Maxence nodded. “A direct line of succession would have been more elegant than this electoral system with such a small electorate, just the thirty nobles on the Crown Council. Elections expose Monaco to corruption.”
Nico lifted his head and grinned at Maxence. “In which case, you would be the undisputed next sovereign. And if you tried to abdicate, it would be Jules.”
Maxence leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers over his flat stomach. “There are drawbacks to every system. Or we could open the election to all the citizens. If we’re going to have a dictator for life, they might as well be an elected dictator for life.”
Dree’s black shoe had slipped off her heel and dangled on her toes, exposing yet more inches of skin that Maxence wanted to caress.
Sitting like that, with her legs carelessly crossed at her knees and her shoe about to drop off her foot, was wanton. The other palace admins would have sat on the edge of the chair, their knees and ankles pressed tightly together and so unobtrusive that they faded into the beige paint on the walls.
Dree’s leg twitched, and that shoe swung seductively on her toes, an office striptease he couldn’t look away from.
Nico went on, “Valentina turned fifty just a few years ago. She’s in the prime of her life for attaining such a position. I can’t imagine an opportunity like this would come around again for her. She’s also well-liked and quite feared among the other nobles.”
Maxence pointed at Dree. “You have Valentina Martini on your list?”
She looked up and nodded, her blue eyes bright, and held the stylus at attention on the tablet, diligently taking notes.
He bet she wouldn’t look so perky if his thumb was on her clit. She’d melt in the chair, gasping and begging him to take her.
Maxence asked Nico, “Who else do you think? Would you consider stepping forward?”
Nico went back to resting his head on the back of the chair and staring at the ceiling. “I’m too far down the line of succession for anyone to consider seriously.”
“Why is that a concern?” Maxence mused.
“Tradition.”
“But should it be? Why shouldn’t we elect the best candidate instead of the most genetically similar one?”
Nico wrinkled his nose. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life paraded around like a prize-winning goose, and I don’t think I am the best candidate.”
“You’re not a bad candidate.”
“We should pick somebody with a law degree or an MBA.”
Maxence scoffed, “Corporate drones are inherently sociopathic and destroy anything they get their hands on. They think they know how to run a company, but their vice presidents and admins really do the work the whole time. Because they focus on boosting short-term profits to keep the stock price high, they don’t know how to invest in and manage a country and citizenry to prepare for the next century. They play too much golf and screw it up. And then they burn down the economy because they were too lazy to do the job right, and they’re mad about it.”
Dree chuckled, a deep, throaty sound that trickled from his shoulders to his groin like warm olive oil as he anticipated the touch of a masseuse.
At least he didn’t have to worry about overpowering Nico’s spirit with his own. The hunger in his body for her distracted him too much.
Nico drummed his fingers on his stomach. “Aren’t there university degrees in, like, government management? Or a lawyer would be good. Lawyers know what they’re doing as far as writing the laws and what the consequences of them are.”
Max could have sworn Nico went to university in London. “I thought you had a law degree.”
He shook his head. “My baccalaureate is in art history. All I could do is tell you which of the paintings in the national museum are real and which are fakes. I’d be useless as a sovereign.”
Wait. “Some of the paintings in the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco are fakes?”
Nico raised his head. “Of course.”
That seemed like something to be taken care of at some point, but the election and coronation were first on Maxence’s list of priorities. “You really wouldn’t consider it?”
“There are better candidates.”
“I don’t think there are.”
“Let me tell you some.”
Obviously, Nico had considered and rejected his own bid at the election, so Maxence didn’t press him further. “Who else should we be looking at?”
“Maybe our great-uncle, Louis Grimaldi? He’s the right age, not too old but not going to get us in trouble with scandals. He was the spare heir if anything had happened to Grandfather. He’s led a quiet life. They have three adult kids who are in their thirties and safely married. There are no scandals that I know of in that whole branch of the family.”
Maxence looked at Dree. “You have it?”
She nodded, bending that supple neck of hers.
He turned back to Nico. “Who else?”
He stared at Maxence, dropping one eyebrow. “You really aren’t going to stand for election, are you?”
“No.”
“Good, because I’m essentially giving you a hit list of the people who might stand in your way. If you were like half our relatives, I would worry that anyone whose name came out of my mouth might end up a floater in the harbor by the yacht club.”
Maxence chuckled. “I don’t want to be the prince, Nico. If I could sneak out of this country in the dead of night without repercussions, I would, but I don’t think that’s the case. I did my best not to come back for a decade. I want to be a priest, and I would have taken Holy Orders by now if Uncle Rainier would’ve allowed it.”
Nico let his head drop backward again. “I guess that’s true.”
“You might not want to mention this list to other people.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
“Is there anybody else who either is considering a run for it, or we should consider prodding them to?”
Nico shook his head, rolling his skull back and forth where it lay on the back of the chair. “I need time to think about this. I thought you asked me here to secure my vote. I didn’t even consider the possibility of someone else, and I certainly don’t have a list of nominations right at the forefront of my brain. I’ll keep in touch if I think of anybody.”
“Yes, thank you,” Maxence said.
