Working Stiff: Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1) (45 page)

Rox jumped and grabbed Casimir’s arm, fully intending to make a run for it, but Casimir laid one arm around her shoulders and then shook the offered hand of one of the commandos. “Excellent to see you again, Lachlan.”

The man said something in Dutch and smiled grimly as he shook Casimir’s hand.

Casimir spoke Dutch back to him in calm, reassuring tones, and let his hand drop.

The other commandos all faced outward, rifles across their chests and ready.

Rox was not sure how they had managed to get all those guns into England and to brandish them in an airport, but evidently being a royal prince had its perks, like your security didn’t have to worry about those pesky gun laws.

The Dutch commando said something again to Casimir, and the whole group moved like one multi-legged beast through the small terminal and to another gate. Rox hurried to keep up.

Wow, the Heathrow private terminal was so big that it had a lot of gates.

The commandos hustled Casimir and Rox down the next tunnel and through the door of a new jet.

Casimir glanced out the windows as they were walking and said something to the Dutch guy whom he had been talking to, but Rox was too busy concentrating on not getting run over by their heavily armed escort to gawk at the plane outside.

She tried to pause in the doorway to take in the huge body of the airplane that yawned in front of her. This airplane was far bigger than Arthur’s, a jumbo jet that had been stripped of all its uncomfortable seats for commoners and refitted with living room furniture. Conversation groupings surrounded tables. Part of the way back, a wall divided the plane into another section.

When she stopped, however, Casimir tugged her arm, and the guys behind her still pounded their boots on the gangplank.

She and Casimir sat in one of the wide recliners, and the men who were dressed in black and holding weapons pounded past them toward the rear of the plane.

“It seems that my sister sent the large plane that is usually reserved for state visits. I don’t usually travel like this.”

“It’s good that she cares enough to send the very best.” Rox stroked the armrest with one finger. The leather was so soft that it felt like silk bedsheets.

“We’re also going to have two fighter jets escort us to The Hague.”

“I thought we were going to Amsterdam.”

“It seems that the family has decamped to Huis ten Bosch Palace in The Hague, so we’ll go there. That’s our primary residence anyway.”

Rox looked out the porthole window, which seemed larger than normal airplane windows, definitely wider than normal ones. “Is it normal to have fighter jets fly with you everywhere you go?”

“Not at all. It seems that my sister has been watching the news from America and is not amused by the situation.”

A terrible thought popped into Rox’s head. “Can she forbid you to leave the Netherlands, because she’s the princess?”

Casimir laughed. “No. She probably thinks she can, though.”

The first commando returned and held out a cell phone. “Her Highness would like to speak with you.”

Casimir rolled his eyes and laughed again. “Thank you, Lachlan.”

THE HAGUE

After the royal plane landed in The Hague, an airport shared with the city of Rotterdam, the security guys swung into high gear.

Rox struggled to keep up with Casimir and the battalion of commandos that jogged around them, alert to the crowd’s slightest movement as they moved through the airport and to the curb, where a fleet of black limousines was waiting for them.

One of the commandos held open the back door of the second limousine in the line and waved them over.

Casimir grabbed Rox’s hand and steadied her as she got into the car. She scooted across the seat, and he folded his long legs to get in behind her. The soldier slammed the door behind them and pounded three times on the roof.

Two more security guys were sitting in the front seat. The one on the passenger side glanced back at her and gave her a tight smile before he resumed scanning the sidewalk and traffic around the car.

The caravan of black limousines drove them into the countryside and into a forest.

A forest. A forest with a castle in it.

Things were weird.

Casimir didn’t speak the whole time. He watched the scant traffic and passing trees as if he were waiting for something. When she let her fingers crawl across the leather seat to his hand, he gripped her fingers, but he kept scanning the leafy canopy and other cars, as alert as the commandos in the front seat. The green scent of grass and leaves flowed through the car’s vents.

The limo ducked around the large, old-fashioned building to a rear entrance, jolting her backward in the seat.

