IN A FARAWAY LAND
Runaway Billionaires: Flicka
Book 3
By: Blair Babylon
IN A FARAWAY LAND
Runaway Billionaires: Flicka
Book 3
By: Blair Babylon
When an actual prince—who has a Secret Service, an army, and real spies—is hunting you down, you run, and you hide IN A FARAWAY LAND.
Flicka von Hannover was a princess, but not anymore, sort of. To hide from her conniving soon-to-be ex-husband and divorce him as soon as possible, she runs to the place specified by her prenuptial agreement, Las Vegas.
She has left everyone and everything behind except Dieter Schwarz, her bodyguard who saved her that terrible night and smuggled her to Paris and now to Nevada. Living with the six-four, ripped, bossy Swiss mercenary is driving her crazy in more ways than one. Every time he comes near her, she wants to rip his clothes off with her teeth.
Her ex knows that she must be in Las Vegas to establish residency to divorce him, and his men are looking for her. When his Secret Service try to kidnap her and Dieter saves her again, the adrenaline and heat of the moment are too much for them to resist.
But her ex knows that she has to file the paperwork to divorce him, and he’ll do anything to stop her, even mounting an assault with his army on the courthouse when she tries to go to court.
It’s an impossible situation, but if anyone can save her, it’s her loyal, hot, ripped, protective, bossy, truly maddening, totally off-limits bodyguard.
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Published by Malachite Publishing LLC
Copyright 2018 by Malachite Publishing LLC
Table of Contents
A Fairy Tale, Told By A Prince
Pawned
Revelations
Powerlessness
Leaving
Alpha Princess
Townhouse
Dieter and Theo
A Job Suitable For A Princess
Change of Plans
First Day On The Job
The Job Description For A Princess
The Principal Export of Switzerland Was War
Working For A Living
Counting Cards
The Cure For All Ills
New Life Skills
Snooping and Regrets
At the Library
Waitressing Is A Tough Job
In A Dark Casino, On A Tuesday Night
The Mathematics of Working
Locked Out
Her Silly Little Stalker
At the Swim Lesson
Stay At Home Dad
The Brandy Alexander
Again
Back-Up Numbers
Klosters
Not In A Princess’s Job Description
The Mousetrap
Kitty Ha-Boo
The Stratosphere
Adrenaline Is An Aphrodisiac
Signing the Affidavits
Finally Filing
Counterclaim
At the Courthouse
Raphael Mirabaud
Trial by Grumpy Sparrow
Escape
Valerian Mirabaud
Sneak Peek at At Midnight
A Note from Blair Babylon
~~~~~
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A Fairy Tale, Told By A Prince
Pierre Grimaldi, Prince of Monaco
Pierre pours three fingers of liquor into two highball glasses placed on the coffee table between you and him. He pushes one toward you, an offering, and lifts the other tumbler to his full lips and sips.
He looks over the glass at the window, rolling the rim of the glass against his lower lip.
“The handsome prince is supposed to be the hero in the story, not the villain,” he says, his dark eyes squinted a little, a pensive look as the window light reflects in them. “The handsome prince is the pinnacle of order in society. He’s the reward for the good girl. He’s written as the deus ex machina who kisses the good princess awake from her witchcraft-induced, persistent vegetative state or applies some sort of suction Heimlich maneuver for a poison apple chunk. His kiss is a panacea for every illness. He’s rich as hell, so the good girl won’t ever have to do housework again, and she’ll get to dress up to attend all the royal balls for the rest of her life.
“But why is the handsome prince the good guy?
“He’s the good guy because he’s the responsible one. He’s the one taking over the family farm. He stays behind and does the work. The other heirs all swan off to chase their destinies as priests or rock stars, but someone has to stay on the damn farm to milk the cows and tend the crops.
“Or else everyone starves to death because there is no food.
“And that’s what it is like being the prince, a lot of the time. Milking the cows. Fertilizing the crops. There’s a lot of bullshit involved. Being the prince isn’t all royal balls and marrying princesses. It’s attending the ribbon cuttings and retirements. It’s smashing a perfectly good magnum of champagne against a ship to christen it and visiting the sick and wounded in hospital, every day. It’s looking serious and interested in whatever is on the damn schedule when you’d rather be at home reading a book or in a casino drinking with friends until you’re wasted. It’s somberly toasting trade delegations that may bring their shows and exhibitions and money to Monaco. It’s three to nine engagements a day, every day, including evenings and late nights and weekends and so-called holidays. Yes, a servant brings me tea in bed on a silver tray, but it’s at five o’clock every morning. They bring me a biscuit or two to tide me over until a scheduled breakfast meeting with some official delegation that is in Monaco on business, but I mustn’t eat too much because my abs are one of Monaco’s best publicity assets.”
He pats his flat stomach, and his dark blue tie flips over his fingers. “I’m not only the farmer, I’m also the prize-winning bull, trotted out for the fair.”
