Until we meet again, I am your Lucien

Meena read the note once and then another time.

Then her eyes filled, once more, with tears. “He’s not coming,” she said to no one in particular.

Jon stared at her. “Wait…you mean to the concert tonight?”

She nodded, not looking at him. She let the note flutter to the floor.

“He’s not coming,” she said again.

Then she turned and walked over to the armchair where she’d been curled up a little while earlier, not writing, and collapsed into it, the tulle skirt of Mary Lou’s Givenchy dress puffing up all around her.

Jon bent to pick up the note.

“Wait,” he said. “Are you crying?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Meena said miserably, lifting her knees and hugging them to her chest.

“Well, don’t cry all over the countess’s dress,” Jon advised her. “She’ll probably make you pay for the dry cleaning.” He read the note. “‘You have slain the dragon’? What the hell does that mean? How big is this guy’s dick, anyway?”

Meena dropped her forehead down onto her knees and started to cry. “Don’t be coarse,” she said.

“Holy crap,” she heard her brother say in some alarm. “Don’t cry, Meen. I know you’ve had a bad week, but he’s not breaking up with you. He’s just got to work. He’ll probably see you tomorrow. I mean, for Christ’s sake. He sent you a really nice note. And a purse.”

“It’s not a purse, it’s a tote. And that’s just it,” Meena said, lifting her tear-stained face. “I never told him.”

“You never told him what?” Jon asked, coming to sit on the arm of the chair after he’d pushed some of the tulle out of the way.

“I never told him about it,” Meena said. “I’ve been wanting that purse-I mean tote-forever. But we can’t afford it. And I never told him. It’s like…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s like he read my mind.”

Jon raised his eyebrows. “Well,” he said drily. “I could see how that would be upsetting for someone who’s been doing just that to people for fifteen years or so herself.”

“Shut up,” Meena said, unable to keep from laughing a little.

“No,” Jon said. “Really. It must be a real blow to your ego to have to admit there might be someone else out there who can do what you do. Oh, wait…no, never mind. The prince can’t tell when people are going to die. He just has the psychic ability to know what handbag his girlfriend secretly lusts after.”

Meena reached up to wipe her eyes. “You’re not funny,” she said.

“Then why are you laughing?” he asked.

“Okay,” Meena said with a sigh. “Maybe I overreacted. But it’s pretty weird. You have to admit.”

“I think the fact that you spent the night having sex with a prince is pretty weird,” Jon said. “But who am I to judge? So, since you’re going to be home tonight…Chinese food and a DVD?”

Meena smiled. She still felt shaken.

Shaken to her core, actually.

But it was good to have Jon around to ground her.

“Sounds good,” she said.

“Great.” Jon gave her knee a pat through some of the tulle. “I’ll walk over to the video store and pick something out. As a compromise, I’ll get something with a romance where stuff also gets blown up. Moo shu sound good? I’ll get garlic chicken, too, for a change. Come on, Jack.” He slapped his thigh, and Jack Bauer, delighted, scrambled after him as he walked toward the wall for the dog’s leash. “We’ll be back in a bit.”

Meena, smiling-though still a little shakily-got up from the armchair and, after Jon and her dog had gone, unzipped Mary Lou’s dress, stepped out of it, and hung it carefully back on the hanger in her closet. She would, she supposed, get some other chance to wear it. It wasn’t such a terrible thing.

She picked up the note Lucien had written to her and read it again. It made her smile and made her heart beat a little faster.

You have slain the dragon. She didn’t understand what it meant either.

But she liked it.

She decided to take another shower and wash off all the makeup she’d put on-not to mention the perfume. No sense wasting it on Jon. She’d wiggled out of her pantyhose and was padding barefoot over to the bathroom to turn the water on and take off her sexy black slip and panties-she definitely wasn’t suffering through those all night if she didn’t have to-when the buzzer on the intercom rang again.

What was this? Grand Central?

She picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Hello, Miss Harper,” Roger said. “Delivery.”

“Again?” Meena said. “I didn’t order anything, Roger.”

“I know, Miss Harper,” Roger said. “These are flowers. From Mr. Antonescu, the deliveryman says. Not Mr. Antonescu in 11A, but your friend Mr. Antonescu. You know, from the party last night.”

Meena smiled. So much for keeping the doormen in the building from knowing everything about her personal life. “Send him up, Roger,” she said, and put down the receiver.

Flowers and the bag? Lucien already had her heart. He didn’t have to keep trying to win it.

She went to her purse and looked in her wallet for a tip for the flower deliveryman. She didn’t have any small bills left. She’d have to see if the flower guy had any change.

You have slain the dragon.

What did it mean?

Before she had a chance to slip on a robe, Meena heard a sound outside her door. She looked out the peephole. There they were. Red roses. A huge bouquet of them.

Her heart swelled. He was crazy. And too extravagant.

Yes, he was a prince.

But this was too much.

Meena unlocked the door and opened it a crack.

“Thanks so much,” she said to the flower deliveryman. “Do you have change for a ten?”

That was when he lowered the roses away from his face.

And Meena, for the first time in her life, knew that she was the one about to die.

Chapter Thirty-five

7:00 P.M. EST, Friday, April 16

910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11B

New York, New York

The most amazing thing-to Meena, anyway-was that she never would have guessed he was a killer. Not at first glance, anyway. He was dressed so nicely, in dark form-fitting jeans, a cashmere sweater, and a long, black leather trench. The scarf around his neck looked as if it were made from cashmere, too-at least from where Meena was standing-and brought out the blue in his eyes…the kind of bright blue eyes that wouldn’t have been out of place on some hunky blond heartthrob making his way down a red carpet or paddling a surfboard off a sandy white Australian beach.

They hardly looked like the eyes of a killer.

Except that Meena had known that’s what he was from the moment she’d opened the door and he’d brought the big bouquet of red roses down from in front of his face.

Why had she fallen for that old trick? That bouquet-in-front-of-the-peephole trick? She deserved to get killed just for falling for a trick she’d used a million times herself in her own scripts.

And now here she was, facing down death in nothing but her bra and a black silk slip. She was furious with herself for not having grabbed a robe first, or something she could at least have employed as a weapon…a can of hair spray and a lighter to use as an impromptu flamethrower…even a shoe, for God’s sake, to throw at the guy.

But she hadn’t realized how close she was to death until now, when it was too late. All she’d reached for was her BlackBerry, which in almost any scenario was pretty much useless.

And in this case it was just plain pitiful, unless she wanted to call some cops to come over and be killed along with her.

Because no way was this guy going to let himself be arrested without a fight. She could tell that just by looking at his handsome, pitiless face.

And of course, like any proper assassin, he already had a foot wedged firmly inside the jamb, so she couldn’t slam the door shut in his face. It would just bounce harmlessly off the edge of his steel-toed boot.