“You do wonders for my disposition,” she admitted. “You may not believe this, but some people think I can be difficult.”
“No!” He spoke the denial with such shocked sincerity that she looked over her shoulder in suspicion. He quickly hid his expression by kissing the nape of her neck.
“Hmmph.” She muffled a snicker, which turned into a yawn. “As punishment for your sarcasm, you can take me out to the nicest restaurant you can find.”
“Only the best for you, principessa mia.” He yawned, as well, but Renata’s eyes flew open. He’d just called her his princess. From a regular guy, that wouldn’t mean a thing, but from him?
She slowly shifted to face him but he was fast asleep already. A slip of the tongue, no doubt. It wasn’t as if he were offering her the job. She sighed. That was how things got sticky—the girl started imagining herself in a hip, yet lovely wedding gown while she doodled I HEART PRNZ GIORGIO 4EVR or PRNCS RENATA RULEZ. Literally.
Well, no more of that. Despite how hot, sexy, sweet, kind and wonderful Giorgio was, Renata would not fall in love with the man. Giorgio might like her adventurous Brooklyn personality for a fun vacation, but not permanently. No, when he finally settled down, he would want a sweet, delicate woman who could bake him lemon cookies, wave at crowds and never think of wearing a diamond in her nose or embroidering tiny skulls on a wedding dress. Renata wasn’t princess material. Her heart was still packed away in acid-free tissue and a big fancy box, just like one of her vintage wedding gowns.
LATER THAT EVENING, Renata poked her head out of the bedroom. She could hear men’s voices in the living room. Many men. She followed the voices.
She clutched her robe around her when she saw how many guys there actually were. Giorgio glanced up at her from an intense photo conversation and lifted his finger in a “wait a minute” gesture.
She turned to the beefy guy standing next to her. “What’s going on?” she whispered.
He turned his head to stare at her with blank brown eyes but didn’t answer. Maybe he didn’t speak English, or maybe he wasn’t paid to speak.
She retreated into the bedroom and dressed hastily in a button-up white blouse and denim capri pants, slipping her feet into plain white sneakers. The sexpot look was inappropriate for a serious situation.
She returned to the living room and sat in the floral armchair. Giorgio continued speaking in rapid Italian on the phone, gesturing emphatically. She understood that he was asking about the safety of his sister and grandmother and started to get alarmed.
For once, though, she kept quiet, realizing that she would only at best be a distraction and at worst a nuisance if she pestered him in the middle of his conversation.
He paused to bark orders at Paolo, who pulled out his own phone and made a call as well.
Renata forced herself to stay calm—until the night exploded with noise. A two-hundred-fifty-pound man was pulling her to the ground and covering her with his bulk.
The clattering noise continued in bursts for several seconds. Was some nutjob shooting at Giorgio? They still assassinated princes and prime ministers. She pushed at her own bodyguard but it was as futile as pushing on the wall. She yelled Giorgio’s name but the other men were drowning her out as they called information to each other.
Renata slowed her breaths. Finally the noise stopped and she thought Paolo shouted something. Her bodyguard heaved a sigh of relief and eased off her. “Petardi,” he said. “What?”
“Like American Fourth July. Pop, pop, pop.” He imitated a string of fireworks.
“Oh, firecrackers.” She started to sit up, but he pulled her back down and shook his shaved head. “Well, if we’re going to get horizontal together, I should atleast know your name.” It was a feeble attempt, but at least it gave her something to think about besides the adrenaline shakes starting up.
He gave her a puzzled look.
“Never mind.”
“Okay!” Paolo shouted. “All clear!”
Renata sat up this time and spotted Giorgio across the room. His bodyguards had dumped over the couch and coffee table, sandwiching him between two of them as well as the furniture. He sat up looking mussed but not particularly upset. This must have happened before—maybe even with real bullets instead of firecrackers.
“You okay, Renata?” he called.
