The Lost Princes: Darius, Cassius and Monte

“Families are the building blocks of empires,” Monte was saying blithely. “We need you to be married and to have a solid relationship. We’ve talked about this before. I thought you were on board.”

“I am,” David put in hastily. “Sorry, Monte. I’m just a little tired and short tempered right now. Don’t pay any attention.”

“Good. Wait until you meet her. She’s beautiful. She’s intelligent. And she’s totally devoted to overturning the Granvilli clan’s totalitarian regime. She’ll fight by your side and rule there, too, when we achieve our goal.” He chuckled. “I’m not worried about how you’ll react. She’ll knock you out when you see her.”

“I’m sure she will.”

But David grimaced, wondering if Monte wasn’t perhaps overselling the case. He’d known a lot of bright, gorgeous and astonishing women in his time. So this was another one of them. Readiness to fight for the cause would be just the icing on the cake. He’d seen it all before.

But he couldn’t completely discount Monte’s opinion. He’d spent so many years adrift, not knowing where he was going or what he wanted to do with himself. He’d done well in his Dutch father’s business, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Once he and Monte had found each other, their future trajectory became clear. Now he knew what he was on earth to do. He had a new seriousness and a sense of purpose. His life had meaning after all. Finding the rest of his family and restoring them all to power was all he lived for.

“Keep me apprised as best you can. Let me know where you are if you can.”

“I will.”

Ringing off, he started back to join Ayme and the baby, stopping only to toss the cell phone into a trash can. You couldn’t be too careful and he had a stock of extras, just in case.

The park was pretty and green and centered on a pond with a small bridge over it, creating a lovely vantage point for watching small silver fish swim by below.

“Look, Cici. Look at the fishies,” Ayme was saying, holding the baby precariously at the rail and making David laugh. Still, he moved in quickly to avoid disaster.

“She’s a little young for a swim,” he commented. “Here, I’ll take her.”

And he did so easily. Ayme sighed. It seemed to come naturally to him and she was having such a hard time with it.

She watched him for a moment. He glanced up and caught her eye, but she looked away quickly, still uneasy, still not sure what the point of all this was. The questions just kept bubbling up inside her and she needed some answers.

“Okay, here’s what I don’t understand,” she challenged him as they walked through the grass. “If you’re Dutch, how come you care so much about Ambria? What is your tie to the place?”

He looked startled, then like a man trying to cover something up. “Who says I care so much about Ambria?”

“Oh, please! It resonates in everything you say.”

Hmm. That wasn’t good news. He was going to have to be a bit more guarded, wasn’t he? Still, it did seem churlish to keep such basic information from her. It would all be common knowledge soon enough. Once he got to Italy, all would very likely be revealed anyway. He decided she deserved to be among the first to know. Just not quite yet.

“We can talk about this later,” he said evasively.

“Wait a minute,” she said, stopping in front of him and putting her hands on her hips. “I’m staging a small rebellion here.”

Her dark eyes were flashing and her pretty face was set firmly. He knew better than to laugh at her, but it was tempting. She did look damn cute.

“What are you talking about?” he asked instead.

She sighed, shaking her head. “I don’t get it. What the heck are we running from?”

“Danger.”

“What danger? From whom?” She threw her hands up. “I don’t see what I’ve done to put myself in danger. All I did was hop on a plane and come to England looking for Cici’s father. How did that put me in danger?”

He raked fingers through his hair and looked uncomfortable. “It hasn’t exactly. It’s put me in danger.” He took in a deep breath and let it out again, slowly. “And because you’re currently attached to me, it’s put you in danger, too.”

Her chin rose and she watched him with a hint of defiance in her gaze. “Then maybe I should unattach myself.”

She was just throwing that out there, waiting to see what his reaction would be. When you came right down to it, the thought of “unattaching” from him filled her with dread. At this point, she didn’t have a clue what she would do without him. And she really didn’t want to find out.

