Going Royal 01 - Some Like It Royal (2 page)

“Exactly. It’s a more than fair and equitable trade.” His mouth compressed, frustration knitting his brows together. It added a darker, more attractive layer of intensity—and he wore it well. Her stomach clenched and she was glad that a car separated them. She’d never been attracted to insanity before and this didn’t seem like the best time to get started.

Reaching into a pocket, Daniel pulled out a card and slid it across the roof of the vehicle. “Think about it. I have all the proof at my attorney’s office—including copies of your birth certificate, the obituary for your grandfather, photographs of your great-grandparents and a detailed report from the private investigator I hired.”

That gave her a jolt. She stared at the card like it was a snake—or worse, an apple from a snake.

“Can you do that? Can you think about it?” His fingers were steady on the card’s edge and his gaze compelling. She made the mistake of staring into those too-blue eyes. Her gut said she could trust him, but her mind shrieked like a blonde racing away from an ax murderer in a horror movie.

Nothing good ever came from trusting a stranger.

But he didn’t seem to be going anywhere. She fisted the Taser in right hand, ready to zap if he did anything funny, and reached for the card. Her fingers brushed the edge, but he didn’t let it go.

“Call me. Anytime. I’ll meet you anywhere you want. Anywhere you feel safe.” The words unlocked the band of suspicion winding around her chest.

“Okay. I’ll think about it and I’ll take your card.” The admission cost her nothing and promised even less.

He nodded and let go of the card, watching until she picked it up. But he didn’t leave, standing there and staring at her.

“Princess, I know you think I’m crazy and maybe I am. But if you do this for me, I can promise you, you won’t regret it.” Shivers chased over her skin at the quiet, solemn oath. He gave her a tight smile and a little salute, and then finally retreated to his black Lexus. She said nothing, watching him slide into the driver’s seat. The engine rumbled to life with a smooth purr and he donned sunglasses before backing the vehicle out.

She watched him until the car disappeared around the curve and descended into the garage. Fingering the card, she padded over to the wall and glanced down the six stories to the street below. Two minutes later, his Lexus pulled out and turned onto La Cienega and blended into morning traffic.

Surprising herself, she looked down at the card. She should crumple it up and throw it away. That was what logic and common sense told her to do. But she wanted coffee—she opened the door and tucked the card up under her sun visor. Climbing back into the car, she put her keys in the ignition and started the engine. No way in hell could she contemplate sleep at this garage—not after her visitor and his wild proposition. Her mind hummed with the possibilities of it all, but it didn’t matter.

Fairy tales weren’t made of common sense and logic—they were leaps of faith.

Chapter Two

Stupid.
Impulsive.
Dumbass.
Daniel smacked his hand against the steering wheel.
What the hell were you thinking?
He wanted to yell, not like anyone would notice. They would think he was just like every other dick driving in L.A. traffic. But it wasn’t traffic that’d tied him up in knots, it was the look of utter confusion and refusal on the princess’s face that did it.

He shouldn’t have approached her at the car, but the impulse to follow her from the restaurant the night before had been too strong to resist. It didn’t hurt that the private investigator he’d hired reported that she slept in her car. Believing that to be a mistake, he’d followed her into the garage and up to the near top, parking around the corner. He waited to see her leave via the stairs or the elevator, but when two hours passed without a sign of her, he’d driven the rest of the way up.

Sure enough, she was not only in her car, she was sound asleep in the back. He’d pulled up next to her, thinking the engine would rouse her. When that didn’t, he’d sat there for nearly an hour on that empty desolate parking garage roof. The sexy redhead was exposed, choosing to rest in such an insecure location. Leaving to go get the coffee had been an impulse, but he couldn’t get the image of her in her car—alone—out of his head. He’d ordered the extra coffee and croissants and decided on a bonehead maneuver.

“I toss making a reasonable approach for coffee and end up scaring the shit out of her. Brilliant move, Voldakov, brilliant.” Not that his plan didn’t have its flaws, he’d just asked a stranger to move in and marry him five minutes after waking her up. Her white-knuckled grip on the Taser had never relaxed.

His body tightened at the memory of her sleep-rumpled face, tousled hair and husky voice. It didn’t matter that she’d rolled out of a backseat and not his bed, he knew exactly what he wanted from her right then and it had nothing to do with contracts, access or bloodlines.

He picked up his cell phone. He should call his attorney. He was likely to be facing a harassment suit. Not that she would be wrong. Of course, maybe she would just get a restraining order. “Penniless Princess takes out restraining order against CEO—news at eleven.”

But she’s living in her car.
That single fact tumbled around and around in his brain. He hadn’t really believed the PI’s report—or his own eyes—when he saw her sleeping in the car until he got a good look at the supplies stored inside. Clothes, blankets, pillow and a ratty stuffed bear missing one eye.

