. I will make you presentable for the palace for tomorrow.”
That night, after Chiara had thoroughly reinvented Dree and she was alone in her dorm-sized room, Dree found the wrinkled napkin in the bottom of her backpack and smoothed it out on the small desk.
She found the list of all the places she was supposed to visit, countries around the world that she’d only heard rumors of, and drew precise lines through the word Monaco, which was directly above the crossed-out words Visit Nepal.
Chapter Three
Prayer
Maxence
Maxence Grimaldi picked up the nail. It was not a slender pin made of galvanized steel, but a black, iron antique.
Then, he picked up a hammer.
The hammer was sleek and silver, delivered by the palace’s maintenance department only half an hour before.
Maxence held the nail to the thousand-year-old plaster of the medieval castle and drove the iron spike into the wall. When the metal was firmly embedded, he returned to his duffel bag from Nepal and poked around in the bottom until he found a silk bag.
From inside, he removed a crucifix, a memorial of the suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross. It was rough-hewn from hardwood, scarred in some places, soiled with black soot in others. Max hung it on the wall with a leather loop over the nail and retreated three steps.
The crucifix had traveled with him for over a decade. Before that, it had been held by priests for centuries. Max was its guardian, not its owner.
He stared at it for a long time, trying to compose his thoughts. Peace wouldn’t come. Tranquility wouldn’t come.
Maxence fell to his knees.
He began to pray with his hands pressed against each other in front of his chest, his palms flattened against each other as he poured his heart out in one long stream of anguish to God.
Why am I like this? Why do I sin? I cannot fathom I could lead a better life. I can only clutch at the momentary pleasure because there is no peace I could otherwise attain.
The crucifix was two dark slashes against the white wall.
Monaco is a siren calling me to dash myself against the rocks. Dree Clark is every temptation I’ve ever had rolled up in one beautiful woman. It’s not her fault that I am willing to damn my soul to touch her. She is a beautiful spirit. If only I were not who I am, if only I were not what I am, I could be with her.
Tell me what to do.
Tell me who to be.
Max’s arms unfurled to mimic the shape of the crucifix above as he bared his chest and his heart in a desperate attempt to reconcile himself with God and his heart with his passion.
I have dedicated myself to You and Your work. I have given you my soul and my body. I fight every day, but I feel like I’m clinging onto the face of the cliff while my faith crumbles around me. I fall every day. I fall every minute.
But I want to fall.
It feels like flying.
Chapter Four
Nicostrato Grimaldi
Maxence
Maxence started his day in the royal business office in the Prince’s Palace.
The room was hardly wider than the admittedly large desk placed in front of the wide window, but it was probably five times as long as it was wide. The walk from the door to sit in front of the desk left supplicants a lot of time to think about what they were going to say or why they had been summoned, as intended by the medieval architect.
The high ceiling above was designed to make petitioners feel small as they begged the sovereign’s grace. Also, it had allowed smoke from pitch torches to rise and thus not choke the prince.
Black bunting swags mourning Pierre’s suicide graced the upper bookcase shelves, and a slender Christmas tree threw red and white lights over the back part of the room.
Maxence trailed his fingertips across the wooden desk.
The crystal-clear varnish on the centuries-old dark wood was glassy and perfect. Max’s uncle had it restored a year or so before he’d died.
The desk was a beautiful piece of furniture, as were the sumptuous bookshelves that lined the walls, neatly stacked with leather-bound volumes. Some of the books were treasures, first editions worth thousands, and others were ledgers containing decades of notes on the business of the Principality of Monaco.
Maxence had sat in the chairs before the desk a thousand times, talking to his uncle. Sometimes, they discussed the fortunes of Monaco’s national soccer team. On other occasions, they’d quarreled about Max’s priestly vocation.
The last time he’d sat in here with his uncle, Prince Rainier IV, was right after they’d returned from Pierre and Flicka’s wedding in Paris, the morning after their elaborate ceremony and three wedding receptions. They’d already been a little buzzed from cocktails with breakfast on the early-morning flight, and then they’d broken into the brandy hidden in the small secretary desk beneath the windows.
Maxence pressed the hidden button that released the rolltop cover on the small desk.
Inside, the glasses were clean, and the brandy appeared to be about the same level in the cut-crystal decanter as that last time he’d been drinking with his uncle. Pierre never drank while he was working, t
hough their uncle certainly had.
Even though it was just before eight o’clock in the morning, Maxence lifted the stopper out of the decanter and tipped just one swallow of the brandy into one of the glasses. He raised the amber liquid to the sun outside the window that shone down on the paved courtyard below where the tourists milled, wishing his uncle Godspeed to his reward. Prince Rainier IV had put his country and his people ahead of his personal happiness for decades, and surely the good that he had strived to accomplish in his life demonstrated the state of his soul.
The brandy on Max’s tongue was just slightly more oxidized than the last time he’d had it, but he drank the liquor in memory of his uncle. He wished he hadn’t missed his Uncle Rainier’s funeral. Max had sat at his uncle’s bedside for a month, until conditions had changed such that he dared not stay in Monaco even a few hours longer.
The problem had been that the very last time Maxence had been in this office, he’d punched his older brother, Pierre, who’d richly deserved it. Maxence would’ve beat him to death if Pierre’s bodyguards hadn’t intervened.
Perhaps a solid beat-down would have changed what had happened, and Pierre would still be alive now.
Regret suffused Maxence’s mind.
He wished he would’ve arrived in time for Pierre’s funeral. Pierre had been a sociopath and narcisstically selfish in ways that had shocked Max anew at regular intervals, but he wished he’d been able to assist at his funeral Mass as one last moment with his only brother. He could never forgive Pierre for a dozen crimes, maybe more than that, but he wished Pierre’d had a chance to change.
The door rattled as someone knocked lightly.
Maxence shook off the reminiscing. He didn’t have the time nor the energy to engage in such maudlin thoughts. “Enter.”
An absolutely beautiful blonde stepped through the doorway into his office.
She wore a slim-cut black dress that skimmed her voluptuous curves and left her pale, silky arms bare. Her sunny hair was cut to chin-length, and voluptuous curls bounced around her ears and face.
Prince: Royal Romantic Suspense (Billionaires in Disguise: Maxence Book 5) Page 4