Happily Ever After (Runaway Princess: Flicka, Book 5)

by Blair Babylon

  “I won’t hear of it. I mean it. We’ll bring you in through the cellar if you’re worried about people seeing her.”

  “We’ll get a hotel,” he lied. They had almost no money left, just enough to find some cheap food and drive up to Le Rosey tomorrow.

  Océane glanced at him. “You were standing outside, alone, in the beginnings of an ice storm, wearing nothing but a tee shirt.” Her pale eyebrows rose. “And, ahem, you obviously have not been properly cared for.”

  Yeah, Dieter needed a shower. Sprinting across Monaco had made him sweat.

  She asked, “What kind of a Christian would turn someone away who is obviously in distress, running from murderers and, I think, hungry?”

  Dieter shrugged. “We’ll make it on our own.”

  Océane scowled. “You see here, my little Raphe. I will not turn anyone away. It’s my duty as a decent human being to make sure you’re all right, to make sure everyone is all right. You’re my brother, in blood as well as in Christ.”

  “When did you become so religious?” he asked, smiling at her.

  “When I prayed that my children wouldn’t be murdered every damn day because I worked at a damned bank with my psychopathic father. Now, go get Flicka. Do you want something to take with you, to tide you over until you can have a proper meal?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” he said.

  “If I wouldn’t mind!” Her eyes flared, and she clenched her fists. It was too easy for Dieter to rile up his sister. “Come to the kitchen, right now. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Raphael.”

  “That’s not how that saying goes.”

  “Get your ass in the kitchen and then go get Flicka before I jump on you and tickle you, you little twerp!”

  Before Dieter could help himself, he found himself turning sideways and pulling his hands up in case she did, indeed, try to tickle him. She knew right where to poke him in the ribs to make him completely helpless. “If someone were looking for us, this would be the first place they’d look. They would know that I would come to you.”

  “Oh,” she said, dropping her hands. “Really?”

  “Yeah, Océane. Of course. You’re the one person I trust.”

  As much as he could trust anyone, just then.

  She frowned and wrapped her arms around Dieter. He hugged her back. She asked, “Do you have money for a hotel? I can give you what I have in my purse, and I can go out to an ATM and get more if you need it. If you feel better in a hotel, I understand. I’m not sure how I feel about this family right now, either.”

  “I’d appreciate it. I’ll pay you back.”

  Something hard jammed into Dieter’s ribs, right in the ticklish spot, and he jumped away, laughing.

  Océane said, “I will give you every euro I have, and the kitchen will pack food for you. There must be some spare clothes around here for you and Flicka that you can take with you. Jesus, Raphael. You don’t have to pay me back.” Her despair at such a thought came through her last few words.

  “Thank you, my sister. One more thing?”

  “Anything.”

  “I’ve been Dieter Schwarz for almost as long as I was Raphael Mirabaud, and I’ve been called Dieter all of my adult life. My name is Dieter Schwarz now.”

  She hugged him more tightly. “Yeah, that’s going to take me a while to get used to.”

  Dive Hotel in Geneva

  Flicka von Hannover

  The Pâquis district of Geneva.

  Flicka was sitting behind the cold steering wheel of the car with the engine and lights off, shivering in the dark.

  After she’d dropped Dieter off at a corner near Océane Mirabaud’s house, remembering how to drive had taken a few minutes, but at least she hadn’t been completely helpless. She had stopped the car in a dark parking lot behind a business park to hide and wait at their first meeting spot. The yacht club half a mile away was their fallback meeting place.

  Flicka could do this. She was doing okay.

  Maintaining life skills like driving, cooking, and bump passes should be higher on her priority list, just in case she ever needed to escape from someone who wanted to kidnap her again. She’d developed several more life skills in Las Vegas, like tending a bar and waitressing, not to mention paying her own bills online. She could totally survive in the real world if she needed to.

  Just as soon as she got her damned ex-husband off her back.

