To Catch a Groom (13 page)

The three of them drew close together for a second.

Olivia drew in a noisy breath. “Luc de Falcon is going to wish he didn’t need a cane because when I get hold of i—”

“Signorine?”
came Fabio’s voice. “Last but not least, may I present Isabella di Varano, wife of Giovanni di Luccesi—”

“And my only sister.”

Of course.

The grand entrance of Maximilliano the Magnificent himself!

“This is very exciting,” the dark-haired beauty exclaimed.

Isabella was as gorgeous as her brother, but Greer refused to look at him.

She couldn’t fathom any of what was going on. In truth she was only barely functioning.

“If all of you will excuse our bellissima Duchesse cousins,” Max spoke in a vibrant voice that would have penetrated the farthest corners of the room. “They need their
rest after spending a miserable night in the Colorno jail while I worked out the legalities with the police.”

The crowd’s sympathetic reaction couldn’t possibly have been orchestrated.

“Following their release they chose to take a grueling four-hour bike ride in the hot sun to see the countryside of their ancestors. Unfortunately they ran into some trouble that required my help again.”

Greer stole a look to see if he’d been struck by lightning yet. What a horrible mistake that turned out to be. His black eyes were
laughing
at her.

“I’m quite sure they’re at the point of exhaustion, but as the chief commissioner confided to me, they charmed the guards and handled their harrowing ordeal with all the dignity and spirit of the former Duchesse of Parma herself.
Signorine?
May I be the first to say, welcome to the family.”

His mockery in front of God and all these witnesses who were clapping after such an amazing speech was too much.

“Thank you,” Greer said to everyone with a smile. “It’s been a pleasure to meet everyone.” Her sisters said virtually the same thing before they all murmured their good-nights.

She made her exit out the door with the kind of poise her parents would have been proud of. The girls weren’t far behind. After reaching the foyer, they flew up the staircase to their suite like a bunch of homing pigeons.

Once the door was locked Greer turned to her sisters hot-faced. “We know we’re not related, so how
dare
he mock us like that. Now that we finally know which way the wind is blowing, we’ll see who has the last laugh.

“No way are they going to get the satisfaction of bundling us up in the royal limo and shipping us back to America like so much unwanted baggage. Obviously that was their plan as soon as they were through using us.”

Olivia wore a set jaw. “We came to see the Grand Prix and that’s what we’re going to do.”

“We can escape off the balcony,” Piper muttered. “It’ll be a cinch. I saw a little portico just below it. From there we can jump to the ground and merge into the crowd before they discover we’re gone.”

Greer marched over to her suitcase. “This operation calls for jeans and T-shirts, but we’ll have to be wearing our travel suits when we ring for maid service.”

Within a few minutes several of them appeared at the door to carry the luggage to the limo.

“Thank you. We’ll be right down.”

The second the door was closed, they peeled off their suits, hung them in the closet, then put on their casual clothes and sneakers.

They met at the balcony. “One for all, and all for one,” Piper whispered before going over the railing first. It was like déjà vu, except that instead of water, they landed on pavement.

Piper was off like a shot between two villas across the street. Olivia followed close behind. Greer brought up the tail as they discovered a narrow alley farther on and started running like crazy in the direction of the harbor below.

The crowds of spectators waiting all night to see the race roamed the streets and alleyways, impeding their progress. But it no longer mattered because she and her siblings blended with the crowd.

Farther down when they came out on the main street again, they passed a set of bleachers with a huge “Villon” banner fastened across the top. Olivia stopped in her tracks. “You guys—”

“We know. We saw it, too.”

“Let’s find out if there’s room for three more.”

Whether it was because they were triplets, or because the gods were smiling on them, a group of exuberant
French guys probably in their late teens and early twenties seemed only too happy to let them squeeze in next to them.

They spoke little English which made it amusing. In every other way they communicated like mad. Olivia’s knowledge of Cesar Villon’s racing statistics enamored her to them. Greer and Piper just smiled and pretended they were hard-core fans, too.

For the first time since the girls’ arrival in Europe, they were treated like royalty. The one named Simon fed them ham filled brioches. The other ones named Gerard, Jules and Philippe, supplied drinks and treats. They carried pocket transistors that picked up all the information about the drivers and the cars. Excitement ran high.

