The Billionaire's Proposition in Paris, page 18
“If you give a list to Sergei, he will see that your groceries are purchased.”
One of the security men stepped forward with a nod.
She sighed. “Fine, but I’ve only budgeted seventy-five dollars and if he goes over buying the more expensive brands, I’m not paying for it. And all fresh veg, meat and dairy have to be organic.” She frowned up at Sergei. “You can get those things most economically at—” Emma named one of the three stores she had to shop at to get the healthiest food for her son on the tightest budget.
“I will take care of it,” Sergei promised.
“Give me your number and I’ll send you my grocery list.” She kept it in an app on her phone.
That taken care of, she led the way out of the bank and into the Santa Fe sunshine. “What are you doing in New Mexico?”
She had never once anticipated quite literally running into a prince in the place she’d chosen to start over for its lower cost of living and family-friendly environment.
“A mining deal.” He said it like that should have been obvious.
“But—”
“You are aware that minerals are a strong natural resource in this state.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I am now.” She’d come to Santa Fe looking for a fresh start.
The only major industries that registered with her were ones she might work in. She’d settled in Santa Fe, rather than somewhere else in New Mexico, because of the numerous art galleries and thriving artist community.
She’d been supplementing her income with small commissions from one of them since a year after her move from Seattle. For a place to live and her main income, she’d watched children for a wealthy couple who had a real estate business. When Emma had gone job hunting, none of the places she’d applied to had been mining companies.
It had taken her nearly four years to build her life back to something decent, where she and her son did not have to live a hand-to-mouth existence and she wasn’t going to let Konstantin mess it up now.
She’d gotten her degree, only an associate’s and not the bachelor’s she’d planned for, but it was a degree. But in order to get away from the stigma of the restraining order he’d taken out against her, Emma had had to change her name.
It had hurt to give up her adoptive parents’ name. She’d been a Sloan since only a few months after birth.
However, they’d washed their hands of her, so she’d done it, changing both her and her son’s last name to the one she’d been born with, Carmichael. The only thing she had of biological parents she would never know.
There was drama at the car, Mickey not wanting his father to leave and follow in another car, his screams and tears not unusual for his age, but having a more profound impact on Emma because of the situation. Moisture burned in the back of her own eyes as she tried to explain that Konstantin would meet them at their small house.
“I will ride with you,” he said as he walked around the car to the passenger side.
She stared at him and then down at her ten-year-old domestic compact and tried to compute that statement. Him ride with her and Mickey?
Konstantin’s security argued, but he ignored them, opening the back door for Mickey and helping her incredibly independent son, who had stopped allowing her to help him more than a year ago, into his safety seat.
Hands shaking with nerves, Emma spoke to Konstantin across the roof of the car. “You can ride with your security. Mickey will settle.”
Her son was no longer crying because he believed Konstantin would be riding with them, but was now busy doing up the buckles on his five-point harness.
She acknowledged ruefully that he was no longer the one in danger of having a meltdown.
Konstantin closed Mickey’s door, tapped the hood and came around the car to speak to her.
“You kept my son from me.” The accusation in his voice would have hurt.
If the words had been true.
They were not.
A parking lot was better than a bank, but the car was not exactly soundproof. She lowered her voice, but let her tone drip with accusation. “You ejected me from your life so you could marry another woman.”
“And so out of spite, you did this thing!” The Prince was making no effort to keep his voice down.
“Spite? Are you delusional?” she demanded, her voice still low. “I tried to call you. You refused my calls. I tried to see you, and you had a restraining order taken out against me, remember that? I’d done nothing to warrant one, but men like you, they get what they want.”
“I am not the delusional one. I took out no restraining order. More to the point, I did not want to be a nonentity in my child’s life,” he said in a driven tone.
“You couldn’t tell from how you treated me.” He had made it clear he wanted to be a nonentity in her life and his dedication to that endeavor had dictated his not finding out about their son.
“You should have tried harder.”
How typical to expect her to have had options he would have taken for granted, but that he’d removed from her. He lived in such a rarified world, he probably really believed the garbage he was spouting.
“What do you mean, harder? I called and texted, but you blocked my number. You moved out of our apartment and I couldn’t get a forwarding address.” She’d tried, but the building super and doormen had held firm against charm, pleading and even threats. “I wrote and you never answered, I didn’t even know if you got my letters. I sent emails through the contact form on the Mirrus Global website, but never got a reply.”
It had been hellish. And once she had finally gotten in touch with someone in his family? That hell had only gotten worse, not better.
Something like guilt briefly showed in his expression and then it was gone.
