Prince: Royal Romantic Suspense (Billionaires in Disguise: Maxence Book 5)

by Blair Babylon

  His breath caught in his throat.

  He nearly fell to his knees but did not move.

  Dree.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  An Extravagant Honeymoon

  Dree

  Dree Clark, New Mexican sheep rancher and certified nurse practitioner, was at a royal ball.

  Something must be horribly wrong with the world.

  She’d arrived only half an hour earlier. After her name was found on the guest list stored on a computer tablet that had obviously been tampered with by the staff from below stairs, she’d been shown to a large round table in the back of one of the banquet rooms. Her tablemates were all giggly and toasting each other with the free champagne that the waiters kept pouring into their glasses even though the waitstaff eyed everyone at that table with suspicion.

  An American couple from Back East sitting next to her were named Ford and Charley Dalio, and they were on their honeymoon and traveling all over Europe for a month. They seemed ridiculously, stupidly in love, giggling all over the place and pecking each other with tiny kisses when they thought no one was looking.

  Dree refused to allow herself to get upset. There was no reason why she should be saddened by somebody else’s happiness. She was not that kind of a person.

  Besides, she was sneaking into a high-society charity event to spy on Maxence, and really, what could be more fun? Chiara and her other friends on the palace staff had told Dree to seduce Maxence so that he wouldn’t run off and be a priest, but Dree didn’t know how she was going to find him in this melee or how to do that, anyway.

  After supper, the other people at the table took pity on the country bumpkin who didn’t know the order of events for the evening and told her that the next thing would be dancing.

  Dancing.

  Oh, hey. Another opportunity to gawk and plaster herself to the edges of the room, a perennial wallflower.

  But Dree tagged along with Ford and Charley, and they found the enormous ballrooms with glass walls that overlooked the Mediterranean Sea.

  The jazz band that had been playing earlier had been filled out with more musicians and was now closer in size to an orchestra. Dree was standing in the crowd when Maxence walked out of the other side of the throng of people toward the middle of the dance floor, leading his cousin Marie-Therese.

  All sorts of very bad words went through Dree’s head, but the last time Dree had seen that skank, Marie-Therese had been in Dree’s boyfriend’s bed wearing slutty underwear. A few bad words were probably warranted.

  And yet, Lady Marie-Therese Grimaldi was the girl in Maxence’s arms that night because Dree Clark was, after all, just a New Mexican sheep-herding farmgirl, standing on the sidelines after sneaking into a royal ball.

  The two of them spun around the ballroom dance floor in an elegant waltz. Maxence wasn’t all stiff and show-off like a professional ballroom dancer, but he led Marie-Therese around the floor with confidence, maybe nonchalance, because he was going through the steps and everybody was looking at him while he did it.

  Yes, waltzing was just another thing Prince Maxence Grimaldi could do. Of course, he could. Waltzing was probably an essential skill written into the job description of being a prince.

  He didn’t do it for very long, though. After one circuit of the dance floor, Max released his cousin and gestured for the crowd to join him on the floor, and that’s when his dark eyes found Dree.

  He froze for just a heartbeat.

  Dree saw his reaction, and she couldn’t move either.

  And then he was strolling toward her. He looked mildly interested, the perfect embodiment of His Serene Highness.

  Dree’s heart pounded against her sternum like it was trying to escape. If she ran, she’d fall over.

  Maxence stopped in front of her and held out his hand like he was offering her something in his palm, but his hand was empty. He leaned toward her, his voice pitched low, and said, “Chérie.”

  It wasn’t fair of him to use that nickname, not when he’d told Father Moses that he was breaking up with her to be a priest. It wasn’t fair.

  “Dance with me.” His light tone sounded like the thought had just entered his mind.

  People flowed around them onto the dance floor like they were in a tunnel with darkness rushing around them.

  Dree shook her head. “I don’t know how to dance like that.”

  “The floor will be packed,” Max said, still holding his open hand between them. “You don’t have to know how. Come with me, chérie.”

  Come with me.

  Not please.

  Not, if you want to.

  Of course, Maxence ordered her, Come with me.

  He was looking into her eyes, practically looking into her mind, and she became aware that he was looking through Dree and into her heart.

  She obeyed.

  Dree placed her hand in his, and his long fingers closed around hers.

  He positioned one of her hands on his shoulder, which always seemed impossibly far up because she didn’t realize how truly tall he was until she was standing right next to him, and he held her other hand in one of his.

  His other hand touched her waist and then curled around her back. “For the last month, at every event like this, I’ve caught myself looking for you in the crowd. I’ve watched for you every night. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  She grumbled, “You could’ve asked me to go to the dance with you.”

  He chuckled. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to.”

  “Why would you think I wouldn’t want to go to a dance?”

  “Because this is frivolous,” he said. “I don’t think of you as enjoying frivolous things.”

  Maxence guided her as they moved around the floor, although much slower and with vastly smaller steps than when he had been dancing with Marie-Therese. The ballroom floor was more crowded than earlier, so it wasn’t like he had the choice. However, the way he pressed her hands and body like he was driving her, somehow, Dree ended up waltzing.

