Princes of Castaldini

No. Not the one man who’d once answered all the criteria. He had once come forward to be recognized for his eligibility. So the king couldn’t be counting him among those three men. Could he?

Her feet started moving again under the influence of curiosity…and foreboding. “So, what’s their problem?”

The king let out an uneven exhalation as she came to stand beside him. “Each has one. Each fulfills all criteria but one. A different one in each man’s case, something that makes him unsuitable for the position by Castaldinian law.”

“Then it isn’t your fault you didn’t settle on any of them.”

“Oh, I tried to tell myself that for as long as I could afford to. Now I no longer can. Neither can Castaldini. I brought matters to a head with the Council. They argued that defying the laws Castaldini was built around for any reason would lead to the very loss of identity we guard against. I argued that overlooking the ancient laws this once has become a matter of survival, lest the monarchy crumble and Castaldini be absorbed by one of the neighboring nations vying to assimilate our history and resources into their boundaries. Then, yesterday, I had a ten-minute mental blackout during a council session.”

She gasped. He reached for her hand, squeezed it. He was soothing her? His next words proved that he was. “I couldn’t have asked for a better thing to happen. It seems the reality of my condition was jarring enough that when I regained my senses, my council were singing a different tune. They now unanimously concede that the only way to protect Castaldini is to choose one of the only three men capable of maintaining our sovereignty.”

She pulled her hand back. She didn’t want him to feel it shake. “Whoa, that’s huge. For them to agree to waive the laws. That’s problem solved, isn’t it?”

He grimaced with what looked like self-deprecation. Loathing, even. “Not at all. Each of those men has reason enough to turn his back on me and on Castaldini. They’d be fully justified to leave both to our fate without their intervention.”

“But you’re their king. I know there hasn’t been a precedent for it, but you can draft them into service.”

His eyes widened as if she’d told him he could pole-vault. Then he barked a gravelly laugh, his face growing more asymmetric with the contortion of mirth. “You have no idea how outside my or anyone’s jurisdiction they are. I not only can’t draft them, I can’t afford to antagonize them any more than I already have, or we’ll lose any chance of having a deserving monarch wear the crown, and with it any hope of saving Castaldini.”

“A man who has that much power and doesn’t want to use it to save his kingdom—for whatever reason—isn’t worthy of any crown, let alone Castaldini’s. Whatever happened to the merit part?”

The king’s face settled back into its grimness. “Oh, make no mistake, they all merit it. More than I ever did.”

“I refuse to believe that.”

“Thank you for your faith, figlia mia, but I had forty years to build the history you’re judging me by, thankfully doing more right than wrong. But I did do a lot of wrong. Those three, what disqualified them, how I compounded everything when I alienated them, are among my major mistakes. Another sentimental mistake I’ve been guilty of was that I couldn’t choose between them, leading to this point, where Castaldini is effectively leaderless. But my blessed blackout finally forced the council to choose for me. They recommended going after the one they consider the least of the three evils.”

Though it made no sense, she knew the name he’d say.

She wanted to turn and run out, to outrace her suspicion and the moment he’d turn it into fact. Then it was too late.

“You know him well. My late cousin Osvaldo’s son. Prince…ex-Prince Leandro D’Agostino.”

Her nails dug in her palms. She thought she’d braced herself. Had been bracing herself for eight years. Spending her waking hours doing anything that demanded total focus so she wouldn’t hear that name reverberating through her mind. Going to bed depleted in hope of not having it ignite her unconscious aches and struggles. She’d succeeded. When she hadn’t had relapses and sought mention of his name like an addict would a drug.

Leandro. The man she’d loved beyond reason’s dictates, and those of pride and self-preservation. The man to whom she’d been nothing but a convenience. As she was sure so many others had been. He went through life like a one-man invasion, leveling everything in his path so he could erect his own version of perfection.

And he was the least of the three evils? What were the other two? Demons?

