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

lithe woman crawling over the mattress toward him, but she wore bright red, lace lingerie and scarlet stiletto sandals.

A thick silk robe lay on the carpeting at Dree’s feet.

Maxence caught his breath when he saw Dree standing in the doorway. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

The woman on the bed flipped her long hair back over her shoulder and rose to her knees. She was slim to the point where Dree, a licensed nurse practitioner, worried about undiagnosed anorexia nervosa.

Oh, but Dree knew this chick.

Marie-Therese Grimaldi said, “Oh, look, Maxence. It’s your little admin, Dree Clark. I wonder what she’s doing in your apartment in the middle of the night, again.”

Max said, “I swear to God, Dree. This is not what it looks like.”

Considering Maxence’s defensive posture and Marie-Therese’s predatory one, Dree had a pretty good idea of what was going on. “Jesus, Marie-Therese. This is gross. He’s your first cousin. Your dads are brothers. If you screwed him, you’d have babies with three heads.”

Marie-Therese said to Max, “This is absolutely none of the staff’s business.”

Dree drew herself up to every inch she could muster, which wasn’t a whole lot but she wasn’t a shrimpy. “I may look like a simple admin to you, Lady Marie-Therese, but I am His Highness Prince Maxence’s personal assistant.” She turned to Max. “Your Serene Highness, this woman is not on your schedule at this time. As keeper of your schedule, shall I remove her?”

Maxence said, “Lady Grimaldi was just leaving.”

Dree scooped up the robe at her feet and held it open. “My lady, if you please. Prince Maxence’s schedule does not accommodate unscheduled appointments.”

Marie-Therese looked back and forth between the two of them, flummoxed by their officious display, but they both kept it up believably enough that she had to go along with it. She stomped over to where Dree was holding the robe for her, at least as much as she could stomp in those chopstick-heels she was wearing, snatched the silk out of Dree’s hand, and whirled it around her as she walked out of the bedroom.

Dree followed her into the living room to make sure Marie-Therese got out the door safely and that it was locked behind her.

Marie-Therese shot back at Maxence, “Rubbing one out on your secretary is just pathetic.”

Dree opened the door and held it for her. “I assure you that His Serene Highness is not sexually harassing me nor any of the other staff members. I’m wearing business formal, not lingerie.”

Marie-Therese had walked outside the apartment’s door, but she turned back. “I don’t know what you thought you had in Nepal with him, but this is Monaco.”

Dree looked up at Marie-Therese, who was still astonishingly beautiful even when she was snarling-mad. She said, “Oh, honey, I’m good country folk, but that is some hillbilly stuff, right there. Trolling for dates at the family reunion just ain’t smart.”

Dree flicked the door closed in Marie-Therese’s face and twisted the lock until it clicked hard.

She strolled back to his bedroom.

Maxence wasn’t in the room. She called out, “Max?”

He leaned out of the adjoining bathroom, where he had a toothbrush stuck in his mouth.

“Wow, you have got some relative problems,” Dree told him.

He leaned back into the bathroom. Spitting sounds ensued, and then he said, “I texted you. I was waiting for you. I left the door unlocked for you.”

“I have a key.”

“And this one time Marie-Therese decides to slip into my bed, the damn door was unlocked.”

He came back to the bedroom, still clutching his toothbrush.

Dree asked him, “So, is your cousin a good kisser?”

Maxence froze and then stuffed the toothbrush back in his mouth and scrubbed his teeth ferociously. Foam dripped down his arm.

His toothbrush bent from the pressure and snapped in half.

He stared at the broken handle in his fist and spat the brush head into his other hand.

She laughed at him. “It’s okay, man. I’m just kidding. Take it easy on your gums.”

Maxence went back in the bathroom and spat foam like he was trying to clear poison from his mouth.

Gargling sounds followed.

And then the shower started. Splashing and a long male sigh emerged through the door with the steam.

Dree sat on the bed and waited.

He emerged wearing a white towel tucked tightly around his waist.

“You okay?” she asked him.

Maxence rolled his eyes and shrugged. “That was revolting.”

“Do you need to talk to somebody?”

He shook his head, shrugging, and walked over to sit beside her on the bed. “I’m not traumatized, just offended. It’s like, you think you’re in the movie Fifty Shades of Grey, but then it turns out you’re in hentai.”

Dree snorted. “What the heck was she even doing here, anyway?”

He dropped his head to his hands. “I have no idea why she did this. I thought it would be amusing if you crawled into bed and found me already naked, but I was tired and drifted off. Then, a woman was kissing me, and I was still fogged with sleep, and it took me a minute to figure out my cousin was trying to seduce me.” He sighed. “It’s weird when your cousin grabs your dick.”

Dree shook her head. “It is weird. It’s not like this is the eighteen-hundreds, and if her father discovered her in your bed, you’d be obliged to marry her. And she’s your cousin.”

“Right? The House of Grimaldi is not inbred, like the rest of the European royal families are, because we didn’t marry our cousins. They have all sorts of recessive genetic diseases that we don’t. Royal hemophilia took down more than one royal house.”

Dree leaned back on her hands, the duvet soft under her palms. “This is like a Shakespearean play. Shakespeare always had people hopping into bed with the wrong person and getting caught.”

He nodded. “The bed-trick was one of his most common plot elements. Let’s hope that we’re in one of his comedies and not in a Shakespearean tragedy, where everyone ends up dead at the end.”

“You don’t think she just wanted to sleep with a