A Royal Without Rules

“Working,” Lenz said drily. “She happens to be a great deal more than a pretty face.” He cleared his throat. “Speaking of which, the papers are having a grand time attempting to uncover the identity of your mystery woman.”

“Which one?” Pato asked, still smiling.

Lenz sighed. “And still the public adores you. I can’t think why.”

“We all have our roles to play.” He heard the restlessness in his voice then, the darkness. It was harder and harder to keep it at bay.

His older brother let out another sigh, this one tinged with bitterness, and Pato felt his own rise to the surface. Not that it was ever far away. Especially not now.

“I thought it would feel different at this point,” Lenz said quietly. “I thought I would feel triumphant. Victorious. Something. Instead, I am nothing but an imposter.”

Pato pulled on a pair of trousers and a shirt and roamed out of his dressing room, then around the great bedchamber, hardly seeing any of it. There was too much history, too much water under the bridge, and only some of it theirs. Chess pieces put in place and manipulated across the years. Choices and vows made and then kept. They were in the final stages of a very long game, with far too much at stake. Far too much to lose.

“Don’t lose faith now,” he said, his voice gruff. “It’s almost done.”

Lenz’s laugh was harsh. “What does faith have to do with it? It’s all lies and misdirection. Callous manipulation.”

“If you don’t have faith in this course of ours, Lenz,” Pato said fiercely, the rawness in his brother’s voice scraping inside him, “then all of this has been in vain. All of it, for all these years. And then what will we do?”

There was a muffled noise that suggested one of Lenz’s aides had poked a head in.

“I must go,” his brother said after another low conversation. “And this is about sacrifice, Pato, though never mine. Don’t think it doesn’t keep me awake, wondering at my own vanity. If I was a good man, a good brother…”

He didn’t finish. What would be the point? Pato rubbed a hand over his eyes.

“It’s done,” he said. “The choice is made. We are who are and there’s no going back.”

There was a long pause, and Pato knew exactly which demons danced there between them, taunting his brother, dark and vicious. They were his, too.

“Be as kind to Adriana as you can,” Lenz said abruptly. “I like her.”

“We are all of us pawns, brother,” Pato reminded him softly.

“Be nice to her anyway.”

“Is that a command?” The raw thing in him was growing, hot and hungry. And Lenz had never touched her.

“If it has to be.” Lenz snorted. “Will it work?”

Pato laughed, though it was a darker sound than it should have been. He thought of all the moving parts of this game, all they’d done and all there was left to do before it was over. And then he thought of Adriana Righetti’s sharp smile on her courtesan’s mouth, then the dazed expression on her face when he’d told her to kneel. And the heat in him seemed to simmer, then become intent.

“It’s never worked before,” he told his brother. “But hope springs eternal, does it not?”

His certainly did.

He found Adriana waiting for him as promised in the relatively small reception room off the grandiose main foyer of his lavish palace apartment. It was filled with fussy antiques, commanding works of art and the gilt-edged glamor that was meant to proclaim his exalted status to all who entered. Pato much preferred the flat he kept in London, where he wasn’t required to impart a history lesson every time a guest glanced at a chair.

She was every bit as beautiful as her famously promiscuous ancestors, Pato thought, standing in the doorway and studying her. More so. She stood at the windows that looked out over the cold, blue waters of the alpine lake surrounding the palace, impatient hands on her hips and her stiff back to the door, and there was nothing in the least bit beige about her. Or even henlike, come to that. She’d refastened her jacket, and he appreciated the line of it almost as much as he’d enjoyed ruining that line when he’d unbuttoned it earlier. It skimmed over the elegant shape of her body before flaring slightly at her hips, over the narrow sheath of the skirt she wore and the high heels that made her legs look long and lean and as if they’d fit nicely wrapped around his back.

And she had in her genetic arsenal the most celebrated temptresses in the history of the kingdom. How could he possibly resist?

Anticipation moved in him, hard and bright. He needed her with him to play out this part of the game—but he hadn’t expected he’d enjoy himself. And now, he thought, he would. Oh, how he would.

There were so many ways to be nice, after all, and Pato knew every last one of them.

CHAPTER TWO

TEN DAYS LATER, Adriana stood in the middle of a glittering embassy ballroom, a serene smile pasted to her face, while inside, she itched to kill Pato. Preferably with her very own hands.

