Princess From the Shadows

“Why is that?”

“Because I don’t live here at the palace. I don’t even live on the island. I live in Italy. My home is there, my … everything.” She didn’t know what stopped her from saying something about Luca. Maybe because he hadn’t mentioned him. The whole thing seemed so mercenary. So cold. Adding him to it … it just seemed wrong.

“Fine. We’ll stop in Italy on our way to Santa Christobel.”

Oh, yes, and pick up her five-year-old with Mr. Tall, Dark, Sexy and Imposing standing in the doorway with that mocking grin of his. No thank you.

“I can make my own way to Santa Christobel,” she said archly. “I need time to prepare.”

“Have a lover you need to cast off before we get married?”

She nearly snorted. She’d lived the past few years completely abstinent after only one, near emotionally fatal affair. “Oh, yes, a stable of them. You?”

“I don’t intend to cast anyone off.”

“Excuse me?”

He shrugged. “I don’t intend to cast off any lovers just because I’m getting married.”

Her stomach twisted. Men. They really were all the same. Cheating, lying jerks who only cared about pleasing their sex drives. “I hope you don’t think you’ll be in my bed then. I don’t share.”

A slow smile spread over his handsome face, teeth bright white against his tan skin. “I do.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I don’t ask for what I don’t give.”

“Fidelity?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, I ask for fidelity.” I’ve never gotten it, but I’d like it. “And if you’re going to be in my bed, you won’t be in anyone else’s.” She couldn’t believe she was even talking about beds and sex with a man she’d only just meant.

It was making her face hot, and not, she suspected, from embarrassment. From that nearly six years of celibacy maybe. From the thought of a man’s hands, his hands, on her skin again. Kissing. Caressing.

She shifted and tried to ease the knot in her stomach with a deep breath. That was one part of marriage that wouldn’t be so bad.

Unless he’s actively sleeping with other women the whole time.

Yeah, that was a definite no-go for her. And anyway, contemplating sleeping with him was … he was a stranger and it was bad with a capital B.

“We will discuss this no more. Not now.”

She raised her brow. “Excuse me?”

“It is immaterial. Fine details you and I will work out later. For now, the real question is, will you marry me?”

He didn’t get down on one knee or anything, thank goodness, because that would have been just too much. He stood in front of her, arms crossed over his broad chest, a knowing smile curving his lips. He exuded confidence. Charm. That kind of cocky, arrogant sexiness that said he knew just what he could make a woman feel.

He wasn’t the first man she’d met who exuded those things.

He took a step toward her, his dark eyes trained on hers, and for a moment, it felt like the world had closed in on them. So that it was just the two of them.

Rodriguez didn’t touch her, he didn’t even make a move to touch her, and yet she felt like he had. Could feel the warmth coming from his hard body and she wasn’t afraid of him putting his hands on her, she was wishing he would. Aching for it.

“A simple question, a simple answer,” he said. “Yes or no?”

She met his dark gaze, her heart hopping in her chest like a caged bird making a bid for freedom. She opened her mouth to speak but her throat was dry. She swallowed, trying to find her balance, her confidence.

Trying to find the woman that knew all about men like him, who knew that charm was nothing more than smoke and mirrors; that sex, no matter how fulfilling or meaningful she might find it, was nothing more than a little bit of amusement for men like him, and that they would leave the woman to pick up the check. A week’s worth of fun for them, could mean a lifetime of payment for the woman involved.

It had for her.

And she would never be that stupid again. She would never again buy into the kind of sweet lies that could be issued from wicked, sexy mouths like his. Not even if she was married to the charmer.

Married. Was she really going to marry him? Could she really go back to her father and tell him she’d decided not to?

“Yes,” she said, the word weak, breathless. She cleared her throat. She didn’t do weak and breathless. Not anymore. She’d made the decision, she would stand strong in it. “Yes, I will marry you.”

CHAPTER TWO

HE WAS a small boy. He barely came to the top of Carlotta’s hip. Dark hair, the same green eyes as his mother.

His mother. Carlotta.

Dios.

He knew it, the moment he saw her bend and help the little boy from the back of the limo when they’d pulled up to the palace, knew from the moment he saw the boy’s face. That same sullen expression, the stubborn chin, he was hers.

He had inherited a child, along with a fiancée.

Part of him knew it shouldn’t matter. That it didn’t truly change anything. He and Carlotta had been planning on having children. He needed an heir after all. That he would be a father one day was, and had always been, a given.

Another part of him felt a kind of bone-deep terror that had been absent from him since he was a boy himself. He remembered that day, the day when his emotions had finally given beneath the strain of living a life beneath his father’s iron fist. The day his emotions had deserted him entirely.

Well, that fear he’d thought long gone was here now. Because of the boy. Reflected in the boy. He was afraid, his eyes wide on the castle in front of him. It couldn’t be his first time seeing a palace. His grandmother and grandfather were the rulers of Santina. He was a Santina.

Carlotta looked at him, her green eyes hard. “Hello.”

“Hola,” he said.

“Hi.” This from the boy.

Rodriguez looked down at him, swallowing, trying to bring some moisture to his suddenly dry throat. It seemed like the right thing to introduce himself to the boy. Did you introduce yourself formally to a child?

Annoyance mixed with uncertainty. Carlotta had managed to catch him off guard twice now. They were the only two times it had happened in his recent memory. This wasn’t a trend he liked.

He would just approach the chiild as he would an adult. “I am Prince Rodriguez Anguiano. What is your name?” That earned him little more than a wide-eyed stare from those green eyes.