скачать книгу бесплатно
After her father went bankrupt, the king, a friend and former business associate, had convinced him to move his family closer, to Sardinia, so that the king could be of more help. And he had more than helped, had continued to do so after her father’s death six years later. He’d supported her and her mother and financed her education until she’d graduated from journalism school.
She’d since insisted on repaying her family’s debts with interest. But while she’d needed to settle the financial debt, she’d always cling to the emotional one.
It had been because of that bond, along with what had been solid financial advice at the time, that she’d invested heavily in stocks and assets in Castaldini. It was partly why Le Roi Enterprises, her publishing company, was in trouble now. The kingdom had been hit by a steep recession after the king’s stroke six months ago.
His condition had been hushed up until his recovery hadn’t conformed to his doctors’ optimism. His grim prognosis had leaked out, and Castaldini’s stock market had crashed like a meteor.
He’d called her a couple of weeks ago, requesting a video meeting. He’d said he had a solution to all her problems. She remembered that call…
She’d waited for the meeting to start, contemplating how to turn down his offer of more help. It was one thing to settle her father’s debts and see to their household upkeep, but another to float a company with multinational subsidiaries. She didn’t think he could afford anything of this magnitude now. And she couldn’t be so deeply indebted again, even to him. She’d been so driven to repay her family’s debt that she’d done something as crazy as marry Ed. But…could she afford to turn down help, when hundreds of people depended on her for their jobs?
Then a stranger came onto the screen. It was several dropped heartbeats before she realized it was the king. The incredibly fit and virile seventy-four-year-old man she’d last seen seven months ago at her mother’s funeral had metamorphosed into an emaciated, hundred-year-old version of himself.
Tears surged behind her eyes, at seeing him like that, at the acrid thankfulness that her mother’s illness had been quick and merciless so that she hadn’t suffered his fate, hadn’t lasted long enough to see her beauty almost mummified.
“It’s good to see you, figlia mia.”
The wan rasp that used to be the surest baritone forced a tear to escape her control. She wiped it away, pretending to sweep her hair back. “I-it’s good to see you, too, King Benedetto.”
His smile was resigned, conciliatory. “No need to tiptoe around me, Gaby. I know that seeing me must be a shock for you. But I had to speak to you face-to-face as I ask you this incalculable favor.”
He was asking, not offering, a favor? She didn’t see how that could solve her problems, but the very idea of being of service to him infused her with energy and purpose.
“Anything, King Benedetto. Ask me anything.”
“You once wanted to approach Durante with a book offer.”
She frowned, nodded. She’d asked him how best to approach his elusive son with an offer for a motivational biography, when the enigmatic media-magnet had turned down every offer to publish anything about his life. The king had told her to forget it.
That had been before her mother’s death and she’d since forgotten about it, along with every plan she’d had, lacking the drive to pursue anything new that required focus and determination. Her grief was dulling to a pervasive, crippling coldness, and there was nothing and no one to ameliorate it.
She’d made no friends since she’d returned to New York, seemed to have made only enemies. She had colleagues and employees, was on good terms with most, but she hadn’t forged a real closeness to any of them. Her uncles and their families lived states or continents away and she’d never been close to them anyway. From the men who hunted her for the fortune they thought she’d inherited and the one she’d acquired, to the disaster of her marriage, to the disappointment of her attempts to wash away its ugliness in other men’s arms, to the women who treated her like a succubus who’d drain their men of life, it felt as if she’d lost one bond to the world after another. Her mother’s death had cracked the last link. Why bother? was the one thought left echoing inside her.
Only the employees who’d lose their jobs and the causes she’d be unable to contribute to if she threw in the towel had kept her going, just enough to keep her head above water.
“I feel responsible for your company’s problems.”
The king’s rasp dragged her back to the moment. She blinked.
“Please, don’t, King Benedetto. It’s not your fault.”
She bit her lip on much more. Her company’s decline had started with the discovery of her mother’s terminal illness, and its slow death had begun when a part of her had died with her mother, a part she didn’t know how to resuscitate, didn’t feel like trying. Castaldini’s recession had just been the last straw.
