Dree leaned down and rested her cheek against his warm chest. She braced one leg on the floor so she wouldn’t slide off his lap. “I know who you are. I saw you every day in Nepal when you worked yourself to exhaustion to try to help people there, and then you took care of me when I was too tired to work anymore, and then you stood up and fought against corruption that would have hurt them.That’swho you are.”
Maxence’s arm behind her back firmed and cuddled her more closely to his chest, but his other hand touched her knee. “No. That’s what IwishI was.”
“It was enough for me.”
His fingers wandered up past her bare knee and sneaked past the edge of the blanket. “It’s never been enough for me.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kir Sokolov, Again
Maxence
That evening’s event filled the main floor of the Grimaldi Forum Convention Center, the enormous structure with the roof tiled in the multicolored waves of the Hexa Grace. While that night’s reception for a French pharmaceutical corporation was moderately large, the Sea Change Gala scheduled for the next weekend would dwarf it by an order of magnitude because it was one of the largest events in Monaco’s winter season.
This soirée was merely another black-tie occasion where a prominent corporation paid handsomely for the privilege of associating themselves with Monaco’s royal family for a few hours. The downstairs staff referred to such occasions as “pimping out the royal family,” and they weren’t wrong. Maxence was, essentially, a hired escort for the evening for the multinational pharmaceutical company Gattefosse, although he wasn’t obligated to put out afterward.
Much of the royal family and sundry nobles were in attendance because a frisson of excitement had begun to spiral through their blue blood, anticipating that the next Crown Council meeting would be soon.
Rumors abounded.
Everyone sensed midnight was nigh.
Tick, tock.
Marie-Therese stood over by the forum’s glass wall overlooking the Mediterranean. She wore a black beaded sheath dress and was laughing with a small knot of pharmaceutical industry executives surrounding her.
Maxence was speaking with a different cohort of pharmaceutical industry executives when his cousin Nico entered the main doors. Max excused himself and zig-zagged through the crowd to intercept him. “I didn’t think you came to many events like these.”
Nico nodded solemnly. “Considering our discussion, it seemed that I should reacquaint myself with what they’re like so I can make an informed decision.”
Max had worried that Nico had only been humoring him about possibly standing for the election, so this development was a relief. “I’m glad you came.”
Nicostrato Grimaldi was a few inches over six feet and nearly as tall as Maxence, so the two of them looked over most of the crowd around them.
Max said, “I thought I saw you at the cocktail hour for Wanderlust Yacht Design at the casino last night, too.”
Nico nodded. “I’ve attended four events over the last week. These things aren’t quite as bad as I remembered, or perhaps I’ve just changed a bit in the last decade.”
Maxence turned so that they stood shoulder to shoulder and surveyed the several hundred people milling about the main floor of the convention center. The moon cast a trail of light over the Mediterranean Sea beyond the glass walls. “We’ve all become a bit more tolerant.”
The crowd moved in swirls and eddies, flowing like the shifting sands at night. The men in the room wore black-tie tuxedos, and many of the women had chosen black formals. The crystals and metallic embroidery on their gowns glittered in the darkness like stars. A few of the more daring women wore colors other than black. A flash of peacock blue in the corner, a swirl of scarlet silk over by the bar, and glimpses of white, silver, and gold caught Maxence’s eye as he surveyed the enormous space.
Curving staircases rose from the floor to the upper levels of the convention center. People moved along the steps, climbing to the larger supper buffets set out above. Chattering voices clung to the crowd like fog. Classical music—strings—filled the cavernous space that soared to the ceiling, parts of which were glass.
Many of the women in the room were friends or acquaintances of Max’s from over the years, but his gaze was restless, searching.
Maxence rubbed the outer corner of his eye. He wasn’t going to find the woman he was looking for in the crowd, so he should stop searching for Dree Clark. She was safely behind the walls of the castle. He preferred that she was safely tucked away, and yet a ridiculous glimmer of hope kept his eyes moving, looking for one of the gowns that he had bought for her in Paris that she didn’t even have anymore or the bright, sunny curls of her hair.
Nico asked him, “Could you imagine my father at one of these receptions? He doesn’t suffer fools at all, let alone gladly. If anyone made the wrong political comment, he would dump his scotch and soda over their heads and demand satisfaction.”
Maxence chuckled. “I didn’t ever see my father at an event like this.”
“I’m sorry,” Nico muttered.
Maxence turned back to him. “It was just a statement of fact. I don’t remember him much at all. I was sent away to boarding school as soon as I turned five years old.”
Nico had attended a day school in Monaco, not Le Rosey boarding school in Switzerland like Maxence and most of his friends had. “You Le Rosey kids missed a lot.”