She just assumed that the building was a hotel. It looked like a hotel, a gorgeous facade and columns and plaster and stuff.

Yep, it looked just like a really nice hotel, one of those that Rox stayed in when she was traveling for work and the law firm was picking up the tab, except that the front didn’t have a sign on it.

No Hilton. No Four Seasons. No Holiday Inn.

Yeah, it was a
palace.

Rox needed to think these things through.

Casimir said to her, “This level of security is highly unusual. I think the firebomb has upset my sister.”

The driver said something in Dutch, a dry sarcastic tone lacing his voice.

Casimir chuckled one dry huff. “He said that Ana has been storming around and micromanaging every aspect of the security operation, as she insists on calling it.”

The driver said something else, and his low laugh sounded sinister.

Casimir rolled his eyes. “And the gentleman says that we will have a few hours to freshen up before the reception tonight. My parents are out of town, so it will just be my sister, the Crown Princess Anastasia, receiving us.”

“We don’t have clothes for a reception,” Rox protested. “I don’t have any clothes at all.” She pulled at her tee shirt. “I’m still wearing Brandy’s big workout tee shirt because that’s the only thing she had that would fit over my,” she glanced at the two strangers in the front seat, “chest.”

He chuckled. “I’m sure Ana will micromanage that, too.”

Ana had, indeed, micromanaged that, too.

They were led through the back door and through gilded hallways to an elevator that opened into a short hallway, kind of like a really nice Manhattan hotel with just three doors on the walls. Casimir walked straight to the one on the end, which didn’t have a number or anything on it, and twisted the knob to walk straight inside.

Rox didn’t ask him how he knew which one they would be staying in. She just followed him around like a lost puppy.

Casimir said, “The staff will bring the cats up in a few moments. I heard they had actually found some carriers, so they’ll be safer coming up to our apartment.”

“This is an apartment?” Rox had been wondering whether she was allowed to sit on the creamy raw silk-upholstered chairs and furniture, and she really hoped that her cats would behave themselves and not sharpen their claws on what must be tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of furniture. Or more. She had no idea how to put a value on anything. “I thought this was a hotel.”

“This is my apartment for when I’m in town. I keep some clothes here.”

All this, thousands of square feet—a living room, a formal dining room that seated ten, two bedrooms, and three bathrooms—just for Casimir to keep a few socks here for the couple of times that he visited. He couldn’t visit much. In the last three years, he hadn’t taken more than a few weeks of vacation, and most of the time, he had gone to places with beaches.

He said, “I told Ana what your sizes are. She might have already had clothes delivered for you.”

When Rox found the other walk-in closet in the bedroom, she found that Ana had indeed had clothes delivered for her and that Ana had exquisite taste. Three little sheath dresses in shades from black to pearly gray hung on one side of the closet, and a gorgeous pink cocktail dress was on the other.

Outside the closet, Casimir called, “She’ll have underwear and things in the drawers for you, too.”

Rox came out of the closet to find Casimir gathering clothes from drawers and heading toward another door, which she assumed was the bathroom. She asked, “How did
you
know what size I wear?”

“From that time that the airline lost your luggage in New York.” He flipped underwear and casual slacks in his hand. “You dragged me shopping with you so that you wouldn’t have to carry your own bags.”

She set her hands on her hips. “You said you wanted to go shopping.”

“I didn’t want you to have to carry your bags.” He raised his eyebrows at her and closed the bathroom door behind himself.

Rox was on her phone, checking her social stuff. Nothing particularly important had happened. She wasn’t sure how to write all that had happened during the last day as a social media update or even if she should. The emoticon response would be all over the place.

She was considering understatement:
So, this happened: survived a sniper and firebomb, ended up in the Netherlands, and that guy I work for and am sleeping with might be the King of Holland someday. Selfie!

A PM from Brandy read:
All right, who the hell are Arthur and Maxence? We just got donations that will keep the shelter afloat for five years.

She was beginning to kind of like those guys.

