At his desk in his office, with bright sunlight streaming in the windows behind him, Maxence read the brief and then laid the paper precisely in the center of his desk.
When he looked up, the ceiling seemed a little lower, the office bookcases crouched inward, and the world seemed a little smaller.
Maxence grumbled, wadded the paper into a tight ball, and slammed it at the wastepaper basket over on the side of the room, but he missed. “Dammit.”
From her little secretary chair over on the other side of the desk, Dree popped her head up, and her eyes widened. “What’s up?”
“Matryona Sokolov has given the police enough information to issue arrest warrants for five of my other relatives on lesser charges, and she will testify in the case against Marie-Therese and Jules,” Maxence said.
“I’m sorry, Max,” Dree said.
A wry smile creased his face at her understanding the problem. “Matryona has turned over texts and other electronic communication showing that Marie-Therese planned the coup and Matryona funded it. It’s ridiculous that I held out any hope that Matryona duped Marie-Therese somehow.”
Dree sat down her tablet and walked around the desk to sit on his lap. She looped her arms around his neck. “I’m sorry.”
He wrapped his arms around her. “I don’t have many relatives left. If I need a kidney, I’m in trouble.”
“There’s always Alexandre.”
“He’s always off touring around the world. He’d never make it back in time.”
Dree snuggled into his lap like the wee little fluffball she was. “I would give you a kidney.”
He tucked her head under his chin and hugged her more tightly. “And they still haven’t found Kir Sokolov, so I’m keeping Rogue Security around for the time being.”
Chapter Fourteen
Mairearad
Dree
Moving Maxence’s charity headquarters from Rome to Monaco took five days.
On the first day, Max held a conference video chat with everyone over at the charity in Rome, which was only about fifteen people.
Dree sat in her usual secretary chair in Maxence’s office and took notes about it. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to document his associates’ utter shock and then jubilation about Maxence’s election as the Prince of Monaco, so she just wrote down general positive response.
After he told them about the move, everyone decided right then and there that they wanted to move to Monaco.
A move and reorganization like that would’ve taken months in any medical setting, especially if government contracts were involved.
On the second day, rental paperwork arrived for furnished office space in the old town of Monaco-Ville just across the cobblestone courtyard from the palace. The office would be a five-minute walk from where they were sitting, if someone dawdled and looked at the harbor of the Mediterranean Sea that the Grimaldi fortress had held for over a millennium.
On the fourth day, people emailed Maxence and announced they had arrived, the boxes had gotten there, and the employees would unpack and set up the office space the next day.
Dree and Maxence were in their bedroom in the evening, and he showed her the text.
She blinked at his phone. “Wow, you guys don’t fool around.”
Maxence grinned at her. “It takes me a long time to find the perfect people for my charity. When I find them, I hire them right away and pay them excellently, even though it’s a nonprofit. It’s cheaper to hire and keep the best staff than to train new, substandard employees constantly. The continuity of knowledge makes each one of them worth more than three new interns.”
“Yeah, but there wasn’t any red tape.”
Maxence lifted an eyebrow and grinned at her. “It’s good to be the king.”
When they had a few minutes between appointments the next day, Maxence and Dree walked across the cobbled courtyard outside the palace and over to the new office, past that bronze statue of the malicious Grimaldi.
That statue always seemed to be staring at Dree whenever she walked out of the palace. The way Malizia was drawing a knife from under his monk’s robes was truly creepy.
However, they weren’t going for a little stroll alone. Their quick walk turned into twelve people crossing the courtyard in formation.
As always, a contingent of Rogue Security mercenaries trotted alongside them, always on alert.
Casimir and Arthur accompanied them, too, because they didn’t have anything better to do. Arthur was still insisting they were going to New Mexico with Dree and Maxence.
That was just sheer pig-headedness on their part, and on Arthur’s part especially. Something was going on with that guy. He just enjoyed being evil a little too much, especially if he had designed the tattoo of those shattered, shredded, fallen angel wings on Maxence’s back.
