Royally Romanov Read online

  But the memory of the cozy bed that had loomed behind Maxim at the bookstore lingered in her consciousness. So much decadent red velvet. So many books.

  The intensity of Maxim’s gaze . . .

  Something she hadn’t felt in a very long time wound its way through her. A dark satin ribbon of longing. She blinked. Hard.

  When she opened her eyes, Scott was frowning down at her. “I believe your sanity is the one in question here, Finley.”

  “I meant he’s the one you told me about earlier. The man who was attacked outside of Notre Dame.” She tightened her grip on her handbag without even thinking about it. “It was Maxim.”

  The color drained from Scott’s face. “He told you that?”

  “Not exactly.” But he’d said enough, hadn’t he? “He told me he’d recently suffered a head injury. He said he doesn’t know what happened to him, and he’s trying to put the pieces of his life back together. I’m not sure he can even remember his own name. You saw the bruises, Scott. It’s him.”

  “Oh my God.” Scott’s gaze drifted over her shoulder toward the Pont de l’Archevêché and the cathedral glowing in the Parisian moonlight.

  A chill ran up Finley’s spine. She would’ve been lying if she said she’d never been afraid while walking around Paris. But the city still felt new to her, unexplored. Breathtaking in its Gothic beauty. Now it was starting to feel less like a beautiful dream and more like reality.

  Like home.

  And that wasn’t always a good thing.

  She swallowed. “He thinks I can help him.”

  Scott’s eyes darted back to her. His brow furrowed. “You? How?”

  “He seems to think it might be connected to the Romanovs.” Now that she was saying it out loud, it sounded even more outlandish.

  Maybe Scott was right. Maybe she should’ve just walked away from Maxim Romanov and his perfectly chiseled face.

  Maxim Laurent. Not Romanov. Good grief.

  Scott snorted with laughter. “How is that even possible? Does he think Anastasia’s still alive and she conked him over the head?”

  Finley jammed a pointer finger at his chest. “As I recall, you’re the one who wants to believe Anastasia escaped Russia back in 1918.”

  He held up his hands. “Guilty. But I never said she was roaming the streets of Paris and mugging people.”

  Finley winced.

  “Sorry.” Scott slipped an arm around her and gave her shoulders an affectionate squeeze. His overcoat smelled like old books and French coffee—two of her favorite things. “I don’t mean to dredge up painful memories for you. Just be careful, Finley. You don’t know a thing about this guy. What was he even doing out there at Point Zero at three in the morning? Think about that for a minute.”

  She shrugged out of his hold. “Don’t! Do not blame the victim.”

  It came out harsher than she’d intended, but he’d hit a nerve.

  Scott gave her a sad smile. “I’m not. I’m on your side here, Finley. Remember?”

  She took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, then let it out. She was arguing with her closest friend in Paris over a complete and total stranger. She’d clearly lost her mind.

  “I know you are.” She smiled back at him. “And I love you for it. I don’t know why we’re talking about this. It’s not even a thing. He’s probably already tossed my business card in the trash. I doubt I’ll ever see Maxim Laurent again.”

  Whoever he is.

  “Let’s hope not,” Scott said as they stopped in front of her building.

  She nodded, punched the entry code into the keypad on the outer gate of her foyer, and dug the key to the inner door out of her handbag. But after Scott said his good-byes, and Finley began the long climb up the spiral staircase to her apartment, she thought about the way Maxim had looked at her. The way his gaze had bored into her as if he’d known her. As if she’d known him.

  She thought about the strange pattern of bruises on his skin and the aching hope in his deep voice, the way it scraped her insides.

  I came here tonight hoping you could help me . . . I think you might be the only one who can.

  She wasn’t sure what she hoped for anymore.

  CHAPTER

  * * *

  FOUR

  Shortly after he’d been released from the hospital, Maxim was rather relieved to discover that he’d been legitimately employed at the time of his attack. That’s what he assumed anyway, when he found a small stack of his business cards in one of the kitchen drawers.

