The red lipstick and fingernail polish she wore were fantastic.
A slim, platinum cross on a chain that was a little too sturdy for her delicate skin rested just above her cleavage, and the necklace looked just like a cross that he used to own.
Wait.
It took Maxence far too long to recognize Dree Clark. “What happened to you?”
Dree blinked, shuttering her china-blue eyes. “You said to dress professionally. I did my best. One of the other staff, Chiara, helped me. I’m sorry if it isn’t appropriate?”
The buzz of shock cleared from his head. “Yes, this is appropriate.”
“I don’t have anything else. All the clothes that you bought me in Paris are back in the church with Father Moses. Those cocktail dresses and evening gowns wouldn’t be the right thing for an admin to wear, anyway.”
“No, this is perfectly adequate. I’m used to seeing you in a ski suit with helmet hair.”
She chuckled and looked up for a second, almost an eye roll. “Yeah, I guess this looks better than jeans that hadn’t been washed for three days and those stained sweatshirts.”
“I liked both.”
“I was such a hot mess that whole time. Showering in cold water does not get the oil and sweat off of you like a hot shower does, and we went for days between even cold showers with nothing but sponge baths. I didn’t try even to put mascara on the whole time.”
“You were amazing on that trip.”
Dree looked down at the black pumps she wore.
Max looked, too. The high heels made her ankles and calves even more shapely below the hemline of her dress that fell just above her knees.
She said, “Um, thanks.”
He hadn’t meant to do that. They needed to keep this relationship professional, completely formal, and not look like they were sleeping with each other. “Ms. Clark, we need to discuss your role in this organization and whether you should be here in Monaco at all. Please sit?”
Dree strolled through the long office, and he watched her high-heeled shoes stepping sexily on the red and white Oriental carpet.
She said, “I made the bargain to come with you to Monaco. I don’t welch on deals.”
“It’s not reneging on a promise if we both agree you would be safer someplace else.” His voice was unexpectedly gravelly. Maybe he needed more brandy to clear his throat.
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t be safer in Phoenix. Those drug dealers Francis ripped off aren’t going to forget about the money they think I owe them. It’s only been a month. I’m not sure I can ever go back there.”
Maxence sat in the large manager’s chair behind the desk and spread his palms on the rich wood. “You could go to Paris.”
“I don’t speak French.”
“You could go somewhere else in the United States.”
She scrunched her red, succulent mouth to the side. “You sure are trying to get rid of me.”
“You could lose yourself in the crowds of New York or hide out in a small town in the Midwest. Nurses are needed everywhere.”
Dree hesitated before she spoke, her lips pressed firmly together. “It seemed like the police officer I talked to may have been part of the problem. If that’s the case, it would be easy for him to put an alert on my passport. He’d know when I entered the country and where I went. Those official databases are connected. They would know where I was within days.”
Maxence nodded, trying to appear wise but stalling for time. “With my bodyguards and the Monegasque police, the palace might be safer than Phoenix, but that might not be the only problem.”
“Yeah, murderous Uncle Jules.”
“To start with, yes.”
“Are you sure you’re not blowing things out of proportion? Everybody here has been so nice.”
“Laying aside the fact that people who grow up very wealthy tend to view other human beings as disposable because they never had to develop empathy, there is a great amount of money at stake. Whoever is elected to be the Prince of Monaco will control well over a billion dollars, probably closer to $1.2 billion.”
“That’s a lot of money,” she said and then rolled her eyes. “I mean, obviously. I’m not stating the obvious or anything. Ugh.”
Maxence told her, “It’s more than enough money to push people to murder. It’s happened before. During the election when my uncle, Rainier IV, was elected, well before I was born and in gentler times, a high-caliber bullet smashed through a window and buried itself in the wall beside his head. Luckily, in those days, telescopic sights had not yet been perfected, and targeting computers that can correct an assassin’s aim for the distance, wind, temperature, and humidity hadn’t been invented. The more ruthless candidates for the current position are probably quite confident that it would be immediately hushed up if an assassination occurred now. Monaco could not afford to let the world know that our princely election had turned deadly.”
Dree asked, “Who did it?”
Maxence’s tone turned grim. “The assassin shot himself before he could be arrested. It must be noted that after my uncle Rainier, my father was next in line for the throne, had the most to gain, and was certainly capable of it.”
Dree winced. “And now, here you are.”
“I won’t stand for election, and I won’t accept if they elect me.”
“Oh, that’s why. Because your dad might’ve tried to have your uncle killed for it. That makes sense.”
He shook his head. “I am temperamentally unsuited to be a sovereign of any country.”
Dree’s quick frown was sweet. “I don’t think you’re ‘unsuitable.’”
“While Monaco is a tiny country, its influence is larger than one would expect. We are a celebrity among nations. Everyone wants to be seen at James Bond’s baccarat table. Everyone wants to befriend one of the few sovereigns left in the world with absolute power. Everyone wants to attend royal galas. That kind of power is—heady.”
“Ah. Power corrupts—”
“And absolute power corrupts absolutely. And I am absolutely corruptible.” His voice had lowered.
