The Prince Next Door

“Arnold Schwarzenegger would have quailed,” Ariel replied. “‘More flies with honey than vinegar’ and all that. So, you have to meet him.”

“If I must.” Unfortunately, Serena could think of no other plan that didn’t involve wandering all over town in the heat trying to stay out of sight, an activity she suspected she would not be very adept at.

“Don’t worry,” said Ariel. “I’ll take care of it.” Serena wasn’t at all comfortable with that notion.

CHAPTER TWO

PABLO MENOS RETURNED to the consular office from his meeting with Darius Maxwell hot and seething. Hot from the climate, seething from the encounter.

His position as deputy for administration to the consul-in-residence for the country of Masolimia had its perks, but living in Florida was not one of them. Even this late in the year he still longed for the cool mountain country of his home, a flyspeck in the Pyrenees between Spain and France.

In keeping with the size of Masolimia, the consular offices were a storefront in a run-down strip mall entirely too close to the Port of Tampa. In short, not the best neighborhood. Train tracks ran right behind them, and on a far too regular basis all conversation was drowned by the deep thrumming of locomotives practically driving through the offices.

Not that the consul cared. He was rarely around.

The glass door swung closed behind him, its little bell ringing a note of alert, and modestly air-conditioned air washed over him. In a half hour or so, he might actually cool off.

Juan Mas, his underdeputy, was sitting at his battered desk reading a comic book. He barely looked up. “¿Qué pasó?” he enquired, bored.

“It was terrible!”

That got Juan’s attention. A small man with a beard that defied the sharpest razor, giving him a perpetual five-o’clock shadow, he finally really looked up from his comic book. “Huh?”

“Exactly,” Menos said, going to stand under the nearest air-conditioning vent, hoping to dry out the Hawaiian shirt that was sticking to him everywhere. How did people ever manage to live in this horrid, humid swamp?

“He called the police?” Mas sat up straight and looked wildly about as if afraid the local SWAT team was about to burst in on them.

“Worse,” Menos said flatly. Ay, Dios, the air was barely lukewarm, emerging as a trickle. “He doesn’t care.”

“Huh?” That was one American expression Mas had learned well.

“He doesn’t care,” Menos repeated in a snarl.

“But we kidnapped his mother! What kind of son is he?”

“What kind of prince is he going to be if he doesn’t care about his own mother?” Menos corrected darkly.

“I can’t believe it.”

Neither could Menos. He’d been there, he’d seen the reaction, heard the words, and his jaw was still dragging on the ground, metaphorically speaking.

“That’s inhuman,” Mas said. “Maybe he doesn’t really believe us.”

“Oh, he believed me,” Menos said, plucking rayon away from his chest. “He said, ‘I pity you. You don’t know what you’re in for.’”

Mas’s eyes widened, then a snicker escaped him. “He’s right.”

Menos, whose world view was rather dour to begin with, silently agreed. Why, oh why, had he ever allowed that woman to talk him into this?

But then he squared his shoulders and reminded himself his country’s future was at stake, and it was riding on his shoulders while the consul-in-residence chased bikini-clad bimbos down in Key West.

“We will call her,” he announced. “She must call her son and convince him she’s in danger.”

Mas nodded, only too eager to agree to anything that would allow him to get back to his comics. “Good idea.”

MARIA TERESA STOOD on the stool while her dressmaker jabbed industriously at the waist of the green watered-silk gown she was having made for her son’s coronation.

The call from Menos in Florida hadn’t pleased her at all. Imagine Darius not being upset that she’d been kidnapped! Even Menos, squirrelly as he was, had sounded appalled by the utter lack of concern Darius had displayed.

What was it Menos had quoted Darius as saying? “Enjoy your time with my mother.”

Humph.

Rolling her eyes heavenward, Maria Teresa demanded to know why His Lordliness had given her such an unfeeling son. Why, in fact, the stolid Swiss side had predominated to such an extent.

Was the boy not of her flesh, as well? Where was his passion and fire? Why wouldn’t he take up his lance and tilt at windmills for the sake of his mother?

Why didn’t he believe it?

And how could he laugh at being told he was the prince of Masolimia, a not-inconsiderable flyspeck of a principality in the Pyrenees? It was, after all, bigger than Monaco. It was his birthright. And hers, for that matter. To return as the dowager princess, rather than as the daughter of a despised shepherd family…well, what more could justice demand?

