The Princess and the Rebel Billionaire

by Sophie Pembroke

  And he was just lucky he got to experience that for a week, before going back to the real world.

  Isabella rolled away from him, leaving his skin cooling in the breeze from the open window as she lay beside him on the huge bed. Last night, lying in his own bed next door, he’d felt frustrated, adrift and alone. Before that, he’d felt unsettled and aroused and distracted by being around her.

  Now, he only felt sated, relaxed and as if there was nowhere in the world he’d rather be.

  He blinked at the thought. When had he last felt that way?

  Speeding around the racetrack, it was a familiar feeling—especially as he cornered the last turn before the flag. But outside a racing car? That feeling was a lot harder to find.

  On the top of a mountain, perhaps, looking out at the blue sky and great depths below. The second when he jumped from a plane, in the moments before he opened his parachute. Or when he sprang away from that cliffside and dived towards the water—before he broke his leg, of course.

  But those highs only ever lasted until he reached solid ground again. Until the race was over, the adrenaline gone.

  Until now.

  He’d travelled the world on one adventure after another, taking bigger and better risks, beating the odds—chasing the adrenaline high that reminded him he was alive, when so many others weren’t. He’d taken chances that terrified the people around him so much that they’d sent him here, a last-ditch attempt to keep him safe and out of trouble.

  And here, in Isabella’s bed, he’d found that same peace he hunted for, that same high.

  He just had a feeling it also came with a whole different sort of trouble.

  Shifting onto his side, he watched Isabella’s chest rise and fall as her breath slowly returned to normal.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ The question was out of his mouth before he had a chance to think whether he really wanted to know the answer. Because the odds of Princess Isabella of Augusta feeling the same as him right now seemed slim.

  They both knew what this week was about, and it wasn’t about transcendental feelings of satisfaction with the world. It wasn’t about him finding a way to get his adrenaline high that didn’t involve breaking any bones or taking any risks. Although he knew his team wouldn’t mind if that was the case...

  This wasn’t a permanent solution. This was one week, that was all. Princess Isabella wasn’t about to turn to him and tell him he’d so rocked her world that she loved him and wanted to make him her prince.

  Which was good, because he didn’t want that either.

  Still, he couldn’t help but smile when she turned her face towards his and said, ‘Do you think there’s any more food downstairs? I’m starving.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ISABELLA HADN’T BEEN lying when she told Matteo she was hungry. But as he laughed and pulled on his jeans to go and raid the kitchen for her, she had to admit she hadn’t been telling the whole truth, either.

  She’d been thinking about taking chances. And how good it felt to take a risk for a change.

  How buttoned up had her life been? Oh, maybe it wouldn’t have been obvious to the casual onlooker. To someone who only knew her through her publicity photos or the palace’s social media channels, she must seem the ultimate carefree princess. Never having to worry about the things that consumed so many other people’s lives—like having a roof over their heads or enough money for food or keeping their family healthy and well. She’d always had a home at the palace—not to mention the ‘summer house’, a mansion in the hills of Augusta where the court could decamp in the hot weather—and royal property she could use throughout the country. She’d never had to prepare her own food, although since she’d been an adult her rooms had their own kitchen where she could cook, if she chose. Meals—no, banquets—had been the norm in the palace. The best doctors in the land—in Europe, the world—had been at their beck and call when required.

  Isabella wasn’t playing poor little rich girl. She knew how lucky she was.

  It had just taken until now to realise what freedom truly felt like.

  ‘I’m starting to think the staff here might be psychic.’ Matteo pushed the door open with his knee, grinning as he appeared with a heavily laden tray. ‘That, or we were a lot louder than I’d thought.’

  Isabella pulled herself up to rest against the padded headboard, the sheets falling away from her body and leaving her bare from the waist up. ‘What did they leave us?’

  Matteo didn’t answer immediately, apparently too busy admiring the view as his gaze roamed over her torso. Isabella didn’t reach for the sheet to cover herself.

  Yesterday, I would have done.

  Yesterday, she’d have been embarrassed at the idea of someone listening to her having sex, and providing snacks ready for afters. Yesterday, she’d have blushed at the blatant ogling Matteo was indulging in.

  Today...today she felt like a different person. Had done since that moment by the lake when she made her decision to embrace the possibilities of this week.

  And she wasn’t done embracing yet.

  ‘I’m getting hungrier, here,’ she teased, and Matteo gave her a shameless grin before setting the tray down on the bed and perching beside it.

  ‘We’ve got coffee, cookies, some sort of gooey cake...plenty of sugar to keep our energy levels up.’

  ‘Good.’ She smiled up at him—her best princess smile. ‘I think you’re going to need it.’

  Later, quite a lot later, when the cake was demolished to crumbs, the dregs of the coffee were cold, and Isabella’s muscles were relaxed to the point of melting into the mattress, Matteo turned on his side and propped his head up on one hand.

  ‘What changed your mind?’ he asked as he studied her.

