Once Upon a Time: Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka Read online

  His Serene Highness Pierre Grimaldi was a member of an important family and had wealth, power, prestige, and fame. He was exactly the type of man whom Flicka, Princess of Hannover and Cumberland, should marry.

  Dieter’s heart cramped as Flicka sobbed, her shoulders heaving.

  Her bridesmaids pressed tissues to her cheeks, trying to save her bridal makeup. Her breath shuddered in her body, rustling the silk of her white wedding gown.

  Sunlight sparkled on the diamond tiara in her golden hair.

  Dieter Schwartz stood with his back to the wall, ramrod-straight and stoic, and scanned for danger.

  He didn’t move a muscle, not a twitch, not a lift of a hand, not a blink.

  That right didn’t belong to him.

  His body ached to stride across the room, hold Flicka in his arms, and tell her that everything would be all right, that he would make everything right for her on her wedding day.

  Because Dieter wanted happiness for her. He wanted Flicka’s marriage to be a real one, a happy one, not a union begun out of obligation that spiraled into argument and resentment.

  Like his marriage had.

  But he couldn’t walk across the room and tell her that.

  She wouldn’t want to hear it.

  Especially from Dieter.

  The door flipped open, and everyone looked.

  Everyone looked except Dieter, who glanced over, determined that the man entering was not a threat, and resumed scanning the room and windows for what else might happen during the distraction. He settled back on his heels, ready.

  Wulfram von Hannover, Flicka’s older brother and Dieter’s employer, strode across the dressing room to Flicka. He shooed away the fluttering bridesmaids with one hand as he approached and said, “He will sit in the front pew to show his support for the wedding. He will say nothing during the ceremony. I will walk with you down the aisle and give you away.”

  The problem had been Flicka’s father, as usual. Dieter had heard tales from Wulf for years before he had first met the man, so he had been prepared for the malignant narcissism that had emanated from the old man’s every wrinkled pore. Nevertheless, the old man’s cold inhumanity had riled a dark anger in Dieter, who afterward believed every word Wulf had told him about his barren childhood. That man’s evil was the reason that Wulf had raised Flicka since she had been six and he had been fifteen, and it had reared its ugly head yet again.

  Flicka nodded, and then her face crumpled into tears again as she reached with both hands up toward Wulf. He scooped her up in his arms and cradled her.

  Dieter looked toward the windows.

  “He won’t say anything,” Wulf crooned to her. “If anything happens, I have men ready to escort him out. He’ll be gone before anyone notices a commotion.”

  Wulf made eye contact with Dieter over her blond head.

  Dieter nodded. Yes, he would roughly escort that self-important jackass out of the church, gladly.

  He would do anything to make today perfect for Flicka.

  Flicka huddled against Wulf’s shoulder and looked for all the world like a lost child instead of a princess bride. “I always wanted you to give me away. He’s been insisting for months, but I always wanted you.”

  Wulf said, “I wanted to.”

  Dieter breathed and watched the windows, looking for the long shadow of a club or a gun muzzle, and listened to the patter of shoes sauntering on the other side of the wall.

  Calm, he remained as calm as a sniper readying his body to take a shot, steadying his breath and waiting for the pause between heartbeats to squeeze the trigger past the breakpoint.

  A few minutes later, Flicka’s brother left to see to some arrangements, and her bridesmaids fluttered out to prepare something else.

  Dieter was alone with Flicka.

  He stood against the wall, his spine and palms flat against the cool stone, and didn’t move.

  Quiet descended over the room.

  Flicka tilted her head back and dripped eye drops in her eyes, presumably to clear any redness leftover from crying.

  She said, “I know you’re back there.”

  Dieter cleared his throat because it felt unusually tight. “Wulfram assigned me to your security detail. He has qualms about Pierre’s Secret Service’s priorities.”

  “You’ve been skulking around the whole week, watching me.”

