A Court Gesture

by Jenny Gardiner

  She nodded. “I wasn’t going to take any favors from anyone. I was perfectly capable of doing that on my own.”

  “But...”

  “Of course there’s a but. But yes, I’ll admit, he was pretty easy on the eyes,” she said. “Nevertheless, after that, we went our separate ways, never the twain shall meet. Or so I thought.”

  “Except?”

  “Except long story super short, my boss made me go do an interview with him. Because he’s pretty well known, and my boss thought it would be a great ‘get.’ Lucky me, I ‘got’ that get.”

  “So you go to this interview and?”

  “At first, I decide to bust his chops,” she said. “But soon I realized I was being a real jerk. The guy didn’t do anything to me, yet I was angry with him for what? I don’t even know.”

  “So then?”

  “The rest is a bit of a blur and before I knew it he was spilling his guts and I might have as well, then we kissed and that led to other things and, ugh, his cousin walked in on us, and I experienced a seriously bad case of buyer’s remorse, only I guess you’d call it groper’s remorse, because I know my hands were all over him, and likewise for his.”

  “This is so awesome!” Taylor said with a broad grin on her beautiful face.

  “Awesome isn’t exactly the first word that comes to mind for me,” Larkin said. “Unprofessional is one. And impulsive, that too rings a bell here. Foolish, irresponsible, gullible, embarrassing. Those are some of the main themes running through this.”

  “So, despite all of those negative emotions you mentioned, this somehow leaves me suspecting that you don’t actually regret it.”

  Larkin’s eyes opened wide. “For someone who hasn’t known me very long, you sure do know me.”

  Taylor’s pale blue eyes twinkled. “It’s a gift I have,” she said, puffing air on her nails, then buffing them on her chest, pretending to polish them up. “So if you don’t regret it, from that I think we can extrapolate that you’d not turn down a command performance?”

  “I wish,” she said, for the first time admitting this even to herself. “But it’s not so easy. I still haven’t even written the piece on him. Being that I didn’t interview him, I don’t have anything to write about.”

  “Can you write about what a hot kisser he is?” she said. “He is a hot kisser, isn’t he?”

  Larkin rolled her eyes. “Of course. I’m sure years of training have gone into that skill of his. But I can’t write about that!”

  “So who is this international man of mystery?” Taylor said. “I’m dying to know.”

  Larkin wrestled with telling her or leaving it to be her secret. But she was discovering that it was easier to share a secret than to carry the burden all by herself. “It’s Luca,” she said. “The Prince Luca. Of Monaforte.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Larkin had been at her computer for hours, trying to piece together some semblance of something she could try to pass off to her editor. To her deep shame, she’d even pulled all sorts of nonsense she culled from the Internet to flesh out the piece. Her lack of ethics was appalling her. Her J-School training had just flown out the damned window. Nowhere in all of the classes she took did anyone ever talk about what happens when your heart flips around in your chest when you meet someone you’re tasked with interviewing. Even further, there was nothing anywhere about what happened when you let your hormones kick you in the sorry ass and coerce you into doing things you’d never dream of doing with said subject.

  But here she sat, kicking herself in her very sorry ass.

  The crazy thing is she was able to parlay the piece on Taylor so it actually focused on their going from reporter and subject to friendship. It was actually endearing, the evolution of their relationship, and Piers loved it when she turned it in.

  “This is genius,” he said to her, thwacking the back of his hand to the computer screen in testament. “The readers will absolutely love that you, mild-mannered reporter, could be welcomed into Taylor McFarland’s inner circle like you were born there. If it could happen to you, it could happen to them!”

