Temporarily His Princess

Three

“How long?”

Glory winced at her best friend’s shrill stupefaction.

She was already regretting telling Amelia anything. But Glory had felt her head and heart might explode if she didn’t tell someone. And it couldn’t have been her mother. Glenda Monaghan would have a breakdown if she knew what her husband and son had been up to. Or what they were in danger of if Glory didn’t go through with Vincenzo’s “deal.” The “take it or I send your family up the river for life” deal.

Glory smirked at her best friend’s flabbergasted expression. “Don’t you think you’re going about this in reverse? You keep asking me a question right after I answer it.”

Amelia rolled her long-lashed golden eyes. “Excuse me, Ms. Monaghan. We’ll see how you’ll fare when I come to you saying I was once on mouth-to-mouth-and-way-more terms with a prince of freaking Castaldini, who happens to be the foremost scientist and businessman in the clean-energy field, and that he now wants to marry me.”

“Only for a year,” Glory added, her heart twisting again.

Amelia threw her hands, palms up, at her. “There. You’ve said it again. So don’t get prissy with me while I’m in shock. I mean…Vincenzo D’Agostino? Whoa!”

Glory emptied her lungs on a dejected sigh. “Yeah.”

Amelia sagged down on the couch beside her. “Man. I’m trying to compose this picture of you with Prince Vastly Devastating himself, and I’m failing miserably.”

Glory’s exhalation was laced with mockery this time. “Thanks, Amie, so kind of you.”

“It’s not that I don’t think you’re on his level!” Amelia exclaimed. “Any man on any level would be lucky to have you look his way. But you haven’t been making any XY chromosome carriers lucky since the Ice Age. You’ve been such a cold fish….” She winced then smiled sheepishly. “You know how you are with men. You radiate this ‘do not approach or else’ vibe. It’s impossible to imagine you in the throes of passion with any man. But now I’m realizing your standards are just much higher than us mere mortal women. It’s either someone of Vincenzo’s caliber or nothing. Or—” realization seemed to hit Amelia, making her eyes drain of lightheartedness, then fill with wariness “—is it because it’s Vincenzo or nothing? Is he the one who spoiled you for other men?”

Glory stared at her. She’d never thought of it this way.

After the brutal way Vincenzo had ended their affair, she’d been devastated, emotionally and psychologically. For the next year, she hadn’t thought beyond stopping being miserable. After that, she’d poured all of her time and energy into changing her direction in life.

It had taken Vincenzo’s kicking her out of his life, and out of her job, to make her realize the fatal flaw in her unwavering quest for security and stability. She’d known then that there could be neither, emotional or financial. If the man she’d thought to be her soul mate could destroy both with a few words, she wouldn’t count on anything again. She’d decided to give her heart and skills to the world and hope they’d do it more good than they’d done her.

The more she’d achieved, the more in demand she’d been. For the past five years, she’d been constantly on the go, living out of a suitcase, setting up and streamlining multiple humanitarian operations across the globe. If she’d wanted intimacies, they would have had to be passing encounters. And those just weren’t for her.

But now, after Amelia’s questions, she had to pause and wonder. Had one of the major attractions of that whole lifestyle been the legitimate and continuous way of escaping intimacies?

Glory loved her job, couldn’t ask for anything more fulfilling on a personal or professional level. But it had given her no respite, no time or energy for self-reflection or reassessment. Had she unconsciously sought that flat-out pace to make herself too unavailable? Too consumed to even sense anything missing? So she didn’t have to face that she’d always be a one-man woman? That for her, it was Vincenzo or nothing?

Amelia must have read the answer in Glory’s silent stare, for she, too, exhaled. “Did he break your heart?”

“No. He…smashed it.”

Amelia frowned, expression darkening. “Okay, now I hate the guy. I saw him a few times on TV, and I don’t know how I didn’t peg him for a slimeball! I thought he sounded like a pretty decent guy, no airs, and even with his reputation, I remember wondering how he demolished the stereotype of the royal playboy. I thought being a scientist saved him from being a narcissistic monster. But I stand corrected.”

The ridiculous urge to defend him overpowered Glory. “He isn’t…wasn’t like that. He’s—he’s just… I don’t know.” She shook her head in confusion. “It’s like he’s two—no, three people. The man I fell in love with was like you describe him—honorable, sincere and grounded in his public life, focused, driven and brilliant in his working one, and sensitive, caring and passionate in person. Then there was the man who ended things with me, cold and callous, even vicious. And finally there’s the man I met today. Relentless and dominating, yet nothing like the man who took everything seriously, or the man who relished humiliating me.”

