“I can’t talk about it, Arthur.”
“Because someone is blackmailing you? I don’t know how this lovely little farm family from the southwestern US could have anything on you that they would force you to marry their daughter, but what else could force you to marry her? If she’s knocked up, so what? Illegitimate children can’t inherit the throne, and you can pay her off like everyone else does. Oh wait, but then she would have seen you naked. I don’t get it, Max.”
“Arthur, I don’t want to talk about it.” Maxence really didn’t.
“I can understand how that whole Flicka situation messed you up, but you don’t have to rush into a marriage just to prove something to the world. If I were dating a girl, and then she dated and married my hypothetical older brother, and then he offed himself and she was instantly married to yet another guy, it would mess me up, too. There’s counseling for that, Max. There’s nothing wrong with that. It can be done very confidentially.”
Max shook his head in the darkness. “I’m fine with Flicka. We’re friends now. I think we can probably even figure out how to continue working on our charities together. I’m actually better with her now than I have been for years.”
“Then, what is it? Why are you marrying this girl when she obviously hasn’t seen you naked, and she’s lying about it? If it’s just a saving-herself situation, why lie about it? Are you planning to get Monaco squared away for a few months and then get an annulment and go back to the priesthood?”
“No,” Maxence answered. “I’ve been formally laicized by Pope Vincent de Paul with no obligation to maintain celibacy. That part of my life is over. I don’t think I could go back even if I wanted to.”
“Are you going to divorce her publicly so you can abdicate? Is it just a plan to get out of the princely family? Because it’s really complicated for that.”
“I’m fine with the throne. I don’t plan to abdicate.” And yet, the rest of his life was forever.
“All right, Max. I’m not going to play twenty questions about this. If you ever want to talk to me about it, or anything at all, you know I won’t judge. After the life I’ve led, I cannot imagine judging anyone for anything. I can scramble my plane and be in Monaco within hours, and we’ll talk as long as you need to. But whatever it is, whatever your reason is for doing this, she needs to be better prepared. It’s not fair to let an agent go into the field without proper preparation.”
Maxence nodded in the dark. “Thanks, Arthur. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Arthur’s sigh whooshed out of the dark air. “I know you, Max. I know every skin cell on your back, and I know every bit of trauma you’ve ever gone through. I know absolutely everything about you. Don’t marry this girl if it’s not the right thing.”
Raw lines on Max’s back itched in the straw.
No, Arthur didn’t know everything about Max.
No one did.
Chapter Nineteen
Leaving
Dree
They stayed in New Mexico with Dree’s parents for another day of eating copious amounts of farm food and hanging out with sheep. Dree had always been the sheep whisperer, and though she had a human-based nursing degree rather than a veterinary one, her sisters took her around to evaluate some sheep that might be doing poorly.
She found an abscess on one that needed to be drained. She would require antibiotics.
A rash on another ewe appeared to be contact dermatitis and should resolve with some mild soap.
The diagnosis for the final five was that they were lazy sheep. They were perfectly healthy but had figured out that lying down meant they would be allowed to sleep in the warm barn.
Dree hadn’t realized how dry her hands had been getting until half the mammals she was hanging out with were secreting lanolin. After just a few hours of working with the sheep, the backs of her hands felt like expensive suede instead of medical glove-chapped fish skin.
The next day, the four of them decamped to the airport, riding in the rental SUV through the high desert, past burned-out shacks and dying farms.
Dree rode in the back seat with Casimir, and she read a paperback she’d picked up at home. The guys talked constantly. Maxence was more comfortable with them than he was with anyone in Monaco, and he laughed as much with them as he had with her in Paris or when they were alone. He drove while Arthur sat in the front passenger seat, reminiscing and gossiping about friends from school.
Casimir slowly inched toward the middle of the seat during the first half-hour of the drive. Then he took his seatbelt off and leaned forward between the bucket seats in front and hung onto Max and Arthur’s shoulders to make sure he was part of the conversation.
After a few minutes, he startled and tapped Dree’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry. Do you want to get in here? I can lean back.”
Dree waggled her paperback at him. “I’m good. You guys are having fun. Don’t mind me.”
He paused, and the calculation in his green bottle-glass eyes sharpened. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk with Max?”
She waggled the paperback again. “I don’t need to. You guys enjoy yourselves. You don’t get to see each other much.”
“Right.” Casimir went back to talking to them, leaving her in peace to read.
At the Albuquerque airport, Casimir booked a plane ticket home to Los Angeles, while Arthur made arrangements for a flight back to London.
Arthur raised an eyebrow at Max. “I say, old sod, we’ll see you in a few weeks for your enthronement, shall we?”
Casimir laughed. “I can’t believe one of us finally made it onto a throne. We’ll be there to see it happen. I’ll convince Roxanne to come this time.”
“And I’ll figure out a way to get Genevieve and the baby there.” Arthur shook his head. “He’s just such a wee lad. I quite want to lock him inside Spencer House and not allow the tyke outside until he’s twenty-one. I’m beginning to understand Henry Tudor’s obsession with an heir.”
