Chapter Three
Evelyne waited for Gabriel’s return, trying not to fret and failing. Her father was a vindictive man, and even if Gabriel somehow managed to pull this off, Father would look for someone to blame.
Who would be harmed because of it? Perhaps it had been vindictive and petty to want to name Jordi. Maybe she was more like her father than she’d want to admit. She almost hoped Gabriel would ignore her there.
Almost.
Unfortunately, the only other option to this one would be to return to the castle and marry a man as evil as her father.
Impossible. She had to take the freedom Alexandre had arranged for her.
That Gabriel would put himself in the line of fire for her—no, not her, for Alex—was a surprise. And now she was curious just what would indebt the man to her brother so much. She was quite sure Gabriel had built his own wealth and success with no help from Alex.
But surely just being good friends wouldn’t be enough for Gabriel to risk life and limb to do all this. And surely her brother would not have asked it of Gabriel if there was not something…more to this.
But what? She couldn’t even come up with an idea.
She did not have her phone. She did not have a jacket. She had nothing except this dress suitable for a princess at a royal wedding, heels that felt too tight and painful to put back on and the sloshing feeling of nothing but champagne being in her stomach.
And Gabriel was going to be gone for at least an hour.
She dozed. Probably ill-advisedly considering she was alone in a strange plane in a deserted hangar, but the events of the day had just completely sapped her energy, and the low-level nausea wasn’t helping. So she reclined back in the comfortable plane seat and slept.
When she opened her eyes, not quite remembering that she’d fallen asleep and certainly not sure how long she’d been out, she was not alone anymore.
She might have startled at direct hazel eyes clearly having been watching her, but there was something very centering about Gabriel. Like an anchor amid this very strange and unexpected storm.
He moved toward her. “Here.” He handed her a bag. “Just things I could pick up along the way. Some guests of the palace will wonder where their things went, but I’m certain they’ll get over it.”
Evelyne shook her sleep- and champagne-foggy mind and unzipped the bag. She pulled out a man’s coat—too small to be Gabriel’s. Some kind of faux fur shawl. A pair of slippers—she was so excited about those she immediately shoved them onto her feet.
She let out a sigh of relief.
“Now, eat while I prepare to take off.” This time, he set a kind of bakery box in her lap. She opened it, saw an array of bits and pieces from the wedding meal and reception food.
Her stomach sloshed in protest. “I don’t feel so well.”
“Eat,” he insisted. “That will help.” He turned, walking up the aisle toward the cockpit of the plane.
“Where are you going?”
He glanced over his shoulder at her. His hair was more disheveled now, and he’d lost the suit jacket somewhere along the way. His smile was rakish. “Someone needs to fly this, don’t they?”
“And that someone is you?” She gripped the bakery box and leaned forward. “Gabriel, please don’t tell me you’re one of those men who thinks he can fly a plane simply because you’re good with machines.”
His mouth curved in amusement. “It might be enjoyable to let you think that, but no, Evelyne. I have a license and everything. I imagine there is much about me that would surprise you. Now eat.” He nodded at the box in her lap then disappeared into the cockpit.
He could fly a plane. There was indeed much about Gabriel that would no doubt surprise her. Everything about this night would be included in that list.
She was used to taking orders, so she felt compelled to do as she was told. She surveyed the offerings of the bakery box.
A few of the puff pastry appetizers that weren’t too appetizing this many hours on. Two rolls. And most importantly, a piece of wedding cake, wrapped up to protect the frosting.
She ate that first, though it probably wasn’t her best choice. Still, she’d been dreaming about this cake all week. Ines had impeccable taste in baked goods. Once she was satisfied on a taste level, she forced herself to eat the rest.
The plane lurched, and so did the food in her stomach, but she closed her eyes and breathed through it. The nausea and the knowledge that Gabriel was the one taxiing the plane out of the hangar. Onto a runway.
The sun was peeking over the horizon, painting the sky in blush pinks and oranges. Evelyne decided to take it as a good omen. As hope.
Hope was back. Freedom was here.
That spurt of joy was fleeting as they traveled.
It would seem she’d doze off just as they arrived somewhere new and switched planes.
