The Royal's American Love (7 page)

Chapter Six

The All World Cafe was, to her surprise, enormous.
According to a plaque that she read near the entrance, it was once a plaza
where the world came to sell valuable horseflesh. Ever since the 1700s,
however, it had become a crossroads for people who were looking for a quick
bite to eat and a bit of coffee or tea in the bustle of Athens.

Marianna bit her lip, wondering how she was going to find
the mysterious person who sent the note. She looked around, wishing she had a
description to go on. Then her phone chimed. When she looked down, she saw that
she had a text message.

I see you. Meet me by the fountain. I am wearing a
kerchief on my head.

Obediently, Marianne found her way to the fountain. There
she saw a young, slender woman sitting in the shadow of an enormous potted
fern. There was a furtive look to her, and she was the only one in the area
covering up her hair. There was a free seat at her table. Walking with
confidence, Marianna crossed the open space and sat down at the table. When she
had done clandestine meetings like this as a journalist, she had learned to act
naturally.

“Hello,” she said. “You have me at a disadvantage. You know
me, obviously, but I do not know you.”

The young woman met Marianna’s eyes. Her eyes were dark,
and there was so much pain there that Marianna might have gasped if she hadn’t
dealt with pain and loss before.

“My name is Satya Bhandari,” she said, “and the man that
you are writing about has done my family a great wrong.”

“How did you find out about me?” she asked. No matter what
her immediate instincts were, she needed to know how she had been found.

Satya smiled briefly.

“My cousin works in the royal household. I do not want to
say who, for I fear it would lose them their place if you should prove—”

“If it turns out that I’m a terrible person,” Marianna
supplied, making the girl smile.

“Yes. They told me about the royal family bringing you on,
about how they wish to make Prince Nikolos look kind and sympathetic.”

The urge almost came to Marianna’s lips to say that he was
both of those things, but she hung on to her objectivity.

“What does this mean to you?” she asked instead.

“He is neither of those things,” Satya said, looking down.
“He has been the center of deals that have driven my father out of business. We
came to this country as immigrants. I was born here, as were all my brothers.
My father set up his watchmaker’s shop in Athens, and things were going so
well. Then they came, said they would pay money for my father’s shop to turn
the whole block into a shopping center.”

“Let me guess. He refused.”

Satya smiled a little.

“He is a stubborn man, He did refuse, and he began to speak
to our neighbors, telling them that they should not be bullied. I do not know
whether they agreed with him or whether they only thought they would get more
if they said they did. However they all stood up to the developer, and that was
when things got ugly.”

“How ugly?”

Instead of saying anything, Satya pulled out a manila
envelope. Inside were newspaper clippings. They were all about a row of small
shops that had caught fire late one July night. No one was killed, but the
building was a loss. The inhabitants were sent off with a pittance for the
insurance money. Marianna felt a chill run up her spine.

“Are you saying that this fire was set on purpose?”

“Yes. And that the man who sent them was Prince Nikolos.”

She started to protest. Surely Nikolos would never do such
an evil thing. However, when she took a closer look at the articles, she could
see the mentions of Aurelian Enterprises, which was one of the companies owned
by the royal family. She knew from her own research that it was one that Nikolos
ran personally.

She felt her stomach turn upside down.

“Please,” Satya said, taking Marianna’s hand. “My parents
are working in the hotels as cooks right now. My older brother had to withdraw
from university to help them, and my younger brother cannot sleep because he
dreams of fire. Please. We need justice.”

Marianna found herself nodding. This was the objectivity
she was afraid to lose. A part of her wanted to run from the girl, crying that
it couldn’t be true, it could never be true. Another part of her knew
altogether too well what major corporations, especially ones that were
supposedly beyond reproach, were capable of.

“You will have justice, I promise it,” she said. “May I
keep these clippings?”

Satya nodded jerkily. There was something relaxed about her
now, as if she had delivered her message and hope had come back, at least a
little bit.

“Yes. Keep them. If you need me to speak, I will. My
parents told me there was nothing to be done, but I do not believe that.”

“They are wrong and you are right. Can I contact you at the
email you sent?”

“You can. I will reply as soon as I see it, but I might not
see it for a day or so.”

“That’s fine. Please, be well. I promise that I will not
forget you.”

