Olivia Gates Bestseller Collection 2012 (27 page)

Durante came the hell down.

After a moment of being unable to believe anyone could not only talk to him that way, but have the temerity to deliver a slap through his right-hand man, to even win said man to her side so that Giancarlo had felt justified and satisfied to transmit it full force.

So he came the hell down. He hurtled, streaked, zoomed and tore his way the hell down. He forced himself to slow once he exited his private elevator. She might have thrown down the gauntlet, but damn if he would give her proof of how she had seeped into his blood, had taken hold of his reactions.

He came to a stop just outside the foyer, depleting reserves of control that he saved for navigating crises of global scope. He yelled inwardly at his instincts, wrestled some rhythm into his heartbeat and breathing. He should make her wait.

He
couldn’t wait. Her challenge, his eagerness to see her again, was boiling in his blood.

He started walking again, his gait a study in subterfuge, radiating the opposite of what roiled inside him.

He turned the corner and…there she was. Standing at the reception desk, part of her profile visible to him.

She was wearing a skirt suit in another shade of blue, a cross between royal and navy, the richness and depth of the color setting off the clarity of her complexion, the vivid gloss of her hair. The getup was impossibly more flattering than that evening outfit he’d thought the best showcase of her lushness. It molded
to her lithe frame, emphasizing her height, the perfection of her proportions, detailing each curve and dip, showing off the symmetry and sculpted creaminess of her legs. Those
legs.
Her flowing skirt had deprived him of seeing them before. He’d had them wrapped around him when he’d been stupid enough to walk away from the promise of fulfillment they’d been offering, almost dealing his potency an irreparable blow.

She was carrying a briefcase. Navy blue to go with her outfit. She looked all business today. And there was this…royal assurance to her bearing, a bring-it-on air to her stance, befitting the potent woman that she was and the mission that had brought her here. To conquer him? He’d bet that was it.

She turned, as if she’d sensed his entrance. She couldn’t have possibly seen him, not at the periphery of her vision, not in any reflection. He was still too far for his footsteps to be heard. She had
sensed
him.

And he sensed
her.
Her emanations were unchanged. How did she do that? How did she mess with his perception so that he felt only what she wanted him to feel?

He didn’t care. He had to get closer, get more.

He struggled to keep his stride tranquil, as if reaching her was low on his priorities.

When he was finally within arm’s reach, he stopped. Her face was a mask captured in blankness, her vibe transmitting nothing of her mood or intentions.

A crack exploded by his ear, on the side of his face, slashing the tranquility of the exclusive foyer’s silent occupants and sourceless music.

D
urante blinked, gaped. Beyond stunned. Paralyzed.

He would later swear that she hadn’t even moved. But the evidence that she had would resound inside his head forever. Echoes ricocheted off every sound-reflecting surface in the all-marble, chrome and quartz massive space. He barely heard the gasps that went off in a chain reaction of incredulity around him, the quickening footsteps of the guards whose perpetual orders were to stay out of sight.

He made an adamant gesture, banishing them back where they came from. He couldn’t bear for others to exist in this moment. Only Gabrielle. Gabrielle, whose eyes were panning away from his with the same void filling them as if she didn’t even see him.

Then she brushed past him, walked away with all the grace and serenity of a fairy creature.

It was only when she exited the door the stunned bellman held open for her that Durante registered the burn spreading
through his flesh. His hand went instinctively to the pain from the imprint of her fingers, as if to investigate the damage. He moved his mouth from side to side. His jaw felt almost loose.

It excited the hell out of him.

Which made him even more of a colossal fool than he’d realized.

She was pulling his strings. He knew it. But he could sooner resist the pull of a black hole. He rushed out after her.

He caught up with her in less than a minute, her head start and brisk stride no match for his longer legs and urgency.

She suddenly stopped. He overshot her by six strides and retraced them at once.

“Here’s the other cheek.” He presented her with it. “Go ahead, I know you want to.”

She gave no indication that she heard him or even felt him there. She put her briefcase on the ground, opened it, produced a dossier, took papers out, straightened, started reading.

“Prince Durante Benedetto D’Agostino. Eldest son of the King of Castaldini, and therefore, according to the ancient laws of succession, the only member of the extensive D’Agostino royal family ineligible for the crown.”

She was reading him a report? On him?

“To prove to the world that his inability to run for the crown meant nothing to him, Prince Durante decided to be king of his own kingdom, emperor of his own empire.”

Would there be a point to this somewhere? Knowing what he did about her, she was bound to have a whopper. But what could it be?