She sniffed and looked down at the dark hair of her dressmaker as the woman worked to pin a fold in at the waistline.

“I’m not sure I like this silk at all,” Maria Teresa announced.

The dressmaker’s hands froze. Without looking up, the woman said, “But it becomes you so well, madam.”

Maria Teresa glanced sideways at the mirrored wall, taking in all the expensive, basted fabric that covered her. Fabric her own mother could only have dreamed about. It did flatter the olive tone of her skin, she decided.

“But blue,” she said, anyway.

The dressmaker, now on solid ground, looked up. “Madam doesn’t want to look as if she has a liver disease.”

Maria Teresa sighed theatrically. It was true, blues made her look sallow.

“Oh, very well,” she said irritably, hating to be reminded that there was anything she couldn’t do. “Perhaps yellow…”

The dressmaker, Adele, straightened, stepped back and put her hands on her hips. “Madam,” she said sternly, “we tried every color of the rainbow and agreed this flattered you best. Moreover, it will not be so green once we add the pearls.”

Of course it wouldn’t. She needed to remember that. She was just being difficult because of Darius. Speaking of whom…

“You’re right, Adele. Keep working. After you bring me a telephone.”

“Yes, madam.”

Help just wasn’t what it used to be, Maria Teresa thought. But Adele was one of the best dressmakers around, unless you were interested in the ridiculous fashion ideas that were called haute couture in Paris these days, and Maria Teresa definitely was not.

When Adele passed her the phone, Maria Teresa didn’t need to look up the number, even though Darius had only moved into his new residence three weeks ago. She had memorized the number instantly, just the way a bloodhound memorizes the scent it wants to follow.

Or a predator.

But such unflattering descriptions of herself were not on her mind as she tapped her toe and waited for her son to answer. It seemed to take a long time, but when she absolutely needed to, she could be patient. Barely.

“Maxwell.”

“Darius,” she said, making her tone as pathetic as she could. “Estoy secuestrada.” I am kidnapped.

“Sí, so I’ve heard. How much are you paying them?”

She puffed up with indignation and heard the faint tearing as pins ripped through silk. Adele cast her a disapproving glance, but Maria Theresa ignored it. She would deal with this woman’s impudence later. First, though, she had to deal with her son.

“Darius!” she snapped, in a tone that every mother knows and at which every child quails. “I’m not paying anyone anything. You have to help me!”

“Just how am I supposed to do that? I have no idea where you are.”

She frowned, tapping her toe. This was certainly not the treatment she had expected from him, and certainly not when she employed the voz de la madre, the stern voice of a mother. Looking heavenward, she blasted a handful of saints and her poor departed spouse for having cursed her with such a child.

“Ma mère?”

In this family, a plethora of languages were spoken, and Maria Teresa had always insisted her son address her by the French rather than the Spanish for “my mother.” Sometimes he liked to irritate her by calling her mamacita.

Regardless, she didn’t hear nearly enough concern in his voice. Feeling frustrated, she twisted just a bit, and one of the seamstress’s pins jabbed her side. She cried out.

Which had the desired effect, she realized instantly.

“Ma mère?”

“They’re torturing me,” she cried with great relish.

Adele jumped back, her face paling. Maria Teresa waved her concern away. “You have to save me at once!”

“Where are you?”

“I don’t know!” Which was a lie. The Riviera was a little hot this year, but otherwise comfortable.

“Mother.” This time Darius spoke in English. “Has it occurred to you that kidnapping is a very dangerous thing to do?”

“Only if the police catch them before I am killed,” she wailed.

“That isn’t what I meant.”

She hesitated. This wasn’t going as expected. “What do you mean?”

“Just that if they’re doing this to make me accept that I’m prince of Masolimia, they’re making a big mistake. Because if I accept the throne, I can have these kidnappers beheaded.”

“My dear son, beheadings are so déclassé.” The wheels were truly spinning in her brain now. This was a kink she definitely hadn’t expected, and she was glad that neither Menos nor Mas was able to hear this conversation. They were loco enough without fearing they’d lose their heads.

“Then I’ll have them shot.”

“That’s better,” she approved. She feigned every ounce of pathos she could muster. “But you will rescue me?”

“Which hotel are you at?”

