Crowned: Gowns & Crowns, Book 4

by Jennifer Chance

  “Oh-kay…” Fran had no idea where Ari was going with this, but she could see how he’d drawn these conclusions. It wasn’t as if they’d snuck off the island. They’d merely asked and it’d been done. Ari’s reasoning that it had been a deliberate allowance was on the money, but she suspected that his understanding diverged sharply from hers after that point. “But why?”

  Ari shook his head, remaining far too cheerful. “That is the question, isn’t it? And a good one at that.” He spread his hands. “But such questions will be answered in time. For now, I am Conti Goba, son of Maria and Josef of Makila and without a care in the world. Within that framework, I could be anyone I wanted to be, take on any personality. It is very freeing, no?”

  A pang struck deep in Fran’s heart and she searched Ari’s face, instantly worried. Did he guess the truth about her? Could he possibly know? “It could be…” she said, her tone cautious.

  “It is,” he insisted. “When I came up out of that water, the seas eerily calm after what had clearly been a terrible storm, I knew two things. One, I was alive. Two, I was Ryker Stavros, the luckiest pilot to ever ditch into the sea. Things went downhill from there, but I was someone. I had a purpose, a past, a place in this world. It was my job to remember them, and that proved impossible.” He spread his hands. “But Conti, he has no such obligations. He could be anyone. And so I have decided I am going to fashion him exactly the way I want.”

  Fran grimaced. Ari’s optimism was probably the healthiest attitude he could take, but she’d encountered her share of troubles falsifying her own identification. The fact remained that the men in the tavern had offloaded Conti’s papers pretty easily. For all she’d hoped they’d do exactly that, it made her nervous. “Unless good Conti is in jail. Or dead. Or wanted for murder.”

  “You worry too much,” Ari said, apparently unwilling to be brought down by her pessimism. Fran wondered at that. Was he truly that good natured, or had nothing bad ever happened to him?

  Even as she thought the words, she rejected them. Ari had been held as a prisoner for a year, forced to live in what amounted to little more than a kennel, and made to work in a country where he had no rights. He’d doubtless been beaten, abused—probably starved at some level, and certainly threatened with it. Regardless of his lifestyle before the accident, this was a man who’d endured true hardship.

  Then again, perhaps this was also a man who recognized hardship when it was presented to him—and when it wasn’t.

  His next words confirmed that line of thinking. “I think first we must find something to eat. Someplace off the beaten track. We have money and I have papers, and it is a happy day in the city.” He took her hand. “I am walking with a gorgeous American girl, too. What could be better?”

  She let him draw her down the street, away from the seedy bar. No one appeared to be following them, but how long would that last? “We should get new clothes.”

  “After lunch,” Ari agreed, but he didn’t slow down, and his long strides ate up the pavement until they were out of the marina district and into a more pleasant area of the city. This wasn’t truly the tourist area, but it was right on the fringes, and small shops began to line the cobblestoned streets. The first one that looked like a café drew Ari’s attention, and a moment later Fran found herself inside a cool, shadowy hideaway.

  “Ah! This is perfect.” Ari turned brightly toward the older woman who stepped out of the back room, and began speaking to her in Garronois. Though there were plenty of chairs and tables in the small space—most of them empty—the woman raised a hand and beckoned them to follow her.

  “What’s this?”

  “Something to make that last hint of worry disappear from your eyes,” Ari said.

  He led her past a kitchen down a short hallway flanked on either side with restrooms, and then outside again. Immediately, Fran understood. “A courtyard!”

  “You see? Conti Goba takes care of his woman,” Ari grinned. He turned to the old woman, and relayed more information to her. The woman nodded several times, then bustled away.

  Ari chose a table and drew out a chair, seating Fran with a flourish. Rather than sitting as well, he held up a hand. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  Instantly she tensed. He was giving her the slip, she reasoned immediately. He was seating her in this interior courtyard and then escaping. She should let him go—he wasn’t a prisoner—but how could she face the queen if she did that?

  Her panic must have telegraphed itself to Ari. “No, no!” he said, shaking his head. “You worry too much for a such a beautiful woman. I will be back, sweet Francesca. I would no more leave you alone than I would stop breathing.”

  With a short bow, he pivoted on his heel, leaving Fran staring after him. “What in the world?” she muttered after the café door settled behind him. Surely Ari’s gentlemanly affection was some kind of elaborate act.

  Then again, who truly was Ari Andris? The articles she’d read on him had all been uniform in their compliments, but she’d taken that to be political propaganda. Yes, he was tall and strong, yes he was a credit to his family and his country. But all of the accolades of sensitivity, humor, shrewdness, and politesse…that she’d assumed was exaggeration.

  Yet here he was, without a meaningful memory to his name, acting with more grace and chivalry than, well…anyone she’d ever known.

  Before she could puzzle out more, Ari was back, bearing a tray of glasses and a large carafe of water. “The good mother, she has guests in the front room of her café, so splitting her time is a hardship. I told her I could as easily carry water to us as she could, and this way we could wait for her convenience.”

