The Forbidden Prince
Raoul nodded slowly but his interest had been piqued. How many people were there in his world that quietly came and went, making life easier for himself and his family? Advisors and bodyguards. Cooks and cleaners. He’d never served anyone so he had no idea what life would look like from that kind of perspective. He was ashamed to realise he hadn’t even given it much thought.
Until now...
So that kind of job could change the way you saw the world... Was that what he needed to do?
There was only one slice of pizza left.
‘You have it,’ Raoul said.
‘No, it’s all yours. You’re a boy. You need to eat more.’
‘How about we go halves?’
Mika’s face lit up. ‘Okay.’ She tore the big triangle into two pieces and then eyed them up.
‘That one is bigger,’ Raoul pointed out. ‘You have it.’
Mika hesitated for a moment then she picked up the larger piece and took a big bite out of it before putting it down again.
Raoul snorted with laughter. ‘Okay, now they’re the same. I choose this one.’ He picked up the piece that now had a semicircle of tooth marks where the point of the triangle had been, his hand grazing hers as it passed. Or maybe it hadn’t actually touched her skin—it just felt like it had—because she didn’t move hers further away. His gaze met Mika’s over the slice as he bit into it...and there it was again...
That feeling of a connection he’d never felt before.
Was this what having a real friend was like?
Oddly, it was as exciting as that first flutter of physical attraction could be.
Mika washed down the last of her pizza with the last swallow of her beer. She sighed with contentment and then leaned back in her chair.
‘Right, mister. What are we going to do with you?’
The expression on her face was a mix of concern and a determination to fix things. She was fiddling with the charm on her necklace in a way that suggested it was an automatic accompaniment to a process of deep thought.
The irony wasn’t lost on Raoul.
‘Why do you wear a dolphin charm?’
Mika’s fingers stilled. She was staring at him with those huge eyes and Raoul felt that he’d stepped over a boundary of some kind. He’d asked a question that had personal significance and, right now, she was weighing up whether or not to trust him with an honest response.
‘It’s a symbol,’ she finally said softly. ‘Of being wild and free. And...and happy.’
The wistful note in her voice went straight to Raoul’s heart and struck a very unexpected chord.
Mika was searching for happiness, as everybody did, but she was already almost as wild and free as one of the beautiful creatures his homeland had been named for. She didn’t have to step into a life that was pretty much set in stone—a life that meant personal happiness was unimportant compared to the greater good. If happiness was there, as it had been for most of his life, it was a bonus.
Raoul envied her. Okay, there was a twinge of sympathy that she hadn’t yet found her ultimate happiness, but she was free to create it. To go anywhere and do anything that might help her reach her goal.
As if she knew she might have revealed too much, Mika lifted her hand away from the charm and pushed her fingers through her already spiky hair.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked bluntly. ‘I can’t go home and leave you out on the streets. Not when it’s my fault you’re in this predicament.’
‘What would you do, if you were me?’
She probably didn’t notice that her fingers strayed back to the dolphin charm. ‘I guess I’d find somewhere to stay and then I’d find a job. If you can get one like mine, you get at least one meal a day thrown in as well. It all helps.’
Raoul nodded. Something was falling into place in his head. Impressions and ideas that had been accumulating over the course of this dinner. He’d set out on this private journey to learn about himself but what if he was approaching his quest from the wrong angle? What if he actually needed to learn about other people? The invisible kind, like those in service? Or the individuals amongst a mass like the people he would very soon be ruling?
He could get himself out of his predicament with a simple phone call.
Or, he could embrace his situation by deciding that fate had provided an opportunity that would have been unthinkable even a few hours ago. He could see if he had the personal fortitude to face being homeless. Penniless and without even the prospect of a job. How many of his own people had faced a challenge like this at some time in their lives?
He’d been silent for so long that Mika was chewing her lip and frowning, as if she was trying to solve the problem of world peace rather than his own immediate future.
‘Have you ever worked in hospo?’
He shook his head. ‘Never.’
‘Oh...it’s just that our café is really busy with the start of the high season. I reckon you could get a job there too.’
‘I could try.’
‘You wouldn’t cope if you’ve never done it before. With no experience, probably the only job you’d get would be washing dishes.’ Her eyes widened. ‘The dishie we’ve got was talking about moving on yesterday. I’ll bet Marco hasn’t found a replacement yet.’
