hadn’t worn heels when they’d left Amsterdam in the wee hours that same morning. Monaco required a lot of walking.
She risked a glance back at the sidewalk behind them. “Did we ditch those guys?”
Casimir whispered, “We’ll know in a minute. Here’s the boat.”
The name of the boat, written in black script on the gunmetal gray hull, was Flirting with Disaster. Crew members in black tee-shirts and white pants were scrambling, drawing in ropes hand-over-hand and preparing to cast off.
Ahead of them, Arthur was ushering Gen onto the boat, making sure she stepped in just the right place on the small ramp. The trailing ruffles of her fluttering maternity dress disappeared inside the back of the ship.
The yacht was built like an arrowhead, smooth lines from its sharp point flowing to the back of the hull. Unlike many of the yachts around it, Flirting with Disaster didn’t look like a miniature cruise ship. The round, high hull was shaped more like a futuristic version of a naval patrol torpedo boat, built for agility and racing through the sea rather than luxury and comfort.
Of course, Alexandre Grimaldi would own a death trap of a boat and name it Flirting with Disaster.
Roxanne lowered her head and walked faster.
Dang it, when they got home, she and Casimir needed to speak about this.
Ahead of them, Arthur beckoned to them with one hand and then looked over their heads. His pale eyes narrowed, and he waved them up more insistently.
Roxanne and Arthur ran.
Behind them, footsteps pounded.
Rox wasn’t entirely sure that Pierre guy was on the up-and-up even if he was Max’s brother, and everything that had been said about Estebe Fournier made him seem like the type of mobster who would dump bodies into the sea.
And both of those jerks had thugs tailing them.
Damn it.
Roxanne turned on a burst of speed, her short legs pumping harder than when she was at the gym. She had a baby back in Amsterdam who needed her, and she wasn’t going to die in a stupid marina in Monaco just because Maxence didn’t have the sense that God gave a nit on a gnat’s ass.
The yacht began to pull away from the dock, frothing the seawater behind it.
When they neared the boat, Casimir yanked her hand, wheeling Roxanne around and pushing her ahead of himself.
She had just one step to plant her foot and leap, reaching to grab Arthur’s outstretched hand.
Arthur grabbed her fingers out of the air and spun Roxanne around, practically throwing her at Gen, who was just three steps inside the boat.
Roxanne flailed in the air, not wanting to tackle Gen and the unborn baby in her tummy. She piked to the side like she was diving into a lake back home.
Gen sidestepped Roxanne’s tumble and tried to catch her but missed.
Roxanne landed on her back, and she scrambled to her elbows to look back. “Caz!”
In the bright sunlight streaming in the square opening of the back of the boat, Casimir was leaping, his hand outstretched, and Arthur caught his hand just as Casimir began falling, not quite able to make it.
But Arthur yanked Caz’s arm and threw himself backward, hauling both of them into the ship. They landed in a tangle of long legs and broad shoulders and scuttled apart, looking around to see what they had to fight next.
Back on the dock, eight burly men gathered, cursing the boat that was too far away for them to board and then eyeballing each other.
Then, the shoving started.
Roxanne started laughing.
Casimir and Arthur looked behind them, and then they started laughing, too.
Even Gen was chuckling, then laughing, by the time an all-out fistfight erupted on the sidewalk.
The yacht accelerated hard, making all of them grab a handle or rope to keep from toppling out of the back of the ship.
And they were away.
Twenty minutes later, Roxanne was hanging onto the railing on the top of the boat, one of two parts of the yacht with a real deck where you could stand outside. There was also some deck space near the prow, the pointy end of the boat.
Flirting with Disaster had cleared the edge of the marina and turned on the proverbial afterburners, increasing its speed up to more than seventy knots and barreling toward Genoa and, hopefully, Maxence.
Casimir stood behind her back, his arms holding onto the rail on both sides of her, making sure she didn’t fly off the top of the boat. “This isn’t safe,” he yelled into the wind.
“I don’t care!” Roxanne yelled back.
It