  Frankly, she was a bit surprised at his upbeat reaction. She thought for sure he’d deride her for her lack of journalistic integrity. Hell, she’d deride herself for it if she were her own editor. Maybe it was his background in the British tabloids that gave him the ability to slide back and forth a little more seamlessly in the morals department. Or maybe it’s because he just wanted to put out a story that would sell newspapers. But she knew there was no way she’d be able to pawn off such a story—times a hundred, what with the groping and heavy breathing and, well, hell, getting to third and a half base, putting it in American terms. This would not be looked upon well. If anything, it might launch an international episode for all involved. And kill her burgeoning career, which she couldn’t afford, for one thing, and couldn’t abide, for another. She loved what she did. Shame, it seemed, she had possibly started to love who she did it with. Though love, of course, was too strong of a word. She hardly knew the man. Except that he was kind and gentle and lovely and thoughtful.

  She thought back to Taylor’s response, once she spilled the story to her.

  “Luca?” she said, her mouth agape. “Are you kidding me?”

  Larkin gulped, then frowned. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Afraid?” Taylor said. “Why on Earth would you be afraid? If His Royal Highness Prince Luca Francesco DeMaio, Duke of Bartolomea falls for you, sweetie, you have nothing to be afraid of.”

  Larkin gasped at the very mention of his full royal name. It was so, well, huge. Which, when she thought about it, wasn’t the only thing huge about the man. Her heart beat faster just remembering that. She could never be linked with a man with so many names, so many titles. Prince and Duke and who knew what else he was? She was just Larkin. No way would she be good enough for the likes of him.

  “As I was saying before you totally spaced out on me there,” Taylor said, waving her hand in front of her friend’s eyes. “Luca is the real deal. He’s got a huge heart. He’s loads of fun. He’s so thoughtful. Honestly, I have a model friend who was dying to have sex with him. But Luca didn’t take advantage of her. He wasn’t interested, and he was polite and told her it wasn’t a good idea. Trust me, Luca would never play you, Lark. If he liked you, he’d tell you so. He’d not get into stupid games or anything. He’s a hundred percent trustworthy.”

  “Yeah but—”

  “But nothing,” Taylor said. “It’s much easier to allow your fear to stop you, but then you’ll never know what you’ve taken away from yourself.”

  She had a point there, maybe, but it still didn’t help her figure out what she was supposed to do, with Piers breathing down her neck and a deadline looming and absolutely nothing to write about.

  She shook her head away from the memory. Sure, Taylor offered to get the two of them together. But Larkin was nothing if not stubborn, and she simply couldn’t abandon her professional duty for a continuation of, well, one of the best days of her life. She was an idiot. But a principled idiot, without question.

  Four hours later, she hit send on the document and waved it off to Piers, hoping like hell he was in a good mood when he read the thing. Otherwise, she might just find herself out of a job. Meanwhile, with the way she was behaving professionally, she’d probably end up being the Pope’s right-hand man by the time she finished interviewing the guy. Clearly, she knew no boundaries.

  ~*~

  Piers wasted no time summoning Larkin into his office the following the morning. She was just finishing up a cornetto—Italy’s national breakfast food, which was usually a somewhat treacly so-so pastry intended to compete with France’s croissant but failing miserably in that task. Italy did a lot of food things top-notch, but their breakfast options were lacking. Meantime, she had pulled the unthinkable act—only an American, really, could perpetrate such a crime in Italy—and asked for her spremuta d’arancia (the most divine fresh-squeezed orange juic
e) to take away at the nearby coffee bar where she’d bought the stale cornetto and tossed back a cappuccino in two seconds flat.

  All in all, she’d violated all sorts of laws of being a chill Italian and relaxing in the moment. But, if anyone was talking about her committing violations of rules, she was already in deep, so what was one more crime against civility? Besides, she knew what was waiting for her at work and decided she just needed to rip that Band-Aid off and get it over with, regardless of the level of pain it entailed.

  She skulked into her office, averting eye contact with Piers, feeling like a dog that was about to get whacked on the rump with the newspaper for pooping on the carpet.

  Piers nodded to her to have a seat, which at least meant he wasn’t about to hit her with a newspaper. Tender mercies.

  Larkin nodded. “I assume you’ve read my piece?”