The one thing ameliorating her upheaval at hearing his name again was confusion. At hearing it on the lips of the man who’d banished him from Castaldini, laced with such regret and…affection?

When King Benedetto spoke again, no doubt remained in her mind. It had been both. And more. Far more. The pining and pride of a father speaking of his estranged son. “There was nothing that boy couldn’t do. A true jack-of-all-trades. He built a financial empire and was the best ambassador to the States Castaldini ever had by the time he was just twenty-eight.”

She knew that. That had been when she’d met him, almost ten years ago. A month after she’d set foot on Castaldini, in the fairytale setting of her sister’s wedding.

“You must remember how he walked out on the ambassador’s position over irreconcilable differences in policies, how he escalated his antagonism until I could no longer defend him to the Council, was forced by his actions and their unanimity to declare him renegade and strip him of his Castaldinian nationality.”

Oh, how she remembered that. And what it had led to.

“He is now a tycoon of global power, dividing his time between business and humanitarian endeavors.”

She didn’t want to hear this. But short of walking away, or yelling at the king to quit shoving Leandro’s achievements down her throat, there was nothing she could do but stand there and listen to how he’d moved on, and so spectacularly, with his life.

Focused on his purpose, the king went on. “We approached him to come back, to be given full pardon and become crown prince and regent. He scoffed at our messengers and our offers.”

“Surely that was anger talking.” She started at the croaked protest. It had issued from her. It seemed nothing could silence the negotiator inside her. “Nothing some determined cajoling and ego-boosting concessions won’t alleviate.”

“Oh, yes, that’s what the Council thought, too. I told them they knew nothing about Leandro. But they were confident they could negotiate with him. He told us what we could…do…with our attempts at pride-salving and our middle grounds.”

Phoebe felt every word pushing her to the edge of an abyss. She couldn’t bear to look down, tried again to inch away. “If he so adamantly refuses, why not turn to the other choices?”

“Because the objection against the second is weightier, and he hates me even more. As for the third, the objection against him is the weightiest of all. And I suspect he hates both me and Castaldini. Leandro, as impossible as it seems, is actually the least problematic of all, the one I project will be easiest to reach. And that is where you come in.”

Her heart launched against her ribs. She rocked on her feet with the force of the collision. Don’t say it. Don’t…

He said it. “I’m sending you, the one person I believe can reach Leandro, can convince him to negotiate, or to at least hold down the fort until a more permanent solution is found, if he remains adamant about not accepting the succession.”

Phoebe’s mind emptied. Her tongue fired blanks. “I—I’m not…”

“You’re Castaldini’s most potent negotiator. You’ve bailed us out of situations where my old guard and I were ineffectual, detrimental even. And this is our darkest hour. I am counting on your ability, your infallible diplomatic techniques and your own charms, to lure Leandro back when all else has failed.”

Her own…charms? Now wait a minute here…

Before she could choke out her alarm, the king hurled another declaration at her.

“You’re my—and Castaldini’s—last card.”

“We’re landing, Signorina Alexander.”

Phoebe mirrored the flight attendant’s smile, patted her fastened seatbelt. She waited until the radiant brunette had removed her untouched dinner and hurried away before she let her head thunk against her window. The bonfire of lights that was New York City at night was zooming up at her, an organized maze of the gothic and the postmodern that seemed to be unfurling to engulf Castaldini’s equivalent of Air Force One.

She closed her eyes over the sand that seemed to fill her lids.

She hated flying. She’d come to equate it with upheaval.

The journey that started it all had been ten years ago. Her little sister, Julia, had accepted Paolo’s marriage proposal only to discover he was the King of Castaldini’s son.

Phoebe couldn’t let her eighteen-year-old, special-needs sister go alone to a foreign country and an unknown future. She’d dropped out of law school to accompany Julia. She’d boarded that jet to Castaldini with anxieties and regrets preying on her. The first over the unimaginable future she and her sister were heading to, the second over the life she’d relinquished.