Then came the first rays of the sun and with it the roar of the race. Screaming engines permeated all of Monaco, loud, close, far and soft. Between the unintelligible reporting of the announcer over the loudspeakers plus the echo of the cars bouncing off the buildings and hills, the thrill of the sport was like a fever in the blood.

Fans dotted the scene before them like bits of pepper in a pasta dish. Some were draped over balconies, others hung out of windows, still others looked through the holes in fences all along the route. When Cesar Villon roared by, there was an explosion of noise that probably broke a few eardrums.

Greer looked over at Olivia who was being hugged by one of the guys in the excitement of the moment. She nudged Piper who put her lips to her ear so she could hear her. “Seeing Villon whiz by has made this trip for our sister.”

“I’m glad one of us can go home with a good memory.” Greer’s temper was still as hot as a firecracker.

“When do you want to head for that youth hostel Simon told us about. I’m ready to pass out from lack of sleep.”

“You’re not the only one. Let’s go.”

They called to Olivia who nodded and started making her way toward them. The guys tried to talk the three of them into staying. The only way Olivia could persuade Gerard to let her go was to tell him to come by the hostel that evening. By then they’d be ready to party.

“He drew me a map, guys,” she said as soon as she reached the aisle of the bleachers. “With this crowd it’s about an hour’s walk from here.”

“After yesterday’s bike ride, it’ll be a piece of cake.”

Max instructed the helicopter pilot to fly over the
Piccione
again. Since it had been determined that their prize pigeons had flown off the villa balcony while he and his cousins had been picking Fabio’s brains for information about the guests’ reactions to the news, there’d been no trace of them. Not at the Nice airport, not at the train station.

“Every police officer had been given a description and was told to call in at the first sign of them. Where in the hell could they have gotten to so fast without being detected?”

His cell phone rang. It was Nic who’d been working with the police on the ground. “Did you find them?”

“No. We’ve checked with the concierge of every hotel. There’s been no report of seeing them at the reception counters. They haven’t asked for a room. What about the boat?”

“Fabio says they haven’t stepped foot on it,” Max muttered.

“Dios!”
Nic thundered.

None of them wanted to entertain the thought that the women had been so desperate to get away from them, they’d asked a lift from some predators who had no interest in racing and only came to Monaco for just such an opp—

“Hang on, Nic. Luc’s calling.” He put him on hold and clicked to Luc. “Any news?”

“They’re seven blocks from the villa!”

“What?”
His heart practically leaped out of his chest.

“I just saw them on the TV screen while a cameraman was panning the lower portion of the route chatting with fans. They’re being very cozy with a bunch of enamored college guys sitting on some bleachers bearing a Villon banner.

“Mon Dieu— I don’t know where my mind has been not to think of that first! The stand is next to the corner of the Rue de Cypres. If I didn’t have this damn leg holding me back—”

“You
have
your leg! That’s the most important thing, and it’s going to get better. Because of you, we now know where our pigeons have come to roost. Nic’ll round them up. In the meantime I’ll instruct the pilot to fly over the area so I can keep an eye on them. I’ll call you back as soon as I know anything more.”

He hung up, gave the pilot new instructions, then clicked on to Nic and told him the situation.

“I’m on my way now with the police,” his cousin responded with a noise in his throat that sounded oddly emotional to Max. Was it possible Nic was coming back to life after all these months?

Max waited till the helicopter had reached the desired vicinity. Using his binoculars, he zeroed in on the stand in question, but he didn’t see the face he was looking for. No hair of spun gold. The knowledge that the women had already fled the scene hit him like a kick in the gut.

“Keep circling,” he rapped out to the pilot while he waited for Nic to arrive. In a few more minutes his cousin approached in a police car, followed by two more patrol vans. He and half a dozen officers got out and started in
terrogating everyone on the bleachers. It seemed to go on a long time.

Eventually he noticed four of the spectators being escorted to the vans. Good. They knew something!

Before long Max received the call he’d been waiting for. “Nic?”

“The women have gone to a local youth hostel on the Avenue Prince Pierre.”

Unbelievable.

“Our witnesses refused to cooperate until we threatened them with a night in jail for obstruction of justice. No doubt they were planning to meet them there later for a few nights on the road together,” his voice grated.

Max ground his teeth so hard, pain shot through his jaw. “How much lead time do we have on them?”

