The Lost Princes: Darius, Cassius and Monte

He wasn’t going away. She would have to talk to him and she dreaded it. Her eyelids felt like sandpaper and she wasn’t even sure they would open when she asked them to. But somehow she managed. Wincing at the light shafting in through the open door, she peered up through her wild hair at the angry-looking man standing over her.

“If you could give me just one more hour of sleep, we might be able to discuss this in a rational manner,” she proposed hopefully, her speech slightly slurred. “I’m so tired, I’m hardly human at the moment.”

Of course, that was a lie. She was human alright, and despite how rotten she felt, she was having a reaction to this man that was not only typically human, it was also definitely feminine. Bottom line, she was responding to the fact that he was ridiculously attractive. She took in the dark, silky hair that fell in an engaging screen over his forehead, the piercing blue eyes, the wide shoulders and the bare chest with its chiseled muscles, and she pulled in a quick little gasp of a breath.

Wow.

She’d seen him earlier, but from a distance and more fully clothed. Up close and half-naked was better. She recommended it, and under other circumstances she would have been smiling by now.

But this wasn’t a smiling situation. She was going to have to explain to him what she was doing here and that wasn’t going to be easy. She did try to sit up and made an unconvincing attempt at controlling her unruly hair with both hands. And all the while she was trying to think of a good way to broach the subject that she’d come for. She had a feeling it wouldn’t be a popular topic. She would have to introduce it just right and hope for the best.

“You can do all the sleeping you want once we get you to wherever it is that you belong,” he was saying icily. “And that sure as hell isn’t here.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” she said sadly. “I’m here for a reason. Unfortunately.”

Little baby Cici murmured in her sleep and they both froze, staring at her for a moment, full of dread. But she sank back into deep slumber and Ayme sighed with relief.

“If you wake the baby up, you’re going to have to take care of her,” she warned him in a hushed voice. “I’m in a zombie trance.”

He was sputtering. At least that was what it sounded like to her, but she wasn’t in good judging form at the moment. He could have been swearing under his breath. Yes, that was probably it. At any rate, he wasn’t pleased.

She sighed, shoulders sagging. “Look, I know you’re not in the best shape yourself. I saw you when we first got here. You had obviously been enjoying your party a little too much. That’s why I didn’t bother to try to talk to you at the time. You know very well that you could use more sleep as much as I could.” She scrunched up her nose and looked at him hopefully. “Let’s call a truce for now and…”

“No.”

She sighed, letting her head fall back. “No?”

“No.”

She made a face. “Oh, all right. If you insist. But I warn you, I can barely put a sentence together. I’m incoherent. I haven’t had any real sleep for days.”

He was unrelenting, standing over her with strong hands set on his very tight and slender hips. The worn jeans rode low on them, exposing a flat, muscular stomach and the sexiest belly button she’d ever seen. She stared at it, hoping to deflect his impatience.

It didn’t work.

“Your sleep habits are none of my concern,” he said coldly. “I’m not interested. I just want you out of here and on your way back to wherever you came from.”

“Sorry.” She shook her head, still groggy. “That’s impossible. The flight we came on left for Zurich ages ago.” She glanced at the baby, sleeping peacefully in the drawer. “She cried almost the whole trip. All the way from Texas.” She looked up at him, expecting sympathy but not finding much. She made a face and searched his eyes, hoping for a little compassion at the very least. “Do you understand what that means?”

He was frowning like someone trying to figure all this out. “You flew here straight from Texas?”

“Well, not exactly. We did change planes in New York.”

“Texas?” he repeated softly, as though he couldn’t quite believe it.

“Texas,” she repeated slowly, in case he was having trouble with the word itself. “You know, the Lone Star state. The big one, down by Mexico.”

“I know where Texas is,” he said impatiently.

“Good. We’re a little touchy about that down home.”

He shook his head, still puzzling over her. “You sound very much like an American,” he said.

She shrugged and looked up with a genuine innocence. “Sure. What else would I be?”

