‘You need to leave San Felipe,’ Salvatore added.
She couldn’t cope with this onslaught right now. Not after Antonio’s rejection.
But as she stared at Salvatore, aghast and unable to speak, she saw his eyes widen at something over her shoulder.
‘Is there some kind of problem, Salvatore?’ Crown Prince Antonio walked up behind her.
Salvatore’s expression tightened.
Antonio took her hand, holding it tight. It was the smallest, but most pointed, of gestures and she was so shocked she still could say nothing.
‘Bella and I are very close,’ he said. ‘So I’m glad to see you talking. I’m sure you want to make her welcome. But if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to dance now.’
Bella gazed at Antonio in utter astonishment. Why had he reappeared? Why had he taken her hand? And what on earth did he mean by dance?
She looked up at him to see, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was coolly looking into her father’s eyes.
For a single second there was complete stillness in the ballroom. The glittering guests were motionless, all looking at them, like a tableau at the start of an Ancient Greek play—though whether it was to be a tragedy or not was yet to be determined. Even the orchestra was silent. He’d chosen to move in that small gap between pieces.
Then everyone moved at once. Voices heightened, laughter rang. The excitement that had been palpable before was incandescent now.
San Felipe society was on fire.
Salvatore was now the speechless one. Everyone else surrounding her seemed to melt away. And then Antonio walked her away from him, holding her hand as if it were the most everyday thing in the world, when in fact it was the most intimate, most public display imaginable.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked as he led her through the crowd.
‘As I said. I’m making my way to the dance floor.’
She stumbled and he paused, to put his arm around her waist and draw her nearer to him. Her heart thudded. Why was he doing this? Why when in private he had just ended everything?
He turned to face her and pulled her even closer to dance with him. His hold on her wasn’t polite; it was the hold of a man who knew the woman in his arms intimately.
And the whole world was watching.
‘Why did you say that to him?’ Why tell him they were close? She stared up at Antonio. He was watching her mouth in all the noise—not the way he did when he wanted to kiss her, but with intent concentration. That was when she figured it out. ‘You lip-read what he said to me.’
He’d heard that abusive ‘whore’ slur and he’d come running to the rescue.
But Antonio didn’t answer her now.
‘Antonio,’ she prompted him.
She saw the muscle working in his jaw and knew she’d guessed right.
‘Can you at least try to dance?’ he said shortly. ‘People are looking.’
Finally she understood. It was all about the appearance. Of course it was.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ she choked.
‘Do what?’
‘Give me a Cinderella moment so you can control whatever scandal Salvatore might try to unleash. You’re trying to protect my name, like what you did with Alessia.’ And it was unbearable.
‘This is different.’ His words were clipped.
‘I know.’ She felt a blush burn her cheeks. ‘This is far less serious. And far less tragic...far less...everything,’ she whispered. ‘But you’re still trying to protect someone, and painting yourself into a corner. This time you don’t have to.’
‘What do you mean I don’t have to?’
‘I don’t want you feeling obligated to. You’ve been through that once before and it affected years of your life. I won’t be the reason for that happening again.’
‘Bella—’
‘You know, just because someone cares about you, it doesn’t mean you’re obligated to return those feelings. You don’t owe that person anything.’ He owed her nothing.
‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘You are always obligated to do no harm.’
Oh, God, he was trying to protect her. He was trying to be honourable. Even when she already knew he didn’t want to be that man for her.
‘Okay.’ She struggled to keep breathing steadily and not scream at him. ‘But you’re to do no harm to yourself either.’ She gave up on attempting to dance. ‘This is harming you. This is not what you want.’
He’d just told her so in that private room when he’d promised that mad lust wouldn’t happen again and broken her heart in the process. He’d wanted nothing, not all.
She knew he was protective of those he cared about, or those he felt he owed or who he felt responsible for. She didn’t want him doing that for her. She didn’t want to trap him into something he didn’t really want because he felt sorry for her. Not even for a short time.
The tears flooded her eyes and the lump blocked her throat. She could hardly see and she definitely couldn’t speak.
‘Bella—’
She forced back the burn in her chest. But the overwhelming heartache threatened to drown her. She wrenched her hand from his, turned and ran, forcing her way through the staring crowd, leaving him white-lipped and alone in the middle of the ballroom.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ANTONIO WORKED OUT in the early morning in the palace gym for the first time in days. A couple of times this hour had been Bella’s and his whole body ached at the thought of her. Annoyed, he pushed himself harder, choosing to run on the treadmill to cool down instead of his customary walk through the pre-dawn darkened city streets. He both smiled and grimaced as he flicked the switch to increase the pace. No one had dared mention her—or the ball—to him but he’d not thought of anything since.
The look on Accardi’s face when Antonio had taken Bella’s hand? That naked fury? Antonio had revelled in it. He still did. But his smile faded when he remembered how she’d looked at him in that same moment. And when he’d hurt her so badly.
‘Your Highness?’ His valet ventured into the gym apologetically. ‘You might need to get ready.’
Antonio glanced at the time and frowned. How had an hour gone by?