Washing dishes. Had he ever had to wash dishes? Meals away from his residential apartment at university had always been in restaurants, like meals away from the mess during his time with the military. As for the palace...he hadn’t even been near the kitchens since he’d been a small child in search of an extra treat.
Dishwashing was possibly one of the most ordinary jobs there was out here in the real world. And wasn’t ‘ordinary’ exactly what he’d set out to be in this time away from his real world?
‘I... I wouldn’t mind washing dishes.’
Mika’s nod was solemn. It was her turn to be silent for a while now. At last she spoke, and he could see by the way her throat moved as she swallowed first that she was making a huge effort.
‘I owe you one, Rafe...for today. There’s a couch in my room that you can sleep on tonight...as long as...’
She wouldn’t meet his gaze. There was something important that she didn’t want to say. Something about her body language reminded him of the hedgehog again. She was poised to curl into a ball to protect herself. With a flash, he realised what it could be and the thought was horrific. Had she been hurt by a man? Did that explain the way she’d reacted when he’d touched her? How hesitant she’d been to take his hand even when she’d been desperate?
‘Mika...’ He waited until she looked up and, yes, he could see uncertainty. It wasn’t fear, exactly, because there was a fierceness that told him she was well practised in defending herself. But she was clearly offering him something that was well out of her comfort zone.
He resisted the urge to touch her hand. Eye contact was more than enough, and even that he kept as gentle as he could. ‘We’re friends now, yes?’
Mika nodded but she wasn’t quite meeting his gaze.
‘You’re safe with me. I give you my word.’
She looked straight at him, then, and for a heartbeat, and then another, she held his gaze, as if she was searching for confirmation that his word was trustworthy.
That she found what she was looking for was revealed by no more than a softening of her face but Raoul could feel the gift of her trust as if it was solid enough to hold in his hands.
His vow was equally silent.
He would not drop that gift and break it.
CHAPTER THREE
WHO KNEW THAT military training would end up being so useful in the daily life of an ordinary person?
It meant that Raoul de Poitier was conditioned well enough that yesterday’s strenuous exercise had been no more than a good workout. It also meant that he’d been able to sleep on a lumpy old couch that was actually a lot more comfortable than sleeping on the ground.
He’d tapped into a bit of initiative in making the best use of available resources, too. Mika had a laptop computer and he’d borrowed it for long enough to send an email to his grandmother to let her know he was safe but not to expect to hear from him for a little while.
Mika had been busy with her technology for a while after that, downloading photographs she had taken that day, her busy tapping suggesting she was adding notes to the images. Her frequent glances away from the screen told him that she wasn’t entirely comfortable having him share this small space; the idea to turn the couch around so that the back of it faced into the small room came to him in a flash of inspiration. The effect of the change had been to create the illusion of a wall and, once he was lying down—with his legs bent and his knees propped on the wall—he couldn’t see Mika in the single bed that was only a few feet away. Any tension ebbed as it became apparent that the arrangement would give her more privacy as she worked and then slept.
The bathroom facilities were shared with all the other occupants of the rooms on that floor of the old boarding house. That had been more of a shock than Raoul had expected after a lifetime of a sparkling clean, private en suite bathroom always having been available but, on the plus side, there was no queue at this early hour of the morning.
Mika wasn’t due to start her shift in the café until eight a.m. but it opened at six a.m. and she was taking him in to meet the owner, Marco, in the hope that there might be some work available for a new dish-washer. She’d used the bathroom first and came out in her uniform of a short black skirt and a fitted short-sleeved black shirt. It was an outfit designed to cloak a member of the army of invisible people and, when Mika tied on a pretty white apron with a frill around its edge, he realised the uniform was probably also intended to make her look demure.
The shirt certainly covered the tattoo on her arm but Raoul doubted that anything would make Mika look demure—not with that aura of feistiness, combined with the impression of intelligence that one glance at her face was enough to discern.
‘It’s a horrible job,’ she warned Raoul. ‘A dishie has to be a food-hand as well and help with the food prep to start the day, with jobs like chopping onions and making sauce, and then he has to keep up with all the dishes as soon as service starts, and that’s not easy.’
‘I’m sure I could get up to speed.’ How hard could it be to do such menial work? This was the twenty-first century. Even a small establishment would have commercial dishwashing machines, surely?
Mika turned a corner as they headed downhill towards the beach. They walked past a series of shops still shuttered and sleeping in the soft light of a new day.
