The Prince Next Door. Sue Civil-Brown
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He certainly kept it well hidden. And as for young Darius, well, if he ever blew the universe a raspberry, she hadn’t seen it.
That simply had to change. The boy was entirely too stable and solid. Stable and solid were good to a point, but a man was never going to attract a good woman, the kind of woman who would melt his butter for life, without at least a little bit of the wild side. His father had had one, after all; and bless his dear departed soul if he had hidden it too often, but when he had let it out, oh my, her world had rocked!
She smiled at the memory. The elder Darius had lit up her life for forty-one years. And while God had taken him far too soon, she had come to accept that he was now safely among the celestial beings, which made him fair game.
“So, Darius, it’s time to get your sainted butt in gear and talk to His Omnipotence. It would be nice if you and He could get little Darius off his bubble. Soon. I’ve never prayed for patience, and I don’t especially want to learn it. So now would be nice.”
But she didn’t really expect Him or him to do anything. After all, what influence did a poor shepherd’s daughter have with beings on high, anyway?
Plenty, she decided. Especially if she set the ball rolling and the celestial beings had no choice but to catch it and play the game.
So she would, naturally, start the ball rolling. She always had. Darius, Sr., had gotten used to it over the years, and even sometimes admitted that the most exhilarating times of his life had come when she had done something naughty beyond belief and he’d had to rescue her.
He had actually swashbuckled fairly well, once pushed to it.
But Darius, Jr.—or Darius I as he would soon become, like it or not—was as immovable and as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.
Now what, she asked the beings above, could be more boring than that?
Of course she received no answer. She rarely did. But the silence didn’t make her feel as if they weren’t listening. Right now she would bet her diamonds at Monte Carlo that her late husband was standing right there beside her, covering his angelic eyes and begging her not to be outrageous.
She sniffed again. Whatever had possessed her to marry a Swiss banker? She couldn’t imagine anything stodgier. On the other hand, she had been quite certain she’d seen a twinkle in his beautiful green eyes on more than one occasion. It was that twinkle that had won her heart.
But that did nothing to solve her problem with Darius the son. Her son. Sometimes she wondered if they could possibly share the same gene pool.
But the gene pool was exactly the issue right now, and she was going to give that boy a run for his money that he would never forget.
She looked heavenward and said stoutly, “Kidnapping is a crime, but not always a sin.”
She could almost hear the groans from above.
Then she called those funny little men from the Masolimian Consulate, the ones who had given her the fantastic news.
The news that would push Darius off his bubble for good.
CHAPTER ONE
THE MAN IN THE CONDO next door was up to no good.
Serena Gregory, M.D., dermatologist-on-vacation, peered through the fish-eye lens in her door and watched a distinctly criminal-looking weasel pass by. Then she heard the door of the condo next to hers open and close.
No good at all. Putting her hands on her hips, she cocked her blond head to one side, her blue eyes narrowing with thought.
The balcony, she decided. Maybe she could hear something from the balcony.
Stepping out through the sliding glass door, she paused as the persistent breeze caught her hair and whipped it across her face. With impatient fingers she combed it out of the way and looked out across the sparkling expanse of the late-afternoon Gulf of Mexico. Eleven stories up, she was well above the tourists below.
This view, and the privacy afforded by this eagle’s eye height, had been her primary reason for purchasing this condo.
Now that man had moved in next door, probably bringing the underworld with him.
Her eyes narrowed again, and she moved toward the concrete wall that separated her balcony from his. Maybe she would hear something.
After all, what else did she have to do? It was her vacation. Her job was usually boringly humdrum, removing minor imperfections from bodies and faces so that everyone could look luminously plasticized, punctuated by serious cases like melanoma. Vacations were her time to cut loose.
Unfortunately, the Federal Government had interfered with her two-week, clothing-and-commonsense-optional cruise. They had impounded the ship, claiming that the owners hadn’t paid taxes. She knew better, of course. The Feds were just afraid that someone might have a good time out there on the Caribbean.
But the man who had moved in next door only three weeks ago had caught her attention. He looked entirely too urbane and suave for the local island culture, even in expensive condos like these. As far as she could tell, he had no visible means of support, he came and went at all hours, and he never so much as socialized with anyone else at the complex. A cool nod, a faint smile.
He might as well have introduced himself as Bond, James Bond. The thought made her snicker quietly to herself. The man actually wore ascots with his blue blazers and khaki slacks. Ascots! Too much for Florida.
And now that weaselly looking man had come by twice today. If he didn’t look like the underworld on the hoof, then Serena didn’t know what the underworld looked like.
Which was entirely possible, she admitted, as she realized she’d forgotten to put sun block on her overly sensitive skin. Sighing, she went back inside and got a tube of SPF 50. No basal cell carcinomas for her. No melanoma. No early aging.
Just gobs and gobs of SPF 50, until no matter how she rubbed, she felt sticky over every exposed inch.
As a result, she was a very young-looking thirty-five, albeit a sticky one.
That’s when she realized that with the wind blowing like this, she wouldn’t be able to hear anything from next door unless it turned into a major argument.
Drat.
What she needed was an excuse to be outside her front door. Like most structures in Florida, there was no enclosed hallway, only a covered balcony running along the street side of the building, and exterior elevator shafts. Hence, her condo window ledges held flower boxes full of geraniums.
Excellent excuse to be outside and thus observe the squirrelly crook when he reappeared.
Almost—just almost—she stopped herself. She was being silly and overimaginative. She knew it. But this was her vacation, darn it, and she was going nuts for lack of adventure, all because some IRS agents had chosen this week to seize the cruise ship. What alternative did that leave her? Another trip to Orlando to stand in lines forty-five-minutes long to take rides she’d already taken? Sitting on the beach below where she could sun and bathe at any time of year?
That wasn’t a vacation.
A vacation was a time to cut loose and get into trouble of some kind.
But she did pause. Maybe she should just get a flight to Aruba and go play Texas Hold ’Em. She could get into some serious trouble doing that. Trouble of the financial kind. No matter how often she played—and if she never saw Tunica again, it would be too soon—she was still the sucker at the table.
What harm could it do to tend her geraniums, though? None. Absolutely none.
So she got out her gardening gloves, her shears and a bottle of premixed fertilizer. She’d fertilized the plants last week. At this rate she was going to have geraniums taking over the world. She’d need to call the army to put them back in their place.
The thought made her giggle, easing