It was uncool that Arthur had done that. Friends shouldn’t tattoo someone’s innermost fears about themselves on their skin.
The tourists perked up like hyenas catching the scent of a gazelle who’d strayed, and then they all raised their cameras and phones and started clicking, a pattering flurry that was audible even above the traffic grinding on the street below, the people chattering all around, and the waves of the Mediterranean crashing to shore just over the side of the cliff.
The attention was—disconcerting.
The office was on the third floor of what appeared to be excruciatingly tiny offices, which made sense in a country where real estate was sold or rented by the square inch. Maxence had leased a decently sized office that took up most of the top floor of the building. When they walked in, a dozen people were unpacking boxes and assembling computers on the desks.
One of the men carrying a large box near the back windows looked familiar.
Mediterranean sunlight flowed over his light blond hair that was scraped back from his face and tied in a one-inch ponytail sticking out from the back of his head, which was new, but his pale blue eyes and carved cheekbones were instantly recognizable.
Dree shouted, “Isaak!”
Isaak Yahontov, the biological engineer who’d been such an integral part of their mission to Nepal, tossed a box onto a desk before striding up to the front of the room with his arms spread. “Maxence! Sister Andrea Catherine! I didn’t know you were coming over.”
She smiled to cover up the awkwardness. “Well, I, um, I seem to be hanging out with Maxence quite a bit lately.”
Isaak cracked up. “Yeah, okay. I saw the videos of this guy who said he wanted to be a priest proposing to you, twice. Congratulations to both of you.” He shook their hands and then leaned to the side, staring at Casimir and Arthur. “What the heck are you two old dogs doing here?”
“Happened to be in the neighborhood,” Arthur said.
“Saving Max’s ass,” Casimir replied. “Haven’t seen you in ages, Isaak. Are you working with them?” He gestured to the plaster walls, sunlight streaming onto the dark wooden floors, and the small office space in general.
“I’m setting up a new foundation based on the preemie pods Dree designed. We’re liaising with Max’s foundation here for logistical support. I’m an engineer, not an HR manager. I don’t want to set up and staff another charity. It’s easier to commandeer his people.”
Dree sidled up to Isaak. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything about how the baby is doing? Chirasmi, I think they named her?”
Isaak’s wide smile was a relief. “She was doing fantastically as of a week ago. I inquired after her when I was down in Chandannath because my preemie pod charity is also working with the Karnali Academy of Health Sciences, the medical school that’s right outside of town. The mother and the older sister were staying in a convent there to be with her. They said there’s a good chance they’re going to discharge Chirasmi within the next week, so she may already be home.”
Dree’s thighs wobbled, and she almost sank into a puddle right there on the floor. “I can’t believe it worked. I’m so glad she’s okay.”
Isaak snapped his fingers. “I have something for you. Wait right here. It’s in my backpack.” He walked to the back part of the office space again and began rummaging through a large backpack with a metal frame, the kind you take on month-long hiking trips.
The dozen people in the room looked like a cross-section of the world or a normal Tuesday in Good Samaritan’s emergency room.
At least three languages were being spoken and laughed in.
Dree was picking up Central American Spanish from the people over in the corner who were trying to match computer cables to ports and cracking up at the impossibility of it.
Four people were sorting binders and speaking English with African French accents. The lilt they spoke with sounded like Father Moses Teklehaimanot, who’d gone back to Paris, despondent, when Maxence had broken the news that he was going to ask to be laicized. The fifth person sitting with that group spoke American English with them and wore a bright yellow, turban-style hijab, so that must be why they weren’t speaking French amongst themselves.
A few more people wandered through the office.
Dree turned back to talk with the guys.
Casimir was holding onto Arthur’s shoulder and laughing, his head tilted back, while Arthur just looked pleased with himself as he gazed around the room.
