Prince Charming Undercover

by Debra Salonen

  “Yes. Grace insists he’s just a friend…and, to be fair, he was my husband’s lawyer when Kingston was alive. Charles also helped me handle some financial matters a few years back. But he’s changed since he bought into that casino. And I’ve seen the way he looks at Grace—like a gambler counting his chips for some high-stakes bet.”

  What was that alert about? White slave trade? A possible link to an international drug… “Ha,” he said, snagging the sheet from the middle of the stack.

  The woman on the other end of the line made a huffing sound. “Well, if you’re not interested in helping us and meeting your father before it’s too late, then I’ll leave you with my good wishes and say goodbye.” She hesitated for a fraction of a second then added, “You’ve been in my prayers since the day I learned of your mother’s passing, Nikolai.”

  The name rattled him, but Nick ignored the odd flutter in his chest. He quickly scanned the bulletin. “Wait. Hold on. I didn’t say I wouldn’t help.”

  “Yes, actually, you did.”

  Nick started to grin. “Well, maybe I changed my mind.” He couldn’t care less about his long-lost relatives, but a chance to nail a scumbag like “Lucky Chuck” Harmon was too sweet a gift to pass up. “Tell me more about your daughter and the snake.”

  “Grace, Grace, Grace, tell me you’re joking.”

  Three Graces. Never a good thing. When her eldest sister Alexa, short for Alexandra, started repeating herself, Grace Parlier knew it was time to change the subject.

  “So, what do we know about this long-lost cousin of Mom’s—other than the fact that I’m supposed to pick him up at the airport in an hour?” Grace crammed a too-large wedge of Danish in her mouth. Nervous eating. Not a good sign. But that damn dream had her edgy and discombobulated. “Why can’t he take a taxi? Or call Uber?” she mumbled, chewing and talking at the same time. “You know what traffic is like in February. All the snowbirds in the northern half of the country have descended on Vegas in their giant RVs.”

  Alexa reached across their mother’s faux lace tablecloth to grasp Grace’s hand before she could pig out on another piece of pastry. “Sweetie.” Her melted chocolate-colored eyes were filled with gravity and concern—a mixture Grace and her other sisters called Alexa’s preschool-teacher look. The combination always made Grace feel about five. “Don’t change the subject. No one is knocking your ambition, but you have to be realistic, too.”

  “She’s right,” another voice said from across the room.

  Liz, short for Elizabeth. Sister number two. A true healer, Liz was a physical therapist, who had regularly worked in poor and war-torn countries with WorldRx, an international medical team of volunteers. These days she had a job at DesertWay Medical—a small private hospital in Vegas.

  “I can’t believe you’re even suggesting this. We’re spread too thin as is,” a third voice chimed in.

  This came from Katherine, or Kate, as she preferred. Third-born, just two years older than Grace. Together, they owned Romantique, a neo-Mediterranean restaurant located in an upscale strip mall on West Charleston Boulevard. Kate, an accomplished chef, ran the kitchen; Grace handled the marketing and bookkeeping.

  Not giving up on the hope of deflecting her sisters’ attention from her impetuous—and obviously premature—announcement, Grace said, “Delicious pastry, Kate. Did Jo make it? Maybe we should promote her to assistant chef. I know you’re finicky about who you let work at your side, but she does have a way with cream cheese.” She spoke so fast a bit of raspberry filling lodged in her throat, causing her to cough.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Alexa scolded, giving Grace a look designed to stop even the most fearless four-year-old in his tracks. “Besides, diversion isn’t going to work. You can’t casually toss out, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m thinking of opening a second restaurant with Charles,’ and not expect us to react.”

  Grace knew that. She’d planned to share her idea in full once she’d ironed out the details with Charles, but his call this morning had left her wondering if she’d made a mistake by suggesting they could do business together.

  Charles Harmon was an old family friend and Grace’s occasional dinner date. He was also a lawyer and part owner of the Xanadu, a small, shabby off-Strip casino where Grace had hoped to locate her new venture. She’d been in the shower when he’d called and he’d left a message asking her to drop by the casino to discuss her plan. Nothing in his tone could have been construed as ominous or threatening, but a chill had passed through her body as if she’d been dunked in Lake Mead in January.

