The Prince's Cinderella Bride

by Christine Rimmer

  He watched her walk toward him, those iron eyes never leaving her face. “I’ll ask you again. Are you bailing out on me?”

  She went right to him, right up good and close. She laid her hands on his chest, where she could feel the power in him, feel his big heart beating under her palm. “No, Max. If you’re crazy enough to stick with me, I’m not bailing.”

  His breath left him in a rush. “Thank God.” He grabbed her close, hard arms closing around her.

  She felt his lips against her hair, and for a moment she let herself cling to him. Then she pushed away enough that she could look up at him again. “I want to meet with your mother, just the princess and me. I will tell her the long, sad old story. All of it.”

  He looked at her so piercingly, as though he was trying to see inside her head. “You would do that?”

  It was strange. Yesterday, she never could have volunteered to do such a thing. But now, somehow, she could do nothing less. “I think I have to, Max. I think it’s the right thing to do.”

  “And then what?”

  “I have no idea. But if you and I are going to continue together, it only seems right that she should know. We can start with that. And after I’ve told her everything, the two of you can take a meeting on the subject and decide what, if anything, you need to do.”

  Chapter Nine

  At two the next afternoon, Lani sat on a fabulous damask-covered sofa in HSH Adrienne’s private office. As always, she tried not to gape at the sovereign princess, who had to be almost sixty, but still had full lips and flawless skin. There really was something magical about Adrienne Bravo-Calabretti. She brought to mind some legendary movie star of the silver screen—Sophia Loren, maybe, with that wide mouth and those unforgettable eyes.

  There was tea. With scones and delicate pots of jam and clotted cream. Adrienne poured, those slim, perfectly manicured hands dealing with the fragile china pot and the gold-trimmed, paper-thin teacups without making a single clattering sound.

  Otherworldly. Definitely. Beyond the whole not-gaping thing, Lani was experiencing an absolute cringing sort of terror of this whole situation. What was she thinking to volunteer to tell this incredible woman all about how stupid and destructive she’d been once? Last night, with Max’s arms around her, coming here and telling all had seemed like an excellent, brave and necessary idea.

  Clearly, last night, she’d gone temporarily insane.

  “What do you take?” Adrienne asked.

  A Valium about now would be nice. “Just a little sugar, thanks.”

  Adrienne moved the sugar closer to Lani’s side of the low table, next to the cup of tea she’d just poured for her. Lani put in the sugar and stirred—carefully, trying not to make those annoying clinking sounds that all the etiquette books said were so rude.

  Now what? When taking tea at a table, one never picked up the saucer with the cup. But when standing, the saucer was necessary to catch any drips. Did the low table actually count as a table, or...?

  The princess took pity on her and picked up both saucer and cup. Lani did the same. She sipped.

  Not too clattery, thank God. And she didn’t spill a drop on her carefully chosen outfit of blue skirt, white shirt and short red blazer—red, white and blue; everyday, ordinary American and proud of it. She also wore the gray suede pumps. They made her think of Max, and that gave her courage. She set down the cup and saucer and doubted she would pick it up again.

  Adrienne said, “I understand congratulations are in order.” Lani went blank. For what? For coming here with the intention of revealing all the ways she’d screwed up her life and broken her parents’ hearts, not to mention the heart of Thomas McKneely’s poor, long-suffering wife? Adrienne must have read her bewildered expression. Graciously, as with the teacup, the princess came to Lani’s rescue. “Three books sold at once. We’re all so excited for you.”

  “I... Thank you,” Lani managed rather woodenly. “I’ve had high hopes for this series of books and I’m glad they’re going to be published and published well. Very glad.”

  “Max says they’re all three set in Montedoro.”

  “Yes, the stories take place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The main characters are fictional, but I try to stay true to the period, to...history as we know it.”

  “And these books are called...?”

  “The working titles are The Poisoner’s Apprentice, The Sword of Abdication and The Crucible of Truth.”

  Adrienne laughed. “I’ll have you know it’s never been proven that Lucinda Calabretti poisoned her husband to put their son on the throne so that she could rule through him.”

  “Well, it is fiction,” Lani shamelessly backpedaled. After all, these were Adrienne’s ancestors.

  But Her Sovereign Highness looked delighted. “And The Sword of Abdication takes place in the court of Lucinda’s son, Cristobal?”

  “Yes, it does.” Cristobal Calabretti had abdicated the throne his mother had murdered his father to get for him.

  “And The Crucible of Truth? Let me guess. It takes place in the time of Cristobal’s son, Bernardo, who certainly can’t be blamed for doing what he had to do in order to regain the throne his father had turned his back on.” Her huge dark eyes gleamed. “I have no idea why they called him Bernardo the Butcher.”

  Lani played it diplomatically. “He was a very determined man.”

  “We Calabrettis tend to be that way, though nowadays we are much less bloodthirsty. My husband is the same—determined, I mean. And our daughters and sons, as well. Maximilian most of all.”