  That must be a common problem, too. Lots of women probably had jealous ex’s with “boundary problems.”

  A man’s form walked toward where she waited in the car.

  Flicka might have been wary if it hadn’t been so easy to recognize Dieter’s military march, even at a hundred feet away. His posture was straight, and his bearing betrayed a muscular physique. He carried a couple of packages and a cloth bag.

  Flicka rolled down her window as Dieter approached the car. “How did it go?”

  “Fine,” Dieter said. “Everything was fine.” He trotted around the other side of the car.

  Flicka unlocked the doors for him to get in. When he maneuvered his long legs into the passenger seat, the dome light shone on a black leather jacket he wore. She said, “Nice coat.”

  “I got you some clothes, too, and Océane packed supper for us.”

  “Supper?” Her voice rose in excitement.

  “Roast beef, potatoes, vegetables, and I don’t know what else. Océane was careening around the kitchen with a roll of aluminum foil and stuffed a shopping bag full of stuff.”

  “Oh, wow. Like what?”

  “Let’s get a hotel for the night and unpack it.”

  “We can’t afford a hotel,” Flicka sighed.

  “Océane spotted me some cash. We’ll find a cheap hotel for tonight, somewhere Pierre and the French police won’t look for us. Or at least the kind of place that doesn’t enjoy police attention, so they won’t mention a couple of late check-ins paying cash to anybody.”

  Flicka stared at the dark, empty parking lot. The single light was on the other side, near the buildings, while dark trees stood near the car. “We won’t be able to find a hotel this late.”

  Dieter said, “It’s only eight o’clock, and I know where to go.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Pâquis. Let me drive.”

  Forty minutes later, Dieter parked the car in a lot behind a restaurant in the Pâquis district of Geneva.

  Flicka emerged, holding the coat that Dieter had given her tightly around herself, wobbling on her high heels.

  He said, “It’s not far,” and they walked a block in the neon-lit night along the crowded sidewalk. Flicka minced beside him, really regretting her footwear choice.

  Some of the people walking in the wintry night wore far too little, practically just strips of sparkly cloth around their chests and hips. They loitered on street corners, bending to speak through car windows with people who drove up and stopped. Sometimes, they stepped into the car. Sometimes, the car drove away without them.

  Other people wore long, baggy coats. Their interactions with the cars were quicker, more transactional, and money and small bags furtively changed hands before the car drove back to the better parts of Geneva.

  Some people walked among the crowd, their hands lightly floating among the purses and packs as they collected small items.

  Everyone was perfectly polite, and Flicka said, “Bonjour,” to several people when they greeted her as they passed. It was still Geneva, after all.

  The bars blared music: tech house, rock, and an odd country and electronica mix. Overly muscular men stood in the doorways, handing out flyers to some of the chattering people and glaring at others.

  Smoke wafted among the pedestrians—the harsh fumes of tobacco, the skunk of pot, and the occasional, more chemical puff. She tried not to breathe too much in, especially of the latter stuff. The asphalt itself seemed to exude the smell of stale beer.

  She had nothing the pickpockets nor the prostitutes wanted, and Dieter’s glare above h
er head kept anyone more dangerous at bay. With that black leather jacket straining over his burly chest and arms and his scruffy blond hair and beard, he looked particularly intimidating. Flicka stayed close to him as they bumped and nudged through the throng of people that pressed together on the sidewalk, just a few hours after sunset.

  Dieter dodged into a building on a corner of an intersection where horns blared and music screamed from bars on the street. Flicka shadowed him.

  Inside, a bored man was swiping up on his phone and said, “Seventy euros for an hour or a hundred euros for the night, and if she steals your wallet, we’re not responsible.”

  Oh Lord, he thought— “I’m not—”

  Dieter stepped in front of her and counted out bills. “I understand. The night, thank you.”

  Oh, right. It was better that the guy didn’t look at Flicka too closely, anyway.

  Yeah, this was a good neighborhood if one wanted to avoid the police.