But she could see how he’d think that, because she wasn’t alone in her decline. Many smaller corporations heavily invested in Castaldinian stock were floundering. Even though the new regent, Prince Leandro D’Agostino, had stepped in and floated the economy, the original hit had been bad. She’d heard that Leandro would work his way down to companies at the level of hers, but doubted her company could last until he did. And then, even with his power and financial clout, as regent only, he didn’t promise the market the long-term stability a king would. Advisors had urged her not to await rescue, said Leando might even let lesser interests go under to stabilize the big picture.
The king went on. “Durante could revive your company, either with a bestseller or in other ways if he so wished.”
That was what her advisors had said. That only a guaranteed bestseller or a merger with any major player would buoy her company. Prince Durante would have answered both criteria. But previously, the king had said Durante wasn’t an option. Which meant…“So he’d be amenable to an offer now?”
“I’m not saying he would be.”
That stymied her. “Then what has changed?”
“Your situation. And mine.”
She didn’t understand what her situation had to do with his, only that he thought a positive result might be obtained now. She should jump at the opening. Yet she wanted to do nothing but say goodbye and sit staring into space. It seemed that her lethargy wasn’t about to let her challenge-tackling abilities escape its somnolent grip. She sighed. “I’ll give it some more thought—”
“I’m asking you to do it, Gaby.” The king interrupted her. “And I don’t just want you to sign a contract with him. I want you to insist on being his editor or ghostwriter or however you get such books written. I want you to work as closely as possible with him so that you can convince him to come back to Castaldini.” Gabrielle adjusted the screen, as if that would help his words make sense. He elaborated, ending her confusion. “He left five years ago, saying he’ll never return as long as I live. And he’s kept his promise. He didn’t even call when I had my stroke.”
Something trickled through the clotted mass of indifference inside her. Emotions. Surprise, indignation…anger.
What kind of monster would do that to his father, and a great man like King Benedetto, too? And to think Durante had been the one she’d admired most among all Castaldinian princes, his self-made success intriguing her far more because it didn’t have the crown as its goal. As the king’s son, Durante was the one prince who was ineligible for the crown. And then, success didn’t describe what he’d achieved. He’d become one of the world’s richest, most powerful men, starting with investment banking, then branching into just about everything, garnering a worldwide reputation for being unstoppable, as well as inaccessible. But it was one thing to reject intimacy as evidenced by his misanthrope/heartbreaker reputation, another to reject the man who was his father and king.
“Why all this…antipathy?” she asked.
“Durante blames me for terrible things, things I haven’t been able to prove I wasn’t responsible for.” Okay. So it was more complicated than she could imagine. She really couldn’t form an opinion here. She shouldn’t. It had nothing to do with her. And she wanted it to stay that way. “But it doesn’t matter what he believes. He must come back, Gaby. It’s not only that I need my son—Castaldini needs his power and influence.”
Scratch the no-opinion status. No matter Durante’s reasons, he was a callous creep if he not only didn’t care about his father’s incapacitation but also about Castaldini’s troubles. And she was supposed to make him care?
She asked that, and the king nodded. “I know you can. You’ll come in with a fresh slate and views, with legitimate business offers and concerns. But give me your word that you’ll never tell him of our connection. That would make him send you straight to hell. And none of us can afford that. The situation is grave, and I must be clear. I want you to do anything to make him come back.”
His words had echoed long after their goodbyes. What he’d meant by anything was so glaringly clear, it was blinding. Seduction.
She was resigned to her femme fatale reputation. But it hurt that even the king thought seduction was one of her weapons, her only one, even. Still, she excused him. He was old and sick and desperate to resolve his problems, to secure his kingdom’s future.
And then, what he’d proposed was a worthy cause. If she succeeded—seduction certainly not on the menu of maneuvers she’d use—everyone would come out a winner. The king would have his son back—a reconciliation that was bound to make said son happier, too—Castaldini would get a heavy-hitter to help its regent pull its fat out of the fire, and she’d stabilize her company.
But the damned prince hadn’t even acknowledged her messages. She could think of only one reason. His initial background check on anyone who approached him must have accessed the usual slander. Seemed he’d thought such unsubstantiated filth enough to condemn her.
Furious, she’d called in a favor with one of his insiders and gotten his schedule for the next week. Besides being impossible to get hold of, he was also known for badgering the privileged into doing more for the world. This function was one of his traps where he wrung what he could get out of them for his favorite causes. She’d intended to intercept him, make him an offer he couldn’t refuse. At least, that had been the plan.