Konstantin looked down at their son through the window, realized the small boy was watching them avidly even if he couldn’t hear everything said and grimaced. “We will have this discussion later.”
“Good call.” She made no effort to temper her sarcasm. But neither did she reopen the conversation.
Emma tried to protest his riding with them again when he walked around to the passenger door, but he shook his head. “I told him I would, so I will.” Then the Prince climbed into her car and pulled his seat belt into place, like he rode in such humble transportation all the time.
* * *
Mickey kept up a running dialogue with his father as Emma drove, stopping every few sentences, to get her confirmation. “Right, Mom?” was one of his favorite phrases when he was feeling nervous.
The number of times he used that phrase in the short drive to their house on the outskirts of town indicated just how nervous he was feeling, despite the confident demeanor he put forth.
So much like his father, she ached. As she often did at that reminder.
When they arrived at the fixer-upper house she’d managed to buy only a month previously, Konstantin did not look impressed. She tried to see the one-level old adobe house through his eyes and failed utterly. She could see only what had drawn her to it first.
The coral-stained adobe contrasted happily with the wood trim painted turquoise. The landscaping needed work as odd scrub grew between and around the natural rock that acted as tile in the tiny front courtyard. She did her best to keep up on the weeds, but she had only so many off-hours.
“Is this your home?” Konstantin asked.
Emma didn’t know if he was talking to her or to their son, but Mickey answered. “We just got it. I have my own room now and Mom is gonna put in a play structure in back when we get enough money.”
Konstantin made a sound like he was choking, but he smiled at Mickey. “I would like to see your room.”
“Okay. That’s okay, right, Mom?” Mickey asked again.
“Of course.” She turned off the car. “Let’s go inside.”
Konstantin stopped once they were in the living room and just stared around him. “This is where you and my son live?” he asked with what sounded like disdain to her sensitive ears.
Emma gritted her teeth, gave their son a significant look and then replied, “Yes. This is the home our son loves and is very proud to be able to call his own. Think before you speak, Konstantin. I mean, Your Highness.”
He frowned. “You used to call me Kon.”
“We used to be friends.” They’d been lovers too, but she wasn’t saying that in front of her son.
“We are going to be much more than that soon. Call me Konstantin if you must, but don’t use my title. We are way beyond that.” With that pronouncement he headed down the hallway with Mickey.
The next two hours were a revelation. Konstantin should not have been so good with Mickey. He had no experience with children. He was a tycoon prince, not a dad.
But he was patient with the little boy, showing no frustration when Mickey grew fractious.
“It’s time for lunch, I think.” Emma smiled down at her son. “Are you hungry, Mickey?”
“My name is Mikhail!” her son shouted.
Emma winced at the volume, but her reaction was nothing compared with how still Konstantin became. “You named him after me? But why?”
She stepped back, though he’d made no move to come closer to her. She’d been very careful to keep her distance and their son between them. She had no answer she was willing to say in front of Mickey for why she’d given her son his father’s middle name.
It hadn’t been because she wanted to honor Konstantin, but she’d thought her son deserved something of his father’s and that was all Emma had ever been able to give him.
She just shook her head. “Lunch.”
“Because you’re my dad,” Mickey replied with none of his mother’s reticence. “Mom says I’m just like you.”
“Does she?” Konstantin stared at her and then at Mickey.
Mickey nodded. “Mostly when I’m being stubborn.”
“Like about eating lunch?”
“I don’t want you to go away.”
Oh, man. Emma had never doubted that Mickey needed his dad, but she’d had no way to give him access. Now Prince Konstantin Mikhail of the House of Merikov was here in the flesh and Mickey didn’t want to lose him.
Resolve firmed inside Emma. Whatever Konstantin had planned, he was going to play a significant part in his son’s life from this point forward. Even if Emma had to go to the media and shame him into it.
Tiana, the former Queen of Mirrus and his sister-in-law, not to mention the woman who had threatened to take her baby away, was dead now. It was time for Emma to stop acting out of fear of Konstantin’s family.
“I am going nowhere,” Konstantin promised.
Emma only hoped he meant it.
“Would you like to eat lunch with us?” she invited.
See her remembering manners taught by her parents and patience taught by her yogi.
“Yes, thank you.” Konstantin looked surprised by the offer. “What would you like? I will send Sergei out for it.”
Sergei had been careful to stay close, but always shifting to a different room than the one she, Mickey and Konstantin were in. The rest of the detail were outside watching her front and back door for threats, but probably just as much for paparazzi sniffing around.
“Thank you for the offer, but Mickey needs to eat now, or he’s going to get hangry and none of us wants to deal with that.”
“Hangry? I am not familiar with this term.”