“Maybe you should,” he said calmly, as though it didn’t mean a thing to him. “It’s a good idea, really. Why don’t you do that? We can find you a nice hotel and get you a room…”

She observed the way he was holding the baby, so casual, so adept, and she looked at his handsome face, so attractive, so appealing. Did she really want to trade this in, danger and all, for the sterile walls of a hotel room on her own? Wouldn’t she just end up trudging from place to place, trying to find someone who could help her?

Hmm. Good luck with that.

Maybe she ought to reconsider before this went too far. She wasn’t going to detach herself from him until she had to. Who was she kidding, anyway? She was going to stick around and see what happened. She knew it. He probably knew it, too.

“On the other hand,” she said in a more conciliatory tone, as they began to walk again, “if you would just let me know what’s going on so I could understand and be prepared, it would be nice. I’d like to be able to make plans for myself once in a while.” She searched his face hopefully. “It would be a big help.”

His jaw tightened. “You want to know what’s going on.”

“Yes, I do.”

He nodded. She was really a good sport. She deserved more information than he’d been giving her. He couldn’t tell her everything. But he could do a better job than he’d been doing so far. He shifted the baby from one arm to the other, stood in one spot with his legs evenly spaced, like a fighter, and looked into her eyes. He was taking a risk in telling her. But what the hell—life was a risk. And despite everything, his gut feeling was that he could trust her.

“Okay Ayme, here’s the deal. I am Ambrian. You guessed right from the beginning.”

“I knew it!” Her eyes flared with happy sparks and she wanted to grab him around the neck and give him a triumphant kiss, but she restrained herself admirably.

“There’s more.”

He glanced at her, his intensity burning a hole in her skin and as she realized how seriously he was taking this, her victorious satisfaction faded.

“I’ve been working with other Ambrians determined to overthrow the usurpers and get our country back.”

She gaped at him, suddenly feeling as though her bearings had been yanked away.

“No kidding,” she said softly, feeling shaky. “No wonder there are people after you.”

No wonder. That was a choice he’d made. But she hadn’t made that choice, so what the heck was she doing putting herself and the baby in this sort of jeopardy? Maybe she was going to have to tell him thanks, but no thanks, after all. Time to say goodbye?

His face was hard and serious and his tone was low and intense as he went on.

“The people who run Ambria right now have spies everywhere. They are very much interested in trying to destroy any opposition they see beginning to crop up. That’s why I have to be careful and why I’m afraid of being tracked.”

“Okay.” She folded her arms across her chest and hugged herself worriedly. “Now I get it. Thank you for telling me that.” She blinked up at him, her eyes wide, a picture of pure innocence. “Believe me, I won’t betray your confidence.”

He wanted to kiss her. Looking down, the urge swept over him. Her face was so fresh and honest, her lips full and slightly parted, her cheeks red from the outdoor air and he didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone look prettier. The urge passed. He didn’t act on it.

But it left behind another feeling—guilt.

She trusted him.

Ah, hell, he thought.

Guilt filled his throat. He was still lying to her, still leaving things out. She didn’t know he was actually the man she was seeking. Well, that wasn’t exactly the case, but close. If she knew who he really was, she would be able to focus better on finding the real father. On the other hand, maybe she would just believe he had fathered the child himself. Then what?

There would be no time for DNA tests. He had to be in Italy in less than a week. And he couldn’t tell her about that—not yet. Probably not ever. After all, she wasn’t going with him, so why did she have to know?

They went back to the car and packed everything away, including the now-sleeping baby, then climbed in themselves and started off. But all the while, he was thinking about their conversation.

There was still so much he couldn’t tell her, but he could tell her a bit more than he had.

“Here’s some more truth, Ayme,” he told her after a few miles. “The truth is, I’m just like you.”

“Like me?”

“Yes. I’m an Ambrian orphan, too. I was adopted by a Dutch family right after the rebellion. Just like you.”

She thought about that for a moment. It seemed to fit the scheme of things nicely and it gave her a warm feeling of bonding with the man. Though when she glanced at his face, she didn’t see any reciprocating on the bonding thing. He appeared as much as ever as though his profile had been hewn in stone.