Casimir and Maxence laughed at him. Max said, “Except that England won’t restart a century-long civil war if you don’t have an heir.”
Arthur shook his head with a dismissive waggle. “The Finch-Hattens have always been instrumental in England’s monarchy. God only knows what would happen if our line ended. I tremble at the thought.”
At the entrance to the commercial terminal at the airport, Dree shook Casimir’s and Arthur’s hands good-bye, and she felt like they might be warming up to her a bit. She was trying. Arthur seemed to have entirely dismissed their little altercation on the plane ride to New Mexico, but she still couldn’t explain, even to herself, what was going on with the tattoo problem.
The men indulged in much shoulder-slapping and impressively aggressive hugs from Arthur, and then Casimir and Arthur walked toward the security station.
Oddly, instead of getting in the line to take their shoes off and be scanned by the X-ray machine, Arthur and Casimir both veered off to the side. They showed their passports to one of the security personnel, who tapped something into a handheld tablet and then waved them through the gate meant for airline personnel.
Dree pointed at his two friends blatantly skipping the security checkpoint and asked Maxence, “What was that?”
Max ducked and whispered near her shoulder, “Casimir is a member of the Dutch royal family, so he carries a diplomatic passport. He can do almost anything and get away with it.”
“And the Brit?”
“I couldn’t say.”
They walked out of the airport toward the private terminal where Maxence’s plane was parked in a hangar.
As they walked, Dree mentioned, “I wish we had time to stop off in Phoenix for a day or two so I could tell my friends goodbye. When I left Phoenix almost two months ago, everything was so weird. I went to work that day and expected to come back from Paris in less than a week, so I just said, ‘See you later.’ I’m not going to be living there anymore, and I didn’t even say goodbye to my friends.”
Th
e Monegasque royal jet touched down in Phoenix, Arizona two hours later.
Chapter Twenty
Phone Call
Male voices spoke over the phone.
“You were right. She showed up at the hospital.”
“And I found them checked into the Four Seasons in Scottsdale for the night. Take her at the hospital if you can. Follow her if you can’t.”
“Yes, boss.”
“Nobody disrespects the Sokolov bratva like that and gets away with it.
Chapter Twenty-One
Good Samaritan
Dree
Dree walked into the emergency room at Good Samaritan Hospital in central Phoenix. Maxence was following at a discreet distance.
The waiting room chairs were full of people sniffling with sinus issues, cradling maybe-broken arms, and bending over with stomachaches. Dree barged right past them all and through the swinging doors that led to the central nurses’ station, dodging the sick and wounded with practiced ease.
Caridad Santos saw Dree coming first, and her mouth widened into an O as she pointed and began shouting, “It’s Dree! It’s Dree!” Caridad sprinted down the hallway, her black hair bouncing and rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the hospital tile as she ran. “Andrea Grace Catherine Clark! I thought I was never going to see you again! Are you all right? Are you okay? Where the hell have you been because I have missed you!”
Dree held out her arms to her sides, braced herself with her legs wide, and caught Caridad more than hugged her. Within a few more seconds, a jubilant scrum of nurses surrounded Dree, all of them hopping up and down.
The intercom said, “Code blue, room 306. Code blue, room 306.”
Half the nurses took off running down the hall.
Six of them remained to interrogate Dree as to what the hell was going on with her.
Dree gave them the most abbreviated version of the story she could because Caridad hadn’t told them any details beyond that she’d heard from Dree and she was alive.
“I didn’t know if you wanted me to.” Caridad protested.
“Better safe than dead in a ditch,” Dree said and finished her story with, “And then he proposed, and here’s the ring!”
A hush fell over the crowd of nurses, and as one, all their heads tilted as they looked at it.
Caridad asked, “Is that real?”
“I haven’t tried writing my name on a window yet, but it’s supposed to be.”
“Wow. Who’s the rich guy?”
Dree held out her arm to Maxence, and he strolled over and allowed himself to be introduced. She left off the royal and prince thing again. It seemed like gloating at that point.
Caridad looked at Dree, looked diagonally up at Maxence, and looked back at Dree. “Oh my God, and he’s tall, too.”
The other nurses laughed, Dree laughed, and they all had a good time.
They stayed for a few hours, talking with friends who had a few minutes between patients or who were getting on or off shifts. They all wrote down their phone numbers on a piece of paper for Dree to input into her new phone, as soon as she got a new phone.
She needed to do that.
Dree assured them that they could all come and stay with her in Monaco anytime they wanted to.
As they were walking outside the ER doors, Maxence noted, “I don’t think the palace is that big.”
Dree was giggling, still giddy from laughing with all her friends again. “It was so nice of you to hang out for a couple of hours while I talked to people you didn’t know. Thanks.”
He squeezed her hand. “You were adorable, and they seemed lovely.”
The western half of the sky glowed like scarlet roses sinking into fire.
Dree paused for a moment, a little homesick for desert sunsets.