The damn bear got to him.

Dropping the phone back onto the passenger seat, he struggled to focus on the drive. He’d put his foot in it. No mistaking that, but he could recover the situation. She needed help. He had help to offer. The exchange would be advantageous to both of them.

Or you can just suck it up and let your products speak for themselves.
Spherecast developed top-of-the-line software and had rapidly climbed as the go-to company for corporate security through the United States. But Europe continued to elude him. It wasn’t that the software didn’t work; on the contrary, it performed brilliantly. The design prevented hackers from access by turning tunnels back on themselves or leading them through into trap algorithms. The program then automatically recorded incoming packet locations and waited for specific handoff signals, and if they weren’t received—well, the resulting virus the hacker got back was nasty. But penetrating the old guard of networking connections that dated back to lords and their serfs held him firmly at bay. He’d tried the direct approach with the Andraste family and slammed up against stone wall after stone wall—most he’d been able to trace back to the grand duke’s legal team.

He’d carved out any niche for his company in the states and a lack of title shouldn’t keep him shut out of Europe. Not when his damn product was the best thing out there. But the old guard didn’t see it that way. His Bolshevik roots probably didn’t help. But the Voldakovs were three generations deep in the US and he barely understood the Russian his grandmother had sung to lull him to sleep. Parking, he swallowed his temper and headed for the elevator. Dwelling on what hadn’t worked wouldn’t get him anywhere. He needed a plan.

Okay
,
I
need a
new
plan
...

Arriving at the office ahead of his staff wasn’t that unusual. He took the time to trade his shirt for a fresh one he stored in the bottom of his desk and checked the ties in the drawer above it for one without a stain. His secretary, Lucy, was fantastic about these things.

Settling in behind his desk, he flipped open the folder the P.I. delivered the day before. Photographs of Alyx spilled out, digital time stamps giving him a good idea of her schedule. She worked most evenings at the restaurant—where he’d first set eyes on her—and she split her daytime hours between auditions and classes.

When she’s not sleeping in her car.

If not for his mother’s passion for all things royal and the umpteen gajillion documentaries and news programs she watched about all of them, he might never have made the connection. But one only had to look at Alyx to see the family resemblance. He’d dined there three nights in a row trying to figure out where he’d seen her before and it was only by accident that a news bite on the grand duke late one night helped him put the pieces together. The facial structures were strikingly similar. Her jaw was softer and more round, but the eyes—they could have been twins.

He would never be sure which idea occurred first—hiring the investigator or coughing up some royal blood to grease the wheels. Martin cracked a joke about borrowing a title to get their foot in the door. If it hadn’t been for another frustrating series of stalls on the EU inspector’s part, he might have just asked her out on a date.
Hell
,
I
still want to ask her out on a date
...

Picking up the phone, he dialed his attorney’s number. Martin answered on the first ring.

“Martin Grange.”

“I spoke to her this morning,” he began without preamble.

“Oh, for the love of God, Daniel. We talked about this. Are you in jail? Do I need to come bail you out?” Martin was definitely not on board with his idea. In fact, his attorney labeled it foolish and told him to just play on the up-and-up. It would take them time to make their mark, but by then, the European companies would be coming to him—not the other way around.

“No. I’m at the office.” He toyed with the pen on the desk and drew a squiggly line down the center of the blank legal pad. On the right side he wrote pros and the left, he wrote cons. “She wasn’t thrilled with the opportunity.”

“You sound surprised.” Martin, however, did not.

“She’s sleeping out of her car.” He wrote
needs a home
under pro. “Her car. She parks it at the top of a public parking garage off La Cienega and climbs in the back to go to sleep. She has no security. Just takes one whackjob to knock out her windows and she’s in trouble.”

“That’s her choice. You know, there are plenty of shelters out there for the homeless and it’s not like she doesn’t have a job. She works at one of the swankiest steakhouses in Beverly Hills. She has to make two to three hundred a night.”

Daniel added dollar signs under the pro column along with two question marks. If she did make that much in tips, then why didn’t she have a place of her own? Apartments in L.A. were expensive, but she could find one in North Hollywood for about a week’s worth of tips. “Exactly. The report says she went to the University of California on scholarships, but the three she received couldn’t have covered all of her tuition and her housing—that means student loans.”

Martin sighed. “Daniel, stop. You rescue puppies in the pouring rain when you’re wearing a three-thousand-dollar suit. Not to mention what wet dog smell does to a Lamborghini. Just let this go.”

