by Ruth Wind
"Sylvie, I beg you," he said, turning back to me. "Do not do this thing. My moment of triumph is at hand. The entire royal family is here. They want this jewel. There are some who believe it will restore the throne."
"Well, bully for them." I edged him closer to the wall. "The trouble is, Paul paid you for it, so it technically belongs to him."
"No. Technically, it belongs to me until I return it to the crown jewels with which it belongs." His eyes blazed. "Beyond his reach."
"Luca," I said in a weary voice, "one way or another, I'm leaving here with it. If you just give it to me, I'll walk away. If you hold on to it, you'll go to prison in the UK for theft."
He laughed.
"Where is it?"
He gave me an amused glance. "It is quite safe."
"Mmm." Over his shoulder, I saw Paul not far away, and made eye contact, gave him a slight nod. "The thing I wonder, Luca, is how you feel at all safe, with thugs all around, and me, and Paul Maigny, all on your tail."
"Surely you have guessed by now?"
"What?"
"That 'thug' you chased earlier is my bodyguard, Sylvie."
A series of events snapped into place—every time I'd seen him, Luca had been nearby. I struggled not to let the revelation show but Luca laughed contemptuously.
"You are in over your head. Go home, go back to Scotland, and let the big boys play with the real rarities."
"Don't bother my pretty little head? Is that it?"
"Exactly."
Paul had come up from behind. "What about mine?" he said, and, touched Luca's shoulder.
Luca didn't wait—he bolted, straight for the door to the back of the room. I made a dive for him, and caught his sleeve for a moment, but he tore away, fast as a running back, and was swallowed by the crowd. Hobbled as I was by the high heels, Paul blasted by me, shoved keys in my hands. "Go," he cried. "Get the car and bring it to the back of the hotel."
I spun around and ran in the other direction, headed for the front doors, and the Jag.
It was snowing outside and I had nothing but high heels and a skimpy wrap to protect me from the cold. Spying a man's brown overcoat on the counter, I snagged it on my way by, ignoring a howl of protest from behind me.
Outside, I paused for one second to get my bearings and shove my arms into the coat. It was far too big for me, but the hem dropped well below my knees, and it was very warm.
The sidewalk was slippery, but I had learned a long time ago how to run in even the highest heels—it was a matter of balance and strong ankles—and I managed to stay upright. Skittering around the corner, I saw the Jag, unmistakable in its shape, even when covered by the snow. I opened the right side—saw that I was again in a right-hand drive country—and dashed around to the left. Dizzying, this business of driving on different sides, with shifting equipment.
Since I'd learned to drive in France and the U.S., I was happier on the right hand, and although there was always the slightly disorienting moments of shifting back to the default mode, it didn't suck to drive a Jaguar. Ever. "Hello, darlin'," I said aloud, gleefully listening to the engine rumbling to life.
We all have our favorites. The Alfa Romeo was a lovely creature, responsive and sleek, but if given a choice, I always loved a Jag.
I kicked off the high heels and jumped out to wipe snow from the back window with my sleeve, fast as I could. I didn't even know where the back of the hotel was—it had seemed as if they were going that direction.
The question was answered when Paul yanked open the driver's side door and said, "Let's go! Move!"
In most cases, I would drive, but he was the Formula One champ, not I. Not matter how great a driver I was, I could not come close to him, and I dashed to the passenger side.
"What's going on?"
"He's got a driver and a car. I don't know who it is, but we'll stick with them."
"I know who it is," I said, jumping in. "I kept thinking he was a thug, but he was with Luca all along. Luca's bodyguard."
A dark sedan tore out of the alley behind the hotel and sailed around us, going the opposite way. I saw the driver, and of course it was the redheaded thug I'd first seen at the Glasgow airport, the one I'd bitten at the caravan. "Get in," I cried. "Come on!"
"Sylvie, I came to this side by mistake. You have to drive."
"You're the champ, not me."
"I cannot drive like you can, not anymore. Not since my accident."
