It was the sort of pronouncement Franck was inclined to make, an edict handed down from on high, one designed to get her to argue with him.
That was what they did: argued. Not just about action heroes. About soccer teams. The immutable laws of science. The best desserts. In short, everything.
It was his recreation, one of the nurses had said to Anny back in January, and she’d only been marginally joking.
“So what are you saying? That you think I should run off and elope?” Anny had challenged him with a smile.
But Franck’s eyes didn’t light with the challenge of battle the way they usually did. They glittered, but it was a fierce glitter as he shook his head. “I just don’t see why you’re waiting.”
“A year’s not long,” Anny protested. “Even two. I have to finish my doctorate. And when we do set a date there will be lots to do. Preparations.” Protocol. Tradition. She didn’t explain about royal weddings. Ordinary everyday weddings were demanding enough.
“Stuff you’d rather do?” Franck asked.
“That’s not the point.”
“Of course it is. ’Cause if it isn’t, you shouldn’t waste time. You should do what you want to do!”
“People can’t always do what they want to do, Franck,” she said gently.
He snorted. “Tell me about it!” he said bitterly. “I wouldn’t be locked up in here if I didn’t have to be!”
Anny felt instantly guilty for her prim preachiness. “I know that.”
Franck’s jaw tightened, and his fingers plucked at the bedclothes. He pressed his lips together and turned his head away to stare out the window. He didn’t say anything, and Anny didn’t know what to say. She shifted from one foot to the other.
Finally he shrugged his shoulders and shifted his gaze back to look at her. “You only get one life,” he said.
His voice had lost its fierceness. It was flat, toneless. His eyes had lost their glitter. His expression was bleak. And seeing it made Anny feel wretched. She wanted desperately to provoke him, to argue with him, to say it wasn’t so.
But it was.
He wasn’t ever going to be running down the street to meet Gerard—or anyone else—again. And how could she argue with that?
So she did the only thing she could do. She’d reached out and gave his hand a quick hard squeeze. She had wished she could bring Gerard back with her. Meeting a prince might take his mind off his misery at least for a while. But her father was right, Gerard wouldn’t come.
“I have to go,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Franck’s mouth had twisted. “Go, then.” It was a curt dismissal. He looked away quickly, his jaw hard, his expression stony. Only the rapid blink of his lashes gave him away.
“I’ll be back,” Anny had promised.
She should have stayed.
Another look at her watch told her that it was ten to six now and there was still no sign of Gerard.
But the moment she glanced down at her watch, a sudden silence fell over the whole room, as if everyone in the entire lobby had stopped to draw in a single collective breath.
Startled, Anny looked up. Had they noticed her prince after all?
Certainly everyone in the room seemed to be staring at something. Anny followed their gaze.
At the sight of the man now standing at the far end of the room, her heart kicked over in her chest. All she could do was stare, too.
It wasn’t Gerard.
Not even close. Gerard was smooth, refined and cosmopolitan, the personfication of continental charm, a blend of 21st century sophistication and nearly as many centuries of royal breeding.
This man was anything but. He was hard-edged, shaggy-haired, and unshaven, wearing a pair of faded jeans and a nondescript open-necked shirt. He might have been nobody. A beach bum, a carpenter, a sailor in from the sea. He seemed to be cultivating the look.
But he was Somebody—with a capital S.
His name was Demetrios Savas. Anny knew it. So did everyone else in the room.
For ten years he’d been the golden boy of Hollywood. A man descended from Greek immigrants to America, Demetrios had started his brilliant career as nothing more than a handsome face. And stunning body.
In his early twenties, he’d modeled underwear, for goodness’ sake!
But from those inauspicious beginnings, he’d worked hard to parlay not only his looks, but also his talent into a notable acting career, a successful television series, half a dozen feature films, and a fledgling but well-respected directing career. Not to mention his brief tragic fairy-tale marriage to the beautiful talented actress Lissa Conroy.
Demetrios and Lissa had been Hollywood’s—and the world’s—sweethearts. One of the film industry’s golden couples—extraordinarily beautiful, talented people who lived charmed lives.
Charmed at least until two years ago when Lissa had contracted some sort of infection while filming overseas and had died scant days thereafter. Demetrios, working on the other side of the globe, had barely reached her side before she was gone.
Anny remembered the news photos that had chronicled his lonely journey home with her body and the shots of the treeless windswept North Dakota cemetery where he’d taken her to be buried. She still recalled how the starkness of it shocked her.
And yet it had made sense when she’d heard his explanation. “This is where she came from. It’s what she’d want. I’m just bringing her home.”
In her mind’s eye she could still see the pain that had etched the features of his beautiful face that day.
She hadn’t seen that face since. In the two years since Lissa Conroy’s death and burial, Demetrios Savas had not made a public appearance.
He’d gone to ground—somewhere. And while the tabloids had reprinted pictures of a hollow-faced grieving Demetrios at first, when he didn’t return to the limelight, when there were no more sightings and no more news, eventually they’d looked elsewhere for stories.
They’d been caught off guard, then, to learn last summer that he had written a screenplay, had found backing to shoot it, had cast it and, taking cast and crew to Brazil, had directed a small independent film—a film that was getting considerable interest and possible Oscar buzz, a film he was bringing to Cannes.
And now here he was.
Anny had never seen him before in person though she had certainly seen plenty of photos—had even, heaven help her, had a very memorable poster of him on the wall of her dorm room at university.
It didn’t hold a candle to the man in the flesh. The stark pain from those post-funeral photos was gone from his face now. He wasn’t smiling. He didn’t have to. He exuded a charisma that simply captured everyone’s gaze.
He had a strength and power she recognized immediately. It wasn’t the smooth, controlled power like Gerard’s and her father’s. It was raw and elemental. She could sense it like a force field surrounding him as he moved.
And he was moving again now, though he’d stopped for just a moment to glance back over his shoulder before he continued into the room. He had an easy commanding stride, and though princesses didn’t stare, according to her father, Anny couldn’t look away.
A few people had picked up their conversations again. But most were still watching him. Talking about him, too, no doubt. Some nodded to him, spoke to him, and he spared them a faint smile, a quick nod. But he didn’t stop, and as he moved he scanned the