  “Watching other people who are watching you, and checking the windows, and the hallways, and the doors. Personal protective services watch the environment, not the subject.”

  “Is he expecting you to talk me out of this?” Flicka asked.

  “I don’t think so.” Dieter scanned the windows, still alert, and only caught glimpses of her sunshine hair and porcelain skin.

  And the regal way she sat ramrod-straight in the chair, angry.

  She asked, “You’ve been his batman for—how long now?”

  She knew. He said it, anyway. “We mustered out of the Swiss Army together just over ten years ago.”

  “Yes, and you’ve watched over him and me ever since like an avenging, fallen angel.”

  He didn’t like that talk of angels. He didn’t want people thinking of the names of angels around him. “That’s my job.”

  “Why don’t you talk me out of it?”

  He watched her through her mirror, but her face was as serene as always, as composed as a princess. “Do you want me to?”

  Using just her fingertips, Flicka aligned the little cosmetic compacts and pots into neat, straight rows. Her sure fingers alighted on each, moving them independently of the others, as deftly as when she played the piano. Organizing. Perfecting even the cosmetics. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You’ve been crying all week. Every time I’ve seen you, you’ve been near tears or actually sobbing.”

  “That’s patently untrue.” Her voice did not waver, but it was true. Her whole body told him that she was about to break.

  “You’ve cried more this week than the summer you turned thirteen.”

  “What a ridiculous comment.” Her mouth set in a firm line.

  “I can get you out of here,” Dieter told her. “We will stand up and walk out. Six of my men will surround us when we open that door. Pierre and his men won’t be able to touch you or talk to you. I’ll radio Friedhelm to pull the SUV around. We’ll have you back at the hotel in Wulf’s suite or an airport before anyone knows you’ve left.”

  “I couldn’t leave everyone just sitting there in the church. It’s the social event of the year, maybe the decade.”

  “Wulf will tell them that the wedding is off. I think he would take a grim delight in it, to tell you the truth.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “Besides, I’ve already married Pierre.”

  “The legal ceremony can be annulled in an hour. Wulfram’s lawyers are still here in Paris.”

  “That’s not the problem,” she said.

  “I will say there was a security threat. You don’t have to cancel the ceremony, but postponing it a few days would give you time to think.”

  “Think about what, Dieter? What on God’s green Earth could I think about? This wedding will go on as planned, and tonight the three different receptions will dump millions of dollars, many millions, into my charities.”

  “You can’t sell yourself like that, even for charity.”

  “Oh, Dieter. You said yourself that we royal people are different. It’s not selling myself. It’s just utilizing the opportunity to raise funds. That’s my place, to make the world a better place. This wedding and those receptions will do that.”

  “I saw the pictures on the gossip websites. They’re atrocious.”

  “That’s just Pierre doing, what is it the Americans say? ‘Sowing his wild oats’ before the wedding? I don’t even care.”

  “A wedding isn’t magic. He’s not going to change, Durchlauchtig.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Flicka said, her voice lowering in fury. “I told you to never call me th
at again.”

  Almost two years ago, she had told him never to call her that again. “But the fact—”

  “The fact remains that von Hannovers aren’t cut out for love, are we? We’re meant to make an appropriate marriage, just like our royal ancestors, just like my father keeps harping on.”

  “Even your father thinks Pierre isn’t good enough for you.”

  “So he’s said, over and over.”

  “And Wulfram is in love with Rae Stone. She’s not royal. She’s the most absolutely normal woman I’ve ever met.” Rae was Flicka’s brother’s new girlfriend, his very new girlfriend, the one he’d fallen suddenly and violently in love with almost as soon as he’d laid eyes on the woman. Dieter would have lost thousands, betting that Wulfram von Hannover would never have fallen in love with anyone, ever.

  Flicka rearranged the makeup pots on her desk with quick flips of her fingers. “No, he’s not.”

  “I think he is, and I think she loves him. They’re torturing each other with it.”

