by Dani Collins
He rubbed his thumb against the side of his glass, not ready to admit he was thinking of going there with her. There were so many variables and pitfalls. Sofia wasn’t married or even looking for a consort. The public might be for Queen Sofia, but many were still taking sides against Amy Miller for costing them King Luca.
“She handles it well, doesn’t she? Being in the sun,” Sofia mused.
Amy was winning people over one bright smile at a time, but the attention would never stop. Nor would the judging. It was a sad and relentless fact of his life that he had to remain above reproach. He couldn’t sentence her to those same strictures. Not forever.
Not when her smile was already showing signs of strain.
“Yes, but she’s not wearing sunscreen.” He set his glass on a drinks tray carried by passing waitstaff. “Excuse me while I rescue her.”
* * *
Amy gratefully went into Luca’s arms when he invited her to dance.
“How are you holding up?” he asked as he led her into a smooth waltz. Was there nothing this man didn’t do perfectly?
“I underestimated what I was asking of my clients in the past, when I’ve said, ‘Just smile while they take your photo.’ My fault, I guess, for choosing this dress.”
His expression flickered through amusement and ended up as something more contemplative. “There’s a commentary there on how much attention we give to what women wear, but I’d rather not think too hard when I’ve finally got you to myself.”
“I’ll wear a tuxedo next year,” she said, then faltered as she realized it sounded like she assumed she would be with him next year.
“Or pajamas,” he suggested.
She relaxed. “I’m glad they’ve been well received, but I can’t take the credit.”
“Why not? Sofia and I wouldn’t have ordered any if the option hadn’t been presented.”
Even so, the queen and former king had each preordered a hundred pair, asking that they be donated to long-term care facilities throughout Vallia. With that example set, guests were ordering in factors of ten, rather than the one or two pair Amy had anticipated.
“Do you want to visit the pajama factory while we’re in Asia?” Luca asked.
“Oh. Um...” She nearly turned her ankle again. “While you’re doing that award thing in Tokyo? I mean, yes. I’d love to connect with the manufacturer and be sure it’s a fair wage factory, like they claim. Double-check the quality.”
“Get a photo op? We’ll go together.”
“Look at you, doing my job for me.”
“I’m in the midst of a career change. Willing to try new things.”
She chuckled, more from happiness than humor, but he made her so happy. Glowingly, deliriously lighthearted and hopeful and filled with a sense that she was the luckiest person alive. Especially when his gaze swung down to connect with hers, conveying pride and sexy heat.
This optimism was strange because she had learned the hard way not to look to a man to make her happy. She knew it had to come from within, but even though she would have said she was very content prior to meeting Luca, she felt far more alive and excited now that she was with him. Colors were brighter, music more tear-inducing, her confidence unshakable.
She wondered if this was what being in love felt like—
Oh.
He steadied her, pausing to give her a small frown. “How much have you had to drink?”
“One glass. I was just...distracted for a moment,” she lied.
They resumed dancing, but her whole body was fizzing with the realization that her heart had gift wrapped itself and stolen under his tree.
She was in love with him. How it had happened so quickly didn’t matter. It had. Because this wasn’t a hero-worship crush gone wrong. Or sexual infatuation—although that was definitely a big part of it.
It was deep concern for his well-being. Admiration for his principles and intelligence and laconic wit. It was a compulsion to trust him with all of her secrets and a depthless yearning for him to return her regard.
The words clogged her throat, but it was too soon. Too public. Too new.
But as they continued dancing, she thought it with each step.
I love you. I love you.
* * *
The next days were busy.
Luca was in meetings to redefine his new role and Amy worked remotely, attempting to mitigate the damage her scandal had done to London Connection and her career.
She rarely had Luca to herself, and when she did, it was in bed. There they communicated in ways that were as profound as any conversation she might have wished to have, so she didn’t worry that they weren’t dissecting their relationship. It was growing stronger by the day.
The unrelenting media pressure only pushed them to rely on one another, rather than rending them apart. If an awkward question was directed at her, his hand would come out of nowhere to interlace with hers. When his bearing grew rife with tension over a late-night pundit’s joke at his expense, she would slide her arms around his waist, asking nothing except that he allow her to soothe him. He would sigh and gather her in.
This morning he had commented to someone, “I’m likely to be in London for the next while—”
It had been part of a broader discussion, and she hadn’t had an opportunity to ask if that meant he wanted to continue their relationship. They had agreed on two weeks, but she didn’t need to do any soul-searching. Of course, she wanted to keep seeing him!
They were both in love. She was sure of it. If that put a dreamy, smitten look on her face, she couldn’t help it.
Perhaps that’s why she was garnering so many stares right now.
Or maybe it was because this morning, she and Luca had been granted an exclusive visit to Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden to view their cherry blossoms with some Japanese dignitaries. A handful of photographers had followed them, and those shots were likely being published right now.
Either way, her phone, which was facedown on the table and set to silent, was vibrating incessantly.