‘Dishies get yelled at by the chefs if they get behind,’ Mika continued. ‘The waitresses hate finding they’ve suddenly run out of cutlery or something and the barista will have a tantrum if he runs out of coffee cups.’
‘Who’s in charge?’
Mika looked up to grin at him. ‘Marco thinks he is but everybody has to keep the head chef happy. A dishie is right at the bottom of the pecking order, though. He has to keep everybody happy.’
Raoul wondered where the waitresses fitted into the pecking order. He would do his best to keep Mika happy if he got this job.
It was a surprise to realise how much he wanted to get this job. It wasn’t simply the opportunity of gaining a different perspective on life—the idea of it was beginning to tap into a yearning that went way back.
Didn’t every kid dream of being invisible at some time? And maybe that fantasy had more meaning to those who grew up under a very public spotlight. He would be visible to the people he worked with here, of course, but it felt like he would be stepping into an alternative reality. Nobody who knew him would expect to see him in this kind of work and that would be enough to make him blend into the background, even if they took notice of the people who spent their lives in service of some kind.
‘Here it is.’ Mika began to cross the cobbled street to a shop front that had canvas awnings over the footpath. The name of the café was printed on the dark terracotta canvas in big, white, cursive letters—Pane Quotidiano—the ‘Daily Bread’.
A short, middle-aged man with a long, white apron tied around an ample waist was lifting wrought-iron chairs from a stack to position around small tables. ‘Buongiorno, Marco.’
‘Buongiorno, Mika. Why are you so early?’
‘I’ve brought a friend—Rafe. He needs a job. Is Pierre still here?’
Marco threw his hands in the air and his huff of breath was exasperated. ‘He walked out yesterday, would you believe? Demanded his money and that was that.’ Raoul was receiving a shrewd glance. ‘You got any experience?’
‘I learn fast,’ Raoul replied in Italian—the language Mika was speaking with impressive fluency. ‘Try me.’
Marco had his hands on his hips now as he assessed Raoul.
‘He speaks English,’ Mika put in.
‘And French,’ Raoul added. And Dauphinesque, but that was hardly likely to be useful to the majority of tourists this café served, and he had no intention of giving anybody such a clue to his nationality.
‘Makes no difference.’ Marco shrugged. ‘All he needs to know is how to follow orders and work hard.’
‘Try me,’ Raoul said again. He should probably have added ‘please’ but, curiously, it rankled that he was being assessed and possibly found wanting. Not something he was used to, that was for sure.
‘One day,’ Marco said grudgingly. ‘You do a good job, I will hire you. Mess up and you won’t get paid for today.’
A glance at Mika gave him another one of those lightning-fast, telepathic messages. This was a good deal and, if he wanted the job, he’d better grab the opportunity.
Marco was clearly confident he had an extra set of hands for the day, at least.
‘Finish putting these chairs out,’ he told Raoul. ‘And then come back into the kitchen. Mika? Seeing as you’re here so early, make me a coffee.’
‘One macchiato coming right up.’ Mika didn’t seem bothered by the crisp order. She was looking delighted, in fact, by the way this job interview had panned out. She gave Raoul a quick thumbs-up sign as she disappeared into the café behind her boss.
His boss, too, if he could prove himself today. Raoul lifted a couple of the heavy chairs and carried them to the table on the far side of the outdoor area. As he went back for more, he caught sight of himself in the windows that hadn’t yet been folded back to open up the café to catch the breeze and what he saw made him catch his breath and look again.
He’d had to comb his hair with his fingers this morning so it was more tousled than he’d ever seen before. He’d rinsed out his only set of clothes and hung them over the tiny line outside the window of Mika’s room, so they were clean enough, but so wrinkled it looked as if he’d slept in them for a week. He’d noticed that the stubble on his jaw had felt a lot smoother yesterday but now he could see that it was beginning to look like a proper beard.
Nobody was going to recognise him. He barely recognised himself.
He wasn’t a prince here. Nobody had even asked him for a surname. He was just an ordinary guy called Rafe. And Rafe was on the way to finding his first paid employment.
Maybe he was delighted as well.
