by Cara Colter
She could have almost sworn the strength of what she felt for him shone in his eyes, too. But what did it matter?
He had given his heart to another, to Princess Meribel. And when that break healed—as she now knew hearts did, thanks to him—he would need a woman who could give him babies just like the one he held. Wasn’t that what she had seen in his expression as he gazed so tenderly at that baby?
Longing?
Royal families, as far as Imogen knew, did not adopt babies.
“Imogen,” Rachel said. “How lovely of you to come.” Cristiano nodded at her, and looked at her a little too long, as if he was trying to puzzle something through. But then he bowed slightly and left the room.
Imogen saw Rachel was surrounded by wrapping paper and boxes. A gigantic teddy bear took up one whole corner of the hospital room. The generosity and obvious expense of the gifts brought by the Prince made her own purchases seem small and redundant.
But you wouldn’t think so from Rachel’s reaction. She opened each package and was thrilled. She particularly loved the little bear receiving blanket.
“Will you hold him?” Luca had come over to Imogen’s side as Rachel unwrapped her parcels.
Imogen had been avoiding looking at him, and maybe avoiding the baby, too. It made her ache for a child of her own.
He carefully held out the baby to her, leaving her no choice but to take him.
She gazed into those small, perfect features and drank in the gorgeous smell of the newborn. She felt the sweet, warm weight of the baby melt into her. The feeling she had was not one of her own loss, but of a beautiful blessing the baby was giving the world with his mere presence.
“He’s so beautiful,” she breathed.
“Beautiful,” Luca agreed, but when she looked up at him, he was not looking at the baby at all, but at her. She felt her heart stop at what she saw in his eyes. She looked back at the baby and cooed.
“Can you believe a prince has come with gifts for my baby?” Rachel giggled.
Imogen looked at Luca, again. Yes, she could believe it.
The baby’s face scrunched up. His expression went from serene to furious in the blink of an eye. He stretched out, a tiny fist working free of the blanket and smacking Imogen in the cheek. His eyes opened—slate gray—and so did his mouth. He roared with indignation at finding himself in a stranger’s arms.
“He’s strong,” Luca said with approval.
“And he’s hungry,” Rachel said, reaching for him. Imogen and Luca left to give her privacy to nurse her baby.
As they left the room, Cristiano gave her that searching look again and then went to the end of the hallway, where he could watch over his Prince but still give them privacy.
“I thought you would be gone already,” Imogen stammered.
“I thought you would still be on the mountain.”
“The road was finally plowed this morning.”
“We’re leaving very soon. I wanted to see the baby first, and make sure Rachel was recovering well.”
“That was kind of you,” Imogen said stiffly.
He cocked his head at her. “Have I done anything to make you think I am unkind?”
“No, of course not,” she said hastily. But she felt as if her heart was on her sleeve. It wasn’t his fault she had fallen for him when he cared for another.
“I’ve hurt you in some way,” he said.
“No, not at all.”
“But you seem angry.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m not. I mean I do feel as if you tricked me, not letting me know you were here to see Gabi. My best friend is your sister! The news has kind of rocked my world.”
“And mine,” he said softly.
Of course, his.
“You must be in shock,” she said. “Gabi told me that she, not you, would be heir to a throne that is empty. She told me you want her to give it a chance. Why? She doesn’t want the job. She’s frightened and just wants to run the other way. Why not let her? Wouldn’t that be so much easier?”
“The easy choice is not always the correct one,” he told her. “Kingdoms are run by rules and protocol. Centuries-old traditions are the glue that holds them together in a world that changes very rapidly.”
“But you’ve been groomed to be the King of Casavalle for your entire life.”
“I will use what I have learned to help her.”
She looked at him. She looked at him hard. “Remember when you told me that my fiancé, Kevin, marrying another would be a blessing for me?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“This may be the same thing for you. When we had the snowball fight that day and built our snow family, you said to me you had never been as free as you were in those moments. If Gabriella takes the throne, your life will be more your own than it has ever been before.”
“That may be true,” he said.
“You are so like her, in so many ways. When you said that just now, your tone was exactly like Gabriella’s. Your tone and the tilt of your head. If I’d known you were related to Gabi, it would have explained a lot.”
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“I mean I felt as if I recognized you from the start. As if I knew you. Now I can see the family resemblance just tricked my subconscious mind. No wonder I felt as if I loved you. I recognized you were very like someone I did love. Barriers were removed that should have stayed in place. That would have stayed in place had you just told me the real reason you were at the Lodge in Crystal Lake.”
“You felt as if you loved me?” he asked, shocked.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IMOGEN REALIZED INSTANTLY that she had said too much. Way too much.
“That came out wrong. I felt as if I cared about you.” She was not sure that was an improvement!
“Past tense?”
She wished it was past tense, but she could not lie to him. “No, I suppose not,” Imogen said, and then, eager to change the subject, rushed on. “You need to go talk to your Princess,” she said.
