by Cara Colter
It wasn’t any of that.
No, it was the way her eyes had met his and held for that endless moment after he had told her the Lodge was a magnificent building.
When he had glanced back at her, she had been looking at him, those huge blue eyes, an astonishing shade of sapphire, with a look in them that had been deep and unsettling.
He had felt—illogically, he was sure—as if she knew, not just how troubled he was, but something of him.
It was as if Miss Albright had easily cast aside all his defenses and seen straight to his soul. For a moment, it had almost looked as if she might step toward him, touch him again—and not his hand this time, either.
Had he actually taken a step away from her? In his mind, he had, if not with his body. It had seemed to him, in that brief encounter, Imogen Albright had seen all too clearly the things he most needed to keep secret.
That this was the worst day of his life.
And there had been something in her eyes that had made him want to lean toward her instead of stepping away.
Something that had suggested she, too, knew of bad days and plans gone awry. That she, somehow, had the power to bring calm to the sea of life that was suddenly stormy. In the endless blue sky of her eyes, in that brief moment, he had glimpsed a resting place.
Still, wasn’t awry an understatement? His life—strategically planned from birth to death—was veering seriously off the path.
At this very moment, Luca was supposed to be a newly married man, not alone in a bed in some tiny mountain village in Canada, but in the sumptuous honeymoon suite that had been prepared within the Casavalle palace for him and his new bride, Princess Meribel.
Meribel was of the neighboring kingdom of Aguilarez, and years of tension between the two kingdoms were supposed to have been put to rest today with the exchange of nuptials between them. Instead, here they were in chaos. In an attempt to minimize the mess, he had issued a statement this morning.
Irreconcilable differences.
Not the truth, but the truth might have plunged both kingdoms into the thing Luca was most interested in avoiding: scandal.
Meribel’s tearful announcement to Luca the night before the wedding had come on the heels of other disturbing news.
His father’s first marriage—the one that had ended in the kind of scandal that the Kingdom of Casavalle now avoided at all costs—might have produced a child. A child who would now be an adult. An older sibling to Luca.
Which would mean the role Luca had prepared for his whole life was in jeopardy. The eldest child of the late King Vincenzo would head the monarchy of Casavalle. Was it possible that was not him? It made the ground, which had always felt so solid under his feet, feel as if it was rocking precariously, the shudders that warned of an impending earthquake.
Luca was a man accustomed to control, raised to shoulder the responsibility to his kingdom first, above any personal interests. And yet this whole cursed year had been a horrible series of events that were entirely—maddeningly—out of his control.
Maybe today was, in fact, not the worst day of his life. Wasn’t the worst day of his life that day four months ago when his father, King Vincenzo, had died? With so many things unspoken between them, with Luca needing the gift he would now never receive?
His father’s approval.
On the other hand, if one was inclined to look for blessings in terrible situations—which Luca admittedly was not—perhaps it was a good thing his father had died before everything in their carefully controlled world had begun to shift sideways.
The cancellation of his wedding to Princess Meribel meant the cementing of the relationship between Casavalle and Aguilarez was now, once again, in jeopardy.
There was a possibility that the throne—by law—would go to a person unprepared to take it. A person who had not spent their whole life knowing it was coming, every breath and every step leading to this one thing: taking the reins of his nation.
Luca’s thoughts drifted to Imogen again.
His brother, Antonio, was supposed to be here at Crystal Lake Lodge. But with the news this morning, Luca had felt a need to deal with these issues himself, as they would have more effect on his life than on anyone else’s. Besides, it had felt necessary to get away from Casavalle as the people discovered the wedding they had been joyously anticipating for months was now not to be.
The disappointment would be palpable. Every face he encountered would have a question on it. He would have to say it over and over again—irreconcilable differences—hiding the truth.
Luca had come here armed with a name. He had almost asked Imogen if it was familiar to her. She had said she knew everyone in this village. The village his father’s first wife, Sophia, had escaped to, hiding from the world after the disastrous end of her royal marriage. But in the end, Luca had not asked Imogen. He wanted to phrase any questions he asked very carefully. A kingdom relied on how these questions were answered. There would be time to get to the bottom of this.
And speaking of time, he looked at his watch and calculated.
He had obviously missed the dinner Imogen had said she would prepare. He glanced at his cell phone. It was 3:00 a.m. but he was wide-awake. Hello, jet lag. It would be breakfast time in Casavalle, and Luca was aware of hunger, and of the deep quiet around him.
Why hadn’t the sound of the helicopter returning woken him? It was unusual that Cristiano had not checked in with him on his return. Unless he had, and Luca, sleeping hard, had missed it?
Was there news of the woman? The baby?
Good baby news would be refreshing, Luca thought, not without a trace of bitterness. He was aware of feeling, as well as sour of mood, travel rumpled and gritty. He reached for the bedside light and snapped it on. Nothing happened. He let his eyes adjust to the murkiness and looked for the suitcase Cristiano would have dropped inside the door.
There was none.
