A Court Gesture

by Jenny Gardiner

  Larkin thought about that. How weird was it that she was the one not extending the opportunity to the woman who intimidated her, based purely on her looks. She was totally discriminating against her for that, which was, frankly, sort of shitty of her. Everyone deserved to be treated fairly, regardless of their looks or social status. She grimaced. Damn, she wasn’t giving Luca a fair shake either, she was starting to realize, and how very unfair was that?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Luca was pouting. And he hated to pout. He’d been back in Monaforte for over a week, and still, his mood hadn’t lifted.

  Finally, at breakfast, his sister Isabella confronted him. “What’s crawled up your behind to make you so grumpy?”

  He’d just taken a sip of his coffee and spat it out onto the clean tablecloth. “Look what you just made me do!”

  She lifted her forehead. “I made you?” she said. “Since when have I had control over your bodily functions?”

  He shook his head and frowned at her. “You know what I mean,” he said. “I was minding my business, catching up on my newspaper reading, and you come in and accost me.”

  “Oh, so expressing interest in your siblings is now called accosting?” she said. “Got it.”

  “Good. Get it.”

  “Yep, I did. I got it. Heard ya loud and clear.”

  “Fine.”

  “So, uh, what’s crawled up your behind to make you so grumpy?”

  He glared at her. “Is this what they call a circular conversation?”

  “Maybe so, and we’re going to keep spinning around until you finally ’fess up to your favorite sister and tell me why you’re being so dour.”

  “Dour?” he said. “And favorite sister? You’re my only sister.”

  “Yes, you are like super dour. I don’t even recognize you. You’re like the sullenest person I’ve encountered all week. And I’m not even sure if sullenest is a word.”

  Luca pulled out his phone and typed the word in, certain he could nail her on her word failure. “Damn,” he said. “It’s for real. I thought for sure I could get you to leave me alone if it had been a made-up word.”

  She reached over and moved a stubborn lock of hair from his eyes and looked at him up close. “I haven’t seen you like this since her, you know.”

  “If by her you mean her, well, my dearest sister, you know that she is not up for discussion.”

  She nodded. “Rumor has it,” she said. “But maybe you need to discuss her. Maybe to truly get over her at last, you need to speak her name and talk about it and maybe discuss your feelings. I know—dirty concept. But seriously, Luca, you just haven’t quite been you since Eleanor—”

  He interrupted her. “Don’t say it.”

  “It’s time for immersion therapy,” she said. “Ready? Eleanor. Eleanor. Eleanor, Eleanor, Eleanor.” She looked at him. “And see, you didn’t go up in flames, the world didn’t end, and we got the worst part out of the way. So, what’s bugging you?”

  “You’re a royal pain in my ass, you know that?”

  “Well, you got the royal part of that right,” she said. “They call me princess around here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Believe me, it’s impossible to forget that, what with you wearing tiaras to breakfast and all.”

  “You wish, you little brat,” she said, giving his cheek a sisterly squeeze. “Okay, now that we’ve got the formalities out of the way, give it up. What’s going on with you, baby brother?”

  He sighed. “Believe it or not, it has nothing to do with Eleanor. Well, maybe it does in that it’s resurrecting feelings of rejection. Maybe because this woman is rejecting me.”

  “Why would any woman in her right mind reject you?” she said. “Does she not realize that you’re the sweetest guy in town?”

  “Maybe it’s ’cause she’s never been in this town?” he forked some scrambled egg into his mouth.

  She poured honey in her tea and stirred it around. “Sooo... if she’s never been in this town, is she like a pen pal or something? Do people have pen pals anymore? Oh God, please don’t tell me it’s some online dating site. Surely you didn’t start looking there.”

  He laughed. “There is nothing wrong with online dating. It’s how Jerome, the driver, found his wife.”

  She arched a brow as she took a sip of tea. “It’s not weird for everyone, but you have to admit it’d be sort of weird for a prince.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But how better to find someone who likes you for you and not because of who you are?”