  Flicka snorted half a laugh. “Of course they are, but she’s not enough for him, right, Dieter? She’s not appropriate. Wulf would be better off putting her back on that jet back to America and holing up in Schloss Marienburg for a month in a misguided attempt to drink himself to death to get over her.”

  Dieter’s heart caught in his throat. “I’m saying that maybe von Hannovers can fall in love with a good person like Rae, but they shouldn’t have a crush on a person who is a hollow jackass, is running away from other things, is a decade older than they are, and will break them.” He wasn’t talking about Pierre. “Maybe they should fall in love with someone better.”

  “Well, then, Wulf is luckier than I am, I guess.”

  “Flicka, I can get you out of here. Say the word, and I’ll carry you out in my arms if that’s what it takes.”

  She looked up at him through the mirror, a reflection of an exquisitely beautiful young woman framed with dark wood in the bridal dressing room of a church, her golden hair shining in the sun. Her white dress blazed in the sunlight, and a diamond tiara sparkled in her hair so blond that it was almost silvery. A gossamer veil flowed down her back and puddled on the floor.

  Flicka told him, “We both know that can’t happen.”

  Just Another Bright, Sunny Day

  Flicka von Hannover

  I married Pierre because

  everyone was counting on me,

  even though I knew it was a mistake.

  Flicka von Hannover, Princess of Hannover and Cumberland and a host of lesser titles, married Prince Pierre Grimaldi, the heir to the throne of Monaco, on a sunny Saturday morning in late March.

  White and pale pink flowers filled the French cathedral, hanging from the wooden pews and draped from the soaring columns, and softly scented the air.

  Her brother Wulf, who had raised Flicka since she had been a child, walked down the aisle with her, and her father didn’t so much as cough.

  It was odd, however, as Flicka walked down the aisle beside her brother, that everyone turned toward her as she strolled like flowers following the French sun, everyone except Pierre’s uncle.

  Prince Rainier Grimaldi, who was Prince Rainier the Fourth, the ruling sovereign Prince of Monaco, stared forward as she passed, his angry gaze intent on his nephew Pierre, who was standing at the altar rail, beaming at her as she walked toward him.

  Pierre slid the wedding band onto her finger. The new ring weighed on her left hand. She just wasn’t used to it yet. It must be that way for all brides.

  She felt no Torschlusspanik, a German word that meant more than just cold feet. It meant that desperation when the world closes in as your life becomes set in concrete and crushes you.

  Indeed, settling her life with Pierre relieved Flicka from many burdens of expectation.

  After the ceremony, as always, security men gathered in formation around her as they prepared to leave the church, a phalanx of black suits as alert as terriers and as massive as tanks. Some were her brother’s men, privately employed. People might call them mercenaries.

  Others were from Pierre’s Monegasque security division, the Secret Service. Quentin Sault, the head of the security team, was near Pierre, of course. She knew a few of the other guys: Claude Brousseau, Mathys Vitale, and Jordan Defrancesco.

  Dieter Schwarz was behind her, she knew. She could practically feel him back there like heat on the back of her neck, glowering at her, disapproving of her every move.

  He had no goddamn right to do that.

  The impulse to turn around and punch him in the mouth seized her. Her fist would connect with his strong, square jaw, and she’d probably break her fingers on his masculine cheekbone.

  His storm-cloud gray eyes would look down at her, amused.

  Surely a princess wouldn’t do such a thing on her wedding day while wearing her bridal gown.

  His broken nose would bleed scarlet blood all over her white dress.

  Yeah, she probably shouldn’t.

  Ahead of Flicka, her brother Wulf and his date, Rae Stone, waited while the security guys fidgeted with their underarm holsters and in-ear communication buds. Rae’s burnished copper hair flowed down her back in a thick mass, and Wulf’s hands drifted toward her arms and shoulders as he talked with her.

