“No, seriously. That waiter-guybowedandbacked out of the room.”
“Waiters do that sometimes. We’ll file for the annulment directly afterward, August at the latest. Now, what is your offer for the settlement of such a contract?”
He wasnotgoing to derail me. “You showed up at that Billionaire Sanctuary club in the same car asPrince Harry,the his-royal-highness dude fromEngland,and thenthatwaiter guybowedat you.What is going on?”
Then,finally,Nico looked up from his breakfast at me and stared straight into my eyeballs, the blue of his eyes practically glowing in the white and greige hotel room. “You’re right. Full disclosure, or the contract won’t be valid.”
Where was the guy who’d said all those heart-deep things last night that made my panties damp? “Yeah, ‘full disclosure.’ That’s hot.”
He waved his hand at my chair. “This will take a minute. Sit down and eat.”
“No. I want to know?—”
“Sit, and eat.”
I sat. “Okay.”
Damn, that low, measured voice of his. It just—calmed me downto do what he said.
He chewed a raspberry with yogurt, staring into the middle distance over my shoulder, and swallowed. “All right. Let’s do this. My name is Nicolai Petrovich Romanov.”
His English accent disappeared on those last three words, his name. Darker, more guttural notes surfaced.
“Yeah, that’s what the priest called youduring our wedding vowslast night, and then you called me Mrs. Romanov.”
He blinked his clear blue eyes at me twice then shook his head as if flinging wrong thoughts out of it. “Damn, I wish I could remember the ceremony.”
“So? That’s your name, and now it’s kind of my name. Sort of. For a while. So what?”
“The problem is thatifRussia still had a tsar, an emperor,Iwould be the tsar of Russia. I would be Tsar Nicolai the Third.”
I’d never been to college like Jimmy, but I read books. I knew what a tsar was. “Like aking?”
“Except Russia was more than a kingdom.” He turned his head toward the tall windows beside the table overlooking the desert dust and dirt of Las Vegas. The sun suffused his face with golden light, but he didn’t seem to really be looking at anything. “We conquered an empire. We were emperors, though we called ourselves tsars, a word descended from the title of Caesar.” He sighed and vibrated his head in a small shake. “Such pathetic self-importance.”
“But—” I wracked my brain, practically turning it over and shaking it out. “But Russia doesn’t have an emperor anymore.”
“Correct. The House of Romanov was deposed in 1917 in a rather bloody manner.”
The Communist Revolution. “Yeah, I heard about that one.”
“However, under strict male-primogeniture Pauline laws, which is the order of succession instituted by Tsar Paul the First,ifthe royal family were ever restored, I would likely be the one on the throne.”
“Okay, so, like—” I wasn’t even sure what I should say to that. “But you aren’t. On a throne, I mean.”
He looked back at me, that wistful moment gone. Only a downward twitch of his eyebrows broke his expressionless mask of casual interest. “No tsar has been anointed and crowned in Russia for generations, so no, I’m definitelynotthe tsar. Maybe more like an honorary heir or a claimant prince, perhaps.”
“Okay, well, that’s cool. I mean, it’s cool that youcouldbe the one.”
He looked back to his phone, sitting face-up by his breakfast. His frown turned into a scowl at the screen. “But it won’t ever happen, and it shouldn’t. I’m not a king. There should be no kings because heredity rulers and nepotism should be abolished. Royal blood is nothing but an illusion, a magic trick we played on the world. I’m the prince of smoke and mirrors.”
“Heh. Prince of smoke and mirrors. That sounds like you’re a fae high lord or something. What’s your wingspan, batboy?”
When he looked back up at me, his face didn’t move in the slightest, like he was tanned porcelain, like he was solid sandstone, for two wholebuh-dump,buh-dump,heartbeats while I died and turned to dust inside, but then he tilted his head and asked, “I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing. Never mind. So, you’re, like, rich?”
“Oh no, not at all.” He waved a hand in front of his face as he looked down at his feet. “Rich. Heavens, no. Probably upper-middle class, I’d guess. I don’t want for anything. I’m comfortable.”