She almost slipped. The answer rose naturally to her lips, but she bit it back just in time. “Believe me, this is not a hotel! It’s a hovel!”

Now Adele was looking seriously annoyed, but Maria Teresa hardly cared for that. A generous tip would bring the smile back.

“Really.” Darius sighed. “If you want the truth, Mother…”

“But of course!”

“If you really have been kidnapped, I feel sorry for your abductors.”

“Darius!”

“Tell you what, Mother. I’ll save you.”

Her eyes lit up, and she sent paeans of praise winging heavenward to the lately slandered saints. “You will?”

“Of course.”

Now he would swashbuckle. At last. Her son was going to play Errol Flynn, John Wayne, Sean Connery….

“How soon?”

“I’m not sure. First I have to prove I’m not the prince.”

He disconnected, leaving Maria Teresa to feel as if she had been struck by a truck.

Prove he wasn’t the prince? ¡Dios no lo quiera!

SERENA WAS SUNBATHING, dermatologist-style. She was lying beside the condo swimming pool, clad in a maillot, coverup, wide-brimmed sun hat and half a tube of sunscreen. And just to be sure, she’d chosen a chaise beneath an umbrella. Immediately to her right on the pool deck sat a tall bottle of spring water and a kitchen timer which she had set to twenty minutes.

To her left was a patient-to-be, Marco Paloni. She considered him a patient-to-be because he wore only a Speedo—which left little to the imagination and much that would haunt her dreams—and a thin sheen of olive oil, which he had applied with the same loving care a chef might use to baste a leg of lamb. He had then proceeded to spend the next fifteen minutes regaling her with tales of his days on the Grand Prix circuit.

“And then there was Monza,” he said. “The Italian Grand Prix. My home country. My home course.”

“Of course,” Serena said, doing her best to appear polite, just in case he ended up in her office.

“I was driving for Ferrari, of course. A beautiful car, the 312T2, with a transverse mounted gearbox. What a wonderful machine.”

To judge by the tone of his voice, he might have been describing a fondly remembered lover.

“Emerson Fittipaldi was the favorite, as always. But this was the course I’d been weaned on, watching Fanglia as a boy. It was the first course I’d ever driven. I knew it like…how do you say…the back of my hand.”

“And you won?” Serena asked, glancing at the timer. Three more minutes. Just three more minutes.

“Did I win?” Marco asked. “Did I win?”

“Yes. Did you win?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“How sad,” she said.

Two minutes, forty-five seconds.

“Sad? No!”

“No?” she asked.

“No!”

Two minutes, forty seconds.

“It was better than winning. I came to the chicayne on the last lap, dead even. I took a page from Lauria’s book. Fittipaldi downshifted. I didn’t. Two hundred fifty kilometers per hour.”

“That’s fast,” Serena said.

“Sì! Prestissimo!”

Two minutes, thirty seconds.

“I passed Fittipaldi. Took the first half of the chicayne, no problem. Tapped the brakes. Just the tiniest tap. Turned the wheel.”

“And?”

“Guess!” he said.

“Guess?”

“Guess!”

Two minutes, fifteen seconds.

“Ummm…”

“I flew!” he exclaimed. “Flew! Over the tires. Over the retaining wall.”

“You crashed?”

“Right into the net! That beautiful machine hung right there in the net. The right-front tire had come off, and the car hung by the axle. The ambulance, it comes.”

“Were you hurt?” Serena asked, now concerned. She didn’t care for auto racing, for that very reason. Too many drivers got hurt.

“Hurt? No!”

“No?”

“No!”

Two minutes.

“I climbed out of the cockpit. And fell…right into the arms of my Isadora.”

“Isadora?”

“Isadora!”

Serena turned off the timer. “And?”

“The woman of my dreams. Strong. Gentle. Kind.” He reached into his Speedo. “The paparazzi were there. They captured the moment. The moment I met my Isadora.”

His hand emerged, holding a laminated snapshot out to her. He had cut a dashing figure back then. And there was no mistaking the smile on his face in the photo, his eyes fixed on the raven-haired medic into whose arms he had fallen as if by an act of God. Her face was radiant.

“She’s beautiful.”

“Sì. Bella. Splendida.” His eyes darkened. “She became…my life.”

“She’s…?”

“Yes,” he said. “Four years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” he said, simply.

“No?”

