by Teri Wilson
“It suits you,” Maxim said.
And even though every rational thought in her mind told Finley she was plunging headlong into trouble, she’d never felt more like a princess.
She tugged her hand away. “I’m not keeping it, obviously. It just seemed safer to wear it than to drop it into my bag.”
“Understood.” The dimples in his cheeks flashed, and Finley’s stomach did a little flip.
She was losing it. Clearly. Being royal shouldn’t increase his sexy factor a single bit. If anything, it should make him less appealing. Who was she kidding, though? He was already about as appealing as he could get, crown or no crown.
It was just so strange, though. Finley had spent the past year and a half immersing herself in Russian history. She’d read everything she could find about the Romanovs. She’d spent months pleading with museums all over the world to let her gather together what was left of their possessions. She’d touched the gifts Nicholas had given Alexandra. She’d held those glittering treasures in her hands.
Breathless, she’d walked the halls of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, where Nicholas II and Alexandra had gotten married. Where they’d held grand imperial balls and waltzed from room to room. Where they’d ruled. Then she’d gone back to Paris and written down everything she’d seen and experienced. She’d poured everything she had into her book. She ate, drank, and slept the Romanovs twenty-four hours a day. She’d been chasing them through decades of history, only to have Maxim find her in the present.
Maxim Romanov.
It felt predestined, somehow. Like fate.
Or destiny.
But Finley had never believed her life to be guided by some unseen force. She’d been hurt. She’d lost herself for a while, and she’d only begun to find her way back. Life wasn’t a Cinderella story. She didn’t have a fairy godmother waiting in the wings to make everything better. She was making things better herself.
If anyone could make her believe, though, it just might be Maxim Romanov. Especially here, beneath the onion domes of Cathédrale Saint-Alexandre-Nevsky, where she stood bathed in stained-glass watercolor shadows while Russian chants filled the air.
She blinked. Hard.
“What now?” she asked.
She could barely breathe. He was going to send her away again. And this time, she wouldn’t be able to talk her way back into things. He had the Russian Orthodox Church on his side now. He no longer needed her.
“Now?” He reached for her hand again and just as she thought he was about to unfasten the bracelet from around her wrist, he lowered his head and pressed a tender kiss to the back of her hand. Finley’s heartbeat slowed to normal. She could finally breathe again. “Now we should probably go find my birth certificate. How does that sound?”
We.
The cathedral’s bells began to chime. Finley could feel them ringing from the soles of her feet to the top of her head.
She nodded. “It sounds like a plan. I’m in.”
* * *
THE PARIS STREETS SHIMMERED with glittering light and wine-soaked conversation from the crowded sidewalk cafés as Maxim and Finley made their way toward Boulevard St. Germain with Gerard trotting ahead. All the while, Maxim tried to convince himself that he wasn’t making a terrible mistake. Finley shouldn’t be there, walking beside him. Her fingertips shouldn’t have brushed against his when the walkway grew narrow and the passersby became so thick that they’d nearly bumped into each other. Her hand, warm and lovely, shouldn’t have somehow ended up in his again.
He wanted to touch her. Really touch her. Not just her hand, but also her pillowy lips, her elegant neck, and the decadent curve of her hips. He wanted to touch her everywhere. He wanted it so much he couldn’t even look at her without getting hard.
What had he done?
Maxim told himself that taking her back to his apartment wasn’t dangerous. He had answers now. With any luck, it’d only be a matter of time until he could prove exactly who he was. Once he could, the police would surely take his case more seriously.
But that hadn’t happened yet, had it? He was inching closer to the answers he so desperately needed, but he wasn’t there yet. He still had no idea who’d attacked him or who had tried to break into his apartment. His life could be in danger, and if it was, that meant Finley’s life was at risk as well.
He’d acted selfishly, and he knew it. But he couldn’t bring himself to push her away. Not again. Not when she peered up at him through thick lashes with belief shining in her emerald eyes. Not when she’d looked at him that way all along.
Finley had helped him when no one else would. She’d had every reason not to, but she’d helped him just the same. And now he felt almost whole again. Not like the old Maxim. That person still seemed like a stranger to him.
Someone altogether different. A new man. A man he quite liked.
“Maxim?”
He turned toward Finley with a start and realized they were standing outside his grandmother’s apartment building. Anastasia’s apartment building.
My grandmother was the Grand Duchess Anastasia.
It was too much to think about right then. He wanted to know about the journal. When had he suspected the truth? How had he figured it out?
But those questions could wait, because Finley was expecting him to reach inside his pocket for his key so he could unlock the door to the foyer of his building. Beneath the soft halo of St. Germain’s lamplights, he could see her cheeks go pink. They were the exact color of the cherry blossom trees that decorated Paris in spring. She exhaled a shaky breath, and her gaze flitted to his mouth before dropping to her hand, still interwoven with his.
She thought he was going to kiss her.
She was right.
Only this time, it wouldn’t end with just a kiss.
