By Royal Decree: Royally Romanced

Renata stared at him, realizing all his focus was back on business. Well, he was a prince after all. What did she expect? He certainly had more responsibilities than the junior executives she saw running around New York with a phone attached to their ear and several other devices attached to their belts. It would be negligent of him to avoid his country’s business, even for a week.

She remembered how easily her own place was running despite her being gone. Of course Flick was doing sales and management only, not design. If Giorgio thought some of her wedding dresses were wild, she could only imagine Flick’s ideas. Knowing what her friend thought of holy matrimony, it would probably have an embroidered panel of Edvard Munch’s The Scream over the bodice and tiny handcuffs stitched in metallic steel gray over the skirt.

Renata stifled a giggle but Giorgio heard her. He winked at her and grinned.

It was like when one of her brothers elbowed her in the solar plexus and knocked the breath out of her. She actually had to suck in air before she swooned off her wedge sandals at His Sexy Highness.

Giorgio had been drawn back into his princely duties and didn’t realize what he’d done to her. Since when did a casual smile make her give goo-goo eyes to a man who wasn’t paying her a bit of attention?

On the other hand, maybe that was a good thing. She was sure if she looked into a mirror she would be absolutely mortified at her mushy expression.

She mentally slapped herself and escaped with some shred of dignity before she tossed his phone over the balcony and shoved herself into his arms.

She stepped carefully down the narrow stone stairway from their little apartment. The fresh air outside was a welcome relief to her overheated self.

As if summoned by a genie rubbing a lamp, Paolo appeared across from the foot of the steps, trying to look inconspicuous in a village of six hundred people who were probably all related to each other.

“Paolo?” She beckoned to him and he looked around as if she were talking to some other giant security man named Paolo. Who, me?

She huffed in frustration and strode over to him. “Honestly, Paolo, you don’t need to follow me. Nobody’s going to mess with me in a tiny town like this.”

He just stared at her. She tried again in Italian. “I will be fine. No problema. Go check on him.” She waved her hand in the direction of the villa. “Signorina, he is fine. On the phone much time, not go out. But you are here. With me, no problema for you.”

Paolo was dead serious. Good Lord, a few days of nooky with His Royal Highness and she needed a bodyguard? Besides Giorgio, of course, who was jealously guarding her body whenever he could.

But what possible trouble could she find in a quiet morning of shopping in a small Italian town? “Paparazzi?” she asked.

He nodded seriously.

“You know if anyone bothers me I’ll brain them with a bottle of Scciachetrà.” She mimed whacking somebody over the head, and his mouth turned up a millimeter or two. Positively a guffaw from anyone else. “Oh, all right.” She sighed and rolled her eyes like the worst teenage drama queen. “Let’s go.” She silently vowed to take him into the pharmacy and spend twenty minutes in the “feminine protection” aisle.

But off they went, Paolo hanging fairly far behind her so she at least didn’t have to try to converse with the man in her Brooklyn Italian, which consisted mainly of curses and food items.

She bought herself a nice cappuccino at a café where the barista sketched a heart into the foam with chocolate syrup or something. Paolo, apparently not needing to eat and drink like a normal human being, declined. Then it was off to the stores. Renata found a boutique that had items from all over the Riviera. A length of lace from Portofino for Aunt Barbara, a small model of Christopher Columbus’s ship La Santa Maria for her father, who had been in the U.S. Navy. A carved wooden Madonna and Child for her mother, who was still asking the Holy Mother to find Renata a husband, and a bottle of limoncello lemon liquor for her grandmother, who had given up on Renata and turned to drink. Actually her grandmother had always loved anything with lemon.

She considered buying jars of the famous Ligurian anchovies in olive oil for her brothers, but the idea of carrying four glass jars of oily fish home in her luggage was enough to make her quail. So they each got a miniature wooden version of a ship’s figurehead—long-haired and bare-breasted, of course, so all the guys at the police and fire stations could get a yuk out of it.

By then she was famished and collared Paolo. “I’m hungry and these are heavy. You carry the packages, and let’s eat.”

She picked a quiet trattoria on a side street that had great smells coming from it and dragged him in. “Mangia, mangia.” Paolo stood awkwardly next to her tiny table, blocking the waiter who was lugging a big tray of soup and antipasti.

“Come, sit.” She motioned him into a chair. He hesitated but seemed to acknowledge he was drawing more attention standing like a Roman statue in the middle of the restaurant.

“Grazie, signorina,” he muttered.

“You are most welcome. What is good to eat?”

“Here, the fish.”

“Ah, of course.” No concerns here that the fish had sat in the back of a delivery truck for a dangerous amount of time. “You like pulpo?”

His eyes lit up and he nodded. A fellow octopus devotee. She loved it, too, but hadn’t wanted to order it in front of Giorgio since eating the chewy seafood was less than sexy.

“Okay, why don’t you order pulpo and whatever else you think is good.”

The octopus was cut into rounds and deep fried. Renata and Paolo chewed their way through an order. Really, she didn’t understand why people hated octopus. When it was fresh, it was almost tender.

“Good octopus, right, Paolo?”

He nodded.

“Does your boss like octopus?”

He finished chewing and gave her a considering look. Probably he’d been pumped for information before about Giorgio, but decided his master’s preference for invertebrate seafood was not a state secret and nodded. The few days she’d spent with Giorgio were much more juicy than his eating habits but she wouldn’t be one to blab.

The soup was tomato based with seafood and herbs with fresh garlic toast rounds plopped right on top and the main course was a whole fish cooked with white wine, lemon and herbs.

“He like this soup,” Paolo offered. “We make this at home.”

“It’s very good.” She noticed how Paolo never mentioned Giorgio or Vinciguerra by name and figured it was part of security. “What else do you eat at home?”

“Our part is more del nord—north. We like polenta, sausage, much butter and crema. Meat roasts and risotto. Good food.”

It was the longest speech she’d ever heard. Food was close to his heart. “You should write a cookbook for recipes from—” She’d almost slipped and mentioned Vinciguerra. “From your home.”

He made a self-deprecating sound. “Nobody need a cookbook. Everybody know how to cook.”

“Oh, no, we don’t.” Renata had to be the only Italian-American girl in New York who could goof up a pot of pasta. “Think about it. Everybody thinks Italian food is spaghetti and meatballs. You could do something different.”

“Okay, signorina.” He was humoring her.

“Look at me, Paolo. Does New York need another dress designer?”

He shrugged in puzzlement.

“I’ll tell you—it doesn’t. But I didn’t care. And now the, um, other signorina has a nice dress and is very happy.”

“Yes, is true. She tell me so. And tell me, and tell me.”

Renata snorted with laughter. Ol’ Paolo had a sense of humor after all. “I’m glad to hear it. A beautiful girl.”

“Si, si.” They smiled at each other at their mutual fondness for Stefania.

Renata took a sip of coffee but declined dessert, having filled up on the delicious focaccia in addition to the rest of her meal. If she stayed in Italy much longer, she was going to get a shape like her grandmother, who resembled a Magic 8-Ball in her black dresses.

Ah, well, all the walking and romping around with Giorgio would help. He’d shown no signs of slowing his pace, so she was running out of new lingerie to show him. She’d passed a pricey boutique earlier—maybe that was the place to go.

She set down her cup. “One more stop and then we can go back.”