“No. I would have been sorry if I had not taken that chicayne at 250 kilometers per hour. I would have been sorry if I had not tapped the brakes and turned the wheel at exactly the wrong instant. I would have been sorry if my beautiful automobile had not gone airborne and flown into that net. I would have been sorry if I had not fallen into her arms. For all of that, I would have been sorry.”

He paused a moment, deep-brown eyes fixing on her. “No. I am not sorry. If I see only how she died…Doctor Serena, if we see it that way, life has no happy endings. For any of us. No, God gave me twenty-five years with her. Twenty-five glorious years and four beautiful children. Those years, those memories, my children…they are my happy ending.”

She passed the photo back to him, certain that she’d exceeded her allotted twenty minutes, and equally certain she did not care.

“That’s beautiful, Marco.”

His fingers lingered on hers for a moment. “Dr. Serena, don’t be afraid to fly into the net.”

She nodded and withdrew her hand. “I need to get out of the sun, Marco.”

“And I need to wax my car.”

“Let me guess,” she said. “Ferrari?” He winked. “Always.”

“EXPLAIN SOMETHING to me?” Ariel asked as she licked an ice-cream cone—chocolate with sprinkles.

Serena had run into her in the elevator on her way up from her sunbath. “Yes?”

“How could you go on a clothing-optional cruise when you barely let the sun touch your skin?”

Serena looked at her young friend and found green eyes innocently looking back at her. She didn’t for one second believe that innocence. “Sunblock,” she said, “can be put anywhere.”

“Were you going to hide inside the ship all the time? What’s the point of going to the Caribbean, then?”

“I wasn’t going to stay inside all the time.”

“Just most of it.”

Serena scowled at her. “Are you making fun of me?”

“Moi?” But now there was a definite twinkle in her eyes. “I thought you’d like to know. Mr. Maxwell drives a Ferrari.”

The elevator lurched to a halt at the eleventh floor. The door hissed open. Serena didn’t move. Two seconds later she punched the G button for the garage level.

“What are you doing?” Ariel asked.

“I just had a brainstorm.”

CHAPTER THREE

MARCO, STILL CLAD in his obscene Speedo, was indeed in the parking area beneath the condos. On the coast like this, buildings were elevated on stilts to avoid flooding during severe storms, and the area beneath was quite handily used for parking.

He was busy applying a thick coat of something milky to the lovingly preserved red paint of his Ferrari. He smiled when he saw Serena. “This is so important to preserve the finish in this climate,” he explained.

Thinking of the condition of the paint on her four-year-old car, Serena was inclined to agree. Between salt and sun, a car didn’t stand a chance. “Have you met our new neighbor?” she asked Marco.

He paused and straightened. “No, I don’t think so.”

“He lives next door to me. He drives a Ferrari.”

Ariel snickered quietly, and Serena shot her a warning glance.

“He does?” Marco’s face, usually quite happy, brightened even more. “He appreciates fine workmanship and speed, no?”

“Actually,” Serena said, “I don’t know what he appreciates. All I know is…Marco, I think he may be up to no good.”

Marco’s expression sobered. “Why you say that?”

Ariel beat Serena to the punch, in her usual, tactless and straightforward way. “Serena thinks he might be a drug dealer.”

Marco’s face darkened. His chest swelled with ire and he spouted something in Italian that definitely sounded threatening.

“Now wait,” Serena said hastily. “I don’t know anything for a fact.” Then she shot a glare at Ariel. “Don’t make mountains out of molehills.”

“I thought that was your job,” Ariel agreed sweetly.

Marco, meanwhile, had let his chest sag once more. “Why do you think this?”

“Because…because he dresses oddly and claims to be an international art dealer. I mean…” She was starting to feel foolish, but Marco saved her.

He nodded. “International art dealer? Here? Hah!” He made a gesture that Serena had never asked the meaning of and suspected she really didn’t want to know. “So what do we do?” he asked.

“Well…” She didn’t feel quite so foolish anymore, now that Marco, a man familiar with a more cosmopolitan world than this part of Florida, found it absurd that an international art dealer would choose to live here of all places. Oh, there were some fine-art museums in the Tampa Bay area, and even the famed Dali Museum in St. Petersburg. But enough business to keep a major art dealer busy? Not likely.

“Yes?” Marco prompted.

