Nicki’s question cut across Ryker’s thoughts, and he followed her gaze to Stefan. The man’s aristocratic brows were arched as he regarded Nicki.
“You have somewhere else you’d rather be?”
“Well yeah, duh, we have the entire continent of Europe to explore. Sooner or later you’re going to have to let us all get back to our vacation.”
“We’ve all been languishing without her,” Francesca put in wryly. “Sunning by the pool, gorging on three gourmet meals a day while we wait. It’s been a terrible hardship.”
“See?” Nicki crossed her arms and stared pointedly at Stefan. “How long?”
Stefan set his jaw, and Ryker watched him with interest as well. The stoic man was clearly concerned about the American, beyond simple camaraderie. “Another week, perhaps,” he said. “Possibly longer.”
“Ugh,” Nicki groaned, flopping back in her seat. Ryker swallowed his own grimace. He wanted to get on with his life, meet his family back on the mainland, begin doing what he could to piece his world back together again. As much as he appreciated what the royal family was trying to do for him, he had to get back to work. Though Stefan had told him he was not married, at one point, he’d had to have had a life, a job. It was time to find it.
They wove their way up the mountainside, and his attention moved to Francesca again. She sat almost motionless in the luxurious limo, her face in profile as she studied the road. More than anything, she appeared to be mapping the path back to the marina, noting every turn. As if she already was as stir crazy as he was, and she’d barely been there a half hour.
He settled back in his seat, his mind spinning. Maybe there was something he could do with that…maybe serene Francesca Simmons would be his ticket off this rock.
Chapter Two
The royal apartments on Asteri Island were every bit as luxurious as those in the palace, and there was neither more nor less security here, for all that it was a bit more spread out. Still, Fran couldn’t fight down her anxiety as she paced the sumptuous bedroom that had been prepared for her. Nicki had dropped her off with an eye roll and foul words about another heart monitor test, but Fran hadn’t missed the way she and Stefan had sparred with each other the entire way up from the marina.
It didn’t take a psychology degree to identify that there was a definite energy between the two of them. It also didn’t take one to deduce the same between her and Ryker—or Ari, as she really should refer to him, at least to herself. Though he was undeniably more weathered, the prince looked close enough to the dozens of pictures of him scattered throughout the halls of the royal residence. She hadn’t made a particular study of them, and she regretted that now. Especially since the queen had some misguided belief that she could help tug Ari back toward his memories.
Fran wasn’t an expert on memory loss by any stretch. Sure, it wasn’t completely uncommon for victims of traumatic events to lose portions of their past—particularly those memories directly connected with the violence they experienced. But a full-scale amnesiac response following the crash had to be somewhat unusual. Ari had made the further step to become an entirely different person, too—the childhood avatar he’d chosen when playing with his brother Kristos, according to Nicki.
What did Ryker Stavros mean to Ari, such that in the wake of the crash, that he clung to that persona versus the person he truly was?
Not my problem, Fran reminded herself for the fiftieth time. And it wasn’t. She knew it wasn’t. Nicki had been clear on that score, too. No one was expecting Fran to provide some kind of psychological evaluation of Ari. They simply wanted her as the token companion. Someone who could tag along with the prince without irritating the bejesus out of him, she suspected, and maybe help him be more willing to take his medicine.
Her lips twisted. They wanted her to be Mary Poppins.
A brief knock at the door startled her. “Miss Simmons?” called a voice from the hallway.
She hurried to open the door, nodding at the uniformed maid. The woman appeared as sunny and cheerful as every staff member in the royal household, and she found herself wondering if it was an act.
Stop it. Not everyone fakes their way through life.
The maid beamed at her. “Queen Catherine has requested your presence in the receiving room, if you’re refreshed from your trip?”
Fran lifted her brows. That was quick. “Of course.”
