Crowned: Gowns & Crowns, Book 4

by Jennifer Chance

  “No, but—you said you were clean shaven before your accident,” she said, her voice once more careful, cautious. “If you were trying to hide…”

  “Perhaps I no longer have any appetite for hiding.”

  That was yet again the wrong answer, but Francesca said nothing more as they stepped into the balmy evening. Ryker’s shirt was loose, his sleeves rolled up, but the quality of the cloth was fine and he felt better than he expected to. Silently, Francesca tucked her hand in his and they walked, not stopping at the corner café but continuing deeper into the city. They didn’t speak for a long while, and he let the silence wrap around them, unwilling to break the spell quite yet.

  It was Francesca who finally spoke first.

  “What do you remember?” she asked, glancing up at him. In the mix of streetlights and shadows, it was impossible to clearly see her face.

  “I remember sending you inside, then rounding the building, setting out among the planes,” he replied. “Then I remember…pain, actually.” His brows went up as that new detail crystalized in his mind.

  “The kind of pain you get when a memory is triggered.”

  “Stronger than that, even. This was clear and present, and it strengthened as I got closer to the royal family’s airplane.”

  Beside him, Francesca squeezed his hand. “We can take this slow,” she said. “Your hand is shaking.”

  “Then it’s good it has you to hold it,” Ryker said, tightening his hold on her fingers. But he didn’t want to go slow. He wanted to understand. “I reached the plane and—I turned. I saw it.”

  He stopped abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk, and Francesca stopped with him, her attention riveted to his face. “I’m here, Ryker,” she said with quiet urgency. “Let’s step back, off the sidewalk, let’s stop here.”

  She pulled him out of the mix of people and he let her drag him to another side street, where a collection of benches sat along the traffic circle-style intersection. He sank gratefully onto the closest bench, but it wasn’t the bench or the street or the sidewalk he saw in his memory.

  It was another plane.

  “There was someone else there that night,” he said. “The night I flew out into the storm. I was angry, careless. Didn’t perform all the checks—because there was someone there.”

  Francesca had lifted her other hand to his, holding it tight. Vaguely he realized her hands remained cool on him while he felt like his were on fire. Her thumbs moved rhythmically up and down his skin, over his knuckles and back. “Do you know who it was?” she asked, her tone almost casual. As if the answer didn’t truly matter, as if he could tell her or not, it was all the same to her.

  He relaxed another notch as he focused on the rhythm of her soft hands moving over his. “I don’t,” he said. “I did then. I should now. But I don’t.”

  “You will or you won’t, and it will be okay,” Francesca said simply, and her words were like the lull of the tide, washing over him and drawing him out. A sense of languor spread through him, and he sighed, settling more deeply into himself.

  “I don’t remember what happened after that. I…woke up in the street. Then again in the cab. You were there.” He squeezed her hands. “It seems you’re always there for me.”

  “You fell,” she said, as if she was discussing the weather. “You dropped to your knees by the royal plane, then got up and moved away as fast as you could, though I don’t think you could see well. You were at the side of the road when I drove up in the cab. The driver helped get you in the car.”

  “He knew me,” Ryker said, and he sensed the tension in Francesca, though she continued smoothly.

  “He may have, or you may have reminded him of someone he once knew,” she said carefully. Then her tone became teasing. “Either way, he wouldn’t recognize you now. Your skin beneath your beard probably hasn’t seen the sun in a year.”

  “Oh.” He straightened self-consciously. “I didn’t think about that. Is it bad?”

  She looked up at him and sighed, then shook her head. “It’s not bad, no,” she said. “In fact, you’re now probably the most handsome man in Garronia, bar none.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  Ari rumbled the words, and Fran held on to her teasing tone, as it seemed to comfort him. “Well, it’s been nice having you all to myself. Now that you no longer look like a beach bum, I might have to start fighting off the other women.”

