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Slowly her black-fringed lids fluttered open. Those brown eyes so fabulous because of their burgundy hue stared into his.
“Dizo—” came her urgent cry. Like a cat preening in the sun with delight, she stretched without inhibition and wrapped her arms around his neck. He felt her warm, sweet breath on his lips. Then it was the dream all over again as her mouth took him to that place he’d never wanted to leave.
This time there was a loud knock on the door bringing him fully awake. “Dinozzo! I’m getting worried. If you’re not up on the count of three, I’m coming in.”
Diavolo!
None too gently Dizo pushed her against the mattress. The second he threw the sheet over her head his uncle walked in.
“Your papa has already phoned twice. He has a mes—”
That was all that came out of his uncle’s mouth. Scratching his balding head, he took in the scene of what could only be labeled wanton desire with his-and-her clothing and blankets scattered, pillows askew. Their gazes locked in silent communication.
His uncle cleared his throat. “I’ll tell your father you’ll call him later.” He closed the door.
Muttering a curse, Dizo levered his tall, well-honed body off the other side of the bed. By some miracle he was still wearing his pants. While he was still disoriented, Gina peeked out from beneath the sheet covering her head. His heart slammed into his ribs to see her beautiful face framed by her disheveled curls. One dangled in the middle of her forehead. She was a living, breathing miracle.
In a minute he would demand answers, but for the moment all his befuddled brain could do was try to digest the fact that Princess Regina Schiaparelli Vittorio of Castelmare had spent what was left of the rest of the night in bed with him. Damn if he hadn’t been so drunk after leaving the tavern, he hadn’t been able to distinguish fact from fiction or realize that the divine pleasure she’d brought him was no dream.
She started to get up, pushing the sheet completely away. As she slid her shapely legs to the floor and rose to her feet, the yellow skirt that matched her top fell to her knees. She could wear any color and look gorgeous, creating a picture of summery elegance and sophistication only she could carry off.
Everything she bought or had made to wear was exquisitely cut to play down her curves, but he wouldn’t be a man if his senses didn’t quake at the sight of her voluptuous figure.
With unsteady hands he reached in the drawer for a clean T-shirt and pulled it down over his bare chest. “Explanations can come later,” he muttered. “What I have to do right now is get you out of here before my uncle learns who you are.”
“I don’t care if he knows.”
“You don’t mean that,” his voice grated. You can’t.
She was about to be married to the king of Pedrosa. In order to get near her, let alone touch her, you had to be royalty yourself. She was off-limits. Forbidden. That had been drummed into Dizo’s brain from the moment his father had taken the gardener’s job at the palace years ago.
Before her betrothal, more than one prince Dizo knew of had been after her. His brothers had kept him up on the palace gossip. From rumors they’d learned Gina’s mother had always favored the Spanish speaking Prince Nicolas, now king since his father had stepped down.
Dizo had seen him walking on the grounds with her. Occasionally they’d gone horseback riding. Many was the time Dizo had wished Nic’s mount had thrown him and broken his arrogant Catalan neck.
Gina’s expressive eyes glinted with pain. “You mean you don’t want me to mean it. Is that because you’re getting married at the end of the summer?” She faced him with the same forthrightness that had always been her trademark. Gina was only five feet five, but there were times like now when she took on invisible stature.
A tight band constricted his breathing. “Who told you that?”
“Your father. Who else? Is it true?” Her voice shook.
He grimaced. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“Then it is?” she cried. Her face suddenly lost color.
Gina… “It’s no secret you and I have always been attracted to each other, but that was all it ever could be. We both have to get on with our lives and right now it’s first things first.”
In spite of the tears glinting on those long black eyelashes, a daring smile broke the corner of her provocative mouth. “How do you propose I exit the room without your uncle seeing me?”
Dizo picked up her sandals and handed them to her. “Put these on and I’ll help you out through the window. There’s a fruit shed maybe a hundred yards from here. No one will be around at this time of day. Hide in there and wait for me till I come with the truck.”
If anyone knew she’d been here, in his bed, her reputation would be tarnished beyond all recognition. He didn’t even want to think how King Nicolas would react when he found out. Lucca would have every right to fire the entire Fornese family and shuttle them back to Sardinia. All the goodwill Dizo’s father had built up over the years with King Rudolfo and his family would be destroyed.
The media would have a field day with Gina who up until this stunning escapade hadn’t done anything to sully her name. Much to their frustration they’d never caught her in anything salacious. She’d remained as white and pure as the proverbial driven snow.