He stalked through to the shower. He had only two formal appearances this morning. Once they were done, he’d finally have the time to work out how to manage the intense media and public interest in Bella.
He was still livid that she’d walked out on him at the ball. Never had he met someone so determined to disagree with him and refuse his assistance. Independence was one thing. Pig-headedness another.
What had happened with Alessia was different. She had died. It was her parents and her memory he’d been protecting in the aftermath. And, he finally admitted, he’d been protecting himself.
He’d once told Eduardo that he would have married for love. Indeed it was the only thing he would marry for. But the way he’d treated Alessia? He couldn’t risk doing that to someone else. He couldn’t bear the thought of causing more pain and carrying more guilt. He didn’t deserve happiness when he’d felt responsible for cutting her life short. He should have encouraged Alessia to seek help; time would have been the best chance she could have had.
But he’d failed her and he’d then chosen work. Bella had been right: it had been the easier option. He’d told himself that the constraints on him and the scrutiny he lived under meant there’d been no chance for love to develop with anyone else.
That had been an excuse too.
But then she’d danced into his life and challenged him on every level, hitting him hard and quick. With lust, certainly, but then there was everything else about her—honesty, strength, humour. She’d made him want to tease and laugh and live.
But in the moment when she’d needed him most, in that private room at the ball, he’d failed her. And when he’d put himself out for her in a way he’d never done for anyone else a few minutes later, she’d then questioned his motives. Of course she had. She’d rejected him. She w
as angry with him.
Well, he was furious with himself.
He slung a towel round his waist and stalked to his private music room only to find it now haunted by the memory of her dancing there for him. He sat at the piano and tried not to remember the way she’d straddled him on the stool. But all he could see in his mind’s eye instead was the sweetness of her smile as she’d swum and sung with the dolphins.
He’d never felt as content as he had in that moment. Only he’d been too dumb to recognise why that was. And it wasn’t about knowing he’d disarmed Accardi at the ball that had made him smile.
It was all about Bella—about making her happy.
This wasn’t anger he was feeling now. It was hurt. He was hurt that she hadn’t stayed, that she hadn’t wanted him to help her. And it was fear, that maybe she’d hadn’t really wanted him at all.
Yeah, he was terrified, because he was helplessly, utterly in love with her and he had no idea how to handle it. How could he get her to believe in him? She trusted no one. Now least of all him. And he didn’t blame her. He was such an arrogant, ignorant idiot, who’d been so wrapped up in his own self-sacrificing, he’d not realised that he was sacrificing Bella’s happiness too.
He picked up a phone and sent a message to his aide to cancel all his appointments for the day.
Because finally he’d figured out that his most important job of all was to love her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
NEEDLESS TO SAY the club was more popular than ever. Bella was reduced to barricading herself in her upstairs office. The number of people watching, wanting to get close to her, was terrifying. She was effectively a prisoner but she refused to call on Antonio to help her deal with them. He’d not made contact since she’d left the ball two days ago. It was over.
She’d employed extra security staff at short notice, enforced a strict entry policy and she’d hidden out at the top of the old fire station.
Coming to San Felipe had been a massive mistake. The paradise principality, all beauty and history, with its hint of pirate and sniff of Mediterranean magic, was supposed to have been the scene for her fresh start, but she hadn’t even managed a couple of months before monumentally stuffing up by falling in love with the most impossible of men.
It wasn’t because he was the Prince of the nation, but because he was so principled. He put duty before himself, put the needs of others before his own, and protected others regardless of the price to his own freedom, needs and desires.
She refused to let him do that for her. He didn’t love her.
She also refused to give in to her weakest urge and run away. She couldn’t. She was locked into the lease. She wasn’t going to let the club’s backer down. No quitting, no matter what. In a few weeks all the interest in her personal life would die down. The world would think they’d had a fling and that it was now over. Antonio had shaken free of her. And really, that was the truth.
She just had to grit her teeth and put up with the extra intrusion during that time.
But it wasn’t that intense public interest that she wanted to run from. It was the heartbreak. She’d truly, totally, fallen for him but while she’d been the object of his lust, the only other emotion she inspired in him was pity. She had his courtesy, his misguided sense of responsibility. And that was almost worse than anything.
Energy—frustration, anger, futility—surged within her. She kicked the leg of her desk. But heat coursed through her rather than pain—he’d pushed her onto that wide expanse of wood and teased her to her first orgasm.
She didn’t want to have it in her office any more. She might have to stay in his city for a couple of years but she didn’t need this reminder of his sensual power over her in her home. She’d move the desk out this second. No matter that it was almost midnight and her club was full of patrons. She’d push the wretched thing out onto the landing and get the bar staff to take it away in the morning.
She shoved the paperwork to the floor behind her. Then she tried to shove the thing towards the door. It was so heavy, it took ten minutes to move it even two inches and even then it scraped a deep scratch in the wooden floor and she was furious enough to scream.
‘Need some help?’
