Temporarily His Princess

One



The present

Vincenzo Arsenio D’Agostino stared at his king and reached the only logical conclusion.

The man had lost his mind.

He must have buckled under the pressure of ruling Castaldini while steering his multibillion-dollar business empire. And being the most adoring and attentive husband and father who walked the planet. No man could possibly weather all that with his mental faculties intact.

That must be the explanation for what he’d just said.

Ferruccio Selvaggio-D’Agostino—the bastard king, as his opponents called him, relishing it being a literal slur, since Ferruccio was an illegitimate D’Agostino—twisted his lips. “Do pick your jaw off the floor, Vincenzo. And no, I’m not insane. Get. A. Wife. ASAP.”

Dio. He’d said it again.

This time Vincenzo found himself echoing it. “Get a wife.”

Ferruccio nodded. “ASAP.”

“Stop saying that.”

Mockery gleamed in Ferruccio’s steel eyes. “You’ve got only yourself to blame for the rush. I’ve needed you on this job for years, but every time I bring you up to the council they go apoplectic. Even Leandro and Durante wince when your name is mentioned. That playboy image you’ve been diligently cultivating is now so notorious, even gossip columns are beginning to play it down. And that image won’t cut it in the leagues I need you to play in now.”

“That image never hurt you. Just look where you are today. The king of one of the most conservative kingdoms in the world, with the purest woman on earth as your queen.”

Ferruccio shrugged amusedly at his summation. “I was only known as the ‘Savage Ironman’ in reference to my name and business reputation, and my reported…hazard to women was beyond wildly exaggerated. I had no time for women as I clawed my way up from the gutter to the top, then I was in love with Clarissa for six years before she became mine. But your notoriety as one of the world’s premier womanizers won’t do when you’re Castaldini’s emissary to the United Nations. You’ve got to clean up your act and spray on some respectability to clear away the stench of the scandals that hang around you.”

Vincenzo scowled up at him. “If it’s depriving you of sleep, I’ll tone things down. But I certainly won’t ‘get a wife’ to appease some political fossils, aka your council. And I won’t join your, Leandro’s and Durante’s trio of henpecked husbands. You’re all just jealous you can’t have my lifestyle.”

Ferruccio gave him that look. The one that made Vincenzo feel hollow inside, made him feel like putting his fist through his king’s too-well-arranged face. It was the pitying glance of a man who knew bone-deep contentment and found nothing more pathetic than Vincenzo’s said lifestyle.

“When you’re representing Castaldini, Vincenzo, I want the media only to cover your achievements on behalf of the kingdom, not your conquests’ surgical enhancements or tell-alls after you exchange them for different models. I don’t want the sensitive diplomatic and economic agendas you’ll be negotiating to be overshadowed or even derailed by the media circus your lifestyle generates. A wife will show the world that you’ve changed your ways and will keep the news on the relevant work you’ll be doing.”

Vincenzo shook his head in disbelief. “Dio! When did you become such a stick in the mud, Ferruccio?”

“If you mean when did I become an advocate for marriage and family life, where have you been the last four years? I’m the living, breathing ad for both. And it’s time I did you the favor of shoving you onto that path.”

“What path? The one to happily ever after? Don’t you know that’s a mirage most men pursue to no avail? Don’t you realize you’ve beaten impossible odds in finding Clarissa? That not a man in a million will find a fraction of the perfection you share with her?”

Ferruccio pursed his lips. “I don’t know about those odds, Vincenzo. Durante found Gabrielle. Leandro found Phoebe.”

“Only two more flukes. You all had such terrible things happen during your childhoods and youths, unbelievably good stuff has been happening later in life in compensation. Having lived a blessed life early on, I seem to be destined to have nothing good from now on, to even out the cosmic balance. I will never find anything like the love you all have.”

“You’re doing everything in your power not to find love, or to let it find you—”

Vincenzo interrupted him. “I’ve only accepted my fate. Love is not in the cards for me.”