Startled for one long second, I thought of him lying in that hospital bed in Nice for so very long. He'd never gone back to racing, but it had never occurred to me it was because he couldn't.
"Ah, I hate that look on your face," he said.
As I stood by the car, a voice sailed into the night. "Hey, princess!" said a skinny man smoking a cigarette. "What brought you to Bucharest? This your new boyfriend?"
Before I even processed it was the effing paparazzi, he'd snapped a series of pictures—me in the stolen oversize coat and bare feet, the Jaguar with open door, Paul, looking so very, very Continental. Depending on our expressions, this could be good for almost anything.
I collected my scattered thoughts and dashed around the car in my bare feet. "Get in," I cried. "Let's go for a drive!"
He grinned and dove in the car. We buckled in, and I threw the Jag into gear. Luca and Frankenstein were ahead, but I wasn't particularly worried about it. No contest between a Jag and a sedan, no matter what the make. I punched the accelerator and pulled out, crossing three lanes of traffic to slip the nose of the car neatly ahead of a taxi who leaned on his horn without restraint.
Traffic was heavy—perhaps dinner traffic? "What day is it?"
"Saturday."
"My time-space continuum is really distorted."
Paul laughed. "It happens."
"I need to remember," I said, watching a motorcycle roar between two lines of cars to snake up behind us, "that my father is racing tomorrow."
"I'll remember. Kuala Lumpur, is it?"
"Yes." The photographer from the hotel was on the motorcycle, with someone on the back. They'd obviously abandoned the hopes of seeing royalty for a photo op of a different sort. "Damn them!" I said. "We don't need this headache along with everything else."
"Ignore them."
The other trouble was, there were dozens of dark sedans in the congested street as we approached a roundabout. I thought I spied the car and pushed across the lanes only to discover it wasn't Luca at all. The motorcycle came right behind us, in no hurry.
"There is your prince," Paul said, pointing to the left. "Go!"
The light had turned and traffic was pouring like water through the intersection. The car, a dark blue Audi, with the distinctive five circles and a European Union circle on the bumper, swirled into the roundabout, edging to the left. I followed, trying to beat back a sense of urgency.
"There he goes!" I cried and accelerated, shoving through thick lines of cars with fury as the Audi broke out of the roundabout and headed down a side street.
Traffic was less congested here, but the Audi wove in and out, dashing through little breaks, headed down alleyways and through side streets in a way that let me know the driver knew the city well. Behind us, shooting photos in a lazy way, were the photographer and his pal on the motorcycle.
Snow was still falling, and there were horns honking and the streets were slick. "Frankenstein knows how to drive," I said aloud.
"He's taking us somewhere," Paul said. "This is too easy."
"Well, then," I said, shifting and pressing down on the accelerator, "let's take the lead then, shall we?"
I zoomed through traffic, the Jag smooth as a knife through butter, and the sedan speeded up, looped through a residential area, and dashed through a small park. "What are you doing?" I murmured.
Around me, the Jaguar seemed to come alive. The faster we went, the better the engine purred, and I thought of my father, racing around the tracks of the world, around Monaco and Kuala Lampur and all the other ex
otic places he raced through my lifetime.
He loved it, and he'd given it to me, the only thing he really had.
Frankenstein suddenly cornered around a tight, almost geometrically triangular turn and accelerated wildly as he drove down a deserted, dark street. I glanced in the rearview mirror to see the motorcyclist was still with us.
Speed was very high for these conditions, the heavy snow, the slick roads, the twisting, turning back streets—
The road swerved suddenly to the left, a brutally sharp angle that ran along a body of water. "Shit, shit, shit, shit!" I cried, downshifting, holding my breath as I tried to keep the Jag from spinning out entirely on the curve. We slammed over a low curb, narrowly missed a tree, skimmed along the water for fifty yards, and managed to get back on the road.
The motorcyclist, too, was still in the running, and the trio of us went sailing over a bridge, past a giant white Stalin-era building, back into a dark road, and along a very long park.
"This is getting old," I said.
"There's a wide area coming up. See it?"