  Isabella tried not to shift uncomfortably under his gaze. After all, the man had touched, tasted and loved every inch of her body over the course of the last handful of hours. Maybe longer; the sun looked a lot lower in the sky than she’d have thought...

  ‘Changed my mind about what?’

  ‘About me.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘I mean, last night I definitely got “this is not behaviour befitting a princess” vibes from you. But today...’ He left it hanging, their mutual nakedness doing all the talking for him.

  ‘Maybe I just decided that I deserved a week off from being a princess.’

  ‘And is that something you do often?’

  ‘Never.’ Except that was a lie, and here, beside him in her bed, Isabella found that she didn’t want to lie to Matteo. Not even to preserve her reputation, or the monarchy of Augusta’s reputation, come to that. ‘Once,’ she amended.

  Curiosity flared behind Matteo’s green eyes. ‘Tell me? I mean, if you want to. Since you’re just being Isabella this week, not a princess.’

  ‘And this is something normal people do? Talk about their romantic disasters?’ She wouldn’t know. Her family had told her to lock it away inside her, pretend it never happened. Deny everything if Nate ever tried again to make another story out of it—although she suspected that Leo had paid him enough to make it worth his while to pretend it hadn’t happened, either, after the initial flurry of press.

  ‘This is something that normal people do,’ Matteo confirmed. ‘Well, some of them, anyway.’

  ‘Not you?’

  ‘I don’t have romantic disasters.’

  ‘Just cliff-diving ones.’

  ‘Just those,’ Matteo confirmed, with a grin.

  ‘Although...that’s not what the gossip magazines say.’ Isabella shifted closer, her hands under her head as she curled towards him. ‘They’re forever talking about which heart you’ve broken now.’

  Matteo rolled his eyes. ‘You shouldn’t pay any attention to them. They’ll say anything to get people to buy a copy.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Isabella teased. ‘There are a lot o
f photos of you...’

  He reached over to brush his hand over her waist, almost light enough to tickle, before pulling her closer. ‘Is this the part where I tell you none of them meant anything before you?’

  It was her turn to roll her eyes, now. ‘If this was a normal M dating agency week of passion, or whatever they call it, probably. But I think we both know neither of us are here for that. So the truth will do just fine instead, thank you very much.’

  Matteo loosened his hold on her side, and flopped onto his back. ‘The truth? No one ever seems to care about that.’

  ‘I do.’ Because she knew she couldn’t trust herself to interpret the world without it. People lied, all the time, and she wasn’t sophisticated enough in the way of life outside the palace to even tell when it was happening.

  ‘Fine. I like women—I like their company, and, well, I like sex.’

  ‘I noticed,’ Isabella said, with a smirk.

  She didn’t add, ‘So do I.’ Because she hadn’t known that she did, not like this. Not until today.

  And that was a discovery she was still adjusting to.

  ‘But I’m always upfront with women about what I can offer,’ Matteo went on, oblivious to her omission. ‘I’m not in the market for a serious relationship, or anything more than a few nights of fun. I’ve got too many other things to do.’

  ‘Like go cliff diving.’

  ‘And win world championships.’

  Isabella stretched out her legs under the thin sheets, feeling her well-used muscles protest at still being expected to move. ‘But you’ve done both of those things now,’ she pointed out. ‘What else is on your list?’

  There was a pause she didn’t expect after her question. Not one that felt as though Matteo was trying to think of something to say, or remember what daring plans he had next. More as though he was trying to decide whether to share it with her.

  She wondered how outrageous it had to be, for that.

  Finally, he moved to sit up against the headboard, and reached for his phone, swiping across the screen a few times before handing it to her.

  She’d expected a website or a booking email or something—perhaps for deep-sea diving in the Red Sea, or a trek into the Himalayas. Instead, she found herself looking at a photo of a handwritten list.

  He had an actual list.

  Except...she frowned at the carefully printed words at the top of the page in the photo.

  Giovanni Rossi’s Bucket List

  This wasn’t Matteo’s list. Even though she could see that he’d carefully crossed out plenty of items on it—including cliff diving. And becoming the racing world champion.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, handing back the phone.

  Matteo took it from her, glanced at the screen with an indecipherable look on his face, then placed it back on the table beside him. He looked...lost, somehow. She hadn’t expected that from him, especially after the self-assuredness he’d shown in bed.

  On impulse, she nestled closer, until he wrapped one arm around her shoulder as she rested her head on his firm chest.

  ‘My brother,’ he said, eventually. ‘Giovanni. He was three years older than me.’

  Isabella heard the was and knew that nothing that followed was going to be good.

  ‘He was the daredevil, when we were kids,’ Matteo went on, a fond smile on his face. ‘Always the one getting into scrapes or trying the impossible just to prove that he could.’

  He fell silent, and Isabella could feel the weight of that silence in the air around them.

  ‘What happened to him?’ she asked, when she couldn’t bear it any longer.

  She’d braced herself for a car accident, or some other sort of dangerous, reckless end. Which was why Matteo’s reply made her gasp at the tragedy of it all.