“And that’s exactly why I want you to get a wife,” Ferruccio interrupted back. “I don’t want you to spend your life without the warmth and intimacy, the allegiance and certainty only a good marriage can bring.”

“Thanks for the sentiment. But I can’t have any of that.”

“Because you haven’t found love? Love is a plus, but not a must. Just look at your parents’ example. They started out suitable in theory and turned out right for each other in practice. Pick someone cerebrally and once she’s your wife, the qualities that logically appealed to you will weave a bond between you that will strengthen the longer you are together.”

“Isn’t that an inverted way of doing things? You loved Clarissa first.”

“I thought I did, with everything in me. But what I felt for her was a fraction of what I feel for her now. Going by my example, if you start out barely liking your wife, after a year of marriage you’ll be ready to die for her.”

“Why don’t you just acknowledge that you’re the luckiest bastard alive, Ferruccio? You may be my king and I may have sworn allegiance to you, but it’s not good for your health to keep shoving your happiness in my face when I already told you there’s no chance I’ll find anything like it.”

“I, too, once believed I had no chance at happiness, either, that emotionally, spiritually, I’d remain vacant, with the one woman I wanted forever out of reach while I was incapable of settling for another.”

Was Ferruccio just counterarguing with his own example? Or was he putting two and two together and realizing why Vincenzo was so adamant that he’d never find love?

Suddenly, bitterness and dejection ambushed him as if they’d never subsided.

Ferruccio went on, “But you’re pushing forty…”

“I’m thirty-eight!”

“…and you’ve been alone since your parents died two decades ago…”

“I’m not alone. I have friends.”

“Whom you don’t have time for and who don’t have time for you.” Ferruccio raised his hand, aborting Vincenzo’s interjection. “Make a new family, Vincenzo. It’s the best thing you can do for yourself, and incidentally, for the kingdom.”

“Next you’ll dictate the wife I should ‘get.’”

“If you don’t decide on one on your own, ASAP, I will.”

Vincenzo snorted. “Is that crown you’ve been wearing for the last four years too tight? Or is your head getting bigger? Or is it the mind-scrambling domestic bliss?”

Ferruccio just smiled that inexorable smile of his.

Knowing the kind of laserlike determination Ferruccio had, Vincenzo knew there was no refusing him.

Might as well give in. To an extent he found acceptable.

He sighed. “If I take the position…”

“If implies this is a negotiation, Vincenzo. It isn’t.”

“…it will be only for a year…”

“It will be until I say.”

“A year. This isn’t up for negotiation, either. There will be no more ‘scandals’ in the rags, so this wife thing…”

Ferruccio gave him his signature discussion-ending smile. “Is also nonnegotiable. ‘Get a wife’ wasn’t a suggestion or a request. It’s a royal decree.”

*

Ferruccio had eventually buckled. On Vincenzo’s one-year proviso. Provided that Vincenzo chose and trained his replacement to his satisfaction.

He hadn’t budged on the “get a wife” stipulation. He’d even made it official. Vincenzo still couldn’t believe what he was looking at. A royal edict ruling that Vincenzo must choose a suitable woman and marry her within two months.

This deserved an official letter from his own corporation telling Ferruccio not to hold his regal breath.

There was no way he’d choose a “suitable woman.” Not in two months or two decades. There was no suitable woman for him. Like Ferruccio, he’d been a one-woman man. Unlike him, he’d blown his one shot on an illusion. After six years of being unable to muster the least interest in any other woman he was resigned to his condition.

Though he knew resigned wasn’t the word for it. Not when every time her memory sank its inky tentacles into his mind, his muscles felt as if they’d snap.

He braced himself until this latest attack passed….

A realization went off in his head like a solar flare.

All these years…he’d been going about it all wrong!

Fighting what he felt with every breath had been the worst thing he could have done. After he’d realized none of it was going away, he should have done the opposite. He should have let it run its course, until it was purged from his system.

