The Royal's American Love

by Sophia Lynn

  She wanted to dismiss the email as some kind of joke. She had followed bogus leads before, and she had wasted time and money on them.

  But this doesn’t feel like a fake lead, she thought, her brow furrowing.

  She didn’t respond to the email. Instead she looked at the time and frowned, biting her lip. Her dress was lovely, but it was undoubtedly a party dress. It was hardly the thing that a discreet young woman would be wearing to a busy cafe in the middle of a Saturday.

  She dressed quickly and made her way out of the building. The shops close to Nikolos’s building were all as fancy as she feared, but a friendly taxi driver took her to a large department store. From the way he glanced at her in the rearview mirror, he obviously thought she was a party girl coming in from a hard night out.

  Or he thinks I’m a prostitute, she thought grimly.

  The department store provided her with a becoming knit dress in a deep forest green and a pair of Mary Jane flats. It was a good look for her, and she stuffed her other clothes into the shopping bag instead.

  Now it was just twenty minutes to her meeting, which was right around the corner. She took a deep breath and started to walk. Somehow, she felt as if she was going to pay the piper for the pleasure she had enjoyed that night.

  All things need to end sometime, she found herself thinking sadly, I just want to keep this one a little longer...

  Chapter Six

  The All World Cafe was, to her surprise, enormous. According to a plaque that she read near the entrance, it was once a plaza where the world came to sell valuable horseflesh. Ever since the 1700s, however, it had become a crossroads for people who were looking for a quick bite to eat and a bit of coffee or tea in the bustle of Athens.

  Marianna bit her lip, wondering how she was going to find the mysterious person who sent the note. She looked around, wishing she had a description to go on. Then her phone chimed. When she looked down, she saw that she had a text message.

  I see you. Meet me by the fountain. I am wearing a kerchief on my head.

  Obediently, Marianne found her way to the fountain. There she saw a young, slender woman sitting in the shadow of an enormous potted fern. There was a furtive look to her, and she was the only one in the area covering up her hair. There was a free seat at her table. Walking with confidence, Marianna crossed the open space and sat down at the table. When she had done clandestine meetings like this as a journalist, she had learned to act naturally.

  “Hello,” she said. “You have me at a disadvantage. You know me, obviously, but I do not know you.”

  The young woman met Marianna’s eyes. Her eyes were dark, and there was so much pain there that Marianna might have gasped if she hadn’t dealt with pain and loss before.

  “My name is Satya Bhandari,” she said, “and the man that you are writing about has done my family a great wrong.”

  “How did you find out about me?” she asked. No matter what her immediate instincts were, she needed to know how she had been found.

  Satya smiled briefly.

  “My cousin works in the royal household. I do not want to say who, for I fear it would lose them their place if you should prove—”

  “If it turns out that I’m a terrible person,” Marianna supplied, making the girl smile.

  “Yes. They told me about the royal family bringing you on, about how they wish to make Prince Nikolos look kind and sympathetic.”

  The urge almost came to Marianna’s lips to say that he was both of those things, but she hung on to her objectivity.

  “What does this mean to you?” she asked instead.

  “He is neither of those things,” Satya said, looking down. “He has been the center of deals that have driven my father out of business. We came to this country as immigrants. I was born here, as were all my brothers. My father set up his watchmaker’s shop in Athens, and things were going so well. Then they came, said they would pay money for my father’s shop to turn the whole block into a shopping center.”

  “Let me guess. He refused.”

  Satya smiled a little.

  “He is a stubborn man, He did refuse, and he began to speak to our neighbors, telling them that they should not be bullied. I do not know whether they agreed with him or whether they only thought they would get more if they said they did. However they all stood up to the developer, and that was when things got ugly.”

  “How ugly?”

  Instead of saying anything, Satya pulled out a manila envelope. Inside were newspaper clippings. They were all about a row of small shops that had caught fire late one July night. No one was killed, but the building was a loss. The inhabitants were sent off with a pittance for the insurance money. Marianna felt a chill run up her spine.

  “Are you saying that this fire was set on purpose?”

  “Yes. And that the man who sent them was Prince Nikolos.”

  She started to protest. Surely Nikolos would never do such an evil thing. However, when she took a closer look at the articles, she could see the mentions of Aurelian Enterprises, which was one of the companies owned by the royal family. She knew from her own research that it was one that Nikolos ran personally.

  She felt her stomach turn upside down.

  “Please,” Satya said, taking Marianna’s hand. “My parents are working in the hotels as cooks right now. My older brother had to withdraw from university to help them, and my younger brother cannot sleep because he dreams of fire. Please. We need justice.”

  Marianna found herself nodding. This was the objectivity she was afraid to lose. A part of her wanted to run from the girl, crying that it couldn’t be true, it could never be true. Another part of her knew altogether too well what major corporations, especially ones that were supposedly beyond reproach, were capable of.

