the casino to the Yacht Club de Monaco wasn’t far, but he was sucking wind. Though much of the route was sharply downhill, he’d been carrying Simone in his arms for most of it. She couldn’t keep up with his long stride because she was wearing those ridiculous, sexy high heels.
The sprint had overheated him, so as soon as he’d set her on the quay, he’d rolled his shirt sleeves up to his elbows despite the wintry night, exposing his thick forearms to the chilly air.
Light from the sodium streetlights at Port Hercule glowed mustard yellow on his tanned skin and the wavelets frosting the dark sea. The stiff December breeze flapped his tuxedo shirt against his arm and whipped his hair around his jaw and ears. “Hold onto me. Don’t fall in the water.”
Behind Simone, the Yacht Club de Monaco rose in the air like a beached cruise ship, slim decks stacked on each other. One end was rounded like the stern of a ship, and the other was slimmer, suggesting a pointed bow. The swimming pool on the top floor allowed members to bask in the Mediterranean sun during the daytime.
Presumably, one needn’t wear the dress code-mandated blue blazer and slacks while swimming in the pool.
Presumably.
The yachts in the slips around the club were varied in their styles, from the snowy-white, explorer-type yachts that resembled miniature cruise ships to the sleek, gunmetal-gray motor yachts that looked like floating spaceships. The latter were fortified to defend their billionaire owners from the pitchfork-wielding rabble.
Or, you know, boats, Maxence reminded himself.
Boats.
He needed to concentrate on Simone’s plight.
On the dock, Simone stood on the sidewalk and stared at his yacht. The wild wind picked at the red scarf he’d snatched for her in the casino, and it fluttered away, floating until it dropped into the water. She clutched Maxence’s tuxedo jacket around herself, holding the lapels closed over her white dress. “This isn’t going to work.”
On the cliffs around the harbor, high-rise buildings from five to fifty stories, lit with bright yellow windows and decorated in red and green lights, loomed beyond the yacht club and the main thoroughfare. More hotels and apartment buildings packed together on the mountain terraces and rolling streets in the distance.
Ropes mooring other yachts to the docks creaked like haunted houses, and the lapping water clicked on the boats’ hulls.
“We can’t take a boat!” she whispered loudly. “Estebe has a bigger boat. He’ll catch us!”
“His boat, The Colossus, is a mega-superyacht,” Maxence told her as he tugged her hand. She stepped up the three stairs of the gangplank. “The Last Toy, on the other hand, is a modified Pershing 88 motor yacht. If it were any faster, it would be a cigarette boat. My brother won’t mind if I borrow her for a bit.”
His brother, Pierre, would definitely mind and probably throw a tantrum, but Maxence did not give a flying shit about what Pierre thought.
“Estebe will find us,” Simone said, looking around as if she thought the men chasing her might have already located them. The sidewalk leading around the bay had only a few people strolling or staggering back to their hotels or yachts, though. “If he catches us out on the water, I don’t know what he’ll do to me. At least there are people around on land.”
“Simone, if you want to get back to your family, come on.” He poured intensity into those last two words, trying to get her on the damn boat.
Simone sucked in a deep breath. Her eyebrows bunched together in worry, but she squeezed his fingers and climbed aboard the boat.
“Let’s go. Gita!” Maxence called into the yacht. “We need to cast off right now!”
A woman wearing loose white clothes emerged from the lower decks of the ship, dragging her feet because she was wearing bedroom slippers. “Monsieur Grimaldi? What are you doing here? It’s almost midnight, and we weren’t informed the boat would be leaving the dock.”
“We need to leave right now. Get Amnon up.”
Gita shouted back into the boat, “Amnon! We need you in the wheelhouse!” She asked Maxence, “Where are we going?” as she bent her knees to begin untangling the rope from the mooring on the dock.
Maxence thought quickly. “Genoa. Estebe would expect us to go to Nice, wouldn’t he, Simone? Nice is the closest airport, and it’s where we always fly into because it has the heliport with regular service to Monaco. He’ll put people at the heliport and the Nice airport, so we’ll