Princess From the Shadows
“As have I,” Rodriguez said, his dark eyes unreadable, the little curve of his mouth still present, like it had been earlier. It was a kind of ever-present near-smile that made it look like he was mocking her. It made her stomach feel like it was being squeezed tight by an invisible fist.
She cleared her throat. “So, while I hadn’t really penciled a wedding into my day planner, it’s not a … it’s not a total surprise.”
What was her other option anyway?
Well, there was staying in Italy. That was a good thought. Hiding. But she didn’t know if it served any real purpose. The only person it really helped was her. It allowed her to lick her wounds in private. It allowed her to hide Luca from royal life. Something part of her wanted to do, but something she also knew wasn’t fair. He was a Santina. He was a royal. It was a part of him, and it didn’t do him any good to force him to deny that part of himself. No matter how much simpler it would be to just raise him as an ordinary little boy. Who wasn’t tabloid fodder. It wasn’t reality.
“I don’t suppose you really had other life plans either,” she said.
“I don’t plan. I live.”
“Well … I suppose that means you don’t have a woman back home you’re dying to see. Someone you’d prefer to marry.”
“I’ll be honest with you, Carlotta, I prefer not to marry. But I need an heir. One that isn’t a bastard.”
She flinched when he spoke the word. She hated that word. One used to label an innocent child, to make them suffer for the perceived sins of his parents. Did Rodriguez know about Luca? He had to know. So, he’d chosen the words to wound her.
“Why?” she said. “Do you have many? Children, I mean.”
“Me? No. I always use protection.” Such a throwaway statement. Spoken like a man who never thought about anyone but himself.
She gritted her teeth. “It doesn’t always work.”
“True. But in the event that a pregnancy had resulted, you can bet the woman involved would have told me. I’m rich. Titled. She would have wanted her piece.”
“You would have owed her a piece,” she said. “At minimum.”
“I’m not arguing that. My point is that, whether I want marriage or not, I need it.”
“Preferably to me.”
He looked at her, his dark gaze dismissive. “Because of connection to this family.”
“I didn’t seek to imply otherwise. It’s the only reason I would marry you.”
“Because your father told you to. That’s the reason.”
She felt her cheeks heat. “He has good reasons.”
“Fine. But you’re still doing it because he asked you to.”
“And your father has nothing to do with any of this?”
A muscle in his jaw ticked, the light in his eyes turning black, deadly. “My father can hardly lift his hand anymore. He is weak. What I do, I do for my country.”
“Same goes for me. But my family is Santina.”
“Thank goodness mine is not Santa Christobel. Santa Christobel is better than the Anguiano legacy has been thus far. But I intend to do better.”
“And I intend to … be a part of it.” It was strange, lobbying for something she wasn’t certain she wanted. But she needed it. Everything else aside, her father was right. She had made mistakes that had cost the family. And he had covered for her. Had done everything in his power to keep her from being utterly humiliated and exposed.
In the scope of things, this wasn’t so very much to ask.
“Does it get boring?”
“What?” she asked, trying to ignore the glint of humor in his dark eyes. It made him seem … attractive. Well, he was attractive, glint or no, with his golden skin and dark hair that was much too long to be considered respectable for a man of his station. Chiseled jaw, a body that looked as though it would be hard like iron. It wouldn’t be impersonal or cold like metal, though. No, he would be hot….
She blinked, trying to reroute her thoughts. She didn’t do the man thing. Not anymore. Just acknowledging the speed and ease with which he aroused her was … horrifying. Even more horrifying was the strength of it. Why was it so hard to be good? To be the woman she was supposed to be?
“Being this noble, does it get boring?”
“Yes. It does. Which is why I practice it in small doses.” And throw it off altogether sometimes …
“Good to know that not even you are always respectable.”
“Not even close.” But she tried. She’d tried all her life. To ignore the fire that seemed to burn so close to the surface of her skin. To be the demure princess she was expected to be. It had been a battle all her life. One she’d lost completely when she’d met Luca’s father. A lifetime of practiced restraint reduced to nothing in just a few short weeks.
He inclined his head. “All right then, Princess Carlotta, you have yourself a marriage bargain. My plane leaves Santina late tonight and I intend to take my future wife with me.”
“I … I can’t leave from here. I can’t leave tonight.” Luca was still in Italy, with his nanny. So were all of her things. Her real things, not her princess trappings.
“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.
“Luca,” said Carlotta. “His name is Luca.”
That she answered annoyed him, like she didn’t want her son speaking to him. It also made him feel a small measure of relief. Because it spared him from having to talk directly to Luca.
“Come with me,” he said, turning and heading to the palace.
He nearly laughed. He had been pretending that marrying Carlotta rather than Sophia changed nothing. And had been managing quite well. But now there was this … complication.
This was a difference that would be hard to ignore.