“Fine.” She lifted a hand to wave at him, and her shakes made it wave on its own. She quickly dropped it.
He looked concerned but lifted his phone again. “Pronto? Pronto? Si, petardi.” He laughed about how firecrackers could send them all into a state of siege.
Renata wasn’t. She didn’t think she could stand yet. She scooted so her back rested against the bottom of the chair and pulled her knees up.
Giorgio talked on the phone for another minute and then passed it to Paolo.
Giorgio came over to her. “Are you okay? Giuseppe there is a pretty big guy so I hope he didn’t hurt you when he pulled you down.” He extended a hand. “Come here.”
She took his hand and only wobbled a bit getting to her feet. He guided her to the couch, which was back on its feet as well.
“Giorgio.” Her voice quivered a bit. “Giorgio, what is going on?”
He sighed and gestured at the front windows. “That was firecrackers. Probably the local football team won a match, or someone got married, or just teenagers fooling around.”
“You have eight huge guys standing in the living room on the remote chance firecrackers go off and they need to hurl you to the floor?”
“No, of course not. These men are the rest of Paolo’s team. They’ve been staying nearby in case of incident.”
“What incident brought them all out here? Is your family all right?”
“Yes, and thank you for asking.” He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the back. He kept hold of it, his warmth starting to ease her chills. “But there was a bomb threat at home. At the palazzo.”
“A bomb threat? Where your grandmother lives?”
Giorgio nodded. “Of course the anti-terrorism squad was deployed immediately with the bomb-sniffing dogs. They did not find anything. But when one member of the royal family is threatened, it is standard protocol to deploy extra protection to the other members in case of muliple points of attack.”
“So Stefania has her own team swarming her in New York.”
He gave her a sad smile. “Yes, this doesn’t happen often, but this is not the first time. My grandmother is probably more annoyed than frightened. She has seen Vinciguerra through worse.”
“Worse than bomb threats?”
“She was a girl there during World War II, and during my grandfather’s reign many different factions wanted control of the country. We have a natural deep-water port and the original palazzo is a heavily fortified citadel. Violence was not rare.”
“Oh.” Renata had imagined his country as sort of an Italianate theme park, untouched by darkness or pain. However, one glance at the serious men around her told her that violence was not part of the past. “Who called in the bomb threat?”
Giorgio snapped his fingers and Paolo immediately came to his side. Renata blinked. She didn’t think she’d like Giorgio snapping his fingers at her, but the bodyguard wasn’t offended by the princely gesture. “Paolo, who did this?”
Paolo replied at length. Giorgio signed at the end of his explanation and turned to Renata. “He says the Vinciguerran police have arrested a local group with anarchist affiliations. Their landlady overheard part of their phone call and put two and two together. They had been acting strangely—even more strangely than usual—the past couple days.”
“Anarchists?”
He smiled, which startled her. “One advantage of dealing with anarchists is that they’re pretty disorganized. No one is in charge, after all.”
“Giorgio!” His gallows humor was disconcerting.
“Sorry, sorry.” He put his arm around her. “I know you aren’t used to this. We try our best to stay safe,
but we have to live our lives without fear.”
“You’re not scared?” Renata was terrified, disorganized would-be terrorists or not.
He shrugged. “Not for myself, but for Stefania, my grandmother. And you.”
“Me?”
“Of course.” He kissed her forehead. “I am responsible for your safety. Anyone who tries to harm you will have to come through me.”
“And Paolo and the rest of his guys.”
“That goes without saying.” His eyes filled with pride as he surveyed his team. “They’d do anything to protect us, and I hope to God they never need to.”
Renata shivered. Assassination attempts and squads of bodyguards were something from the nightly newscast, not something she’d ever expected to experience. “What do we do now, Giorgio?” she whispered. She meant it as a rhetorical question, but he took her literally.