She followed the woman down the long, sumptuously decorated hallway, all of it wrapped in marble and hardwoods, with gilt-framed mirrors and lush ferns breaking up the opulence. There weren’t any pictures here, but from what she understood this villa was used as more of an offshore guest cottage than an official residence of the palace. She snorted, then coughed to mask the derisive sound. What would it have been like to be Ari, growing up in this sort of household?
Her life with her dad hadn’t been bad, not really. Not until the end. But it certainly hadn’t been anything like this.
The maid stopped before a large door and gestured Fran inside, but Fran hesitated a moment.
“How many of them are in there?” she asked.
The woman dimpled at her with almost conspiratorial understanding. “The lot of them. King Jasen and Queen Catherine, Prince Kristos, Ambassador Mihal and Captain Korba. Also Dr. Lessing, I believe.” She brightened. “And Miss Clark. So you are not without friends.”
“Never that,” Fran said. Then she straightened her shoulders, her script set in her mind, and sailed into the room.
The maid had missed two additional doctors who sat at the edge of the chamber—or at least they looked like doctors—but otherwise she’d been right on target. The royal couple turned as a single unit when Fran entered, and Queen Catherine Andris stepped forward with her hands outstretched.
“Francesca, thank you so much for coming on such short notice.” Real gratitude rang in her voice, so earnest that Fran couldn’t help but thaw a little. She allowed the queen to clasp her fingers and returned her regard steadily. “It means so much to me to have someone Ari’s age here while he’s being analyzed by all these strangers.”
“Catherine,” King Jasen murmured, but the queen dropped Fran’s hands and shifted toward him, the sweep of her glance taking in the older man standing at his side.
“Tell me I’m wrong, Dr. Lessing,” she said majestically. “That it’s a bad idea to have a companion who can help Ari reintroduce himself to his former life, someone who can’t stir up memories because they don’t know each other.”
“You’re not wrong,” Dr. Lessing responded with a polite nod. “A young member of his own country might have been better, but I do understand your need to keep Ari’s presence here secret.”
“No one can know he’s back until he’s ready to be back,” the queen said severely. “Francesca neatly avoids the issue. She’s Nicki’s friend and that’s enough to explain her presence here.”
Fran saw her opportunity. “Has his recovery progressed very far?” she asked, her tone level. She pointedly did not glance Stefan’s way. So far, he didn’t seem to pick up on her hyperawareness of him.
Dr. Lessing’s expression became sterner. “It’s not an exact science, I’m afraid. It could be months.”
What? Fran kept her face composed but Nicki squawked on her behalf.
“Months!” she said. “No way. Fran can’t stay here that long, none of us can.” Fran watched as Stefan sent his cool regard Nicki’s way, but Nicki didn’t waver. “And we definitely can’t remain much longer cooped up here on this island, no matter how awesome it is. I swear I’ve already been over every inch of it and we’ve barely been here a full week.”
Dr. Lessing spread his hands. “Actually, Ari may do better with a gradual reintroduction to his former stomping grounds.”
“These are his stomping grounds,” Queen Catherine retorted. “He’s been to this island a hundred times over the years.”
“But not recently.” Kristos Andris shifted against the table where he was leaning
. “The last few times you announced you were coming here, Ari always managed to be fooling around in his airplane or on some diplomatic trip, entertaining foreign visitors, that sort of thing. We haven’t been out here for, what—” Kristos glanced at Dimitri Korba, captain of the Garronia National Security Force. “Three years? Four, I think.”
“At least,” Dimitri said. His voice was a sonorous boom, and Fran smiled despite herself. Lauren had missed the hulking captain since he’d come to the island to watch over his best friend, for all that Ari didn’t realize that the occupants of the island’s primary house were his own family and closest comrade. “And the island was given over to guests of the state more often than not.”
“True, but—”
“Your Highness.” Stefan straightened, his hand at his ear. “Ari is approaching the main house.”
The queen whirled on Dr. Lessing. “Should we see him?” she asked, her tone so pleading that Fran’s heart twisted. “Can we talk to him yet?”