The massive doors to the palace opened and he ushered them in to the cavernous entryway. All glossy marble with a domed ceiling depicting intricate scenes of men and angels. Not to his taste at all. He’d never felt at home here. There was a reason he’d spent his young adult years in France and Spain, a reason he had his own penthouse in Barcelona still, even though his time avoiding Santa Christobel was over.
But now that his father was in the hospital, now that running the country was up to him, he’d had no choice but to come back. Even though it made him feel like he’d crawled into someone else’s skin. Ill-fitting. Uncomfortable. Nearly unbearable.
Now, another role he wasn’t made for. Husband. Father.
“There is no … no room prepared for Luca,” he said, careful not to look down at the top of the boy’s dark head.
“What?” she asked, finely arched brows locking together.
He gritted his teeth against rising annoyance. “Had you told me there would be a need …”
“You didn’t know?” She shot a look to Luca, then back to him, her eyes round with shock. “How did you not know?”
Luca was watching both of them, confusion in his eyes. That was something he remembered well about being a child. That lack of control. Knowing that your fate was in the hands of the adults around you. How little sense it made sometimes.
His stomach tightened, and he looked down at the boy again. “Luca, perhaps you would like to come out to the garden?”
The garden. Such as it was. It was a massive, sprawling green field in comparison to most lawns. But it was likely to keep a child busy. At least, he thought it would.
Luca nodded. “I like to play outside. Do you have a slide?”
Rodriguez looked at Carlotta, then back at Luca, a strange sensation—nerves?—making it hard to breathe. “No. No slides. But we could put one in.” Put one in? Like they were staying?
Of course they were staying. He’d signed a new marriage contract with King Eduardo before leaving Santina. But he hadn’t known about the child. About Luca. He’d known that he and Carlotta would have an heir … but an heir was … It sounded very detached. Unreal. The little boy with serious green eyes was real.
Too real.
“You don’t have to put a slide in,” said Carlotta. “Well, not today. Eventually I guess it might … Luca, let’s go outside.” She held out her hand and Luca wrapped his small fingers around hers. She looked at Rodriguez and he nodded, leading her through the entryway and down the main corridor that led out to the back terrace.
They stepped outside into the warm evening, the heat of the day long past, the setting sun casting electric orange stripes over the vivid green lawn.
“There isn’t a pond or anything is there?” she asked, eyeing the fenced-in area.
“No. It’s safe for him. This part here is just grass.”
“Go, run,” she said.
Luca smiled at Carlotta and trotted off the terrace, and Carlotta watched him, a soft expression on her face.
“The plane ride was long,” she said. “He really needed to get out and move.”
“I can imagine.” He’d learned not to fidget from a very early age. It had stayed with him into adulthood. Sometimes, even now, if he was in a meeting and he found himself fidgeting, he could still imagine that the sharp crack of a ruler on his shins might come next.
“How did you not know?” she asked.
“About Luca? How was I supposed to know?”
“It was … The press, they … He’s the only illegitimate Santina. The headlines were not kind.”
“I don’t read tabloids.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“Not even when they’re talking about you?”
“Especially not then,” he said.
“How do you… I mean, how can you not? I had to … I had to know what they were saying.” She looked away from him, her eyes on Luca, who was now turning circles in the middle of the large expanse of grass. “I suppose, looking back, it wasn’t the healthiest thing for a hormonal, pregnant woman to do. But I just felt like I needed to know.”
“I don’t care what they’re saying. Anyway, what they write about me is simply a rundown of my weekend’s events. If I want a recap, I’ll look at the pictures I took.”
She turned her head sharply, her eyes wide. “Pictures?”
“Oh, so you’ve read about me then,” he said.
“I said I read tabloids. Anyway, who hasn’t read about you?”
“Probably a few priests who are trying to deny the existence of evil in the world, but we aren’t supposed to be talking about me right now. I didn’t know you had a son.”
“Does it change anything?”
Did it? He’d never planned on being very involved with his wife and children. He just … he couldn’t think of a single thing he could add to their lives. They would serve their purpose, likely better without his interference. He knew nothing about family. The only thing he knew about children was what not to do with them.
That was something, he supposed.
“I don’t know that it does,” he said. “Is his father in the picture?”
“Luca doesn’t have a father.” Carlotta felt her cheeks get hot as Rodriguez fixed her with a hard stare. “Well … obviously he has a father,” she said. “But he doesn’t have an involved father.”
“Messy breakup?” he asked.
It suddenly seemed a bit harder to breathe. “You could say that.” It would be an understatement, but she wasn’t in the mood to elaborate.
“So I’m not going to get tangled up in any sort of custody thing?”
“Absolutely not. Is that your only concern?”
“I don’t see anything else that should concern me.”
“You don’t see how having a son concerns you?”
His eyebrows locked together. “He’s not my son.”
Carlotta’s heart twisted tight. It was a fair enough statement. Luca wasn’t Rodriguez’s son. And they’d been at his home for all of fifteen minutes. He wasn’t being cruel. Still, it felt a little cruel. “No, I know. But he is a child, and if you’re going to be my husband he will be your stepson, and that means some of the responsibility …”
“He has a nanny?”