  Max. God. For a moment there, she’d almost let herself relax. But now her throat locked up and her left leg was showing a distressing desire to bounce. She kept her foot firmly on the floor and gulped to make her throat relax. “Yes. Max is, um, very determined.”

  Adrienne nodded, a slow, regal dip of her dark head. “I think he will make an excellent sovereign.”

  “Yes.”

  “And whatever you’ve come to share with me, rest assured I would no more betray your confidence than Maximilian would.” Adrienne spoke softly, with real kindness.

  “I... Thank you.” Lani’s palms were sweating. Ridiculous, annoying tears burned at the back of her throat, forcing her to swallow again, to gulp them right down into the deepest part of her. She was not going to sit here and blubber in front of Her Sovereign Highness. “I...well, the good news is, I’ve never killed anyone or been arrested for bank robbery or cooked crystal meth or...” Good Lord in Heaven. Cooked crystal meth?

  “It’s all right, I promise you,” Adrienne said in the tone people use to calm wild animals. “Take your time.”

  Lani wanted to cover her face, become really small, jump up and run out of there and keep on running and never look back. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Adrienne snared her gaze and held it so steadily. Very much the way Max often did, and suddenly the resemblance, mother to son, was so powerful, so close. “Just begin,” the princess said. “I think you’ll find the way. I know you will.” She sounded so certain.

  And really, if Adrienne Bravo-Calabretti, Sovereign Princess of Montedoro, was sure that Lani could do it, well then, she absolutely could. She said, “My father’s best friend was a writer named Thomas McKneely...” And once she got going, she just kept on. On and on through all of it, her own arrogance, her pride, her complete self-righteousness, her unforgivable treatment of her own father, her certainty that what she called love justified any action; her heedless, limitless cruelty. All of which led to the loss of so much that mattered, including her baby and almost her life.

  When she finished, Adrienne reached across the low table and touched her hand. The princess spoke. She said soft, comforting things.

  Lani thought that whatever happened next, it wasn�
��t so bad, really. To simply tell the truth as it had happened, to tell it and let it stand, let it be.

  Adrienne stood. Lani automatically started to rise as well. “No,” said Adrienne. “Stay. Just a moment...” Lani sank back to the sofa.

  Adrienne went out.

  Lani heard the door close behind her. Several minutes passed. Lani sat there, wanting to go, but feeling she should wait until the princess came back and excused her.

  The door opened again. She turned to look and Max was standing there.

  He held out his arms to her. It was all the encouragement she needed. She got up and ran to him.

  He wrapped her up tight in his warm embrace.

  She clung to him, burying her head against his hard, strong shoulder. “Your mother...?”

  “She said you’ve told her all she needed to know.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means we have her blessing. The rest is up to us.”

  “Oh, Max.” She held him tighter.

  He kissed her hair. “My brave darling...”

  “Brave...” The word sounded wrong to her.

  “Yes. Brave.”

  Funny. She didn’t feel all that brave. What she felt was strangely, completely free.

  Chapter Ten

  After that, Lani knew happiness. Weeks of it.

  She got past the dreaded midpoint of The Crucible of Truth and forged on toward the end. Two of the bloggers who’d messaged her through Facebook turned out not to be tacky tabloid journos, after all. She gave them interviews. She worked on her web presence, hired a website designer and had two long discussions with her New York editor concerning revisions to the first and second books.

  Even better than her steady progress in her career, she had time with the people who mattered to her. With Sydney, with Trev and Ellie, with Nick and Connie and Gerta. And with Max most of all.

  She went to breakfast with the princely family four Sundays running. Everyone seemed to accept her, to welcome her. Adrienne treated her warmly. And Max’s father, the prince consort, Evan, would smile when he saw her and ask how the book was going.

  The paparazzi remained relentless. Any time she went out in public, alone or with Max, or even with the children, there was always some guy lurking nearby with a camera or a smartphone stuck to his face.

  She learned to do what the Bravo-Calabrettis did: ignore them. It wasn’t that hard once you got the hang of it. And they kept their distance, which really helped. Not a one was as in-your-face as that first guy outside her building that Sunday night in late February. They all kept back, out of the way as they were required to do in order not to be packed off to France.

  There were pictures on the internet, lots of them. And videos on YouTube—of her and Max out for an evening, of her shopping with Sydney, of her and Max and the children enjoying an afternoon on the family yacht.

  And there were stories, in the tabloids and online. More information came out about her, specifically, about her previous job as a nanny to the children of Prince Rule, about her long friendship with Sydney, about her budding career as a novelist. The tabloids seemed to love the whole nanny angle. All the stories had headlines like The Prince’s Nanny Love and Wedding Bells for the Prince and the Nanny?

  Lani tried to take it all in stride. The stories about wedding bells and diamond rings kind of got to her, though. Max never talked about marriage. Neither did she. It seemed a delicate, dangerous subject in light of what they’d said to each other that long-ago night in the library.

  He wasn’t going to get married again. He’d said so straight out. And she’d gone and told him that marriage wasn’t for her.

  Only, well, something had happened to her in the course of forging her freedom from the chains of the past. She’d found a way to love again—or maybe to love for real, as a grown woman, in the way she hadn’t come close to all those years ago, with Thomas.