“Humiliating you?” The edge to Amelia’s rising fury was a blade against Glory’s inflamed nerves. “And now he’s asking you to marry him to fix his reputation? And don’t say ‘only for a year’ again or I may have to break something. I can’t believe I was excited at first! Tell him to take his short-term-lease-marriage offer and go to hell.”

Glory had always thought Amelia as magnificent as a golden lioness. She now looked like one defending her cub. Her reaction warmed Glory even through the ice of her despondency. “You mean you wouldn’t have told me to tell him that anyway?”

“No, I wouldn’t have. I mean, you’re not in the market for a regular marriage anyway, then comes Prince Very Delicious offering you a year in a fairy tale with a ten million dollar cash bonus. If he wasn’t a scumbag who seems to have crippled you emotionally for life, I would have thought it a super deal for you. Now what I want to know is how dare he approach you of all people with his offer?”

Glory hadn’t shared Vincenzo’s reason for picking her. As the one “convenient”—not to mention compromised—enough for his needs. Again. She exhaled and escaped answering.

Amelia harrumphed. “But it doesn’t matter what he’s thinking. If he bothers you after you say no, I’ll have my Jack have a word with his teeth.”

Imagining Jack, a bear of a man and a bruiser, pitted against the equally powerful but refined great feline Vincenzo suddenly brought a giggle bursting out of her.

Pulling back from the edge of hysteria, Glory’s laughter died on a heavy sigh. “I’m not looking for an intervention here, Amie. I only wanted to…share. I—” she barely swallowed back have to “—already decided to say yes.”

Amelia gaped at her. Glory hadn’t told her of Vincenzo’s ultimatum, either. If she did, Jack and his whole rugby team would be after Vincenzo. Then Vincenzo would gather all those hulking wonders he had for cousins and it would probably lead to a war between the U.S. and Castaldini….

She suppressed the mania bubbling inside her, and focused on overriding Amelia’s vehement objections. “It’ll only be for a year, Amie. And just think what I can do for all the causes I’m involved in with ten million dollars.”

Amelia snorted. “Not much. That would barely supply a few clean-water stations. If you’re foolish enough to put yourself within range of the man who hurt and humiliated you, I’d ask for a hundred million. He can afford it, and he’s the one who needs to scrape a mile-deep of dirt from his image with your shining one. At least you’d be risking annihilation for a good enough cause.”

Glory smiled weakly at the firebrand she had for a best friend. She’d met Amelia five years ago while working with Doctors Without Borders. They’d hit it off immediately—two women who’d worked all their lives to become professionals, then discovered, each through her own ordeal, that they needed a cause, not a career. As a corporate and international law expert, Amelia had made it possible for Glory to accomplish things she’d thought impossible. Amelia always insisted Glory’s business and economic know-how were more valuable than law—in a world where money was a constant when everything else was mercurial.

“I wanted you to take a look at this….” She reached for the hardcover prenuptial agreement as if reaching for a bomb. She dropped it in Amelia’s lap as if it scalded her and attempted a wink. “That’s mainly why I told you. To get your legal opinion on this little gem.”

Amelia stared at the heavy volume in her lap with the gilded inscription proclaiming its nature. “I’d say this is a huge one. And from the looks and weight of it, I’m not sure gem is the right word for it, either. Okay, let’s see what Prince Very Disturbing has to offer.”

Unable to sit beside her as she read Vincenzo’s terms, Glory got up and went to the kitchen.

While she searched for something to do, she tried telling herself that, considering the situation, the prenuptial shouldn’t disturb her. She’d never seen one, and she had no knowledge of marriage laws. Maybe this language was standard within every marriage where one party outranks the other in position and wealth a thousandfold.

She wasn’t poor, but financial ease had ceased to be a goal to her. She’d settled for having no debts, and a few inexpensive needs. But in comparison to Vincenzo with his Midas touch, she guessed she would rank as destitute. Maybe he had to consider his investors when he dealt with anything that could affect him financially. Maybe even his board of directors had a say in his financial decisions, and in today’s world, marriage was one.

But did he have to go that far with the prenup, as if he was safeguarding himself from a hardened criminal? Or was it she who didn’t know what was too far?

She’d made apple pie from scratch and baked it by the time Amelia entered the kitchen with the volume tucked beneath her arm, and a thundercloud hanging over her head.

Amelia slammed the prenup on the island with a huff of disgust. “The only thing he left out was the number of cutlery pieces that have to be accounted for before he gives you the ‘latter portion of the monetary settlement at termination of contract term’!”

Glory’s heart kicked her ribs. “It’s that bad, huh?”

“Worse. This guy is making provisions for provisions, as if he’s dealing with a repeat offender known for ‘stealing kohl from the eye,’ like I heard they say in Castaldini.”

Just what Glory had been thinking.