  “If you didn’t want our feedback, why’d you say anything?” Liz asked, filling the electric teakettle with water. Four sisters, four beverages of choice: coffee, tea, cola and whatever strange brew Liz currently favored.

  “Because…well, because you know me. I have a bad habit of speaking before I think things through, right?”

  Her sisters agreed with a combination of groans and sighs.

  Before any could comment, she continued. “Last week, I floated an idea past Charles. Why not remodel the Xanadu’s ridiculous excuse for a coffee shop into a satellite operation of Romantique? Can’t you see it as a hip bar with an exposed kitchen where Kate could really show off her stuff? I even came up with a name for it. Too Romantique.”

  Alexa and Liz, who were six and a half and five years older than Grace, respectively, exchanged a look Grace had seen many times.

  “It’s a very clever name, Grace,” Alexa said. “But I have to go on record as being against this. I’m not comfortable with you doing business with Charles. There’s something about that man that makes me nervous.”

  “Yeah,” Grace said, snickering softly. “We know. That’s why you set him on fire.”

  The standing joke for years had been that their father, Kingston, had brought Charles home to meet Alexa, who’d accidentally dropped the cherries jubilee and singed Charles’s beard. Charles had been clean shaven ever since.

  “I agree with Alexa,” Liz said, tapping her foot as she waited for the water to boil. “You’re talking major remodeling. That isn’t going to be cheap. Where are you getting the seed money? I know Charles is pretty well-off, but he does have two partners. Are they game for this?”

  Leave it to Liz to ask the tough questions. Everything about Liz was functional, from short-sleeved denim blue shirt with a rainbow embroidered just above her name to khaki pants and thick-soled shoes. Her shoulder-length ebony hair was pulled back in a scrunchy.

  She poured boiling water over several scoops of some greenish powder resting in the bottom of a juice glass. Grace didn’t bother asking what medicinal properties the concoction contained. Liz went through health fads the way some people did diets.

  “Well…” Grace said, stalling. “That particular issue didn’t come up. But since I’m the one who brought the idea to Charles…I thought I’d ask Mom to let me invest the money in my trust fund.”

  Alexa groaned. Liz choked on her partially swallowed swill. Kate let out a sound of pure disgust.

  “Are you nuts?” they said simultaneously.

  Grace felt her cheeks burn. “Like I said, this is just in the chatting-up stage. I tossed the idea on the table last week when Charles took me to dinner. His call this morning is the first I’ve heard back from him. Didn’t MaryAnn tell us he was wrapped up in some pro bono insurance claim business?”

  MaryAnn Parlier, their cousin Gregor’s wife, had been Charles’s personal secretary for just over a year. Gregor, who was Liz’s age, was the girls’ paternal uncle’s son. In addition to being part of the family, Gregor and MaryAnn were also neighbors, living just two houses down from Yetta.

  Liz blew out a sigh and turned to the sink to rinse out the green residue in her glass. “I can’t vouch for the pro bono aspect of his business, but I know we’ve been seeing a lot of referrals from Charles’s group lately at DesertWay Medical.” She’d joined the staff at DWM after her ten-month sojourn in India. “But you’re tr
ying to change the subject again and it’s not going to work. You know what Dad had in mind when he set up the trust accounts.”

  Grace knew. A wedding. As old-fashioned as it sounded, Kingston had always referred to the four trusts he and Yetta had established for their daughters as “dowries.”

  “Well, none of you used your trust money for that purpose. Why should I?”

  Alexa’s money had been earmarked for a wedding until her plans fell apart at the last minute. Instead, she’d drawn from the fund to buy a house and set up The Dancing Hippo Day Care and Preschool. Liz’s nest egg had paid for grad school, several trips abroad and the down payment on her house. Kate’s money had been invested—and lost—by her scoundrel ex-husband. Only Grace’s trust remained untouched.

  “Listen,” she said, trying to sound businesslike, “Mom has final say on how I spend the money since she’s the trustee. I just thought I’d feel you guys out first. You know how distracted she’s been lately.”

