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

Maxence leaned in and whispered near her ear, “You’re the most beautiful woman here tonight.”

She had been looking at the other women there, svelte women whose bone structure might be the product of generations of breeding for beauty or might be the work of highly skilled plastic surgeons, but Dree found that comment highly implausible. “I declare, Prince Maxence, you’re going to turn my head.”

“You’re warm, and you’re kind.”

“Now I know you’re just trying to get laid.”

“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

“Max, honey, you’re laying it on pretty thick.”

He turned her hand that he held and brushed her knuckles across his lips. “Love isn’t hard for me,” he said, musing. “Friends of mine—Casimir, Arthur, Xan, it seems like all of them—said that they’d never really loved anyone before they met their wives. I didn’t know what they meant because I’ve always found it easy to open my heart. But now, I know what they meant when they said it was different.”

“Max, priests shouldn’t talk this way. It’s not fair. You’re going to break my heart. You’ve already broken my heart. I don’t know how to let you go. You told Father Moses this morning that you would go to Rome with him to take Holy Orders. How can I compete with that? How am I supposed to compete with God?”

Maxence stopped moving and pressed the back of her hand against his chest. His strong heart thumped under her knuckles. “It’s not a competition.”

“It feels like a competition. When you leave for Rome, I’ll have lost you forever.”

“What if I don’t go to Rome tomorrow?”

“You will go eventually. At some point, Pope Vincent will tell you that it’s okay now, that you should go to Rome and be a priest. Even I know that you should be a priest, Max. Everybody who has seen you preach knows you should be a priest.”

“When I’m on the road with the charity as Deacon Father Maxence, it’s so easy to love. I can love everyone, the kids, the dogs, the whole world. I can just let it all happen. There’s no selfishness in it. There’s no covetousness. I don’t want to own them. I loved my brother, Pierre, even though I knew what he was. I loved Flicka for years. That’s what people feel when I talk. But you… You break me open, and it’s different.”

“You’re leaving tomorrow to go to Rome and take Holy Orders. Don’t break my heart anymore. Let’s just dance this one dance together. Let’s have this one night that we can remember for the rest of our lives. And I don’t mean I’m going home with you, because I’m not. I’m going back to my own room, alone, because that’s the right thing to do. So for right now, Maxence, will you please just shut up and let me have these few minutes?”

He’d been watching her the whole time, his dark eyes seeming sadder and sadder as he listened to her.

“Just these few minutes?” he asked. “Is that all you want?”

Dree’s eyes stung but she wasn’t going to ruin this by crying, so she blinked back the tears. “I would’ve taken anything. I would’ve taken a few more weeks or months, maybe even a year or two, because knowing you makes every minute of my life feel real. But if these few minutes is all we have, then I’ll take them and hold onto them for the rest of my life.”

Maxence asked her, “What if we had more time?”

“We don’t,” Dree said. “You’re leaving for Rome, and I’ll figure out what to do. You set me up with more than enough money to start over somewhere. My sister and her son are taken care of for a few months, and by the time their money starts running low, I’ll be settled somewhere and can start sending them money again. I don’t want to pretend, Max. I just want to remember these few months with you.”

“No, what if we had more than this? What if we had forever?”

To Dree’s utter shock, Maxence slid one toe behind himself and dipped, ending up on one knee in front of her.

And he was holding a small black-velvet box in his palm.

The crowd pulled back like receding ocean waves.

Silence rippled in rings from the center of the ballroom floor to the glass walls that overlooked the dark Mediterranean Sea.

White static filled Dree’s head, and her hands started shaking.

Maxence said, “Andrea Grace Catherine Clark—”

“Oh my God, you said my name right.”

“—I never thought I would meet someone as kind, warm, and wonderful as you are. Would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

Chapter Thirty-Two

A Decent Proposal

Maxence

There hadn’t been an exact moment when Maxence had decided to propose to Dree Clark. The tears she was blinking back made his heart ache. Her words sliced the lies that he had been telling himself all his life, and they fell into shreds at his feet.

As she told him that she wanted just those few moments with him, the weight of his grandmother’s engagement ring in his pocket pulled on his tuxedo jacket and his cross around her neck caught the light, and that was when his miracle occurred.

He had been praying for a miracle to tell him to be a priest, but his miracle had been right in front of him for months. The kindness in her soul could be nothing less than miraculous.

Lowering himself to one knee in front of Dree Clark felt more right than prostrating himself on the floor in St. Peter’s Basilica.

When those words left his mouth, Would you do me the honor of becoming my wife, the love in his soul expanded through the room, drawing a collective sigh from everyone around them.

Beside Dree’s shoulder, Nico stood where he had been dancing with Marie-Therese. They’d turned to watch with the rest of the crowd. Max saw out of the corner of his vision that Nico was grinning at