“Probably forty minutes.”

“It’s enough for Luc to set things up the way we want. I’ll meet you back at the villa.”

After clicking off, he phoned Luc and let him know what was happening.

“Leave it all to me, Max. By the time you both get here, we’ll be able to relax and catch some sleep before tonight.”

Sleep? What was that?

Since the moment he’d followed Signorina Greer inside the San Giorgio church in Portofino where he’d first glimpsed her face in the candlelight, he’d felt an unprecedented stirring in his blood.

The sight of her distinctive profile, the texture of her skin giving off a glow of natural pearls, those violet orbs—all had kept his legs planted in the shadows where he could feast his eyes on her without detection.

She had a lovely body. In the flattering sundress, she was the essence of classic femininity. The kind that would grow more beautiful when she became a mother.

Haunted by that image, he’d left the church ahead of her, hungry and restless for the one thing in life that would always elude him.

“Max?”

“Yes?”

“Are you all right?”

“Of course.”

“If you say so,
mon ami.
” There was a click as he replaced the receiver.

“W
E DON’T
have individual rooms,
mesdemoiselles.
Our dorms have four bunk beds each, eight people to a room. Right now we only have four beds left in the whole center.”

“Is it an all women’s dorm?”

The receptionist at the Centre de Jeunesse Pierre shook her head. “We don’t make distinctions here.”

Of course not.

Greer turned to her sisters. “I don’t think I can go on without some sleep.”

“I can’t, either,” Piper murmured. “You can bet these are the only four beds available in Monaco.”

“I don’t see we have a choice, guys,” Olivia declared.

“Agreed.” Greer pulled out her wallet and handed the receptionist the credit card. At the rate they were spending money, there would be no profit to bank at the end of the year.

So far they were out their designer luggage, their wardrobes, their bikes and $15,000 they would have to give back to Mr. Carlson. If it hadn’t been for the generosity of Simon and the boys, they would have been forced to buy breakfast, too.

The woman handed them three sets of clean sheets, blankets and pillows. “You’re in dorms four, five and six upstairs.”

They wouldn’t even be in the same room. “Thank you.”

At the top of the stairs they paid a visit to the rest room before moving on to the dorms. To their relief, each one
was empty. Naturally no backpackers would be hanging around here. Not while the most exciting event in the world’s most romantic spot was happening right outside the building.

All the bottom bunks had already been claimed by other guests. Olivia looked around her dorm. “If our luck holds, no one will show up until tonight. By then we’ll have had our sleep and can head for the train station.”

“Let’s set our watch alarms for 7:00 p.m. That’ll give us a good few hours to recuperate.”

They hugged Olivia goodnight, then went to their separate dorms. Somehow Greer found the strength to climb up the ladder and fix her bed before collapsing on top of it. Yet five minutes later she was still awake.

Max’s last words to the guests in the drawing room kept running through her mind.
Welcome to the family.

His mockery, meant as the final affront before he put her on the plane home from Nice had been particularly hurtful.

Greer knew why… She was in love for the first and only time in her life.

Hot tears gushed from her eyes. She buried her face in the pillow. It was a good thing her sisters weren’t in the room. They’d never seen her cry over a man before. And they never would!

When next she became cognizant of her alarm going off, she was so out of it she rolled off the mattress to get up like she usually did, then screamed to feel herself falling.

“Oh!” she cried out again when a pair of strong masculine arms caught her before she went splat on the floor.

“Easy,
signorina
.”

“Max!”

She blinked several times while she tried to figure out
if she was awake or dreaming. Right now the black eyes staring into hers at such close range were alive with flame.

“How did you find me? What are you doing here?” She was so in love with him and so cross with him at the same time she couldn’t see straight. “Where are all the other people?”

“What other people? Don’t I even merit a ‘grazie’ for saving your life?” he whispered against her lips, nibbling them as if they were delicious morsels he couldn’t resist.

She groaned because he was kindling the ache that had never gone away since he’d first kissed her. Rivulets of desire coursed through her body which yearned toward his. She was trembling with needs he’d brought to life, needs that would never go away.

“Put me down first and we’ll talk about it,” she begged in a breathless voice. This close to him she couldn’t think.

His mouth roamed over her face, her nose, her eyes, her hair. “I can’t do that,
bellissima.
I’ve learned that the only way to get anywhere with you is to keep you in my arms. I want you, Greer. I want you with a hunger you couldn’t possibly comprehend.”