  He sat the glasses on the table, then poured them both drinks. Fran did her level best not to stare as he handed her a glass. “You should drink more water than you do, Francesca,” he murmured, watching her as she downed the water. “It’s a very different climate here than America. More tropical.”

  “It’s certainly that,” Fran said with a grimace. She watched as Ari settled into his own chair, his long legs sprawling out in comfortable relaxation. “How did you know this place would have a courtyard? Have you been here before?”

  “Not at all,” he shook his head. “I suspect this part of town is a place I never explored, which is a shame. That woman in there—she works hard, but she is happy. Her kitchen is filled with pots and pans and laughter and love, here in this tiny little restaurant tucked into a street I’ve never seen. It’s not right, that I do not know it.”

  Fran lifted her brows. “You can’t expect to have seen everything in the city, though. It’s a big place.”

  “Not that big,” Ari countered. “And I have lived here all my life, I know it in my bones. Yet here this lovely woman lives and works and feeds her neighbors, and I did not know she existed—didn’t know this street existed. What else have I been missing, I wonder? What life might I choose to live, once my memories come back to me?”

  Ryker knew Francesca wasn’t taking his words as an idle question, and he liked her more for it. As if it would be possible for him to like her any more than he already did. Her gentle manner, her soothing touch, her beautiful expressive eyes were already weaving a spell around him that he didn’t want to break.

  Before she could speak, however, he posed the same question to her. “What about you?” he asked. “Here I know nothing of the life you currently lead, but that’s only fair as we don’t know anything about mine. What life do you wish to live, Francesca Simmons?”

  As he spoke, he tracked the progression of Francesca’s emotions from tense to immediate relief. This was a woman who didn’t want to talk about her past—not to him. He suspected not to anyone. But there would be time for that. There were so many other things he wanted to learn about her. A person’s path was important, but their heart—that is what mattered, he thought. Your feet might get you to a place, but your heart is what got you through it.

  Francesca didn’t respond right away and he
leaned back in his chair, completely at his ease. She watched him, and eventually a smile played at the edges of her lips. “Are you interrogating me, Mr. Goba?”

  “In the most insistent and demanding of ways,” he nodded. “You must tell me everything or I will subject you to hours of intrusive questions.”

  “I see.” She reached for the carafe, then halted as he smoothly lifted it and poured more water into her glass. “You don’t have to serve me, you know,” she protested.

  “I don’t, no. But if it does not bother you?” He looked the question at her and she shook her head, which made him grin in genuine pleasure. “Then you must know I enjoy doing it. Everyone works hard in this world, but not everyone is taken care of. I get the impression you focus more on caring for others than others do for you.”

  She blinked at him. “I don’t need anyone to care for me.”

  “Oh, but there you are wrong.” Ryker spread his hands. “We each need someone to care for us, whether or not we can manage quite well on our own. We are strong because we need to be strong. I am, you are. Our sweet nana inside is, cooking her wonderful meals. But our hearts are never so full as when they beat in time to another’s. It’s what hearts were made for, yes? It’s what makes them complete.”

  She was fully staring at him. “You can’t seriously talk like this all the time.”

  He laughed, but he couldn’t deny his rush of excitement at the expression on Francesca’s face. He’d surprised her, and in surprising her he’d peeled away another layer of her wariness, revealing another facet of the woman underneath. He got the feeling there was more—so much more to Francesca than he could imagine, and even now he felt the press of time.

  He leaned forward. “So answer my original question. How would you live your life, if you could choose any path? What would you do?”

  She tilted her head. “I’ve chosen a path I love,” she confessed, and he found himself believing her. “I help people become more whole, more their true selves. That’s really the goal of my work, I think.”

  “The work you did with the soldiers?”

  “Well—that was more to help them give a voice to what they’d experienced,” she said, and her gaze shifted away from him as she went to a place in her own memories. Not all of them happy memories, he suspected. “I couldn’t heal them. I’m not a doctor. I couldn’t tell them it would be okay, that they’d get better. Some of them will, some of them won’t. The things they saw…” she shook her head. “I never realized how sheltered I was in my own happy, safe world, until I saw a glimpse of their truths, their experiences.”

  “And you gave them words to express that truth?”

  “Words, sometimes,” she said with a soft smile. “Or I simply gave them a safe place to share it. To let the ugly or hurtful or terrible thing into the sunlight, where they could see it outside of themselves, and realize it was part of their experience, yes, but not who they were, not really. That they had endured it, but they no longer needed to carry it if they didn’t want to.”

  Ryker found his throat tighten at the naked emotion on Francesca’s face. It was emotion she probably didn’t reveal to those she was helping, but her grief was almost transparent, her empathy for these strangers so strong that he could feel their remembered pain as if it was shimmering between them now. “That is a gift,” he murmured.

  She blinked at him, and her wariness was back. “It’s a blessing, really. Except I’m the one being blessed. I researched all the different careers out there, what I could do, what I wanted to do. That I was able to go to school to learn how to help people in this way—that was unbelievable to me when I first realized it.” She smiled, only it was a smile she would give a stranger, one intended to deflect, not to invite in. “I was very lucky.”