  She’d found her way to love and she loved Max. And now that she loved him, now that she was truly able to let the past go, marriage didn’t seem like such an impossible proposition, after all.

  In fact, marriage felt like a good thing. A right thing. A big step that she and Max really ought to talk about taking—not right away. There was no reason to rush it. But someday, most definitely.

  She’d gone on the pill. It was nice, not to have to fiddle with condoms, and to rest a little easier that there would be no surprise pregnancy. But more and more to her, having a baby someday seemed like a good thing, the right thing for her.

  Yes. Someday. She was sure of that now.

  Her father called near the end of March. Someone had finally told him what was going on over there in Montedoro.

  “Is this Prince Maximilian good to you?” her dad demanded.

  “Yes, Papi. He’s a wonderful man.”

  “You’re happy.” It wasn’t a question. He seemed simply to know.

  And that pleased her, gave her that warm and fuzzy feeling down inside. “I am happy. Very happy.”

  “When will you bring him home to meet your family?”

  Okay, she was kind of dreading that. Just a little. She’d gone home twice since the move to Montedoro. Both times had been awkward, with her parents pushing her to move back to Texas, and her brother all over her for deserting the family, for leaving her parents without their daughter in their waning years.

  Plus, well, now that she had finally found someone she was serious about, there would be the usual Vasquez Family Marriage Interrogation Squad. They all—her mom, her dad and even her overbearing big brother—wanted her to be happy. And to a Vasquez, happiness meant marriage and babies.

  “Yolanda Ynez, are you still on the line?”

  “Yes, Papi. I’m here. And I do plan to bring Max and the children to meet you. As soon as we can work that out, in the next couple of months, I hope....”

  He grumbled a little more, accusing her of putting him off, which was only the truth. But then he asked about her writing and she told him how much she liked her editor, about her new website and her progress on the third book of her trilogy.

  And he told her he was proud of her, which got her kind of dewy-eyed. Then he said he loved her and put her mom on.

  That went pretty well, at least at first. She told her mom all about how well her career was going, and her mother congratulated her enthusiastically on her success.

  Then her mom came right out and asked her, “Are you going to marry this man, this prince that you’re dating?”

  Lani cringed—and evaded. She reminded her mother that she and Max hadn’t been together that long, that it was never a good thing to rush into something as important as marriage.

  And of course, her mom said, “Your father proposed to me on our second date.”

  “I know that, Mama, but—”

  “I said yes.”

  “No kidding.” Lani had heard the story at least a hundred times.

  “You can mock me if you want to.”

  “Sorry...”

  “All I’m trying to say is that it was the best decision I ever made.”

  “I know, Mama. Papi’s a prize.”

  “Yes, he is. And a woman knows when she’s found the right man.”

  Yeah, sure. Like I did with Thomas. “Well, Mama. You knew.”

  “What does that mean, mi’ja? Are you telling me you don’t know your own heart? Because the heart knows. You only have to listen to it. Are you listening to your heart with this prince of yours?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Well, okay, then. Bring him home so that I can see if he’s good enough for you.”

  “Oh, Mama...”

  “I love you, mi’ja. You are always in my heart and I am so proud of you.”

  Out of now
here, tears welled up. One even overflowed and dribbled down her cheek. She swiped it away. “I love you, too, Mama. Very much.”

  “Bring him home.”

  She promised that she would. Soon.

  Her mother was silent. And then a few minutes later, they said goodbye.

  * * *

  “He’s so completely gone on you,” Sydney said. “Everybody sees it. But then, you’re gone on him right back, so it all shakes out.”

  Trev and Ellie were at the villa with their new nanny that afternoon, so it was just Syd and Lani in Lani’s tiny kitchen area, sharing a lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches, cream of tomato soup and tall glasses of iced tea. Lani ate a bite of her sandwich and sipped her tea and stared out the little window by the table. It provided a view of another tenant’s balcony across the way, partially obscured by the crown of an olive tree.

  “You’re too quiet,” Sydney accused. “What’s wrong?”

  Lani sipped more tea and watched the olive branches sway in the early-spring breeze. “I talked to my parents yesterday. They want me to come home and bring Max with me.”

  Sydney fiddled with her napkin, lifting it off her lap, smoothing it down again. “And this...annoys you? Depresses you? Has you feeling overcome with joy?”

  “I really need to do that—go home, I mean. I haven’t been back to Texas enough since we moved here.”

  “So give yourself an extra week when you go to New York for that business trip next month. Visit your family and take Max with you.”

  “It seems a little early for him to be meeting the parents.”

  “But you’ve already met his parents—and I don’t just mean because you lived at the palace. He’s brought you to Sunday breakfast several weeks in a row. That counts as meeting the parents, and you know it, too.”

  “Still, it’s different. We live here. It’s all just more natural, Max taking me to family things.”

  “Is this some new form of amnesia you’ve got now? Think back to the first time he asked you to Sunday breakfast. It didn’t seem all that natural to you then. You were tied in knots over it.”