“It’s my wedding reception.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Pierre’s security detail frisked everyone. You set up metal detectors for anyone who didn’t have an HRH in front of their name.”
“I don’t trust those Monegasque Secret Service guys. Neither does Wulf.”
Flicka glanced around them, finally remembering some operational protocol.
She said, “Dance with me.”
Dieter looked out over the crowd of targets and potential perpetrators. “I’m on duty.”
“Everyone is looking at us because we are just standing here, arguing. We’re too conspicuous. Dance with me so people will stop staring.”
He had never danced with her in public. The lapse in protocol would have been insane. “It’s your wedding reception. You just married your husband. You should be dancing with him and mingling.”
“I have mingled and made the rounds and greeted until even I, a classic extrovert, am terribly tired of peopling.”
“Dancing with me would be inappropriate.”
She laughed. “Everybody thinks you’re like an uncle to me.”
That felt like a punch to the gut on so many levels. “Could you say anything to make me feel worse?”
“Even Wulf thinks that.”
“And there it is.” The banter felt friendly, even normal, and he succumbed to it.
“Come on.Dance with me,”Flicka insisted and held her arms out for him to slide into the waltzing position.
Not taking her in his arms would look more suspicious than just accepting.
Dieter Schwarz, son of no one and owner of nothing, former military officer with no past known before his conscription as if he had dropped out of a cloud onto a Swiss mountain peak, took the hand of Her Serene Highness Friederike Augusta von Hannover and rested his hand on her waist.
The bandage on his arm where the bullet had creased his biceps that morning bulged under his suit jacket.
The tiny beads encrusting her reception dress were sharp against his palm and fingers, and her other hand was as delicate as a breeze in his.
Twice, that day, he had felt her skin against his flesh.
He hadn’t touched her for two years.
Only a thin layer of silk and glass beads separated his palm and fingers from the soft skin of her back.
That morning when he had seen the sunlight flash on the telescopic sight atop the gun, he dove for Flicka and gathered her body and limbs under his. He’d pressed his cheek to her forehead as bullets slammed the ground around him and burrowed through the meat of his arm.
And now, this innocent dance with the bride of the evening, her slender body bending in his arms and her hand clasped in his, was the second time he had touched her today and in as many years.
Every thought drifted away from him except that Flicka von Hannover was in his arms again.
Everyone thought he was like an uncle to her.
Everyone except him and her, who knew better.
Her lithe form swayed inches from his chest. Roses perfumed her skin, and he breathed in that familiar, maddening scent.
Dieter’s attention drew back from the crowd and the vantage points above and the jackals in the room. He focused on Flicka’s warmth in his hands.
