Temporarily His Princess (10 page)

“So, what now?”

“We start preparing for next week.”

“What’s next week?

He pressed her against the balustrade and spanned her rib cage with his large hands, the translucence of his eyes bottomless reflections of the vivid sky. Then he said, “Our wedding.”

Seven

“O
ur wedding?”

Vincenzo’s heart dipped in his chest at the frown on Glory’s face as she echoed his words.

Was she angry again? After the magical flight here, when she’d gradually relaxed, seeming to accept their situation and then enjoy being with him, he’d almost forgotten how resistant she’d been. But what if her acquiescence had been a lull, and now she’d come to her senses and would start antagonizing him again? He couldn’t stomach a return to friction, would give anything for their newly forged harmony to continue. Even if it meant letting her make the decisions from now on.

She threw her hands in the air. “God, I was determined to stop repeating your words like an incredulous parrot. Then you go and say something that forces me into being one!”

She
had
sounded and looked deliciously startled frequently in the past couple of days. Was that all? She was annoyed at herself for parroting his declarations?

He watched her intently, considering his response so he wouldn’t trigger a relapse into hostilities. “Why is what I just said worthy of incredulous parroting?”

“When you talk you don’t hear yourself? Or was it one of the other Vincenzos who said our wedding is next week?”

Her smirk blanked out his mind with the memory of having those sassy lips beneath his, soft and pliant, burning with urgency, spilling moans of pleasure. He needed to devour them again. But he had to settle this first.

He backed her up against the balustrade, his gaze sweeping her from her piled-up hair to her turquoise stilettos, hunger an ever-expanding tide inside him. “That was the one and only Vincenzo talking. So is a week too long? I can make it sooner. I probably should. We probably wouldn’t survive a week.”

She picked up her dropping jaw and replaced it with a more bedeviling smirk. “It’s okay, this happens with a newly installed sense of humor. Sometimes you can’t turn it off. Or you’re such a new user, you don’t know how to. Let’s hope you get the hang of it soon.”

This wasn’t the first time she’d made comments to that effect. Had he been that much of a humorless boor before?

He guessed so. He’d been too focused on what he’d thought paramount he’d forgotten to lighten up.

But back then he’d thought his behavior suited her, the driven, dead-serious woman he’d thought her to be. Serious about work and passion. A delightful, challenging wit hadn’t been among the things he’d thought she possessed, what he’d told himself he’d have to live without, with so many qualities to make up for the deficiency. Now he realized being a sourpuss had made her turn her humor off, making him miss knowing this side of her.

How much more had he missed? Was it possible other things he’d believed about her would turn out to be as totally wrong? How, when he’d had proof of them?

No. He was leaving this alone. This bomb had already detonated once and destroyed his world around him. He wasn’t lighting its fuse again.

What mattered now was that she seemed to relish his new lightheartedness. He’d never dreamed they could have anything like the time they’d spent on the flight, filled with not only mounting hunger, but escalating fun, too.

He wanted more.

He went after it.

“You’re right. It’s a joke thinking I can wait a few days. We’ll have the wedding today.”

It was exhilarating. Teasing her, soaking up her reactions, opening himself wide for her retaliations, every barb targeting his humor triggers.

She obliged him with another bull’s-eye. “This is worse than anything I feared. That humor program had a virus that scrambled you up. We’ll have to uninstall everything in your brain and reformat you.”

He pulled her into him, groaning at the electric thrill that arced between their bodies. “I like me all scrambled up like that. So shall I rush the delivery of the catering, minister and guests? I can have everything ready by eight tonight.”

She arched to look up, pressing her lushness closer to him. He’d never remained that hard, that long. And he loved it.

“So he first hits his opponents with a ludicrous offer, then, as they gasp in disbelief, he follows up with an insane one, making them grab for the ludicrous lesser evil.”

“You’re not an opponent.”

At her raised eyebrow, though it was mocking and not cynical, he felt that nip of regret again. One that made him wish he could erase the past, both distant and recent. What he’d give to restart everything from this point, with them who they were today, with no yesterdays to muddy their enjoyment of each other, and no tomorrows to cast shadows over it.

