Infamous

by Jane Porter

Her brothers quickly trooped out and Alexandra slowly turned to face Wolf, who had a black eye, a bloody nose, swollen lip, bruised cheekbone and a big ugly mark at his temple.

  “What were you thinking?” she whispered.

  Wolf shrugged wearily. “I wanted to be with you,” he said, swaying on his feet. “I wanted to be here—” he drew a breath and reached up to wipe away blood trickling from a cut in his cheekbone “—for you.”

  “For me?”

  He wiped the blood on the back of his jeans. “You must be worried sick about your dad. If it were my dad, I would be.”

  “And that’s why you’re here?”

  “Alexandra, I said I’d be there for you anytime you needed me. And so I’m here.”

  She blinked back tears. He looked as if he’d been run over by a truck. “Getting ambushed by my brothers.”

  “I was doing okay.”

  Her lips pursed. “Let’s get you to the kitchen and get some ice on those bumps and bruises.”

  In the kitchen, she directed Wolf to a chair at the scarred pine farm table while she made him an ice pack out of a plastic bag and some ice cubes inside a clean dish towel.

  She studied him, ice pack in hand. Blood continued to trickle from a cut in his cheekbone—he might need stitches for that one—and more blood dried at the corner of his lip. His forehead was shadowed with pink and purple. His hair was long, definitely not combed. He hadn’t shaved in God knew how long and circles were etched deeply beneath his famous smoldering eyes.

  “Wolf, I’m worried some of these cuts will end up in scars.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I do,” she said, pressing the ice pack to his temple, furious all over again.

  “Alexandra, I’d fight a hundred men for you. I’d slay dragons, too.”

  She saw him wince as she shifted the ice pack around on his head. “Wolf, when I said fight for me, I didn’t mean literally.”

  His laugh was low and self-mocking. “I might be too old to box professionally, but I wasn’t going to lose you, Alexandra. You’re mine. You’ve been mine from the very beginning.”

  “When you called me ‘ordinary’?” she replied.

  He reached up to wrap his hand around her wrist as she held the ice to his temple. “Ordinary’s a good thing, love. After ten years of Hollywood nonsense, I welcomed you like a breath of fresh air. It didn’t take me long to realize that I might be far from home but you were exactly what I needed. Wanted. Loved.”

  Alexandra’s hand trembled as she clutched the ice pack. Wolf was her undoing. “I don’t stand a chance against you, do I?” she murmured.

  He tipped his head back, smiled up at her, dark eyes hot, wicked. “No.”

  And he just kept on melting her heart.

  It wasn’t fair. She couldn’t resist him. And God knew she’d tried.

  Wolf’s hand warmed hers, and once her trembling stopped, he pulled her hand away, discarded the ice pack and drew her down onto his lap. “Come home, lady,” he said, dropping his head to kiss her throat. “Come home with me. Start a family with me.”

  She leaned against him as his arms went around her. “You forgive me then?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive. I’m as much at fault as you. I can see now I didn’t handle Joy’s illness well. I thought I was doing the right thing, but in retrospect I see I only made the problem worse.”

  “She’s better now?”

  Wolf’s shoulders lifted. “She was in Arizona in rehab for three months. She swears she’s done drinking, but it’s not my battle anymore. It’s hers. We both know it.”

  Her forehead furrowed with concern. “You were really worried about her.”

  “I thought she’d die,” he answered simply.

  Alexandra twisted on his knee to better see his face. “Die?”

  “My mom was an alcoholic, too.” Wolf rubbed his hand over his jaw, and for a moment a shadow of the old torment was back, darkening his eyes. “That’s why my father took me away from her when I was twelve. She died less than a year later—alcohol poisoning—and I’ve always blamed my father. And myself. I hated that we just left her, didn’t help her. I thought we might as well have killed her ourselves.”

  “That’s why you couldn’t turn your back on Joy,” Alexandra concluded softly.