It was a feeling she was growing accustomed to the more time she spent in his presence—and the more he pulled his little stunts. Like tonight’s disappearing act in the middle of a reception where he was supposed to be calmly discharging his royal duties.

Please, she scoffed inside her head, her gaze moving around the room for the fifth time, holding out hope that she’d somehow missed him before, that he’d somehow blended into a crowd for the first time in his life. As if he has the slightest idea what the word duty means!

“The prince stepped out to take an important phone call,” she lied to the ambassador beside her, when she accepted, finally, what she already knew. Pato had vanished, which could only bode ill. She kept her smile in place. “Why don’t I see if I can help expedite things?”

“If you would be so kind,” the ambassador murmured in reply, but without the sly, knowing look that usually accompanied any discussion of Pato or his suspicious absences in polite company. Nor did he look around to see if any women were also missing. Adriana viewed that as a point in her favor.

She had kept the paparazzi’s favorite prince scandal-free for ten whole days. That was something of a record, if she did say so herself. Her intention was to continue her winning streak—but that meant finding him. And fast.

Because Adriana couldn’t kid herself. She hadn’t contained Pato over the past ten days. He’d laughed at her when she’d told him she planned to try. She’d simply babysat him, making sure he was never out of her sight unless he was asleep. That had involved frustrating days with Pato forever in her personal space, always teasing her and testing her, then doing as he pleased, with Adriana as his annoyed escort. It had meant long nights unable to sleep as she waited for the inevitable phone call from the guards she’d placed at his door to keep Pato in and the parade of trollops out. All she really had going for her was her fierce determination to bend him to her will—his brother’s will, she reminded herself sternly—whether he wanted to or not.

Naturally, he didn’t want to do anything of the kind.

Though he was always laughing, always shallow and reckless and the life of the party, if not the party itself, Adriana had come to realize that Pato had a fearsome will of his own. Iron and steel, wholly unbendable, beneath that impossibly pretty face and all his trademark languor.

Tonight he’d simply slipped away from the embassy receiving line, showing Adriana that he’d been indulging her this whole time. Allowing her to think she was making some kind of progress when, in fact, he’d been in control from the start.

She could practically see his mocking smile, and it burned through her, making her flush hot with the force of her temper. She excused herself from the ambassador and his aides, then walked calmly across the ballroom floor as if she was headed nowhere more interesting than the powder room, nodding by rote to those she passed and not even paying attention to the usual swell of her loathed surname like a wake of whispers behind her as she went. She was too focused on Pato, damn him.

He would not be the reason she failed Lenz. He would not.

But Pato wasn’t corrupting innocents in the library, or involved in something sordid in any of the receiving rooms. She checked all of them—including every last closet because, the man was capable of anything—then stood there fuming. Had he left? Was he even now gallivanting about the city, causing trouble in one of the slick nightclubs he favored, filled as they were with the bored and the rich? How would she explain that to Lenz when it was all over the tabloids in the morning? But that was when she heard a soft thump from above her. Adriana tilted her head back and studied at the ceiling. The only thing above her was the ambassador’s residence… .

Of course. That bastard.

Adriana climbed the stairs as fast as she could without running, and then smiled at the armed guard who stood sentry at the entrance to the residence. She waved her mobile at him.

“I’m Prince Pato’s assistant,” she said matter-of-factly. “And I have His Majesty the King on the line…?”

She let her voice trail away, and had to fight back the rush of fury that swirled in her when the guard nodded her in, confirming her suspicions. She’d wanted to be mistaken, she really had.

And now she wanted to kill him. She would kill him.

Once on the other side of the ornate entryway, Adriana could hear music—and above it, a peal of feminine laughter. Her teeth clenched together, making her jaw ache. She marched down the hallway, stopped outside the cracked door where the noise came from, and then had to take a moment to prepare herself.

You already found him in bed with two women, a brisk voice inside her pointed out. You handled it.

She tucked her clutch beneath her arm, and wished she was wearing something more like a suit of armor, and not a sparkly blue gown that tied behind her neck, flowed to her feet and left her arms bare. For some reason, it made her feel intensely vulnerable, a sensation that mixed with her galloping temper and left her feeling faintly ill.