Bringing the pillow to his face, he could still smell Marie’s perfume. His core stirred at the memory of their union. Embracing until they’d blended into one being. Exploring one another, his hands, her hands, exciting, elevating, pleasuring. Her mouth moving from one of his shoulders to the other. His lips trailing down every vertebra of her spine. Wrapped around each other, caressing and wanting, until they joined in the most profound coupling. Their bodies fitting perfectly together as one.
“Marie?” he called out, needing her again, needing her right now.
Reality began to throb his brain like a headache. It wasn’t supposed to have played out like this. He’d told himself all along not to develop romantic feelings for her. That they could never be together, therefore he would protect her feelings. And his own.
Yet once he’d lost control and kissed her that night at the Mexico party, they were, in fact, marching toward an inevitable conclusion. And then last night, the merging of their minds, bodies and, maybe especially, their souls was even more transcendental than he could have imagined.
There was no other way to describe it. He was head over heels in love with Marie. What he was going to do about that predicament, he had no idea.
“Marie!” he called out again, hoping that she was in the sitting room or bathroom. He tossed the bedding aside and rose to scan the suite.
Her Marilyn Monroe dress and heels were gone. All he spotted was the blond wig that had been part of her costume.
Confirming that she wasn’t here, he retrieved his phone to check if she’d left a message for him. He only found one from his mother, which she’d marked as urgent. As he read the Royal Matchups website report she’d sent, feverish blood sped through his veins like they were racetracks. His head shook back and forth as if to scream No! No!
Fury enveloped him. At the press. At his mother. At Marie. And especially at himself. How could he have allowed this to happen?
He picked up the blond Marilyn Monroe wig. And absentmindedly ran his fingers through it like it was Marie’s own strands. As if it contained Marie’s DNA, and as if that would quell the firestorm raging through him.
Marie had deceived him! He’d thought they were being open and honest but she was withholding information. He’d directly asked about her parents and who they really were. No doubt assuming that he’d have to disassociate from her if he found out the answer, she kept it from him.
He sat in his disappointment and hurt, stroking the wig.
Until anger turned to agony.
Oh, what his poor Marie had been subjected to. How absolutely terrifying it must have been to have criminals for parents, with no one to protect her. For a child to have to live in the squalor and bedlam of lawlessness and drugs was almost unthinkable. And then that they were murdered with no provisions made for Marie. The pain he felt for her was unbearable.
Zander’s mother had been right, of course, that the media would find a way to trace Marie. Citing newspaper articles from fourteen years ago and a follow-up piece a few years later, those evil gossip hounds had been able to expose her. To use the information to humiliate Zander’s family, and Marie herself. That he had thought for even a minute there was a chance of all this unfolding otherwise was simply the wish of a naive boy in love.
* * *
The next morning, Marie woke from fitful hours of incoherent nightmares, sinister visions filled with bursts of violent colors and distorted human screams. Yesterday was a lifetime ago, when she’d quietly left the mansion where her Zander lay sleeping after their extraordinary night. First, the success of the gala had pumped them with adrenaline and giddy pride at a job well done. Then, together and alone in the still hours, their energy fixated on each other. They engaged in celestial lovemaking, the likes of which Marie didn’t know existed.
Not much more than twenty-four hours ago, she’d lain on Egyptian cotton sheets in the arms of the strong and goodhearted prince who had entered her life and rocked it to the core.
He had treated her as an equal. Never prying about her past. And letting her fall in love with Abella, despite how carefully he guarded her. It was almost as if, along the way, Zander had come to trust Marie.
His trust. Which she had betrayed by not telling him herself about the horror stories, her horror stories. That had abruptly become public property. How silly of her to think that she could keep them private. Even people at the APCF didn’t know every gruesome fact, although they’d heard similar tales hundreds of times.
But now, because of her association with Prince Zander de Nellay, the whole world was apparently entitled to slice her open and dissect inside. She could hardly fathom what it was to be him, to have every move he made be under the ever-present camera’s eye that was always watching.
If only they could shut the world out and make their own rules about who was suitable for whom. Because when immersed in their own groove, she and Zander made beautiful music together. A tune she knew nothing would ever compare to. A melody she’d want to hear in her head for eternity.
Because not only was she in love with sweet Abella, she was in love with Zander.
So this was love, she mused a few days later in her solitary room. Like floating just a few inches above ground and no matter what you did, your feet wouldn’t touch the floor. It could be an exquisite feeling of invincible vitality, one that inspired and motivated and gave forth endlessly renewable energy. But when all of that love was expended in vain, it was draining and exasperating and painful. A relentless reminder of what couldn’t be.
As was the chrome clothing rack on wheels that Zander had sent over to hold the formalwear he’d bought her. Listlessly, she touched the black lace of the ball gown she’d worn to the Mexico party.