She ignored it and kept her attention on Luca. He spoke at the podium, switching back and forth between Italian and Japanese so she missed much of what he was saying. She could tell there was praise for collaboration and innovation on some tech solution commissioned for Vallia. He showed a photo of a port in Vallia, then one here in Japan, highlighting some advancement that had made a difference in both countries.
One of Luca’s handlers stood behind him. The young man sent her an urgent glare.
Seriously? He could hear the buzz of her phone all the way over there?
She slid the phone off the table without looking at it and dropped it into her bag.
She had the sense of more glances turning her way, but reminded herself that a few rude stares were a small price to pay for the absolute wonder of being Luca’s... They didn’t need a label, she assured herself. None of the usual ones fit them anyway. “Girlfriend” was too high school. “Lover” was too edgy for a prince, “mistress” too eye-rollingly outdated.
Luca had been footing her bills since she’d met him. Even her charge from the hotel boutique in London had been reversed. Apparently, he’d had the clothes she’d bought that day put onto his own account.
That made her uncomfortable, but she pulled her weight in other ways. She was still managing the pajama campaign and offered constructive ideas to his team on how she and Luca were presenting themselves. They were equals.
Luca came to the good part, announcing a pair of names and the company they represented. Everyone clapped as a husband-wife team rose to collect the statuette Luca held.
The audience took advantage of the applause break to set their heads together and murmur, flicking speculative glances toward her. Luca joined his assistant behind the winners and glanced at the screen his assistant showed him.
He stiffened and his gaze lifted in a flash to hit hers like a punch.
Amy’s stomach clenched. What?
As the couple at the podium finished speaking and left, they seemed disconcerted by the growing undercurrents in the room.
The cameraman who’d been filming the event turned his lens on her. A reporter shoved a microphone in Amy’s face.
“Is it true? Did you cause a teacher to lose his position with Upper Swell School for Girls? Do you have a history of destroying men’s lives?”
CHAPTER TEN
LUCA DISAPPEARED OFF the stage behind the curtain, abandoning her to the reckoning of harsh stares and harsher questions.
As Amy was absorbing the profound pain of his desertion, another reporter joined the first. People stared while she desperately tried to gather her handbag and light jacket, which was being pinned by a reporter. On purpose.
Panic began to compress her lungs. She struggled to maintain her composure. She was hot and cold and scared. As scared as she’d been the day she was told to leave the school and had no idea where she would go.
Do not cry. Do not, she willed herself while her throat closed over a distressed scream.
And these damned buzzards kept asking their cruel questions.
“Did you lure the prince into that nude photograph? Did someone hire you to do it? His sister?”
One of Luca’s bodyguards shoved into the fray and shielded her with his wide body and merciless bulk. He grabbed her things and escorted her out of the nearest exit, but it was still a gauntlet of shouted questions and conjecture.
When he shoved her into an SUV, Luca was already in it. His PA sat facing him; his other bodyguard was in the front. The bodyguard who had rescued her took the seat facing her and pulled the door shut behind them.
“Is it true?” Luca asked stiffly. She hadn’t seen this particular shade of subdued rage under his skin since he’d spoken of his father’s death.
“I’m not talking about it here.” Her voice was hollow. All of her was. It was the only way she could cope, by stepping outside her body and letting the shell be transported wherever he was taking her. If she let herself see and think and feel, she would buckle into hysterical tears.
“That’s not a denial,” he growled.
How had this happened? Why?
“Who—” She had to clear the thickness from her throat so her voice was loud enough to catch the PA’s attention. “Who released this story?”
He told her the name of an infamous gossip site. “Their source is the wife of Avery Mason. She claims he confided in her early in their marriage.”
Amy set her hand across her aching stomach and looked out the window.
“The flight plan has been changed, sir,” Luca’s PA informed him after tapping his tablet. “The team will meet us when we refuel in Athens.”
No photo op at a factory in Jiangsu then. Big surprise. “The team” would be the same group of lawyers, spin doctors and palace advisers who had handled his first damning scandal and were continuing to massage it.
Obviously, she was off the job. Amy couldn’t be trusted. Luca would control the messaging, and his lawyers would likely press her to sign something. Maybe Luca would sue her for defamation. The contract she’d signed with him hadn’t stated explicitly that she was supposed to ruin him. They’d left that part as a handshake deal. Could that come back to bite her? She needed Bea!
The private airfield came into view. They drove up to his private jet, and even that short walk of shame was photographed from some hidden location that turned up on her phone when she checked it as the plane readied for takeoff.
“You’re shaking,” Luca said crisply. “Do you need something?”
A time machine? Her friends? She dug up one of the sleeping tablets she’d taken on the flight here, requested a glass of water and swallowed the pill.
Luca answered a call and began speaking Italian. His sister perhaps. He was cutting his words off like he was chopping wood. Or beheading chickens.
“Sì. No lo so. Presto. Addio.”