  “Boy, that’s true,” Alexa said. “I wonder how much of that has to do with our new guest.”

  “Yeah,” Kate said after taking a swig of Coke, which, as usual, she’d tried to disguise by putting it in a coffee mug. “I have to say I’m not wild about some stranger moving next door.”

  “Did anybody do an Internet search on him?” Liz asked.

  “I did, and nothing came up. Nada. Which is probably a good sign, right? But I still don’t know why I’m the one picking him up,” Grace said, relieved that the focus of conversation had finally shifted away from her obviously unpopular declaration.

  They might not approve of her idea, but, at least, she’d managed to keep mum about the weird dreams she’d been having lately. Talk about disturbing. In one, a sinkhole opened up in the street and was slowly swallowing the entire neighborhood. Grace was frantically trying to talk Kate out of her car, which was slipping trunk first, down the hole, when a stranger grabbed Grace from behind and pulled her to safety. She’d awoken, heart pumping and breathless—not because of the catastrophe but because of the stranger. She came from a long line of Gypsy fortune-tellers and she knew one thing: Strangers were never a good omen.

  Chapter 2

  Yetta Parlier paused just outside the threshold of her kitchen, where she’d been listening to her daughters’ weekly breakfast summit. Eavesdropping, she’d learned, was by far the best way to find out what was going on in her family.

  “The reason you’re meeting Nikolai’s plane, Grace, is because Elizabeth is taking me shopping,” she said, walking into the room. Her daughters all stopped what they were doing to look at her. “Alexandra has a doctor’s appointment and Katherine will be busy preparing a feast to welcome Nikolai.”

  Her daughters. Her four beauties. Each a unique individual with her own strengths and weaknesses. Of course, Kingston had never believed his princesses were anything but perfect. For a smart man, he could turn a blind eye to the truth when it suited him.

  She frowned at the thought. And, now, we might all pay the price for that foolishness.

  “Mom’s right, Grace,” Elizabeth said after greeting Yetta with a smile. “You’re the logical choice and it would seem kinda cold not to meet his plane.”

  Her second-born daughter rarely passed up a chance to help others, although those altruistic tendencies had changed since Liz’s last trip to Eastern Europe. Yetta had yet to get to the bottom of that, but she pushed the thought aside. She had more pressing issues to worry about at the moment.

  “Besides, aren’t you the one who was carrying on the other night about our need for new blood in the family?” Katherine chimed in. “Like we were a vampire cult or something.”

  “I was only making an observation,” Grace said stiffly. “Mom, tell them. In olden days, four unmarried daughters would have been considered a liability. It would have been our duty to marry strong, wealthy men with big oxen.”

  Even Yetta had to laugh at that, although she didn’t feel much like smiling. Her most recent dream had been vivid, if not easily interpreted. One of her daughters had been in great danger. Help from the outside was their only hope, even if that meant keeping secrets from her girls. She only hoped they’d forgive her when the truth came out. As it would.

  “Oh, Grace, you are too much,” Alexandra said with a laugh. Yetta looked at her eldest daughter with pride. Others might have given up or turned bitter after being cheated out of the life they had planned. Not Alexa. But such bravery came at a price.

  “Yeah,” Elizabeth agreed. “No offense, but when it comes right down to it, we’re descended from a group of nomadic wayfarers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time and wound up spending several centuries being slaves.”

  Grace looked at Yetta and sighed. “They’re hopeless, aren’t they? Tell them, Mom. You’re the one who’s imported a long-lost family member from Detroit. This guy must have something special going for him if we’re letting him move in next door.”

  Oh, he had something. He had a badge and a gun and the right connections to local law enforcement. But for Nikolai’s safety, her daughters would need to remain unaware of his true identity and his reason for coming to Las Vegas. At least, until the threat to the family had been eliminated. Then Yetta hoped Nikolai would make peace with the past and her daughters would understand her need for secrecy.

  “Nikolai was lost to us as a child,” Yetta said, recalling Jurek’s suggestion that she stick as close to the truth as possible. “I’ve hoped for years that he might return to us. And now that he is coming back, I expect you to do whatever it takes to make him feel welcome.”