It was a square of some sort, maybe the center of a park. I slammed my foot down and raced forward. Just ahead, the dark sedan picked up speed to attempt to stay ahead, and just as I felt the first nerve-wracking loss of traction an instant before I lost control, I saw the Audi hit a patch of ice and start to slide.
At the same instant, the Jag skidded into the same ice and whirled like a top, spinning so hard it was like a merry-go-round.
"Hold on!" I cried.
"Keep your head low!" Paul yelled, and just then, the motorcycle slammed into us, the machine crashing into the windshield, the humans somewhere else. In the blindness, I couldn't see where we were going.
"Paul!" I cried.
"Hang on, hold on. You can do it."
I clung to the shivering steering wheel, and suddenly, it was as if I became the car—I was no longer skin and limbs and brain, but suddenly melded with the car. I could feel the tires as part of my body, feel where they met the road, feel the engine rumbling through my lungs, my belly. In my groin was the center of balance, and my hands were the wheel.
It was still a struggle to regain control, to steer against the spin and avoid braking, which would only slam us even further out of control. The car slowed, and slowed, and I raised my head to steer us to a stop—
And heard a huge, slamming explosion.
I knew that sound.
For an instant, I waited for my body to break apart, go spraying out into the ether, but nothing happened.
When the car spun out, my body—and Paul, I noticed—had gone into an instinctive crouch, intensified when he'd yelled at me to duck, and now I straightened.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
"Yes. Are you?"
"Fine. Who crashed?"
"I think it was the Audi," he said grimly.
The Jaguar was running. I shut it off. It was amazingly quiet.
We opened the doors to a scene of carnage, made all the more unnerving by the absolute silence that accompanied it. The motorcycle was mangled, on its side, front wheel spinning crazily. I saw one person lying in the road, another sitting up. I hoped the camera was lost in the water at the very least. Bastard.
"Stay here, Sylvie," Paul said. In his voice, I heard the horror of what he was seeing. I glanced over, ready to look away fast, but I needed to know what exactly had happened.
The Audi had slammed into the side of a bridge. There wasn't much left of it.
My tolerance for car wrecks is miniscule, given the nature of my father's profession, the number of gruesome deaths I'd seen over the years. This was a bad one. I turned away, retching, and then realized that Paul was going to search Luca's body for the Katerina. In the distance, sirens started whooping.
"Paul, don't touch it!" I cried, and dashed toward him. "Please!"
He stopped me with a hand held out, fingers pointing in my direction. "Come no closer," he said. "You will not want this scene in your imagination, ma cherie."
His expression was so severe, I halted. "Please don't pick it up."
"Close your eyes, Sylvie, and turn around."
I did as I was told. Snow lit on my face in little splotches, and there was a smell of gasoline and hot antifreeze dripping on engines, and the ticking of cooling metal. I thought of Luca on the road in Scotland, and pulling him out of the wrecked car.
"Hey, princess," said the photographer. "Smile, baby."
My eyes popped open and I saw the photographer lift his camera and shoot the wreckage. Something in me snapped, and I roared across the space between us, snatched his camera, and threw it will all my might into the lake. "People died here, you bastard!"
He smiled. "Yep. And I've got it all right here." He showed me a small digital camera, and then sprinted into the night.
I let him go, the will to follow drained out of me by the long, long hours I'd been running, chasing, ducking. Bastards. It was a sick way to make a living.
The sirens were whooping closer and anxiety sprang up in me. I didn't turn around. "Paul, we need to go."
He came up beside me. "One moment, Sylvie," he said.
I looked at him. His expression was deeply serious, his eyes grave. In his hand, he held something. It was covered with blood, blood that also covered his hand. I hated the symbolism, the grimness of that vision. "Paul—"
He held up one finger from his other hand, then went to the edge of the lake and knelt, dipping the Katerina into the water, bringing his hand and the diamond up clean. He walked back, stopped in front of me, and soberly, ritualistically, raised his hand and opened his fingers, so the Katerina, clean and gleaming, dripping with water from the lake of her own country, sat like a plump egg in offering.