  “So that’s your problem? This mystery woman likes you only because you’re a prince?”

  “Actually, to the contrary,” he said. “She’ll have nothing to do with me because I’m a prince.”

  “What?” Isabella cackled. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard!”

  “Right? But it’s true.”

  “Like how does she convey this to you? Does she tell you you’re not good enough because you’re royalty? Or are you too good?”

  He shrugged. “I can’t figure her out. I think she’s terrified that I’m out of her league, so she won’t even give me a chance. Which isn’t exactly fair, to prejudge me. I mean, never did I give her any indication that I was beyond her reach. If anything, I’ve gone to extremes to be nice to her.”

  Isabella cut a bite from her omelet and put it in her mouth. “Okay, so you have the hots for her,” she said. “Do you think she might share those feelings? But she’s intimidated by your princeliness? Ha-ha! Is that a word?” She gave him a wink.

  He ran his fingers through his hair. “Honestly, I am so confused. I do think she has feelings for me. I know she does. But then she doesn’t. But then she does. But then she doesn’t.”

  His sister started to laugh. “Oh, my sweet brother,” she said, scratching his head affectionately, “you’ve got it bad, don’t you?”

  “It’s making me crazy, Bella,” he said. “It’s not like I even know her that much, but I just want to know everything about her. But what I do know of her...” He was lost in thought, remembering what it felt like to kiss her and the touch of her skin, the feel of her hands on him, her lips on his.

  “So what’s stopping you from reaching out to her?” Bella said. “Maybe you need to be super insistent. If you keep at it, at some point she’ll cave.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not like I want to break her down. And I don’t want her to think I’m some stalker type. Worse still, she can’t see me as desperate.”

  “There’s a fine line between desperate and constant craving, isn’t there?” Bella rested her chin on her hand, trying to come up with a helpful suggestion.

  “From where I sit, I can’t see a differentiation,” he said. “Though desperate sounds so pathetic, whereas constant craving lends a sort of poetic air of yearning.”

  “Yeah, well, be careful with that. I’m with you on the desperation thing possibly backfiring,” she said. “Have you asked her out on a proper date even?”

  He bit his lip, not wanting to spill his guts altogether to his sister. “That hasn’t exactly presented itself as an opportunity.”

  “Why not? Seems a natural thing to do if you’re smitten by her.”

  “Ugh,” he said. “So the thing is, she was hired to interview me. She’s a reporter. But I sort of enabled the interview to happen. But the problem is she already hated me, so she started out the interview being quite wary of me, was laying it on thick, really. But somehow, I was able to get her to change her perspective a bit and then we got on like thieves. Well, thieves who were a little too overcome by lust.”

  His sister cackled. “No! Luca! No! Please don’t tell me you had a hookup with a reporter who was interviewing you,” she said. “Mother would kill you. That is probably a first for this family. Though come to think of it, I’m sure Zander’s done far worse.” Zander was their older brother whose reputation as black sheep of the family meant he carried the blame for all sorts of bad decisions he mi
ght not have ever even done.

  “Oh, puh-lease,” he said, a little too defensively. “I did not sleep with her.” He held up his hand, making a space between his thumb and pointer finger. “But we maybe came this close to doing so.”

  She pointed at him. “I knew it!” she said. “You’ve got it bad for her. You got down and dirty with her but didn’t finish the deed. You were trying to be respectful or something crazy like that?”

  “Crap, I wish I could take that much credit for self-control,” he said. “The only reason we didn’t finish what we started was because Sandro came into the room, the buzzkill.”

  “So she was a willing participant in this, I’m assuming?”

  “Of course she was,” he said. “Not like I’d force myself on her.”

  “And Sandro walks in on you, she’s all embarrassed on all sorts of levels—not the least of which she probably doesn’t have much in the way of clothes on,” she said. “Plus, she’s supposed to be conducting an interview with you, not boinking you.”