His mouth was doing the most incredible things to her. In his arms she was learning the meaning of rapture. When they got tangled up with each other on the narrow lower bunk, she couldn’t tell where one kiss ended and the next one began.

Ecstasy. That’s what it was like being kissed by Maximilliano di Varano. Ecstasy.

Her fingers twined in his raven-black hair and she found herself covering his face and throat with her mouth, savoring everything male about him while she worshipped the differences between them.

“You were right to call me a shark,” he whispered huskily as he caressed her throat with his lips. “I’d like to take bites out of you in order to make you a part of me.

“But if I did that, then you would be consumed, and I would go mad with hunger because there wasn’t any more of you, anywhere. Let me take you back to the
Piccione
where we can be alone and I can love all of you,” he begged with primitive longing.

Back to the
Piccione
? For only one night?

In that moment her heart dried up like winter’s last prune.

Deliberately misunderstanding him, she leaned over him, pressing his cheeks with her palms. Pain like she’d never known before intensified the purple glow of her eyes.

“You’ve made me so happy, I’m frightened. Do you think you could talk Fabio into letting us take the
Piccione
on a long, long honeymoon? I want to go to Elba, Monte Cristo and a hundred other islands with you. I want to experience everything with you.

“You’ve set me on fire, and now I’m the one bursting from the love I want to shower on you. I want to be all things to you. I want to live with you night and day.

“I want to have your babies,” she cried against the male mouth that had transformed her. “Beautiful, brilliant, wonderful babies just like their father.

“You won’t be doomed to swim forever alone, searching for me but never finding me. Once we’re married, you can make love to me whenever you want. Whenever I want. Whenever we both want, for the rest of our lives if we want. How does that sound to you, my darling?

“You are my darling you know,” she kissed the corner of his mouth, the lashes of his eyes, the lobes of his ears. “Don’t you know a hundred lifetimes from now I will love you even more than I love you right now?

“Yet I can’t imagine it being any stronger than it is at this very instant. There’s no man who comes close to you,
Max. I love you. I love you to the depth of my soul.” Her voice throbbed.

“I honestly didn’t know love could make me feel like this. I didn’t realize,” she whispered, her breathing shallow. “Kiss me again so I’ll know this is real.”

She sought his mouth once more with soaring passion. “I can’t wait to be your wife. I realize we haven’t known each other very long, but it doesn’t matter. Not when you’ve found your soul mate.”

Staring into the black depths of his eyes she said, “We
are
soul mates. I knew it when you asked me to guess your name, knowing such a task would have been impossible. It was the most thrilling moment for me because I knew you wanted the experience to go on and on and never be over.

“I wanted it to go on and on, too. More than anything in my life I wanted to swim in the moonlight with you. But my feelings were too intense that night, too raw. I felt like one of those white-hot stars out in space ready to implode. Oh Max, I—”

“Greer—” he spoke her name in a gravelly voice, shifting her aside so he could get to his feet.

His breathing sounded ragged. The broad chest beneath the cream knit shirt he was wearing rose and fell visibly, like he’d just run a marathon. She’d terrified him.

That was the prophecy she’d made to her sisters months ago. It had come true. She knew he would run once he thought marriage was on the cards. But it hurt with a pain from which she would never, ever recover.

She slid off the bottom bunk. “What’s wrong, darling?”

He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. His face was a study in agony. She had no idea he could look that way.

“I forgot I was dealing with a woman who has obviously never been to bed with a man before.”

Really. Her inexperience stuck out that badly? She’d thought her wild response to him was probably more uninhibited and reckless than any initiated woman he’d ever made love to before.

“No,” she answered in a bright tone. “I haven’t. I’ve never had the slightest inclination until I saw you get out of that pool and come walking toward me as if you wanted to devour me. Since then I haven’t been able to think about anything else but marrying you and making love with you for the rest of our lives.”

After a long, palpable silence, “Greer—” he said her name again. The ultimate playboy of the Riviera seemed to be choking on monosyllables. It had to be a first for him, so why wasn’t she jumping up and down with glee?

He raked a hand through his hair. “I’m afraid taking you out to the
Piccione
isn’t going to work after all.”

He’d finally been able to spit out the words, but they emerged sounding like a tormented whisper. How weird!

