Prince: Royal Romantic Suspense (Billionaires in Disguise: Maxence Book 5) Blair Babylon (ebook reader screen txt) 📖

second thought, perhaps we should rely on our Catholic connections to take care of you. It would probably be best if you stayed in a convent with other religious sisters so everyone can look after one another.”

Disanka nodded. “Yes, Deacon Father Maxence. We are always more comfortable when we stay with religious sisters.”

“I’ll make some phone calls. In the meantime, there is a room here where you can wait.”

Ndaya swiveled her head, looking around the courtyard. “Do you know people in this castle, Deacon Father Maxence?”

He winked at her. “I have connections everywhere.” He turned to Dree and said, “We’re going to take them up to my office to wait for some friends to come and get them. I know you don’t speak French, but they have no idea who I am here. I’m just Deacon Father Maxence, and I have ‘connections,’ so they can wait inside until someone from a convent comes and picks them up.”

Dree was still smiling and nodding at Ndaya and Disanka. “Who are they? I mean, you just told me their names, but who are they?”

Maxence’s grin grew forced. “It’s not entirely inaccurate to say they are my family.”

Dree raised one pale eyebrow at him, a grin playing around the corners of her mouth. “Did you forget to mention you have two wives and a couple of kids?”

Max chuckled, the tension in his chest evaporating. “Ndaya and Disanka are bonnes sœurs, religious sisters, with a Catholic order in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We met there five years ago. They’re nurses who work at a children’s home in Kinshasa.”

“Ah, I always knew you had a thing for nurses.”

He laughed. “Evidently. Majambu and Mpata were left in the surrender cradle on the same day. Majambu was about six months old, but Mpata was a newborn. They were both sick. It took months to nurse them back to health. They were abandoned by women who couldn’t take care of them or were leaving their husbands, or they might have been born into upper-class families who didn’t want to admit that their teenaged daughters became pregnant. There’s no way to know. I was new in the DRC at the time, working with Father Moses at a rectory near the convent. Anyway, Father Moses assists at the children’s home, and so did I. And we—bonded.”

“Did they call you daddy? I heard them say pere, which I think means daddy?”

“They call me parrain, which means godfather.”

Dree’s voice dropped and became hoarse. “Someday, you can do a favor for me.”

Maxence smiled and rubbed his eyebrow, suddenly shy about what he should have been most proud of. “I baptized them. They were the first children I baptized.”

Dree glanced up at him, startled. “But you’re not a priest.”

He shrugged. “You don’t have to be a priest to baptize someone. Any Christian can baptize someone in extraordinary circumstances, but deacons do baptisms all the time. We’re considered ordinary ministers for baptisms. I’ve baptized lots of babies. But anyone can.”

Dree’s smile softened. “I wish I’d seen you do that.”

“Yeah.” The tight knot unraveled in Maxence’s chest. He wished she’d seen the better part of him, too.

Dree led the way back to Maxence’s office. Ndaya and Disanka followed her, their long, white skirts swaying like dangling lilies, while Max brought up the rear with Majambu and Mpata clinging to his shoulders and giggling. They struggled with each other because they were both trying to dominate Maxence’s attention, each of them turning his face toward herself and away from her sister. Except for a few furtive video calls, he hadn’t seen them since he’d left the DRC to tend to his dying uncle, and he could swear they had grown so much and were talking so much more in just that short time.

He hated that he’d missed so much.

In the office, Dree fussed over them and made sure there were chairs and tea for the ladies and milk and cookies for the kids.

Majambu and Mpata didn’t want chairs. They were delighted sitting on Max’s lap and competing for his attention and the cookies.

After a few quick phone calls, the refreshments, and plans for Maxence to come to the convent the next day for lunch, Max’s receptionist called on the phone and, sounding very confused, announced that three nuns had arrived and insisted they had an appointment.

Maxence and Dree saw the two nurses and two toddlers into the minivan, which had car seats, and waved goodbye as it drove out of sight.

Once the minivan had rounded the curve and sped into a tunnel, the smile dropped off Max’s face. He turned on his heel and marched back into the palace with Dree and five security personnel trailing him.

The crowd parted in front of him.

As he walked down the hall toward his office, he passed Quentin Sault, who was walking the other way. He growled to Sault, “With me.”

Sault fell in beside and one step behind Maxence. His receptionist called after him, but he straight-armed his office door out of his way. It banged against the wall on the other side as he turned.

Quentin Sault entered after him and came to parade rest, his hands locked behind his back and chin, high.

Maxence walked around behind him and flipped the door closed, leaving Dree and the other security personnel outside. As he paced around to stand in front of Sault, he asked, “Who brought them here?”

Sault blinked, weathered eyelids covering his nearly colorless eyes. “I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Those African ladies who appeared in the courtyard of the palace, a place where they should not have been. They should have been pretty much anywhere else in the world except this palace in this country. They’ve never known who I am, and they would not know to find me here. Someone knew they existed. Who was it, and who brought them here?”

Sault’s iron-gray eyebrows twitched toward the crease between his eyes. “I’ll look into it, sir.”

“They said Michael Rossi contacted them in Kinshasa and made the travel arrangements for them.