  “No one was boinking anyone,” he said. “You make it sound so tawdry. We were just, um, getting acquainted.”

  “No doubt,” she said. “Remind me to be careful about whom I get acquainted with or Sawyer will kill me. Okay, so the thing is, she pulled back. Regret set in. She felt like she’d violated some professional code of ethics. She was embarrassed that Sandro came in on you guys when it was happening. So how do you get her to let her guard down?”

  Her brother shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

  She spread her arms out wide. “I know this seems shallow, but could you try maybe to impress her? This place is none too shabby. Maybe invite her up here, make up some special occasion that she couldn’t refuse. Be a prince. I mean what girl could turn down a handsome prince?”

  He pouted. “Apparently, I’ve found the only one. Just my luck.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Larkin and Taylor were giggling over Aperol spritzes during aperitivo at the Gucci café. It was a gorgeous late-autumn afternoon, and they were seated at an outdoor table, overlooking the Piazza della Signoria, always a busy tourist destination, which made it particularly entertaining for people watching.

  “I love that woman’s pink hair over there,” Taylor said, pointing to a woman with hot pink braids. “If I didn’t have to leave my hair alone for modeling gigs, I’d do that in a heartbeat.”

  “Oh my God,” Larkin said. “In a million years, I can’t imagine dying my hair bright pink. I’d stand out so much.”

  “Baby steps with you, my friend,” Taylor said, sweeping her hand in front of Larkin’s face. “I mean, look how far you’ve come already! These gorgeous clothes. You’ve ditched the glasses in favor of contact lenses. You are a transformed woman. I’d imagine you have men pounding your door down.”

  Larkin hadn’t exactly been pushing men away or anything, but she had noticed she was turning more heads. Considering she’d never once turned a man’s head before—that she knew of—that was progress.

  “Yeah, that’s me,” Larkin said. “I’m like Venus in that famous painting over there.” She pointed to the nearby Uffizi Gallery, one of the many treasures of this amazing city. She was referring to Sandro Botticelli’s masterpiece, The Birth of Venus.

  “Luckily with more clothing on than Venus,” Taylor said. “I couldn’t imagine you’re ready to be out here stark naked.”

  “Well, she does cover her crotch with her hair,” Larkin said. “Luckily it would be a few years to get it that long.”

  “Probably not your best look,” Taylor said, laughing.

  “Right. In answer to your earlier statement, I’m hardly fending off a parade of men who are in hot pursuit.”

  “Then they’re fools,” Taylor said. “What say I fix you up with someone?”

  Larkin could only imagine how disastrous that could be. “Thanks,” she said. “I’m okay.” Her thoughts drifted to Luca, those eyes of his, those Mediterranean blue eyes of his. And his dazzling smile that lit up the room. She was mentally stroking her fingers through that dark, wavy hair at the nape of his neck when she accidentally let out a moan. A moan! God, seriously, Larkin?

  “I recognize that look,” her friend said.

  “What look?”

  Taylor nodded at her. “That is the look of a woman in lust,” she said. “I know it well. So who is it you’re fantasizing about?”

  “Oh, gosh, no. No one, really.”

  Taylor tilted her chin down and lifted her eyebrow, throwing a dubious look her way. “You can pretend all you want to,” she said. “But it’s not going to make it not true. Why don’t you tell your good friend Taylor and maybe we can do something about it.”

  Larkin sighed. “Trust me, this isn’t one you can do anything about.”

  Taylor pretended to slap her back and forth across her face, jokingly. “Have you not realized yet that anything is possible? Just put your mind to it and it can happen.”

  “Except in this case, if I made it happen, let’s just say it would be a bad career move.”

  “In what way?”

  “Like hooking up with the person I’m supposed to be writing an objective piece about, for starters?”

  Taylor winced. “Oooh. I see,” she said. But then she lifted her finger, making a point. “So you’re writing about me, too. And we’ve become friends.”