He caressed that elegant, dense eyebrow. “Put that down before someone gets hurt. Namely me. At least more than I’m already hurting.” He ground his beyond-pain hardness into her, showing her she should have mercy on him. The eyes that rivaled Castaldini’s skies darkened, her body yielding, shaping itself to his seeking. Her response, as always, heightened his distress, his delight. He groaned with them both. “So you want to postpone the wedding till next week.”

A choppy laugh shook those globes of perfection against his chest. How he didn’t have them free of their restraints and in his hands and mouth already, he had no idea. “And
then
he makes it all sound like his opponent’s decision.”

“‘He’ has no opponents here. He’s just negotiating.”

“I can sniff out the faintest scent of negotiating a mile away. I can’t even detect a trace now.”

“It must be because I learned the undetectable negotiation method at the hands of a mistress of the art.”

“Seems I didn’t teach you but transferred it to you. That skill has been nowhere to be found when I most needed it.”

He tugged a loose glossy lock from the satin hair that shone in his homeland’s sun like burnished copper. “But ‘your’ decision to postpone is well-advised. Next week’s forecast says it will be a perfect day for a wedding.”

She curled that dewy, edible lip. “Every day is a perfect day on Castaldini. But…” Something like panic spurted in her eyes. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” At his nod, she grabbed his lapels. “And what do you mean
wedding?
”

It was his eyebrows’ turn to shoot up. “The word has more meanings than the one agreed on since the dawn of humanity?”

She shook her head, something frantic creeping into her eyes. “I thought we were just going to get a ring, sign a marriage certificate and report to the king so he can officially send you to your UN post.”

It pained him that she expected only a cold ritual to befit the barren deal he’d proposed forty-eight hours ago.

Sorrow filled him for what should have been with this woman his heart and body had chosen, but wasn’t and wouldn’t be.

Suddenly, all levity drained from him, loosening his embrace.

Unable to remain in such intimate contact with her anymore, he stepped away. And saw it. A quiver of insecurity. A crack in the veneer of confidence and cheek.

He should have felt that was the least she deserved. To suffer some uncertainty and trepidation. But he didn’t. It hurt him to see her looking so…bereft. He hated to see vulnerability in those indomitable eyes.

He forced himself to smile at her, to reach a soothing hand to her cheek. “If you didn’t think I was talking about a wedding with all the trimmings, why were you surprised at all when I said next week? Or today? The ceremony you describe could have been concluded in a couple of hours.”

“Forgive me if I’m boggled by the idea of
any
brand of ceremony. I was never married before, you know, for real or for pretense, and a date, let alone one so soon, makes me feel this is actually happening.”

He watched her lips shaking, attempting a smile of bravado and failing, and could no longer deny it.

His gut was having a fit, sanctioning no evidence but what it sensed. It insisted she wasn’t the hardened manipulator he’d once thought her. That person would have grabbed his deal, would now be working his evident eagerness to milk more from him. But she wasn’t. She was really shaken.

And for the first time, he put himself in her place. Taken away from everything she knew to a strange land, her choice stripped away, her family not only unable to come to her aid, but the reason for her predicament. Her only company and precarious support was the man behind it all. And he kept blowing hot and cold, to boot. She must be feeling lost, helpless. And to a woman who’d been mistress of her own fate for so long, that must be the scariest thing she’d ever experienced.

His gut finally communicated with his brain, reaching a decision.

If he took out the terrible blot of her betrayal from their lives, he could connect the woman he’d once loved with this woman he laughed so easily with, the woman he now wanted more than he’d known he was capable of wanting. And he didn’t want that woman to be under any form of compulsion.

Taking another step back, severing any intimacy, he exhaled. “It doesn’t have to happen.”

More uncertainty flooded her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you don’t have to marry me.”

*

Glory wondered if the sun had overheated her brain.

That would explain feeling and hearing things that couldn’t be real. When Vincenzo had stepped away, she’d felt as if she was teetering on a cliff without his support. Then, because of the distance that had come over him, she’d felt she’d fallen into the abyss of the past, discarded all over again.