  He laughed and stirred on the bench, and she sat away from him then stood as he did. His left hand remained locked on hers, and she let him tug her back to the sidewalk. There was some sort of festival going on near the center of town, and Ari gravitated toward it.

  Especially in the evening light, she didn’t much notice the difference in his skin tone between his cheekbones and his chin, and she suspected that a few days in the bright Garronia sun would blur those lines further. But there was no longer any denying the similarity between Ryker Stavros/Conti Goba and the deceased Aristotle Andris. She knew she shouldn’t allow him to walk around the city, despite her serving as a distracting cover, but she didn’t see how she could keep him from doing so without explaining why. Even now his brain was valiantly trying to link up the disparate bits of data it had—he was a pilot, he recognized the royal seal, he’d had a near collapse at the municipal airfield walking among his treasured planes.

  What had he meant by his muttered phrase at the side of the road, though? “The bastard tried to kill me.” He hadn’t recalled saying those words, and she wondered if it would return to being buried in his psyche. Clearly, however, there’d been someone at the airfield who had caused him distress, someone that he’d been able to recall vividly tonight. One of the other mechanics? A pilot? She didn’t want to push him to find out. She felt that he was right on the edge of discovery…but now that discovery was becoming more perilous by the minute.

  “You’re keeping all your thoughts to yourself.” Ari’s words tugged her back to the moment, and she offered him a rueful shrug.

  “I spend a lot of time alone,” she said. “I get used to thinking more than talking.”

  “The hallmark of a good counselor, I suspect? As long as you listen too.”

  She laughed, forcing herself to unwind another notch. “We try to listen most of all,” she admitted. “So many recoveries are already right there, in the minds and hearts of the patients, that listening is all that’s required is to tease them out.”

  “And who listens to you, Francesca?” Ari’s voice was light, flirtatious, but his question struck a deep pang of wariness inside her. “Who do you go to when you are done with all that thinking? I can’t imagine Nicki slows down enough very often for conversation.”

  Fran chuckled. “Not if she can help it.”

  “And your other friends?” Ari stopped as if he’d realized something new. “Your other friends—they’re staying at the palace now, yes?”

  “Yes,” she allowed.

  “We should go there,” he announced, so fervently that Fran would laugh if her head weren’t spinning. “I’m convinced there’s a link between me and the palace, one I need to understand if I’m ever going to regain my memories. If you are returning to your friends, surely the royal family would agree to see me.” He scoffed. “They footed the bill for my private rehab on Asteri Island. I can’t imagine they wouldn’t want a thank you for that.”

  “We should go see them,” Fran agreed—how could she not? And it had to be better than letting Ari run around loose in the city. At least if he was inside the royal palace, they could keep him away from prying eyes. That mattered now more than ever since he’d decided to shave. “Tonight?”

  He sighed lustily, considering. “Not tonight,” he decided. “Tonight is for laughter and music and the beautiful American woman who has stood by my side no matter what.”

  Fran shot him a glance. “Your side is certainly no hardship,” she said.

  “No, no! I refuse to let
you downplay it.” Ari’s voice was growing boisterous, and a few tourists turned their way, lifting their glasses. Fran quickly shifted into the shadows, tugging Ari with her.

  As the moved deeper into the city the music grew louder, a mix of international house music and tunes that almost sounded like country reels. As the city’s center opened up into a series of mini town squares, she spied food carts and drink stands, open doors on bars and cafes alike, and everywhere, tourists.

  Not solely tourists, either. Fran was no expert on native Garronois features, but there were enough olive-skinned, dark-eyed revelers of every age in the mix that she was sure the celebration wasn’t merely for vacationers. The decibel level rose to dangerous heights as conversation vied with the crashing music, but it all served to form a cocoon of sights and sounds around Ari, who’d pulled her yet closer the nearer they got to the center of the celebrations.

  She stepped up on tip toe. “Do you know what they’re celebrating?”

  He shrugged. “In Garronia, you do not need a reason, only a few like-minded friends. Celebrations like these—”

  He drew in a sharp breath and Francesca’s hands immediately went to his temple, his wrist, her body pressing in close against his in case he should need her to brace himself.

