She fixed him with a stare. “That seems to be going around, and you seem to always be around when it happens.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny anything. Here, he is.”
Another extremely tall guy pushed his way out of the crowd, and Colleen glanced up at him.
Several unusually burly guys just happened to be standing nearby. They turned their backs to the new guy and surveyed the people pressing closer to them. The three bodyguards wore earpieces in their ears, mics clipped to their lapels, and sunglasses even though they were inside a casino at night.
The new guy, however, was the type of gorgeous male that made Colleen stumble backward a step. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed, and his sculpted bone structure was the natural ideal that plastic surgeons envied but could never really copy. He was a movie star and a model and a demigod, and he was somehow standing next to her.
Tristan extended his hand. “Maxence, old chap! Good to see you.”
The man smiled, and the heavens parted, and the angels sang. Jesus, her knees actually trembled. He said, “Tristan, always a pleasure. You haven’t come round the palace for weeks. How have you been?”
Palace? Colleen’s brain stuttered so much that she barely noted the new guy’s British accent that was identical to Tristan’s.
Oddly identical.
Tristan had said that he knew the new guy, evidently named Maxence, from high school, so the often-discussed English teacher must’ve had a hand in Maxence’s accent, too.
“Can’t complain,” Tristan said. “Max, may I present my girlfriend, Colleen Frost, originally from Arizona.”
Girlfriend?
Before Colleen even had a chance to process that, the divinely perfect specimen of a man gazed down at Colleen, and a delighted smile spread over his face.
Her brain fizzed like a shorted-out motherboard.
Maxence said, “A pleasure to meet you. My wife is from New Mexico and worked as a nurse in Phoenix.”
Colleen leaped at the easy conversation opportunity because nothing good was going to happen in her head. “That’s great! Which hospital?”
“Good Samaritan,” Maxence said.
“That’s a great hospital. I sprained my ankle really badly my freshman year of college and ended up in their emergency department, and they took x-rays there to make sure it wasn’t broken. Great hospital.”
The demigod’s smile seemed easy. “Where do you live in Phoenix?”
“I live in Tempe, over near Southwestern State University.”
“That’s quite a university.”
Yeah, he knew about it. “Oh, you betcha. It makes Playboy’s top ten list of party schools every year.”
“An excellent course of study for living in Monaco. How do you like it here?”
The people surrounding the three of them had turned inward to watch the new guy talking to Colleen.
Well, of course people were watching. New guy Maxence was so unearthly beautiful that he almost appeared angelic. There was something of the old-time movie stars about him, a classic, sophisticated handsomeness that couldn’t be bought or learned.
Even Colleen was a little smitten, though a part of her mind was hopping up and down and telling her to remember who she came there with.
One of the bodyguards, for that was who those burly guys surrounding him obviously were, leaned toward the new guy and whispered something.
Maxence blinked and looked at the ground, and then he looked back at Tristan and Colleen. “I am late to tonight’s function, so I’m afraid I must depart.” He shook Tristan’s hand again. “Bring her around the palace soon. I’m sure Colleen and Dree would have much to talk about.”
The three bodyguards and two more security guys who stepped out of the crowd formed a phalanx around Maxence, and they spearheaded his way toward and through one of the doors to leave.
The crowd that had gathered around them started talking in flustered excitement and began to disperse.
Colleen covered her mouth with her fingers as she asked Tristan, “So, who was that guy, and why is everybody acting so weird?”
He chuckled and whispered to her, “That was His Serene Highness, Prince Maxence, the Sovereign Prince of Monaco, who literally owns the land you’re standing on and the air you’re breathing.”
“Oh.” Her chest fluttered, and the vibrations shook her brain. “He was royalty?”
“Mm-hmm.”
Horror. “I made an idiot of myself, talking about how Southwestern State is a party school.”
Tristan laughed. “Max liked you. He’s kind of reserved with people because he is who he is, especially after his older brother died and he accidentally got the throne shoved at him, but inviting you to meet his wife was huge. He’s overprotective as hell of Dree. He hovers around her like a psychotic daddy eagle. You did great.”
She didn’t believe him at all. “Right.”
The unreality of it assailed her.
Two weeks before, Colleen had been a college-dropout clerk working in a struggling computer-gaming chain store, and now she was hanging out on yachts and at the Monte Carlo casino in Monaco and chatting up royalty.
She slipped her fingers into Tristan’s hand. “I’m having a great time.”
He hugged her against his side and pressed his lips against her temple. “That’s all I want.”
The dealer announced, “Rouge! Red wins.”
Tristan collected his money and whispered into her hair, “Let’s get out of here.”
In bed that night, when Colleen was sated and sore and Tristan was wrapped around her, he murmured, “Whatever happens, tonight was the best night of my life. If it all had to happen to lead up to this day with you, it was worth it to me.”
Colleen clung to him more tightly. “Me, too.” She thought about it. “Except Jian and Anjali getting kidnapped. To hell with the Butorins.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, to hell with them. I want you to have something, just in case.”
That seemed morbid. “No, you don’t have to do that.”
“Yeah, I do. I haven’t had a spare minute to dodge out and buy you something because I didn’t want to spend those minutes away from you.”
“Dude, you gave me a bank account full of money. I checked it. That was a lot more than we agreed on. Like, ten times more. Did you make a typo? I was going to bring it up.”
“Don’t bring it up, and it wasn’t a typo. No matter what happens, I want you to be taken care of, at least enough to get through school.”
“That’s tuition, books, and dorm for me and twenty of my most intimate friends.”
He nodded. “Good. Start a business when you get out. Or take a trip around the world. I just hope I’m there to see you do it.”
The weight of it became too much, and she hung her head. “Don’t talk like that. I want to see things with you. I want you to tell me what’s on the menu and what I should eat. I want to go to casinos and other things with you. Speaking of going places, there’s that yacht club at the end of the pier—”
Tristan clasped her chin and lifted her face, and then he slid his warm palm over her cheek. “I want to. I’ll try. But I want you to have something. It’s the most valuable thing I own that Mary Varvara Bell won’t get, or at least, she can’t take it away from you.”