  Larkin looked at her. Crap. She was right. Once again she’d gotten too close to the subject. But she didn’t do it on purpose. They just somehow seemed to hit it off. She couldn’t help herself. Surely this wasn’t the only time a reporter became friendly with a source.

  “Well, thanks for reminding me I shouldn’t be friends with you, dammit.”

  Taylor waved her hand dismissively. “Pffft,” she said, blowing air from her mouth. “Nonsense. You can’t keep a distance from the entire world just because you’re writing about the world.”

  “Well, no,” Larkin said. “But I’m not avoiding the whole world. Just people I’m writing about. When I’m writing about them.”

  “So who is this other person whose wiles tempted you to the dark side?”

  “The funny thing is it was someone I met at Fashion Week,” Larkin said. “If anything, I didn’t even like him. Which was sort of me being a judgmental jerk, but that’s another story. But then my boss made me write about him, and I can’t even remember how it happened, but before you knew it—”

  “Did you two sleep together?” Taylor leaned in, speaking in a hushed tone.

  Larkin shook her head. “No.” Then she sat with that answer for a second, realizing for all intents and purposes she was sort of full of shit. “Okay, so I didn’t have all-out sex with him, but close enough to count for not behaving in a particularly professional manner.”

  Taylor clapped her hands. “Oh, this is so exciting,” she said. “So we have the man for you. We just have to make it so you can be with him.”

  Larkin threw her hands up in dismay. “I can’t do that, Taylor,” she said. “He’s a very important man and I am so far out of his league anyhow. But how bad would that be, me writing a piece about him after I did that?”

  “I hate to tell you, Larkin,” she said. “But I have a feeling this isn’t something plenty of people before you haven’t already done. Like, take war correspondents, for instance. Do you think those people are working under those stressful conditions and with limited members of the opposite sex and they’re getting together under pretty intimate life and death situations—you don’t think plenty of war correspondents don’t hook up with soldiers and military brass and politicians who are involved with this? It’s just human nature.”

  “Yeah, well, according to my boss, I can’t be human.”

  “For all you know, maybe he’s even done it,” she said. “Look, I’m not telling you to let your journalistic principals fly out the window. But I am saying that you are human and if in the course of your work, you happen upon someone with whom you have a connection, well, you
have my complete permission to seize the moment and go for it.”

  “I wish I’d had that last week, so I wasn’t so riddled with guilt,” she said. “Meanwhile, my boss is breathing down my neck to get this story written but I never even conducted the damned interview! We were so busy panting and pawing all over each other...” She stared off into the distance, remembering that day.

  Taylor smiled. “Panting and pawing are good,” she said. “The world needs more of that in fact. So tell me who this Prince Charming is, and let’s figure out how we can get you two together again.”

  Larkin blanched. She knew? But she hadn’t told a soul about her prince. “Prince Charming?”

  “You know, the Cinderella prince,” she said. “The one who sweeps Cinderella off her feet and they live happily ever after. It’s the best story.”

  “Yeah, well except for the wicked stepsisters and that awful stepmother of hers.”

  “Into each romance, a little adversity must fall.”

  “Oh, no worries, that happened too.”

  “Larkin Mallory you are being awfully cryptic. If we’re going to be friends, then you need to trust that I won’t share your secrets. But you have to tell me them. It’s the friend rule.”

  Larkin nodded. “The friend rule, is it?”

  “You want me to pull out the book and find that clause?”

  Larkin held up her hands, yielding finally to her friend. It would be nice to have someone to share this with. After all, isn’t that what friends were for? She heaved a sigh, took a large swig of her Aperol spritz, and placed her hands on the table, ready to confess to her crimes.

  “So there’s this guy I met when I was trying to get into the nightclub that night I met you,” she said. “And I’d lost my badge and he was trying to help me but I was in fiercely independent mode, which meant I was just annoyed that this dude was trying to throw his weight around. Meanwhile, I think he was just trying to be nice. Help a damsel in distress, as it were.”

  “And did you turn him down?”