Pierre held up his hands. “Tell me what is acceptable.”
Relief softened her shoulders. “Stand beside me here. Lean around a little, and it’ll look like we’re hanging on each other.”
Pierre did as he was told and kept his hands on his legs.
Flickagrinned and snapped the shot, making sure that she looked jubilant and glad to be home. Being passive-aggressive about this would only make things worse.
She checked the picture to make sure that she had framed it so that the alpine mountaineering pin she wore wasn’t particularly visible, and she held the phone out for Pierre to see.
He peered at it, then smiled. “Perfect. I’m sure they’ll captionit with something like how glad you are to be home in Monaco with your husband.”
She nodded. Yes, of course, they would.
He glanced at his feet. “I read your posts from last night. Did you believe they were going to kill you?”
“Absolutely,” Flicka said.
He frowned, and one of his eyes twitched. “I am very glad you got away. If anything had happened to you, I would have been distraught.”
He didn’t need to have said that. “Thank you.”
“I should like to hug you, but I understand if that isn’t acceptable.”
“It’s not, Pierre.” She handed him the phone. “I need to check on Alina.”
“One more thing,” Pierre said.
Oh, that was always a bad sign. “Yes?”
“Max said that he told you about my uncle’s health.”
Maxence had told Flicka that Prince Rainier—the current, reigning Prince ofMonaco—had had a massive stroke and was in a persistent vegetative state, meaning he was brain-dead. “Max said he came home to say goodbye to the Prince.”
Pierre nodded. “Now that you’ve returned, we will remove my uncle from life support. We’ll notify everyone now, and we’ll have the funeral as soon as possible after he passes, within a day or two.”
Usually, state funerals required at leasta week of preparation. Pierre seemed unnaturally eager to bury his uncle.
He said, “I’m afraid that I must ask you to attend the funeral at my side and to perform any duties relating to my coronation.”
“Of course, Pierre,” Flicka said. “I assumed that would be part of it.”
He half-bowed from the waist and kept his eyes on the floor. “Flicka, I may have been trying to flatter you when I saidyou were the most gracious woman I’ve ever met, but I do mean it, and I thank you.”
A man walked into the office, through the open door.
Flicka barely glanced at him, other than to ascertain that he wore the generously cut suit of a bodyguard concealing guns.
Even she didn’t really look at bodyguards sometimes.
He spoke to Quentin Sault. “Sir, you are needed in the operations room.”
The manspoke Monegasque Italian with a perfect accent, so Flicka wasn’t sure why she scrutinized him more closely.
Maybe it was his dark red hair curling above his blue eyes, though his haircut was much more military than the last time she’d seen Aiden Grier, the ginger Scot who worked for Rogue Security.
She’d seen him only the one time in Geneva, just before they’d boarded the train to Paris, whenhe’d walked from the SUV that Magnus Jensen had been driving to the other one, but Flicka never forgot a face, either. He’d been the one who had “served” Pierre with the divorce documents as she and Raphael had watched via webcam from Las Vegas, but his accent then had been a thick Scottish burr.
Flicka looked away from Aiden because she didn’t know whose side he was on. His accent sounded likehe was a native-born Monegasque, and maybe he was.
Maybe Pierre hadn’t had a spy in theWelfenlegion.
Maybe the spy had infiltrated Rogue Security, instead.