She saw Satya disappear into the crowd. For a long time, she
didn’t want to move. She only let the hubbub of the crowd wash over her, moving
quickly like the play of sunlight on water.

Just a few hours ago, she had been as happy as she ever had
been in her life. Now it had all come crashing down around her. She had
believed in Nikolos, and now she had been reminded in the most brutal possible
way that at the end of it all, no one was as they seemed.

She pushed her own sorrow down. There would be time to deal
with it afterward. Right now, she had to find out the truth, for Satya and her
family, but also for the people who might look at Nikolos and see as she had
seen.

Despite the evidence in front of her, she could not imagine
Nikolos doing the things Satya had said he did. She couldn’t believe the man
who had touched her and kissed her so sweetly could be so ruthless.

She reached for her objectivity. It was a tool, and at the
moment, it was the best one she had. She gathered herself up and went back to
the road to hail a cab. She had a great deal of work to do.

* * *

When he got out of the meeting with his parents, Nikolos
felt better than he thought he would. There had been the mild censure for
taking so long to get to the things they needed from him, but after that, it
had stopped.

When they were almost done, he’d turned a curious eye to
his mother.

“I don’t want to ruin things when they are going so well,”
he said cautiously, “but why are you being so nice to me today?”

His mother looked at him fondly, even if there was a bit of
sly humor in her twinkling eyes.

“Aren’t I always kind to you?” she asked, but she shook her
head knowingly. “Ever since the writer has been following you, you have
changed. You are kind and thoughtful, aware of yourself and the power you
command. It is a great thing to see.”

Nikolos raised an eyebrow at his mother.

“You don’t think it is simply because I know that I am
being watched?”

She looked at him fondly.

“I have known you all your life. Believe me when I say that
I know what it looks like when you are simply being good for the sake of those
watching.”

No matter how frustrating his mother could be sometimes, he
knew she was also a woman who saw much and was very fair. He really couldn’t
fault her for her observation because at the bottom of it, it was true. He was
changing, and true reason for it was a flame-haired siren who had just given
him one of the most amazing nights of his life.

On his way back to the penthouse, he drove past an old man
selling flowers on the corner. Something about the flower wagon made him blink,
and he drove around the block to come back to the stand.

The old man was selling roses, but that wasn’t the
surprise. In addition to the red, pink and white roses, there were silvery ones
as well, with just the softest touch of violet.

That’s what makes her eyes so special
, Nikolos thought.
There’s just a bit of violet in them.

When he asked for a bouquet of the silver roses, the old
man lit up.

“What a good choice, sir,” he exclaimed. “Most people look
right over those roses. They’re grown in a hot house right outside the city.
Very special flowers, they were developed in the United States—”

“I’m never going to overlook these,” Nikolos decided. Every
time he saw them, he would think of Marianna’s eyes.

Nikolos was disappointed when he arrived back at his
penthouse only to find Marianna was missing. He didn’t suppose that she would
stay, he thought. He had been gone hours later than he had said he would. He
realized very quickly, however, that she had left no note, either, and he began
to get uneasy.

After he had searched a second time to make sure there was
no note, he looked at his phone. There was no message either, and so he called
her.

She picked up on the second ring, and she sounded
unsurprised to hear from him.

“I have missed you all day,” he said cheerfully. “Where
shall we go for dinner tonight?”

“I’m really sorry, but I can’t,” she said. “Something came
up, and I need to spend some time working tonight. I’m sure you understand.”

Nikolos scowled.

“I’m not sure I do,” he said. “You were saying that even
journalists took days off.”

“I’m sorry, but that day can’t be today.”

“Tomorrow?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. He could
imagine her biting her lip, thinking fast.

“Maybe not,” she said apologetically. “But I will see you
on Monday.”

“Of course,” he said curtly. “I understand perfectly.”

“Nikolos…”

“Enjoy your weekend, and I shall see you on Monday,” he
said. He turned off the phone, shaking his head.

What was he thinking? He was mooning over her as if he were
a lovesick boy. He had allowed her to change the way he behaved, the way he
thought, the way he ran his life. That needed to end immediately. He pushed
away the hurt he felt at what seemed to be her rejection. Some saner part of
his mind tried to tell him that she may simply have meant exactly what she
said. Perhaps she did need to work.