So now she had some important information and she could use it to fill in the blanks. She knew why David was afraid someone was after him. And she knew why he felt such deep feelings for Ambria. And she knew why he might have connections in the Ambrian community that would help her find Cici’s father. But she didn’t know…

Turning to face him again, she confronted him with a steady gaze.

“Okay, mister,” she said firmly. “Let’s have it. More truth. I understand why you might have felt you had to take off from your apartment. And why you want to keep on the move. But what I don’t understand is this—why did you bring me along?”

Chapter Six

THAT was a very good question and David wasn’t sure he had the guts to answer it, even to himself. He looked at Ayme.

He’d meant a quick glance, but something in her pretty face held him for a beat too long and he had to straighten the car into the proper lane when he put his attention back on the road.

That was a warning—don’t do that again.

For some reason Ayme’s allure seemed to catch him up every time. He didn’t know why. She was pretty enough, sure, but it was something else, something in the basic man-woman dynamic that got to him, and he didn’t seem to be able to turn it off.

“Come on, David,” she was saying. “Tell me. Why did you bring me along?”

He shrugged and tried to look blasé. “Why do you think?”

She made a face. “My charm and beauty?” She managed to put a sarcastic spin on her tone that made him grin.

“Of course.”

She rolled her eyes. “No, really. What was the deciding factor?”

He glanced at her, then looked back at the road and put both hands firmly at the top of the wheel.

“Okay, if you want me to be honest about this, I’ll tell you.” He hesitated and grimaced again. Since this seemed to be the time for truth why not go a little further? She could handle it.

“This won’t be easy for you to understand. You’ll think I’m overstating things. You might even think I’m a little nuts. But just hear me out and then decide.”

“Of course.”

“There are a couple of things going on here. First…” He took a deep breath and went on. “I’ve always had good reason to expect that someone would try to get to me and kill me someday and I’m not going to talk about why.”

She sat very still, but she made a small grating noise, as though she were choking. He ignored it.

“When you arrived on my doorstep I had to consider the possibility that you, or someone who sent you, might be involved in something like that.”

“David.” Her voice was rough. “You thought I could be a killer?” The idea shocked her to her core.

He looked her full in the face and shrugged. “You bet. Why not?”

She sputtered and he went on.

“But it’s more likely to be your Carl Heissman person. Don’t you see that? And if I have you with me, you can’t contact him and let him know where I am.”

She made a gasping sound. “David, what have I done that would lead you to think—”

“Not a thing. And believe me, Ayme, I don’t suspect you of anything at all. It’s the people who sent you who have me on guard.”

“Sent me?” She shook her head, at a loss. “Nobody sent me. I came on my own.”

“Someone found out your plans, sought you out and gave you my name. Why?”

She stared at him, realizing he had a point. She remembered that she had been surprised when Carl Heissman contacted her and wanted to meet. He’d been friendly, concerned, charming and her doubts had quickly evaporated. But now that David brought them up again, she had to acknowledge them.

She could see that but, still, this all seemed crazy to her. People killing people was something she just wasn’t used to. Assassinations. Killers. Spies. Those things were on TV and in movies, not in real life.

Was he for real or just some insane paranoid? But the more she studied his beautiful face, the more she was sure he believed every word he said.

Did that make it all true? Who knew?

“There’s one little problem with that whole scenario,” she pointed out right away. “If you left me behind, I wouldn’t have known where you were within minutes of your leaving. So how could I tell anyone anything?”

His mouth twisted sardonically. This was obviously not a new thought to him. But all he said was, “True.”

She waited a moment, but he didn’t elaborate and she frowned.

“Anyway, I thought you were just protecting me from the bad guys, whoever they may be. Isn’t that what you said?”

“I did say that, didn’t I.”

She frowned again, watching him as though she was beginning to have her doubts. “But we don’t know who the bad guys are. Do we? I mean, we know they’re these Ambrian rebel types, but we don’t know what they look like or what their names are. Right?”

“You’re absolutely right. Rather a dilemma, don’t you think?”

