Maxence powered down his phone and shoved it back into his pocket.Try to track that, Estebe.
He said, “It’s past midnight, so you’ll be home later today. The flight to Mauritius is just a little over twelve hours from Genoa.”
Gita yelled down into the bottom of the boat, and two other people arrived to help her with the ropes. A man ran up the stairs to the wheelhouse on the roof with its huge radar array on the very top of the large yacht.
A smile curved the corners of Simone’s mouth. A twinkle flickered in her eyes, and she began to look more like the Simone he remembered from high school instead of the frightened woman at the casino. She braced her fists on her hips, the sleeves of his tuxedo jacket falling over her hands, and asked him, “How do you know how long the flight to Mauritius is? Because you’re right.”
He laughed and flicked his fingers in the air, dismissing her too-prescient question. “One of those odd pieces of information you pick up when you’re globetrotting.”
Simone’s relieved smile widened. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“Come on. We’ll get you settled in one of the cabins. You must be exhausted. Being pregnant does that, I’ve heard.”
“You’ve heard right,” she told him. “And yes, I’d love to sleep.”
Crew members scurried around them, readying the ship for departure.
Maxence said, “You’ll need something to wear for sleep and probably something else for the plane tomorrow. Let’s see what Pierre left on the boat.”
Simone’s smile brightened, and she held out the heavy skirt of her white dress. “Otherwise, I’ll be the best-dressed passenger on the plane to Africa.”
He laughed. “People used to wear suits to fly, but I’ll bet the flight attendants haven’t seen many beaded evening gowns.”
“It’s Pamella Roland Couture,” Simone said. “Even I think a pink ombre, crystal-beaded gown a bit much for a twelve-hour airplane ride.”
Maxence squinted a little at the gown. “I thought your dress was white.”
Simone swished the hem back and forth, the lights from the yacht club glistening on the crystals.
Upon further reflection, the hem near her toes was a deep pink that faded upward to white over the swell of her thighs.
He swallowed and said, “I guess it is pink at the bottom. I was pretty proud of myself for even noticing it was white.”
“Maxence, you are such a guy sometimes.”
He grinned at her. “Let’s get you settled in a cabin, and I’ll see if there are some clothes in the drawers that we can filch.”
The deck under Maxence’s feet moved, and he grabbed a railing and her hand to steady them both.
The yacht was underway, speeding out of Port Hercule toward Italy.
Chapter Thirteen
Monaco-Ville
Arthur
Abutler preceded the four of them—Arthur, Gen, Casimir, and Roxanne—into Pierre Grimaldi’s apartment, if a lavish suite of fifteen rooms stuffed with velvet furniture, ornate rugs, gold and silver art, historical relics, and enormous paintings and tapestries stacked two or three in a column up to the twenty-foot ceilings could be called an “apartment.” It was like calling a four-hundred-foot mega-superyacht a “boat.”
Arthur didn’t bother to look around.
He owned better.
As they approached Pierre, Casimir was already in the lead, his long legs striding over the thick rug in seconds to where Pierre was standing. Casimir was barely inside the door before he shouted, “What the fuck have you done with Maxence?”
Arthur hung back, watching. He had already calculated how the first part of this encounter must proceed, since he was entering a confrontation with two dynamic lawyers and a spitfire paralegal. Pierre’s response was the only matter in question.
He was amused at how much living in California had changed Casimir, who had been so withdrawn when they were at school. It was good to see. Arthur liked the change very much.