  “It’s fine—it’s fine,” he said, breathing in a measured cadence as she watched him with a critical eye. “A memory that was important—might become more important. But nothing I could pin down.” He sighed, shaking his head. “Perhaps there was a similar celebration the day I took off. Something like this.”

  Fran pursed her lips, considering that possibility. “I don’t think so. It was raining right? Unless there’d been some sort of holiday in progress, I’d think that’d put an end to any serious revelry.”

  “Fair enough. But if the storm wasn’t expected until later…” he shrugged. “I don’t know. But it would be interesting to match the timetable of the crash with what came before it, to see if there is anything that matches up.”

  Francesca grimaced. With the added ripple of Ari believing foul play was involved in his crash, or at least being angry with someone related to the night of that event, she couldn’t let him continue not knowing who he was. But how did you tell someone they were a dead prince?

  They walked along for another block, and Ari stopped, buying them both drinks with Fran’s euros. He crinkled a grin at her as he handed her the plastic cup. “It seems like we should toast to something,” he said. “Every time I lift a glass it feels like a celebration.”

  She eyed the clear liquid in the cup, and swirled it around.

  “This is tsipouro, isn’t it?” she asked. “So I know what to tell the nice police officer when we fall down in the gutter?”

  He laughed. “It’s not so bad.” He lifted the cup higher. “Here’s to many reasons for celebration,” he suggested, and Fran clicked her cup to his, trying to follow suit as Ari tossed his drink back. She drank, but more slowly, allowing the fiery burst of flavor to take its time as it hit her stomach and nervous system.

  Then they were off again, weaving through the crowd hand in hand, standing close together as music played and laughter flowed around them. Another street vendor yielded a sticky pastry, and Fran suddenly felt like she was at the county fair again, wandering past the rides on her way to her father’s beer truck. There were no funnel cakes or frozen lemonades on the city streets of Garronia’s capital, but the mood was the same.

  “Ari?”

  The voice was startled and feminine, and Ari paid no attention to it, since of all the names he was focusing on tonight, that wasn’t one of them. But Fran’s entire body jolted, every sense on high alert. She swung around in a careless arc and grabbed both of Ari’s hands, tugging him toward her as she scanned the crowd.

  Sure enough, there was a woman standing not ten feet away, her own cup forgotten in her hand as she stared. She was beautiful and she looked rich, her thick, dark flowing hair cascading over her shoulders, her tunic and pants an expensive drape of cream fabric, and her beaded high-heeled sandals like something out of a fashion magazine. She shook her head, stepping forward, and Fran did the one thing she could think of.

  She dropped Ari’s hands as he blinked down at her, then pressed in close, her hands flat on his powerful pecs, her face straining up toward his.

  “Kiss me,” she implored.

  Ryker stared down at the impossibly beautiful Francesca, her lips traced with sugar but her eyes full of passion for him, and thought he was quite possibly the luckiest bastard who’d ever been born.

  “If I must.” He grinned and did her one better, picking her up and swinging her around, tucking her tight to his body as he bent toward her. When their mouths touched another surge of desire shot through him, quick and hot, and he found he didn’t want to let Francesca go.

  They broke apart and she leaned up against him, apparently as content to stand with him as he with her. He looked up and around. They’d stumbled into a small gallery-like city park off the main square of the festival. There were others here, mostly couples, walking and talking under sparkling pin lights. Ryker bent down for another kiss, embracing Francesca in the shadows, then she whispered against him.

  “Is there somewhere quieter we could go?” she murmured, and he tensed with anticipation, his body responding immediately to her feminine entreaty. The beach was too far, their hotel was too far, and he didn’t know the city so well to find another park like this, but less crowded.

  “No one is bothering us here,” he said. She leaned back in his arms, wrinkling her nose.

  “But anyone could come by.”