But it didn’t matter that he hadn’t done that before. Now was the perfect time to do it. And to let all those still-seething emotions work to his advantage for once.

A smile tugged at his lips, fueled by what he hadn’t felt in six years, what he’d thought he’d never feel again. Excitement. Anticipation. Drive. Challenge.

All he needed now were some updates on Glory to use in this acquisition. He already had enough to make it a hostile takeover, but more leverage wouldn’t hurt.

Wouldn’t hurt him.

Now, her—that was a totally different story.

*

Glory Monaghan stared dazedly at her laptop screen.

She couldn’t be seeing this. An email from him.

She drew a shaky hand across numb lips, shock reverberating in her every nerve.

Slow down. Think. It must be an old one….

No. This was new. She’d deleted his old emails. Though she had only two months ago. And by accident, too.

Yep, for six years, those emails had migrated from one computer to another with all of her vital data. She hadn’t clicked a mouse to scrub her life clean of his degrading echoes. She hadn’t gotten rid of one shred of him. Not his scribbled notes, voice messages or anything he’d given her or left at her place.

It hadn’t been as pathetic as it sounded. It had been therapeutic. Educational. To analyze the mementos and the events associated with each, to familiarize herself further with the workings of the mind of a unique son of a bitch.

The lessons gained from such in-depth scrutiny had been invaluable. No one had ever come close to fooling her again. No one had come close again, period. No one had surprised her, let alone shocked her, since.

Leave it to that royal bastard to be the one to do it.

She resisted the urge to blink in hope that his email would disappear. She did squeeze her eyes, but opened them to find it still staring back at her. His unread message, somehow bolder and blacker than the other unread ones. As if taunting her.

The subject line read An Offer You Can’t Refuse.

Incredulity swept inside her like a tornado.

But wait! Why was she thinking it was an actual email from Vincenzo? Some spammer with some lewd scam must have hacked into his account. Yeah. That was it. With a subject line like that, this had to be the only explanation.

Still…it was strange that Vincenzo hadn’t deleted her from his list of contacts.

Whatever. This email belonged in the trash.

But before she emptied it, her hand froze on the button, an internal voice warning, Do that and go nuts wondering what that email was really all about.

Okay. She had to concede that point. Knowing herself, she wouldn’t be able to function today if she didn’t know for sure.

But what if she opened it, only to find some nasty surprise? In the name of her quest for peace of mind, she should delete the damn thing.

God. That bastard was reaching through time and space, tugging at her like a marionette. Just an email with an inflammatory subject line had her spiraling down a vortex of agitation as if she’d never exited it.

Maybe she never had. Maybe she’d only been bottling it up, pretending to be back to normal. Maybe she did need some blow to jolt her out of her simulated animation. Maybe if this was an email from him, it would trigger some true resolution so she’d bury his memory once and for all.

She clicked open the email.

Her gaze flew to the bottom. There was a signature. His. This was from him.

All the beats her heart had been holding back spilled out in a jumbled outpour. And that was before she read the two sentences that comprised the message.

I can send your family to prison for life, but I’m willing to negotiate. Be at my penthouse at 5:00 p.m., or I’ll turn the evidence I have in to the authorities.

*

At ten to five, Glory was on her way up to Vincenzo’s penthouse, déjà vu settling on her like a suffocating cloak.

Her dry-as-sand eyes panned around the elevator she’d once taken almost every day for six months. The memories felt like they belonged to someone else’s life.

Which wasn’t too far-fetched. She’d been someone else then. After a lifetime of devoting her every waking hour to excelling in her studies, she’d reached the ripe age of twenty-three with zero social skills and the emotional maturity of someone a decade younger. She’d been aware of that, but hadn’t had time to work on anything but her intellectual growth. She’d been determined she wouldn’t have the life her family had, one of precarious gambles and failed opportunity hunting. She’d wanted a life of stability.

