Beauty and the Reclusive Prince / Executive: Expecting Tiny Twins: Beauty and the Reclusive Prince

Marcello’s mouth was holding steady but his gaze was rife with amusement.

“Isabella, I think you’ve got it wrong,” he said carefully, as though teaching a lesson. “This is the Italian countryside, you know. As I understand it, vampires live in Transylvania. Am I right?”

Of course he was right, but she wasn’t going to admit it so easily. “Oh, so you think an Italian can’t be a vampire?” she demanded.

He shrugged grandly and almost rolled his eyes. “What do you think, Max? I’d say chances are slim.”

Max didn’t answer, but she wasn’t giving up. She shook her head and threw out her arms. “They say there are vampires everywhere.”

“I see.” Marcello was laughing at her again. “How many have you met yourself?”

She gave him a quick, sideways look. “Well…not many, I will admit.”

He nodded wisely. “Interesting.”

His attitude was really beginning to annoy her, but even worse was the way the prince stayed silent through it all. She wanted some reply, some indication as to how he felt about the things she was saying, and she was getting nothing at all.

“So you actually haven’t had a lot of experience with vampires.”

“Max is the only one so far,” she said tartly.

And that got the reaction she was after. Max swung around and came in front of her very much like the man who had swooped down upon her on horseback, bringing with him all the sense of power he seemed to carry with him, very much like that cape he’d worn.

“Miss Casali,” he said icily, staring down at her, his full scars exposed. “I may be many things, but I am not now, nor have I ever been, a vampire. If I start feeling a sudden craving for human blood, you’ll be the first to know. Until then, drop this nonsense.”

She swallowed hard, looking up at him. “Okay,” she said in a small, soft voice. His gaze held hers for only seconds, but it made its mark. She felt as though she’d just had a wild ride on a roller coaster and her insides were still in flight.

“Marcello?” he said pointedly, then turned back to pace the shadows.

His cousin moved in to start his examination of the patient and, for now, all bantering ceased. He started with a look at her black eye, and what he saw had him shaking his head in dismay. “Ice will help the swelling,” he told her after he’d checked to make sure there were no cuts or outright abrasions involved. “But the bruising will seem to go on forever. And there’s really not much you can do about that.”

There wasn’t much he could do about her bruised hip, either. He tested her reactions and pronounced nothing broken. But the cut on her leg was deep and he decided a few stitches were in order.

She sat back obediently and didn’t talk back. Her mind was swirling with emotions and reactions to the prince and to his fascinating life and home. What was she doing here? It was more than obvious she didn’t belong. But she wouldn’t have given up this chance at a taste of another sort of world for anything.

Max paced, then slumped into a chair and watched, feeling restless. He was torn. He wanted her out of here as quickly as possible. She disturbed everything about his life. And at the same time, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was bad news, but it was a sort of bad news it seemed he hungered for. Having her here made him remember the old days, when Laura was still alive and they traveled and held parties on the terrace and lived the life of international socialites, attending shows and meeting famous people and competing in yacht races and attending fabulous dinners in exotic locations. Their life together had only lasted a year and a half, but it had been an enchanted existence, a life of pleasure and comfort such as most people could only dream of.

It seemed almost too indulgent now, as he looked back on it. Maybe that had been the problem. Maybe they had taken things too much for granted. Maybe they had been too happy. Sometimes it seemed the fates wouldn’t allow too much happiness.

Isabella laughed at something his cousin said and he frowned, holding back the curt comment that came to mind. He seemed to remember a time when he might have been as good at the give and take as Marcello was now. But that time was gone. He didn’t expect he would ever get it back. Still, it was interesting to watch this playing out before him. It was so unusual to have a stranger among them.

She’d dropped into his world out of nowhere and she would soon go back to whence she came. But she was an anomaly and, with her bruised and swollen face, he almost felt as though they had something in common. That was ridiculous and he knew it. He was alone in his own private hell and no one else could understand what this was like. It would be best to get rid of her as quickly as possible.

Isabella knew he was watching her and his interest sparked a warm fire in her chest, a fire that was spreading and beginning to create such heat it scared her. It wasn’t that she was unused to male attention. She’d had that all her life. She was a beautiful woman, her features wide and sensual. She knew some men considered her extremely sexy. She’d never understood that. She didn’t feel very sexy. Most of the time she just felt as though she had too much to do and too little time to do it in. Men just sort of got in the way.

But men liked her. Still, she had a sharp tongue at times and didn’t suffer fools gladly, or any other way. Over the years, there had been very few men she’d thought were worth the effort.

