Epilogue
EPILOGUE
Four months later...
Beatrice leaned against the bar, staring at her mentor and Magnus. Good Lord, they were so adorable.
“They’re going to get married, you know,” Santiago whispered in her ear. “And then we’ll be the only ‘will-they-won’t-they’ couple left. Dios mío, Bonita...our sexual tension is already hitting the roof.”
She turned to face him and almost bumped into his plush lips. As she slowly tore her eyes away from his mouth, Beatrice found her face growing hot. He did this to her at every turn. “I think we’re just fine where we are.”
Santiago chuckled darkly as he ran his hand over his closely cropped hair. She fought everything in her body to avoid his advances. She’d wanted to sleep with him in Estonia, but decided against it. Based on Celeste, she wasn’t sure if it was a good idea.
Now that her mentor had come back to her one true love, Beatrice was now reconsidering.
“I know we’ve worked as a crew,” Santiago said. “But I think these two lovebirds will be busy with being straight for a minute. In the meantime, I’ve got a lead on a two-man job.”
Bea’s ear perked up. “Really?”
“The mark is in Philly. If you’re interested, I could use a techie in the field.”
Electricity hummed through her body in the same way her arousal to Santiago affected her. “Yes!” she said, excitedly.
“Excellent,” he said with a wicked grin. Celeste was right. He was like the devil incarnate. His mustache twitched as he stared at her lips. She desperately wanted to stroke his goatee. Oh, God... I need to talk to Celeste . “I have a feeling you and I will have a wonderful time,” he said in her ear.
The hairs on the back of her neck lifted as his hot breath brushed against her ear. “I think I’m down.”
“When I say I really didn’t expect this meeting with you—” Celeste said loudly. The loud and steady thumping of techno music made it difficult to communicate. “—I mean it.”
Princess Astrid shooed her bodyguard away before sitting at a small two-top table. “You and your man deserve to be haunted by me for just a little while longer,” she said, slapping her purse on the table. She flicked her hair over her shoulder before taking a sip of her cocktail. “Speaking of which, where is he?”
Celeste gestured over her shoulder at Magnus, who was at the bar with Santiago and Beatrice. When she received a message from their old friend Aksel, regarding the princess, Celeste thought it would be a good idea to invite her to the bar Santiago ran in the Meatpacking District.
“How is that going?” the princess asked in a sweet voice.
“Why are you here?” Celeste asked, getting back to the topic at hand.
“I’ll be honest with you,” she said. “America is...different. While I now enjoy my freedom with my fiancé, I am lonely for friends. Real friends. Not the kind that know that I’m a Swedish princess.”
Celeste raised a brow at this news. The girl needed friends. “Are you being serious?”
“I knew you lived here, and I wanted to catch up. Also, I wanted to update you on Inspector Vermeulen.”
Celeste was already on top of the news. A month after the car bomb incident, Nationalmuseum released a statement that the Freya jewels had, once again, been taken. A new investigation had been opened and so far, Interpol didn’t have any hard leads. Inspector Hugo Vermeulen and the museum had been roundly criticized by the press, who now turned against them in favor of the poor princess.
“My family has given up on the jewels. As far as they’re concerned, Freya’s jewels are lost for good. According to my siblings, my parents simply want to bury the story,” she chuckled. “They’ve apologized to me, though. My mother wants me to have my wedding in Sweden, at the very least. I’m not sure what I’ll do now that I have a whole kingdom rooting for me.”
“No longer the black sheep in your family?” Celeste asked with a grin.
Astrid flipped her brown hair over her shoulder. “I’m Sweden’s darling now.”
Thank God... It was hard not to feel something for the girl who made such a drastic decision to change her life. Celeste was relieved that they could work together to help make that happen, and to atone for their sins. “And your fiancé? How is that going?”
A broad smile spread over her face and brightened her whole being. “I’m so happy,” she breathed. “Martin makes me feel like I’m the most important woman on Earth. I wake up every morning feeling like a goddess. And I love him so much. He’s smart and funny and kind. It also helps that he’s wealthy... He makes me feel like I can be someone outside what I was born as. Does that make sense?”
To Celeste, it made perfect sense.
Because Magnus made her feel the same thing. When she felt a hand on her shoulder, she jumped. He was at her side. “Hello, Princess.”
She rolled her eyes. “Astrid is fine, thank you.”
“F?rl?t, Astrid.”
“Tack s? mycket, Magnus.”
“So, what about you two?” she asked, taking another delicate sip. “What will you do now that you’ve stolen my family’s heirlooms?”
Celeste and Magnus looked at one another, smiling and feeling the same emotions that Astrid described between her and Martin. Magnus was back to teaching and Celeste was back to minding her store. She had a number of customers beating down her door and online orders to fulfill. They broke down every piece of the Swedish heirlooms and fenced them in several different directions. The funds were split among five crew members. Celeste gave her cut to the Harrison Home for the Youth.
“We’re taking it easy,” Celeste said, staring into Magnus’s clear blue eyes.
He smirked as his eyes darted to her mouth. “We’re trying normal for a while. We’ll see how long that will carry us.”
“Normal for a minute,” she countered. “But after that, I think we’ll probably want to get back into the fray.”
Magnus leaned closer to her and whispered, “I kinda like the fray. Especially with you.”