He got up and searched the wall for the light switch. He found it and flipped it, but remained in darkness. Still, he made his way to the closet and the adjoining bathroom. No suitcase. And no lights, either. He went to the window, thinking, even in the darkness, he would be able to see the outline of the helicopter on the lawn.
Instead, what he saw was a world of white and black. Pitch-dark skies were overlaid with falling snowflakes so large they could have been feathers drifting to earth. Mounds of fresh snow were piled halfway up the windowpane, and beyond that, the landscape wore a downy, thick quilt of snow. No wonder the quiet had an unearthly quality to it, every sound muffled by the blanket that covered it.
Even though a mountain range separated Casavalle from Aguilarez, and even though he was, as he had told Imogen, accustomed to the unpredictable weather of such a landscape, he was not sure he had ever seen such a large amount of snowfall in such a short time. It seemed to him well over a foot of snow was piled against the panes of his window.
He had not heard the helicopter return because there had been no helicopter return.
He looked at his cell phone again. No messages. Not surprisingly, as it appeared there was no signal. Miss Albright had warned them the region did not lend itself to good cell phone service.
It was apparent there was no power, no doubt knocked out by the storm, but did that also mean there would be no phone landline, either? He recalled glancing at an old-fashioned phone when he’d entered this room. It was on the desk by the fireplace, and he fumbled his way through the darkness to it and lifted the receiver.
Nothing. He set the phone back down. Luca contemplated what he was feeling.
He was still single when he should have been married.
He was outside of the shadow of protection for perhaps the first time in his entire life.
His cell phone was not working, and his computer was not here.
The snow falling so thickly outside should intensify t
he feeling that he was a prisoner of the circumstances of the worst day of his life.
Instead, he felt something astonishingly different, so new to him that at first he did not know what it was.
But then he recognized it, and the irony of it. The snow trapping him, his marriage failing before it had begun, the lack of communication with the world, Cristiano being far away, a possible new contender for the throne, all felt as if they were conspiring to give him the one thing he had never known and never even dared to dream of.
Freedom.
He shook off the faintly heady feeling of elation. His father would not have approved of it. The current circumstances of his life required him to be more responsible, not less.
But still, for a little while, it seemed he had been granted this opportunity to experience freedom from his duties and his responsibilities whether he wanted that freedom or not.
He did not know how long the reprieve would last.
And he realized he had no idea what to do with this time he had been granted. Though the first order should be fairly simple. He needed to find something to eat.
He opened his bedroom door and was greeted with a wall of inky darkness. He became aware of a faint chill in the air. Obviously, the heating system was reliant on power. He fished his cell phone back out of his pocket and briefly turned on the flashlight, memorizing the features of the hallway before he turned it back off to conserve the battery. Feeling his way along the wall, and using his memory, he found the sweeping staircase and inched his way down it.
He didn’t use the flashlight on his phone again as his eyes began to adjust to the darkness. He saw an arched entry to a room just off the foyer at the base of the stairs. Dining hall?
He entered and paused, letting the room come into focus. Not a dining room, but some kind of office and sitting room combination. There was a large desk by the window, a couch and a fireplace, which it occurred to him they might need.
They.
He could well be stranded here with Miss Albright. He felt a purely masculine need to protect her and keep her safe against the storm, and he went over to investigate the fireplace. Of course, he was not usually the one lighting fires, but he would have to figure it out. Miss Albright protecting him and keeping him safe was embarrassingly out of the question.
He moved deeper into the room, and jostled up against the sofa. A small thump on the floor startled him.
A cell phone was on the floor, and the bump had made it click on, its light faintly illuminating the fact that Miss Albright was fast asleep on the sofa! The cell phone must have fallen from her relaxed hand.
He picked it up, and a photo filled the screen. The picture was of Miss Albright, laughing, her face radiant with joy, as she gazed up at the man she was pressed against. Her left hand was resting against his upper arm, and a ring twinkled on her engagement finger.
It was a small ring, nothing at all like the heirloom Buschetta ring he had given Princess Meribel on the occasion of their formal engagement. That ring had been carefully chosen from the famous Valenti royal collection as the one that would show not just her, but her family and her kingdom, how valued an alliance this one was. The ring, by the famous Casavallian jeweler, had been appraised at fifteen million dollars.
In retrospect, had Meribel accepted that ring with a look that suggested a certain resignation? Had she looked at the ring longer than she had looked at him? Certainly, there had been nothing on her face like what he saw in this picture of Miss Albright.
Carefully, Luca set the phone on a coffee table in front of the sofa. He could taste a strange bitterness in his mouth.
Love.
Obviously, that radiant look on Miss Albright’s face came from someone who loved and was loved.
It was the very thing he had trained himself never to desire, the thing that had nearly collapsed the House of Valenti when his father’s first marriage, a love match, had ended in abandonment, scandal and near disaster instead of happiness.
Luca had been taught by his father that love was a capricious thing, not to be trusted, not to be experimented with, an unpredictable sprite that beguiled and then created no end of mischief in a well-ordered life.