“Kind of nuts, that’s what I think.” She shook her head. “Maybe we should have stayed in the apartment. Maybe if we just stayed in one place and waited for them to show up, we’d find out who they are.”

“We’d find out more than that. Not a good idea.”

“Maybe. But you can’t live your whole life just running all the time. Can you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only just begun.”

She made a sound of exasperation and he grinned.

“We have a destination, Ayme. We’re not just running for the fun of it.”

“Oh. How about letting me in on where that destination is so I can share that feeling of comfort?”

“Not yet.”

Her sigh had a touch of impatience to it. “In that case, I’m just useless baggage. So I still don’t see why you brought me along.”

“Because I feel some responsibility toward you. You came and you asked me for help. Isn’t that enough?”

“So you’re really planning to help me?” she asked as though surprised that such a thing might be the case.

“Of course. I told you I would.”

She settled back and tried to think. What was the old expression, jumping from the frying pan into the fire? That was pretty much what she felt like. She’d been feeling vulnerable enough just searching for Cici’s father. Now she was still searching for the man and being tracked by assassins, as well. And everyone knew what happened to people who hung out with people who were being tracked by assassins. Nothing good.

It was like reaching the next level in a video game. Suddenly the danger was ratcheted up a notch and you had to run that much harder.

From what she could gather going over the information he’d relayed, he was part of a revolt against the current regime in Ambria. Too bad she didn’t know more about it so that she could decide if he was a good guy or not. From his point of view, he was obviously the “goodest” of the good guys, but that sort of thing tended to be a biased assessment. A strange thought came to her unbidden. What if he considered her a hostage?

The beginnings of a wail from the backseat interrupted her musings and gave notice that Cici was awake again.

“Uh-oh, here we go,” Ayme said with apprehension.

David gave her a look. “You seem to live in dread of this baby waking up. She’s barely announced her presence. And actually she’s been quite good all day.”

She sighed. She knew she shouldn’t be taking it out on the baby. Still. “You don’t know what it was like on that airplane crossing,” she told him.

“Babies on planes.” He nodded, thinking it over. “Yes, I have to admit that is not a pleasant prospect. But it was probably the pressurized cabin. It probably hurt her little ears.”

“You think so?” That put Cici in the category of someone transgressed against instead of the transgressor. She looked back at the baby and gave her a thumbs-up.

“Sure,” he said. “It’s not likely she’s going to cry that way all the time.”

He was right. She hadn’t been all that fussy lately. But Ayme attributed it to David’s calming influence. It certainly had very little to do with her. She only wished she knew the secrets of how to reassure a baby and get it to stop howling.

Cici was awake but gurgling happily as they came into the seaside area where they were going to spend the night.

“Where are we going to stay?” Ayme asked, looking longingly at the Ritz as they cruised past it. Then there was the Grand with its long, sweeping driveway and uniformed attendants standing ready to help guests as they arrived at the huge glass doors. They zipped right by that one, too.

“It’s just a little farther,” he said, leaning forward to read a street sign.

She noticed that the farther they went from those elegant hotels, the farther they also went from the bright lights and sparkling entryways. Soon they were surrounded by gloom.

“Here we are,” he said at last, pulling into a driveway that immediately plunged them down a dark tunnel and into a broken-down parking lot. “This is the Gremmerton.”

She took note of the oily puddles and stained walls. “Might as well be the Grimmer-ton,” she muttered softly to herself.

“What was that?” he asked, glancing at her as he parked and shut off the engine.

“Nothing,” she said, feeling sulky and knowing she was being a brat. “Nothing at all.”

He grimaced. He knew exactly what she was thinking but he didn’t bother to explain why they were staying here. She would have to figure it out for herself. When you were trying to travel below the radar, you had to stay in places where people would never expect to find you. And at the same time, you had to be low key, so that people wouldn’t look at you and sense the incongruity and say among themselves, “Hmm. What is someone like that doing here? You would think someone like that would be over at the Grand.”

“We’re running low on formula,” he noted as they unloaded the car and prepared to carry things up into the room.