He shrugs one shoulder. His arms and torso do look muscled under his suit. “And if you wonder why I know so much about farms when there is no farmland in Monaco, it’s because I am traipsed out to every fair and exhibition to award the ribbons and inspect the livestock. And I listen. That’s really my job: to listen, nod, and not be too stupid when I reply. There’s little chance of that, however. I am given scripts to which I must stick, lest I set off an international incident with a wayward remark.”
He places his whiskey on the coffee table, setting it back from the edge. You suspect that he has done this so it will not spill on his suit. There is no time in his schedule to change his clothes if they are wet and smell like liquor.
His next glance at you is sharp, his dark eyes staring at you from the corners. “No one ever asked if I wanted to be the prince. I was the first heir in line, and who wouldn’t want a life of extravagant luxury handed to them? I won’t lie, though. I did want the job. I’ve always wanted the job, from the time I was old enough to grasp that I had the chance to be the prince like my uncle was. I wanted to carry on the noble traditions of my house.” He gestures, waving at the ceiling and, you presume, some grand future. “I wanted to be the one to steer Monaco, pro
mote our interests, and lead our people through this world and into a bright and shining tomorrow.”
His hand falls to his thigh and rests on the fine fabric of his suit, an expensive, well-cut suit like he wears every day of his life.
His grandiose plans seem to turn to anger as his handsome face hardens. “I wanted to be the Prince of Monaco, but no one else wanted it. They all see it as a burden, to hold the throne and do the duties. They’ve all run off with wealth such that their great-grandchildren will be disgustingly, idly rich. They have enough to drink or snort or jab themselves to death if they choose, or to jet around the world on their planes to have lunch in Paris, dinner in London, and midnight drinks in New York with beautiful, young gold-diggers hanging on them. But I’m holding the fort, quite literally, because I’m going to be the sovereign prince.”
He lifts his cut-crystal highball glass to drink again, and he’s almost melancholy now. “The handsome princes in fairy tales are supposed to be the good guys,” Pierre muses, “but they’re not, when you think about it. The handsome princes in the fairy tales are all raping bastards. They go around kissing unconscious women. A woman can’t give consent if she’s unconscious, but that doesn’t stop the handsome prince. He kisses her anyway, and God knows what else. Who would stop him, after all, if he climbed right inside the glass sarcophagus, tossed up her skirt, and got it on right there in full view? No one, that’s who. No one at all would interfere. They would assume that he had the right to do so because he is the prince. Divine right of kings, I suppose, or that ancient tradition, the droit du seigneur or jus primae noctis, depending on how far back you want to go. The right of the first night, where the king or prince or local, weak-chinned nobleman beds the bride on her wedding night before her husband does. That’s the nice way of saying it, beds the bride. We all knew what happened after he locked the door. They could probably hear her screaming for help. King Gilgamesh of Uruk insisted on his first night right in the poem Gilgamesh, sleeping with any virgin woman or man he chose.
“It’s in there.
“Look it up.
“And then, of course, there’s the story of how my family obtained the throne of our little sliver of land. It wasn’t through brave and noble conquest or being bestowed by a pope for godliness. No, we won it by treachery. In 1297, my ancestor François Grimaldi disguised himself as a monk and appealed for shelter at the fortress that guarded the harbor. He deceived a gate guard, convincing the man that he was only a pitiable monk and an innocent man of God. Once inside, he murdered the gullible guard, and he and his men captured the castle, killing everyone inside.
“In the palace, there’s a statue of him, dressed in monk’s robes and holding a knife, that serves as a reminder of how we won it. We’ve held the headland over the harbor and the castle ever since. And that’s why we’re sovereign princes, because we will treacherously murder anyone who tries to take it away from us.”
He frowns at the glass of whiskey in his hand. “No wonder I’m such an asshole.”
Pawned
Flicka von Hannover
Las Vegas Pawn Shop Operators might be good at haggling,
but they’re not as good as corrupt African politicians.
“One thousand dollars,” the pawn shop cashier said, her bleached-blond hair bobbing in the desert sunlight that streamed through the shop’s front window as she inspected the diamond necklace in her fingers, “and that’s a gift.”
It wasn’t.
Flicka von Hannover, also known as Her Serene Highness Friederike Marie Louise Victoria Caroline Amalie Alexandra Augusta, Prinzessin von Hannover und Cumberland, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg, etc., knew that this pawn shop con artist was trying to swindle her out of millions of dollars, but she desperately needed the money.
Flicka and Dieter Schwarz—her hot, ripped, blond bodyguard and ex-lover who had helped her escape from her abusive, cheating, and maybe homicidal soon-to-be ex-husband—had been holed up in a cheap hotel room since they had flown into Las Vegas yesterday. Between them, they had a little cash in his wallet, two changes of dirty clothes in a duffel bag, and years of wonderful and painful emotional baggage.