  The corner of his mouth lifted, but he still looked tortured. “Those are those ghosts and demons I mentioned.” He let out a half sigh. “But trying to help Joy when she didn’t want to give up drinking taught me invaluable lessons. We can’t help someone that doesn’t want to be helped, and in the end, our first responsibility is to ourselves.”

  She leaned forward, wrapped her arms around his neck, felt his warm, hard chest crush her breasts. And it was a delicious sensation, familiar as well as exciting. “I love you.”

  “I should have been there for you more, Alexandra. I should have listened to you better—listened with my heart, not my head.”

  “But you were.”

  “No—”

  “Yes,” she whispered, cutting his protest off with a slow and very tender kiss. “I love you, Wolf,” she said against his mouth. “I love you more than you’ll ever know. I’m just so grateful you’re here and that you waited for me and fought for me and didn’t give up on me.”

  He made a rough sound in the back of his throat and stroked her hair back from her face and then along her cheek. “I will always fight for you.”

  “Even when I get scared and do foolish things?”

  “Especially then,” he answered soberly.

  Alexandra dashed away fresh tears. “I’ve learned lessons, too. And I know now why I didn’t feel loved enough. It wasn’t anything you were doing. It was me. I didn’t love me enough to believe that you could love me, too.”

  “How could anyone not love you, Alexandra? Your family dotes on you. Your brothers would go to the ends of the earth for you. And I know this—I will never love anyone the way I love you. I couldn’t. You were made for me and I’ve spent years traveling the world to find you.”

  Swallowing a soft cry, she dragged her hands through Wolf’s hair, fingers twining in the black, inky length. “So that’s how an Irish Spaniard ends up in Los Angeles.”

  “I came to find my heart.”

  She blinked even as a tear trickled down her cheek. “I promise you’ll never have to search for it again.”

  Wolf cupped her wet face in his hands. “And I’m going to hold you to that promise,” he said roughly before kissing her absolutely senseless.

  And maybe, Alexandra thought hours later as she lay snuggled in her husband’s strong arms in her rather small childhood bed, those Hollywood happy endings really do come true.

  Pure Princess,

  Bartered Bride

  Caitlin Crews

  About the Author

  CAITLIN CREWS discovered her first romance novel at the age of twelve. It involved swashbuckling pirates, grand adventures, a heroine with rustling skirts and a mind of her own, and a seriously mouth-watering and masterful hero. The book (the title of which remains lost in the mists of time) made a serious impression. Caitlin was immediately smitten with romances and romance heroes, to the detriment of her middle school social life. And so began her life-long love affair with romance novels, many of which she insists on keeping near her at all times.

  Caitlin has made her home in places as far-flung as York, England, and Atlanta, Georgia. She was raised near New York City and fell in love with London on her first visit when she was a teenager. She has backpacked in Zimbabwe, been on safari in Botswana and visited tiny villages in Namibia. She has, while visiting the place in question, declared her intention to live in Prague, Dublin, Paris, Athens, Nice, the Greek islands, Rome, Venice, and/or any of the Hawaiian islands. Writing about exotic places seems like the next best thing to moving there.

  She currently lives in California, with her animator/comic book artist husband and their menagerie of ridiculous animals.

  To
Jane Porter: inspiration, mentor, and the big

  sister I always wanted.

  Thank you, for everything.

  PROLOGUE

  LUC GARNIER did not believe in love.

  Love was madness. Agony, despair and crockery hurled against walls. Luc believed in facts. In proof. In ironclad contracts and the implacable truth of money. He had been relentless and focused all his life and as a result, wildly successful. He did not believe this was a matter of luck or chance. Emotion played no part in it.

  Just as emotion played no part in picking out his future bride.