Until now…
After she’d slipped into her sandals he lifted the short-sleeved jacket to help her finish dressing. It took all his strength of will not to pull her back against him and finish what she’d started while he’d thought he was dreaming.
The untouchable twenty-six-year-old Princess Regina no longer bore that label. Her swollen lips showed signs of being kissed senseless. A faint rash from his five-o’clock shadow covered her high-boned cheeks. His touch was all over her even if he couldn’t remember details. Traces of her fragrance still clung to his skin. How in hell was he going to live with that?
She flashed him that captivating white smile. “Your uncle’s going to know how I disappeared.”
Dizo pulled the shutters back and opened the two panes that swung outward. “It won’t be the first time,” he muttered, “but as he was young once himself, he knows better than to say anything, especially with nonna in the house.”
For reasons he didn’t dare contemplate right now, it was imperative Gina leave Sardinia immediately. He picked her up none too gently and swung her through the opening, then lowered her until her feet touched the ground. When he would have let go of her hands, she held on.
“Last night you told me you desired me. Over and over again in every conceivable way,” she added with those wine dark eyes never wavering from his. “If the woman you’re supposedly going to marry is still unaware of your feelings for me, then it’s time you went to her with the truth.”
While he stood there reeling from the implication that more might have gone on than he could remember, she stole away.
His jaw set, he closed the window and put the shutters back in place. After he’d slipped on his shoes, he left the room and practically ran into his uncle who’d just come out of his grandmother’s room.
“I owe you an apology,” Dizo began in a quiet voice.
To his surprise his uncle broke into a smile. “No apology is necessary.” He patted his shoulder, seemingly more affable than usual. “Your papa has worried. You know. No women for a long time, but I phoned him just now and assured him there’s nothing wrong with his Dinozzo.”
Dio mio.
“Then you’ll understand I need your truck again for a little while?”
His head bobbed. “Si, si. I’ll explain to your nonna you have business in town but will be back soon.”
“I swear I won’t be long. Grazie, zio.”
He took off out the back door for the truck. The keys were in the ignition where he’d left them last night. Gina must have seen him drive away from the house and decided to wait for him to return. When she realized he was on the verge of passing out, she’d helped him in the house and things had gotten out of hand from there. That was the only explanation he could think of that made any sense.
“Princess?” he called to her once he’d reached the entrance to the shed. “Quick—come and get in—”
When she didn’t answer or appear, he frowned. “Princess?”
Nothing.
After climbing down from the driver’s seat, he went inside. A thorough investigation revealed no sign of her.
His mind replayed the moment he’d helped her to escape. Only now did it occur to him that after delivering her last salvo, she’d had no intention of hanging around for him. Too late he remembered she never went anywhere without her network of staff and personal bodyguards.
Now his crime had more witnesses who’d watched him lower her out his bedroom window. It was conceivable the news had already reached her brother’s ears. How long before Nic heard the worst—Dizo suddenly realized he was in the biggest trouble of his life.
He pounded a fist against his forehead. By now she was on the helicopter winging her way toward Castelmare. With no time to lose he raced back to the farmhouse.
After swearing his uncle to secrecy, he explained he had to go back to Castelmare on an emergency before the day was out. Six hours later his commercial flight landed in Nice, France. He rented a car at the airport, then drove over the speed limit to the capitol city of Capriccio in Castelmare fifteen miles away.
Before he did anything else he needed to talk to his father who would still be on the palace grounds. Since the death of Dizo’s mother, Guido never left for home before seven in the evening.
When he walked in to the greenhouse, three pairs of Fornese eyes widened to see him appear unannounced. His father’s slid away. Guilt had a way of revealing itself.
Over the years Dizo had worked out the important issues with his father, but he’d never been truly angry with him until now.
He flashed his brothers a speaking glance. “If you don’t mind, I have to talk to Papa alone.”
Both looked distinctly uncomfortable before they nodded and left, closing the doors behind them.
Dizo moved closer. “I’ve always been aware of your dislike for Princess Regina, but you chose the wrong day to tell her I left Castelmare because of my nonexistent impending marriage. Do you have any conception of the pain she was in after her father’s funeral yesterday?”
His father’s dark head with only a sprinkling of gray lifted abruptly. “How do you know what I said to her?”
“She told me.” In person. In Technicolor. Dizo was still in shock.
“Of course. The telephone.” He slapped his own leg. “That young woman never leaves you alone. Because she’s the principessa of Castelmare, no place is far enough away from her, is it.”