“That was my Lexus, not the Lamborghini. And the detailer got the smell out and the dog got a home.”
Needs help.
He wrote that down beneath the pros
and
circled it. He studied the list—two items on the pros and none on the cons did not make a fair argument.

“Has the grand duke returned any of our calls?” They’d been courting Andraste for months, subtly. They’d used connections and parties to try to get closer to the man, but the grand duke’s entourage was not easily penetrated. Getting access to him proved more difficult than finding Willy Wonka’s golden ticket. It irked the hell out of Daniel that his “new” money bourgeois didn’t merit a call above receptionist.

“No, but that’s not a reason to—”

Daniel’s cell phone rang and he glanced down at it. Only three people had that number. His secretary never called him before nine and Martin was on the phone. “Martin, I have to go. She’s calling.”

“Daniel, wait—” But he hung up on his attorney’s protests and thumbed the answer button on the cell.

“Hello?”

“Daniel Voldakov?” Her husky voice sounded smoother, more alert.

“Hello, Princess.” He leaned back in the chair and turned around to look out the window. He couldn’t see the parking garage from his vantage, but he could imagine her yellow tank top, white shorts and long tan legs.

“Why don’t you just call me Alyx and skip the whole royal shtick, okay?” Impatience crept into her voice. Impatience and if he wasn’t mistaken, curiosity.

“All right, Alyx. If you want me to call you that.”

“I do.”

He nodded, though she couldn’t see him. “Done. See, I’m a reasonable man. I take it you’ve thought about my offer.” He’d imagined it would take her longer.

“Yes. I wasn’t going to call. In fact, I was just going to throw out your card, but since you did bring me coffee, I figured I owed you a little courtesy.”

Damn.

“It’s a no, then?” He pursed his lips and glanced back at the file about her.

“Exactly. Thanks for the thought.”

“You’re very welcome.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Voldakov.”

“Until next time, Miss Dagmar.” He listened to the distinct pause as his words sank in. When the phone clicked off, he picked up the P.I.’s report. She wanted to be an actress.

Switching to his desktop phone, he dialed his secretary’s number. “Lucy.”

“Mr. Voldakov, it’s not nine. You know the rules.” The older woman had been with him since he opened his first business out of his garage. A family neighbor for thirty years, she was the only one who could get away with talking to him like that.

And she never called him Mr. Voldakov unless he annoyed her.

“I’ll put a ten-dollar bill in your candy jar as soon as I hang up.” He also didn’t mind paying the penalty fee. She kept candy for all the employees’ kids when they visited and more for her own grandchildren, and he paid a fine for every out-of-office-hours call.

It worked for them.

“All right, what can I do for you?”

“What do you know about advertising for an actress?”

* * *

Three days later, he leaned back in the auditorium of the theater he’d rented for the day. His secretary’d placed an advertisement in all the papers for a casting call. They’d listed very specific qualities and appearance. He’d gone through every resume and photograph that arrived until he found Alyx Dagmar’s.

She was the only one he wanted, and she was the only one who made the cut.

He wrote the script himself. It was a bastardized version of My Fair Lady, but he didn’t care. The names and the places were all that mattered—well, and the princess in question.

The theater crew admitted her, gave her access to a dressing room and the pages she would cold read for the part. Right on schedule she walked out on the stage. He knew she couldn’t see him in the darkened theater.

Clasping his hands together, he sat back and watched as she took her spot. “Whenever you’re ready.” He called quietly, certain it would carry.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.” She lifted her hand as though holding a glass up to make a toast. Dressed in the simple green strapless gown, with her glorious russet hair pinned up, she seemed as glamorous as any model. “It is time for us to remove our masks, to reveal ourselves to each other in the fine tradition of the old-world masquerade. Have you danced with a duke? Did you dine with a princess? Did you discover your true love?”

She flowed three steps toward the lip of the stage, the single spotlight highlighting the magnificent column of her throat. He held his breath. She was better than he imagined. With all the gesture of flourish she mimed the removal of a mask. Her smile lit up her face and he leaned forward.

An air of expectancy hung around her, cloaking her as her smile turned coy, secretive. The notes said she was to react to surprise with a hint of delight. But the riot of emotion she let play over her face captivated him.

With a graceful curtsy, she dipped toward the stage and her gaze roved over the audience. He could almost imagine she hunted for him in the shadows and when she paused to straighten, her chin came up. “Yes,” she said in a clear, true voice. “My name is Princess D’tente.”

It was a stupid name, he grimaced at it, but he’d wanted her to take the message in it.

“And at long last, I am reunited with my family.” She paused again, but this wasn’t in the script. Her smile faltered and fell away.

Her gaze arrowed straight at him, where he sat, arms braced on the back of the seat in front of him.

“You son of a bitch.”

Yep. That definitely wasn’t in the script.