Not that she’d had second thoughts since then. Although she was only two and a half years older than Julia, she’d been more of a mother than a sister to her since their single mother had died just days after Phoebe’s thirteenth birthday. When Julia had become afflicted with Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia—a rare form of partial paralysis—Phoebe’s protectiveness had mushroomed. At fourteen, Julia had started suffering from weakness, stiffness and partial loss of sensation in her lower limbs. By the time she was seventeen, she’d been in a wheelchair. Then she’d met Paolo.

Undaunted by her condition, he’d swept her into a whirlwind romance. It wasn’t long before he’d proposed. And though Julia had accepted after nearly a year of cajoling and insistence that her physical condition made no difference to him, Julia’s psychological state had been fragile and her dependence on Phoebe had deepened with the anticipation of all the upheaval that becoming a princess overnight would bring.

Phoebe had wondered too many times if she would have done things differently if she’d known her own life would change forever, too. And not just as spillover from the changes in Julia’s.

What if the first time she’d set eyes on Leandro, she’d had the sense to feel alarmed at her volatile reaction, especially when she’d always been steady and cerebral? To realize that something so out of control would lead to a crash? That a man so voracious in both ambition and passion would end up consuming her while giving nothing of himself in return? What if she hadn’t let him sweep her into that first kiss an hour after meeting, hadn’t thrown herself into his bed a week later?

She’d always come to the same conclusion. Any alternative scenario wouldn’t have derailed her life, and she wouldn’t have spent years afterward trying to get back on track. She would have been whole, living a full life, with a family of her own.

And the king thought her the one best equipped to talk Leandro into coming back. The man she hadn’t had one rational discussion with in the fourteen months she’d been his lover.

But she had to be fair here. Their past affair was unknown, thanks to the lengths to which Leandro had gone to keep it a secret. The king was asking her to do her job as Castaldini’s diplomatic troubleshooter, who had negotiated many precarious deals and smoothed potentially treacherous situations on the kingdom’s behalf. If she took personal history and emotions out of it, this, while a one-of-a-kind situation, was still within her job parameters.

Not that she hadn’t tried to excuse herself from the chore, extricate herself from this impending mess. But without ad-mitting why she couldn’t face Leandro, she’d had no ground on which to squirm out of that trap. She thought even a confession would have backfired. The king’s reliance on her “charms” would have only taken on new relevance. As a man, and a desperate monarch to boot, he would have believed a former lover who just happened to be the kingdom’s best negotiator would be a double-barreled weapon that was sure to win the battle.

She had one more reason she couldn’t have used. The consequences of this turn of events.

Leandro must be punishing the king and his Council, forcing them to grovel for his return after they’d banished him. But she had no doubt that when his pride was appeased and his conditions were made and met, he’d become part of the D’Agostino family again, would become its crown prince and future king.

And her time on Castaldini would come to an end.

The moment he came back to stay, she’d leave.

She was an hour away from meeting the man who’d made it impossible for her to love or even want another. From negotiating the deal that she had to succeed in negotiating at any price.

The deal that would end life as she knew it.

Leandro D’Agostino fought the urge building inside him until he felt as if his head were expanding under its pressure, heard the bones in his hand crackle under its force.

He stared down at that hand before he realized it was his cell phone issuing that sound. The cell phone he was crushing.

He swore, threw it away. It clanged on the gleaming wood of his desk, skidded and clattered to the mirror-like hardwood floor. He gritted his teeth as silence filled the racket’s wake.

Dammit. How many phones had he damaged in the past eight years so that he wouldn’t use them to call her? Even though that had been for the exact opposite purpose for which he wanted to call her now?

Well, he was not calling Phoebe Alexander. He was not canceling his meeting with her.

She wanted an interview with him? She was getting one.

For all the good it would do her.

She’d picked a bad day to break an eight-year silence. A bad month. A bad lifetime.

And she was about to find out how a tiger felt when those who’d ripped a claw from his paw came to poke at the festering wound.