He inserted the skeleton key into the lock. Was it his imagination, or did the key slide in too easily? He removed it, then pushed it in again, turning it to the right and left a few times, testing it before pushing the door open. The lock appeared to be in perfect working order. Clearly, the events of the past few weeks had made him paranoid.
When he placed his hand on the small of Finley’s back and guided her through the marble lobby, he could feel her supple spine moving beneath his fingertips. A wayward lock of her upswept hair tickled his nose. She smelled of flowers—lush peonies in the rain. His body went hard again.
He probably shouldn’t be thinking about sex right then. He should be thinking about what to do with the surreal fact that he was a royal heir, the grandson of the last Russian Tsar. How was that even possible? What was he supposed to do with this information? He had no intention of making a claim under the Century Rule, no matter what the DNA results indicated. He just wanted to know who he was and what had happened to him. That’s all he’d wanted all along.
But that wasn’t quite true, was it?
He’d also wanted to find the woman who’d haunted his dreams in the hospital. And now that he had, he wanted to know her. He wanted to feel the flutter of her pulse against his mouth again, to taste her delicate sweetness. He wanted to lose himself.
In Finley.
If that made him a bad man, so be it. Things had spun so wildly out of his control, there was no going back. Maybe he’d never been in control to begin with. It sure as hell didn’t feel like he had been.
And it didn’t feel that way now, especially when he and Finley reached the front door of his flat.
“It’s open,” Finley said. The color was slowly draining from her beautiful face. “Did you forget to close your door?”
Merde. No, he hadn’t. “Don’t go inside. Someone’s been here.”
Or worse, someone was still there.
Gerard’s ears pricked forward. The little bulldog growled and scooted backward until he bumped into Maxim’s shin.
Fin
ley scooped him into her arms. “We should call the police.”
“No.” Maxim shook his head.
The last person he wanted to see right now was Julian Durand. He couldn’t face another interrogation. If the detective started pressing him for information, Maxim would be forced to tell him about the meeting with Father Kozlov. He didn’t want to do that. Not yet. Not until he’d taken the DNA test. If Maxim told the French police he was a long lost heir to the Romanov dynasty and couldn’t back it up, they’d never take him seriously. He was having enough trouble getting them to do so already.
“Wait here.” He reached into his pocket for his cell phone and pressed it into Finley’s hand. “If I’m not back in a couple of minutes, call the police.”
She stared at the phone in her palm and then met his gaze. Her eyes were huge in her face. “You can’t go in there, Maxim.”
“I’ll be fine. Whoever did this is probably gone. The open door attracts attention, and I doubt that’s something they’d want.” He hoped so, anyway.
“Maxim, please.” She shook her head. Memories moved behind her eyes. Painful memories.
He cursed himself again for getting her involved in his mess of a life. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
He hoped with every fiber of his being it wasn’t a lie. Then he pushed through the door and stepped inside the flat.
The place was a mess. It had obviously been ransacked from top to bottom. The kitchen drawers had been pulled out and the contents dumped on the floor. All the paintings hung askew on the walls. The old trunk he used as a coffee table had been overturned, and the cushions on his grandmother’s sofa were slashed. Tiny white feathers had settled on every surface. A few still floated in the air. Maxim felt like he was trapped in a perversely horrific snow globe.
He stood there for a moment with his feet rooted to the spot, too stunned to move. The thought of Finley waiting for him in the hall finally propelled him into motion. He moved from room to room as fast as he could, navigating through a maze of upturned furniture and his possessions scattered underfoot.
He checked behind the shower curtains and searched the corners of every closet. Whoever had made the monumental mess was long gone. Maxim could sense it in his bones. The flat felt cold and empty. Barren. It sure as hell didn’t feel like home anymore.
Then again, he hadn’t really had much time to absorb the fact that he actually lived here. It still felt like a stranger’s apartment. Now more than ever.
“Come on in. Everything’s fine.” He held the door open wide for Finley and Gerard.
Finley exhaled a tense breath. She stepped inside and her mouth dropped open in a perfect O. “Oh my God, Maxim. Everything is not fine.”
“You have a point. I may have exaggerated slightly.” He raked a hand through his hair. “But no one’s here.”
“Good.” She nodded and bit her lip as she looked around in a daze. Gerard let out a little yip and snapped his jaws at a feather floating past his comical little face.
If Maxim hadn’t been so utterly furious with himself, he would’ve laughed. “Finley, you need to go. You can’t be here.”
She stared at him. “Seriously? Neither can you. This is bad, Maxim. Really bad.”
He crossed is arms. “I’m aware.”
Where was he supposed to go? A hotel? Not likely. He’d probably have to call and cancel all his credit cards. His laptop was missing and with it, all of his personal financial information.
One thing was certain. If he stayed, he would do so alone. He’d had no business dragging Finley into this disaster, and he wasn’t about to let her stay. There would be no changing his mind this time.
“Finley, I’m serious. You need to leave. It’s not safe here.”
She patently ignored him and began tiptoeing through the wreckage. “Is anything missing, or did they just trash the place?”
Maxim sighed. Was he going to have to pick her up and carry her out? “My computer is gone, but nothing else as far as I can tell.”