  Yetta waited for someone to speak. She knew her strident tone probably surprised them, but she’d been muffled by grief long enough. She blamed herself for the current state of disharmony within her family, and she’d taken steps to rectify the situation. She only hoped she wasn’t too late.

  Alexandra cleared her throat and said, “I might be a few minutes late to lunch. I have an appointment with my ob-gyn this morning.” A sudden presence—fear—entered the room. “Just routine,” she added, with the barest quiver in her voice.

  Yetta walked to the cupboard so no one would see her face. Alexandra had been the first to disappear in her dream. Not swallowed by the snake, like the others, she’d simply faded away. Almost as if she’d never existed. At no time in her life had Yetta felt so impotent and frustrated, not even as she’d watched her beloved husband give up on life. She refused to lose another member of her family. And, though she doubted she could make her daughters—or Nikolai, for that matter—understand, Nikolai’s arrival signified hope.

  Grace concentrated on folding her napkin into a perfect triangle. Alexa put on a brave face, but Grace knew that her sister was worried. For months now, Alexa had been experiencing severe pain and nausea around the time she was ovulating. Six years earlier, she’d undergone surgery to remove a cyst on her ovary. The relatively routine procedure had been a success but Alexa had developed a serious infection at the wound site. Now she dreaded the thought of another surgery, but the possibility was all too real.

  As her sisters debated whether women made better ob-gyns than men, Grace thought about her current dilemma. Do I dare gamble on a second restaurant?

  Her instincts said yes.

  In just two years of business, Kate and Grace had turned a profit with their restaurant, a feat most had claimed was impossible. Kate’s reputation was steadily growing, but the only way for a chef to play in the big leagues in Vegas was to move closer to the heart and soul of the tourist industry: The Strip.

  The Xanadu offered that possibility.

  The only impasse to her plan, as far as Grace was concerned, was Charles. Lately, he’d been acting differently. And the last time they’d dined together he’d seemed a little too attentive. Almost as if he was interested in taking their friendship to some other level.

  Grace didn’t understand why, since there’d never been even a hint of sizzle between them. Plus, as Charles knew,
she was on a hiatus from romance.

  Thanks to Shawn Bascomb. Her first love…and first heartbreak.

  Shawn. Drop-dead gorgeous snowboard instructor and white-water raft guide. Free spirit. A Prince-Charming-in-the-making just waiting for Grace’s love to bring out the hero in him. Or so she’d convinced herself. Only after Kate revealed that Shawn had cheated on Grace several times during their relationship had Grace been able to admit that shoulder-length dreads and well-defined muscles were his most charming attributes.

  In part, Grace blamed her mother for Shawn. Yetta had filled Grace’s head with nonsense at the impressionable age of ten. “You’re going to marry an honorable man who doesn’t know he’s a prince. Your love, Grace, will help him find his true self.”

  Had Grace believed this? With all her heart. After all, her beloved father put complete faith in her mother’s visions, so why shouldn’t Grace?

  And she had. Until recently…

  Grace studied her mother as she moved around the sunny, east-facing kitchen. Petite and fine boned like Liz and Kate, Yetta was a study in contrasts. Shoeless, yet dressed in a tan, Anne Klein business suit with a skirt that stopped an inch below her knees, she seemed a regal peasant. The dull fabric was offset by the vivid scarlet, gold and teal of her flowery blouse, which wasn’t tucked in. Her lush silver hair fell well past her shoulders.

  “Are you hungry, Mom?” Liz asked. “Grace—the pig—left you a small piece of pastry.”

  Grace dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her folded napkin to prove her sister’s dig didn’t bother her.

  Yetta waved away the suggestion. “I ate hours ago with Maya. She helped me organize the seating chart for the luncheon today. I want Nikolai to meet everyone.”

  Maya was Kate’s daughter, who’d turned four a few days earlier. Grace glanced at Kate, who had complained to Grace only yesterday that Maya spent more time with her grandmother than she did with Kate. Grace had tried to be sympathetic, but mostly she was relieved to see Yetta returning to her old self. If hanging out with Maya helped, then Grace was all for it.