The doctor frowned. “I don’t think that would be wise, Your Highness.”
Even as he spoke, Fran’s resolve to get off the island and out of Garronia was dealt a mortal blow. Here all these people wanted nothing more than to have their son back, their son, their brother and their best friend. They weren’t thinking about her, they weren’t interested in prying into her background and revealing all her stupid secrets and missteps. They were thinking about Ari.
And she could help them with that. She could help him, maybe, walk the path back to his memories—or at least give him someone to talk to as he found his own way.
“I’ll intercept him, if that’s helpful?” she suggested as the queen turned to her, obvious in her urgency. Fran pointed. “I think there’s a door to that garden, right? I could go out that way.”
Queen Catherine nodded quickly. “He loved that garden as a little boy,” she said. “He hasn’t been there yet that we know of.”
Stefan’s words set them all on edge. “He’s at the front drive. We can send a diversion.”
“I’ll go out now.” Fran offered up the same warm smile she’d used to win over drunks and ball-breakers from the time she’d been five years old, her hands lifting in the same conciliatory gesture that had allowed her to back away cleanly from pushers and pimps.
The audience in the royal receiving room of Garronia’s island idyll was different, sure…but they relaxed all the same.
“It’ll be fine,” Fran said, hoping desperately she was right.
“It’ll be fine,” Ryker muttered, surprised he wasn’t wringing his hands like an idiot teenager. He knew Francesca was staying at the main house along with some other VIPs, but there was no reason for him to think she’d be randomly strolling through the gardens on her first afternoon. Still, he couldn’t stay away.
The door opened at the front of the main house and he instinctively shifted his direction, angling around the long drive toward the western gardens. He’d scoped the whole building out already—its exterior anyway—along with wandering down every path and access road in and out of the compound. The place had impressive security, but the workers seemed to be doing their level best to stay out of his way. He appreciated that. Stefan may have thrown a gauntlet of doctors at him, but he’d tried not to make him feel like a prisoner.
Ryker had barely cleared the house when he heard Francesca’s voice, high and clear—and talking to someone.
“Yes, I know—that’s fine,” she said as he quickened his pace, passing the final row of bushes to move into the garden proper. “I can’t wait to see you too…right, absolutely. You too.”
A pang of jealousy struck Ryker so hard it made him scowl, and he barely blanked his expression in time as he rounded the corner and saw Francesca. She disconnected the call and was pocketing her phone when she saw him.
“Ryker,” she said. “I was just about to ask where I might find you. Nicki’s last time trial is going over and I’m on my own for a few hours. I figure I didn’t come all this way to sit in my room.”
“Then I’m glad I can be of service.” He frowned, though, uneasy in the shadow of the big house. Something seemed off about Francesca’s manner…or maybe it was the place that seemed off. He tilted his head, focusing on the fountain. Was it that?
“I guess I could simply sit out here.” Oblivious to his sharpening attention, Francesca walked over to the bubbling fountain, a wide basin with a cluster of leaping stone fish in its center surging through a spray of water. “I didn’t realize how big this garden was.”
“The fountain isn’t right,” he muttered, too low for Francesca to catch since the bubbling water was so loud. He shook off the troubling thought and stepped toward her.
“There’s another garden closer to the sea, if you’d like to see it,” he said. “Fountains, flowers, trees—and a view.” He nodded at the house. “Not that this isn’t an impressive view.”
“It is rather looming, isn’t it? But these flowers are enough to take my mind off everything but their fragrance.” Francesca laughed and more of Ryker’s unease cleared away. Everything was catching him at odd angles on the island—like he should be recalling more and he simply couldn’t. Or he almost thought he did, then it slipped away. Francesca pointed out a particular flower growing in a bright purple cluster. “I think those are my favorites,” she said.
“Borage,” Ryker said without hesitation, and she repeated the word as if to commit it to memory. “And you choose well. It generally grows wild but—”
A bolt of pain seared through him, practically splitting his temple, and he staggered forward a step.