Meribel’s admission of loving another—of carrying another man’s baby—total proof that his father’s lessons had been correct.
And yet that glance at the photo of Miss Albright and her betrothed had made him feel the faintest pang of weakness, of longing for something he had turned his back on. Something unfamiliar niggled at him, so unfamiliar that at first he could not identify it. But then he knew what it was. He felt jealous of what he saw in the photo of Imogen and her man.
The feeling was unfamiliar to the Prince because, really, he was the man everyone perceived as having everything. Soon to be King, Luca had wealth and power beyond what anyone dared to dream.
And yet, what was the price? A life without love?
What was it like to love as deeply as Meribel loved, so deeply that the future of a nation could be jeopardized? What was it to feel that kind of joy? That kind of abandon? What would it be like to lose control in that way? To give oneself over to a grand passion?
His family’s history held the answer: to give one’s self over to a grand passion was an invitation to ruin.
And it seemed his father’s personal catastrophe, more than thirty years in the past, still had the power to wreak havoc. Had there been a child from the King’s brief first marriage? Was the claim real, or in this world so filled with duplicity, was it just a lie, a sophisticated extortion attempt of some sort?
Luca glanced once more at Miss Albright’s sleeping face.
He saw sweetness there, and vulnerability. He became aware of that feeling of protectiveness again, especially as he felt the chill deepening in the air. Still, he did not want to risk waking her by lighting the fire.
Instead, he saw a blanket tossed over the back of a wing chair, quietly made his way to it and went back and laid it over her.
Some extraordinary tenderness rose in him as the blanket floated down around her slender shoulders. He reminded himself that she was committed to another. Then he noticed her hand. The ring that had been in the photo was missing.
Not that that necessarily meant anything. Maybe she didn’t wear it to do chores.
Luca forced himself to move away from her, and once again went in search of something to eat.
He found a cozy dining room, and on a large plank harvest table, perfectly in keeping with the woodsy atmosphere of the Lodge, sat a single table setting and a bowl of soup—mushrooms clustered in a thick broth and garnished with fresh herbs.
Beside the soup was a plate of cheeses, gone unfortunately dry around the edges, along with strawberries and grapes. All were artfully placed. He considered that for a moment. He wondered if Imogen had been disappointed when he did not come for dinner. He sampled her offering, taking a slice of cheese. Unfortunately, it was as dry as it looked, but it piqued his hunger. He turned his attention to the bowl of soup. It probably only needed heating. Forgetting he would need power to do that, Luca scooped up the bowl and went in search of the kitchen.
CHAPTER FOUR
IMOGEN WOKE WITH a start, struggling to think where she was. Then she remembered. She had frantically come up with a plan for the Prince’s dinner, but when he had not come down for the meal she had been somewhat relieved. Her offering had hardly seemed princely!
Then she had come to her office, the place in the Lodge where the cell signal booster was located. She had tried desperately to get news of Rachel, but the thickening storm outside had made even intermittent service impossible. And then the power had gone out completely. It was the reality of life on a mountain, but sometimes nature’s reminders of human smallness and powerlessness could be incredibly frustrating.
She must have fallen asleep on the couch. But she didn’t recall
covering herself with a blanket. She pulled it tighter around herself, until only her nose peeked out. The Lodge was already growing cold. She would have to get up soon and light some fires, but right now...
A crash pulled her from the comfort of the blanket. The unmistakable sound of shattering glass had come from the direction of the kitchen.
Here was another reality of mountain life: the odd creature got inside. On several occasions raccoons had invaded. Once a pack rat, adorable and terrifying, had resisted capture. On one particularly memorable occasion—a framed picture in the kitchen giving proof—a small black bear had crashed through a window and terrorized the cook for a full twenty minutes before they had managed to herd it out the door.
Aware of these things, Imogen stood up and looked around, her eyes adjusting to the darkness. There was a very heavy antique brass lamp on the side table beside the sofa. She picked it up and slid off the shade. She tiptoed across the floor and down the short hall, past the dining room, to the kitchen. She took a deep breath and put the lamp base to her shoulder, as if it was a bat she might swing.
She went through the door and saw a dark shape huddled by the fridge. She squinted, her heart thudding crazily. Too big to be a raccoon. Wolverine? Small bear? What had the storm chased in?
“Get out,” she cried, and lunged forward.
The dark shape unfolded and stood up. It wasn’t a bear! It was a man.
“Oh!” she said, screeching to a halt just before hitting the shape with her heavy brass weapon. She dropped the lamp. The weight of it smashed her toe, and she heard the bulb break. She cried out.
The shape took form in front of her in less time than it took to take a single breath. It was Prince Luca. He took her shoulders in firm hands.
“Miss Albright?”
What kind of dark enchantment was this? Where a bear turned into a prince? Where his crisp scent enveloped her and where his hands on her shoulders felt strong and masterful and like something she could lean into, rely on, surrender some of her own self-sufficiency to? The pain in her foot seemed to be erased entirely.