  Maxim Laurent

  Banquier senior d’investissement

  Comptes internationaux

  Banque de France

  He couldn’t remember anything about his job, obviously. He had no recollection of ever interviewing at the Bank of France. Nor could he recall ever having a burning desire to go into banking or finance. The last job he could remember was when he’d worked as a waiter at Les Deux Magots during his years at university.

  How long ago had that been? Four years? Eight?

  Probably closer to ten. Long enough to progress from waiter to banking executive, a move that struck him as an odd choice. Investment banking had a boring ring to it. Maxim had always preferred working with his hands to crunching numbers. But maybe that had changed, along with everything else.

  He wanted to see Finley again.

  She was all he could think about. But the museum wasn’t open yet, and even though she’d given him her card, he wasn’t sure if turning up first thing in the morning was such a good idea. He opted to go by his office en route to the Louvre. Perhaps he’d find something that would shed some light on the mysterious notebook. Or his life in general.

  He’d settle for anything at this point.

  “Mr. Laurent, you’re here.” The receptionist did a double take when she looked up from her desk and found him standing there.

  “Oui.” Maxim nodded, immediately realizing that showing up unannounced at his office had been a mistake.

  Nothing about the posh lobby was familiar. Not the paintings on the walls, not the polished oak furniture, not the woman behind the desk. Not even the large silver letters that spelled out Banque de France on the wall behind her. Maxim could see his reflection in them. He looked distorted and blurry around the edges, which pretty much mirrored the way he felt at the moment.

  He forced himself to focus on one thing rather than trying to take all his surroundings in at once. Maybe that would be better. Surely he could remember one small thing.

  He concentrated on the receptionist. She was young, early twenties maybe. Pretty.

  Maxim had no recollection of her whatsoever.

  Luckily, he could sneak a discreet peek at the name plate in front of her. Anna Picard. “Bonjour, Miss Picard. Perhaps you could direct me to my office?”

  Her polite smile faded a bit. He should know who she was. The fact that he didn’t was obvious.

  Her gaze flitted to the bruise on his temple. She stood and cleared her throat. “Of course, Monsieur Laurent. Follow me.”

  She led him down a long, quiet corridor, past a large conference room with glass walls, until they reached one of the corner offices.

  “Here we are.”

  Maxim followed the wave of her hand with his gaze. His name was emblazoned across the smooth wood, along with the title Senior Investment Banker.

  “Thank you.” He nodded, hesitating as he reached for the doorknob. He felt like an intruder all of a sudden, which was absurd. The office was his, after all.

  But Anna Picard was still standing there, watching him with that strange expression that hovered somewhere between curiosity and suspicion. So he opened the door and pretended to recognize the huge desk and the floor-to-ceiling window with its sweeping view of the Eiffel Tower and Champ de Mars.

  “I’ll let Monsieur
Joubert know you’re here,” she said, and glided back in the direction of the lobby.

  Monsieur Joubert. Yet another name that Maxim didn’t know. Wonderful.

  His ever-present headache throbbed at the base of his skull. The awful, metallic taste that had been his constant companion in the hospital rose up to the back of his throat again. Maxim sank into the wingback leather chair behind the desk while he tried to get his bearings.

  The scattered papers and numerous piles of file folders made it look as if he’d been away a matter of minutes rather than days. A Montblanc fountain pen sat just in front of him, uncapped. He half expected to look up and see himself strolling in the door, back from a coffee break.

  Someone did stroll into the office, but it wasn’t Maxim. It was a man dressed in a finely tailored suit and bow tie. Monsieur Joubert, Maxim presumed.

  “Maxim.” He smiled and came around the side of the desk, stopping just short of Maxim’s chair. “You’ve no idea how good it is to see you. I’m relieved to hear that the rumors of your demise were exaggerated.”