They dared call him back. They now offered the mantle of power and responsibility. After they’d slandered him and cast him out, stripped him of his identity before his people, before the world.After he’d spent his life in service of his kingdom and its people, after he’d been certain he’d be named crown prince as the one D’Agostino male who met all the ancient criteria.

The closer he’d come to the crown, the more the Council had panicked. They wanted to remain the ruling body for life, had feared—and correctly—that his first action as king would be to replace them. So they beat him to it while they still could. They’d turned on him, removing him as a threat. After all, they’d still had the power. And King Benedetto’s ear.

King Benedetto. His kin and king. His hero. The king hadn’t just stood aside and let the dogs shred him, he’d delivered the decree that had torn Leandro’s guts out himself.

But being unable to call himself of the royal house of D’Agostino, ceasing to be a Castaldinian, hadn’t been the worst injury he’d sustained. That had been her betrayal. Her desertion.

And she was on her way here. To negotiate on his former king’s behalf. Or was it on her own?

It could be the latter, disguised as the first.

As if he’d fall for her again.

Whatever she was coming here for, he wasn’t letting her have it, or any influence on him again. Not in this life. Or the next.

Si, let her come. He was in the mood to be provoked. Her memory had been the source of heartache for far too long. Let her flesh-and-blood presence inflict something less pathetic. Something hot and harsh. Something he could sink his teeth into. And rip.

It was time to tear out anything soft or stupid from his depths, the remnants of the spell he hadn’t been able to break. It was time to exorcise her…

All his hairs stood on end as if he’d been doused in a field of static electricity. A presence. Unmistakable even after all these years. Here. She was here.

Phoebe.

Ernesto must have met her downstairs, let her up here. Let her walk alone into his den. Like eight years ago.

Caution told him not to move, to make her initiate the confrontation. Every instinct screamed for him to turn, to catch her first uncensored reaction to seeing him after that lifetime.

It was the hot, sharp sound that spilled from lips he knew to be rose-soft and cherry-tinted, that had once wrung all coherence from him with soul-wrenching kisses and moans, that shattered the stalemate. He swung around.

Déjà vu engulfed him.

Time rewound to the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. To the last time he had. And like both times, like every time in between, everything about her bombarded him all at once.

Different droned in his mind. Raven-haired when she’d been caramel blond before, creamy pale when she’d been deeply tanned, curvaceous when she’d been willowy. The woman who stood two dozen feet away had little in common with the younger one who occupied his memory, who’d never relinquished her hold over his senses.

He took in the enhancements in one glance, knew he’d need hours, days, more…far more, to sort through them.

But he didn’t have to catalog them to suffer their effects, to relive that incendiary—and to his rage and resignation, unrepeatable—attraction.

For a stretch that existed outside time, it was as if the only thing that could happen was that he would surge toward her, that she would rush to meet him halfway.

She stood as transfixed as he. As shocked.

That conviction jogged him from the surreal timelessness he’d plunged into, the version where nothing had gone wrong between them. He crash-landed into the distasteful present.

Of course she wasn’t shocked. She was here with full premeditation…

No. She was shocked. This was no act, not any more than his own dive into that time warp had been. So what did it mean?

He exhaled the breath trapped in his lungs, admitted he’d probably never know what anything meant where she was concerned, that he had no more grasp on this situation than he had on anything else that had happened in the past.

But he intended to take control of it. Or at least try to. He’d start by taking control of himself.

He turned fully to her, bracing for the change that would come over her expression as she regained control.

The last of the shock he’d detected in her drained. He caught a stinging lip in his teeth, counted down the seconds before her gaze heated, her posture relaxed, beckoned…

“For the record, I told King Benedetto what I think of a man who refuses to do his duty out of petty pride.”

Leandro blinked. What the…?

“But it’s my job to negotiate on the king’s behalf. Even for a prize I don’t think worth winning.”

Two

Leandro consulted his hearing. And his memory.

Had she really said what he’d heard her say?