She noted the details of the embroidered flowers and of the threadwork. Pati at the dress shop had told her it was made from guipure lace, a specific type that had an open design and raised texture. Marie wouldn’t know one lace from the other if her life depended upon it, but Pati had emphasized what a unique gown it was.
Marie had never worn satin gloves before that night and the red pair was unbelievably luxurious. Bringing one to the side of her face, she brushed it against her skin just as Zander had with his lips.
She had to avert her gaze from the Marilyn Monroe dress, with too-vivid remembrances of Zander untying the neck of the halter and skimming the fabric down her body until she was naked in his hands. She had no idea what had happened to the wig that went with it.
Individual tears dropped from Marie’s eyes.
“You know, you did a great job with the gala,” Felice said, leaning her head into Marie’s office later that day. “Zander will be in this afternoon to close out the books.”
“What?” Marie all but choked on the coffee she was sipping. She knew she’d have to see Zander again sometime. He was committed to lending his name to the APCF’s pursuits and that didn’t end with the gala. But she’d hoped that some time would pass before she’d have to encounter him again.
She was definitely not ready to see him strut down the corridor of work cubicles toward her office, making her prickle in anticipation as he’d done dozens of times in the past few weeks.
It would take a while before she could lock into those spectacular almond-shaped eyes that were the darkest she’d ever seen. Or to notice those muscular hands that had held her so firmly in their grip. The brawny left shoulder that competently nestled baby Abella.
No, she needed some distance before being expected to face all of that again.
“Felice,” Marie sputtered before the agency director moved out of earshot. “Would it be okay if I worked from home for the rest of the day? I’m not feeling well.”
That wasn’t exactly the truth, but a sickness she certainly had. The most excruciating, pounding, stabbing, scorching ache anyone had ever been asked to withstand. Being near him would throw salt on those al
ready open wounds.
Felice removed her eyeglasses and let them dangle from their chain around her neck. “I gather something personal has transpired between you and Zander,” she said, reading right through Marie. “Take the rest of the day off if you want. But I don’t think avoiding him is the right move.”
She knew that Felice was right and she’d have to learn how to live through seeing him again.
But not today.
Please, not today.
* * *
“Here’s where you’ve been keeping my granddaughter,” Princess Claudine chided her son as she burst through his apartment door, shopping bags in tow. “I have gifts.”
“Hello, Mother.” Zander met her arrival, Abella in his left arm as usual.
Mother and son kissed the other on each cheek and then Claudine gave a quick pat to the baby’s head. “So cute.”
Claudine reached into one of the bags and extracted a pink plastic baby’s rattle. She shook it for Abella, who focused her eyes on it for about five seconds before turning away. Zander’s mother hadn’t interacted with young children in a long time, he reasoned, so she obviously didn’t compute that by eighteen months of age Abella was on to more interactive toys. Still, it was a nice gesture.
“Come out to the terrace, Mother, and we’ll have a drink.”
When Her Highness called Zander yesterday to tell him that she’d be in Cannes for a film festival party and would stop in to see him, he’d bridled. He was in no mood to listen to his mother’s stories about the silly partygoers she kept company with and their insignificant problems.
Since the APCF gala and that obscene gossip report, Zander had been keeping to himself. He’d taken Abella in her buggy out to the seaside, which allowed him a chance to take long, contemplative walks. But he’d been returning home by nightfall, canceling engagements, staying in evening after evening. He was in a funk.
With the spongy and colorful ground covering he’d laid down on the terrace, the area had become Abella’s play space as much as anything else. Which drew a curious, and probably disapproving, reaction from his mother. Nonetheless, he seated her and poured some cold drinks.
“Does she speak yet?” Claudine asked of her granddaughter.
“She has a lot of words. And is starting to string them together.”
“When you were that age, we could hardly keep you quiet. We swore you had already learned to read when actually it was that you’d memorized all of the books we read aloud to you. Whereas your sister kept silent until she was almost three years old.”
It was quite a surprise for Zander to hear his mother waxing nostalgic about his childhood. They both knew that his and Elise’s upbringings were left mainly to nannies and palace staff, with Claudine waltzing into the nursery for overly perfumed kisses before she was off for her fabulous evenings.
Of course, any complaints on that he had were not as dire as the tragedies of Marie’s childhood. But a hands-on parent his mother surely wasn’t. Now, as she’d grown older, she’d apparently reinvented a history that portrayed her in a more favorable light.
At the mention of Elise, they both paused and looked out to the seashore view the terrace provided.
“Life is unpredictable,” Claudine mused.
“How right you are.”
Zander’s thoughts moved to the anguish that had him torn up inside. Marie. When he’d gone to the APCF to finish the accounting for the gala, she wasn’t at the office. His repeated calls and texts had gone unanswered. He didn’t want to show up at the APCF again to look for her, as it seemed she was making it clear she didn’t want any contact with him.
He should respect that.
But what about what he wanted?
“I can tell you’re blue, Zander. Because of Marie?”