Now that Amelia had confirmed her suspicion, her confusion deepened. Why all this? So a man in his position had much to lose, but he was forcing her to serve a sentence in lieu of her family. Could he really think she’d want to prolong it, or try to bribe him or cause any trouble at its end?

But those extensive precautions said that he did. Why? Because of her family’s history? Didn’t he already know she had nothing to do with her father’s and brother’s actions and choices? With his surveillance and investigations, he must know she’d had very little to do with them in the past years. She maintained close relations with her mother, who had nothing to do with her husband’s and son’s transgressions and stupidities. Or was Vincenzo just this paranoid with everyone?

He had been very cautious with people in general. She’d thought she’d been the exception, that he’d been totally open and trusting with her. Yeah, sure. Just like she’d thought he’d felt anything for her.

It had all been a lie. A mirage. This was the reality. That he’d never bothered to know anything about her. No, worse, that he thought the worst of her.

Amelia’s harrumph brought Glory out of her musings. “You wanted my opinion? Based on a prenup like that, and the rest of this man’s pattern of behavior? Go for a billion dollars, Glory. Up front. And right after the wedding, go for his balls.”

*

After Amelia had given her verdict on Vincenzo’s offer and Vincenzo himself, she’d insisted on going over the “submission contract.” She’d spent the rest of the night dissecting it, and writing down in lawyer-speak what Glory would ask for instead. It was past two in the morning by the time Amelia left, and not of her own accord. Glory had to pretend to fall asleep on the couch to convince her she couldn’t take anymore.

Not that she’d wanted to sleep. In fact, she’d known sleep would be an impossibility tonight. Maybe every night from now on. As long as Vincenzo was back in her life.

Her sleeping patterns had already been irrevocably changed since she’d first met him. First, with nights of longing, then ones interspersed with repeated lovemaking, then memories and miseries. She’d only had a measure of her old sleeping soundness restored when she’d maintained a schedule that knocked her out for the five or six hours she allotted for rest.

Right now she felt she was back in the bed of thorns of post-Vincenzo devastation. Even worse. Now she was caught in his maelstrom again, in a far more ambiguous relationship than ever before; she felt she was lying on burning coals.

But apart from the shock of her family’s crimes and Vincenzo’s outrageous “offer,” what really shook her were those last minutes at his penthouse.

Everything inside her had surged so fiercely in response, it had incapacitated her. Outraged her. That after all the heartache and humiliation, he only had to touch her, to tell her he wanted her, that she’d been the best he’d ever had, to have her body come to life, proclaiming him its master…

A classic ringtone sundered the stillness of the night.

Jerking up in bed, her heart thundered, unformed dreads deluging her. Her mother. She’d been fragile since her last round of cancer treatments months ago. Something had happened….

She fumbled for the phone, almost dropping it when she hit the button to answer. A deep-as-night voice poured into her brain.

“Are you awake?”

Gulping down aborted fright, anger flooded in to replace it, dripping into her voice. “It figures. You had to be one of those unfeeling, self-absorbed people who wake up others to ask if they’re awake.”

Dark amusement tinged his fathomless voice, making her almost see, taste, the smile that tugged at his lips. “You sound awake.”

“I am now, thanks to a royal pain.”

A bone-liquefying reverberation poured right into her brain, yanking at her responses. “So you still wake up ready.”

He didn’t say for what. He didn’t need to. She’d been always ready for anything with him, on waking up in his arms. Even now, when her mind wanted only to roast him slowly over an open fire, her body obeyed his inexorable influence, readying itself with a languid throb of remembrance and yearning.

And that was before his voice dropped another octave as he whispered, “If I woke you up, I’m glad. I shouldn’t be the only one who can’t sleep tonight.”

“Your conscience weighing on you?” Her voice, to her dismay, was rough and thick, aroused, nowhere as demolishing as she intended it to be. “Or have you long had that removed? Or has it always been genetically missing?”

His chuckle was louder this time, more enervating. “Its deployment hasn’t been required in our current situation. As I mentioned before, my offer is beneficial to everyone, starting with you. Now enough of that. What did you decide?”

“You mean I can decide? Now, that’s a new development.”

“It’s a few-hours-old one. I already made it unquestionable that it’s up to you. I just couldn’t wait till morning for your verdict.”

“Good thing that you called, so I wouldn’t have to wait to tell you that I never want to see or hear from you again.”

“That’s not on the menu of options open to you. Being my temporary princess is a done deal. And as such, you’ll see plenty of me. I’m only inquiring if you’ve decided to see all of me.”

Her huff was less exasperated with him than disgusted with the clench of longing at his lazy, overpowering seduction. “I guess you decided to develop a sense of humor and you had to start from scratch. I must have your late blooming to thank for this juvenile double-talk.”

