The Prince Next Door. Sue Civil-Brown

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      CHAPTER TWO

      PABLO MENOS RETURNED to the consular office from his meeting with Darius Maxwell hot and seething. Hot from the climate, seething from the encounter.

      His position as deputy for administration to the consul-in-residence for the country of Masolimia had its perks, but living in Florida was not one of them. Even this late in the year he still longed for the cool mountain country of his home, a flyspeck in the Pyrenees between Spain and France.

      In keeping with the size of Masolimia, the consular offices were a storefront in a run-down strip mall entirely too close to the Port of Tampa. In short, not the best neighborhood. Train tracks ran right behind them, and on a far too regular basis all conversation was drowned by the deep thrumming of locomotives practically driving through the offices.

      Not that the consul cared. He was rarely around.

      The glass door swung closed behind him, its little bell ringing a note of alert, and modestly air-conditioned air washed over him. In a half hour or so, he might actually cool off.

      Juan Mas, his underdeputy, was sitting at his battered desk reading a comic book. He barely looked up. “¿Qué pasó?” he enquired, bored.

      “It was terrible!”

      That got Juan’s attention. A small man with a beard that defied the sharpest razor, giving him a perpetual five-o’clock shadow, he finally really looked up from his comic book. “Huh?”

      “Exactly,” Menos said, going to stand under the nearest air-conditioning vent, hoping to dry out the Hawaiian shirt that was sticking to him everywhere. How did people ever manage to live in this horrid, humid swamp?

      “He called the police?” Mas sat up straight and looked wildly about as if afraid the local SWAT team was about to burst in on them.

      “Worse,” Menos said flatly. Ay, Dios, the air was barely lukewarm, emerging as a trickle. “He doesn’t care.”

      “Huh?” That was one American expression Mas had learned well.

      “He doesn’t care,” Menos repeated in a snarl.

      “But we kidnapped his mother! What kind of son is he?”

      “What kind of prince is he going to be if he doesn’t care about his own mother?” Menos corrected darkly.

      “I can’t believe it.”

      Neither could Menos. He’d been there, he’d seen the reaction, heard the words, and his jaw was still dragging on the ground, metaphorically speaking.

      “That’s inhuman,” Mas said. “Maybe he doesn’t really believe us.”

      “Oh, he believed me,” Menos said, plucking rayon away from his chest. “He said, ‘I pity you. You don’t know what you’re in for.’”

      Mas’s eyes widened, then a snicker escaped him. “He’s right.”

      Menos, whose world view was rather dour to begin with, silently agreed. Why, oh why, had he ever allowed that woman to talk him into this?

      But then he squared his shoulders and reminded himself his country’s future was at stake, and it was riding on his shoulders while the consul-in-residence chased bikini-clad bimbos down in Key West.

      “We will call her,” he announced. “She must call her son and convince him she’s in danger.”

      Mas nodded, only too eager to agree to anything that would allow him to get back to his comics. “Good idea.”

      MARIA TERESA STOOD on the stool while her dressmaker jabbed industriously at the waist of the green watered-silk gown she was having made for her son’s coronation.

      The call from Menos in Florida hadn’t pleased her at all. Imagine Darius not being upset that she’d been kidnapped! Even Menos, squirrelly as he was, had sounded appalled by the utter lack of concern Darius had displayed.

      What was it Menos had quoted Darius as saying? “Enjoy your time with my mother.”

      Humph.

      Rolling her eyes heavenward, Maria Teresa demanded to know why His Lordliness had given her such an unfeeling son. Why, in fact, the stolid Swiss side had predominated to such an extent.

      Was the boy not of her flesh, as well? Where was his passion and fire? Why wouldn’t he take up his lance and tilt at windmills for the sake of his mother?

      Why didn’t he believe it?

      And how could he laugh at being told he was the prince of Masolimia, a not-inconsiderable flyspeck of a principality in the Pyrenees? It was, after all, bigger than Monaco. It was his birthright. And hers, for that matter. To return as the dowager princess, rather than as the daughter of a despised shepherd family…well, what more could justice demand?

      She sniffed and looked down at the dark hair of her dressmaker as the woman worked to pin a fold in at the waistline.

      “I’m not sure I like this silk at all,” Maria Teresa announced.

      The dressmaker’s hands froze. Without looking up, the woman said, “But it becomes you so well, madam.”

      Maria Teresa glanced sideways at the mirrored wall, taking in all the expensive, basted fabric that covered her. Fabric her own mother could only have dreamed about. It did flatter the olive tone of her skin, she decided.

      “But blue,” she said, anyway.

      The dressmaker, now on solid ground, looked up. “Madam doesn’t want to look as if she has a liver disease.”

      Maria Teresa sighed theatrically. It was true, blues made her look sallow.

      “Oh, very well,” she said irritably, hating to be reminded that there was anything she couldn’t do. “Perhaps yellow…”

      The dressmaker, Adele, straightened, stepped back and put her hands on her hips. “Madam,” she said sternly, “we tried every color of the rainbow and agreed this flattered you best. Moreover, it will not be so green once we add the pearls.”

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