* * *
The trickle of breakfast customers had grown into a steady stream of holiday makers who preferred a relaxed brunch. Mika’s section today covered all the street tables so she had the added hazard of stepping around dogs lying by their owners’ chairs as she delivered plates of hot food or trays laden with coffee orders. Tables were being taken as soon as people stood up to leave so they had to be wiped down fast, and a new carafe of chilled water along with glasses provided.
She was almost too busy to wonder how Rafe was coping out the back but he entered her thoughts every time she cleared a table, being careful to scrape the plates and put all the cutlery on the top. Carrying the piles to the kitchen, she found herself scanning shelves to see where they were running low on supplies.
‘We’re going to need more water glasses soon. And don’t forget the lemon slices and sprigs of mint in the carafes.’
‘Okay.’ Rafe had a huge apron on and a dish brush in his hand. He started to push a pile of plates further towards the sinks so that Mika had room to put hers down.
‘Careful...’ Without thinking, Mika caught his hand. ‘Margaret’s left cutlery between the plates. That whole pile could topple and smash on the floor.’ She could feel the heat of his skin beneath her fingers. Had it been soaking in hot water for too long to feel as if it was burning her? Hastily, she pulled her hand away and scooped up the knives and forks on her top plate to put them into the big, sudsy bucket on the floor. Pierre, the last dish-washer, had trained her not to drop them too fast and splash his legs.
‘Thanks.’ Rafe cast an eye over his shoulder and lowered his voice. ‘I don’t want to annoy him again. He had to show me how to run the dishwasher twice.’
Mika smiled. ‘Gianni’s bark is worse than his bite. He’s a pretty good chef.’
‘Service... Table eight.’
‘Oh, that’s me...’ Mika turned swiftly, uncomfortably aware that she’d been distracted. ‘Behind,’ she called in warning on her way to the pass, as one of the other waitresses backed through the swing door with another tray of dirty dishes. Would she have room to dump them on the bench? Rafe was going to have to work faster if he wanted to get this job. He might not even get a break, at the rate he was going.
There were plenty of water glasses on the shelf the next time she settled new customers and every carafe was decorated with mint and lemon. This was good. Rafe hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d promised Marco that he was a fast learner. Mika delivered another tray of coffees to the table where her boss was sitting—as usual—with a couple of his mates, right on the footpath, so he could greet anyone else he knew and keep an eye on how the whole café was functioning. If things got really crazy, he would pitch in to help, or sometimes he would just wander around to check that everybody was enjoying their time in Positano’s best café. He had the best job, which was fair enough, given that he was the owner of the establishment.
Poor Rafe had the worst job but he seemed to be managing. Mika stopped worrying about him as the day sped on. It wasn’t her problem if he didn’t like the work or didn’t get offered a paid job, was it? She’d repaid her debt by giving him dinner and a place to stay last night. Finding him work was just a bonus.
Except...
She liked him. And she liked having him around. Instead of grumpy Pierre, whom she had to be careful not to splash, she could look forward to a smile every time she carried dirty dishes out the back.
It was growing on her, that smile.
The other waitresses must be getting smiled at too, she decided. There was a faint undercurrent of something different amongst her colleagues today. They seemed to be putting more effort into being charming with the customers. Was it her imagination or was Margaret, the English girl who was here to improve her Italian, making more frequent trips to the kitchen than usual? She’d spotted Bianca reapplying her lipstick more than once and Alain, the gay barista, had even gone to collect clean coffee cups himself instead of calling for one of the waitresses to do it.
No surprises there. Hospitality workers were usually young, travelling and eager for any fun that came their way. Rafe was new.
And gorgeous...
It was his eyes even more than that smile. The warmth in them. And that wicked gleam of humour. Would she ever forget the way he’d looked at her over that slice of pizza that she’d already taken the huge bite out of? It had been a silly joke but he’d bought right into it and for a heartbeat, as she’d been caught in his gaze, she’d felt like she’d known him for ever.
Like he was her best friend. Or the brother she’d never had.
‘Sorry?’ Mika had to scrabble to retrieve her pad from the pocket of her apron. She pulled her pencil from behind her ear. ‘Was that one seafood risotto?’
‘Two.’ The customer glared at her. ‘And the linguine with lobster. And side salads. And we need some more water.’
‘No problem. Coming right up.’
Mika stepped over a sleeping poodle, dodged a small child and turned sideways to give Margaret room to carry a tray past her.
‘Thanks, hon.’
Margaret had a nice smile, too. And long blonde hair. And legs that went on for ever under that short skirt.
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