“Is that what you’re afraid of? Becoming corrupted?”
Maxence straightened a few papers and pens on his desk so that they were parallel to the edges. “I’m already corrupted. That is painfully clear from our time in Paris and Nepal.”
“I don’t think so.” Dree was staring him straight in the eyes, her gaze level and serious.
Maxence looked away. “It’s kind of you to say that, but the problem is that there is going to be a fight for the throne like there has not been for a generation. The world is more brutal now. The usual rules of civility and tradition no longer apply. Politicking for votes will no longer be subtle promises of privilege. It’s going to become threats, blackmail, and violence.”
“They don’t scare me,” she said.
“I don’t want you here. I can’t have anyone around who might be used as leverage. My job now is to make sure that Monaco is in the hands of someone responsible and moral.”
“So, not like your Uncle Jules.”
“Precisely.”
“I can’t believe that jolly little elf we saw is the racist, manipulative guy you described.”
“Psychopaths are good at hiding what they are. Their personalities are nothing but a singularity of rage, and Jules isn’t the only psychopath in line for the throne.”
“Do you think Prince Jules is evil?” she asked, still examining him like a specimen under a microscope that the nurse was identifying.
Max flipped his fingers at the ceiling, indicating the impossibility of an answer. “Ah, the problem of evil.”
“You have a Ph.D. in theology, in theodicy, the study of evil,” she said. “You should be able to figure out whether he’s evil or not.”
Maxence could have discoursed for hours about the definition of evil and sin and the problem of the existence of either of them. His doctoral thesis had run over four hundred pages.
Ins
tead, Maxence said, “Jules Grimaldi is a selfish asshole and will always lust after more and more money and power. Being the Prince of Monaco and controlling forty thousand people and over a billion euros in wealth would satisfy him for a week. Then, it would not fill the gaping hole of fury in his heart, and he would want more. He would seek out and sign treaties with other countries that would give him more power and money with no regard for how it affected Monaco’s citizens. Indeed, he would enjoy making them more miserable, more helpless, with less money and power, more like medieval serfs than citizens, because it would demonstrate his power over them. Stripping people of their citizenship, humiliating them, even allowing his own people to become sick and die would excite him. He literally gets high from it. It proves to him that he has the power of life and death over those people, that he can crush them, and no one can stop him. He would enjoy destroying Monaco just because he could do it. Yes, he’s evil. He’s evil to his very core.”
When he’d finished ranting, Dree was still watching him. “And that’s why you came back.”
He nodded. “I can’t leave the citizens of my country to that.”
Dree’s head tilted, and she crossed her arms. “Your country?”
“I’m a citizen of Monaco. This is my country, not in the sense of ownership but as a stakeholder.”
Dree nodded. “I see.”
“I’m asking you to leave Monaco. I want you to go anyplace else.”
Her blue-eyed gaze didn’t waver. “No.”
“I could have you thrown out of the country. Quentin Sault will put you on a helicopter to Nice, and from there, on a plane for Paris.” He flicked one finger back to where Sault stood at parade rest at the rear of his office, his customary position. “I’ll dump money into your bank accounts to make sure that you can get somewhere else.” He smiled. “I still have your routing and account numbers.”
“Don’t. I want to stay here with you. You’ve convinced me this is important.”
Maxence let himself roll his eyes. “There are plenty of important things to do in the world. I can call Father Moses and have you assigned to another charitable tour, a less hectic one this time, at a Catholic hospital anywhere in the world. You’ll be safe from those drug dealers. You can live out your life doing good in the world.”
“And yet I could never go home.”
“Staying in Monaco won’t change that.”
“I’m not sure how to deal with the pickle my ex-boyfriend has gotten me into. At some point, I’ll figure it out. Maybe I should go to the FBI. Maybe I should call the New York Times. But I need time and space to figure it out.”
Maxence could see where she was headed and knew he should stop her.
Yet, he didn’t.
She continued, “You need somebody here on your side. I want to stay here as your admin. Who knows? I might even be able to help you.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, you can.”
“See? I told you.”
“I need an admin I can trust because I can’t ask anyone else employed by the palace to do this. I need you to take notes on our meetings, as is customary. Anything I do as the interim sovereign of Monaco must be documented. As such, I need you to write down anything except what I actually talk about with these people.”
“You want me to lie?”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
“Oh, no. I was just making sure that I knew what we were talking about.”
“I want you to fabricate entirely false discussions and take notes on them. I need to discuss the succession to the throne with a few of my cousins. I don’t want anyone else to know what we’re doing. Unfortunately, these archives are public record, which means anybody, including Uncle Jules’s minions, could ask for and view the notes of any of these minutes.”
“Why don’t you just invite them over for dinner instead of talking to them officially in the office? That would be a lot less suspicious.”
Max shook his head. “Meeting with my cousins, some of whom have already been blocking the effort to elect a new sovereign, at a time when notes would not be deposited in the archive, would be seen as suspicious. If we meet in here and notes are deposited, then they will assume there is nothing to be suspicious about.”
“I see. So, what should I write down?”