  ‘He was diagnosed with terminal cancer when I was sixteen.’ His words were flat, emotionless, but Isabella could tell that was through practice. He said it the same way she said Nate’s name, these days, and it had taken her years to perfect that emptiness between the syllables. Nath-an-ial. Ter-min-al. They sounded the same in her head.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Matteo.’ Isabella pressed a soft kiss to his skin and wished there were more she could do. But grief was grief, wasn’t it? Whatever the cause, it was personal, and permanent.

  He shrugged, and she felt the shift of his muscles under her cheek. ‘It was a lot of years ago, now. Seventeen, almost.’

  ‘Still. He was your brother.’ Nathanial had been her world, and he didn’t even have the good grace to be dead.

  ‘Yeah.’ Matteo slumped a little lower against the headboard, pulling her closer until her whole body half covered his. ‘After he got sick...he made this list. All the things he’d wanted to do in his life but was never going to get the chance. I... I helped him. Because I think, even then, I thought he was going to get better. I thought it would give him something to look forward to, once the treatment was over. But instead...’ She felt him swallow and wrapped her arm a little tighter around him. ‘He died. And I was just left with this list. So I promised myself—promised him, really—that I’d do every single damn thing on it. Everything he didn’t have time to do. Everything that was taken from him. And I am. I have.’

  Become world champion. The list item floated in front of her mind’s eye. Had Matteo based his whole career on his brother’s dying wish list?

  She couldn’t ask that. She’d only known the man a couple of days, however much some algorithm somewhere said she was his perfect match.

  But she could hear the grief in his voice—still there, not diminished at all by every challenge he crossed off his brother’s bucket list. Unresolved.

  ‘So what’s next?’ she asked instead. ‘What’s left on the list?’ Because as far as she could tell, almost everything had been crossed off.

  ‘Well, even Giovanni didn’t envision making love to a princess,’ Matteo joked, although there wasn’t any real humour in his voice. ‘So... I guess I’m pretty much done. Becoming world champion...that was his big dream, and I did it. And went cliff diving to celebrate.’

  Isabella half smiled at that. ‘I guess that means you’ll have to start writing your own list now, then, huh?’

  ‘I guess it does.’ There was a hint of amazement, disbelief even, in his tone. But it was gone before she could even be totally sure it was there at all, as he twisted them around so she was underneath him again, and all she could think about was how right his body felt against hers. As if they were two parts of the same whole.

  ‘But the list can wait?’ she guessed as he pressed her further into the mattress, his arousal obvious against her belly.

  ‘The list can definitely wait,’ he agreed, before kissing her.

  She hadn’t answered his question.

  Matteo didn’t realise it until he awoke to the early morning light filtering through the gauzy curtains that barely covered the glass front of the villa. In fairness, he’d been far more preoccupied with all the things she had been telling him—more, now, again—to focus on the conversation she’d sidestepped.

  But lying there in the pale June dawn, with Isabella’s body curled against his, he realised, and he wondered.

  How had she persuaded him to tell all his secrets about Giovanni, about the list, about why he did the things he did, and still managed to evade telling him anything about herself? In fact, beyond the small detail of her being a princess, he wasn’t sure he’d found out anything personal about her at all.

  Was that part of being royal? The ability to ask polite questions and listen to the answers without ever giving anything in return? He didn’t know. Isabella was the first royal he’d ever spent real time with, beyond the polite niceties, and he had a suspicion that she wasn’t exactly typical.

  He looked down at her, sleeping in his arms, and considered what he did know abou
t her.

  She wasn’t looking for true love.

  She hadn’t been enamoured of any of the suitable prospective husbands Augusta had thrown up.

  She hadn’t come here through her own choice.

  She wanted a break from being a princess—and she’d done that only once before...

  What had happened then? Matteo was willing to place money that someone had hurt her. Someone had made her this way—cautious and careful. And if she was letting that go this week, with him... Matteo wasn’t sure he could bear to see her go back to her buttoned-up ways afterwards.

  Ever since he’d admitted that the chemistry between them was unavoidable, he’d hoped. He’d flirted and he’d hinted and he’d hoped—but he hadn’t really expected. He’d figured a week of frustration and an inappropriate royal crush was probably punishment from the universe for something—maybe the broken leg, maybe the hearts he knew he’d broken, even when he’d been trying not to.

  But he hadn’t imagined this. Hadn’t dreamt for a moment that their second full day together would lead to a race to the jetty and that kiss...not to mention everything that came after.

  His position hadn’t changed; he was the same man who’d seen a curvaceous brunette on the terrace below and hoped.

  But Isabella...she’d become someone new overnight. Consciously, intentionally. She’d made a decision to be Just Isabella, rather than the Princess—but Matteo knew without her having to say the words that it wasn’t a permanent change. This week was a holiday from being herself. Except, having seen how free and alive she seemed... Didn’t she deserve to be that way all the time?

  He wondered if he could convince her. If he could show her, in the days they had left together, that she could be whoever she wanted to be—not just in Lake Geneva, but in Augusta, too.