  He frowned. “Read it?” he said. “More like I ingested it and then picked the chewy bits out of my teeth with a dental instrument. And not in a good way. This thing,” he said, pointing at his computer screen, where her piece was on display at one hundred and fifty percent enlargement, “is pure pap and pablum.”

  Larkin squinted at him, not knowing what he meant by that, but assuming it wasn’t good.

  “You don’t know pap and pablum? How about Weetabix then?” he said. “Your story is a lump of soggy, mealy Weetabix that has festered in room temperature milk for a day or so. Long enough that the only exciting thing about it is the potential for bacterial overgrowth and whatever adventure that might carry with it. The bloody reader would have to prepare for a hospital visit, likely even a stomach pump, after ingesting this bit of journalistic food poisoning.”

  Larkin had never been dressed down by a superior like this before. It was humiliating. Tears welled in her eyes, but the last thing she wanted to do was show her weakness by crying like a little girl. It upset her that basically, her crime was that she fell for the prince she was supposed to interview. Was that such a horrible thing? She hadn’t joined a cult after interviewing its leader. She hadn’t picked up arms with a rebel group after embedding with them. She was merely crushing on someone she wasn’t allowed to crush on. Crap.

  “Mallory, this is not the type of work I expect from you,” he said. “And I think you know that. I’m not sure what the hell happened here, but you need to fix this. I’ll move the publication date back on this by another week. But you need to fix it. And don’t feed me any more crap like this. You got it?”

  Larkin nodded, her head hanging down as she stood to leave. She didn’t dare say a thing or she knew the tears would start streaming down her cheeks and the last thing she wanted to do was appear like a weak child who would cry at the hint of criticism. Besides, she knew it sucked, so she could hardly blame her boss for calling her on it.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Luca finally decided to give up his pride and stop waiting for the stubborn girl to reach out to him. Why he’d expect that anyhow was odd: it’s not like your average young woman would go out of her way to get ahold of someone at the palace who would take her seriously and reach out to Luca to put them in touch. Their whole system of communication was set up to avoid having strange women and the like actually contacting Luca and his family members. So he needed to stop placing undue expectations on her to do something she’d likely not have succeeded at anyhow.

  He picked up the phone and dialed Piers’s number.

  Piers answered after several rings. “What?” he said, charmingly gruff as always. Luca made a mental note to meet this lovely man sometime so he could match the sour mood with a face.

  “Mr. Woodberry,” Luca said, “it’s Luca from Monaforte.”

  Piers’s voice morphed to sunshine and bluebirds. “Your Highness,” he said in an unusually polite manner. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  “It’s your reporter,” he said. “I believe her name was Larkin, something like that?” He figured it was best to play stupid so as to not arouse suspicion.

  “Of course,” he said. “I hope she behaved herself at your interview.”

  If only he knew how well she conducted herself. Until she, unfortunately, decided that she couldn’t conduct herself in such a congenial manner. If only he could figure out how to tap into that more agreeable version of her.

  “Right,” he said. “Of course. She was lovely. Perfectly hospitable.”

  And good God, how hospitable her body had been. A few more minutes and he’d have known it intimately. Damn that Sandro, harshing his buzz like he did.

  “Good,” Piers said. “What can I do you for?”

  He was downright buddy-buddying it up with Luca.

  “Well, I realized I promised a follow-up with her but then failed to reach out to her in a timely fashion,” he said. “And actually, amidst all the craziness, I completely forgot to get any contact information from her. I was hoping that perhaps you might be able to put me in touch with her.”

  Piers grumbled for a moment or two, apparently wrestling with this. “Normally, I don’t give out my reporters’ personal contact information,” he said. “But under the circumstances, I don’t think she’ll mind.”

  He read off her mobile number, and Luca read it back to him, ensuring he didn’t jot down an incorrect digit by accident.

  “Most cordial of you to do so, mate,” Luca said, laying on the friendly chatter thick. “I’ll be sure to reach out to her. And in case I’m unable to reach her, if you could please mention that I’d love to host her here in Monaforte on Friday, I’d appreciate it. Give her the weekend to learn more about the crown, become acquainted with the traditions and such.”