With the entire female population throwing themselves at him from every direction, why was it causing him such upheaval? Why such suffering to deny himself the pleasure of a one-night stand with a virginal American from the wrong side of the tracks?

“What do you mean?” she cried out in spurious alarm.

When he didn’t say anything else, she decided it was time to help him out.

“Why don’t you just admit you would love to make love to me, but not if it means getting hitched first!”

“Greer—”

She laughed. If her sisters had been present, they would have called it her cruel laugh.

“Take it easy, Max. It’s not the end of the world. You’re off the hook. You always have been.”

His dark head reared back, exposing his hard jaw. “Explain that remark.”

Putting her hands in her back pockets, she smiled up at him. “I’ll be happy to. At the jail when I was telling you about the Husband Fund, I’m afraid so many other matters were discussed at the same time, I left out the most important part.”

“Which part?” he demanded in a chilly tone.

Greer cocked her head to the side. “This’ll take a few minutes. Would you like to sit down first?”

Like a magnificent colossus, he remained standing there.

“Fine. Have it your way.” She flashed him another sunny smile. “My sisters and I never worried about getting married, but our parents did.”

His scowl was quite frightening. “We’ve been over this ground before.”

“True, but there’s more. Unfortunately you have to be patient because I’m a woman, and you know how women are. They have to lay everything out and build up to it, analyze it, discuss it, and dissect it to death before they get to the point.

“It’s just one of the great differences between the sexes men have so much problem with. Especially a man like you.”

His mouth thinned. It delighted her, even if the withered prune which had been her heart was dissolving fast.

“As I was saying, our parents were concerned enough about the situation that during Mr. Carlson’s reading of a letter our father had written to us, Daddy asked us to watch a movie about these ladies who try to find millionaires to marry.”

“I’ve seen it,” he interjected in a low voice.

“Of course you have. Anyway, the whole idea was to put ideas in our head to find a rich man and settle down.

“The film was a complete turnoff.”

She paused. “You’re pacing. Why don’t you sit down? I told you this would take a while.”

If looks could kill. “Go on.”

“The loss of both our parents who needed constant nursing care over a couple of years was harder on us than we thought. After Daddy died, we moved across the street to a basement apartment so the house could be sold to pay the bills. I guess we didn’t see that we needed a break until our landlady suggested to Piper we could use a vacation.

“But you know how it is when you’re a workaholic, because that’s what we are. We loved college, love our work and find it much more stimulating than anything else we do.

“So…until Mrs. Weyland brought up the idea of a vacation, we really hadn’t entertained the thought. But with $15,000 suddenly in hand, it sounded kind of fun to go somewhere exciting. If only the money didn’t have to be used to find a husband which none of us wanted.

“That’s when Olivia reminded us we were the Duchesses of Kingston, so why not pretend
we
were the millionaires and see how many men we could get to propose?

“Piper picked up from there and said why not wear the Duchesse pendants to bring the really hard-core playboys out of the woodwork?

“Both their ideas were brilliant. At that point I merely suggested that we vacation on the Riviera if we wanted to hit the jackpot. When any of those phony playboys actually did propose, they would disappear back into the woodwork as soon as we told them we were the poor Duchesses from Kingston, New York, with no titles, no money, no lands.

“Then we could go home as free as the air to breathe having had a fabulous time visiting the home of our ancestor and maybe picking up new markets for our calendar business.”

By now Max’s eyes resembled shards of black ice. He
shifted his weight, making her aware of his intimidating height. “So if I had proposed—”

“If you
had
proposed fair and square, I would have told you the truth about myself knowing you would bail.”

“Which was exactly what you wanted to happen.”

Ah hah. His Italian ego had been dented again.

“I thought I’d already made that clear. But to reiterate, yes! That’s exactly what we wanted to happen. Don’t you see? We would have obeyed Daddy’s stipulation to try and find a husband.

“Could we help it if in the end our eager suitors took back their proposals when they realized there was no gold at the end of the rainbow?”

She flashed him her diabolical smile. “I certainly didn’t have to worry about you though, did I. Maximilliano di Varano baled ahead of time because you don’t need to force a woman to have her, and you’re not stupid. Otherwise you wouldn’t be chief counsel for the House of Parma-Bourbon even if you are the son of a duc.”