She jerked upright. Antonio was leaning in the now open doorway, watching with a soft smile curving the edge of his usually firm mouth. He was in jeans and tee, with stubble on his jaw, and his usually impeccable hair looked as if he’d been ruffling it with both hands for two hours. He had dark rings under his eyes as if he’d not slept in days and his pale eyes just burned right through to her vulnerable soul.
He looked gorgeous.
Her muscles liquefied. So not what she wanted when she was trying to shift a desk heavier than Stonehenge’s largest rock.
‘What are you trying to do?’ he asked when she failed to respond to his first question.
‘What does it look like I’m trying to do?’ she answered heatedly. ‘I’m moving this desk.’
His eyebrows shot up. ‘It looks heavy.’
‘Clearly.’ She straightened and glared at him. ‘And you’re in the way.’
She didn’t want him here at all—not looking like that. And looking at her like that.
It wasn’t fair.
‘How do you think you’re going to get it through the door?’ He didn’t budge as she fruitlessly tried to move the behemoth another few inches. ‘Ask me for help.’
For a split second she gaped. Then she snapped her jaw shut and stood upright to glare at him. ‘No.’
He stepped into the room and kicked the door shut behind him. Folding his arms across his chest, he mirrored her defiance.
‘Ask me,’ he dared, glaring back at her.
Something shifted deep within her when she saw that flickering expression in his eyes. Something she really didn’t want to shift. He couldn’t break down her resistance with just that look.
‘I don’t need to move it tonight,’ she murmured weakly.
He leaned forward, planting both hands on the desk that stood between them. ‘I need to know I can help you,’ he said huskily, still pinning her in place with that unwavering, intense gaze. ‘That you feel you can count on me. That I’ll be there for you.’
Bella breathed gently, trying to stave off the emotion swirling too close to her surface. He still didn’t get it, did he?
‘I don’t want to have to count on you,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to use you in that way.’
She didn’t want him to ‘rescue’ her. She didn’t want to be any kind of ‘duty’ to him. She tore her gaze away, frowning down at the desk.
‘It’s not using me.’ His spread hands snapped into fists, his knuckles whitening. ‘I ache for you to need me. Because I need you.’
Stunned, she glanced back up to his face.
‘It’s okay to ask for help and it’s okay to want to be loved,’ he argued roughly. ‘That desire doesn’t weaken you in any way.’
‘Have you been reading self-help memes on the Internet?’ she croaked.
‘Stop trying to push me away. I’m not going anywhere.’ An expression crossed his face—one she hadn’t seen in him before. ‘I’ve spent the last two days racking my brains trying to come up with some elaborate way in which I can convince you. Considering what happened at the ball I figured a grand public gesture wasn’t it. In the end I decided it comes down to just you and me. No audience. No performance. Just truth.’
At that vulnerable intensity in his eyes, her grip on her emotions slipped. Anguished, she broke. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘Everything,’ he whispered. ‘I want everything from you. Everything with you.’
‘No, you don’t.’ She shook her head, haunted by all the constraints on them. ‘Kings have flings with dancers. They date them. They don’t—’ She broke off, embarrassed at where she’d been heading. At her presumption.
‘Don’t what—’ he smiled a little crookedly ‘—marry them?’ He waggled his eyebrows. ‘Isn’t it a g
ood thing I’m not a king?’
‘You know what I mean,’ she mumbled, mortified and unable to think further than her next breath. ‘And you’re a king in every other way.’
‘You think I wouldn’t marry you?’
‘I think you can’t.’ She burned. He couldn’t possibly be serious.
‘Have you been reading the papers?’ His gaze narrowed. ‘You know what they say isn’t true.’
‘I haven’t been reading them,’ she answered his lecturing tone scornfully. ‘I’m not stupid. I never read them. I don’t need to read them to know what they say.’
And from his one comment she was glad she hadn’t. It had taken sheer willpower and strategic unplugging of the Internet to resist the temptation. But she’d done it. She’d made herself focus on nothing but the club these last two days. She’d caught up on her accounts, her business studies and she’d paced for hours, alone and inconsolable. ‘I’m not suitable for you.’
‘You’re the one declaring that you don’t want to be defined by your past, or by the reputation others have foisted on you, yet you’re the one saying that you can’t be with me because of what others might think,’ he said. ‘I don’t care what they think so why should you?’
‘I care about what they say about you,’ she said fiercely. ‘I’m trying to protect you.’
‘Why?’ he shot back at her. ‘Because you care about me?’
There was a moment of pulsing silence. In that one moment she was bereft of more than words, but everything.
‘This isn’t the Dark Ages.’ He softened his approach and that wicked smile suddenly flashed across his face. ‘There are no scarlet letters in my country. It’s not like you have a sex tape.’
‘My mother’s one is still doing the rounds—’ she interrupted, cringing inside.
‘And you’re not your mother,’ he interrupted her back. ‘Even if you did, I wouldn’t care.’ He leaned forward, pressing his fists harder on the desk. ‘No more roadblocks. I choose you, Bella. If my people don’t want you as their Crown Princess then I’ll abdicate. You’re more important to me than anything.’
The Mistress That Tamed De Santis Page 14