Gen was relatively sure he was joking.
He was probably joking that he would ever try to dethrone the current occupants, the House of Windsor. That, she was sure of.
Pretty sure.
But it didn’t speak as to whether he could, and Gen would not have bet against him.
With his silvery-blue eyes, hard cheekbones and jaw, rock-hard body and elegant manners, his world-class education and unusual talents, and that extravagant, towering height of his, Arthur Finch-Hatten was a force of nature. He could produce results that others simply could not.
That night, he should be in Paris, doing whatever it was he did that no one talked about.
But if Maxence was missing and the situation was dire enough, Arthur would go. If Gen had ever needed to analyze Arthur psychologically, the personality trait at the very top of his list would have been loyalty.
Loyalty to country, loyalty to her, and loyalty to Casimir and Maxence, his best friends for practically his whole life.
It still boggled her mind, though, that anyone could have lost track of Maxence, even in a crowded room.
All three of the men—Maxence, Casimir, and her Arthur—stuck up above every crowd because all of them were right around six-feet-four.
How could those bodyguards not spot Max?
When she, Caz, and Arthur got to the casino, they could just look over the top of the crowd for a hot, smoldery guy whose head and shoulders were literally sticking out of the mass of people like a nail that wants a hammer.
Gen supposed that the diminutive Rox could stand on a chair or something so she could see, too.
Shorties were cute.
Maxence’s black hair would probably still be a little too long and curling around his ears and collar, as always. A crowd of admirers would have formed around him, vying for his attention and absolutely rapt whenever he said anything over the heads of the crowd with his lush, full lips.
Gen wondered if Max’s hands would be tanned as darkly as they usually were, his face only a few shades lighter from wearing a hat to keep the equatorial sun off of his nose. His skin normally would have been a pale shade of buff from a few Italian ancestors mixed in with the Northern European ones.
She had accidentally seen his light-skinned butt once.
Maxence had been staying with them for a week up at Spencer House, and his towel had slipped.
Gen had spun away so fast, laughing, that she had nearly fallen over, while he had looked mortified and tucked that white towel more tightly around his waist before proceeding from the sauna to his room, his head held high. God, he’d been embarrassed. The quick grab and his expression of abject horror had been so funny.
She hadn’t caught a glimpse of the last turkey in the shop, but his rounded, muscular ass was magnificent.
Besides, to find Maxence in a crowded room, you could just ask anyone where he was. Maxence had a magnetism to him that most people found compelling. When Maxence was in any room, half the people could point in his direction without even looking because they could practically feel him over there.
The other half wouldn’t be able to take their eyes off of him.
Gen didn’t think this missing person case would take long. They’d probably be back in Paris by lunchtime.
She swung her solid belly around without bending too much to climb out of the helicopter. Her tummy felt like a turtle shell strapped to her midsection.
Her bladder felt like a rock.
Above them, the helicopter blades sputtered and slowed.
Arthur was right outside her open door and holding out his hand to steady Gen, careful that she didn’t bobble, as her toes stretched toward the asphalt. He was sweet. She liked him all fussy like this. Most of the time, Lord Arthur Finch-Hatten was courtly and polite, as befits an honest-to-church English earl.
Since she’d gotten pregnant with the heir to his earldom in her belly, he was her knight in shining armor at every opportunity. His silvery eyes even gleamed like shining armor.
Once Gen was steadily on her feet and holding the hem of her black maternity dress down in the whirling wind created by the slowing helicopter blades, Arthur asked Casimir, “Should we start at the casino?”
“That’s where he was last seen,” Casimir said. “Plus, whenever Maxence has gone missing, starting at the nearest casino is a good plan. We can check the girls into the Hotel de Paris next door and cross-examine the dealers and staff who will be mopping up.”
Gen liked Casimir van Amsberg.
Caz was a fellow attorney, even though he was more of a solicitor than a pit-bull, litigating barrister like herself. Caz understood procedure, and the first thing in the procedure would be establishing a timeline and questioning witnesses.
Gen liked Casimir’s wife, Roxanne, even more. Gen and Arthur had had an impromptu Vegas wedding and a honeymoon in a courtroom in the House of Lords, but a bit after all that, Casimir had toted Roxanne across the pond and they’d all had a lovely house-party at Arthur’s enormous mansion for a few days for Gen and Rox to get to know each other. By the end of the long weekend, Gen felt like she’d known Roxanne her whole life, and Casimir and Arthur were winking at each other as if they’d known it would happen.
This emergency trip to Monaco felt like a girls’ weekend for her and Rox, though Casimir and Arthur had to find their wayward friend, too.
Arthur frowned at Casimir in the dark, chilly morning. They both stooped, as did Gen, because the helicopter blades were just a bit too close above their heads for comfort.
Roxanne seemed unconcerned.
Arthur said, “I tried calling Maxence again, and it’s still going straight to voicemail. Either he’s turned his phone off, or he’s not in range of a cell phone tower.”
“Damn.” Casimir tapped his screen and held it up to his ear.
“Trying Max again?” Arthur asked, his voice as dry as a bored English lord.
“Of course, I am. Just in case he turned it back on after the five hundred other times we’ve called him.”
Arthur said, “I’ll take a look into the casino’s surveillance to see if anything pops up.”
Casimir said, “Yeah, you start there.”
Gen looked down and tried to keep from grinning. Though she was pretty sure that Casimir suspected what Arthur’s job was, it could be referred to only obliquely.
Men in black suits were holding open the doors to the heliport’s terminal for them.
The only way around the chain-link fence enclosing the helicopter landing pads to the parking lot was through the tiny terminal or box office or whatever they called the small building with the closed vendor windows that usually sold helicopter tickets, if one didn’t own a helicopter, of course. They trotted through the building with its huge posters of Monaco and France and out the front door.
As Gen was walking through the doorway, Arthur paused and asked one of the guys, an eastern-European-looking fellow with a dark hat, “Does Pierre know Maxence is missing?”
The man glanced at his partner, who shrugged, before answering, “Yes.”
“Did he order Quentin to call us?”
Another glance between them and a non-committal shrug. “Yes.”
“Wait just a minute,” Gen told Arthur while they were inside the terminal and dashed into a ladies’ room. Roxanne followed her inside because she was solid that way. Rox was, however, still recovering from helicopter-induced terror and too busy holding up the tile wall with both hands for chitchat.