  “Merci.” Maxim got the distinct feeling he should stand and hug this stranger. Or at the very least, shake his hand. Apparently, they were friends in addition to being coworkers.

  But something stopped him. If this person was such a friend, where had he been while Maxim was lying in his hospital bed?

  The man shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. His gaze flitted to the papers on the desk and then back at Maxim. His smile broadened. “I wish I’d known you were coming. I would have had Joy straighten up your office.”

  “Joy?” Maxim’s life was rapidly becoming filled with a cast of characters he couldn’t keep straight.

  The other man’s gaze narrowed. “Your assistant. Surely you remember Joy? She’s relatively new, but she’s been with us at least a year now. A year and a half, maybe?”

  Maxim shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t. I’m afraid my demise is worse than it looks.”

  “How so?”

  Maxim swallowed. The metal taste in his mouth had gotten so bad that he could feel himself grimacing. “I’m recovering from a concussion. Memory loss is one of the side effects.”

  “I see. What else have you forgotten?”

  Maxim’s gaze shifted to the unfamiliar desk, its unfamiliar papers and the unfamiliar uncapped pen. “Everything, pretty much.”

  “Including me.”

  It had been a statement rather than a question. Still, Maxim nodded. “Yes, including you.”

  “I suspected as much.” He extended a hand. “I’m Gregory Joubert, VP of finance.”

  Maxim stood, finally, and gave his hand a shake. “My boss, then?”

  “Yes, but also a friend.” Gregory pointed to a framed photo on a bookshelf behind Maxim. The picture showed the two men on a tennis court with a large silver trophy between them.

  So Maxim was a banker and a country-club tennis star, in addition to being an obsessive amateur genealogist. He was beginning to think he’d woken up in an alternate universe.

  “Apologies.” Maxim still wondered why he hadn’t heard from his doubles partner while he’d been fighting for his life. But maybe Gregory had been there—he had been pretty out of it for the majority of his stay. Tsar Nicholas II himself could have turned up and he’d have never known.

  “The doctors assure me the memory loss is only temporary,” he added, although his hope was growing dimmer by the day. His most vivid memory was still the vision he’d had of Finley Abbot. He kept having to remind himself that he’d never actually known her. She was more a stranger to him than the man standing in front of him.

  Still, he couldn’t help glancing around the office in search of more pictures. He half expected to find a photograph of Finley that matched the image in his head.

  He didn’t.

  “Temporary?” Gregory blinked. “So you’ll eventually remember everything, then?”

  Maxim redirected his attention to his boss. “Not quite all of it. Most head injury patients never regain the memories surrounding the time of the accident.”

  Gregory lifted a brow. “Maybe that’s a good thing. Do you really want to remember being beaten in the street?”

  He didn’t want to remember. He needed to. “If I don’t remember, I’ll never know what happened, will I?”

  “Point taken. Do the police have any leads? A detective came to the office a few days ago to ask some questions, but he didn’t seem to have much to go on.”

  Detective Durand had been to his office. Why wasn’t Maxim surprised? “None so far.”

  “I was there, you know. At the hospital. I went as soon I heard, but they weren’t letting you have visitors. They said you were in a coma.” Gregory shook his head. “It’s just so good to see you.”

  He pulled Maxim into a hug.

  Maxim let himself relax as best he could. So he hadn’t been alone all those days after all. He had someone. He had a friend. A friend he couldn’t remember, but a friend nonetheless. He’d take what he could get.

  Gregory released him, jammed a hand through his hair and aimed his gaze at the stack of file folders on Maxim’s desk. “I hate to say this, Maxim. But if you don’t remember who I am, you’re not ready to come back to work at Banque de France. As a senior-level employee, you have a generous disability policy. I encourage you to use it. Give it some time.”

  “I understand. I simply thought that if I came here and took a look around, it might spark some sort of memory . . .”

  He looked away.

  Maxim felt foolish admitting as much out loud, especially since this visit to his workplace had confused him far more than it had helped.

