Honeymoon With a Prince (Royal Scandals) (17 page)

“Dressed like that?” Vittorio gave Massimo’s wrinkled clothes a pointed once over.
 
“What you need is a stylist, not a closet organizer.”

“No doubt I’ll have both soon enough,” he grumbled, leaving them staring after him as he strode away.

Chapter Ten

A row of bars stretched from the floor to the ceiling in front of Kelly, separating the small, cinder-block room she now occupied from the rest of the police station.
 
Steel, if she had to guess, though someone had taken it upon themselves to paint them a jaunty yellow.
 
Beachy color or not, they weren’t the type of bars she’d come to Sarcaccia to enjoy, the ones with ocean views, fruity drinks, and good-looking bartenders catering to her every whim.
 
The type where she could tilt her face into the summer breeze and brainstorm a new business plan, one that she’d reminisce about years later by saying she’d originally scribbled the idea on a cocktail napkin while looking out over the Mediterranean.

On the other hand, the area where she now sat smelled like the bars she remembered from college.
 
Vestiges of cigarette smoke and the occasional hint of vomit and sweat tinged the air, but they were easy to ignore compared to the odor rising from the cement floor.
 
If she had to give it a name, she’d call it Eau d’Spilled Alcohol.
 
It wasn’t strong enough to make her ill, but it permeated the space.
 
The jug of bleach and the mop propped next to the desk of the officer on duty didn’t seem to have helped matters.
 

Worse than the smell, however, was the sound.
 
Located somewhere nearby but out of her line of sight, a clock loudly ticked off the seconds.
 
She wondered if it’d been installed specifically to torture those waiting in the cells, reminding them that life went on outside while they remained in limbo.

She rose from the metal bench that was bolted to her cell wall and approached the bars, waiting patiently for the officer to finish his report before she spoke.
 
He tapped away on a computer keyboard that looked at least a decade old.
 
When she was certain he wasn’t looking, she discreetly huffed a breath into her palm.
 
As she suspected, she needed out of here soon to brush her teeth, if nothing else.
 
She was beginning to offend herself.
 

Her gaze swept the walls behind the officer.
 
The room looked like it could belong to a police station in any part of the world.
 
Drywall painted a grayish blue—much nicer than the walls inside the cells—held bulletin boards displaying duty rosters, descriptions of wanted criminals, and the occasional poster warning against the dangers of drug use.
 

Then her eye caught the framed photos near the main doors, the ones that led to the lobby.
 
Rather than showing the current President and Vice President, as government offices did back in Dallas, they featured King Carlo and Queen Fabrizia.
 

Massimo’s parents.
 

She’d seen their photos before, of course, but now she studied them in a new light.
 
They made a striking pair, Fabrizia with her golden hair and clear, bright skin worthy of Hollywood, and Carlo, who was the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome.
 
Though his hair was now more salt than pepper and his face had grown slightly wider with age, even his police station photo radiated charm.
 
Massimo looked more like his father, she decided—at least in his coloring and general build—but had his mother’s nose and cheekbones.
 
Yet Massimo’s eyes and mouth seemed entirely his own.
 
She couldn’t imagine either of his parents displaying the sultry smile that had played at Massimo’s lips as he’d watched her lick her ice cream spoon.
 

She hadn’t intended the action to be so flirtatious.
 
When she’d offered him a bite of her ravioli, sure.
 
But later, as she’d sucked the ice cream off her spoon…in that moment, she’d been swept away by the sunset, the decadent dessert, and the company.
 
The mere fact she was half a continent and an ocean away from her routine, experiencing life in a country about which she’d only dreamed, left her in a blissful daze.
 
But when she’d glanced at Massimo and caught him staring at her withdrawing the spoon from her mouth, she’d known exactly what he was thinking.
 

She clamped her teeth into the inside of her lower lip and looked away from the photos.
 

“Yes, Ms. Chase?” the officer said without looking up or slowing his typing.
 
The man was as gruff as Officer Scarpa’s partner, but older.
 
Deep wrinkles radiated from the corners of his eyes and his brawny shoulders drooped slightly, as if years manning the holding area had taken their toll on what she suspected had once been an impressive physique.
 
No doubt he had a lack of sympathy for those who occupied the spot where she now stood.
 
She couldn’t imagine sitting at his desk day in and day out and maintaining a cheery disposition.

“I can’t see the clock from here.
 
What time is it, please?”
 

“Almost noon.”
 
His tone was akin to that of a parent answering a toddler’s twentieth request for a snack.
 
“We’ll tell you when it’s two o’clock and you may call your bank.”

She thanked him in as pleasant a tone as she could muster, hoping he’d realize she was a decent, law-abiding tourist who had no business spending a sunny vacation day in a holding cell.
 
On the inside, she wanted to let loose with every four-letter oath she’d ever heard.
 
The cops should’ve realized she was no criminal after spending nearly an hour questioning her while they checked her passport, travel documents, and reservation confirmations against information in their computers.
 
But apparently not.

Settling her rear on the bench once more, she leaned back against the wall and lifted her face to the ceiling.
 
A long, gray piece of lint—or was it a thick spiderweb?—hung in one corner near a vent, flitting back and forth with the movement of the air.
 
She suspected it had been there for weeks, if not months.
 
Exhaustion washed through her, making her limbs heavy, and she fought back a sudden urge to explode with laughter at her predicament.
 
The only people who ended up in jail on their honeymoon were those who partied too hard or starred on reality television shows.
 
