He scratched the new scars on his cheek again, a nervous move. "I told you about the car accident when I was six."
Rox took his hand, and he tightened his fingers around hers. Pirate nibbled on his arm when he stopped petting him.
"After the accident, some people were not kind, even though I was a child."
"A small child."
From behind them, Casimir heard Arthur sneeze, except it sounded like he said, "Willem," under his breath.
They didn't need to go into that, yet.
Casimir said, "One particular newspaper was abusive, following me around and taking pictures, jumping out at me because I looked particularly monstrous when surprised. The pictures ran with amusing captions."
Rox slid her hand up to his elbow and tucked her fingers around his thick biceps. He concentrated on Pirate in his lap and Rox's hand on his arm. He had learned as a child not to let his emotions show. A crying monster looks far worse than a stoic one.
"There's no reason for me to permanently reside in Amsterdam. An investigation will determine whether I should return to Los Angeles. I suspect not."
"Yeah, I don't think you can go back there," she agreed.
"I have the whole rest of the world."
Rox stroked his arm, fretting over him. "I'm sorry. That must have been awful."
Casimir shrugged. "It was a long time ago."
The new burn still felt like fire on his skin.
"If you want, I have some gauze and paper tape in my purse for," she gestured to her own cheek, "you know."
Anger boiled up in him, but he didn't let it show in anything more than an eyebrow twitch. "Let them look. Let them take pictures and talk."
"Good Lord, what did they say?"
Her horror at his response suggested that he hadn't been entirely successful in pressing that down. "That I should give up my spot in the line of succession in favor of my brother Willem, just in case anything happened to my sister, because no one wanted their prince or a king to look like a monster."
Rox's sweet eyes widened, this time with sympathy. "They said that about a child."
Damn it, he didn't want her sympathy. He didn't want her to look at him as a monstrous object of pity and scorn. "Luckily, my sister married and began pushing me down the line of succession quite quickly, so it was a moot point, anyway."
"Where are you now, in the line?"
He stroked Pirate, who had a smile on his smashed, ugly face. "Sixth. Ana is first, followed by her four children."
"So, ‘Ana,' your sister whom I talked to, is Anastasia the Nefarious, the Warrior Queen of the Netherlands."
He felt his smile widen. "The Warrior Crown Princess of the Netherlands. Our parents are still very much alive."
"And who's after you?" she asked.
"My younger brother Willem and my sister, Margriet. You'll probably meet everyone within a day or so. Ana said that she'll ‘arrange something,' which is every bit as ominous as it sounds." He shifted in his seat. "Look, I don't mean for you to be impolite or anything, but when you meet Willem, don't take anything that he says seriously. Margriet is fine. You'll like her."
"Why, is he going to tell me that you're a manwhore who ran around Amsterdam, screwing in all the brothels in the De Wallen district?"
He raised one eyebrow. "I think I liked it better when you only knew about windmills and tulips."
"Yeah. Well. I Googled."
"I never frequented the De Wallen district. Did you find that on the internet?"
"I just read about the red light district. I didn't know that I should Google you. If I had, I probably wouldn't be all shocked right now."
"To be clear, Willem might have had such a story planted, if he thought it would be effective or if I would care. He probably would say that or worse if he thought that it would cause me to abdicate."
"Are you serious? Abdicate what?"
Ah, such naiveté. "So he could be sixth in line for the throne instead of number seven."
"Why would he want to do that? There would still be your sister and four kids ahead of him!"
Casimir shrugged. "I have no idea why he does anything. The rest of us live in the real world, working in the law or finance or trade. He thinks he's in a high fantasy novel and has to win the throne or die."
"Literally?" she asked, her eyebrows raised and skeptical.
Casimir shrugged. "He's not delusional, but I swear that, if he could have, he would have massacred us all at his wedding last year."
"That is weird, Casimir."
He sighed. "I know."
Rox hesitated, but she asked, "It's actually Prince Casimir, isn't it?"
Casimir scratched the cat's chin, knowing that he was being ridiculous, but stroking the cat's fur was soothing. "That's what people will call me to my face in Amsterdam."
Behind his back, they still called him Prince Monster.
NOTHING CHANGED
Okay, so "Cash Amsberg," Rox's boss, the smokin' hot lawyer whom Rox had known for three, long years, the insufferable tease whom she could make actually giggle when she got on a roll, the man who rescued her from leeches in the Amazon rain forest and gropers in Italy and had poured her into bed on more than one occasion when she misjudged the strength of unfamiliar international liquors, the guy who needed her to rescue him from a persistent Russian prostitute and to hold his hand when he was in pain after the car accident, that guy was actually Prince Casimir of the Netherlands.
Rox's head boggled.
She wanted to throttle him.
You need to tell a girl something like that.
But really, nothing had changed.
He was still the same goofball who spoiled her cats. Pirate was currently drooling with contentment on his knee. Seriously, there was a dark spot on Casimir's pants' leg under the cat's chin. He was literally drooling with happiness.
He was still the sharp lawyer whom she worked with, the guy who had torn down a law firm rather than allow their clients to be swindled, and they put on their resting bitch faces together to fence with opposing counsel.
He was still the same guy who could talk to anyone he met, under any circumstances, and have a lively conversation where the other person walked away believing that Casimir was awesome and their new best friend.
That gregariousness and graciousness might have been learned, she realized. Those would be excellent qualities in a royal diplomat, and he had probably been trained as such since he was a little boy.
But Casimir was still the same man.
And Rox was still his same paralegal who was probably the last woman on Earth to sleep with him.
So nothing had really changed.
Other than the fact that Rox really wanted to hide under the table in this private airplane rather than meet his sister, Crown Princess Anastasia the Nefarious, the Warrior Princess who might invade France just for the hell of it.
CASIMIR'S PLANE
When Arthur's plane landed in London, Rox and Casimir said solemn and refined goodbyes to Maxence and Arthur, who did not nearly kill them by hugging this time, and walked through the jet bridge into the private terminal at Heathrow.
At the end of the tunnel, a squad of commandos in black fatigues swarmed them.
Rox jumped and grabbed Casimir's arm, fully intending to make a run for it, but Casimir laid one arm around her shoulders and then shook the offered hand of one of the commandos. "Excellent to see you again, Lachlan."
The man said something in Dutch and smiled grimly as he shook Casimir's hand.
Casimir spoke Dutch back to him in calm, reassuring tones, and let his hand drop.
The other commandos all faced outward, rifles across their chests and ready.
Rox was not sure how they had managed to get all those guns into England and to brandish them in an airport, but evidently being a royal prince had its perks, like your security didn't have to worry about those pesky gun laws.
The Dutch commando said something again to Casimir, and the whole group moved like one multi-legged beast through the small terminal and to another gate. Rox hurried to keep up.
Wow, the Heathrow private terminal was so big that it had a lot of gates.
The commandos hustled Casimir and Rox down the next tunnel and through the door of a new jet.
Casimir glanced out the windows as they were walking and said something to the Dutch guy whom he had been talking to, but Rox was too busy concentrating on not getting run over by their heavily armed escort to gawk at the plane outside.
She tried to pause in the doorway to take in the huge body of the airplane that yawned in front of her. This airplane was far bigger than Arthur's, a jumbo jet that had been stripped of all its uncomfortable seats for commoners and refitted with living room furniture. Conversation groupings surrounded tables. Part of the way back, a wall divided the plane into another section.