  “Then we should let them,” he said. “I am Conti Goba, squiring around the prettiest girl at the festival.”

  She snorted. “Not the prettiest.”

  “There you are wrong.” Still, he turned and she fell into step with him, the two of them wandering further down the shadowy pathway through the trees. This gallery felt familiar to him, but his simple pleasure at being with Francesca outweighed any pain that might want to ring in his ears. Her hand was warm in his, her body close, and every statue, bench and tree beckoned to him as welcome shelter.

  A commotion at the festival end of the park sounded again, someone shouting, and Fran tugged him deeper into the shadows. “I think there’s a fountain here,” she said. “Oh! It’s beautiful.”

  He pulled his attention from the other end of the street to the wide concrete apron that abutted the cobblestones, and let his gaze travel up. It was a beautiful fountain, a depiction of Poseidon with mermaids bursting up around him in a spray of water. From their outstretched hands streams of water fell, and Fran leaned forward, trying to catch some of the spray with her fingers. “I don’t have a coin or I’d toss it in for luck.”

  He lifted his brows as she glanced back to him. “And what would you wish for?”

  “If I could have anything?” Her face seemed suddenly wistful, and Ryker quieted as she gazed at him. “It’s not fair of me, and it’s not possible, but I wish this night wouldn’t end.” She glanced back to the sparkling fountain, and the park beyond, lit with yet more fairy lights. “That’s selfish, I know.”

  “Selfish,” he murmured. He reached for her and she let him take her hand and pull her deeper into the city park. It was quieter here, though the place didn’t have an abandoned feeling. More that it was holding its breath, waiting for the sun to rise.

  When she didn’t say anything more, he squeezed her fingers. “Selfish how?”

  “I’ve had you to myself all day—for a couple of days really—but you’ve got things to do. Friends. Your family.”

  He snorted. “A family I cannot remember.” Nevertheless, something about this park felt familiar, as the whole city felt familiar, calling to him with a siren song of his own history. It seemed so much closer to the surface here, but he didn’t want his past, now. He wanted his present, this moment with Francesca.

  “You will though.” She shook her head, as
if she could hear the melancholy in her voice. “And you should. You’ve an entire life waiting for you around the corner.”

  Despite her words striking a definite chord of rightness within him, Ryker didn’t want to hear this. He tightened his grip on her hand and she glanced up to him as he slowed to a stop. “You cannot say goodbye to me, Francesca,” he murmured. “You’ve barely said hello.”

  Her smile was so gentle, it seemed as if it held the grace of angels. But what he felt for this woman wasn’t angelic.

  “I’m not saying goodbye,” Francesca said. But a new sense of wrongness settled over him, and he stared down at her.

  “Then why do you hesitate?” he said. “Do you not want me to kiss you—like this?” he leaned down and brushed his lips against hers, and her breath caught. “Or is it you prefer like this?”

  He lifted her against him then, and there was no way she could miss the hardening of his body as he fit it against hers. Her soft groan deep in her throat egged him on, and he plundered her mouth, kissing her lips, her jaw, then back to her mouth again, slipping his tongue past her parted lips and tasting her, exploring her. He wanted to be inside her, and the lone thing stopping that was the fact that they weren’t alone in the park, not perfectly alone. Not the kind of alone he’d need for what he’d want to do with this woman, the two of them entwined together so tightly that it would be impossible to tell where one would end and the other begin.

  Francesca slid down his body as he pulled away, but he didn’t let her go. He liked the way she stared at him, her eyes wide and confused by what had happened between them, as if it wasn’t something she could predict in her carefully ordered life.

  He didn’t want her careful or ordered, however. He wanted her to be his.

  “Where should we go?” he rumbled, and before she could answer he lifted a finger to her lips. “Not tonight. Not in the city. But where should you and I go—together? If you could picture any place in the world, where would you like to visit with me?”

  “Ha, well that’s easy enough.” Her face transformed in the shadows, seeming to be lit from within. He knew what her answer would be before she said it: Paris.