So far, all she’d done was stammer three sentences and got nothing out of him but that disconcerting stare.
She needed results, but she had to restart her own volition first. Or at least the autopilot that had steered her for months now.
One or the other must have kicked in, because she moved at last.
She leaned on the door as she opened it. The exuberance of jazz and the forced gaiety in the overcrowded ballroom slammed into her. But what almost knocked her off her feet was the power of his gaze. He’d been watching for her, as if certain she’d follow him.
Not that she could. Those people who had the same idea as her—of ambushing him here—left her no chink to get through.
He left her no air to breathe as his gaze drilled into her across the ballroom. She began to think it might not be a bad thing after all if she didn’t get a chance to talk to him alone.
She was a seasoned businesswoman who’d been through a battlefield of a marriage and divorce, who’d before and since been pursued by men, had thought she’d seen and tried all kinds, to her crushing dissatisfaction. But Prince D’Agostino fell far outside what she’d thought to be her inclusive experience. To lump him under “man” with those she’d had experience with was as accurate as lumping a top-of-the-food-chain predator with a jellyfish. Something very sure of itself told her she shouldn’t get closer. For any reason.
She should leave. Now.
She had to pry her gaze—her will—from his first.
Somehow she did, was at the door when a rough velvet whisper hit her between the shoulder blades. “Don’t run off yet.”
Logic said that omnidirectional/internal sound effect was the surround system’s doing. But there was no logic here. There was only the influence the voice exercised, the reactions it ignited. The certainty that it was talking to her.
She swayed around, found him on the dais in front of the mic, his gaze still cast on her like a stasis field.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Thank you for paying the ten-grand admission fee. But because you’re getting…restless, I’ll fast-forward to prying some real contributions out of you. You have the auction list, but in light of a certain…development, I have made some changes. Now the first item on auction is…myself.”
Two
If Prince Durante D’Agostino had announced he was Superman and launched into the air to circle overhead, there wouldn’t have been a more drastic reaction to his announcement.
Not that it would have shocked her. He did look like some superhuman being as he dominated the scene just by standing there, the rugged nobleness of his features and his leonine forehead accentuated by the swept-back mane of raven satin, the jacket of his sculpted designer charcoal suit casually pushed back by the hand resting on his hip, his white shirt stretching across his torso, detailing the daunting power beneath. He looked like a modern god swathed in the trappings of the times that equalized other men but that didn’t begin to contain the influence he exuded, to disguise his in-his-own-league nature.
His gaze panned the ballroom yet somehow managed not to release hers. That alone kept her heart practically dropping to the polished Carrara marble floor. But what restarted her tremors was what she saw in those eyes—an intensity untouched by the cynical amusement with which he watched the mayhem he’d kicked up.
“Before you get too excited,” he finally said. “I’m not auctioning off all of me, just my ear. Considering how in demand it is, with so many of you attempting to talk it off, I’m offering one hour of its exclusive use.” His lips tugged into what had to be the most arrhythmia-inducing weapon ever deployed on susceptible females. And it had her in its crosshairs. “I already have an opening bid. One hundred grand.”
Now she knew how mamma mia had been coined. It had to have been a woman who’d first exclaimed it, as a brutally gorgeous male plucked her strings.
And she did feel like a marionette, compelled to obey his every tug, any reluctance or misgiving evaporating in the excitement his mischief sent through her. She walked back under the pull of his challenge.
When she stopped at the fringe of the bidding crowd, he put his lips to the mic, implanted hot, wild images and sensations straight inside her, pitched his voice an octave lower. “Do I hear one hundred ten?”
Over three-dozen people, mostly women, raised their hands. She’d beaten them all in speed of response.
His lips spread in satisfaction, his pose grew more languid, a conqueror certain of his victory, indulgent in his triumph. “Thank you. Do I hear one hundred twenty?”
Her hand was up in the air before she could will it to be there. Seemed he’d jumpstarted her competitiveness. More. He’d sparked the first sign of life in her since she’d witnessed her mother’s being extinguished.
He kept raising the bid, and her competition dwindled. Soon suspense was fast reaching the point of overload.
When a dozen hands still shot up in the air when he reached the four hundred fifty grand mark, her stamina snapped and recoiled like an overextended string.