At one point, they even had a private room on a railcar.
Gabriel had presented her with a large meal there, and a shopping bag.
Inside were silly tourist clothes—but anything was better than someone else’s coat and the godforsaken royal dress.
The best part were the sneakers—a step up from the slippers she’d been schlepping around in.
When they boarded yet another private plane, Gabriel once again in the pilot’s seat, she was perilously close to crying. She didn’t know how many hours, days it had been. She’d wanted escape, but she wasn’t sure how much she had left in her. Which no doubt made her weak.
“This will be the last one,” he told her gently. “We will have a bit of a drive once we land, but this is the last flight.”
Evelyne seated herself in the copilot’s seat. “Where are we going?”
He looked at all the dials and whatnot, didn’t even spare her a glance. “The States. A new continent seems safest.”
A new continent. A new life. Away from everything she’d ever known. The palace, her father. She was free… But at the cost of everything. Including… Alexandre. Would she ever see him again?
The thought brought a stab of pain, and tears to her eyes she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to fight if she stayed in that thought. “I know nothing about America,” she said instead of, will I ever see Alex again? She was afraid if she voiced that, she might fall apart completely.
“You know how to speak English. That should be enough.”
Evelyne did not know how speaking the language would be enough. It had been one thing to insist Jordi run away with her, it was something altogether different to actually think about the practicalities of what running away meant.
She had been raised a princess in a small, isolated country. While she had suffered monstrous punishments at the hand of her father, she had also been waited on and pampered in other ways.
What would she do in America? How would she survive without Alexandre’s protection and guidance? It seemed unsurmountable.
And still, this horrible, terrifying unsurmountable was better than marrying the general.
Everything was better than that, and she reminded herself of this again and again while Gabriel once again guided a small plane into the sky, taking her far away from the monsters that had stalked her pampered life.
Maybe somewhere between the two extremes lay a life worth living.
Gabriel was glad she was sleeping, even if he was concerned about the amount she’d done since this whole thing started two days ago now. She’d had a traumatic event. Sleep was good. He wished she’d eat more. Once he got her settled, he’d insist upon it.
He drove up the curving driveway to the home he’d procured for her.
He’d had to pull some considerable strings to get a house off the market with no connection to him, but the thing about designing and implementing security systems for the rich and powerful was that he had just the kind of connections that could keep things… off the books.
He’d considered going small, rustic. Some tiny, rural town no one would ever expect to find a princess in, but Evelyne would not know how to survive rustic, and he doubted very much she could fit in with rustic.
Since Gabriel could not yet afford to risk hiring staff for her that might wonder who the regal beauty was, he thought procuring something she was better used to was the better bet.
So he’d gone with the grand and isolated.
The rugged Maine coast boasted some beautiful homes, spread out and situated far away from any metropolitan center.
The mansion he had procured for her stood on a sea cliff overlooking the crashing Atlantic.
He could not staff it yet, until he found someone trustworthy and who had no chance of discovering who Evelyne really was.
So she would be all by herself in all that space.
She would no doubt not find this ideal, but escape—even well-funded escape—did not always get to be ideal.
He turned the vehicle off, and this must have woken her, because she blinked her eyes open, straightened in the seat, gazing out the windshield at the grand house spread out before them, the ocean in the distance.
“Welcome home, Evelyne.”
She didn’t say anything, so he got out of the car and skirted the hood to open her door for her. He even helped her out. Her gaze stayed glued to the ocean beyond the house.
“Gabriel…” Her eyes were wide. “This is… Is this yours?”
“No, it is Francesco Marino’s. He’s an eccentric Italian billionaire—a false identity I have used before when needed.
Now he has a young wife, Lina, and they have hermited themselves away in America to enjoy their newly found wedded bliss.
” He made a grand sweeping gesture to encompass the house and sea.
He enjoyed the stories, creating them, implementing them. In his business, it paid to have an identity or two that had no connection to who he really was. Both for himself and sometimes his clients.
“Locals will occasionally catch a glimpse of one of them on the balconies,” he continued. “But never in town. The nearest town could never meet their extravagant needs anyhow.”