  The Côte d’Azur preened itself in the warm afternoon sun as Luc strode down a side street in Nice, headed for the Promenade des Anglais, where the famously luxurious Hotel Negresco sat in gracious Victorian splendor, looking out onto the sparkling blue waters of the Baie des Anges and the Mediterranean Sea beyond. The Hotel Negresco was one of Luc’s favorite hotels in France, and thus the world, overflowing as it was with museum-quality art and a famously accommodating staff—but he had a far more pressing reason for visiting Nice’s landmark hotel today.

  Luc had flown in that morning from his Paris headquarters, determined to see for himself if the latest potential bride—who looked so good on paper—looked even half as good in person. But then, they all looked good on paper, as they had to be of a noble family to so much as make his list. The last woman he had considered for the position had seemed like a perfect match on paper—but a few days spent tailing Lady Emma around her London society life had quickly revealed that the young noblewoman had a secret penchant for late nights with rough gentlemen.

  It wasn’t that Luc necessarily minded that his wife might have a past—he simply preferred that, whatever the past was, it had involved the sort of people who would not make interesting headlines should the tabloids catch wind of them. Lady Emma Prefers Goths to Garnier. He could imagine it all too well.

  “That’s the way modern women are these days,” his number two man had told him, after Luc had discovered Lady Emma’s late-night bar-crawling. Alessandro was the closest thing Luc had to a friend, but even so, he’d thrown his hands up in the air when Luc had glared at him across his opulent Paris office.

  “Modern women may be as loose as they like,” he’d snapped. “But my wife will not be. Is this so much to ask?”

  “This is not all you ask!” Alessandro had replied with a laugh. He’d begun to tick off the necessary items on his fingers. “She must be noble, if not royal, to honor your bloodline. She must be pure in word and deed. She must never have been young or stupid, as no scandal can ever have touched her.” He’d shaken his head sadly. “I do not think this woman exists.”

  “She may not,” Luc had agreed, closing the dossier he had compiled on Lady Emma and setting it aside with distaste. “My mother taught me long ago that beauty is too often a mask for dishonor and betrayal. One cannot depend on it—only on an irreproachable reputation.” He had smiled at Alessandro. “If she does exist, I will find her.”

  “And what if this paragon does not wish to marry you when you have hunted her down?” Alessandro had asked dryly. “What then?”

  Luc had laughed. “Please.” He’d sat back in his chair and gazed at his friend, crooking his brow in amusement. “That is not very likely, is it? What woman would not benefit from becoming my wife? What can any woman possibly want that I cannot give her? I will place all of my wealth and power at the disposal of whatever woman can fill the position.”

  Alessandro had sighed heavily, his romantic Italian soul no doubt mortally wounded at the prospect of filling the position of wife. “Women like romance and fairy tales,” he’d said. Luc rather thought Alessandro was the one who preferred such fripperies, but had not said so. “They do not want marriage to be conducted as a business proposition.”

  “But that is what it is,” Luc had said, shrugging again. “The correct woman must understand this as well.”

  “I fear you will be looking for a very long time, my friend,” Alessandro had said, shaking his head.

  But Luc had never been afraid of hard, seemingly fruitless work, he reflected as he turned the corner and saw the famous façade of the Hotel Negresco before him. In fact, he thrived on it. His famous parents had died when he was barely twenty-three, and he had had to make his own way in the world in their considerable shadows. Even before their deaths in a boating accident he had been more or less on his own—his parents having been far more interested in each other and their endless romantic complications than in their son.

  Luc could not bring himself to regret his unorthodox upbringing, no matter how many people seemed to think it pointed to some lack in him—something no one had dared say to his face in some time. Growing up in such a way, surrounded by so much heightened emotion mixed with jealousy and betrayal and avid outside interest, had stripped him of many of the needs that ruled other men. It had also made him that much more successful, which was all he cared about—for what else was there? He did not need the emotions that other men did. He was not interested in love, and all the upheaval and agony it brought. He wanted a wife in the most traditional sense, for the most traditional reasons. He was nearing forty now, and it was time he created a family to carry on his legacy and his mother’s royal Italian bloodline. The wife he chose would have to be from an equally august bloodline—noble for centuries, at the very least, as his family was. It was tradition. It was his duty.