  Dree shrugged. “I may be level-headed and down-to-earth. I might be good in emergencies and have my head on relatively straight when it comes to people. But I like pretty dresses, and I like to have a good time. I’m not a stick in the mud. I was never going to be the Adult Sunday School Coordinator.”

  Maxence leaned in and whispered near her ear, “You’re the most beautiful woman here tonight.”

  She had been looking at the other women there, svelte women whose bone structure might be the product of generations of breeding for beauty or might be the work of highly skilled plastic surgeons, but Dree found that comment highly implausible. “I declare, Prince Maxence, you’re going to turn my head.”

  “You’re warm, and you’re kind.”

  “Now I know you’re just trying to get laid.”

  “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  “Max, honey, you’re laying it on pretty thick.”

  He turned her hand that he held and brushed her knuckles across his lips. “Love isn’t hard for me,” he said, musing. “Friends of mine—Casimir, Arthur, Xan, it seems like all of them—said that they’d never really loved anyone before they met their wives. I didn’t know what they meant because I’ve always found it easy to open my heart. But now, I know what they meant when they said it was different.”

  “Max, priests shouldn’t talk this way. It’s not fair. You’re going to break my heart. You’ve already broken my heart. I don’t know how to let you go. You told Father Moses this morning that you would go to Rome with him to take Holy Orders. How can I compete with that? How am I supposed to compete with God?”

  Maxence stopped moving and pressed the back of her hand against his chest. His strong heart thumped under her knuckles. “It’s not a competition.”

  “It feels like a competition. When you leave for Rome, I’ll have lost you forever.”

  “What if I don’t go to Rome tomorrow?”

  “You will go eventually. At some point,
Pope Vincent will tell you that it’s okay now, that you should go to Rome and be a priest. Even I know that you should be a priest, Max. Everybody who has seen you preach knows you should be a priest.”

  “When I’m on the road with the charity as Deacon Father Maxence, it’s so easy to love. I can love everyone, the kids, the dogs, the whole world. I can just let it all happen. There’s no selfishness in it. There’s no covetousness. I don’t want to own them. I loved my brother, Pierre, even though I knew what he was. I loved Flicka for years. That’s what people feel when I talk. But you… You break me open, and it’s different.”

  “You’re leaving tomorrow to go to Rome and take Holy Orders. Don’t break my heart anymore. Let’s just dance this one dance together. Let’s have this one night that we can remember for the rest of our lives. And I don’t mean I’m going home with you, because I’m not. I’m going back to my own room, alone, because that’s the right thing to do. So for right now, Maxence, will you please just shut up and let me have these few minutes?”

  He’d been watching her the whole time, his dark eyes seeming sadder and sadder as he listened to her.

  “Just these few minutes?” he asked. “Is that all you want?”

  Dree’s eyes stung but she wasn’t going to ruin this by crying, so she blinked back the tears. “I would’ve taken anything. I would’ve taken a few more weeks or months, maybe even a year or two, because knowing you makes every minute of my life feel real. But if these few minutes is all we have, then I’ll take them and hold onto them for the rest of my life.”

  Maxence asked her, “What if we had more time?”

  “We don’t,” Dree said. “You’re leaving for Rome, and I’ll figure out what to do. You set me up with more than enough money to start over somewhere. My sister and her son are taken care of for a few months, and by the time their money starts running low, I’ll be settled somewhere and can start sending them money again. I don’t want to pretend, Max. I just want to remember these few months with you.”

  “No, what if we had more than this? What if we had forever?”

  To Dree’s utter shock, Maxence slid one toe behind himself and dipped, ending up on one knee in front of her.

  And he was holding a small black-velvet box in his palm.

  The crowd pulled back like receding ocean waves.

  Silence rippled in rings from the center of the ballroom floor to the glass walls that overlooked the dark Mediterranean Sea.

  White static filled Dree’s head, and her hands started shaking.

  Maxence said, “Andrea Grace Catherine Clark—”

  “Oh my God, you said my name right.”

  “—I never thought I would meet someone as kind, warm, and wonderful as you are. Would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  A Decent Proposal

  Maxence

  There hadn’t been an exact moment when Maxence had decided to propose to Dree Clark. The tears she was blinking back made his heart ache. Her words sliced the lies that he had been telling himself all his life, and they fell into shreds at his feet.

  As she told him that she wanted just those few moments with him, the weight of his grandmother’s engagement ring in his pocket pulled on his tuxedo jacket and his cross around her neck caught the light, and that was when his miracle occurred.

  He had been praying for a miracle to tell him to be a priest, but his miracle had been right in front of him for months. The kindness in her soul could be nothing less than miraculous.

  Lowering himself to one knee in front of Dree Clark felt more right than prostrating himself on the floor in St. Peter’s Basilica.

  When those words left his mouth, Would you do me the honor of becoming my wife, the love in his soul expanded through the room, drawing a collective sigh from everyone around them.