“Your laptop is usually sitting out in the open though, isn’t it?” Her gaze drifted toward the kitchen. “I noticed it sitting on the kitchen counter last night.”
“It was still sitting there when I left this morning.” He bit back a smile. “Shortly after you turned up and announced you weren’t here to sleep with me.”
“Right.” She cleared her throat.
He righted one of the dining room chairs, lowered himself into it, and dropped his head in his hands. What was he supposed to do now? He couldn’t quite bring himself to tell Finley to go again, but he knew damn well he shouldn’t let her stay.
“Maxim.”
He looked up. “Yes?”
“Someone knows who you are.”
“That makes one of us, then.” He shrugged.
She unclipped Gerard’s leash. The little dog pounced on the closest pile of feathers while Finley came and knelt in front of him.
He looked up and met her gaze. God, she was beautiful. And smart. Too smart to throw away her career for the likes of him.
“I’m not talking about who you were before. I mean who you are . . . who you’ve been since you were born.” She looked at him with an intensity he felt deep in his chest. Her eyes were unfathomably green. Bewitching. More exquisite than any of the paintings that hung in the museum she loved so much. “Someone knows you’re a Romanov.”
“We don’t know if that’s true.”
“We do.” Her hand fluttered to her heart. “I do.”
Maxim fought the urge to drop to his knees, bury his hands in her hair, and kiss her until they both forgot they’d ever heard of the Romanov dynasty. He fought it hard.
“Someone else knows, too. That’s why they came here. That’s why you were attacked. Don’t you think? It can’t all be a coincidence.”
He would have laughed if it hadn’t felt so utterly hopeless at the moment. Even if the DNA test proved who he was and solved the mystery of the bizarre notebook, he still wouldn’t have any idea how he’d become a target. Somehow confirming he was royal didn’t seem like it would improve the situation. Actual royals couldn’t even walk down the street without bodyguards. What if the press somehow found out who he was?
His jaw clenched. “Definitely not a coincidence. But what were they looking for? The notebook?”
“No. They were looking for this.” Finley held up her hand. His grandmother’s bracelet sparkled against her porcelain skin.
Maxim took her hand in his, ran his thumb over her palm, and somehow resisted the urge to kiss the inside of her delicate wrist. “I always thought this thing was costume jewelry. My grandmother always told me it was an old sentimental favorite. She called it fool’s gold.”
Who was the fool now?
He leveled his gaze at her. “It’s not safe here, Finley. We need to leave. Now.”
CHAPTER
* * *
THIRTEEN
Maxim was right. They couldn’t stay at his apartment.
Finley had put on a brave front, because she knew if she’d let him see just how terrified she’d been when she’d first walked into his ravaged flat, he would’ve stubbornly insisted she leave. She wasn’t about to go away now, no matter how queasy she felt as she took in all the destruction.
“We can go to my apartment.” She stood and eyed the papers that had been dumped unceremoniously on the floor of Maxim’s kitchen. “But first we need to find your birth certificate.”
“Absolutely not.” There was an edge to Maxim’s voice that she’d never heard before.
It was sharp enough to stop Finley in her tracks. “You need it for the DNA test.”
“I wasn’t talking about the birth certificate. I was talking about your apartment. I can’t be there, Finley. Not if means this whoever did this will follow me.”
Finley inhaled a sh
aky breath. She hadn’t considered the possibility that someone had been following Maxim.
Don’t panic. Do not.
A very real part of her wanted to run. It was one thing to risk her career, but it was another thing entirely to stick around if it meant reliving the worst thing that had ever happened to her.
She couldn’t be a victim. Not again.
But she knew she couldn’t leave him, either. She didn’t want to leave him. She had feelings for Maxim, and those feelings had nothing at all to do with his family tree.
Why is this happening?
She nodded. “Fine. Just try and locate your birth certificate in this mess while I make a phone call. I know a place where we can spend the night. Someplace safe.”
She lifted her chin and tried to ignore the fact that she’d just blatantly announced she intended to spend the night with him.
He didn’t utter a word of protest, but then again, he didn’t have to. His raised eyebrow managed to do all the talking.
Finley flashed him the universal talk-to-the-hand gesture. “Don’t even think about arguing with me. Honestly, it’s like this whole royal thing has gone straight to your head. You’re not a tsar, you know. And I’m not one of your royal subjects. I can make my own decisions.”
A fascinating knot flexed in his jaw, and his eyebrow arched even higher.
Finley suppressed a shiver. Did he have to be so handsome? So divinely masculine? She’d managed to attach herself to the man who had the most communicative eyebrows in France.
We’re not a couple. It’s just a royally inconvenient crush.
He stood and walked toward her. Finley was suddenly more nervous than she’d ever been in her life. “Are you at least going to tell me where we’re spending the night?”
She could feel the heat coming off him, like the sun rising over the Seine on a hot summer day. Oh God. This was really happening. Maybe the flutter she felt low in her belly wasn’t nerves after all. Maybe it was excitement.
Her throat grew dry. Excitement. Most definitely. “Um, not yet. Can you give me five minutes?”