However, there was something about the way that she had
talked with him, something about the way she had brushed him off. There was a
coldness there he hadn’t anticipated. He had never heard her voice sound so cold
before this moment.

Nikolos shook his head as if he could merely dislodge her
from his thoughts…from his soul. The more he tried to push her away, however,
the more he thought of her smile, the sweetness of her skin, the kind way she
had of simply listening. He had never encountered that genuine a woman before,
and now that she was gone, he could feel the hurtful space her absence left
behind.

“I can’t do this,” he said out loud to the apartment.

He was heading for the door when his phone chimed. For one
brief and blazing instant, he thought it was Marianna. He wasn’t sure what she
might say that could make their previous exchange better, but the mad and
ridiculous hope was there.

Instead, the number came up as unlisted. With a dark frown,
he answered the call.

“Guess who!”

Nikolos blinked with surprise.

“Grace, is that you?”

“Of course it is! Listen, I’m in Athens for the weekend,
and I was wondering who might be able to show me an absolutely divine time. Of
course, the moment I asked myself that question, I knew that the answer was
you! So how about it, are you free? Can you make the time for an old friend?”

Despite his dark mood about Marianna, he found himself
grinning, albeit a little reluctantly, over Grace’s fast talk.

“I had some plans,” he said, “but I suppose I can make the
time. Shall I meet you at our old club. Will that suffice, Duchess?”

Grace’s laughter was pure sweetness. Even in his worst
moods, it could make him smile.

“Of course! I simply cannot wait to see you!”

Nikolos felt a part of him protesting this action. He was
going out to see Grace, when all he really wanted to do was find Marianna. The
need to see her again, just confirm that everything was all right, was intense.

He shook his head. He changed clothes, and he left his
apartment.

Chapter Seven

Marianna told herself she couldn’t remember the last time
she had slept. Of course that was a lie. She did remember. It had been in Nikolos’s
bed, wrapped up in his arms. When she thought about it too long, she was
tempted to believe it was the best sleep she’d ever had in her life.

She couldn’t think about that now. Instead, she had to
think about the Aurelian corporation and what it may have done to Satya’s
family and many other families besides.

It was like a terrible puzzle. The further she went, the
more boundaries and prohibitions she came across. There was something going on,
but despite all of her digging, both online and off, she could not have said
what it was.

Marianna worked straight through Saturday and Sunday,
stopping to get food when her body absolutely demanded it, sleeping only when
she couldn’t see straight. At the end, she realized she had come nearly full
circle. She had a handful of names, the sense that something was going
suspiciously wrong, and a deep sense of unease.

And now that I have all of this information, what in the
world am I going to do with it?

She knew what she had to do as a moral person. When she was
a journalist, the answer had been even clearer. Call attention, Make sure that
an injustice couldn’t be ignored.

However, whenever she tried to cast Nikolos as the villain
in the piece, she couldn’t do it. His name was all over the documents she could
find, but her keen reporter’s instinct told her that there was something wrong.

On top of the research she was doing, which was hard enough
on its own, there was the fact that inside, it felt like her heart was being
wrenched in two. She couldn’t believe that Nikolos was responsible for what
Satya had accused him. She couldn’t imagine that he would be so heedless about
the cause of people who were only fighting to make a living.

However, she had known powerful people before. She had seen
people who were wonderfully charming in public, but then as soon as the doors
were closed, they revealed their true selves. Some of those people had worked
just within the bounds of the law to get what they wanted, even if it cost
others everything. Some…the most ruthless…had gone far beyond legal means.

You’re being a little fool
,
a cold voice
inside her said.
What do you know about him? You don’t know what he’s
capable of. You don’t know what kind of secrets he is hiding behind that
handsome face.

I know the way he smiles. I know how gentle he is, and
how kind. He could never have done what Satya says.

The two voices were constantly speaking. Sometimes one was
louder, sometimes the other was. They never stopped, and neither could prevail
over the other. More than once over the course of the weekend, she felt as if
she was at the point of tears, ready to hide from the world.

There were two things that kept her from it. One was her
sense of justice. If Satya was right, there was a great wrong being done. The
other was her sense of faith. If she kept looking, she knew somewhere in her
heart she would find something that would exonerate Nikolos.

At this point, only one thing was clear. Her objectivity on
the matter was gone. The only thing left to guide her were her own ethics.