“During his meteoric ascent from age twenty, the prince masterminded takeovers that redefined the word
hostile.
Those he took an ax to say that they would have preferred it if he’d taken a contract on their lives and been done with it. Two of those he destroyed
did
end up taking their own lives. Then, at thirty-five, he engineered a market crash that sent thousands into
bankruptcy while catapulting himself from mere billionaire status to that of financial god. Ever since, he’s been shearing his way through the pantheon, cutting down fellow deities in his climb to the absolute and solitary top.”

He’d heard all that before. Not that articulate or concentrated, and certainly not to his face.

She wasn’t finished. “On a personal level, it is said that Prince Durante is as cold-blooded and unrepentant a lady-killer as he is a rival-slayer. He is known to pick beauties from those who crowd around his feet, use them and discard them. On one notable occasion, one of his fleeting indulgences tried to commit suicide and is still undergoing intensive psychiatric treatment. Her family reports that Prince Durante systematically destroyed her self-esteem, and she ended up despising herself. A second woman—a married one—said that Prince Durante’s influence rivals that of the Prince of Darkness himself. After her husband divorced her and gained custody of their two toddlers, denying her even visitation rights, the spellbound and discarded woman still said that, even knowing where it would lead, she’d do it again. She only wished Prince Durante would take her back.”

And he got her point. Right through the heart.

Something else skewered him there. Shame.

He of all people, who suffered slander, shouldn’t have been party to perpetuating it, to judging her and carrying out his judgment based on secondhand information.

But beyond shame, which was self-indulgent and worthless, something harsher tore at him. The hurt he felt emanating from her.

He could no longer deny it. His instincts hadn’t been tampered with. They’d told him the truth all along. Everything
else
had lied. Everything he’d heard about her had been as false as the reports propagated against him by his enemies.

The fair reports were also out there, as abundant, but they
weren’t as interesting as the defamatory ones, weren’t sensational enough to be bandied around. His friends didn’t feel the need to defend him and he’d never wanted them to, leaving the field wide open to the foes who spoke loudest, were most persistent.

She stopped sifting through the pages. “All reports of Prince Durante’s atrocities remain unsubstantiated allegations, because he manages to remain beyond reproach, faultlessly covering his amoral and immoral tracks. As such, he is considered to be our era’s only Machiavellian prince. Some even claim that he used Machiavelli’s most famous work,
Il Principe—The Prince
—the immortal guide to acquiring and maintaining power, as the template from which he forged his persona and kingdom. What he added of his own heartlessness and intelligence has created a modern hybrid even the philosopher couldn’t have imagined being spawned.”

He raised his hands, surrendering. “
Abbastanza,
Gabrielle. Enough. You can stop now. I get it.”

Without a glance at him, she rearranged the papers back into the dossier, bent to pick up her briefcase. He caught her arm.

“We need to talk.” Her blank stare deepened his desperation. He gritted his teeth. “
I
need to talk.”

“That you do, now, is of no consequence. I am not here to talk. I am here to tell you something. You’re a paranoid bastard who’s so full of your own convictions and hang-ups, you can’t see how your actions injure and maim people around you. If you have one shred of humanity—and according to your lofty opinion of yourself, you’re full of…it—I’m giving you an assignment to find out how much you
do
possess. Write down a list of all the people in your life. Be honest about their condition today, emotionally, psychologically, financially, and calculate the role your condemning, unforgiving nature has played in it.”

Her accusation slid right off him. Not because it didn’t shame him that it might be true, but because his only concern was for undoing the injury he’d caused
her.

Pedestrians and even drivers were slowing down to watch the scene unfolding between their city’s most famous resident royal and the stunning woman who was clearly telling him off. Some were openly gawking. Some were clicking away on their cell phones.

Not that he cared. But he was beginning to realize the role speculation and the media must have played in smearing her reputation.

He had to take her away from prying eyes and wagging tongues. “Come up with me, Gabrielle. Please.”

“No.” She extricated her arm from his urgent grip. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my…vast experience, it’s what to avoid in the interest of self-preservation. I thought being punched black and blue was the worst thing that had happened to me, but now I know how hard
you
hit, I’d be crazy if I came near you again. Goodbye, Prince Durante.”

He blocked her path. “
Per favore,
Gabrielle, you must listen to me.”