That remoteness couldn’t have been real. Not after all his pursuit and passion. And he couldn’t have just said…

“I don’t have to marry you?” There she went, parroting him again. She swallowed the knot of anxiety that rose in her throat. “Just a minute ago you wanted me to marry you in seven hours or seven days, and now… Just what are you playing at?”

He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Nothing. No more games, Glory. But don’t worry. I’ll still help your family. Of course, they can never again as much as forge a note to your nephew’s kindergarten or take a cent from a tip dish.”

Her heart slowed, as if fearing every beat would make this real. “Y-you mean that?” His slow nod, his solemn gaze cleaved into her. “Wh-what will you do about King Ferruccio’s decree?”

“I don’t know. I’m thinking on the fly here. Maybe I’ll ask someone else.”

Her heart boomed now, each beat almost tearing it apart.

She couldn’t bear thinking he’d marry someone else, even in pretense. “Why?”

His shrug was heavy; his spectacular face gripped in the brooding she hadn’t seen there since she’d met him again. “It just suddenly hit me, how wrong this whole thing is.”

It suddenly hit her, too. That he wasn’t only confounding. He was nerve-racking. Heartbreaking. And he probably did suffer from a severe bipolar disorder. What else explained the violent pendulum of his mood swings?

He forced out an exhalation. “You can go back as soon as you wish. If you want me to escort you, I will. If not, the royal jet is at your disposal.”

Feeling as if her whole world was being swept from under her, she leaned back on the balustrade before she collapsed.

He meant it. He was setting her free.

But she didn’t want to be free.

She no longer knew what to do with her freedom.

Before he’d reinvaded her life, she’d spent years nurturing the illusion of steadiness. His hurricane had uprooted her simulated peace and exposed the truth of her chaos, the bleakness of her isolation.

But she’d already succumbed and had woven a tapestry of expectations around this time she would have had with him. She’d anticipated its rejuvenation, thought it would see her through the rest of her life. In her worst estimations she’d never thought it would all end before it began.

But it had. He’d suddenly cut her loose, letting her plummet back into her endless spiral of nothingness.

She pushed away from the balustrade as if from a precipice and past the monolith who stood brooding down at her.

She looked around her stunning surroundings, every nerve burning with despondency.

In a different life, Vincenzo would have brought her here because he wanted to share his home with her. If not permanently, then at least sincerely, passionately, for as long the fates let them be together.

In this life, he’d brought her here for all the wrong reasons, only to send her away before she got more than a tantalizing taste of the place that had forged him into the man she loved.

Yes, in spite of the insanity and self-destructiveness of it all, she still loved him.

Now she’d only gotten enough of a glimpse of him in his element to live with their memory gnawing at her, to mourn what hadn’t and could never have been.

Needing to get it over with, she turned and found him still standing where he had been, his back to her, looking up at the sky. Thunder filled her ears as her gaze ached over the sight of his majestic figure…then she realized.

The din didn’t come from her stampeding heart. It was coming from above.

It took a moment to realize its direction then see its origin. A helicopter.

“The Castaldinian Air Force One, rotorcraft edition.” Vincenzo gazed at her over his shoulder, his eyes grave. “Seems Ferruccio couldn’t wait to meet my future bride.”

Hot needles sprouted behind her eyes. She didn’t want to meet anyone. She wasn’t even a counterfeit bride now.

He turned, expression wiped clean. “Please say nothing while he’s here. I’ll resolve things with him later.”

She only nodded numbly, making no reaction when he took her hand and led her from the terrace and down the stairs he’d carried her up what felt like a lifetime ago.

By the time they exited the castle, the helicopter was landing in the courtyard, the revolving blades spraying the fountain water at them. Glory shuddered at the touch of the warm mist, cold spreading in her bones.

As the rotors slowed down, a man stepped down from the pilot’s side. She recognized him on sight. So the king flew himself here. And without guards or fanfare. It said so much about him and his status in Castaldini.

But all photos and footage hadn’t done him justice. He’d looked exceptional in those. But the man was way more than that. He was on par with Vincenzo in looks and physique. He could even pass for his brother.