“Pour us each a glass of wine. Your nerves don’t need any caffeine.” His phone rang and he snatched it up. “Pronto. Si.” He listened and gave her a wry smile. “Stefania is safe. Apparently the security team, uh…startled her and Dieter.”
Poor Giorgio. Renata was sure he would have rather pretended Stefania and her fiancé spent their time pining for each other, but such was obviously not the case.
Renata hid a grin, but sobered quickly. Not much to smile about. She found a nice red wine in the rack and popped it open. That puppy wasn’t getting the chance to breathe—one glass was going straight down the hatch.
11
“WHERE ARE WE GOING TODAY?” Renata was intrigued. Giorgio had told her to pack an overnight bag with swim gear. “To the beach?” She had worn a white peasant blouse over a snug denim skirt and high-heeled slingback sandals with a cork wedge and red snakeskin embossed leather upper.
“In a way.” Giorgio, carrying both of their bags, led her down to the pier a block away from the hotel.
“Ooh, a boat ride.” A good-size yacht was docked at the end of the long pier. She was glad she’d popped on a wide-brimmed white straw beach hat and oversize Jackie O sunglasses. Sun rays bounced off the water like crazy. And she could always pretend to be Jackie O reading a very serious book on Onassis’s yacht. Except she didn’t have any serious books and Giorgio was infinitely more interesting than one anyway.
“A yacht. You once suggested I should try it for relaxation. And I wanted to make it up to you for the commotion last night.”
She waved a hand at him. “That wasn’t your fault.”
“If I were a regular man, it would have never happened.”
He handed the luggage to a sailor wearing a bright blue polo shirt and helped her up the gangplank.
She recognized that shade of blue. “I think this is the same boat we came on from Genoa.”
“Yes, you’re right. We’re going on a private overnight cruise.”
Her eyes widened. “We have the whole yacht to ourselves?”
“Us, plus the captain and a couple crew members, including a chef.”
She climbed a set of stairs to the upper deck. He made an appreciative noise and gave her a quick pinch on the butt as he followed her. High heels plus a tight skirt were a killer combo since she’d thrown a bit of extra wiggle into her step.
They emerged on deck where they got a kick-ass view of the harbor with the ocean behind it. “Well, you just dodged a bullet by not having me cook.”
“An Italian girl who doesn’t know how to cook?” He shook his head in mock dismay and slipped his arm around her waist as they leaned on the rail. “What would your mamma say?”
“She’d say I’d never get a man without knowing how to keep him happy in the kitchen, but…”
He raised his eyebrows. “What?”
“My grandmother would say it’s more important to keep him happy in the bedroom.” Unless she was baking lemon cookies.
He threw his head back and roared with laughter. “Not to disparage your mamma, Renata mia, but I think your nonna is correct in this instance.” The yacht began to move away from the dock and the salty breeze picked up.
“I agree. It’s socially acceptable to order out for meals, but not the other.”
“That depends on who you hang out with,” he told her.
She screwed up her face. “Yuck!”
“No, not me,” he assured her. “Perhaps it comes from having a little sister, but that kind of girl never appealed to me. They are always somebody’s daughter—or sister.”
“Good for you.” She reached up to kiss him. Of course Giorgio wouldn’t need to pay for sex, but he probably knew men who did. From what she’d seen on tabloid TV, some girls flocked around rich guys like skimpily dressed moths to a flame.
She had an unwelcome thought. What was the difference between them and her? She was here on Giorgio’s dime and had only paid a fraction of what had to be extensive expenses. On the other hand, she had gone out with him in New York because he was gorgeous and fascinating and had never asked him, never even considered hinting that he should take her to Europe. That was his idea. She had never been a gold digger and she wasn’t about to start now. Besides, he knew she wanted him for sex, not money, and had said so when he called to ask her on the trip.
Maybe that would salve her conscience. She was here because she couldn’t get enough of him the man, not him the prince with a royal treasury bankrolling their activities. She would have gladly spent a week in New York doing the same thing they were doing, minus the sightseeing. Logistics and nosy people had made that location impossible.