He affirmed, but his mother didn’t need to be a master detective to have figured that one out. She, too, had read the startling account of Marie’s history that the media had mercilessly broadcast to the world. She added, “Frankly, that press report nauseated me.”
“Me, as well.”
Both mother and son knew that were he to continue to associate with Marie, it would give the media endless permission to publish demeaning and distressing personal facts about her, and grant the public and Charlegin’s citizens a license to arbitrate him and his family. It would fuel an insatiable drive for stories about them, no matter where they went or what they did.
“You know I had my share of scrutiny as a commoner marrying your father.”
Of course, it was many years ago when Claudine and Hugh began their courtship, before the internet and social media exploded and gave birth to constant news cycles starving for more and more content. But Zander had seen some of the unflattering newspaper clippings about the shopgirl who had caught Prince Hugh’s eye. They portrayed her as an unabashed gold digger. Which she was, but it must have been hurtful to have to see her ruthlessness spelled out in print.
“You and he persevered,” Zander spat with a wry twist to the corner of his mouth.
“Yes, your father loved me once.”
Her words dangled in the air.
His parents had a working relationship. Fulfilling their obligations, appearing at functions and serving Charlegin’s subjects. They were cordial to each other. Although Zander and his sister always knew that they weren’t in love.
There were no hushed conversations or private jokes. No stolen moments of affection. No long hours spent together.
Nothing like what he felt for Marie, for example.
“Doggie.” Abella lifted the wooden piece from the animal puzzle she was playing with.
“Yes, Bell-bell, that’s a dog.”
“Doggie bow-wow.”
“Right, a dog says bow-wow.”
Abella went back to her play.
“When you brought Marie to the palace, I saw how you gazed into each other’s eyes like you were the only two people on earth. And at the gala, how you interacted as a couple with a bond that was palpable.”
“What are you saying, Mother?”
“That I had an ulterior motive in coming to Cannes today. I wanted to talk to you in person. To tell you that I’ve had a change of heart.”
“How so?”
“Long ago, what the press thought of me wasn’t the real issue between your father and me,” Claudine confessed after a sip of her drink.
“Oh?”
“I never told you about Louis.” Her mouth minced a couple of times before she spoke again. “Louis was the boy I was truly in love with. His family lived a few doors down from mine in dreadful Roubaix. Louis was a car mechanic. Blue jeans and white T-shirts, all muscle and libido. You get the idea.”
Having never heard about this before, Zander was spellbound.
“My father became disabled when I was a teenager. Years hunched over factory machinery left him with constant back pain and unable to work. Mother was a laundress but didn’t make enough money to support the household.”
Zander vaguely remembered his maternal grandparents, who died decades earlier.
“After I met your father,” Claudine continued, “I was faced with a choice.”
Understanding of his mother’s words washed across Zander. He laid his hand over his cheek where Marie had last kissed it. He could still feel her there. He slowly confirmed, “Stay with the boy you loved or marry the prince who would take care of your family.”
“I never mentioned Louis ever again. I had no reason to hurt your father, who has shown me nothing but generosity. But I will never forget.” Claudine let out a prolonged sigh before she added, “I know I wasn’t an attentive mother. I think I’ve filled my life with silly pursuits to compensate for the love I left behind.”
“And you’re telling me all of this now.”
“Because I don’t want you to make a similar mista
ke.” She reached across the table and put her hand over Zander’s. “My greatest wish is that you follow your heart.”
Were he to take his mother’s advice, he knew exactly where his heart would lead him. Into the arms of the woman who had changed him forever. Learning about the terrible consequences she’d had to withstand only made him respect and admire her more. She’d grown into a brave adult who was devoted, caring and considerate. Not to mention kind and alive and passionate.
Yes, his heart belonged to Marie Paquet. He was in love with her. And wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, and didn’t care a hoot what the press or anyone else had to say about it.
What’s more, he suspected she loved him, too.
He wondered what his sister would think of all of this. He’d bet she’d want him to find love and to create a true family for Abella to grow up in.
“Thank you, Mother.” Zander maneuvered his hand from under his mother’s to on top of hers, where he gave it a squeeze.
“Now,” Claudine said afterward, getting off her chair and sitting down on the ground covering next to Abella, “may I please play with my granddaughter?”
* * *
Marie glanced up from her computer when she heard a rustling just outside of her office. At eye level, she didn’t see anything so went back to her work. When she heard it again, she tracked a more thorough search.
No wonder she had missed it the first time. Because walking into her office was not an adult of typical height. Bending her neck downward, Marie watched Her Highness Crown Princess Abella de Nellay of Charlegin waddle in as if she owned the place.
She sang out. “Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques...”
“Dormez-vous?” Marie joined her. “Dormez-vous?”
The interlude was followed by a massive gulp in Marie’s throat as it struck her that the eighteen-month-old didn’t arrive at the APCF on her own.
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