Just recently her friend Gino had railed at her, accusing her of being cold and heartless. That had cut her to the core. He’d asked her to go with him on a weekend trip to Rome and she’d turned him down. In his disappointment, he’d charged her with living for her own immediate family and no one else.

“All you want to do is run this restaurant and make your father happy. You’ll never have children. You’ll be content to be an old maid, clucking like an old hen over your aging chicks, those worthless brothers and your old, sick father.”

She could dismiss Gino with no effort at all, but his words didn’t fade away quite so easily. The things he’d said echoed in her mind all the time lately. Was it true? Was she really so wrapped up in her little family that she’d lost the knack of feeling like a desirable woman? Would she never have room for a man in her life? What if he was right? What if there was something wrong with her?

But the things she’d been through tonight were relieving some of those doubts. She was all right. She could relate to men, on the level of friendship at the very least. Marcello obviously liked her and they got along famously.

And Max…He’d kissed her, hadn’t he? It had been a light, gentle gesture of healing, but still…A kiss was a kiss. Even in her ugly, bruised condition, he’d felt a pull in her direction. And she’d felt it too.

And that was just the problem. She couldn’t remember when she’d felt such a thrill at a man’s touch. It had been years. But was there any promise there? Of course not.

Come on, Isabella, she chided herself a bit sadly. He’s a prince. You work in a restaurant. So what if there seems to be a sensual connection that flares between the two of you every time your eyes meet? He may find you amusing for the moment—though evidence of that is pretty skimpy—but there is no way anythingreal can happen between the two of you. So you might as well forget it.

Marcello finished up giving her stitches and began to pack his equipment away in his little black doctor bag. He and Max talked back and forth for a moment, and then the prince said something that chilled her.

“We’re going to have to beef up security around here,” he was saying, not even looking her way. “I don’t want anyone near the river.”

She turned to look at him. Whenever the river was brought up, there was some undercurrent of emotion that she couldn’t quite pin down. What was it about the river that had so spooked this family?

“The dogs don’t do the trick?” Marcello said.

Max shrugged. “The dogs can’t be everywhere all the time. And they have to sleep. They’re dogs.”

Marcello grinned. “That they are. Have you thought of hiring guards?”

“No.” He flashed a warning look at his cousin. “You know I can’t do that.”

Marcello shrugged with resignation. “Of course.”

“We’ll put in an alarm service, with cameras. We’ll get state-of-the-art security going around here. No one will be able to slip through the cracks again.” He shrugged. “We should have done it long ago.”

Isabella sighed. That meant she wouldn’t get a second chance. What was she going to do? Hire James Bond? It didn’t seem likely.

Marcello headed back to his room to get some sleep. Isabella felt a flutter of nerves at being alone with Max again, but he treated her with distant politeness, making her sit closer to the fire to dry her hair while he dispatched poor Renzo off to get her car and bring it up for her. And then he began to pace the room again, staying as far away from her as he could manage.

Her conversational gambits seemed to have dried up with Marcello out of the room. She fluffed her hair in the warmth of the fire and racked her brain for a subject as the silence between the two of them got louder.

“I like your cousin,” she said at last, risking a quick look his way. “And I appreciate the medical attention.” She threw him a quick smile and made an attempt at a light joke. “You treat trespassers well around here.”

He gave her a piercing look, then turned back to stare into the fire. She noted he was getting less and less protective of the right side of his face. Did that mean he was getting less self-conscious? Or that he cared less what she thought?

“Yes,” he said at last, speaking slowly. “Marcello is my friend as well as my cousin.” He glanced her way. “He and I once looked very much alike,” he added softly, almost as though musing to himself. “People took us for brothers.”

She nodded. She could tell that, despite the scar. “He’s very handsome,” she said before she thought, then colored slightly as she realized how he might take that.

He glanced at her, eyebrow raised, but didn’t say anything. She didn’t speak again right away. She wanted to. She wanted to tell him his own face was so much more interesting than his cousin’s. It had all the beauty Marcello had, but it had something more—character, history, a hard and cruel story to tell. Just what that story was, she didn’t know, but there was passion there, and mystery, and heartbreak. It was a face for the ages, a map of human tragedy, a work of art.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized she preferred it. In fact, she found it beautiful in a rare and special way. But she couldn’t say those things—could she? He would think she was flattering him, perhaps even trying to get something from him.

“You are both very handsome,” she said at last, feeling a bit brave to say that much.