“Hey, guys.” Rae’s guilty-as-original-sin expression looked like she was about to break some bad news.
Georgie cringed at the thought of more bad news.
Rae said, “I appreciate you jumping on a plane on short notice.”
“Yeah, sure,” Lizzy said, smearing thick butter on the other side of her croissant. Flakes drifted to the plate, and the baked scent filled the air around Georgie.
Rae said, “Um, I need to tell y’all something.”
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Georgie reached over and took Rae’s hand, determined to stay stoic. “Are you okay? This isn’t a Make-A-Wish trip, is it?”
“Oh, no. I’m fine. No problem, there. I’m just not sure—” Rae looked out the windows, over at the Eiffel Tower, like she wanted to turn to dust and float away. She said, “It’s about Wulf.”
A wolf? Georgie didn’t get it.
Lizzy asked, “Who?”
“Wulf,” Rae said. “That’s The Dom’s name, his real name.”
Lizzy’s jaw dropped open like she wanted the flies to get in. She crowed, “No way! His name is Wulf. Get it?” She elbowed Georgie, and Georgie scrambled after the apple slice that went shooting out of her hand. “Wulf? Like he names all the sub guys dog names? There’s Irish Setter, and Cairn Terrier, and Mutt. Oh my God! I cannot believe he does that! That’s so psycho!”
Rae blinked her huge, brown eyes. “I guess he did. Jeez, some psych major I am, huh?”
Georgie leaned in. Even she could see that Rae was winding up for a long story. “That’s not all, though. What’s up?”
Rae looked at her lap, a classic move of misdirection. She said, “We’re getting married this morning.”
Lizzy laughed. “You’re marrying The Dom? What kind of crazy pre-nup did that come with? Like, are you sharing him with other girls?” Lizzy’s mouth dropped open again, and her pale blue eyes grew on her tiny face. “When you say we’re getting married, you didn’t mean that we are all marrying him, right? That isn’t why Georgie and I are here, right? ‘Cause we are not down with that. At least, I’m not. I am so not.”
Oh, Lord. Had Lizzy really repeated that? That girl had no freaking filter.
“No!” Rae’s big, brown eyes widened even more, an appropriate response, this time. “Good God, no! Just me. Nothing out of the ordinary, other than he asked me last night and I said yes and then he said now and it’s all very, very sudden. Why would you think such a thing? Georgie? Where would she get such an idea?”
Georgie sat up very straight, very prim, and held her apple slice out to the side like a nonchalant cigarette. “I’m sure I have no idea.”
She ignored Lizzy’s gaping. She really should grow a filter someday.
“It’s weird that it’s so soon, right?” Rae asked. “Is this some European thing? Do they just up and get married without an engagement? I mean, the very next day?”
“So, you’re marrying him this morning?” Georgie glanced at Lizzy and prayed that she had grown that filter in the last couple seconds. Surely Lizzy wouldn’t declare her undying love for The Dom right here, right now, to their friend who was going to marry him.
Lizzy grinned and shoved her croissant in her mouth.
Looked like Lizzy was okay. At least Georgie could stand down on that front.
“Yep,” Rae said. “That’s it. I just wanted you guys here at my wedding, as bridesmaids, not as sister wives. Jeez, that’s weird by my family’s standards.”
The confused expression on Rae’s face was priceless. Maybe Georgie needed to pile on just a little. “Well, you know, it’s not completely insane. This is The Dom that we’re talking about.”
“No, it’s not The Dom,” Rae said, picking up her knife to smear more butter to her croissant. “It’s Wulf. Just Wulf.”
Memory tickled the back of Georgie’s neck, but she wasn’t sure what it was.
Wulf.
That was familiar somehow, but she hadn’t ever known The Dom’s name.
“Oh, yeah. He’s different now.” Lizzy tore off a big bite of her croissant.
“I don’t think he ever really was The Dom,” Rae said. “At least, that’s my working hypothesis. He’s just really good at compartmentalizing, when he needs to.”
“Oooo,” Lizzy said. “Psychology.”
Something, Georgie thought. Something about the name Wulf. She stared at the George Vee croissants on the plate, not quite reaching for the rich pastry that smelled like her childhood in this very suite.