She felt so tired she could have slept for days. Instead,
she opened up her laptop and started to work again. The truth lay somewhere in
these documents, and she would find it.

Monday morning dawned bright and clear, a beautiful day in
Athens. When she checked her schedule for the day, it involved following
Nikolos to a luncheon given by one of the antiquities organizations.

She received a text that he would be picking her up, and
she winced. Her cowardice had prevented her from speaking to him at all over
the weekend. Every time she had thought of it, she wanted to hide. She was
pleased that they might be able to continue things as usual, though she
wondered how he would regard her after their single night together. She didn’t
think he would be cruel, but pretending it had never happened would be
exquisitely painful for her.

He arrived at her hotel directly on time, giving her a
polite if distracted smile. As he maneuvered his way into traffic, she
cautiously broached the topic of the weekend with him.

“About the weekend. I am so sorry, I know I just sort of
disappeared on you.”

He glanced at her as he drove. There was something curious
about his gaze, but guarded, as if he wasn’t sure what he wanted to tell her.
That look made her mood dip even further. She wasn’t a journalist anymore, and
apparently, if her subject could pull back into his shell so quickly, she might
not be a very good ghostwriter either.

“I had wondered about that,” he admitted. “But I reminded
myself that your life is your own. You are certainly not compelled to spend
your time with me, regardless of what we might have done together before.”

She flinched a little at his neutral tone.

“Oh god, I did want to, though, I really did—” Marianna cut
herself off before she could start babbling, sounding even more pathetic than
she felt. “Anyway, I am sorry. What did you end up doing this weekend? As I
recall, you didn’t have anything pressing on your schedule.”

He shifted a little, looking straight ahead. There was
something about his motion that made her frown. She had always been an
observant woman, and right now, she could tell there was something strange
happening.

“Not much,” he admitted. “An old friend ended up coming to
town. We spent some time at the club and then we ended up taking a boat to an
island resort that my family owns. It was spur of the moment, a good way to get
my mind off things.”

Marianna found herself smiling. She was happy he had at
least not spent his time as frustrated and upset as she had been.

“I’m glad your friend showed up,” she said. “It sounds like
the two of you had a good time.”

“We did,” he said with a faint smile.

She thought nothing more of it until she was waiting for
Nikolos to finish the social rounds after the luncheon. The food was mediocre,
and the topic not one that interested her. She had ended up in the atrium of
the admittedly gorgeous building. She was sorting through the pile of
newspapers and flyers for something interesting to read when a picture of a
very familiar face caught her eye. It was a tabloid, and front and center was
Nikolos and a gorgeous blonde woman.

She checked the date, startled to see it was current for
that day, and she looked at the picture again

Possible Royal Wedding? Insiders Think So!

Biting her lip, she held the paper uneasily. A part of her
knew there was nothing to be gained from reading it. The other part of her remembered
Nikolos’s answers regarding his weekend, how little he had actually told her.
In the end, the temptation was too great. She opened up the paper and started
to read.

Prince Nikolos has often been featured on our pages as
Greece’s hottest bachelor, but will he have to give up his crown? Insider
sources clued us in to the prince’s discreet fun with Duchess Grace Bard of the
United Kingdom. Now, it is well known that the two have been an on-again,
off-again couple in the past, but this time, have the sparks turned into
something more?

This past weekend, with no notice at all, the prince and
his blonde duchess jetted off to one of the many private resorts off the coast.
Given that Prince Nikolos is currently being shadowed for a publicity piece,
could it be that this once hedonistic wild man is settling down? Could the
attempts to clean up his image be all about getting responsible for his new
married life?

Of course Marianna knew the way the tabloids worked. They
asked questions that lead to very specific answers, and then they were free of
the onus of proving a single blessed bit of proof. Perhaps another day she
would have dismissed it outright, but then she remembered how he had acted in
the car. Nikolos might not have lied to her, but he had definitely misled her.

She tried to hang on to her shreds of objectivity, but it
was too much. After they had spent that time together, he had run off to be
with a gorgeous duchess, someone he was perhaps feeling serious enough about to
clean up his image. Despite the nature of her work, she felt a trickle of fury
go down her spine. By the time that Nikolos finally freed himself from all of
the people who wanted to speak with him, that trickle was a river, broad and
strong.