  “You will have justice, I promise it,” she said. “May I keep these clippings?”

  Satya nodded jerkily. There was something relaxed about her now, as if she had delivered her message and hope had come back, at least a little bit.

  “Yes. Keep them. If you need me to speak, I will. My parents told me there was nothing to be done, but I do not believe that.”

  “They are wrong and you are right. Can I contact you at the email you sent?”

  “You can. I will reply as soon as I see it, but I might not see it for a day or so.”

  “That’s fine. Please, be well. I promise that I will not forget you.”

  She saw Satya disappear into the crowd. For a long time, she didn’t want to move. She only let the hubbub of the crowd wash over her, moving quickly like the play of sunlight on water.

  Just a few hours ago, she had been as happy as she ever had been in her life. Now it had all come crashing down around her. She had believed in Nikolos, and now she had been reminded in the most brutal possible way that at the end of it all, no one was as they seemed.

  She pushed her own sorrow down. There would be time to deal with it afterward. Right now, she had to find out the truth, for Satya and her family, but also for the people who might look at Nikolos and see as she had seen.

  Despite the evidence in front of her, she could not imagine Nikolos doing the things Satya had said he did. She couldn’t believe the man who had touched her and kissed her so sweetly could be so ruthless.

  She reached for her objectivity. It was a tool, and at the moment, it was the best one she had. She gathered herself up and went back to the road to hail a cab. She had a great deal of work to do.

  * * *

  When he got out of the meeting with his parents, Nikolos felt better than he thought he would. There had been the mild censure for taking so long to get to the things they needed from him, but after that, it had stopped.

  When they were almost done, he’d turned a curious eye to his mother.

  “I don’t want to ruin things when they are going so well,” he said cautiously, “but why are you being so nice to me today?”

  His mother looked at him fondly, even if there was a bit of sly humor in
her twinkling eyes.

  “Aren’t I always kind to you?” she asked, but she shook her head knowingly. “Ever since the writer has been following you, you have changed. You are kind and thoughtful, aware of yourself and the power you command. It is a great thing to see.”

  Nikolos raised an eyebrow at his mother.

  “You don’t think it is simply because I know that I am being watched?”

  She looked at him fondly.

  “I have known you all your life. Believe me when I say that I know what it looks like when you are simply being good for the sake of those watching.”

  No matter how frustrating his mother could be sometimes, he knew she was also a woman who saw much and was very fair. He really couldn’t fault her for her observation because at the bottom of it, it was true. He was changing, and true reason for it was a flame-haired siren who had just given him one of the most amazing nights of his life.

  On his way back to the penthouse, he drove past an old man selling flowers on the corner. Something about the flower wagon made him blink, and he drove around the block to come back to the stand.

  The old man was selling roses, but that wasn’t the surprise. In addition to the red, pink and white roses, there were silvery ones as well, with just the softest touch of violet.

  That’s what makes her eyes so special, Nikolos thought. There’s just a bit of violet in them.

  When he asked for a bouquet of the silver roses, the old man lit up.

  “What a good choice, sir,” he exclaimed. “Most people look right over those roses. They’re grown in a hot house right outside the city. Very special flowers, they were developed in the United States—”

  “I’m never going to overlook these,” Nikolos decided. Every time he saw them, he would think of Marianna’s eyes.

  Nikolos was disappointed when he arrived back at his penthouse only to find Marianna was missing. He didn’t suppose that she would stay, he thought. He had been gone hours later than he had said he would. He realized very quickly, however, that she had left no note, either, and he began to get uneasy.

  After he had searched a second time to make sure there was no note, he looked at his phone. There was no message either, and so he called her.

  She picked up on the second ring, and she sounded unsurprised to hear from him.

  “I have missed you all day,” he said cheerfully. “Where shall we go for dinner tonight?”

  “I’m really sorry, but I can’t,” she said. “Something came up, and I need to spend some time working tonight. I’m sure you understand.”

  Nikolos scowled.

  “I’m not sure I do,” he said. “You were saying that even journalists took days off.”

  “I’m sorry, but that day can’t be today.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. He could imagine her biting her lip, thinking fast.

  “Maybe not,” she said apologetically. “But I will see you on Monday.”

  “Of course,” he said curtly. “I understand perfectly.”

  “Nikolos…”

  “Enjoy your weekend, and I shall see you on Monday,” he said. He turned off the phone, shaking his head.

  What was he thinking? He was mooning over her as if he were a lovesick boy. He had allowed her to change the way he behaved, the way he thought, the way he ran his life. That needed to end immediately. He pushed away the hurt he felt at what seemed to be her rejection. Some saner part of his mind tried to tell him that she may simply have meant exactly what she said. Perhaps she did need to work.

  However, there was something about the way that she had talked with him, something about the way she had brushed him off. There was a coldness there he hadn’t anticipated. He had never heard her voice sound so cold before this moment.