  Surely, her brother couldn’t be in love with Rae.

  Infatuated, maybe.

  When Flicka had been a kid, during long winter evenings with Wulf and Dieter when they had come home from their military barracks and picked her up from boarding school, the guys had teased each other that they were both destined to be bachelors their whole lives. Sometimes Dieter had brought a woman home with him, and sometimes Wulf did. Flicka had learned not to get attached to the women because she wouldn’t see them more than a few times.

  But Wulf was acting differently around Rae.

  When Wulf was around other people, he closed down emotionally. All von Hannovers were reserved, of course. They were old royalty, like old money but far older. They were serene and mindful of their elevated social status. Flicka envisioned her own reserved demeanor like a shining suit of armor that closed around her, isolating her from upset and annoyances.

  Wulf wore his emotional armor like a tank.

  When he was around Dieter and Flicka, he was warm and open.

  Around Rae, he was acting normal.

  Or at least as normal as Flicka had ever seen him act.

  Good Lord, he was laughing out loud. He only did that behind closed doors. Usually, closed and locked doors.

  Flicka frowned, uneasy at the change in her older brother. She didn’t want him to get hurt.

  The security men rustled around her, readying themselves for the rush to the cars.

  Behind her in the crowd, Pierre was talking to his security guys in Monegasque, a bastardized Italian dialect, though she never described it that way to Pierre or anyone else from Monaco, of course. While Flicka would have liked to walk to the cars with her new husband, they were separated for security reasons. Should there be a problem, their security would each cover them rather than risk a mix-up.

  She glanced backward.

  Pierre, darkly handsome with a chiseled jaw and cheekbones, was chatting with one of his security guys who was trying to do his final checks before the dash to the cars.

  Between her and Pierre, Dieter towered over the crowd of black suits, his blond hair and gray eyes lighter than most of the other men. He caught her eye as his gaze swept past, surveilling the area and the crowd, and he frowned at the collection of black suits around her.

  Beside her, a man said in French, “All right, let’s go.”

  He was one of Pierre’s security guys, not one of Wulf’s private mercenary force. Wulf’s guys called themselves the Welfenlegion, a silly reference to the private army of the last Hannover king, George V.

  These guys were Monegasque Secret Service, however, not Welfenlegion.

  Ahead of Flicka, Wulf and Rae, accompanied by his ba
ttalion, began to walk and opened up empty space between his security personnel and Flicka.

  She walked with the security men, her high-heeled shoes a little unsteady on the cobblestones under her feet. Princesses don’t stumble, however, and she strode toward the sunlight streaming through the open double doors.

  They moved, en masse, through the hallway of the Basilica Sacre-Coeur.

  When they hit the back doors of the basilica, the security men broke their tight formation and fanned out, pushing back the crowd while Wulf, Rae, Flicka, and Pierre strode with just a few security staff to the waiting black SUVs.

  The noontime sun blazed overhead and washed their shadows down to black puddles at their feet.

  Flicka was a slim, white-draped silhouette glowing amongst the black-suited men, an easily visible target. She watched the roofline for flashes of lens flare as much as the security guys did. Her brother Wulf had been the target of an assassination attempt when he was eight. She had seen the hideous scar on his back many times, though he had tattooed a dragon over it a few years ago.

  Flicka had lived with the specter of death over her head every day of her life. She was more than aware that her own birth date was just over a year after the crazed gunman’s attack on her brothers, Wulf and Constantin. They were fraternal twins, a fact obvious from pictures of them. Wulf had startling, crystal-blue eyes, kind of like hers were dark, clear green, but Constantin’s eyes had been gray.

  Constantin had been killed in that attack, cut down in front of Wulf, and so the Hannover royal family had been short on heirs. Thus, her parents had produced another child, who had unfortunately been a girl. Her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer before they had tried for another male heir, and Flicka suspected that her father hadn’t cared enough to find another wife and impregnate her.