Her disdain would have annihilated a lesser man. At least a less determined one. “As you listened to me? Oh, wait, you didn’t give me the chance to say anything to listen to. You heard my name, recalled the report some bored assistant collated on me and disregarded everything you learned about me during that night you kept calling magical and unprecedented—the line you handed me when you wanted to score another one-night stand. Funny part is, although your criteria for one-nighters are reportedly pretty flexible, it seems you draw the line somewhere. At my level.”

He surged forward as if to stem the flow of her bitterness. She took two steps back to his every step forward in a wretched parody of a waltz.

He stopped, clenched his fists so he wouldn’t haul her over his shoulder and take her someplace where he could make her listen. “You think I leave functions I sponsor, dedicate whole
nights and ignore work—for days on end—for anything, let alone what you make sound like scratching an itch? It
was
all real and magical to me.”

Something terrible flared in her eyes, which turned the color of turbulent smoke. “Yet as soon as you heard my name, you looked at me as if I were something vile. You made me feel soiled, worthless, like no one has ever made me feel—not the sick jerk I married, not the paparazzi who scoop up his poison to mix with their own and peddle it to the rumor addicts of the world.”

Suddenly a man with a cell phone held up toward them came too close. The bastard wanted to get sound with his footage.

“Gabrielle, let’s stop this sideshow. Come inside with me.”

“This
sideshow
will stop when you move out of my way so I can get on mine. So move. Just don’t forget to make that list. Start with your father and work your way down.”

“I will. I promise. But I’ll start with you.”

“Don’t bother. I’m sure you felt validated as you walked away from me. Enjoy the company of your prejudice, Prince Durante.”

“
Maledizione,
Gabrielle, I wasn’t feeling validated when I walked away, I was feeling violated. I’ve been incapacitated ever since. All the vile things I had heard about you overwhelmed me until all I could see was another trap like those that have been laid for me ever since I became old enough for women to consider me a ticket to wealth and social status. But I’m used to those traps. I watch them being laid in bored amusement. When I thought I’d failed to see yours, I was enraged. But what really hurt was when I started negotiating with myself to let you have whatever you want, so that I could have you, too. That was the lowest place I’ve ever been. So I walked away.”

Her eyes darkened to the color of cumulus about to hurtle down a deluge. Then she gave a slow nod. “Okay. It must be tough being you. It must be almost impossible for you to trust people’s motivations enough to indulge in even healthy casual
contact. I can relate to that, because the would-be exploiters in my own life make it tough for me to trust anyone. In your case, that must be multiplied by a factor of thousands. I just hope you remember it wasn’t my idea to hide my identity that long, that I only delayed introducing myself until you gave me a fair hearing, fearing the reaction you ended up so predictably having anyway.”

“You don’t have to remind me how things went, or that it was I who steered the situation. I remember every second of that night.”

“I’m sure you had fun superimposing your version of my ‘trap laying’ on every second.”

“Fun? I said I was paralyzed for the past few days. I’ve been going mad wondering how you fooled my instincts so totally, yet wanting you so fiercely still, I was willing to risk anything to have you.”

“Sure. You were so out of your mind you would have never seen me again if I hadn’t insulted you into confronting me.”

“I wasn’t in the least insulted. I was stunned, then thrilled. And I was on my way to find you when you arrived.”

That startled her. But not for long. She clearly discounted his claim, huffed. “What a coincidence, huh?”

“I don’t believe it’s a coincidence. I think we’re attuned to one another on a very basic level. We reached the same decision, reached our limit for staying apart at the same time.”

“Not exactly the same time. I arrived here when the idea of coming after me was still in the embryonic stage with you.”

His lips twitched. “Actually, it was in the last stage of labor.”

Her lips almost gave in to the humor tugging at them. Almost. He knew part of her was reveling in their volley match, but she wasn’t about to let him get off that easy. As she shouldn’t.

“Still, according to your theory, because I acted first on that transmission between us, either my receptors are keener, or signals take longer to penetrate that thick skull of yours.”

This was a serious situation. As serious as when she’d been relating her life story. She’d poked fun then, too, if at herself.

He shouldn’t. He couldn’t help it.

He threw back his thick skull and laughed.

No one else had or would ever talk to him like that. Only her.

He stopped laughing abruptly when her gaze strayed behind him. He turned. His bodyguards had closed in and were trying and failing to look as if they were not on full alert.

“So even your bodyguards are terrified I might suck you dry or swallow you whole, huh?” She smirked.

“Should you really be saying things like ‘suck you dry’ and ‘swallow you whole’ to me, out here, where I can’t do much about it? Now that’s a spectacularly effective method of punishment.”