“Gabriella?”
“Not that Princess!” It showed her what a serious turn her life had taken that she was trying to sort through princesses. “You need to talk to Meribel.”
“About?”
“How you feel.”
He regarded her thoughtfully. “You do something to me no one else has ever done.”
Imogen could feel herself holding her breath.
“You boss me around.”
Her disappointment was acute but she smiled with false brightness. She noticed he had managed to dodge the issue about how he felt about Princess Meribel.
“Nice to see you, Your Highness,” she said, her tone formal. “I wish you a safe trip back to your kingdom and a good life.”
“Don’t say that as though we will never see each other again.”
He sounded faintly pleading. It could weaken her resolve. On the other hand, the thing she did to him that no one else ever did was not the same thing he did to her that no one else had ever done!
“Since you are now related to one of my favorite people in the whole world, it seems likely we will see each other again.”
Did he look relieved?
She was entering into very dangerous waters.
Before he could read the turmoil in her face—before he could reach the embarrassing conclusion that she had indeed loved him—she leaned close to him.
“If you do anything—anything at all—to hurt my Gabriella you will have to deal with me. It won’t be pretty and it won’t be fun.”
His lips twitched. Annoyance or amusement? Being threatened was probably as new to him as being bossed around.
He nodded, and she still could not read the glint in his eye. Was he humoring her? Or did he understand just how com
pletely she meant business. She turned quickly on her heel and walked away from him.
Even though she wanted to, desperately, she forced herself not to look back.
* * *
Luca left Gabriella and Queen Maria together, and exited the room. His mother’s grace was matched by his sister’s and there was something about the two women together that made the future of Casavalle, despite the unexpected detours—or maybe even because of them—seem as secure as it ever had.
He passed through the front foyer of the palace. As Luca had told Imogen, Casavalle was getting ready for Christmas. The huge tree had been selected for the front foyer.
It soared upward, crowned at the very top with a lit angel. It was, as always, spectacular. Rather than filling him with a sense of the familiar, with homecoming, it made his heart ache for a lopsided tree, held up with strings and nailed to the wall.
Annoyed with himself for thinking so longingly of a much less spectacular tree, Luca shook off his sense of melancholy and headed for the palace secretary, Miles Montague’s, office.
Miles looked both pleased and relieved to see him. A mountain of work needed the Prince’s immediate attention.
“Prince Antonio has been doing a fine job in difficult circumstances,” Miles told him. “But he’s not you. We need you.”
Ah, to be needed. But for how much longer? Luca could just imagine the adjustment everyone was going to have to make when it was no longer him that they turned to for every decision.
But for right now the work would be a balm—all the stacks of papers that needed to be reviewed, projects awaiting approval, engagements to attend, meetings to be held. It was the very thing he needed to give him back his sense of being grounded in the world.
The secretary looked down at the stack of papers. Off the top he pulled the pink slips that came with phone messages.
“Let’s deal with this first. Have you ever heard of Tia Phillips?”
“No, I can’t say I have.”
“As I thought.”
“Who is she?”
“She’s been calling, insisting she’s friends with Prince Antonio. She says he knew her brother. But my question is, of course, what does knowing mean? That he shook his hand once at a ball? That he sat next to him at a charity function? I rebuffed her as kindly as possible, but she doesn’t seem to be taking no for an answer.”
“Probably Canadian,” Luca muttered.
“Sir?”
“Nothing, sorry.”
“Sir, do you ever recall your brother mentioning anyone with the last name Phillips, male or female?”
Luca shook his head. “I’m fairly certain I know all Antonio’s close friends by name. That one doesn’t strike a chord. Have you asked her how Antonio knew her brother?”
“She’s particularly unforthcoming in that department. She may have started crying when I asked her.”
Luca raised an eyebrow. “Nut?”
“Possibly. Stalker, perhaps? The insistence of her calls made me wary of passing on the message to Prince Antonio, particularly since he has his plate full. We’ve fielded stalkers before. I’m afraid if I ever put her through to the object of her attentions, we’d have an even bigger problem.”
“You didn’t think to just ask Antonio?”
“I preferred to ask you. I didn’t want to relegate the messages to the bin without running it past you first, sir.”
So, there it was. I preferred to ask you.
The people of Casavalle, and the staff at the palace, already saw Luca as King, as the one they could rely on to make decisions both large and small, the one they would turn to.
Of course, Miles not wanting to make the decision himself might also have been because Luca had expressed annoyance with him that Gabriella’s letter had made it to his mother simply for being marked Personal and Confidential.
It was obviously making Miles extra vigilant about which messages got through to the royal family and which did not.
Despite having been hard on Miles over the letter to the Queen, Luca knew himself to be more approachable than his father had been. He had thought it would be his signature—what set him apart from his father—when he assumed leadership.