  Beside Dree’s shoulder, Nico stood where he had been dancing with Marie-Therese. They’d turned to watch with the rest of the crowd. Max saw out of the corner of his vision that Nico was grinning at them with his eyebrows raised, nearly grinding his teeth in excitement. His hands clenched, and he looked like he was holding himself back from running over and hugging them.

  Beside Nico, Marie-Therese watched them with calculation in her eyes.

  Dree blinked at Maxence, her china-blue eyes batting open and closed.

  From where he kneeled, he leaned slightly toward her. “Breathe.”

  That startled little gasp must have been her beginning to breathe again. “Are—are you sure?”

  “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life,” he told her.

  He’d been so intensely focused on Dree because he was proposing to the woman he loved, a woman who had changed his life so completely in just slightly more than two months that he did not recognize himself, that he hadn’t noticed his ring of bodyguards had melted away.

  A sharp crack slapped his ears.

  And then another.

  And another.

  Dree had already ducked, one hand up to ward off the bullets. “Who the hell is shooting?”

  Maxence snatched Dree’s arm, dragging her down and underneath himself as he crouched over her. He shoved the jewelry box holding his grandmother’s engagement ring into her hands as he tried to shield her.

  More gunshots snapped and broke the air.

  The crowd ducked.

  Screeches expanded, filling the air of the Grimaldi Forum and then intensifying, wails becoming shrieks.

  The fog of screaming thickened.

  Maxence looked around, trying to figure out where the shots were coming from.

  Nico was hunched over and trying to drag Marie-Therese under his chest to protect her, but she pulled away from him.

  Half a dozen strong hands lifted Maxence from the floor, leaving Dree twisting to look around. No blood.

  Quentin Sault said, “Your Highness, we have a helicopter on the roof.”

  Max said, “Not without her.”

  Sault scowled and told the men surrounding Max, “Take him and the girl.”

  The security men began to hustle Max toward a staircase in the rear of the ballroom.

  Max grabbed Quentin Sault and pointed. “Get my cousin Nico. He’s right there.”

  Michael Rossi appeared behind Nico, who was stumbling toward where Marie-Therese had fled into the crowd. Rossi grabbed Nico and pressed a small handgun to the base of his skull. Blood poured down the side of Nico’s neck as he crumpled to the floor.

  Maxence stumbled, disbelieving.

  His throat wouldn’t work.

  Nico.

  Rossi turned to where the bodyguards were shuffling Max and Dree out of the room.

  Maxence stepped between the assassin and Dree, shielding her.

  Instead of raising his gun and taking a shot at Max, Michael Rossi raised his fist with his arm at a right angle, signaling. His gaze tracked slightly to Maxence’s left.

  Rossi was looking right at Quentin Sault.

  Betrayal.

  Maxence snatched his phone out of his pocket and thumbed an app on the home screen. He pressed the phone into Dree’s hand and with every bit of strength he could put into his arms, shoved her away from himself and into a thick knot of people. “Run.”

  Dree flew a short distance from him and then stumbled, but she looked back at him.

  Maxence yelled at her, “Run!”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Kidnapped

  Dree

  They were dragging him away. They were dragging Max away!

  She had to help him, and yet he’d told her to run.

  The man who’d shot Nico had signaled to someone in Max’s security team. One of Max’s guys had double-crossed them.

  This couldn’t be happening. She didn’t believe any of it.

  Maxence roared at her, “Run!”

  She clutched his phone and the little velvet box in her hands as she staggered to her feet. She didn’t even know where the exits were. There were no
little red signs. There had to be little red signs. Why couldn’t she find any little red signs?

  The crowd surged around her.

  Dree ran with them so she wouldn’t get trampled.

  At the door to the stairwell, the crowd bunched up.

  More gunshots from below.

  The phone in her hand squawked, and she raised it to her ear.

  A man’s voice asked in a British accent, “Maxence? What’s happened?”

  Bodies nudged and bumped Dree as she tried to press her way to the stairwell. “There’s been a shooting.”

  “Who is this?”

  “My name is Dree Clark. I’m Maxence’s”—she swallowed hard—“secretary. I’m his secretary. He’s been kidnapped. There was a terrorist attack, and he’s been kidnapped.”

  Thumps rumbled in the background of the phone. “Where are you?”

  “The Grimaldi Forum.”

  “Dammit, Monaco. Why does he ever go back to Monaco? Tell me anything you can about what happened.”

  The gunshots and Nico dying and blood on the ground and Maxence shoving her away jumbled up in her head. “I think his security double-crossed him. They killed his cousin. They dragged him away. They said there’s a helicopter on the roof.”

  “Was he wearing—”

  A hand swatted the phone away from Dree’s face and plucked the phone from her hand. “Hey! Give that back! I have to tell him what happened!”

  An extraordinarily tall, gaunt man stood beside her. “Hello, Dree Clark. Francis Senft said you have the money he owes us.”

  His accent was Russian.

  Dree darted to the side, trying to get away, but a large man was already standing there and grabbed her.

  She said, “I’m not Dree Clark. You have the wrong person.”