Rae swallowed a bite of her croissant. “God, these are good.”
Yeah, they were good. The croissants and the suite were confusing her. The name Wulf didn’t have anything to do with those. Something else.
“So, he loves you?” Lizzy asked Rae. “At least some of his compartments do, anyway?”
Rae nodded. “I mean, I think so. He said so.” Her sigh sounded like an admission of guilt. “You were right, Georgie. I’m so twitterpated. It’s been tearing me up. I’m sorry, Lizzy. I know how you feel about him, and I’m so sorry. If you want me to put you back on a plane home, or if you don’t want to go to the wedding—”
Lizzy jumped up, ran around the table, and threw her arms around Rae. Rae’s brown eyes bugged out a little at Lizzy’s display of emotion, but she hugged her back.
Lizzy chortled, “I am so happy for you. You found love, and you’re marrying the love of your life. That’s amazing, and I know you’ll be happy.”
Rae said, “I’m so glad. I wanted you guys here more than anyone else, but I was so afraid that you’d be all broken up about it,” Rae said. Relief made her voice breathy. “There’s a little more to it than just that, but if y’all are okay with it, then everything’s going to be fine.”
Georgie smiled at her, shoving all those wisps of memory to the back of her head. They probably weren’t important anyway. “Of course we’re happy for you. Do you need someone to look over a pre-nup? I could call someone, like Professor Chen, who represented Lizzy for that contract.”
Rae looked perplexed. “Wulf didn’t mention a pre-nup. It probably slipped his mind. I’ll just ask him.”
Wulf.
The name echoed in Georgie’s head like boots stomping in a corridor.
Maybe she had heard The Dom’s name at some point in the past and was just putting it together now.
Surely that was it.
Rae and Lizzy nattered on about lawyers, and the name Wulf echoed around and around in Georgie’s head, looking to latch onto something.
Rae finally said to both of them, “Wait here just a minute. There’s some other stuff about Wulf that we should discuss, but I need to ask him about that pre-nup.”
Wulf, like a far-off thunderclap, rumbled around the room.
Rae folded her napkin beside her plate. “Excuse me.”
Georgie needed to concentrate on the here-and-now. She sipped her coffee as Rae sidled back to the master bedroom.
When Rae closed the door to the bedroom behind herself, Georgie grabbed Lizzy’s hand. “So you’re okay.”
“I am so okay. Between Theo and Mannix, I don’t even want to think about The Dom,” she whispered. Her light blue eyes were crinkled with laughter, not lined with weepy tears, thank God.
From behind the closed door of the bedroom, a man laughed, a deep, rolling peal of good humor.
Georgie nearly dropped her apple slice. “Was that The Dom?”
“The Dom doesn’t laugh,” Lizzy said. “He occasionally allows a cold smile, but he never laughs.”
Everything about this day was unsettling. “That was weird.”
Lizzy said, “Maybe he’s happy.”
Such a facile comment, yet maybe true. Georgie had often thought that she sensed that something sad lurked behind The Dom’s cold demeanor. “Yeah, maybe he is.”
A black cat jumped up into the fourth chair at the table, and its whiskery face looked over the bone china plate at them.
Lizzy jumped back in her chair. “Holy co
w!”
“Hey!” Georgie said, peering at the cat. “Is that Blackie? The cat that was hanging around The Devilhouse a few months ago?”
The cat regarded them with solemn yellow eyes, gazing at Lizzy’s leftover butter pat smeared on the edge of her plate.
The bedroom door clicked and opened. From inside, The Dom’s bass voice said, “Of course not. Do you want a pre-nuptial contract?”
Rae’s chuckle was brighter in timbre, nearly giggly. “Yeah, sure. But I warn you, my family doesn’t believe in divorce. We believe in cast iron skillets and branding irons.”
Georgie couldn’t believe that Rae had said that. She cracked up, and Lizzy laughed with her.
Rae came back, shutting the bedroom door behind her, and sat at the table. “Oh, Brunhilde,” Rae said, speaking to the cat, as if the cat understood her. “We didn’t get any sausage today. I’m sorry.”
The cat sighed and wandered off.
Lizzy asked, “That was the cat from The Devilhouse?”