A prize I don’t think worth winning.

And that would be…him?

He stared at the woman Phoebe Alexander had become. She strode into his den as if it were her own sanctuary and he the intruder, each stride loud with the bearing of someone who knew her worth, her effect, exuded it to perfection with each breath.

Confusion mounted as his gaze clung to the new lushness encased in the formal attire of her profession, the severity of which only accentuated each long limb and ripe curve. His eyes followed each undulation of feminine assurance and fluid grace, pored over the areas her suit left exposed. That smooth neck with the modest expanse of flesh just below, those molded legs. He could almost taste her new creaminess. Would it taste the same as her honeyed tan once had…?

Abbastanza, you fool. Focus on her face. Fathom her tactic.

He did, only to wish he hadn’t. Lingering on features that had been sculpted to their full potential by a connoisseur god of taste and elegance only intensified the rush of hormones through his system, had every nerve ending rioting like a wheat field in a storm. And there was nothing in her expression to guide him.

She reached the oak coffee table in front of his Chesterfield couch arrangement, bent to place her gray briefcase down with a concise click. Her thick braid fell forward, drawing his gaze to the femininity encased snugly in a jacket that reflected her silver eyes. Fantasies washed over him, of dragging her by the braid, undoing it with fingers made rough by haste to the cadence of her encouraging moans, releasing the twining locks into a cascade of glossy raven waves. Another kick of blood rushed to his loins.

Then she straightened, looked straight at him as if she were looking through spotless glass. She laced her fingers loosely in the pose of a saleswoman waiting on the whims of an ambivalent client, and all he could think was that those supple hands had once been all over him, stroking him to a frenzy, pumping him to oblivion, digging into him in ecstasies of release, that they were now linked right in front of…

Dio. What was wrong with him? He couldn’t finish one thought without taking it to a carnal conclusion? Without imagining her abandoned in his arms as he did everything with her, to her?

He shouldn’t have abstained. Even if he hadn’t felt any urge for female company, for physical gratification, he should have sought both. Just like he sought sustenance. He shouldn’t have convinced himself he didn’t need the release, needed all his drive intact for his endeavors. Now it seemed he was starving.

Ma, maledizione…he hadn’t been. Not until she’d walked in.

“Shall we begin the negotiation?”

He winced. Her voice was the same, velvety and rich like chocolate and red wine. But even when she’d spat her last words at him before walking out of his life, she hadn’t sounded so—arctic. And that frostiness was nothing com-pared to how those eyes swept over him as if examining an icky lifeform.

She dropped his gaze like a hot potato, swept hers around as if seeking something worthy of her focus. “You do want to get this over with so you can get on with the rest of your day, don’t you?”

The answer that almost escaped was What I want is for you to tell me who you are and what you did with the Phoebe I knew.

Did the change in her extend so deeply beyond the physical? Had the woman who’d inundated him with hunger and appreciation and exuded passion from every pore disappeared? Was this what had replaced her? A woman who was finally true to her namesake?

The name of a goddess of the moon had been such a misnomer for the sunny entity she’d been. But now the name and the myths woven around it seemed to have been invented for her. Where once her skin and hair and figure and vibe had glowed with the sun’s heat and energy, they were now permeated by the moon’s light, by its night and fullness. By its coldness.

But then the changes were probably only superficial. Her old spontaneity and warmth must have been an act. One he’d fallen for.

So why had she dropped the facade now, when she was here to insinuate herself into his favor?

A scoff almost burst from his lips. Favor? That she now hoped to win by telling him how worthless she thought him?

Which was a strange declaration. As one of the most powerful men in the world, he epitomized worth. She herself must have plotted to ensnare him the moment she’d recognized his potential.

She’d read him, played him like a virtuoso. The endlessly loving sister, the innocent who’d gone up in flames at his first touch, the one presence in his life that had been undemanding and soothing during conflicted times. She’d projected everything that had captivated him with unerring consistency.