  “Sure, of course. Stay as long as you like. If you need anything, I’m right down the hall.” Gregory graciously pointed in the direction of his office and lingered in the doorway for a final moment. “It’s really great to see you, mon amie. Take care. Let me know when you start feeling more like yourself again.”

  Maxim glanced at the papers spread across his desk. None of the names or numbers on the charts sparked even the faintest memory. Most of the documents were dated nearly a year ago, which was somewhat alarming. He hoped he hadn’t spent the last few months in his office fanatically scribbling notes about the Romanovs in his journal.

  But he was beginning to wonder if he had. Where was his work? What had he been doing at this desk in recent weeks?

  And how would he possibly know when he started to feel more like himself again when he no longer knew who he’d been?

  * * *

  “THERE’S SOMEONE HERE TO see you.” Marian Dubois, the head curator for the decorative arts department, stood with her arms crossed in Finley’s doorway.

  Not that it was exclusively her doorway. She shared it with the other six assistant curators in her department. So at best, it was maybe one-sixth her doorway. But hopefully that would change after the successful debut of her Romanov exhibition. No American had ever been promoted to full curator at the Louvre, but Finley aimed to be the first.

  A girl could dream.

  The room, located in the Richelieu Wing of the Louvre, was a maze of crisscrossed tables piled with carefully labeled and catalogued artifacts. It was controlled for both temperature and humidity, and required a key code for entry and exit.

  When Madame Dubois entered and made her announcement, Finley closed the window on her computer and looked up. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t try and find the photographs Scott had told her about—the ones from the attack at Point Zero. She’d managed to keep that promise last night after she’d gotten home from her book signing, but first thing this morning, she’d caved. The photos were all over social media. There was even a short video on Instagram.

  It showed a man lying facedown on the pavement, surrounded by blood. Around him, people stared. A few screamed. It was eerie. Horrific.r />
  And it terrified Finley to her core.

  She had to stop looking at the images. They were bringing back all sorts of feelings she’d tried long and hard to forget. Once her screen was blessedly dark again, she searched Madame Dubois’s gaze purely out of habit. She rarely received visitors, and every piece of art she’d assembled for the Romanov exhibit had been in France for weeks. She’d even flown to St. Petersburg and London to escort the rarer pieces back to Paris herself.

  No one had a reason to come looking for her. Unless . . .

  Don’t be ridiculous. You gave the man your business card less than twelve hours ago. It’s not him.

  But Madame Dubois was looking right at her.

  Finley swallowed. “Someone’s here to see me?”

  “Oui, Finley. You.” Her boss nodded. “He’s waiting for you in the second floor portrait wing. He can’t come anywhere near this room. He doesn’t have clearance.”

  Her visitor didn’t have any security clearance at all? That ruled out every single one of the Louvre’s two thousand employees.

  It’s him.

  Her stomach did a little flip. “Then I’d better get going. Merci, madame.”

  Her boss nodded, and her gaze swept the items on Finley’s table. “Don’t forget this afternoon I’d like to review the major pieces for your exhibit, just to make sure everything is in order. The gala is in a matter of days.”

  “Oui, madame.”

  Seemingly satisfied for the time being, Madame Dubois exited the room. Once she’d gone, it was all Finley could do not to bolt from her chair.

  The Louvre was the biggest museum in the world. The tour guides and docents were fond of telling visitors that the museum was so immense that it would take one hundred straight days to see every piece of art in the Louvre’s extensive collection. And that would leave a mere thirty seconds to look at each one. The museum’s galleries took up over half a million square feet, which meant that making her way to the portrait gallery was easier said than done.

  She used her cardkey to exit the curatorial offices and waved at the security guard stationed by the door. Heels clicking on the marble floor, she made her way to the main building, past the mob of tourists fighting their way toward the Mona Lisa. For the sake of time, she took the employee elevator to the second floor rather than battling the stairs.