"She is yours, Sylvie Montague."
I stared at him, remembering his words in the car. If I took it and gave it back to him, perhaps the curse would be broken. If my love was true—
I bowed my head, plucked the jewel out of his hand, and tucked it in my pocket. "Let's go."
He took my hand, and we walked into the night, leaving the carnage behind.
Chapter 23
The very word "diamond" comes from the Greek "adamas" meaning unconquerable, suggesting the eternity of love. The Greeks also believed the fire in the diamond reflected the constant flame of love. For millions around the world that fire, the mystery and magic, the beauty and romance shining out from a simple solitaire says all that the heart feels but words can't express. However, it wasn't until 1477, when Archduke Maximilian of Austria gave a diamond ring to Mary of Burgundy, that the tradition of diamond engagement rings was born.
—www.costellos.com.au
We returned to the hotel and slipped in the back way. Impossibly, the ball was still going on, the laughter louder, the pleasure cranked up a notch. We went upstairs without speaking.
I was exhausted, sick at heart, confused.
And aching to be held. I thought of all the years, all the many, many, many nights I'd lain in a lonely bed and thought of Paul. Not many men, men who sometimes took his place, the one man.
This one. Paul.
We entered the suite and Paul locked the door, put out the Do Not Disturb sign. "We should sleep in tomorrow, hmm?"
"Sure."
My body buzzed with a dizzying mix of exhaustion and electricity and anticipation as I took off the drab brown overcoat, then reached into the pocket and pulled out the Katerina. I put it down on the table and we both reverently bent over it.
"Magnificent," Paul said.
"You know that I would give her to you if she were mine to give."
"Yes."
"Do you think it was the curse that killed him?" I asked quietly.
"I don't believe in curses," Paul said, and looked at me.
"I didn't think I did, either, but there's no denying that people who get mixed up with this jewel often die gruesome deaths."
He cocked his head, and a smiling light edged into his iri
ses. "That's like saying cocaine is a curse, isn't it? It isn't the drug, it's the activities surrounding it that cause destruction."
"Right." At his proximity, at the closeness of his sage-green eyes, I felt suddenly dizzy, and straightened, putting cold fingers to my forehead. "Whew."
"Are you all right, Sylvie?"
"Would you mind doing me a favor?"
"Of course."
I turned around and lifted my hair from the back of my neck. "Would you kiss the top of my back, just there? Just once or twice?" I pointed to a place at my nape. "There?"
He didn't move immediately.
"Please?" I said quietly, firmly.
His sleeve rustled as he moved, and the air was disturbed around us and his lips touched the back of my neck. His lips, then his tongue, drawing a little circle there. "Like that?"
"Again," I said and my voice was barely a whisper.
He slid an arm around my waist, and I bowed my head, my hands still holding my hair out of the way. He kissed each rise of my spine, lips first, then tongue, then moved and did it again. "What else?"
"My ear," I whispered, and he obliged me.
"And here?" he asked, kissing along my shoulder.
"Oh, yes."
My hands started their trembling again, and my knees were a little unsteady too. I let it fill me up, the hunger, the fear, the conflict between wanting him and being afraid to ruin everything.
I turned. "I have never, in all my life, wanted someone to kiss me as much as I want you to kiss me now," I said, and put my arms around his neck. "Can you forget everything else and just kiss me?"
"I cannot forget," he said, and his voice was gruff. "I have waited a thousand years for this, Sylvie. A million." His breathing was unsteady, and he cupped my face, lifted my chin with his thumbs, and kissed me.
Kissed me.
You think you know what a kiss is, how it proceeds, but this was not like anything I'd ever known before. The opening of his mouth, the thrust of his tongue, the way I opened to him, to take him, all of him, into my mouth. I wanted to swallow him, or crawl into his mouth. I couldn't breathe with the wanting, with the fierce thrusting need to inhale him. I stumbled forward, pulled him tighter, pressed my body against his.