“I saw a small market on the corner when we drove up,” she said. “If you’ll watch her for a while, I’ll run out and get some. After we get settled in.”

“Good.”

They climbed two flights of stairs and found their room. It wasn’t really too bad, although it did have wallpaper peeling from one corner and a single light bulb hanging down from the ceiling.

It also had only one bed.

She stared at it for a long moment, then turned to look at him, perplexed. “What are we going to do?” she asked. “Maybe we can order in a rollaway.”

“No,” he said calmly. It was fascinating watching the sequence of emotions as they played across her face. “We’re pretending to be a family. We’ll share the bed.”

Her eyes widened. “I don’t know if we ought to do that,” she said, gazing at him with huge eyes.

That one statement, along with her horrified look, told him everything he needed to know about the state of her innocence—as well as the state of her media-fed imagination. He bit back a grin and coughed a bit before he could respond.

“Ayme, do you think I’m not going to be able to control myself? Do you really think I’m going to attack you during the night?”

She looked very stern. Evidently that was exactly what she was worried about.

“Okay,” she said. “Here’s the honest truth. I’ve never slept in a bed with a man.”

“No!” He pretended to be surprised, then wished he hadn’t. He didn’t want her to think he was mocking her. It was really very cute that she was so concerned. Compared to most of the women he’d become accustomed to, it was delightful.

“No, really,” she was saying earnestly. “I don’t know what will happen. I…I don’t know men very well.” She shook her head, eyes troubled. “You read things…”

“Ayme, don’t pay any attention to what you read.”

He reached for her. It seemed a natural enough instinct to comfort her. He took her pretty face between his hands and smiled down at her.

“Pay attention to what I tell you. I won’t pretend I’m not attracted to you. I am. Any man would be. But it doesn’t mean a thing. And anyway, I can handle it. I’m not going to go mad with lust in the middle of the night.”

She nodded, but she still seemed doubtful. What he didn’t realize was that she was reacting to only one of the things he’d mentioned: the fact that to him being attracted to her didn’t mean a thing.

He’d realized by now that he shouldn’t have touched her at all and he drew back and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Then he frowned, watching emotions play over her face and wishing he’d never started down this road.

But now she could add missing the wonderful feel of his warm hands on her face to the fact that to him, she didn’t mean a thing. He’d actually said that. Any attraction between them was a biological urge, nothing more. She could have been any woman, it would have been the same.

Wow, she thought sadly. Talk about crushing a girl’s spirits. Didn’t mean a thing.

But what did she expect? She looked at him, at how large and beautiful he was. He was an exceptional man. He probably dated a lot of exceptional women. And he probably thought she was young and silly. Meanwhile, she’d begun to think that he was pretty wonderful.

He cleared his throat, wishing he understood women. She appeared unhappy and he didn’t know if it was because of the bed situation or if something else was bothering her. “So let’s just play this by ear, okay?” he tried hopefully.

“Okay,” she said softly.

“You sleep on your side, I’ll sleep on mine. If it would make you feel better, we can make a barrier down the middle with pillows.”

Her smile was bright but wavering. “Like an old Puritan bundling board?” she said.

“If you want.”

She seemed to be somewhat reassured, but he wasn’t. He could still feel the softness of her face against his hands. He shouldn’t have touched her.

“Where’s the bathroom?” she asked, looking about the room.

“Down the hall,” he said. “You can’t miss it.”

“What?” Ayme shuddered. This on top of everything. “Down the hall?”

“That’s right.”

“Oh, no, I can’t share a public bathroom.” She was shaking her head as though this were the last straw. “Are you crazy?”

“This is the way old hotels are set up,” he told her. “You’ll have to get used to it. You’ll be okay.”

“I won’t,” she cried dramatically, flopping down to sit on the edge of the bed. “Bring me a chamber pot. I’m not leaving the room.”

She bit her lip. Deep inside, she was cringing. That hadn’t really been her, had it? Couldn’t be. She didn’t play the drama queen, didn’t believe in it. But it seemed a combination of circumstances had come against her all at once and for just a moment, she’d cracked.