“Yes. She had to stay behind for a couple of days but …”
“In that case, I see my responsibility will be limited.”
Anger burned in her, threatening to swallow her whole. “And will it be the same for your children? Because if not, you and I have no more to say to each other. Luca is my son. He’s my world and if you—”
“Yes. It will be the same for our child. I don’t intend to have any more than is required.”
“If we have a girl?”
“Then we will have to have more, I suppose.”
“I don’t … I don’t even know how to have this discussion with you,” she said, panic clawing at her stomach. How could she stand here talking children with this stranger? Was she really going to marry this man?
Yes. Because the other option was going back to her father, standing in that spot in his office and telling him, yet again, how badly she’d failed the Santina family. She couldn’t do it. The guilt would consume her. She lived with enough guilt. No sense in adding to it.
But one thing she had to be sure of. For Luca. And if Rodriguez couldn’t handle it, she would walk away, no matter how disappointed her father was. No matter how much compound interest in guilt it earned her.
“Will you adopt him?”
Rodriguez stiffened, his posture totally rigid. “What?”
“Will you adopt Luca? Give him your name. The same name I will have. The same name his halfbrother or -sister will have. Will you make him a part of this family? Because if not, I’ll walk away now.”
A muscle in Rodriguez’s jaw twitched. “I cannot name him as my heir.”
“I don’t expect you to. But I cannot have him be alone in that way.” Just the thought of it made her throat ache, made it get unbearably tight. “I need him to know that he has a father. That he isn’t the only one who isn’t a part of a family.”
“Having a father can be vastly overrated,” Rodriguez said, his voice rough.
“Give him your name. Your protection. And I will marry you. Be your wife in every sense. But you have to make my son yours, as much as your other children.”
She watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed, his eyes fixed on Luca. “Then I will adopt him after the marriage. All of this can be simple enough. We marry, we produce an heir. We lead separate lives.”
“Why?”
He looked past her, at Luca, who was now lying on his back looking at the sky. Then he looked back at her. “Because I’m not after a perfect, happy family. I want to do what is right by my country. What is necessary.”
“The way that disrupts your life the least?”
“And yours, Carlotta. You can keep living as you please here. You’ll have very little obligation to me. This marriage will be like a job you can clock in and out of. On for public appearances, off when it’s done.”
“So, I get lovers too, then?”
He shrugged. “What’s good for the goose.”
“Just not while we’re—”
“Mommy!”
She turned sharply and saw Luca, standing right at the edge of the terrace. He had a way of darting from place to place with no warning, her son. It had never really been a problem before.
“Yes, Luca?”
“I’m bored.”
“And tired I’ll bet,” she said.
“No.” He shook his head for emphasis, the serious expression on his face reminding her of her brother Alessandro. She was so thankful that he seemed to have none of his father in him.
“Yeah, I don’t believe that, figlio mio, but nice try,” she said, running her fingers through his dark hair, ruffling it.
“There is a room next to yours,” Rodriguez said, his manner suddenly awkward. Luca did seem to make him nervous and she wasn’t really sure why. “He can stay in there.”
“Good. If we could have his things brought in, that would be great.”
Rodriguez nodded curtly. “After he’s in bed, perhaps you and I can have dinner.”
Carlotta wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She liked having Luca as a buffer. It was much more comfortable.
Ironic that you feel the need for a buffer since you’re planning on having a baby with the man. No buffers then.
That thought had her hot all over. Well, not so much the pregnancy and childbirth aspect of it. She’d hated being pregnant. Every moment of it. It had all been sickness and sadness. A little bit of denial. Only when Luca was placed in her arms had everything truly come together. And from that moment, she’d been lost. Everything that had come before it—the pain, physical and emotional—had paled in comparison to the love that had flooded through her when she’d seen her son for the first time.
She’d already done it once without a man in the picture.
“Great. We can talk more then,” she said, wondering if any amount of talking would ever make the situation seem normal.
After spending a couple of hours getting Luca settled and conked out in his new room, Carlotta went back to her room and selected a nice dress from her collection of, admittedly, out-of-date clothing.
Clothes just didn’t matter when you hardly ever went anywhere and certainly never went on dates. As Queen of Santa Christobel she would need new clothing….
Oh. Madre di dio. She was going to be the Queen of Santa Christobel. She had sort of been stuck on being Rodriguez’s wife. On what it would mean to marry him and share his bed, and have his baby, and uproot her son from his home in Italy. She hadn’t even gotten to the queen bit.
She tugged the dress off the hanger and sat on the bed in nothing but her bra and panties, the plush, silken comforter billowing around her, enveloping her. She clutched the rust-colored dress to her chest and breathed in deeply, trying to stop the room from spinning.
This was not her life.
And what is? Self-imposed exile in Italy? Living it up, aren’t you, Carlotta?
She had known she’d have to get back into the swing of things eventually. Start living life beyond the four walls of her home. She hadn’t really intended on doing it in such a grand way.