Prince: Royal Romantic Suspense (Billionaires in Disguise: Maxence Book 5) by Blair Babylon (best books to read fiction txt) 📕

Sunlight blazed between her eyelashes.

She chanced a look outside the helicopter through the wide window.

On the inland side, past a chain-link fence, mountains encrusted with tall, pastel-colored buildings climbed into the pristine sky.

A few people stood outside the fence, pointing cameras with bazooka-sized lenses at the helicopter or whispering into their phones. A squat red-brick building that looked like it had been built in the fifties interrupted the helipad’s fence.

The whine of the rotors above her died away, and Dree glanced out of the bulbous front windshield of the helicopter. People were already stepping out of the first helicopter that had flown from Nice, France, lifting off just three minutes before the one she’d ridden in.

The people disembarking from the first chopper were Maxence, that guy Quentin Sault, who’d come to take him back to Monaco, and some more of his military guys. They walked toward the door of the small building, not acknowledging the few paparazzi outside the fence.

Max strode as he walked, a vision of powerful, sexy masculinity in a well-tailored suit. Sunlight glinted off his tanned skin, and a breeze toyed with his thick, black hair. His hard cheekbones and jawline cast shadows on his skin, a handsomeness reminiscent of sophisticated old-Hollywood movie stars. His gait was powerful and athletic, the movement of a healthy, confident man. Even the way he jabbed the asphalt with his heels looked arrogant.

The shorter security men scurried to keep up with his long-legged stride while they squinted at the reporters outside the fence.

Because Dree was now staff, she hadn’t rated riding on the first helicopter with His Serene Highness, Prince Maxence of Monaco, Count of Wherever, Lord of Someplace She’d Never Heard Of, Emperor of His Own Massively Inflated Ego, the Duke of Stick Up His Noble Ass, and Royal Guy Who Evidently Didn’t Want to Get Laid if He Treated People Like That.

If Maxence really was a prince of this whole country, shouldn’t there be a whole lot more media here to take his picture? Like Princess Di or something? Just because he was ridiculously rich didn’t make him royal. Those very few photographers might just be aviation enthusiasts who were there for the helicopters.

Her helicopter’s door scraped as it opened, and the other staff began scooting toward the wind blowing into the cabin of their aircraft.

The breeze smelled great.

Shocked, Dree froze with her palms on the velvet seat and inhaled hard, sucking in the freshest air she’d ever smelled. The cool, damp air soothed her nose and throat as she breathed it in, bringing her the scents of crisp cotton sheets dried outside in the springtime and God’s creation of the Earth. “Wow.”

The white guy beside her, yet another military guy wearing black fatigues and armed to the teeth, turned back. One of his light brown eyebrows rose above the rim of his mirrored sunglasses. “You okay?”

“Yeah, this place smells great.”

He looked out the door, then back at her. “You mean the sea breeze?”

“Is that what it is?”

“It’s a little fresher than the regular ocean, I guess.”

“That’s what the ocean smells like? Which ocean is it?”

His head tilted. “The Mediterranean Sea isn’t an ocean, but it’s pretty big. It’s cleaner than a lot of areas of the Pacific or Atlantic, so maybe that’s what you’re smelling.”

“I’m from the middle of the desert in America. I’ve never smelled the ocean before.”

He grinned at her. “Welcome to Monaco. Make sure you spend some time on the beach. It’s great.”

Dree followed the guy as she stooped to exit the helicopter. He held out his hand to steady her as she hopped down onto the asphalt, and she retrieved her backpack with everything she owned in the world inside.

“I’m Louis Bernard,” he said.

She stuck out her hand to shake. “Dree Clark. Pleased to meetcha.”

Late afternoon sunshine slanted over an electric-blue sea that stretched southeast to the horizon and threw silver speckles on the wavelets. Wind gusted over the water and patted her face, fluttering her unzipped puffy coat at her sides and ruffling her hair.

The long tarmac of the heliport was painted with red and white bullseyes. Royal blue helicopters clung to the targets like bottle-blue dragonflies gingerly resting on a sidewalk.

Thick red and white stripes marked their tail fins.

She looked over at the heliport building, where Maxence was walking.

A banner composed of a red rectangle atop a white one snapped on the flagpole in the sea breeze.

The helicopters, the small building, and some of the trucks outside were marked with a shield filled in with a red and white diamond-checkerboard pattern, which Dree had seen before.

She’d seen it when Maxence had been sponge-bathing in their tent and when he’d rolled up his sleeves to his elbows in that Paris hotel and bared his thick forearms.

The tattoo on his right arm, the one with a ring of three shields, had that exact pattern on the shield pointing down toward Max’s wrist.

That was the last thing, the thing that finally convinced her he was Prince Maxence of Monaco. His body was literally marked with Monaco’s insignia.

No, Monaco was marked with his insignia.

Maxence really was a royal prince who’d been slumming in Paris and then had been on a charity tour of Nepal. That wasn’t a joke. His ancestors had ruled lands and commanded armies to fight wars.

Her family were sheep farmers, infantry cannon fodder, and peasants.

A part of Dree’s mind was very busy insisting that people were people, and that royal people were no better than other people who were the salt of the earth, the ones who grew the food and milked the sheep that kept the world fed.

Whether Maxence was better or not, he and Dree were very different, as he stood in his tailored, stylish suit on the soil of the country he might rule someday, while she wore grimy jeans and a ski jacket from a church’s poor barrel.

A group of people emerged from the building and approached Maxence. The new group looked like a