“Just toss them,” Luca said of the raft of pink slips clutched in Miles’ hand. “We have far bigger things to deal with than some woman who has seen Antonio’s picture in a magazine, decided she is in love with him and made up some story to connect the two of them.”
“My assessment, exactly,” Miles said. He swept the papers into the bin beside his desk with a sigh of relief. “We do, indeed, have larger issues to deal with.
“Sir, since you released the statement calling off the wedding based on what you called irreconcilable differences, the people of Aguilarez seemed quite ready to renew old hostilities in defense of their Princess’s honor. They rushed to the conclusion that she had been jilted. By you. On the eve of her wedding!”
“Wars have started for less,” Luca said pensively.
“In a way it was a good thing that the truth was leaked, that the betrayal was hers, not yours. But now our people are furious. They feel the insult to you is an insult to Casavalle and to them, personally. I am getting reports that talk around the kitchen tables and in the pubs is of nothing else. How you’ve been scorned, and it’s a national disgrace that should be avenged.
“Naturally Aguilarez is reeling. I understand Princess Meribel is in hiding and the royal family will be having emergency talks. Her four siblings are en route to Aguilarez now.”
“We need to be part of developing a strategy to defuse this situation before it gets out of hand.”
“I was hoping you would have a suggestion, sir.”
“Arrange a meeting with her family.”
“Excellent.”
“Both families are going to have to work together to minimize damage. Our relationship with Aguilarez has come so far. We can’t risk it all on a matter of the heart.”
“No,” Miles said approvingly. “Matters of the heart have to be separated from functions of the state.”
But when Luca looked back over the history of the two countries, it seemed as often as not, hearts would not be ignored.
Look at his own father, risking everything to follow love.
Now Meribel doing the same thing.
It gave him a headache. Really? Could people not put their personal feelings aside for the greater good?
But when he thought of that, he thought of Imogen, and it seemed his own resolve wavered. If he had a decision to make that involved her welfare or the welfare of his kingdom, how pragmatic could he be?
I felt as if I loved you.
For the first time, Luca became shockingly aware that a part of him was answering her.
And it said, I felt as if I loved you, too.
And the thing was, that thought of loving Imogen, loving the time they had had together, loving the freedom and the comfort of being with her, didn’t make him feel bitter, as he had felt when Meribel had left him behind.
It made him feel better that he had had Imogen in his life even for a short while.
Stronger.
Wiser.
More able to do the right thing.
And suddenly, he knew exactly what the right thing to do was. He had to meet, not just with the royal family of Aguilarez, but with his former fiancée. Just as Imogen had suggested, he needed to talk to Meribel. And not just for the good of both their kingdoms.
He needed to do it for himself.
* * *
Piloted expertly by Cristiano, the royal helicopter had made the journey over the rugged mountains that separated the kingdoms of Casavalle and Aguilarez.
From the air, Luca looked down at the royal family’s grounds. The palace of the House of Aguilarez was more formidable, and less decorative, than his ow
n home. It was a fortress, its walls incorporating the strength of the mountain that stood directly behind it.
Prince Cesar Asturias was waiting to greet him as Cristiano held open the helicopter door after they landed on the ground. Despite Cesar’s reputation as an unapologetic playboy, Luca had always liked him, probably the best of all Meribel’s brothers.
“Your Royal Highness, welcome,” he said formally, bowing slightly.
“My brother,” Luca returned, and saw the immediate relief on Cesar’s face.
“I was hoping we would be brothers,” Cesar said. “I don’t know what the rest of the family will say today. A formal statement has been prepared and they may stick to it. But I want you to know how sorry I am.”
Luca clapped Cesar on the shoulder. “As I am about to tell your family, there is nothing to be sorry for. I am hoping that we can find other ways to resolve some of the growing hostility between our kingdoms. We’ve been at peace for two hundred years.”
“Two hundred and three,” Cesar said. “But who’s counting?”
Luca laughed. Cesar’s quick dry wit was one of the things that Luca enjoyed about him so much.
He was escorted through the palace. He had been here many times, particularly since his engagement to Princess Meribel, but he still noted the differences between this palace and his own home. It wasn’t just that there were no Christmas decorations here, yet, that made this palace more formidable, somehow. Even the artwork was darker and more warlike.
He and Cesar entered a conference room. The entire Asturias family had gathered, save for Meribel. But her mother, father and four brothers were all there, seated, their expressions grim.
Formal greetings were exchanged and then Luca was offered a seat. He looked around the table and felt some relief that his future did not hold Christmas dinners with this group of stern-looking warriors.
“Luca,” said King Jorge solemnly. “I wish to apologize for the actions of my daughter. She has brought shame to our house.”
“I want to suggest we all look at it differently,” Luca said.
The men in the room watched him warily. You did not walk into another man’s kingdom and disagree with him.