She blurted out, “I bid one million.”
A hush fell. Everyone turned to gape at her.
He straightened, his eyes losing all lightness, singeing hers through the charge that filled the space between them. “Now that’s a nice round figure. Anyone willing to top that? No? Fine, then. I have one million from the lady in blue. Going once, going twice—”
“I bid ten million.”
Durante saw shock seize his mystery woman’s face before he registered the words that had caused it. Only then did he drag his eyes and senses from her and search out the new speaker.
His every muscle tensed. How had he gotten past security? How had Durante not noticed him before?
His security had messed up. As for him, all his faculties had been converged on her, everything else skimming his consciousness without leaving an imprint.
And there was the now-gaunt, wild-eyed Jeremiah Langley. Staring at him like a drowning man would at a lifeboat. A month ago he’d looked at Durante as if at his own killer, before attempting to stab him. Durante couldn’t imagine how Langley had ended up blaming him—and not the investments he’d made against his advice—for his bankruptcy, but he’d hushed everything up, not wishing to add criminal charges to the distraught man’s troubles. He’d also postponed announcing Langley’s bankruptcy until he sold shares that would leave the man with minimal debt. But he’d made it clear to Langley, and to his security—he didn’t want to see the man again. Not in this lifetime.
No one knew how things stood between them, or that Jeremiah didn’t have the ten million he’d bid for Durante’s leniency. He couldn’t call Langley on it without outing him. Langley had cornered him into accepting his so-called bid as the winning one.
And that was his worst crime.
She had already accepted defeat. This time, she was walking away. He might not have more of her. Not tonight. Unacceptable.
He would have more of her. And if he had his way, as he always did, he would have all of her.
Gabrielle felt all animation drain from her system.
The moment her bid had burst from her incontinent mouth, she’d launched into feverish calculations to determine how she could part with that much cash in one lump sum in her current situation. Then that ten-million-dollar sledgehammer had fallen, pulverizing both worry and hope.
So that was it. She’d bid and lost. And he was no longer looking at her. Ten million dollars would distract even him.
So what was that tightening behind her ribs? Disappointment?
How stupid was that? This scheme wouldn’t have worked anyway. She didn’t know how she or King Benedetto could have thought it might. All her moronic endeavor would achieve was to give the scandal sheets fuel for the coming decade. She had to leave before the paparazzi he’d banned from the event got wind of this and ambushed her. Leave. Now. And don’t look back.
She managed that, but still felt as if she were wading through quicksand. His gaze had latched on to her again, robbed her of dominion over her own body. Desperation to get away kicked in.
In minutes she was in the parking lot, running to her car.
She remote-opened her door, was reaching for its handle when a boom cracked the silence of the night.
“Stay.”
She dropped her keys. Her purse. Probably a few months’ to a couple of years’ life expectancy, too.
She slumped against the warm metal and glass as if pressed there by the presence closing in on her. She heard nothing but the blood thundering in her head. The presence expanded at her back, pinning her to her support, squeezing her heart.
She fumbled for the door handle. She’d managed to open the door when that voice hit her again, a quiet rumble this time.
“Stay.”
She clenched her eyes shut, pitched forward, her nerveless weight closing the door with a muffled thud. That one word.
An invocation. Deeper and darker than the moonless night.
She turned around, leaning on the car. And there he was.
The good news was that he kept a dozen feet between them. The bad news was that it made no difference. And why should it? He’d been dozens of feet away in that ballroom and had still overwhelmed her.
“Stay?” Where was her voice? She’d addressed him before in a breathless whisper. This time it was a husky rasp. Both were nothing like her usual crisp tones. “What am I? Your poodle? What’s next? Roll over? Beg…?” She winced, stopped. Where were her brakes?
“How about ‘stop,’” he drawled. “Before you inflame my already-raging imagination beyond control.”
His voice wasn’t the same as what had flowed from the sound system earlier. It was so much more layered and modulated and hard-hitting, the prominent r’s of his accent far more intoxicating. Hearing it without distortion delayed her comprehension of his words. Then it hit her and she almost went up in a puff of mortification.
She couldn’t believe she’d said something so provocative, just begging for misinterpretation. He’d never believe she hadn’t meant anything beyond sarcasm.