  He needed a wife who knew her duty.

  He strode into the elegant old hotel, past the white-gloved doormen, and did not bother to gape like a tourist at the sparkling lobby that emanated old French charm and elegance all around him. He had seen it many times before. The Hotel Negresco prided itself on its luxuriousness. Luc made his way toward the Salon Royal, with its Gustave Eiffel-designed dome and Baccarat chandeliers sparkling over a crowd of some of the world’s foremost philanthropists. He ignored the well-dressed and genteel throng, as well as the priceless art that graced the walls. He searched the room until his eyes fell on the woman he’d been looking for—Princess Gabrielle of Miravakia.

  She stood out from the crowd in a good way, he was pleased to note. She did not call attention to herself. She did not display her chest in an inappropriate manner or hang all over the men who competed for her attention. She seemed cool and elegant, refined and royal, as she stood in the center of a knot of extremely well-dressed patrons.

  She was lovely—but then, she should be. She was a royal princess, after all—the heir to her country’s throne. He ignored her looks and concentrated on the way she presented herself: her public persona, which was by all accounts completely without blemish.

  Her hair was swept back into an elegant knot at the nape of her neck, and she wore a simple cocktail dress with restrained hints of jewelry at her ears and one wrist. Nothing flashy or gauche. She was all sophistication and class, presiding over this great reception for one of her pet charities with all the grace for which she was known. She was every inch the perfect princess.

  He liked what he saw. But he couldn’t trust what she showed the world at a reception for six hundred. Could a woman really be as above reproach as this one appeared to be?

  Luc signaled a passing waiter and requested a drink, then moved to the outskirts of the crowd, from where he could watch her without being observed in return. She was in Nice for the week, he knew, and was expected to make a number of appearances—which interested him less than what she got up to in her free time.

  He was sure that, like Lady Emma before her, Princess Gabrielle would eventually show herself to him. He had only to wait, and watch.

  But as Luc watched the perfect-looking princess make her rounds, he allowed himself a moment of cautious optimism as he sampled his drink.

  If she proved to be as perfect as she looked, he had done it. He had finally found his bride.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “DO YOUR duty,” her father ordered her only moments before the organ burst into life—his ver
sion of an encouraging speech. He frowned at her. “Make me proud.”

  That was the entirety of his fatherly pre-wedding advice.

  The words swam in Princess Gabrielle’s head even as the heavy weight of her silk taffeta wedding gown tugged at her and slowed her down. The long train swept back from her dress, extending almost ten feet behind her as befitted a royal princess on her wedding day. Gabrielle only knew that it was hard to walk with ten feet of fabric to pull along with her, though she kept her spine erect and her head high—as always.

  Thank God for the veil that covered her face, hiding the expression she was afraid she couldn’t control for the first time in her twenty-five years—to say nothing of the prickly heat flooding her eyes.

  She could not cry. Not here. Not now.

  Not as she walked down the aisle of her kingdom’s holiest of cathedrals, holding fast to her father’s arm. Her father—King Josef of Miravakia. The man she had spent her life trying—and failing—to please.

  Even at university she had been too determined to win her father’s elusive approval to do anything but study hard. While her peers had partied and explored all that London had to offer, Gabrielle had lost herself in her books and her research. After university, despite the degree she’d obtained in Economics, she had dedicated herself to charity work, according to her father’s expectations of the Crown Princess of Miravakia.

  Anything and everything to curry her father’s favor. It was the mantra of Gabrielle’s life.

  Even this. Marriage to a perfect stranger of his choosing.

  Why was she going through with this? Hers was not some ancient feudal kingdom—and she was no chattel. But if there was a way to go against her father’s wishes without incurring his wrath she did not know what it was. She knew that she could have said no. Couldn’t she? Or was she simply too desperate to prove to her father that she was worthy of his approval—even when the stakes were so high?