A big red passenger van was parked next to their blue rental SUV. Someone had switched the letters of the manufacturer’s name on the front of it to read DORF. She chuckled at it.
“What’s funny?” he asked.
She pointed. “DORF. Must be one of those Swedish brands.”
Maxence laughed and walked around to the driver’s side of the SUV. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that brand in Sweden. Perhaps I’ll ask Victoria about it the next time I see her.”
“Who’s Victoria?”
“Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden. She’ll be the queen someday. She’s exceptionally sweet. You’ll like her.”
Dree walked toward the passenger-side door and reached for the handle. “Nice to know that you’re on a first-name basis with all the other royal people in the world.”
Maxence opened the driver’s side door. “And you will be, too, soon enough.”
“Okay, that’s just weird.” Dree flipped up the handle and eased the passenger door open as wide as she could, but that van was parked so close. She didn’t want to ding their paint.
She was just turning sideways to shimmy her way into their SUV when the van’s sliding door squealed open, the wheels grating on the metal track.
Hands clamped her shoulders, yanking her backward.
Dree was off balance and flailing. Rather than fight her backward motion, she let her knees go limp and dropped straight down between the vehicles.
“No! Stop! Fire!” Her scream abraded her throat. “Stop it—let me go!”
Her butt and spine scraped the van’s frame as she fell. The sky poured blood.
Maxence landed beside her. He must’ve vaulted across the hood.
His arms strained, throwing punches. His face was a screaming rictus of fury.
Dree struggled as the guy grabbed at her, scratching, howling.
Grunts.
An arm grabbed around her head, dropping stinky flesh over her view of the SUV in front of her.
Shouts.
The van’s engine roared beside her head. A wave of heat and the stink of exhaust enveloped her.
Some guy jerked her hair.
Rage flashed through her. “Asshole!” She reached behind her head and dug her acrylic-manicured fingernails into the tendons of his wrist. He screeched something in another language and let go.
A sickly wet smack crunched behind her.
A man wailed, a hoarse and horrible sound.
She clawed at the hands holding her and sank her teeth into somebody’s hairy forearm, tasting coppery blood.
Screams.
The arm jerked away. She spat the blood at the asphalt.
Their SUV was right there, so close.
Thuds and a grunt that sounded like Maxence.
She writhed and twisted the guy’s wrist that held her.
A shout.
—Falling!
Dree slammed against the door of their SUV and curled and rolled, asphalt scraping her cheeks and the backs of her hands. She scrambled underneath their vehicle. Smell of oil. Stink of gas.
Reaching, she slapped Maxence’s ankle.
His brown dress shoes stumbled backward, away from the van’s open door. Angry shouts mixed with the male screams and groans.
Dree spun herself, flipping herself over until she rolled out from under the SUV on the other side.
The van’s engine howled as the vehicle sped away.
Dree jumped to her feet. “Max! Are you okay?” She sobbed and shrieked nonsense as she ran around the van to find him.
Maxence was leaning on the front of the hood with both arms, panting. An abrasion reddened his temple, and his lip was swelling. The knuckles on his hands spread over the hood were raw.
She said, “We need to have that looked at. You need to have that looked at. We’re right here. There’s an ER right here. Come on. Let’s go.”
Maxence looked up. “Dammit.”
Dree followed his line of sight.
The van had turned around the end of the row of parked cars and was heading back toward them.
“Come on,” Maxence growled. “Let’s get inside before they get here.”
They sprinted across the rows of the parking lot be
tween the parked cars and jumped through the entrance doors. Dree led the way as they ran right back to the nurses’ station.
Caridad was standing at the desk. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph! What happened to you?” She pulled her penlight out of her pocket and began flashing it in Dree’s eyes, checking for a concussion. “Hestia, call the police now.”
“No!” Dree yelled. “Caridad, remember that policeman who came around asking about me? I think there’s a problem with the police.”
Caridad looked around them. “We’ll put you in a room until we can figure out how to get you somewhere safe.”
Emergency rooms had protocols for patients but back channels for staff.
Dree followed Caridad, gripping Maxence’s hand to make sure he was following. “Maxence is the one who needs to be evaluated for head trauma. He took at least one blow to the temple.”
Caridad found a room at the end of the hallway farthest away from the doors. “Stay in here. I’ll put this room on the board as closed for cleaning. What do you need, Dree?”
“Check Maxence for head trauma, first.”
They had Max sit down on the bed, and Caridad palpated his temple and then checked his pupillary response for a concussion. “He looks fine to me, but I’ll have the attending come in and do another concussion check. What else?”
“I had blood exposure in my mouth. Could you check and make sure I don’t have any lacerations?”
Dree opened wide, and Caridad flashed her penlight around Dree’s mouth. “I’ll get you some hydrogen peroxide to rinse with, and we can do anything else you want for the exposure. We have pharmaceutical samples if you want a prophylactic course. I don’t see any lacerations or cuts. You floss well. Your gums are in great shape.”
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