Rae picked up her croissant again. “Yeah. Wulf takes her everywhere he travels. She pines when he leaves her at home.”
Georgie choked on her coffee. The Dom had bonded with the stray cat that had been wandering around The Devilhouse, and now he was spoiling the heck out of it. That was so weird.
“There’s a little more that Wulf wasn’t discussing with folks back home, but people might mention it today, so let’s just get it all out on the table.” Rae took a healthy bite of her omelet and swallowed it. “Let’s start with his name. Give me a second. Let me remember all of it.”
Lizzy glanced at Georgie, obviously humoring Rae.
Georgie drank her coffee, the roasted goodness mellow on her tongue, with the name Wulf spinning in her head.
Wulf.
Rae sucked in a deep breath. “Okay, I think I’ve got it now. Wulfram Augustus Heinrich Ernst Georg Berthold Friedrich—”
The hot coffee congealed in Georgie’s throat. She forced it down rather than cough out her horror.
Only one other person that Georgie knew had a whole bunch of names like that. Even her upper-crust childhood friends in Connecticut only had the usual number of names, four at the most.
Rae said, “Wilhelm Louis Ferdinand—”
Oh, God. Georgie knew what was coming. The name Wulf wasn’t a memory from her childhood.
Flicka’s face floated in her mind, and the reason that The Dom had been at Flicka’s wedding became teeth-grindingly obvious.
Rae finished, “Prinz von Hannover.”
Georgie set down her coffee cup. The frail bone china clattered in the saucer, so she let go. She asked, “Prinz von Hannover und Cumberland?”
Rae blinked, surprised. “How did you know?”
Because Flicka had droned on and on about her older brother, Wulfram Augustus, who had essentially raised her, who was crazy over-protective and had private security men dogging her every move, whom she loved and worshiped and rebelled against and missed terribly and wanted to drop out of Tanglewood to spend the summer in London with him while he had been finishing a PhD at the London School of Economics.
Georgie had even seen a picture of Wulfram Augustus on Flicka’s dresser, but he had been much younger, maybe a teenager, and laughing and swinging Flicka in his arms when she was about eight. He’d had long, blond hair, down to his shoulders.
“Lucky guess,” Georgie grated out.
This whole time, for the last couple years, Georgie had worked for Flicka’s brother.
The acid coffee raked Georgie’s stomach, and she held onto the edge of the table to keep her hands from shaking.
The Dom must have known who she was. He must have told Flicka where she was.
Georgie didn’t know how to interpret the last few years. It was insane. It was all insane.
Another man came out of the bedroom, not The Dom, and Georgie’s eyes noted that he was gorgeous but the sight buffeted off her stunned brain. The guy grabbed Lizzy’s hand, growled something in her ear, and they ran off together.
Georgie fought to not throw up the bitter coffee and chunks of apple.
The Dom walked out of the bedroom.
No, Wulfram von Hannover walked out of the bedroom.
He leaned down, the Parisian sun reflecting on his bright blond hair, and he glanced up at Georgie only once. He whispered to Rae, and she whispered back.
So many of her conversations with him whipped through Georgie’s head. Surely he must have known. He must know who her father was. He must know what she had done.
He must have told Flicka.
Tremors wracked her whole body, and she fidgeted with her braid, trying not to freak and cause an excessive display of emotion.
Wulfram von Hannover looked up again and smiled at her, a slight curve of his lips, but the coldness never left his dark blue eyes.
Georgie said, “You never told me that you were Wulfram von Hannover.”
“I couldn’t,” he said. His tone was quiet, reproaching her.
Of course he couldn’t have told her. She would have run. “Yeah. I can see that.”
Wulfram von Hannover glanced toward the bedroom. “Rae, may I discuss something with you, privately?”
“Uh, sure?” She glanced at Georgie, smiling, as she walked away and he followed her.
As soon as the bedroom door closed behind them, Georgie bolted, sprinting for the door and the elevator and her own room where she could figure out if she needed to run into Paris or whether she could wait until she got back to the States to change her name and hide again.
She held her hand over her mouth, breathing stinking coffee breath hard into her palm, and leaned against the locked door.
Georgie had seen Wulfram von Hannover, Flicka’s brother, every day for years, and hadn’t known it.