  Flicka did not ask Dieter how he knew about the neighborhood, where to park, and the direct route to a hotel that asked no questions. Raphael Mirabaud had probably known this area quite well.

  They climbed a steep, spiral staircase to a room on the fourth floor that overlooked the swirling crowd below. Dieter walked behind her, one hand resting on her lower back.

  The room was tiny and held a double bed and a dresser topped with a television. With the windows closed, even the music blasting from the bars was barely audible. Those pre-war buildings had been built of stone and real plaster, and they insulated sound exceptionally well.

  Flicka turned. “He thought I was a—”

  Dieter assured her, “He didn’t even look at you. A guy came in off the street with a woman, and he made an assumption that probably holds up nine times out of ten around here.”

  She smiled at him. “Let me take a shower first, and you can judge whether he was wrong or not.”

  His smile turned sultry, and he stepped closer to her. “Why wait until you get out of the shower, my sweet, naughty lady of the night?”

  He stripped the clothes off of her, practically ripping the silk ball gown that she’d lived in for two days since she’d escaped from the Prince’s Winter Ball.

  Beads clattered on the floor, but Flicka didn’t care. That stupid, black dress was the last thing Pierre had seen her in. She never wanted to wear it again. She never wanted to see it again. It had been chosen for the Princess of Monaco, not for her.

  She stood in her bra, panties, and high-heeled pumps in the cool room, and Dieter’s gaze devoured her bare skin. He growled, “God, you’re beautiful.”

  She reached to push the jacket off Dieter’s shoulders and hesitated. In that black leather, with his black tee shirt and slacks, his hair mussed and his golden beard scruffy on his jaw, Dieter looked rougher than he ever had before, except perhaps for when he’d come back to their London flat after an operation with his former ARD-10 colleagues. She ran her hands up his broad pectoral muscles and down over the ripples of his abs under the soft cotton of his tee shirt.

  He didn’t look like someone else, though. He sure as hell didn’t look like Raphael Mirabaud, son of a high-caste, Swiss banking family. He looked more and more like Dieter Schwarz, the mercenary. Even the light in his gray eyes suggested the spark of violence.

  If anyone could keep Flicka safe, this rough, dangerous version of Dieter could.

  He took her face in his hand, running his thumb over her chin and jaw, and bent his head.

  His lips were less gentle when he kissed her. He pushed her up against the wall and opened her mouth with his, sucking and biting her lips and forcing his tongue against hers.

  Flicka shoved his jacket off his shoulders, and he shucked the rest of his clothes, breaking off the ravaging kiss only to strip his tee shirt off over his head.

  He crowded her toward the small bathroom, grabbing her—his hands rubbing and massaging her back and ass—and spinning them both around several times before they navigated the narrow doorway. Flicka turned on the water in the shower while he chewed on the back of her neck from behind, holding her breasts in his hands and tormenting her by pinching her nipples, until the water warmed enough for them to get in.

  The green-tiled shower stall was barely big enough for them, and their skin slipped together while he soaped her and washed her hair with the tiny bottles on a high shelf by the showerhead. Soap and lavender scented the steam. She did her best to wash him but he kept grabbing her, shoving her against the wall, and kissing her hard in the hot water.

  After a while, they must have been clean enough, because Dieter steered her out of the shower and to the bed, where he pressed her into the stiff mattress and plowed into her, taking her hard with one knee on the mattress and one foot on the floor for leverage. Flicka gasped as he took her, holding onto his shoulders as he grunted and growled, “You’re mine now. No one will take you again. I don’t care where we have to go or how we have to live, but you’re mine, now and forever.”

  When he dug his teeth into the side of her neck, she cried out, and the world vibrated and shifted as the air turned white around her. Every rub of his hard, muscular body against and inside her ignited another swarm of ecstasy in her body and skull.

  Eventually, she opened her eyes to the small bedroom, with Dieter holding her in his arms and murmuring, “My love, my Durchlauchtig,” as his lips caressed her temple and ear.

