Sue Civil-Brown - The Prince Next Door

“Maxwell.”

“Darius,” she said, making her tone as pathetic as she could. “Estoy secuestrada.” I am kidnapped.

“Sí, so I’ve heard. How much are you paying them?”

She puffed up with indignation and heard the faint tearing as pins ripped through silk. Adele cast her a disapproving glance, but Maria Theresa ignored it. She would deal with this woman’s impudence later. First, though, she had to deal with her son.

“Darius!” she snapped, in a tone that every mother knows and at which every child quails. “I’m not paying anyone anything. You have to help me!”

“Just how am I supposed to do that? I have no idea where you are.”

She frowned, tapping her toe. This was certainly not the treatment she had expected from him, and certainly not when she employed the voz de la madre, the stern voice of a mother. Looking heavenward, she blasted a handful of saints and her poor departed spouse for having cursed her with such a child.

“Ma mère?”

In this family, a plethora of languages were spoken, and Maria Teresa had always insisted her son address her by the French rather than the Spanish for “my mother.” Sometimes he liked to irritate her by calling her mamacita.

Regardless, she didn’t hear nearly enough concern in his voice. Feeling frustrated, she twisted just a bit, and one of the seamstress’s pins jabbed her side. She cried out.

Which had the desired effect, she realized instantly.

“Ma mère?”

“They’re torturing me,” she cried with great relish.

Adele jumped back, her face paling. Maria Teresa waved her concern away. “You have to save me at once!”

“Where are you?”

“I don’t know!” Which was a lie. The Riviera was a little hot this year, but otherwise comfortable.

“Mother.” This time Darius spoke in English. “Has it occurred to you that kidnapping is a very dangerous thing to do?”

“Only if the police catch them before I am killed,” she wailed.

“That isn’t what I meant.”

She hesitated. This wasn’t going as expected. “What do you mean?”

“Just that if they’re doing this to make me accept that I’m prince of Masolimia, they’re making a big mistake. Because if I accept the throne, I can have these kidnappers beheaded.”

“My dear son, beheadings are so déclassé.” The wheels were truly spinning in her brain now. This was a kink she definitely hadn’t expected, and she was glad that neither Menos nor Mas was able to hear this conversation. They were loco enough without fearing they’d lose their heads.

“Then I’ll have them shot.”

“That’s better,” she approved. She feigned every ounce of pathos she could muster. “But you will rescue me?”

“Which hotel are you at?”

She almost slipped. The answer rose naturally to her lips, but she bit it back just in time. “Believe me, this is not a hotel! It’s a hovel!”

Now Adele was looking seriously annoyed, but Maria Teresa hardly cared for that. A generous tip would bring the smile back.

“Really.” Darius sighed. “If you want the truth, Mother…”

“But of course!”

“If you really have been kidnapped, I feel sorry for your abductors.”

“Darius!”

“Tell you what, Mother. I’ll save you.”

Her eyes lit up, and she sent paeans of praise winging heavenward to the lately slandered saints. “You will?”

“Of course.”

Now he would swashbuckle. At last. Her son was going to play Errol Flynn, John Wayne, Sean Connery….

“How soon?”

“I’m not sure. First I have to prove I’m not the prince.”

He disconnected, leaving Maria Teresa to feel as if she had been struck by a truck.

Prove he wasn’t the prince? ¡Dios no lo quiera!

SERENA WAS SUNBATHING, dermatologist-style. She was lying beside the condo swimming pool, clad in a maillot, coverup, wide-brimmed sun hat and half a tube of sunscreen. And just to be sure, she’d chosen a chaise beneath an umbrella. Immediately to her right on the pool deck sat a tall bottle of spring water and a kitchen timer which she had set to twenty minutes.

To her left was a patient-to-be, Marco Paloni. She considered him a patient-to-be because he wore only a Speedo—which left little to the imagination and much that would haunt her dreams—and a thin sheen of olive oil, which he had applied with the same loving care a chef might use to baste a leg of lamb. He had then proceeded to spend the next fifteen minutes regaling her with tales of his days on the Grand Prix circuit.

“And then there was Monza,” he said. “The Italian Grand Prix. My home country. My home course.”

“Of course,” Serena said, doing her best to appear polite, just in case he ended up in her office.

“I was driving for Ferrari, of course. A beautiful car, the 312T2, with a transverse mounted gearbox. What a wonderful machine.”

To judge by the tone of his voice, he might have been describing a fondly remembered lover.

“Emerson Fittipaldi was the favorite, as always. But this was the course I’d been weaned on, watching Fanglia as a boy. It was the first course I’d ever driven. I knew it like…how do you say…the back of my hand.”

“And you won?” Serena asked, glancing at the timer. Three more minutes. Just three more minutes.

“Did I win?” Marco asked. “Did I win?”

“Yes. Did you win?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“How sad,” she said.

Two minutes, forty-five seconds.

“Sad? No!”

“No?” she asked.

“No!”

Two minutes, forty seconds.

“It was better than winning. I came to the chicayne on the last lap, dead even. I took a page from Lauria’s book. Fittipaldi downshifted. I didn’t. Two hundred fifty kilometers per hour.”

“That’s fast,” Serena said.

“Sì! Prestissimo!”

Two minutes, thirty seconds.

“I passed Fittipaldi. Took the first half of the chicayne, no problem. Tapped the brakes. Just the tiniest tap. Turned the wheel.”

“And?”

“Guess!” he said.

“Guess?”

“Guess!”

Two minutes, fifteen seconds.

“Ummm…”

“I flew!” he exclaimed. “Flew! Over the tires. Over the retaining wall.”

“You crashed?”

“Right into the net! That beautiful machine hung right there in the net. The right-front tire had come off, and the car hung by the axle. The ambulance, it comes.”

“Were you hurt?” Serena asked, now concerned. She didn’t care for auto racing, for that very reason. Too many drivers got hurt.

“Hurt? No!”

“No?”

“No!”

Two minutes.

“I climbed out of the cockpit. And fell…right into the arms of my Isadora.”

“Isadora?”

“Isadora!”

Serena turned off the timer. “And?”

“The woman of my dreams. Strong. Gentle. Kind.” He reached into his Speedo. “The paparazzi were there. They captured the moment. The moment I met my Isadora.”

His hand emerged, holding a laminated snapshot out to her. He had cut a dashing figure back then. And there was no mistaking the smile on his face in the photo, his eyes fixed on the raven-haired medic into whose arms he had fallen as if by an act of God. Her face was radiant.

“She’s beautiful.”

“Sì. Bella. Splendida.” His eyes darkened. “She became…my life.”

“She’s…?”

“Yes,” he said. “Four years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” he said, simply.

“No?”

“No. I would have been sorry if I had not taken that chicayne at 250 kilometers per hour. I would have been sorry if I had not tapped the brakes and turned the wheel at exactly the wrong instant. I would have been sorry if my beautiful automobile had not gone airborne and flown into that net. I would have been sorry if I had not fallen into her arms. For all of that, I would have been sorry.”