Nico left them, and Maxence was once again alone with the tantalizing Dree Clark, whose shoe was still dangling from her toes like fresh meat in front of a hungry wolf.
Chapter Five
Kissin’ Cousins
Dree
Dree steadied the tablet on her knees and prepared to take notes like a secretary once again, even though she was a nurse. And she had a master’s degree in nursing. And she had several years’ work experience in a major hospital as a nurse.
Not that she was whining about it or anything.
Didn’t secretaries get chased around the desk by the boss? She needed to negotiate which perks and fringe benefits she was entitled to.
The slim phone on Max’s desk spoke. “Your Highness, sir, Their Graces the Duke and Duchess of Valentinois have arrived.”
Dree tried not to snort. Geez, that was a mouthful. It was a good thing they didn’t have to do that at the hospital where she’d worked in Phoenix. Your Highness, Dr. Jackson, sir, His Grace the Duke of Ahwatukee and Count of Chapparal, Lord of the White Tank Mountains, is currently presenting with a Code Blue. The patient would be brain dead before the call for the crash cart was finished.
At the end of the long room, the door opened.
Maxence stood and told her, “Your subject is wool prices.”
Oh, heck. She could natter on about wool for hours.
“Alexandre!” Maxence stepped around the huge desk and strode across the palace office toward the couple who’d been shown in by Quentin Sault, who remained inside and stood at the back of the office.
That guy, Quentin, was so unobtrusive that he seemed to fade a
way, first to a gray mist, then settling between the books like dust.
The white man and woman who stood by the door were slender in a way that suggested health and exercise, not cigarettes and pills.
Max didn’t introduce Dree to his guests. Dree was staff, sort of. She set her tablet computer on her knees and tried to disappear into the air the way the other staff members did.
Staring at the backlit screen became too difficult, and Dree sneaked a peek at the two people Maxence was approaching with his arms spread wide.
The man was freakishly tall, as tall as Maxence. The two of them towered with their heads near the top of the door frame, only inches away from scraping their scalps if they’d walked through.
Dree could instantly tell that guy was not the type to ever fade away. His blond hair just past his shoulders seemed perpetually being blown back by the forward momentum of his ambition, and his personality was so large that it would have filled the office, except that the other man present was Maxence.
The new guy looked a whole lot like Max in his facial features—hard cheekbones and the jawlines like square angles, body language and stance like he knew he owned the room, plus a sexy smolder in his dark eyes. He wore a black suit with his shirt open at the collar.
The woman with him wore a blue sleeveless dress that skimmed her slim body, and her tanned calves were lean like she was a runner. She glanced around the office, checking out the bookcases that lined the walls far, far up to the thick crown moulding on the ceiling far above. Her shoulders hunched just a little, as if she was intimidated by the majestic dimensions of the room.
Maxence grabbed the man around his shoulders and embraced him, kissing him on both cheeks and then going in for a long hug, clapping his palms on the guy’s shoulders and laughing. “Alexandre! I can’t believe you’re home already.”
The man wrapped his arm around the back of Max’s shoulders, their suit jackets almost the same color except that Max’s had a midnight blue cast to the dark fabric.
Alexandre said, “Couldn’t stay away.”
“Thanks for keeping me informed about the machinations in my absence,” Max said, still hugging.
“We both have an interest in that.”
They were still hugging it out.
Dree lowered the tablet to her knees, watching the hug-fest.
The other woman was watching them with a bemused smile. One of her eyebrows floated up as the hug did not end.
The hug went on for far longer than Dree had expected, the two men clapping their arms around each other’s shoulders and then stepping back and holding each other at arm’s length.
Yeah, those Europeans were weird.
When Max broke away, Alexandre flipped his long blond hair behind his shoulder and extended his hand to draw the woman into the conversation, revealing a black cast on his left arm and hand like he’d broken it. “Max, you old dog, allow me to introduce the love of my life, my bride, Her Grace Georgianna Grimaldi, Duchess Valentinois.”
The woman’s smile froze. She extended her hand to shake. “Call me Georgie. Just Georgie.”
She didn’t sound British, French, or Russian like everybody else around Monaco seemed to.
And that guy seemed familiar, though Dree could not imagine where she might have ever met a nobleman from Monaco.
That hair flip, though. Dree had an odd memory of someone who looked like this guy pulling his hair aside because he had a strap of some kind over his shoulder.
Lights flashed around him, too.
Weird.
Alexandre continued, “Georgie, my love, allow me to present my cousin, Deacon Father Maxence Grimaldi, who denies he is Prince Maxence of Monaco and the heir apparent to the throne.”
Maxence smiled smoothly, and Dree could see his eyes sparkle from where she was sitting. He took the woman’s hand between both of his. “I do indeed deny it. Please call me Maxence. It is a pleasure to meet you at last, Your Grace. I could swear I’ve met you somewhere before.”
The woman shook her head and said firmly, “Nope.”
“But you look so familiar—”
“Absolutely not.”
Dree looked back at the nonsense she’d written on her tablet, trying to remain invisible. Everybody who hung around Maxence seemed to have royal or noble titles. They must think she really was a nobody.