  “You were,” Ryker said easily, taking no offense at her caution. There was nothing in Francesca’s revelations that merited such concern as far as he could see—but he hadn’t walked in her shoes, hadn’t carried her burdens. Eventually, he would understand her, but he could pursue that end as cautiously as she pursued everything. “And you will be finishing your studies soon?”

  “Yes,” she said, her relief on being on more solid conversational ground obvious. “I have to present my final thesis, defend it as they say, but the preliminary work I’ve already submitted has been well received. I should have my masters and could start work counseling as early as next year.”

  “Ah!” he said, sitting back. “So you would like to become a counselor, then. For soldiers?”

  “No—not exclusively.” Francesca shook her head quickly. “I don’t pretend to know everything it takes to understand the needs of military personnel. They give so much more than people believe they do…I’ve seen the barest amount. I’d have to do far more intense work in that field before I would consider myself an expert. But for the general public, yes. I think that would be very rewarding. To help them get connected with who they really are, live their best life. That sort of thing.”

  He nodded. “You’d be very good at it.”

  “Maybe,” she said, then she flashed him an uncharacteristically confiding glance. “But first I’d travel.”

  “Travel! But you are traveling now, you and your friends.”

  “Well…not as much as we expected,” she laughed. “We have stayed in Garronia longer than expected, with Nicki’s, ah, recovery.”

  “Fair enough.” He poured more water into her glass, pleased that she let him do so. “And where would you travel, once you leave our shores?”

  “Paris,” she said definitively. Then she quirked a look at him. “Have you ever been?” She blinked at what he knew must be the clouding of his expression, and hastened to take back the question. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—”

  “You worry too much,” he said, shaking his head. “In truth, I don’t know. But the not knowing gives me no pain.” It didn’t, either. He probably had been to Paris, he thought. He would remember that when the time came, if so. But there was nothing related to the City of Lights that gave him pause. And he knew it was called the City of Lights. So that, at least, was progress.

  Their food arrived and both he and Francesca seemed to realize how hungry they were at the same time. The lunch lasted through another carafe of water and a bottle of wine, the conversation between them light and easy once more. He told her information about the city—not specific memories, he still couldn’t grasp that—but facts that came to him so readily it was if he’d read them off a placard somewhere. He tried to recall if he’d done exactly that, perhaps on the day-long boat ride to Asteri Island or while he was there.

  He hadn’t though. And the reason why was—there’d been no information available either on the yacht or the island. No magazines, no tourist brochures, no newspapers.

  “What’s wrong?” Francesca asked, and when he realized she was watching him again, her brows drawn together. “What are you thinking?”

  “I—it’s nothing,” he said. “But I haven’t seen a newspaper or website or television…” he laughed. “In over a year. An entire world is going on around me, and I don’t know the first thing about it. I would have thought…” he shook his head. “I would have thought I’d have seen something.”

  She nodded, but her expression remained tight. “I suspect the doctors didn’t want you to be overwhelmed. Perhaps that’s all it is?”

  Something in her tone seemed off, but he knew no good could come of pursuing this path. Later, maybe when she was asleep, he would find a newspaper or a bar with a working television. Anything he learned would be worthwhile.

  Nevertheless, a small, contrary part of him was willing to put off the inevitable end to his ignorance for a few hours longer. He didn’t want to see Francesca worried, he wanted to see her relaxed. If that meant avoiding the news for a few hours more, it was a sacrifice he was more than willing to make.

  Instead he could focus on her.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s find a place to hide for a w
hile.”

  As he’d suspected, her entire face eased, her tension flowing away in a wave of relief. “I’d like that,” she nodded as they stood. “There’s got to be someplace near here that will work—not too fancy, but safe. Private. Not too close to the marina.”

  “That sounds exactly perfect,” he said, and reached for her.

  When she put her hand in his, it felt like coming home.

  Chapter Eight

  Fran kept her fingers entwined with Ari’s the whole way up the three flights of stairs from the tiny front lobby of the hotel. She’d been in far worse accommodations, to be sure. And given that Ari had lived in a cage for the past year, she figured no matter what the room above held, he’d not complain.

  More importantly, the hotel fit her needs for keeping Ari out of sight until nightfall. Little more than a half mile from where they’d hidden away in the Garronois café, the hotel was on a quiet back street off the tourist district but in a very respectable part of town—and the street was a curved one that didn’t dump into a courtyard. There would be no long sightlines for watchers to observe them.

  There was also a back entrance.

  They’d stopped and bought clothing and bathroom supplies—as well as more food and wine—at a series of small shops along the way, though neither of them was hungry at this point. To all the world they looked like a couple out for a lazy afternoon walk, she thought. She didn’t think Ari took such walks very often. He exclaimed too much over too many details, and never with a wince of pain. He was discovering his city as an outsider would, and his delight knew no bounds. Everything was beautiful and charming or majestic and impressive, and she got the feeling that she could pick up a dusty stone and he’d declare it his kin. He so clearly belonged here—in this city, this country. Surely it was only a matter of time before his mind breached the fences keeping him from all his memories.

  Ari chuckled as he fit the long key into the door. “I don’t think the desk man believed we were simply exhausted from a day at the beach.”