The Prince Next Door. Sue Civil-Brown

soon?”

      “I’m not sure. First I have to prove I’m not the prince.”

      He disconnected, leaving Maria Teresa to feel as if she had been struck by a truck.

      Prove he wasn’t the prince? ¡Dios no lo quiera!

      SERENA WAS SUNBATHING, dermatologist-style. She was lying beside the condo swimming pool, clad in a maillot, coverup, wide-brimmed sun hat and half a tube of sunscreen. And just to be sure, she’d chosen a chaise beneath an umbrella. Immediately to her right on the pool deck sat a tall bottle of spring water and a kitchen timer which she had set to twenty minutes.

      To her left was a patient-to-be, Marco Paloni. She considered him a patient-to-be because he wore only a Speedo—which left little to the imagination and much that would haunt her dreams—and a thin sheen of olive oil, which he had applied with the same loving care a chef might use to baste a leg of lamb. He had then proceeded to spend the next fifteen minutes regaling her with tales of his days on the Grand Prix circuit.

      “And then there was Monza,” he said. “The Italian Grand Prix. My home country. My home course.”

      “Of course,” Serena said, doing her best to appear polite, just in case he ended up in her office.

      “I was driving for Ferrari, of course. A beautiful car, the 312T2, with a transverse mounted gearbox. What a wonderful machine.”

      To judge by the tone of his voice, he might have been describing a fondly remembered lover.

      “Emerson Fittipaldi was the favorite, as always. But this was the course I’d been weaned on, watching Fanglia as a boy. It was the first course I’d ever driven. I knew it like…how do you say…the back of my hand.”

      “And you won?” Serena asked, glancing at the timer. Three more minutes. Just three more minutes.

      “Did I win?” Marco asked. “Did I win?”

      “Yes. Did you win?”

      “No.”

      “No?”

      “No.”

      “How sad,” she said.

      Two minutes, forty-five seconds.

      “Sad? No!”

      “No?” she asked.

      “No!”

      Two minutes, forty seconds.

      “It was better than winning. I came to the chicayne on the last lap, dead even. I took a page from Lauria’s book. Fittipaldi downshifted. I didn’t. Two hundred fifty kilometers per hour.”

      “That’s fast,” Serena said.

      “Sì! Prestissimo!”

      Two minutes, thirty seconds.

      “I passed Fittipaldi. Took the first half of the chicayne, no problem. Tapped the brakes. Just the tiniest tap. Turned the wheel.”

      “And?”

      “Guess!” he said.

      “Guess?”

      “Guess!”

      Two minutes, fifteen seconds.

      “Ummm…”

      “I flew!” he exclaimed. “Flew! Over the tires. Over the retaining wall.”

      “You crashed?”

      “Right into the net! That beautiful machine hung right there in the net. The right-front tire had come off, and the car hung by the axle. The ambulance, it comes.”

      “Were you hurt?” Serena asked, now concerned. She didn’t care for auto racing, for that very reason. Too many drivers got hurt.

      “Hurt? No!”

      “No?”

      “No!”

      Two minutes.

      “I climbed out of the cockpit. And fell…right into the arms of my Isadora.”

      “Isadora?”

      “Isadora!”

      Serena turned off the timer. “And?”

      “The woman of my dreams. Strong. Gentle. Kind.” He reached into his Speedo. “The paparazzi were there. They captured the moment. The moment I met my Isadora.”

      His hand emerged, holding a laminated snapshot out to her. He had cut a dashing figure back then. And there was no mistaking the smile on his face in the photo, his eyes fixed on the raven-haired medic into whose arms he had fallen as if by an act of God. Her face was radiant.

      “She’s beautiful.”

      “Sì. Bella. Splendida.” His eyes darkened. “She became…my life.”

      “She’s…?”

      “Yes,” he said. “Four years ago.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      “No,” he said, simply.

      “No?”

      “No. I would have been sorry if I had not taken that chicayne at 250 kilometers per hour. I would have been sorry if I had not tapped the brakes and turned the wheel at exactly the wrong instant. I would have been sorry if my beautiful automobile had not gone airborne and flown into that net. I would have been sorry if I had not fallen into her arms. For all of that, I would have been sorry.”

      He paused a moment, deep-brown eyes fixing on her. “No. I am not sorry. If I see only how she died…Doctor Serena, if we see it that way, life has no happy endings. For any of us. No, God gave me twenty-five years with her. Twenty-five glorious years and four beautiful children. Those years, those memories, my children…they are my happy ending.”

      She passed the photo back to him, certain that she’d exceeded her allotted twenty minutes, and equally certain she did not care.

      “That’s beautiful, Marco.”

      His fingers lingered on hers for a moment. “Dr. Serena, don’t be afraid to fly into the net.”

      She nodded and withdrew her hand. “I need to get out of the sun, Marco.”

      “And I need to wax my car.”

      “Let me guess,” she said. “Ferrari?” He winked. “Always.”

      “EXPLAIN SOMETHING to me?” Ariel asked as she licked an ice-cream cone—chocolate with sprinkles.

      Serena had run into her in the elevator on her way up from her sunbath. “Yes?”

      “How could you go on a clothing-optional cruise when you barely let the sun touch your skin?”

      Serena looked at her young friend and found green eyes innocently looking back at her. She didn’t for one second believe that innocence. “Sunblock,” she said, “can be put anywhere.”

      “Were you going to hide inside the ship all the time? What’s the point of going to the Caribbean, then?”

      “I wasn’t going to stay inside all the time.”

      “Just most of it.”

      Serena scowled at her. “Are you making fun of me?”

      “Moi?” But now there was a definite twinkle in her eyes. “I thought you’d like to know. Mr. Maxwell drives a Ferrari.”

      The elevator lurched to a halt at the eleventh floor. The door hissed open. Serena didn’t move. Two seconds later she punched the G button for the garage level.

      “What are you doing?” Ariel asked.

      “I just had a brainstorm.”

      CHAPTER