Hiding in A Hotel Room
Georgie
Georgie paced through the hotel room, past the huge bed backed up against one wall, past the plush chair, the desk, and the couch, all of it upholstered in royal blue and pristine white shining satin. The roses fumed their sickly sweet perfume through the room like they were trying to cover up a bad smell. She kept her eyes on the royal blue carpeting.
Royal blue. Oh my God. Georgie’s stomach cramped hard with panic and she almost threw up again, but she paced instead.
She paced past the blue and gold silk curtains that puddled on the floor, yet more regal excess. Georgie’s mother would consider this opulence to be trying too hard, but she was an upper-crust New Englander.
Too much energy coursed through her thin frame. She hadn’t gone running today. Georgie needed to run, run far, run fast. At least ten miles. Maybe farther than that.
After twenty minutes of pacing, Georgie finally burned off enough panic that she sat on the bed, pulled out her laptop, and tried to deal with emails from the home front. Nothing important had hit her inbox. A couple friends wanted a study group that afternoon, which she declined because she was on another continent.
Some other stuff.
Chatty emails and rumors about professors.
Nothing Earth-shaking.
No death threats today.
Georgie dealt with the emails and then stared at the screen, trying to decide what to do without enough information, when Lizzy breezed into the room, pink-cheeked and pale blue eyes sparkling, giggling and bursting with energy.
“Hey!” she chortled.
“Hey, yourself,” Georgie said. “You look freshly fucked.”
“You betcha.” Lizzy spread her arms and fell on the other side of the king-sized bed as if she were falling backward into water and bounced on the mattress.
Georgie’s laptop bounced on her knees from the quake. She switched to a paper she was working on just so she would have something to stare at and started typing about hegemony in South American politics.
Lizzy sat up and asked, “What’s going on with you?”
Georgie typed. “Nothing.”
Lizzy sighed ostentatiousl
y, which was her signal that she knew Georgie was lying. “Okay. Fine.”
Georgie deleted the drivel that she had typed. “Something sure is going on with you, though. That was Theo, right?”
Lizzy’s goofy smile said it all. “Yeah. That was Theo.”
She thought hard about what Georgie Johnson would say if she wasn’t screaming inside. She would probably scam on Lizzy’s guy, not really, but just to bolster Lizzy’s choice of anyone except Mannix fucking Bonfils.
Yeah, that sounded right.
She asked, “That Sun God is your Medium Adult?”
Lizzy rolled over on her tummy and stretched backward, curling herself into a backwards circle, a Mobius strip of a girl. “What? You saw him at the contract signing.”
Georgie ignored her contortions. “I was busy trying to place Mannix fucking Bonfils and getting you dressed in something other than slutwear. I didn’t even notice him.”
“You saw him at the dorm, too,” Lizzy said.
“I wasn’t really looking at him because I was worried about you. Evidently, my psychic gaydar doesn’t use visible light. I didn’t even notice that he was blindingly beautiful.”
“He had a scruffy little beard, then.”
“Oh, that’s why. So gross.” Georgie twirled the end of her brown braid around her finger, desperately trying to think of something to say.
She asked Georgie, “What happened to Dieter, the hottie in the SUV?”
Lizzy must have been too busy gawking at Paris to listen to the conversation. “Married.”
Lizzy grinned a manic, bitchy smile. “But Theo’s not blond-blond like The Dom, and he’s not all smoldery, like Mannix—”
Georgie leaned across the soft bed and backhanded Lizzy on the arm.
“Ow! Hey!”
“Yeah, ow. This from the masochist sex submissive. What is wrong with you?” Georgie waggled a finger at the door, indicating Theo, out there somewhere. “He’s gorgeous!”
“Well,” Lizzy dithered. “He’s pretty.”
“No, I mean seriously. If you can’t see that, you need a good eyeball-licking to clear your vision. You hit that?”
“Uh-huh.” Lizzy grinned again. “He’s really buff, too. Hard and lumpy in all the right ways. There’s an eight-pack under that lawyer suit, and his back is like a big, gold Brahma bull. He’s a gentleman in the parlor, a Dom in the bedroom, and a good man to have at your back in a fight.”
[Billionaires in Disguise 01.0] Every Breath You Take Page 6