“I thought…perhaps….well. Since you both have Ferraris, I thought you might be able to strike up a conversation and learn more about him.”

“Sì.” Marco nodded once, then vanished into his own Italianate thought. After a few minutes, during which time Serena hardly breathed, he nodded again. “Yes,” he said. “I will be a spy. I have grandchildren visit here. No drug deals in my building!”

For an awful instant Serena wondered if she was being too hasty. Then she remembered the weaselly visitor, and the threatening words he had spoken, “We have your mother.” Surely that was a sign of some illicit deal gone bad.

“But,” she said, having a final twinge of conscience, “we don’t know for sure anything’s wrong with him. We just need to find out.”

“I’ll find out.” Marco beamed. “No one can resist my personality.”

“No?”

“No.”

Serena had her doubts, considering how she had been clock-watching—or rather timer watching—just a little while ago. “Just don’t go overboard, Marco.”

He smiled. “Trust me. We will become bosom buddies.”

ARIEL LICKED the last bit of stickiness from her fingers as she and Serena rode the elevator back up to the eleventh floor.

“I wish,” Serena said, “that you wouldn’t be so…”

“Brutally honest?” Ariel asked. “It’s just the way I am. Besides, you wanted Marco to help, didn’t you? So why beat around the bush and waste time?”

Serena didn’t have an answer for that.

“Anyway,” Ariel continued blithely, “I hope you realize you may just have totally slandered an innocent man.”

Serena’s heart thumped. “I didn’t say he was a drug dealer. You did.”

“But it was your idea.” Smiling, Ariel got off the elevator ahead of her. “I hope you have a good lawyer.” Then she skipped down the balcony toward her own unit like a gleeful child.

Serena stared after her, thinking that while Ariel might be an adult by law, she was awfully immature in some ways. Sometimes it didn’t seem to Serena that the young woman ought to be living on her own.

But then, she thought with painful honesty, she could probably say the same about herself.

What had she just done?

SERENA’S SINUSES HURT. Guaranteed there was a storm coming. Her sinuses were a better predictor than the weather service. Certainly better than that dweeb on TV, who one day had stood talking about clear skies while it was raining everywhere, including on his own building.

Sighing, she pulled back the drapes, stretching out the morning stiffness and looked through her glass doors. Her sinuses were right. They were pounding like a tympani because the sky was leaden, the gulf was gray and white-capped, and the only thing missing was the rumble of thunder.

No morning run. She’d lived her entire life in the lightning capital of the world, and she knew better than to get down there on the beach and trot along the water’s edge when there were clouds visible, even at a distance.

As if in answer to her thoughts, a purple-blue-red bolt suddenly shot out of the heavens and appeared to hit the water near shore. It was followed by an eerie green halo that seemed to hang in the air like a huge ball of plasma…which it probably was.

Curious, she stepped out on her balcony—not the wisest thing but she wasn’t always the wisest person, as everyone acquainted with her knew—and glanced down.

“Oh my God!” The words escaped her as she saw what appeared to be two men dragging a third person out of the water. Idiot tourists. Someone else was running toward the beach bar at a mad dash. Probably to call 911.

Serena was a dermatologist, but she was also a medical doctor. Grabbing a blanket and the CPR kit she was never without, she dashed out of her condo. The elevator would be too slow, so she ran down eleven flights of stairs, bursting out onto the beach and churning up gouts of sand behind her.

People were crowded around the person lying on the sand. “I’m a doctor,” got her right through until she could look down on the body.

“What happened?” she demanded as she dropped to her knees.

“Lightning,” said a man.

Serena bent forward, putting her ear to the man’s mouth to listen for breath as she also felt his carotid artery for a pulse.

Neither.

She tipped the man’s head back and used her fingers to ensure his air passage was clear. Then, holding his tongue with her thumb so it wouldn’t fall back in his throat, she applied the breathing bag.

“Can someone use this bag?” she asked. “Like this? While I try to resuscitate his heart.”

“I will.”

She suddenly found herself looking in the brown eyes of her mysterious neighbor, who knelt across from her. She didn’t have time now to think of that, though. “Like this,” she said. “Every time I tell you.”

“Got it.”

She began compressions, timing them, leaning fully into them with all the weight in her body, while her mysterious neighbor pumped air into his lungs as ordered. Every five compressions, she paused to listen.