Not professional women who planned their vacations well in advance, read guidebooks cover to cover before traveling so they’d appreciate a country’s history and traditions, and kept their confirmations where they could be accessed online, just in case.
 
Not that confirmations mattered when the bills weren’t paid.

It could be worse, she told herself.
 
Most of the police spoke English.
 
The guy manning the holding area spoke it as well as she did.
 
They’d also promised to let her call the bank to see why her payment to the property management company wasn’t put through.
 
From what the officers at the station explained, it was refused due to a lack of funds, which she’d insisted was impossible, but time alone in the holding cell gave her the opportunity to think long and hard about what must have happened.
 
The only conclusion she could draw was that Ted had emptied their joint account, the one into which she’d deposited the money from the sale of her business.
 
The account that was meant to be used for honeymoon expenses, then a down payment on a condo.
 
She’d intended to pay for the honeymoon herself as a wedding gift to him.

And that was after she’d paid the deposit on the villa, which in itself was no small chunk of change, especially since she’d done it prior to the sale of the business.

The officer stopped typing long enough to clear his throat, then spit noisily into a tattered paper coffee cup.
 
Two teenage boys—if she had to guess at their age—in the cell adjacent to hers imitated the sound, then fell into choked guffaws.
 
From what she could translate of their conversation throughout the morning, they’d been out drinking the previous night and were waiting for their parents to come fetch them.
 
She imagined the boys’ laughter would end at that point.
 

Then one of them retched.
 
The officer barked at him to use their cell’s toilet.

Kelly crossed her arms over her chest, willing herself to temper her fury at Ted and at being stuck in a six-by-eight cell for the last few hours.
 
She hadn’t touched the joint bank account before she’d left because she’d already set automatic payments for the honeymoon.
 
The villa, the groceries—groceries that hadn’t been delivered, which should have given her a clue—even the tours she’d booked were tied to that account.
 
It’d been the easiest way to pay for everything and avoid having to carry a lot of cash, since several of the mom-and-pop businesses on Sarcaccia didn’t take credit cards.
 
Then, once she returned home, she planned to close the account and transfer the portion originally earmarked for a condo down payment to a business account and use it as the seed money for her next business venture.
 

Never in a million years did she think Ted would close the account before she returned.
 

Of course, she wouldn’t know for certain until the banks opened back home in Dallas and she could speak to an actual human being.
 
Until then, she desperately wanted to believe it was a snag.
 
An easily-fixed error.
 
Not that all her hard-earned money—years and years worth of savings—was gone, sitting in the pockets of a man she’d dumped.
 
To contemplate that scenario made her nauseous.
 
She’d been wrong about Ted—wrong enough to know she could never marry him—but she didn’t think she’d been that wrong.
 
The last thing Ted needed was her money.

She propped her elbows on her knees and forked her hands through her hair, wishing the action would wipe all desire for the male species from her brain.
 
She’d been sorely mistaken about what she meant to Ted.
 
And apparently she hadn’t learned a darned thing from it, because she’d gone right out and expected she meant something to Massimo, too.
 
Not that one night with a man—a man whom she’d told herself would be her vacation indulgence—was the same as being engaged, but after the intensity of the night they spent together, she didn’t think she’d mean
nothing
to him.

Well, at least she wouldn’t be seeing Massimo again.
 
Too bad, because right up until he walked out on her this morning, she’d been having the time of her life.
 
A smile lifted one corner of her mouth as her mind filled with a vision of their shared shower, his large hands sliding over her back under the hot spray, the pressure from his thumbs easing the tension from her muscles with as much skill as any masseuse and with infinitely more passion.
 
Then his lips landed on the back of her neck, doing wondrous things to her nerve endings as he lathered the area between her shoulder blades.
 
When the soap went flying, they’d had a rather detailed, stimulating debate about who should retrieve it and what else they’d do while down there.
 

Crazy.
 

She released her hands from her hair, letting them fall into her lap.
 
She’d only known Massimo a few hours, yet never before had she felt so at ease with a man and at the same time, so sexually charged.
 
Every fiber of her being thrummed at his touch, leaving her at the very edge of her control.
 
When he’d interlaced his fingers with hers as they lay in the moonlight, the look in his eyes sent her pulse into the stratosphere.
 
No man had ever looked at her that way.
 
He made her feel beautiful.
 
Wanted.
 
And oddly enough, though they were in the midst of having sex on a mattress on the floor of all places, respected.
 

Stupidly, she’d believed it was real.
 
Part of her still wanted to believe it, which was why
not
seeing him again was the best possible thing to happen to her today.

Voices came from the front of the police station.
 
In the cell beside her, the boys quieted, then began urgent back-and-forth whispers, making her suspect one or both sets of their parents had arrived.
 
The officer’s fingers paused over his keyboard and he turned his head, his ears tuned to what was happening in the front hall.
 
After a few seconds, he rolled his chair away from the computer and lumbered to the door separating the cell area from the station’s lobby and reception desk.
 

When his shoulders straightened and his hands flew to his waistband to adjust his uniform, the tiny hairs at the back of Kelly’s neck flared to life.
 
Whoever stood in the reception area commanded the man’s respect.
 
In the cell beside her, the boys’ whispers abruptly ceased.
 
She wondered who their parents might be and how severe a punishment they faced at home for their night of carousing.
 
The officer listened for a minute, nodded a few times to the people standing outside, then spun on his heel and walked directly to the cells, removing the keys from his hip as he covered the short distance.
 
Rather than approach the boys’ cell, he came to hers.