She’d worked to that end since she’d been a teenager, forgoing the time dump others called a social life. And she’d believed she’d been achieving her goal, graduating at the top of her class and obtaining a master’s degree with the highest honors. Everyone had projected she’d rise to the top of her field.

But though she’d been confident her outstanding qualifications and recommendations would afford her a high-paying and prestigious job, she’d applied for a position in D’Agostino Developments not really expecting to get it. Not after she’d heard such stories about the man at the helm of the meteorically rising enterprise. In his corporation, Vincenzo D’Agostino had grueling standards. He interviewed and vetted even the mailroom staff. Then he had vetted her.

She still remembered every second of that fateful meeting that had changed her life.

His scrutiny had been denuding, his focus scorching, his questions rapid-fire and deconstructing. His influence had rocked her to her core, making her feel like a swooning moron as she’d sluggishly answered his brusque questions. But after only ten minutes, he’d risen, shaken her hand and given her a much more strategic position than she’d dared hope for, working at the highest level, directly with him.

She’d exited his office reeling at the shock of it all. She hadn’t known it was possible for a human being to be so beautiful, so overpowering. She hadn’t known a man could have her hot and wet just looking at her across a desk. She hadn’t even been interested in a man before, so the intensity of her desire after one meeting had had her in a free fall of confusion.

But while she’d gotten a job she’d thought impossible, she’d thought the real impossibility would be him. Even if he hadn’t had an absolute rule against mixing work and pleasure, she couldn’t imagine he’d be interested in someone like her. Cerebrally, she knew she was pretty, but a man like him had stunning and sophisticated women swarming all over him, and she’d certainly been neither. Something he’d confirmed when he kicked her out of his life.

She’d been determined to stifle her fantasies so she wouldn’t compromise her fantastic position. At least she had until he’d called an hour later, inviting her out to dinner.

Silencing her misgivings about his change of M.O. and its probable negative effects on her career, she stumbled over herself saying yes. She’d thrown discretion to the wind and hurtled full force into his arms, allowing her existence to revolve around him on every level, personal and professional.

Yeah, she’d hurtled all the way off the cliff of his cruelty and exploitation. And she could only blame herself. No law, natural or human-made, protected fools from their folly.

But there’d been one thing she’d learned from that ordeal. Vincenzo didn’t joke. Ever. He was as serious as the plague.

In her eyes, it had been the one thing missing from his character back then. Of course, her eyes had been so filled with the plethora of his godlike attributes, she’d given the deficiency nothing but a passing regret. But that fact forced one belief on her. His email had been no prank.

She’d reached that conclusion minutes after she’d read it. After the first shock had passed, she’d gone through the range of extreme reactions until only rage remained.

A ping yanked her out of her murderous musings.

Forcing stiff legs to move, she stepped out into the hall leading to that royal slimeball’s floor-spanning penthouse.

Nothing had changed. Which was weird. She’d thought he would have remodeled the whole building to suit the changing trends and his inflating status and wealth.

He’d once told her this opulent edifice in the heart of New York was nothing compared to his family home in Castaldini. He’d pretended he couldn’t wait to take her there. His desire to take her there, and the prospect of visiting his home, had kept her in a state of constant anticipation and excitement.

But she hadn’t been able to imagine anything more lavish than this place. His whole world had made her feel what Alice must have felt when she’d fallen into Wonderland. It had alerted her to how radically different they were, how it made no sense that they’d come together. But she’d ignored reason.

Until he’d thrown her out of his life like so much garbage.

Another wave of fury crashed over her as she stopped at his door.

He must be watching her through the security camera. He always had, barely letting her enter before sweeping her away on the rapids of his eagerness. Or so she’d thought.

She glared up at where the camera was hidden. She still had the key. Another memento she hadn’t thrown away. He probably hadn’t changed the lock. Why should he have? With enough guards to stop an army, she wouldn’t have gotten here without his permission.

He probably expected her to ring the bell. Yeah, right. He might have dragged her here, but she was damned if he’d leave her waiting until he deigned to open the door.