A woman walked by them. She was shorter than Maxence and the other Le Rosey guys, as usual, because those guys were freakin’ redwoods, but she seemed a little taller than Dree. Her pale skin contrasted with her ebony-black hair and unrelieved black business suit. She looked like she might be a monochrome picture of a white person except for her vibrant red lipstick. The effect was almost vampiric.
Arthur’s icy silver eyes widened. “You, there! I say, wait a moment.” He dodged around Casimir, whose eyebrows were suddenly at two different elevations.
Maxence cursed softly and stared at his shoes.
Dree elbowed him. “What?”
Maxence told her, “Just a minute. There’s something I need to take care of.” He followed Arthur over to the woman.
Arthur was talking to the vampire in disguise, but he didn’t encroach too closely, and he hadn’t tried to touch her. From where Dree was standing, it didn’t look creepy, and her smile seemed unperturbed.
When Maxence reached them, he extended his arm and tapped Arthur very lightly on his shoulder, as if he were moving him back.
Wow. That was an unusually aggressive move for those guys with each other.
Dree trotted over before something weird happened. Arthur didn’t seem to be the type to be weird with women, but you never knew. Max’s strange reaction was concerning.
By the time Dree got over to them, though, the woman was grinning, her red lipstick forming an upward-curving crescent. Her black eyeliner fit in with her otherwise monochrome theme, however. “Yeah, I remember you,” she said to Arthur. “You came in those couple of times with Maxence on some of his appointments.”
“Came in where?” Dree asked as she got there.
Arthur’s smile wilted, and he didn’t say anything when he looked at Maxence.
Max’s expression didn’t change for a moment, his face a smooth mask that usually meant his mental gears were grinding so fast they were in danger of overheating.
The woman ducked her head a little bit and leaned toward Dree as if she wanted to whisper something private. “When I was getting my master’s in social work in Phoenix, they came in where I worked. That’s where I met these guys. I’m Mairearad.” She stuck out her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Social work! That’s awesome. I’m a nurse practitioner. I worked at Good Sam in Phoenix.”
Mairearad grinned with her whole face, her dark eyes, her mouth, and her dimples. “I can’t believe you’re from Phoenix, and we had to come all the way to Monaco to meet!”
“Yeah, I could have run into you at Los Dos Molinos over on the south side.”
“Oh, no.” Mairearad reared back, her hands up and her palms out. “I ate at Los Dos once. I cannot handle it that hot. ‘The green is hotter than the red.’ Those sadists.”
Out of the corner of Dree’s eye, she saw Maxence twitch when Mairearad said that, and then he scratched the back of his neck.
“You okay?” she asked him.
He looked up at her. “What? Yeah. Fine. I think a fly bit me the other day.”
Mairearad asked Dree, “Do you live here?”
“I guess I do now, yeah. I’ve been here about a month.”
“What are the good restaurants? I’ve never even been here because someone,”—her eyes slid to the corners of her black eyeliner toward Maxence—”never mentioned he was from Monaco, let alone that he might own the place someday.”
Dree laughed. “There’s this place over on the other side of Monaco, which means a fifteen-minute walk, that calls itself an Irish pub. They have the best Thai chicken salad I have ever had in my life. It’s phenomenal. Just enough chili-garlic sauce to make it interesting, but not Los Dos-type interesting. They have really good hamburgers and French fries, too. And then there are some Monegasque restaurants here that serve a whole bunch of fish.”
Mairearad’s eyes flared wider. “That sounds fantastic. I’d love to try that Thai chicken salad sometime.”
“I’ll show you around. Two Phoenician girls on the loose in Monaco! What could go wrong?”
Maxence stepped closer to Dree and slid his hand around her waist. He said to the other woman, “Mairearad, Dree is my fiancée.”
“Oh!” And then lower. “Oh. Well, congratulations to you both. I didn’t even know that was a thing, Max.”
“I haven’t announced it to the charity staff yet. It just happened a few days ago.”
“I think it’s wonderful. I hope you have the happiest of marriages.”