Maxence walked toward her and the desk and said, “Come in and sit down. We should plan our palace coup. Would you like coffee or something stronger?”
The woman, Georgie, said, “Coffee,” as the guy said, “Something stronger.”
Maxence said to Dree, “For your notes, these are Their Graces Alexandre and Georgie Grimaldi, Duke and Duchess of Valentinois.”
She wrote that down.
He went on to talk to them without introducing her.
Dree sat on her chair and kept her eyes glued to her tablet.
Maxence returned to his seat behind the desk and gestured at the two other chairs in front of it. He sat at the desk, his posture regal and solidly in charge, and asked his two guests, “Any specific type of coffee or ‘stronger?’”
Georgie said, “Black.”
Alexandre said, “Scotch.” He dropped into the far chair, almost reclining with his long legs stretched out, utterly at ease in a prince’s office in a palace.
Dree wrote their beverages of choice down on her tablet, maybe still trying to mimic a dutiful secretary or just doodling because she still wasn’t being introduced, so it wasn’t like she had anything better to do.
She wrote something about wool.
Maxence pressed the button on the desk phone and put in an order for refreshments. He sneaked a glance at the man and said to the duchess, “Again, it is certainly a pleasure to finally meet the woman who tamed the savage rock star, Xan Valentine.”
Xan Valentine?
Dree looked at him.
One of her friends had ordered a Killer Valentine concert on pay-per-view for a house party. The lead singer of the rock band was named Xan Valentine.
When Dree looked at the guy again, yeah—oh my God, yeah—that was Xan-freaking-Valentine the rock star who was sitting down on that chair just past the woman, right there.
This was so weird. Dree had steeled herself to meet royals and rich people, but she’d never thought a rock star was going to sit six feet away from her.
But the admin outside the office had said this guy was the Duke of Valentinois, a Monegasque nobleman, not a rock star.
He couldn’t be both, right?
Dree must have something mixed up.
This was all too weird.
“Hi there.” Duchess Georgie of Valentinois had caught Dree staring at her husband.
Dree perked up, and she tried not to think about the rock star sitting right over there. “Hey! Are you American?”
Georgie smiled at her. “I grew up in Connecticut, but I did most of my bachelor’s at Southwestern State in Arizona.”
Dree dropped her stylus but caught it on the bounce. “Really? I worked over at Good Sam in Phoenix up until just a month or so ago.”
Georgie’s brown eyes lit up, and her whole face lifted as she grinned. “You’re kidding! How did you get here?”
“Long story. Really long and weird story.” She caught Maxence looking at her from the corner of her eye. “And it’s nothing. Boring. I should stop talking now.”
Georgie frowned at Maxence. “What, you don’t let your admins talk to people?”
Alexandre laughed. “Being the first in line for the throne changes a guy, huh, Max?”
Max said, “It doesn’t matter what my hypothetical number is in the line of succession, or yours, for that matter.”
Xan-freaking-Valentine nodded. “Not since the damn Council can elect anybody they want to and force them to be the monarch.”
“Well, one can always abdicate and renounce one’s place and citizenship. That’s been my plan for years.”
Georgie crossed her legs. “I stil
l don’t get this. When we got married, Xan told me that he was number three in line for the throne, but he would never be in any danger of getting tapped for it. But that’s why we had to call his uncle and get permission to get married.”
Maxence smirked at Alexandre. Dree tried not to stare at Max because he got hotter when he smirked. Max said, “I heard you had gone to all the trouble to make a dynastic marriage, getting proper permission and finding a Catholic priest and everything. I wondered if you’d changed your mind about your place in the family.”
“Never,” Alexandre scoffed. “It never occurred to me that Pierre would do anything other than grab the throne with both hands. If Uncle Rainier had refused his permission, I would’ve gone ahead and made a morganatic marriage with Georgiana. I just wanted to keep my title and my house, but she’s worth more than a house in Monaco.”
Max laughed at Alexandre. “‘True love is worth more than a house in Monaco.’ We should put that on mugs and sell them in the palace gift shop.”
The vocabulary was beyond Dree. She wrote them on the pad, trying not to frown. Duc and Duchess = dynasty not morganananatic marriage, WTF.
Georgie whispered to her, “Dynastic means it’s royally legal. Morganatic means that I’m not royal, which is the case, but the only thing that matters is that his uncle said it was dynastic. Children of morganatic marriages are not quite legitimate, and they can’t inherit the title and money.”
Dree nodded. “Oh, okay.”
Georgie said, “I was pre-law at Southwestern State. Contracts are fun. All these stupid details just light my fire.”
Max looked up at Dree, a warning glance that she was interfering in royal business.
She snickered but went back to pretending to write something.
Oops. She was supposed to be writing about wool.
She backspaced over everything she’d written and wrote some notes about wool grades from distinct sheep breeds.
Alexandre shrugged. “Anyway, those quick phone calls to Uncle R and a priest mean I have kept my title, and thus I have a vote in the Council of Nobles for who’s to be the next prince. This is insane. I can’t believe there’s a contested vote.”
Prince: Royal Romantic Suspense (Billionaires in Disguise: Maxence Book 5) Page 6