The night before, Flicka had used some of Dieter’s little bit of money to buy some sturdy toenail clippers. While sitting in their tiny hotel room amidst their few clothes and the television blaring to cover their conversation, she had snipped the jeweler’s wires that had held the Laurel Tiara on its steel frame.
“You should hide,” Dieter had said. “I’ll call in Rogue Security, and we’ll set up a fortress in the suburbs with round-the-clock security and electronic surveillance.”
“Pierre will have them followed,” she said, teasing the tiny, silver wires from between the diamond settings and clipping them. “He’ll immediately know where we are. Right now, it doesn’t look like he knows which continent we’re on.”
Which was why she couldn’t access her trust funds and banking accounts. If she did, Pierre would see exactly where she was. He must already have his Secret Service in Nevada and looking for her. Pierre wasn’t stupid.
Arrogant, but not stupid.
“He knows you’re with me,” Dieter said.
“But he doesn’t know who ‘Raphael Mirabaud’ is,” Flicka said, citing the name on the fake passport Dieter had used to fly into the US.
Dieter turned over his big hands, beseeching her to listen to him. “They might put it together.”
Flicka said, “If we set up a ‘fortress’ here or if he follows your mercenaries from Paris and London, he’ll send Monaco’s army or a platoon of lawyers. I’m not sure which would be worse.”
Dieter said, “I can protect you from any assault he throws at you. No one will get past our front lines.”
“Pierre is a country,” she reminded him, because her husband was the heir to the throne of Monaco, one of the few monarchies with any clout left. Pierre had the Monegasque Secret Service and their military intelligence at his disposal, and probably France’s intelligence services and military, too. Treaties bound Monaco and France tightly together. “He could send the French military if he wanted to. He could do just about anything.”
“Monaco doesn’t have missiles, for God’s sake, and neither Monaco nor France would attack the middle of the United States with a missile, anyway. The US would obliterate Monaco as a training exercise.”
“Then he’ll send lawyers,” she said, still clipping away at the tiny wires. “He’ll file injunctions or challenges or something, even before I finish establishing residency here so I can file the divorce paperwork. It’s only six weeks. We can go to ground for six weeks.”
“It’s risky,” Dieter said, leaning back in the chair where he sat across from her, drinking a glass of tap water. “It’s too risky. And you’ve never ‘gone to ground’ in your life. Where did you even hear that?”
“I read books, and it’s the better plan,” she insisted, still snipping the wires.
As Dieter spread his arms and locked his fingers behind his head, the strong muscles in his arms and shoulders bulged under his pale blue shirt. The bleached summer sky color of his shirt reflected just a little in his gray eyes, making them look almost silvery while he stared at her. The lamplight from above the table made his blond hair darker than usual, the ash yellow of drying summer flowers in Switzerland. He said, “I need to contact Rogue or else we won’t have any money. I only have a little over a hundred dollars left.”
“I’m going to pawn the Laurel Tiara from the Hannover crown jewels. It’s worth millions in diamond weight, let alone it’s historical and specimen value. We’ll have plenty of money.”
“That’s not how pawn shops work.”
“Then we’ll get jobs,” she said.
“You can’t leave the apartment, if we can afford an apartment,” he said. “I’ll have to leave to go to work, and you’ll be unguarded and alone. I don’t like this at all.”
“I’ll work, too.”
“You can’t work somewhere without me guarding you.”
“Sure, I can. I’m Gretchen goddamn Mirabaud.” That was the name on her passport, which was the name and face of Dieter’s ex-wife, a face that was so startlingly like her own that neither passport control nor immigration had given it a goddamn second look. “There’s a US green card in there. I can get a job if I want to.”
“Doing what?”
Flicka von Hannover hadn’t figured that out yet. No one was hiring real, live princesses to do princess things. “Something.”
“You can’t just walk around Las Vegas.”
“Millions of other people do.”
“Not actual princesses who are being hunted by their ex-husbands who—”
He trailed off, and Flicka filled in all the words he might have said in her head.
Her ex-husband who loved someone else, always had, and had been using Flicka as a cover.
Her ex-husband who had hit her.
Her ex-husband who had shot at her.
Her ex-husband who had raped her.
Flicka peered more intently at the tiara, careful to clip only the tiny wires binding it to its frame. “I’ll be all right. It’s easier to hide in a crowd than in a closet.”
“Who the hell told you that?”
“You did, in case I ever got separated from my security.”
“Well, I was wrong. Hide in a damned closet,” Dieter said. “I can’t let something happen to you.”
“I don’t want to hide in a closet. I’m sick and tired of hiding.”
Flicka snipped the last wire, and the Laurel Tiara slumped onto the table with a faint whisper of metal and stones on wood. Without the steel frame holding it in shape, the tiara was designed to collapse into a necklace, a simply beautiful necklace that Flicka had worn to balls and opera openings and even a fiftieth wedding anniversary party once.
In A Faraway Land (Runaway Princess: Flicka, Book 3) Page 1