Casimir set the phone back in its cradle and kept his hand on it. “Willem is coming up for a few minutes to talk.”

“Isn’t he the one who wants to be the king?”

She replayed that sentence in her mind.
Absurd.
How did a nice little Southern girl like herself end up in The Hague, casually commenting on court intrigues?

OMG, court intrigues.
She had to work that into her post somehow.

“Yes. My younger brother.” Casimir said that softly, thoughtfully.

She set the phone down. “He isn’t coming up with assassins to kill you, is he?”

Casimir’s eyebrows twitched down, and he didn’t smile. “Probably not.”

“You’re kidding around, right?”

“Ana has security personnel in the hallway. Willem might be many things, but he isn’t stupid.”

“Oh. Right. I feel all kinds of better, then. Does he have a British accent like you or a Dutch accent like Ana?”

Casimir glanced at her. “You picked that up, did you?”

She shrugged. “It’s pretty obvious.”

“My brother and sisters grew up together here in Amsterdam and The Hague, so they speak English with a Dutch accent. I grew up at Le Rosey boarding school in Switzerland, where I learned English from a British tutor.”

She had wondered how that had worked, how Casimir had met Arthur and Maxence at the Swiss boarding school, but he was Dutch. “I can’t believe your parents sent you away.”

“It was for the best. Maxence and I had already been friends since before the car accident. Once I got to Le Rosey, he and Arthur became my brothers.”

“I could never send my children to boarding school.”

“The press was hounding me. My parents had to get me away from them, and some of the family situation was not ideal.”

Whoa.
That was interesting. He had never mentioned anything about a family situation before. “I can’t imagine boarding school was better than living at home.”

“It was a great deal better. Within two weeks, I stopped flinching every time a bush rustled. Within a few months, I was much happier. It was definitely the best decision to get me out of the Netherlands.”

She glanced up at him, but he was still staring straight ahead.

“Ana and I are close because we were children together before I was sent away when I was seven. I barely know Margriet. She was a toddler when I left.”

“And Willem?”

His mouth was set in a grim line. “He’s two years younger than I am. We were never close.”

The door rattled as someone knocked on it.

“That was quick,” Casimir muttered. More loudly, “Come in!”

On the other side of the living room, the door opened, and a man entered.

The new guy was tall, Rox could tell by the fact that he was still an imposing presence even when walking through the oversized door, and he had bright blond hair that glistened in the sunlight streaming through the windows. Even from across the room, he looked like Casimir.

A
lot
like him.

Rox glanced up at Casimir, who stood rock-still by her side. He didn’t so much as blink.

The man called from across the room, “Casimir!”

His voice sounded like Casimir’s.

Beside her, Casimir straightened, and his stony expression turned into the one that she knew was his resting bitch face modified with a formal smile.

That was odd. Casimir only used that face during negotiations with very unpleasant opposing counsel. One time, the other lawyer had been chewing tobacco and spitting the chew juice into a paper cup that soaked through pretty quickly. Brown liquid had dribbled down the side of the cup, and a ring of sour spit had bubbled up on the table, which had seeped onto the corner of the contract that they were debating. The lawyer had handed Casimir the chew-stained contract to look at a particular clause, and Casimir had worn that tight, bland smile the whole time he was holding the soggy paper.

As the other man came closer, Rox could see that he really did look a lot like Casimir—meaning that he was drop-dead gorgeous, with strong cheekbones and a square jaw that would turn every woman’s head in a room to look at him—
just
like him, except for the new guy’s blond hair and the fact that his eyes were a pale shade of blue.

They looked as alike as the best plastic surgeons in the world could have made them.

The smile on the other guy’s face was wide and genuine, and he held his hand extended as he walked across the room. “Casimir! When did you get in? I didn’t even know that you were coming home.”

“It was an unplanned trip,” Casimir said, shaking his hand. “May I present Roxanne Neil, my very dear friend with whom I have worked at the law office in California for three years now. Rox, this is my brother Willem.”