“Ryker! Are you okay?”
At once, Fran’s cool hands were on him, one at his temple where his own hand gripped his head, the other braced on his arm. This close, he could smell the scent of lavender on her, adding to the sense of peacefulness she seemed to weave around him. His headache abated as easily as it started, and he sagged in relief, then offered her a rueful grimace.
“Sorry about that. I had the most powerful image of something important, attached to those flowers, but…” he shook his head. “It’s gone now.”
Francesca pulled her hands away, but not in a manner that implied she was shy or embarrassed. More that he no longer had a need for her soft, soothing touch, and so she removed it. He didn’t necessarily agree with that assessment, but since Francesca remained beside him he wasn’t going to argue the point.
They strolled out of the garden, down one of the carefully tended cobblestone paths that seemed to run riot over the whole property. The silence between them felt natural, as if he’d known her before, and suddenly that thought struck him sharply—but without any pain.
“I didn’t…know you, did I?” he asked. “Before?”
“Oh! No, you didn’t,” Francesca said, her smile doing little to ease the spike of disappointment flared through him. But he knew he shouldn’t be surprised. There was no attendant flare of pain when he regarded the American, and he sensed there would be, had he known her well. Before the incident with the borage, the only searing pain he’d felt was the first time he’d met Stefan. Then again, he suspected that man gave everyone a headache.
“What do you know about me then?” he asked Francesca. “Other than I’m stranded on this island?”
Her manner was easy and unaffected. “Nicki said you’d been in an accident quite a while ago—a plane crash,” she said. “That you lost your memory then, and they’d recently found you. But that’s all I know.”
“Some friends I have, it would seem,” Ryker nodded. “To send a diplomat and an American to find me. It makes you wonder how little was going on in the country, eh?”
“I get the feeling that the royal family would do as much for any Garronois citizen they thought they could help,” Francesca said. “I mean, I’m sure there are plenty of people they can’t help, but your situation was one where they could. So they did.”
If he’d intended to draw her out, he wasn’t successfu
l. Then again…maybe there was truly nothing surprising about his rescue.
“Perhaps,” he shrugged. “But the time for helping is at an end. I’d like to find my family.” He shook his head, imagining how strange that must sound to her. “To be walking around—healthy, as whole as I can be, and knowing that someone out there is waiting and wondering what happened to me…that doesn’t sit well. It’s not honorable.”
Francesca nodded, but she didn’t dismiss his concerns. When she glanced his way, her eyes were steady and kind. “I think Stefan wants to be able to give your family as much information as possible about how healthy you are. You’ve lost your memory, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone for good,” she said. “If there’s a way to nudge it back into place while you’re under a doctor’s care, then so much the better.”
Ryker grimaced. “They’ve done no end of nudging, but it’s led to nothing so far.” That wasn’t true, of course. But he’d had his guard up every time he’d gone before the panel of doctors who seemed to be watching him every time he turned around. He supposed they were probably watching him now.
Nevertheless, having Francesca here improved his mood considerably. The wind coming up over the promontory caught at her hair, pulling it from its pins, but she didn’t seem to mind. Her manner was easy as they climbed the stone staircase to the terraced garden, her delight unfeigned as she took in the manicured gardens, the bright flowers vibrant against the brilliant sky and crashing Aegean far below. “This is incredible!” she shouted.
“Windy too.” He laughed back at her, his heart suddenly lighter than it had felt in over a year. For this moment he was no longer a stranger without a family, a home, or a place in the world. Instead he was simply a man standing on a mountaintop with a pretty girl, surrounded by flowers and sunshine and sea.
“Oh!” she gasped as a particularly strong gust of wind battered them, and he pointed to a low copse of trees. She nodded, her hands to her hair as she made a run for it. He kept pace with her until they’d reached the trees, then let her take a few steps ahead, her laughter warming him in a way that made him realize he’d been cold for far too long.
Crowned: Gowns & Crowns, Book 4 Page 2