“Hungry and angry together. Hangry.”
Konstantin smiled. “I too can become hangry,” he admitted to Mickey. “We should both eat lunch.”
“We’ll all eat together at the table, like a family. That’s okay, right, Mom?” Mickey’s nerves were showing again.
“Yes. We’ll all eat together. Do you want to help me make sandwiches?”
“Will Dad...” He looked at Konstantin as if asking if that was okay.
The Prince nodded at his son, swallowing like he was having trouble containing emotion.
“Will Dad help us make them too?” Mickey asked, stressing his father’s title like he was savoring it.
Tears burned at the back of Emma’s eyes and she hated Konstantin more in that moment than she ever had before. For all he’d stolen from Mickey, for the fear of loss her son couldn’t hide.
Konstantin met her gaze and something must have shown on her face because he flinched backward as if she’d struck him.
Emma forced her anger deep inside, repeating the mantra she’d used to let go of her hatred in the first place and gave her son the reassuring smile he needed. “I’m not sure Konstantin has ever made a sandwich before. You can show him how to spread the mayo.”
Emma insisted on making sandwiches for the security detail as well as the three of them, which she knew meant she’d have to dip into the rainy day fund to buy more groceries, but needs must. Konstantin tried to argue with her that his people didn’t need to be fed by her, but she ignored him.
What did he know about what the average person needed? He lived in his rarified world and had no clue what it meant to be just a regular guy.
Cooking with her ex-lover in her tiny kitchen turned into a test of Emma’s strength.
He kept brushing up against her and sending her senses into orbit. And the worst part? She didn’t think he even realized he was doing it.
There just wasn’t enough space not to bump into each other with three of them working at the counter, putting the food together. She pulled a container of gazpacho she’d made the day before out and dished it up to go with the sandwiches for everyone.
The day was warm and chilled soup would be refreshing. Never mind it was supposed to be her and Mickey’s dinner two nights next week.
“You’re gonna like this, Dad,” Mickey assured Konstantin. “Mom’s the best cook!”
“I remember a time when she struggled to boil water.” He smiled at her, inviting her to share the joke.
Emma’s mother had been old-fashioned in so many ways, but her kitchen was her private domain and she never allowed anyone in it. Not even her daughter. Emma had had no clue how to cook when she’d gone to college.
“I learned.” When she’d been pregnant and alone.
Konstantin frowned, like her thoughts were broadcast for him to see. Maybe they were. Emma had never had much of a poker face. Her dad used to tease her that he knew if she liked her presents, not by what she said when she opened them, but by what her face told him.
Some days, she missed her parents so much, it hurt.
But like Konstantin, they’d opted to eject Emma from their lives when she wasn’t what they wanted her to be.
“You look sad. What is wrong?”
He was asking her that? Like he couldn’t guess, if not the particulars, then certainly the gist. And what gave him the right to ask any personal questions of her at all anyway?
She inhaled and exhaled repeating patience, compassion and tolerance under her breath.
“Mom gets like that,” Mickey said practically. “She says memories aren’t always warm and happy, but they’re still ours. It’s okay if I cry sometimes when I remember Snoopy dying.”
“Who is Snoopy?”
“He was the family dog for the people I worked for.”
“Worked?” he asked, probing.
But she ignored him and started handing out plates.
“You are not their servant. They can come get their food if you insist on feeding them.”
“Don’t you think they deserve to eat?” she asked with bite.
He frowned at her, seemingly shocked. “You know me better than that. They could have gotten takeout. I would have paid for it.”
“Instead, I chose to feed them.”
“I don’t remember you being this stubborn.”
“Life changes us all.”
Lunch was a surprisingly convivial meal, but by the end of it, Mickey was practically drooping off his chair. “Nap time for you.”
“I will be here when you wake,” Konstantin promised, staving off what might have been another meltdown.
Her son was tired. He was stressed. And he was terrified he’d never again see this person he’d just gotten to call Dad.
Mickey insisted on holding Konstantin’s hand on the way to his bedroom.
“Bathroom first,” Emma insisted from behind them.
Mickey didn’t argue, just veered into the brightly tiled, if small room. She’d taken pains to get the grout clean, but she didn’t have the knowhow to fix the chips in the mosaic tiles put in when the house had been built more than forty years ago, or the money to hire someone to do it.
Emma tucked her son in, but he extracted no fewer than three more promises from Konstantin that he would be there when Mickey woke up.
She just hoped the Prince realized how important it was that he keep that promise.
Copyright © 2021 by Lucy Monroe
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ISBN-13: 9780369707284
The Billionaire’s Proposition in Paris
Copyright © 2021 by Heidi Rice
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
