That asshole, Uncle Jules, picked off a few of my coalition. He’s called a Crown Council meeting for THREE O’CLOCK. I can’t hold him off any longer. Where are you? I’m trying. Jesus, where are you?
Maxence, are you getting these? Christine said you came back to the palace in a helicopter and took right back off again. So at least you’re alive even though YOU’RE NOT ANSWERING ME. What’s going on?
Before that, a long string of texts from Alexandre asking, and then demanding, and then begging to know if Max was all right after the mass shooting at the Sea Change Gala.
Maxence texted to him,On my way.
He jogged back to the bedroom, grabbing trousers and a shirt out of his closet and yanking them on. “The council meeting started.”
“What?” She gestured toward the sunlit window. “It’s not even four o’clock.”
Maxence tossed his phone on the bed beside her so she could read the texts. “The Crown Council meeting started ten minutes ago. I have to gonow.”He lifted his phone to his ear to call Magnus Jensen to arrange for security.
Dree vaulted out of the bed and sprinted for her drawer, flailing as she pulled a white sundress over her head and stretched white panties over her ankles. “I’m coming with you.”
“I need to leavenow.”
She trotted into the bathroom, and Max heard some fabric rustling. Then she returned and ran to the living room, ruffling her damp hair with her fingers and jamming her feet in the high-heeled pumps lying on the floor on the way.
Maxence told Magnus Jensen over his phone, “The council meeting was moved up. We need to go to the throne room immediately.”
Dree snagged the key fobs that Magnus had left them, shoving one in her sundress’s pocket and one in Max’s pants pocket, and then grabbed her wrinkled jacket from last night’s formal dress off the floor. “You’re not going anywhere without me.”
Chapter Eighteen
CROWN COUNCIL
Dree
The high-heeled pumps Dree had been wearing for the last eighteen hours werekillingher feet. Her left pinkie toe might be mangled forever.
Why, oh why, hadn’t she left her running shoes in Maxence’s apartment? Not that she ever went running. Or her hiking boots from Nepal?
She was trying not to limp as they sped through the corridors of the palace.
OMG, this was it,the Crown Council meeting.
But Max’s hand-picked successor, his cousin Nico, was dead.
This might not go well.
Dree wanted to shine a spotlight in Max’s eyes and demand answers from him about what the hell had happened to him last night, whether he’d been the victim of a kidnapping or a capture or just a mistake orwhat.But, as soon as Max had talked to Magnus Jensen on the phone, those mercenary guys had swarmed into Maxence’s living room and announced they could immediately escort them to the Crown Council election meeting.
Dammit.
She wished she could have at least grabbed different shoes from her room downstairs. She’d barely gotten her girls tucked into a bra she’d had in his bathroom and the white sundress she’d stuffed in a drawer in Max’s apartment for less obvious walks of shame, shoved that panic-button key fob in her pocket becausethe sundress had pockets,and then the door had popped open, and then they were leaving.
Maxence had sucked on her right nip so hard that she might have a hickey on it, which was totally worth it, but the loose cotton of her sundress rubbed it the wrong way.
She’d grabbed the little black jewelry box that she’d carried in her bosom since Maxence had shoved it into her hands the night before and stuffed it into her bra again, arranging her girls so the jewelry box wasn’t poking her too much. A bruise was forming on her rib right near the bottom of her cleavage from that thing. The velvet didnothingto cushion it.
Considering the whole one-knee and proposal thing that Maxence had done at the gala the night before, theremustbe a ring in the box,right?
If the box had earrings in it, guys didn’t bend the knee and say romantic stuff like that. Dree’s heart swelled with the memory because it had been one of the only things keeping her going last night while she’d been lying on the floor of that closet.
But she wanted Max to do the wholerevealthing and show it to her. Then she could say yes, and he would put it on her finger for forever.
They should do ittogether.