“I apologize for my trite attempts at euphemisms.” He sounded serious all of a sudden. Just as she wondered if she’d finally managed to offend him, his voice plunged into the darkest reaches of temptation. “So when will you let me strip you naked, worship and own and exploit every inch of your mind-blowing new curves for my pleasure and yours? When will you let me kiss and caress you within an inch of your sanity, suckle and stroke you to a few screaming orgasms before sinking inside you and riding you into oblivion?”

Breath sheared out of her lungs, heartbeats fractured against her ribs. The surge of images crowded her mind’s eye with memories of her desperation for his touch and assuagement.

She’d asked for that when she’d taunted him. Not that she’d thought he’d say…

“Mind-blowing new curves?”

She almost groaned. She couldn’t believe that was what she’d latched on to in all the mind-melting things he’d just said. Seemed body-image issues were so hardwired that they’d override even the heart attack he’d almost given her. But she had put on weight she wasn’t happy about and couldn’t believe he found it appealing.

“Ah, si, bellissima, every inch of you has…appreciated. You were always gorgeous down to your toes, but the years have ripened you into something impossibly…more. I ached the whole time you were at my penthouse to test and taste every remembered wonder, every new enhancement. I am now in agony to explore and devour every part of you. And I know you need every part of me, too, on you, in you. I can feel your arousal echoing mine even at this distance. But if you think you’re not ready yet, I’ll come…persuade you. I’ll remind you what it was like between us, prove to you how much better it will be now we’re both older and wiser and certain of what we want.”

Fighting another surge of response and haywire heartbeats, she said, “Now that I’m older and wiser, you think I’ll let you have me without guarantees, like when I was young and stupid?”

“You want a ring first? I can bring it with me right now.”

“No. That’s not what I meant….” She gulped, her head spinning. This was zooming beyond warp speed. Just a few hours ago she’d never thought she’d see him again. Now he was almost seducing her, over the phone no less, and she was a breath away from telling him to just hurry the hell over. “I didn’t mean material guarantees. I meant guarantees of being treated with respect when you decide I’m no longer ‘convenient.’ I don’t even have the advantage or excuse of obliviousness like I did when I believed you valued me.”

A silent moment followed. Then an expressionless drawl. “Let’s leave the past buried. We’re different people now.”

“Are we? Maybe you are, whatever the hell you are. But unlike you, I have one basic character, and I’m pretty much the same person I was six years ago. Just older and wiser, as you pointed out, and aware that what you’re suggesting would cause long-term damage. And mentioning that, if I become your ‘princess,’ temporary or not…”

“When you become my princess. Very soon. Though, with the necessary preparations, not soon enough. But say the word, and I’ll be worshiping your glorious body within the hour—”

She cut him off before she combusted. “I demand to have a say in the details, since I have no choice in the fundamental stuff. If part of this charade is a ring, then I want to choose it. You’ll have it back in the end, but I’m the one who’s going to be wearing it, and ‘only a year’ is still a long time.”

His voice suddenly lost the mind-scrambling sexiness and filled with a different passion. “Then you will choose your ring. And everything else you want. As my princess you can and will have everything you wish for.”

Her heart squeezed into her throat. “Weird. I have a two-hundred-page volume detailing how I can’t have anything.”

Silence stretched over long seconds.

A forcible exhalation followed. “That volume is only to…” He stopped again. As if he couldn’t find the right words. Which was even weirder. Vincenzo was never at a loss for words.

She decided to help him out. “Only to protect you from any opportunistic ideas I might develop at contract termination. So it’s strange you’re willing to be wide-open for those same ideas at its start. Not that I want anything from you, but I’m just observing the contradictions.”

Another long silence answered her.

Then another heavy exhalation. “I changed my mind.”

He did? He was taking back his offer of “everything”? Figured. That must have been his need to have sex talking. She must have managed to douse his desire and he was back to thinking straight, and taking back his reckless concessions.

Then he went on. “You don’t have to sign if you find it excessive. And you don’t have to make a decision now. And you are free to say no. Of course, I won’t stop trying to persuade you. But for now, you can go back to sleep. I’ll come for you tomorrow at five to pick the ring. Sorry if I woke you up.”

The line went dead.

She pulled the phone from her ear, staring down at it.

What was that all about? Had that been a fourth man inhabiting his body?

What was she walking into? And with which man? Or would it be with all of them? With him changing from one to the other until he drove her mad with confusion, insane with wanting him—whoever he was—and self-destructing in the process?

Not that she had any choice. She’d enter his den, and wouldn’t exit it for the next year. It was doubtful she’d exit in one piece.

No. Not doubtful.

Impossible.