Mairearad’s smile remained perfectly unchanged.
Not changed at all.
Frozen.
Dree was trying very hard not to quietly freak out. Mairearad wasn’t making a scene, so Dree probably shouldn’t either.
But that was weird.
Dree said, “So, we’ll have to go get that chicken salad sometime?”
Mairearad’s freakishly robotic smile still didn’t waver. “I’ll have to take a look at my schedule. Setting up the new office is going to keep us pretty busy for a while.”
Maxence pulled Dree a little closer to his side, weirdly possessive.
Or defensive.
“Okay,” Dree said. “I’m over at Maxence’s business office a lot, like all the time. I was filling in for his secretary for a couple of weeks to help out, you know? So you can always call me over there if you want to go get the Thai chicken salad.”
“Yeah, sure,” Mairearad said. “Thanks for the rec!” Her bright smile was still plastered on her face.
Casimir joined them, and Mairearad turned her grin toward him. “Caz, how’s married life treating you?”
“We have a toddler,” Casimir said. “Did you know that the fastest land animal on Earth is a toddler with something in her mouth?”
Mairearad laughed at him. “I’ve heard that.”
Isaak came back over to them, holding a paper bag. “Mairearad, Aina and Deshondra are having problems deciding on a filing system for those binders. Could you mediate the discussion?”
“Oh, thank God,” Mairearad said. “Yep, I’ll go right over and help them.” She walked over to where the Francophones were standing around a pile of fat three-ring binders.
Dree looked up at Max. “Do we need to talk?”
“No.”
Dree told him, “I said that wrong. We need to talk.”
Isaak handed a crackly paper bag to Dree. “I believe this is yours.”
Dree reached inside, and she knew exactly what he’d brought her the instant her fingers touched the cloud-soft wool. “Oh!”
She dragged the pale blue pashmina that the grandmother in Nepal had given her for saving her grandson from scurvy out of the bag. The l
ast time Dree had seen the shawl, it had been knotted around the premature infant Chirasmi, who had survived Dree’s insane motorcycle dash through the icy Himalayas to get her to a hospital.
She turned to Isaak. “Oh, thank you! I thought I wouldn’t see it again, not that it wouldn’t have been for a good reason. But I’m really glad to have it back.”
“I was going to hit up Maxence for your forwarding address if you weren’t here.”
She smiled up at Isaak and put all her apologies into that smile. “Thank you.”
Isaak’s smile back was fond, like they might be able to start a real friendship this time. “My pleasure.”
On the way back to the palace a little while later, Dree stopped Maxence in the middle of the cobblestoned courtyard. Their entourage halted around them. The eight-pack of mercenaries faced outward, scanning the crowd that was beginning to notice them, while Arthur and Casimir withdrew slightly.
They must have seen the look on her face.
The statue of Max’s ancestor François Grimaldi, disguised as a monk but known as François the Malicious, threw a long dark shadow across the cobblestones.
She asked Maxence, “What was going on back there with Mairearad?”
“It’s nothing.” He looked off to his side, across the harbor below the headlands of the palace.
Dree said to him, “It was something to her. Were you guys having a relationship? Or a fling? Look, I don’t care what happened in the past or even a few months ago. As long as it doesn’t continue, it’s none of my business. I just don’t want to put my foot in my mouth again.”
Maxence shook his head but didn’t look at her. “We don’t have a relationship other than a professional one because she works for my charitable foundation. And I wouldn’t have a sexual relationship with somebody who works for me in any capacity. It’s unethical. And if that’s what you’re asking, I’ve never had sex with her. I’ve never kissed her.”
“Did you lead her on or something? Because she was obviously distraught.”
Maxence shook his head. “I maintain a professional distance with the people who work with me. I don’t view my foundations as a private hunting ground like some men do.”
Reign: A Royal Romantic Suspense Novel (Billionaires in Disguise: Maxence Book 5) Page 6