She handed back her glass and texted Bea and Clare, already knowing it was futile. They were tied up with other things, and she didn’t know how to ask for forgiveness when she was piling yet more scandal onto London Connection.
In a fit of desperation, she sent out a text to a few of her closest contacts, fearful she would be locked down in Vallia again. A commercial flight was out of the question. She’d be torn apart, but a handful of her clients flew privately throughout Europe. There was a small chance one of them might be going through the airfield Luca used in Athens.
As she was texting, her mother’s image appeared on her screen as an incoming call.
Don’t cry. Do not cry.
Amy hit ignore, then tapped out a text that she was about to take off and had to set her phone to airplane mode. It wasn’t true, but she couldn’t face the barrage that was liable to hit her. She turned off her phone and set it aside.
Luca tucked away his own phone and studied her.
The plane began to taxi. The flight attendant had seated herself near the galley. The rest of his staff were sequestered in their own area, leaving them alone in this lounge, facing one another like duelists across twelve paces of tainted honor.
“Yes. It’s true,” she said flatly, appreciating the cocooning effect of her sleeping tablet as it began to release into her system, reducing her agitation and making her limbs feel heavy. It numbed her to the profound humiliation of reliving the most agonizing, isolating experience of her life. “I had an affair with my teacher in my last year of school. That’s why I was expelled and why my parents disinherited me.”
“How old was he?”
“Twenty-nine. I was eighteen.”
He swore. “That’s not an affair, Amy. He should have been arrested.”
“Oh, he’s a disgusting pig. I won’t argue that, but I came on to him, even after he said we shouldn’t. I told you I was spoiled. I wasn’t used to taking no for an answer. I loved how enamored with me he seemed. How helpless he was to resist me.”
She saw how deeply that hit Luca, pushing him back into his seat. Making him reconsider his own infatuation with her.
Was she trying to hurt him with this chunk of heavy, sharp-edged history? Maybe. Kicking it at him felt like the only way she could handle touching it at all.
“I’d never had to face any consequences before that. If I was caught bringing alcohol into the dorm, my parents would make a donation to the school and smooth things over.” That had been her father’s solution, to avoid a fight with his ex over which one of them had to bring Amy back into their home. “I was friends with everyone. It was a point of pride that even if someone thought I was full of myself, I would win them over by flattering them and doing them favors.” That had been her mother’s legacy. If you didn’t have a clear pressure point like money or maternal guilt to bring to bear, fawning and subtle bribery were good substitutes. “I refused to let up when he tried to turn me down.”
“Grown men are not victims of teenage girls,” he said with disgust.
“Not until his mother, the headmistress, discovers them. Then he’s apparently a defenseless baby and the harlot who seduced him is served with an overdue notice of expulsion. That’s when her parents finally decide she should be taught a lesson about the real world.”
His flinty gaze tracked across her expression.
It was all she could do to hide how devastated she’d been. Still was. She looked away, out the window to where Tokyo was fading behind wisps of cloud.
A tremendous melancholy settled on her. The sleeping pill, but history, as well.
“It was covered up by his mother and mine. The gossip hadn’t really got around anyway. Bea and Clare were the only two people who stood by me. They wanted to quit school in solidarity, but I didn’t want t
hem to throw away their futures just because I had. They helped with rent here and there, but I eventually found my feet with the online promotions and I was so...touched. So proud when Clare asked me to start London Connection with her. I felt like I was bringing value when I’d been such a mess in those early years. And now... Now I’ve stuffed it up anyway.”
“Why did you take my assignment when you had something like this in your past?”
“I didn’t expect to relive it. You’re the one who decided to use me for your own ends because the opportunity was too good to pass up,” she reminded him.
His head jerked back. “I would have made other decisions if I had known.”
“Would you?” she scoffed.
“You didn’t give me a chance to prove otherwise, did you? I came to you to manufacture a scandal so I wouldn’t cause anyone else to be hurt. I told you that. But you didn’t warn me that something like this was possible. You said this is a circle of trust, but you didn’t trust me, did you?”
“Don’t lecture me on honesty. Not when you—” She leaned forward in accusation, then abruptly had to catch her armrest as she realized the tablet was destroying her sense of balance. “When you were so convinced of your own perfection you had to hire someone to make you look bad. You want to talk about respecting a relationship? You hired me so that when you made your one mistake—” she showed him her single finger for emphasis “—it wouldn’t really be yours. You wanted to be able to tell yourself that whatever happened wouldn’t really be your fault. You want to believe this image—” she gestured to encompass his aura “—of being completely flawless, is real. Here’s news, Luca. We all make mistakes. That’s why my job exists! I’m your mistake. And now you’ll have to live with that. So suck it.”
She dropped back into her seat, feeling like a sack of bruised apples. The entire world was upon her, crushing her. She propped her cement-filled head on the weak joint of her wrist, growing too tired to cry, even though sobs were thickening her throat and sinuses.
“My mistake was believing the scarlet harlot of Upper Swell was going to live happily ever after with the Golden Prince.”