“Boring things. As far as your notes are concerned, we will discuss the number of tourists in Monaco, the number of mugs and tee shirts sold at the palace gift shop on their way out, the price of cement for our land reclamation projects, and other such topics. At no time, however, will we discuss circumventing the traditional line of succession because we don’t want Jules Grimaldi to be the Prince of Monaco.”
A knock sounded at the door, and they both startled.
Maxence drew a breath and said, “That will be my first appointment of the morning, my cousin Nico. Where is my receptionist?”
Dree cocked her head to the side, one blond curl lying on the fresh skin of her cheek. “Is he an evil psychopath who’s gonna try to kill you?”
He had a chuckle about that one. “No, Nico’s been a friend for years. He’s too far removed down the family tree to be considered any kind of a threat. Write down who attends the meeting, and your topic for this morning will be the current harvest of sea scallops.”
Dree leaned forward. “What is a sea scallop?”
He chuckled. “It’s a delicious little sea creature. I ate a plate of them at the Four Seasons George V Hotel, and you had a bite of one.”
“Oh, the little things.”
“Yes.”
More knocking.
He looked at the far end of the office and called, “Enter.”
Max’s second cousin Nicostrato Grimaldi stepped sideways through the door, closing it behind him, before he strode through the office toward them. His brown hair was perfectly combed, unlike Maxence, who still needed a haircut.
As he approached, Nico said, “Hey, you’re still alive this morning. I’ve lost fifty euros.”
Max smiled tightly. “Good to see you too, Nico.”
As always, when Maxence began a meeting like this, he tamped himself down. Tension flowed out of his body. He should not be too insistent, should not allow his voice and his soul to become too vibrant with an idea or his passion, and remain essentially still, almost meditative.
Nico took a seat and smiled at Dree, which made Maxence want to slap that smile right off of his face. But he figured he couldn’t do that right now, not when he needed information from Nico.
He was probably flaunting his blue eyes at her, too.
Dree smiled back at Nico.
Maxence cleared his throat and shoved a tablet computer across the desk to her. “Take notes.”
She sat up very straight in her chair and slipped the stylus out of the side slot.
Maxence turned back to his cousin. “I would like your assessment of the likely outcome of the Crown Council.”
Nico laughed a loud, rolling laugh, leaning back in the chair as he did. “Why don’t I throw in what the stock market is going to do next month? Maybe the weather forecast for London?”
“Fine. Give me the prevailing sentiment.”
“You. You’re the prevailing sentiment.”
“Let’s take me out of the equation,” Maxence said.
Dree bowed her head over the tablet. Her curls parted, displaying the balletic curve of her neck that Max wanted to rake his teeth across.
Nico flipped his hand in the air, dismissing the idea. “No one is taking you out of the equation. Everyone is counting on you to ride in like the cavalry and prevent a real fight for the crown.”
Maxence was surprised anyone thought that. Evidently, he hadn’t been clear enough. “Nico, I can’t stand for election. I’ve taken Holy Orders as a deacon and will take the next level to be a priest as soon as I’m allowed. I can’t marry. I can’t have legitimate children. I cannot be the sovereign prince.”
He was going to need to chant that at every
member of the Crown Council he met.
If he wanted to stay alive.
Max continued, “Now, who will the frontrunners be?”
Nico leaned back in his chair and frowned. “In theory, it’s supposed to go down the line of succession. Next in line is Alexandre.”
“Yes.”
Dree crossed her legs, her thighs brushing together. Her hemline rode up, exposing more of her creamy thigh that his tongue had licked only the night before last.
Nico said, “But Alex won’t run, and he wouldn’t win.”
“Agreed,” Maxence said and cleared his throat. “But let’s leave the theoretical line of succession because it’s an anachronism. Who wants it?”
Nico smirked at him. “You’re asking me to rank our relatives in order of ambition and ruthlessness.”
Maxence nodded. “Yes, exactly.”
Nico blew his breath out and tilted his head back to observe the ceiling. “There’s Prince Jules, of course. He said to my dad once that he was sorry he was too young when Rainier IV was elected, and so he’d missed his chance to ‘try something drastic.’”
That didn’t surprise Max. “Who else?”
“Are we including women?”
“It’s probably time we did.”
Dree made a snort in her throat and scratched something on her tablet. She was holding the tablet propped on her knee, clutching the side with those sexy fingernails. After only a few hours out of the wilderness, she was right back to looking like the femme fatale he’d met in Paris. The bodice of her black dress accented her narrow, bendy waist and hourglass figure.
“Valentina Martini might think she’s a contender,” Nico said, still musing at the ceiling.
Maxence reared back in his seat as he considered the possibility of Valentina Martini making a play for the throne. She was descended from Prince Rainier III’s oldest daughter, forming a straight matrilineal line back to Maxence’s grandfather. “That’s interesting.”
“If the line of succession had been based on absolute primogeniture instead of male-preferred primogeniture, she would be the heir apparent right now,” Nico said. “I can see her successfully politicking our relatives and ruling with an iron fist if she did win.”
Prince: Royal Romantic Suspense (Billionaires in Disguise: Maxence Book 5) Page 5