  They sat up for a little while and ate the supper that Océane had packed for them, leaving some rolls for breakfast the next morning, before they turned out the light.

  Flicka snuggled down in Dieter’s arms and tried to sleep, at least tried to rest, but all night, she listened for Monegasque boots marching up the spiral staircase to take her back to Pierre and the Prince’s Palace, that medieval fortress. Dieter wouldn’t get a second chance to break her out. They would probably murder him in this cheap hotel in the Swiss red-light district.

  While Dieter had been in Océane’s house, she’d found a newspaper blowing across the parking lot. In the Arts and Society section, she’d read that the Monaco Council of Nobles had not confirmed Prince Pierre Grimaldi as the next Sovereign Prince of Monaco as had been expected, and they would meet again in two days.

  No mention was made that the Princess of Monaco was missing, but her absence was surely why the confirmation process hadn’t been a mere formality.

  Pierre would be getting desperate to find her.

  Flicka prayed that they would get to Schloss Marienburg the next day, and surely they would be safe in the Gothic Revival castle, surrounded by her father’s guards.

  She got what rest she could and watched the sun rise over the Pâquis district of Geneva, surrounded by Dieter’s strong arms.

  The Last Leg

  Flicka von Hannover

  Schloss Marienburg,

  at last.

  The next morning, they dressed in the clothes that Dieter’s sister had sent with him: slacks, a blouse, and a thick coat for Flicka, and jeans, a white shirt, and that sexy, black leather jacket for Dieter. They trotted back to the car, watching around themselves for anyone running after them, but the Pâquis district of Geneva was not known for its early risers. Only a few people were leaving apartments to catch the city buses and trams, and the bars were shuttered and dark. A cafe on the opposite corner was doing brisk business with breakfasts and coffee, and a line to be seated trickled outside and into the cold sunshine.

  The car was parked where they’d left it, and they got in, found a gas station on the outskirts of Geneva, and drove to meet her father at ten o’clock at Le Rosey school, the boarding school where she’d grown up.

  When they arrived, Dieter insisted that she drop him off on the sidewalk a few blocks away to scout and continue to drive around, which she did and managed not to hit anything. Turning the wheel at the right time to exactly navigate the corner was complicated. She needed more practice.

  Fifteen minutes later, at the appointed corner, Dieter
climbed back in the car and said, “He sent a few people.”

  A platoon of black cars barricaded the area where her nannies or security staff used to say goodbye to her for the school year. Her father’s security men marched out to take possession of her, but Flicka insisted that Dieter had to stay with her and they would not be separated.

  Her father had also sent maids.

  Why would he send maids?

  The three times that the procession pulled over for food and necessary stops during the seven-hour drive back to Schloss Marienburg, the maids fussed over Flicka and hovered, trying to see to her needs.

  Flicka supposed that she should be gratified that her father was worried about her being sufficiently taken care of during a day trip in the car, but it seemed insane that seven women were fluttering around her when they stopped at a hotel in Freiburg for lunch.

  The security guys were on super-hyperdrive alert, standing guard with enthusiastic fervor.

  Her father must have promised everyone extra paychecks or threatened the hell out of them.

  During the seven-hour drive, Dieter sat beside her in a rear seat of a Volkswagen Atlas SUV. The Volkswagen factory had long been situated in Hannover, and her father had insisted many years ago that at least half the House’s vehicles must be Volkswagens. She and Dieter spoke quietly, formally, and he didn’t try to touch her at all.

  Ah, he was preserving the story that he had merely rescued her, just in case she didn’t want to deal with her father’s crazy screaming that would surely ensue if he found out she’d married someone he would surely think was unsuitable.

  After an hour of driving on the long highway from Switzerland and north into Germany, she couldn’t stand it any longer, and she reached over and held his hand.

  Dieter rubbed his thumb across her knuckles, and his stern, professional expression softened the slightest bit as he watched, vigilantly, for anything untoward as the caravan sped toward Schloss Marienburg.