“Welcome home, Evelyne.”
She didn’t say anything, so he got out of the car and skirted the hood to open her door for her. He even helped her out. Her gaze stayed glued to the ocean beyond the house.
“Gabriel…” Her eyes were wide. “This is… Is this yours?”
“No, it is Francesco Marino’s. He’s an eccentric Italian billionaire—a false identity I have used before when needed. Now he has a young wife, Lina, and they have hermited themselves away in America to enjoy their newly found wedded bliss.” He made a grand sweeping gesture to encompass the house and sea.
He enjoyed the stories, creating them, implementing them. In his business, it paid to have an identity or two that had no connection to who he really was. Both for himself and sometimes his clients.
“Locals will occasionally catch a glimpse of one of them on the balconies,” he continued. “But never in town. The nearest town could never meet their extravagant needs anyhow.”
“But… Even with these fake identities, you bought this, you paid for it, you…”
“Have no worries, Evelyne, I can certainly afford it,” he said dryly. “And a land holding, even under a fake identity, is never a bad thing to have.”
“It’s so big. It’s so…much.” She shook her head. “Are you to stay with me?” she asked.
“Not for long. It is too dangerous. I must return to Italy and work as soon as possible, before King Enzo starts concerning himself with my whereabouts. But I will stay long enough to get you settled, under the guise of being out of contact range on a job in Moscow. Now, you are not to have any contact with Alexandre, or anyone back in Alis, but either of you can contactmeand I will act as careful conduit. But I would relegate this only to emergencies, Evelyne. This is very delicate.” He began to lead her toward the house. “I will visit on occasion, to take care of whatever necessities arise, but it must be done carefully, so it will be infrequent. Eventually, we will hire you some staff, but for now, you will have to make do on your own.”
He pulled the key he’d procured in New York from his pocket, unlocked the front door and gestured her inside.
She stepped in, a bit like someone suffering some kind of shock. Like she didn’t quite know how to put one foot in front of the other.
“It is yours, essentially, for the time being. As long as your father searches for you, it will be your home and refuge.”
She turned in a circle in the soaring foyer, white and a bit bland. The whole house was rather commercial and bland feeling.
Evelyne’s dark, gold-flecked gaze met his. “Why are you doing this? I know you and Alex are friends, best friends, but this is…above and beyond friendship.”
He considered just what to tell her. Thiswasabove and beyond, and while he liked to think of himself as a good man, now that Alex had put him on that path, he would not have gone tosuchlengths for anyone else. Though he liked to think he would have gone tosomelengths to help a young woman escape what would no doubt become an abusive situation.
Still, the truth of his bond with Alexandre, the truth ofhim, was not something he shared with anyone. But there was a way of phrasing anything that left people thinking they knew the answer to something, even if they didn’t.
It was how he’d lived his adult life, skating the surface of any real connections. Anything that might threaten to pull him under again.
“Years ago, I almost made a very grave mistake,” Gabriel said conversationally, walking through the foyer and into one of the sitting rooms, knowing she’d follow. The furniture here was almost cozy, though still too much white to be a welcoming room. “One that would have ended my life—literally or figuratively, one way or another. Your brother was the one who stopped me. He saved me—and had to fight tooth and nail to do it—and I owe him for this.”
“So this is your payment?” she asked carefully.
“It is my thank-you gift.” He corrected her, because friendship did not require payment, to his way of thinking. He gestured at the window, which was the entire length of the wall. It looked out over the crashing ocean below.
Evelyne stepped to the glass. The cloudy light gave her an ethereal glow, even with the silly sweatsuit emblazoned with mountains andInterlakenin looping script. She would need a wardrobe, a way to get groceries without being seen, little things like that to keep her well the next few weeks while he made sure nothing connected him to her disappearance or her to Maine.
She all but pressed her nose to the window, clearly delighted by the view. Which gave him a satisfaction he did not wish to think too deeply on.
“Sometimes I wonder if he’s really as good as he seems to me. Can anyone be that saintly?”
There could only be oneheshe was referring to. “Sometimes I wonder this myself. He has always seemed…otherworldly, almost, in his determination to the right thing. If he was a terrible man, like your father, I could understand it. Hisright thingwouldn’t be right at all, if he was like the king. But he understands real right, and insists it be done. I do not know how, but heisgood.”
“I think it must have come from my mother,” she said quietly. “He was almost eight years old when she died. He remembers her. She must have taught him.” Evelyne looked back at him as if hoping he could confirm this.
But he could not. While Gabriel remembered their mother in a vague kind of way, he had moved away from Alis about a year before the queen had died. On top of that, there were subjects Alexandre never broached. No matter what.
His mother was one of them.
“Well, I do not know how to thank you, Gabriel. Even if you’ve done this for Alex, you have taken great pains to do something that will benefit me.” She reached out, took his hands in hers and gave them a squeeze. It was a very royal move, but the warmth of her small hands, the warmth of her words…they had an effect on him, royal or no.
The gold in her eyes, the fervency in her voice seemed to spread a heating warmth through him. That alluring temptation he had little experience resisting, because what temptation couldn’t he indulge in?