  He could practically hear Piers beaming through the telephone lines. “I can assure you she’ll be there,” he said. “I’ll let her know.”

  “You’re a good man, Mr. Woodberry.”

  Although Luca assumed in about ten minutes, Larkin would be screaming out just the opposite.

  ~*~

  “You’re going to absolutely love this,” Taylor said when she met Larkin at the Palestra Cappelli, a boxing gym near the Monti neighborhood where Taylor worked with a trainer when in Rome.

  “It’s the best feeling ever to pound out your frustrations on that bag,” she said as they secured wraps around their hands and fingers before donning gloves. “I started with a boxing class back home in Boston after my boyfriend broke up with me. Every day I went to the gym and landed my punches on his imaginary face, and damn, did it feel spectacular. The best way to get over a bruised heart.

  “I do all sorts of workouts, depending on where in the world I’m traveling,” she said. “But this is by far my favorite. It makes me feel strong and in charge and totally kick-ass.”

  Her trainer took them through a sixty-minute workout, alternating punches and even some kicks, and by the end, Larkin felt like a changed woman. She held her gloved hands aloft like a boxing champion and danced around the mat. “Oh, man that was amazing,” she said. “Every time I made contact with the bag, that was my boss’s annoying mug I was whacking at. I could get hooked on this!”

  Just as she peeled off one of the gloves, her phone rang, and before she even thought to check the number on it, she answered it.

  “Mallory,” Piers said with a bark that sounded like he had a chunk of meat stuck in his throat. “Your prince interview called. Said you had some unfinished business. Pack a bag. You’re on your way to Monaforte first thing Friday morning.”

  Unfinished business my ass, she thought.

  “Take that, Mr. Woodberry,” she said with a grimace as she landed a left hook hard on the bag, wondering if perhaps she should have imagined that face belonged to a certain handsome prince instead.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  This time, at least Larkin wasn’t stuck tooling around in that miniature death trap of a Panda on treacherous, serpentine, two-lane roads while on her way to see Prince Luca. Instead, she was on the first available train out of Rome, which meant it was taking he
r the long way. The route wound its way up through northern Italy, crossing through parts of Switzerland, and on to the enchanted country of Monaforte. The enchanted bit was according to some TripAdvisor review she’d read; having never been there, she’d have to hold off on that assessment for herself.

  Going the more circuitous route didn’t bother her; it meant it would be that much longer until she had to face her adversary or whatever she was considering Luca these days. Was he a friend? A foe? A fine-looking specimen of a man whose bones she’d jump in a heartbeat if she weren’t obligated to write a balanced story about him for her job?

  But the train ride was absolutely breathtaking from Rome, passing through the burnished-red vineyards and autumn-ripe olive groves of Umbria; the golden rolling hills of grain being harvested in southern Tuscany near fields filled with the sad, downturned faces of what remained of last summer’s sunflower crop; on to the lush vineyards of Chianti; and the blinding white of the Carrara marble mines. Soon, the train climbed the rugged Apennines, meandering through parts of La Grassa, the famed fertile breadbasket of Italy, Emilia-Romagna. As the train approached Milan, Larkin spied the majestic sky-high spires of the Gothic wonder that is the Milanese Duomo, a sight that always took her breath away. After changing trains in Milan, her train skirted the foothills of the Alps, climbing through alpine meadows, past cheery cows with jangling bells, many being led down to lower grazing areas in anticipation of upcoming winter’s snowfalls.

  As the train approached Porto Castello, they passed rolling countryside with beautiful old, stone farmhouses and stacked-stone fences, then fairy-tale gingerbread cottages and old half-timbered homes and buildings that looked like something out of Beauty and the Beast. There was even the occasional thatched-roof house, truly like nothing she’d ever seen before.

  It was far enough north and late enough in the season for there to be smoke curling from the chimneys of the homes they passed, which lent a cozy ambiance to the scene. Something about this place felt instantly magical. Perhaps that enchanted description wasn’t far off.