After what had happened to Dizo last night, he couldn’t honestly answer his father.
“I may not have your college education, figliomio, but I’m not as unintelligent as you think I am.”
“That’s your assessment, not mine.”
“Basta!” He shook his head in fury. “It’s exactly because I knew how hard it was on her I said what I did.” His index finger lifted, a sure sign a lecture was coming. “Since I took this job here sixteen years ago, I’ve seen her traipse after you like a lovesick puppy and you allowed it knowing nothing could ever come of it.”
Tell me something I don’t know, Papa. Gina’s destiny had been decreed the moment her royal parents knew another royal baby was on the way.
“Before your mother died, she made me promise I would put a stop to it, but I couldn’t persuade you to go back home to college. You planned your life so you could be around the princess. You think I don’t know you could have made triple the money doing another kind of part-time job away from the grounds?
“Only one man has ever mattered to her besides her father. That man is you!
“When she came hightailing it in here yesterday after the funeral looking for you, I took matters into my own hands. She’ll be marrying King Nicolas of Pedrosa in the very near future. As long as you finally showed the good sense to leave Castelmare for good, I decided to make certain the umbilical cord got cut once and for all!”
Dizo inhaled sharply. “I’m afraid it didn’t work.”
“Obviously not. You’re back here in twenty-four hours looking like the very devil despite my big brother’s news that you were with a woman last night. What did the princess do? Order you back to the palace on some excuse about the plantings at her father’s grave?”
He experienced more pain remembering the day they’d talked about her father’s love of pine trees and how they could be incorporated when everything else was more tropical. It hadn’t been that long ago.
“She did worse than that, Papa. It’s the reason I’ve come to you for advice.”
“My advice?” he mocked. “Since when did you ever want it?”
“Since this morning when I woke up to find her in my bed.”
A stunning silence followed.
Aghast at the revelation, his father paled and staggered over to the chair to sit down. The two men stared long and hard at each other. “She showed up at the farmhouse?” he asked incredulously.
“I’m afraid so. I left Zitta’s bar around two. Nothing else registered after that except that I had this fantastic dream about her. When I woke up, there she was.”
A ruddy color spilled into his father’s cheeks. “Did you—you know what I mean—”
Yes, Dizo knew esattamente what he meant.
“I don’t really know. She still had her clothes on.” Though admittedly not all. “I was wearing my pants and nothing else.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” he muttered.
Dizo had been thinking about that and had come to the same conclusion. “That’s why I’m here.”
His father wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Did my brother see her?”
“He saw someone in the bed, but I got her out through the window before he could identify her. Unfortunately you and I both know her bodyguards had to be close by.”
“Si, and bodyguards talk.” A serious moan came out of his father before he crossed himself.
“That’s all I’ve been thinking about. I told her to wait for me inside the fruit shed, but when I drove up in the truck, she was gone.”
He jumped to his feet. “It was a trick! She knows every one of them.”
And they work every time.
Dizo rubbed the back of his neck. “Whatever it was, it got me back here on the double.”
His father started to pace, then stopped in front of Dizo. “You don’t have a choice but to go to Lucca and tell him the whole truth. Once King Nicolas finds out—” He shook his head in despair. “If there’s any chance at all you impregnated the princess, her brother has to know before anyone else! That’s one thing the bodyguards don’t know yet.”
“And then what, Papa? If she’s carrying my child, she would never abort it. Nic would have to live with the knowledge that she’d been with another man first.” There was a secret part in Dizo’s heart that rejoiced at the very thought of her giving birth to his son or daughter.
“She could never marry you, let alone acknowledge you or your love child in public, either! How does that sit with you?”
He shut his eyes tightly. “It doesn’t. I have to pray to God I didn’t make total love to her.”
“But you don’t know for sure.”
“No,” he said in a tormented whisper. “She’s the only one who can tell me the truth.”
“Have you ever known her to lie?”
“No.” Gina didn’t have a deceitful bone inside that breathtaking body, but since last night he realized she’d been willing to risk the unthinkable to be with him. He couldn’t believe she would go that far. On the day she’d buried her father, she’d flown all the way from Castelmare in the dead of night to find him. It went against everything her royal training had taught her from the cradle. But it secretly thrilled him.
“Then you have to ask her what happened,” his father said, bringing him back to the present.
“I intend to. No matter the answer, I’ll go to her brother. He deserves to know exactly what happened before King Nicolas finds out.”