She stabbed the key in, imagining the lock was his eye.

Her breath still hitched as the door clicked open, then again as she stepped inside.

He stood facing her at the end of the expansive sitting area, in front of the screen where he’d once displayed their videotaped sessions of sexual delirium as he’d drowned her in more.

Her heart clamored out of control as his steel-hued eyes struck her with a million volts of sexiness and charisma across the distance.

He’d once been the epitome of male beauty. Now he’d become impossibly more, his influence enhanced, his assets augmented.

Dressed in all black, he seemed taller than his six foot five, his shoulders even wider, his waist and hips sparser in comparison to a torso and thighs that had bulked up with muscle. His face was hewn to sharper planes and angles, his skin a darker, silkier copper, intensifying the luminescence of his eyes. The discreet silver brushing his luxurious raven hair at the temples added the last touch of allure.

But she wasn’t only checking off his upgrades against what she’d known…too intimately. She was reacting to him in the same way, with the same intensity she had when she’d been younger, inexperienced and oblivious of his reality.

Weird, this disconnect between mental aversion and physical affinity.

She could barely breathe, and that was before he spoke, his voice deeper, strumming hidden places inside her with each inflection, with that trace accent, those rolling r’s…

“Before you say anything, yes, I do have evidence that would send your father and brother to prison from fifteen to life. But you must already be certain of that. That’s why you’re here.”

Her momentary incapacitation cracked.

She moved steadily toward him, roiling rage fueling each step. “I know you’re capable of anything. That’s why I’m here.”

His eyes smoldered as they documented her state. “I’ll dispense with the preliminaries then and get to the point of my summons.”

She stopped feet away, scoffing, “Summons? Wow. Your ‘princehood’ has gone to your head, hasn’t it? But then, you must have always been this pompous and loathsome, and I was the one who was too blind to notice.”

Those sculpted lips that had once driven her to insanity twisted. “I don’t have time now for your scorned-woman barbs, Glory. But once my objective is fulfilled, I might accommodate your need to vent. It will be…amusing.”

Bringing herself under control, she matched his coolness. “I’m sure it will be. Sharks do relish blood. And that, along with anything I say to you or about you, isn’t a barb. Just a fact. So let’s stop wasting calories and get to the point of your ‘summons.’ What will it take so you won’t destroy my family? If you want me to steal some top secret info from your rivals, I no longer work in your field, as I’m sure you know.”

An imperious eyebrow rose. “Would you have, if you were?”

Her answer was unhesitating. “No.”

Something streaked in his eyes, something that looked like…pain? What made it even more confusing was that it was tinged with…humor? Humor? Vincenzo? And now of all times?

“Not even to save your beloved family?”

She wanted to growl that they were no such thing.

Oh, sure, she loved them. But they drove her up the wall being so irresponsible. They were why she was now at this royal scumbag’s mercy. He must have acquired some debts of theirs. And if he could send them to prison using those, they must be huge.

“No,” she said, more forcefully this time. “I was just analyzing the only thing you might think I have to offer in return for your generous amnesty.”

“That’s not the only thing you have to offer.”

For heart-scrambled moments it felt as if he meant…

No. No way. He’d told her in mutilating detail what an exchangeable “lay” she’d been. He’d discarded her and moved on to a thousand others. And he was known to never return to an already pollinated flower. He wouldn’t go to these lengths, or any, to have her in his bed again.

Her glare grew harder. “I can offer you a much deserved skull fracture. Apart from that, I can’t think of a thing.”

This time, the humor filling his eyes and lips was unmistakable, shaking her more than anything else had.

“I’ll pass on the kind cranial-reconstruction offer. But there is another alteration you can offer me that I vitally need.” His lips quirked as if at a private joke. “ASAP.”

“Will you stop wasting my time and just spit it out? What the hell do you ‘need’?”

Unfazed by her fury, he calmly said, “A wife.”