He was staring at her earrings. She reached up and touched one of them, not sure what his interest was. They were all she had left from her birth mother and she wore them all the time. She knew her original parents had come from the tiny island country of Ambria. So had her adoptive family, but that was years ago and far away. Ambria and its problems had only been minimally relevant to her life as yet.

But then, she was forgetting that the Ambrian connection was the reason she was here. So naturally he would notice. Still, something about the intensity of his interest made her uncomfortable. It was probably safer to go back to talking about Cici.

“But as I was saying, she wasn’t happy about traveling, and she let everyone know it, all across the Atlantic.” She groaned, remembering. “Everyone on that plane hated me. It was hell on earth. Why do people have babies, anyway?”

His eyes widened and one eyebrow rose dramatically. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

“Oh.”

She gulped. That was a mistake. She groaned internally. She really couldn’t afford to goof up like that. He’d assumed Cici was her baby, which was exactly what she wanted him to think, at least for now. She had to be more careful.

She wished she were a better actor, but even a professional performer might have trouble with this gig. After all she’d been through over the past week, she really ought to be in a straightjacket by now. Or at least a warm bath.

Just days before, she’d been a normal young first-year lawyer, working for a small law firm that specialized in immigration law. And then, suddenly, the world had all caved in on her. Things had happened, things she didn’t dare think about if she was to keep her wits about her. Things she would have to deal with eventually, but not yet…not now.

Still, she was afraid that nothing would ever be sane again. She’d turned around and found herself in the middle of a nightmare, and suddenly she’d had very limited choice. She could give up and go to bed and pull the covers over her head for the duration—or she could try to take care of what was left of her family and get baby Cici to where she belonged.

The question was moot, of course. She was used to doing what was expected of her, doing the responsible thing. She’d quickly decided on the latter course and now here she was, single-mindedly following the path she’d set for herself.

Once her mission was accomplished she would breathe a sigh of relief, go back to Texas and try to pick up the pieces of her life. That would be the time for facing what had happened and deciding how in the world she was going to go on now that everything was gone. But until then, for the sake of this tiny life she was protecting, she had to maintain her strength and determination no matter how hard it got.

In the meantime, she knew she had to lie. It went against her nature. She was usually the type who was ready to give her life story to anyone with a friendly face. But she had to squelch that impulse, hold back her natural inclinations and lie.

It wasn’t easy. It was a painful lie. She had to make the world around her believe that Cici was her baby. She hadn’t been a lawyer for long, but she knew a thing or two and one of them was that she would put this whole plan in jeopardy if people knew Cici wasn’t hers, and that she had no right to be dragging her around the world like this. Social workers would be called in. Bureaucrats would get involved. Cici would be taken away from her and who knew what awful things might happen then.

Despite everything, she already loved that little child. And even if she didn’t she would have done just about anything for Samantha’s baby.

“Well, you know what I mean,” she amended a bit lamely.

“I don’t really care what you mean,” he said impatiently. “I want to know how you got in here. I want to know what you think you’re doing here.” His blue eyes darkened. “And most of all, I want you to go somewhere else.”

She winced. She could hardly blame him. “Okay,” she said, pulling herself up taller in the seat. “Let me try to explain.”

Was that a sneer on his handsome face?

“I’m all ears.”

She knew very well he was being sarcastic. He didn’t seem to like her very much. That was too bad. Most people liked her on sight. She wasn’t used to this sort of hostility. She sighed, too sleepy to do anything about it, and went back to contemplating his ears.

They were very nice and tight to the sides of his head. She admired them for a moment. Everything about this man was pretty fine, she had to admit. Too bad she always felt like a gangly, awkward teenager around men like this. She was tall; almost six feet, and she’d been that tall since puberty. Her high school years had been uncomfortable. She’d been taller than all the boys until her senior year. People told her she was willowy and beautiful now, but she still felt like that clumsy kid who towered over everyone.

“Okay.”