She greeted him politely enough, but by the time they got
back to his car, he was looking at her quizzically.

“You look like there’s something on your mind,” he said,
turning to her without starting the car.

“You know what I’m supposed to do with you this month,
right?” she asked. Mystified, he nodded.

“You’re meant to be painting a literary picture of me,
basically,” he offered, and she nodded.

“That’s exactly right,” she said. “But what happens when I
can’t do my job because you refuse to turn around and let me see all of you?”

A ghost of a smile whisked across his lips.

“I think you have managed to see more of me than most,” he
offered, but it only made her angry.

“I’m not talking about that,” she spat. “What I needed to
know and didn’t is that you are apparently involved with Duchess Grace Bard,
and that you were seeing her this weekend. How can I do my job correctly if you
keep things like this from me?”

He sat in silence for a moment.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that when I asked you where you
went for the weekend, you let me believe that it was some kind of platonic
friendly excursion. I thought you went out to have some fun, not that…that you
were courting another royal! If I had know that… Well, that might have changed
a few things.”

She was too proud to say the rest. She couldn’t bring
herself to tell him if she had known he was apparently close to engaged with a
duchess that she never would have allowed herself to tumble into bed with him.

“And you think that I am in looking to climb into bed with
Grace Bard, why, exactly?”

To her surprise, his response wasn’t angry or even
defensive. Instead, it was only curious, as if she had somehow mistaken the
capital of the United States for New York instead of Washington, DC.

There was nothing she could do to keep the slightly
hysterical note out of her voice. At this point, she almost didn’t care. All of
the pain and grief she had gone through over the weekend overwhelmed her, and
she found her voice rising without her thinking about it at all.

“I read about it in the newspaper,” she said, holding back
tears with only the greatest of difficulty. “There was a picture of you…and her…and
oh, god, I feel like such a fool.”

When he tried to reach for her hand, she pulled it away
violently. She had to sit with her hands over her face for a few moments,
trying to compose herself. When at last she looked up, she was startled to see
they were driving down the street.

“This…isn’t the way back to the hotel,” she said in
surprise.

“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “I think that regardless of what
I might have believed or felt, you had a hard weekend. Mine was much better,
but not in the way that you seem to think it was. So, let’s get you to a place
where you can start to feel a little better and where I can start to explain,
yes?”

She knew she should take a hard line with him. Marianna
knew that right now, she had to set limits and boundaries that would stick. If
she didn’t do it now, it would only be harder later. The problem was she was
exhausted, both physically and emotionally. There was nothing left to her but
hope and fear. The two warred within each other briefly. For a moment, it could
have gone either way. Then the pressures and the stress of the previous two
days was too much, and she only nodded mutely.

“All right. Just relax, and let me take care of things.”

It was simply too much of a temptation to allow him to
drive, to let him make the decisions for a little bit longer. If there came a
time when she needed to strike out, to confront him over the information that
Satya had given her, that could come later. Right now, she only sank back into
the bucket seat and let her eyes drift closed.

In a matter of seconds, her breathing evened out, and she
felt into a light and mercifully dreamless sleep.

* * *

He’d had a plan for the day, after they were done with the
luncheon. He was going to sit down and talk with Marianna. He wanted to know if
he had imagined the chill between them, if she truly intended their night of
passion to be something that was light and forgettable. He needed to know for
sure. That was the plan, anyway. Over the course of the weekend with Grace, he
had considered a few different plans, some brutally simple, others grandiose
and unlikely.

This plan, which was one that actually had Grace’s
approval, was the best one of the lot, but Marianna had derailed it utterly.

He didn’t know what to think. When he had seen her at the
steps in front of her hotel, his first instinct had been to order her back to
bed and to call for some sturdy, nourishing food for her. She was on the
slender side, but somehow over the past seven days, she had become almost
gaunt. Her eyes seemed to have lost some of their luster, and her movements
were wooden, as if she had been tacked together with bad nails.

Her explosion after the luncheon was strange as well. If
any other woman had spoken to him in that way, he would have quickly dismissed
her and left. However, there was something desperate to her anger, something
that made his heart ache. All he had wanted to do was to make it better for her
in the only way that he knew how.

He supposed that men who were more steady and stable than
he was had plans for what happened when the women they cared about seemed to be
on the verge of collapse. He, however, was making it up as he went along.