  Nikolos shook his head as if he could merely dislodge her from his thoughts…from his soul. The more he tried to push her away, however, the more he thought of her smile, the sweetness of her skin, the kind way she had of simply listening. He had never encountered that genuine a woman before, and now that she was gone, he could feel the hurtful space her absence left behind.

  “I can’t do this,” he said out loud to the apartment.

  He was heading for the door when his phone chimed. For one brief and blazing instant, he thought it was Marianna. He wasn’t sure what she might say that could make their previous exchange better, but the mad and ridiculous hope was there.

  Instead, the number came up as unlisted. With a dark frown, he answered the call.

  “Guess who!”

  Nikolos blinked with surprise.

  “Grace, is that you?”

  “Of course it is! Listen, I’m in Athens for the weekend, and I was wondering who might be able to show me an absolutely divine time. Of course, the moment I asked myself that question, I knew that the answer was you! So how about it, are you free? Can you make the time for an old friend?”

  Despite his dark mood about Marianna, he found himself grinning, albeit a little reluctantly, over Grace’s fast talk.

  “I had some plans,” he said, “but I suppose I can make the time. Shall I meet you at our old club. Will that suffice, Duchess?”

  Grace’s laughter was pure sweetness. Even in his worst moods, it could make him smile.

  “Of course! I simply cannot wait to see you!”

  Nikolos felt a part of him protesting this action. He was going out to see Grace, when all he really wanted to do was find Marianna. The need to see her again, just confirm that everything was all right, was intense.

  He shook his head. He changed clothes, and he left his apartment.

  Chapter Seven

  Marianna told herself she couldn’t remember the last time she had slept. Of course that was a lie. She did remember. It had been in Nikolos’s bed, wrapped up in his arms. When she thought about it too long, she was tempted to believe it was the best sleep she’d ever had in her life.

  She couldn’t think about that now. Instead, she had to think about the Aurelian corporation and what it may have done to Satya’s family and many other families besides.

  It was like a terrible puzzle. The further she went, the more boundaries and prohibitions she came across. There was something going on, but despite all of her digging, both online and off, she could not have said what it was.

  Marianna worked straight through Saturday and Sunday, stopping to get food when her body absolutely demanded it, sleeping only when she couldn’t see straight. At the end, she realized she had come nearly full circle. She had a handful of names, the sense that something was going suspiciously wrong, and a deep sense of unease.

  And now that I have all of this information, what in the world am I going to do with it?

  She knew what she had to do as a moral person. When she was a journalist, the answer had been even clearer. Call attention, Make sure that an injustice couldn’t be ignored.

  However, whenever she tried to cast Nikolos as the villain in the piece, she couldn’t do it. His name was all over the documents she could find, but her keen reporter’s instinct told her that there was something wrong.

  On top of the research she was doing, which was hard enough on its own, there was the fact that inside, it felt like her heart was being wrenched in two. She couldn’t believe that Nikolos was responsible for what Satya had accused him. She couldn’t imagine that he would be so heedless about the cause of people who were only fighting to make a living.

  However, she had known powerful people before. She had seen people who were wonderfully charming in public, but then as soon as the doors were closed, they revealed their true selves. Some of those people had worked just within the bounds of the law to get what they wanted, even if it cost others everything. Some…the most ruthless…had gone far beyond legal means.

  You’re being a little fool, a cold voice inside her said. What do you know about him? You don’t know what he’s capable of. You don’t know what kind of secrets he is hiding behin
d that handsome face.

  I know the way he smiles. I know how gentle he is, and how kind. He could never have done what Satya says.

  The two voices were constantly speaking. Sometimes one was louder, sometimes the other was. They never stopped, and neither could prevail over the other. More than once over the course of the weekend, she felt as if she was at the point of tears, ready to hide from the world.

  There were two things that kept her from it. One was her sense of justice. If Satya was right, there was a great wrong being done. The other was her sense of faith. If she kept looking, she knew somewhere in her heart she would find something that would exonerate Nikolos.

  At this point, only one thing was clear. Her objectivity on the matter was gone. The only thing left to guide her were her own ethics.

  She felt so tired she could have slept for days. Instead, she opened up her laptop and started to work again. The truth lay somewhere in these documents, and she would find it.

  Monday morning dawned bright and clear, a beautiful day in Athens. When she checked her schedule for the day, it involved following Nikolos to a luncheon given by one of the antiquities organizations.

  She received a text that he would be picking her up, and she winced. Her cowardice had prevented her from speaking to him at all over the weekend. Every time she had thought of it, she wanted to hide. She was pleased that they might be able to continue things as usual, though she wondered how he would regard her after their single night together. She didn’t think he would be cruel, but pretending it had never happened would be exquisitely painful for her.

  He arrived at her hotel directly on time, giving her a polite if distracted smile. As he maneuvered his way into traffic, she cautiously broached the topic of the weekend with him.

  “About the weekend. I am so sorry, I know I just sort of disappeared on you.”