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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 whirl-wind 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 admitting 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 compared 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.
She’d moved on after he’d been wiped out of the picture, looking for a replacement prince. And she’d found one—and lost him. To this day, Leandro had been unable to find out the true circumstances of her broken engagement to one of his second cousins, Prince Armando D’Agostino.
But she’d had a contingency plan. She’d become the indispensable presence that connected the über-traditional monarchy to the modern world. The one the kingdom relied on in its hours of need. The one they’d sent to him.
And she wanted to “start the negotiations.” Wanted to get it over with so he could “get on with the rest of his day.”
Not the words or attitude of someone who cared one way or the other if those negotiations bore fruit.
So what was she up to now?
She must have a plan. A new act. She must have decided to walk in here, pretend antagonism, condescension, and before he interpreted any level of emotional involvement in either, she would switch to indifference. Keep him guessing. Keep him off-balance and enmeshed in the game, trying to anticipate her next move and how to counteract it.
Masterful. A resounding success.
And why not? He’d let her perform this new scenario. Watching her execute it should be therapeutic.
He advanced on her with steps that he hoped looked measured. His resolve to purge her wasn’t lessening her impact. He stopped two steps away, and it hit him two hundred times harder.
He made another split-second decision, to give in to it rather than fight it and lose more to its sway. He let her aura flood over him, took another step closer.
“And hello to you, too, Phoebe.”
Her eyes swung up to his. Blood grew thicker, demanding harder contractions from his heart to push it through his arteries.
She took half a step back. Slow. Smooth. Dancing with him already? They’d once danced so…exquisitely together.
“There’s no need to pretend we owe each other hellos.”
The matter-of-factness of her tone was like an intravenous stimulant, riding his circulation’s rapids to his fingertips, his toes, his scalp, his erection. He made up for the half step she’d gained. “Don’t we? You keep saying the most interesting things.”
“I’m stating facts. Now, if we can move on?”
“So, me not being a prize worth winning, and us not owing each other hellos are ‘facts.’ Because you say so, of course.”
Her gaze shifted downward. He felt it scrape down his body, as inflammatory as her nails had once been.
But what was the stirring he saw in her eyes? Irritation? At him? Or at herself? Because she hadn’t intended to look? To notice? To become as inflamed?
Before he could make sure, her gaze moved back up to his, smothering whatever it had been in blandness. “Prince D’Agostino…”