Renata sighed and looked over the beautiful blue water, the seabirds wheeling above the waves. It was too fine a day to worry. Giorgio knew she wasn’t like that, and so did she.
A steward in a white dinner jacket handed them each a glass flute and disappeared. “Ooh, champagne.”
“Prosecco,” he corrected her. “They grow Prosecco grapes north of Venice in the foothills of the Alps, not too far from Vinciguerra.”
“I’m sure I’ll love it.”
He surprised her by reaching under her hat and gently taking off her sunglasses. “I want to see your lovely blue eyes.”
Renata blinked her lovely blue eyes in the dazzling light. Giorgio lifted his flute and she did the same.
“To us.”
“To us?” Was there an “us”? At least for the next week or so.
“And our cruise on the lovely Italian Riviera.”
Ah, a little bon voyage toast. “To our cruise.” She lifted her glass to clink his and then drank. The sparkling wine was fruity and dry with a hint of peach.
Giorgio certainly was showing her the lifestyles of the rich and famous on their trip. She’d been slightly concerned she wouldn’t see anything of Italy but the bedroom, but Giorgio, probably realizing she wouldn’t be jet-setting back to Europe anytime soon, was being so considerate in arranging typically tourist opportunities.
The yacht slowly began to move away from the dock with a low humming of the engines. “This is really lovely, Giorgio.” Her arms settled around his waist as if they belonged there and she clung to him.
He smiled down at her. “Nicest bon voyage I’ve ever had.”
“Me, too.” She’d have to get an extra-long bon voyage kiss before she hopped a plane for New York. “What’s wrong?”
Her expression must have reflected her dismay at leaving him in only a handful of days. “Oh, um, the sunlight bouncing off the waves got me for a second.”
“Then you need these back. I’d hate for you to get a headache from the sun. It often bothers visitors who aren’t used to it.” He slipped her sunglasses back onto her nose, and she was glad for the concealment. He put his own pair on. They stared out over the water, each safe from revealing too much thanks to their shatter-resistant dark lenses.
“Where is the trip taking us?”
“Another surprise, but it will involve lots of sun, fun and food.”
“Three out of four of my favorite things.”
He pursed his lips into
an air kiss. “I’m sure we can make time for your other favorite thing.”
“What, swimming?”
He laughed. He slid his hand down her waist so it rested on the curve of her hip. “The captain will be down in a minute to give us a tour of the towns as we pass them, but I think after that I will give you a tour of our stateroom. You will have had a bit too much late-morning sun and retire there for a nap—with me, of course.”
“Wow, how decadent. A nap already?” She rolled her hip slightly so he caressed her bottom.
“Everyone knows redheads are susceptible to heat,” he told her with a serious expression.
She wiggled her eyebrows. “Only to your heat,” she whispered as the captain arrived, maritime-spiffy in his white shirt with black-and-gold epaulets. He had sunburned crow’s-feet at the corners of his snapping black eyes.
“Ah, Capitano Galletti,” Giorgio greeted him warmly.
“Signor, signorina, welcome to my ship, La Bella Maria, named after my lovely wife, Maria. Benvenuto!” He bobbed his head in a respectful nod. “A pleasure to have you join us as we cruise the Cinque Terre. If there is anything we can do to make your trip the most enjoyable possible, please do not hesitate to ask.”
“Grazie, Capitano. Signorina Renata’s great-grandparents came from Corniglia and she would like to learn more about that village.”
“Ah, from Corniglia!” His face crinkled into a mass of wrinkles, his smile the widest one. “I should have known from your beauty. Signore, the most beautiful women in Italy are from Corniglia. But do not tell my wife I said so—she is from Manarola.” They laughed. That was the village next to Corniglia. He gestured extravagantly at the panorama behind him. “They are so beautiful because of the sun, the sea, the fresh air and the fish,” he said in a significant tone of voice.
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