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“That’s insulting. This is first-class,” he said, his tone dry, “all the way.”
“Is this a joke to you? Your life has been easy, I get that. It radiates off you in waves. Your privilege. Your wealth. Everything I’ve had I’ve worked for. Every day of my life has been infused with some kind of struggle. Every single thing I own was purchased at great cost. You spend more on bottled water in a week than I spend on groceries in a month.”
“That is probably true. But now this is your life. Do not worry about your roommate, by the way. I made sure to give her several months of rent so that she would not feel your absence too keenly.”
“Nice of you to consider her feelings,” she said, though she was grateful that Samantha wouldn’t be left high and dry. Suddenly a wave washed over her, leaving her feeling adrift. Weightless. “I think I’m in shock,” she said, sinking further back into the chair across from him, her limbs suddenly feeling very shaky.
“Bailey,” he said, his expression concerned. “Are you able to breathe?”
She laid her head back, feeling dizzy.
“No,” she said.
Suddenly he was next to her, his large hands cupping her face. He was warm, and he was so very Raphael. “Bailey,” he said, his tone stern. “Keep breathing.”
Her vision went fuzzy around the edges for a second, then dark...
It came back, with too much clarity, too much brightness. She felt sick to her stomach, a cold sweat on her forehead, her fingers icy. “What happened?” she asked.
“You passed out,” he responded. He looked...he looked genuinely concerned. Though she wondered if it was for her or for the baby.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, pulling away from him. He complied, removing his hands from her face. She hated it. Hated that when he touched her she still felt something. Hated that he wasn’t touching her anymore. Hated herself for caring.
“Have you been passing out regularly?”
“No,” she said, trying not to watch him as he stood up and crossed to the bar. Trying very, very hard not to pay total and complete attention to his every movement. “I’ve had a little bit of a shocking day. I walked into a grocery store and saw that my ex-lover was a prince. Seeing as I knew I was having his baby, it suddenly occurred to me that I was having a prince’s baby. Then I went home, and said prince was in my bedroom. Then he dragged me onto a private plane, all the while demanding that I marry him or he’ll take my baby away. I think I’m just suffering the aftereffects.”
He opened up a bottle of sparkling water and poured it into a glass, his movements deft and swift. Then he crossed the space to her, handing her the drink. “I found out I was going to be a father today, and I seem to be handling it well.”
“Because you’re a robot,” she replied, taking a sip of the bland, fizzy liquid.
“I think that you can attest to the fact that I’m all man, Bailey. Not a robot.”
“Not all. Parts of you,” she said. “You seem to have Tin Man syndrome. No heart.”
“I love my country,” he responded, his tone cool. “I am eternally loyal to it. And I will do whatever is necessary to preserve the legacy. There is no reason for me to panic about the situation we find ourselves in. There is no question that I must marry the mother of my child. And while who you are will require a little bit of damage control, I was already set to be married in the next month. And, presumably, sometime after my wife would have given birth to a child. That has always been the course plotted out before me. All in all, only the bride has changed.”
“So...women and the children they bear are interchangeable to you?” she asked.
“A wife and child are necessary components to my life,” he said, his tone hard. “Essential to the continued health of the kingdom and bloodline. The importance cannot be overstated.”
“But who the woman...”
“Matters in terms of bloodline, political affiliation and the ability to have children. You have one out of three—I think you’re smart enough to guess which.”
He said it with such calm. As though the bride were the most incidental part of the marriage. As though he didn’t care at all whether he was married to her or to the shiny brunette she’d seen in the tabloids. “You’re horrible. Just horrible. How did I manage to convince myself for eight months that you were Prince Charming? No reference to your actual royalty intended.”
“We see what we want to see, Bailey. You wanted to see me as something that I wasn’t. It was convenient for you at the time. I was an easy lover for you to have. Don’t pretend that it didn’t suit you on some level to be with a man who was only around part of the time.”
“Or I was an idiot virgin who had finally found a man that she wanted to sleep with, and had her judgment completely clouded by her orgasms.”
Her words hung between them, tense and heavy. She despised herself for bringing that up. For bringing up the pleasure they had found together. She would rather forget it. It kept her up at night. All day, she would drag herself around, feeling exhausted and heartbroken. But night was worse. Because then she would dream. And when she dreamed, it was that Raphael was in bed with her. Touching her, kissing her. And when she woke up, she was alone. Hideously, depressingly alone, and she ached. For a touch she would never have again.
“I am sorry you were hurt,” he said, his tone clipped. “That was never my intention. But I have known who I was to be, what sort of woman I was to marry, from the time I was a boy.”
“And that woman isn’t me.”
“No.” He pushed his hand through his dark hair. “It is important to make the best choices I can for my country. And someday my child will do the same. It is what was instilled in me from the beginning. My mother reinforced my father. She had been raised to be the wife of a prince, and she knew her place. That is what it takes to raise the heir to a throne, Bailey. You must understand it is not snobbery on my part—at least not entirely—when I say you are not suited.”
“I...” She swayed slightly in her seat. “I really don’t even know how to have this conversation.”
“You should get some rest,” he said, stunning her with that declaration. “When we land we will be very close to the palace, and you can get settled in. In the meantime, I am afraid that you are overtaxed.”
“I don’t feel like you’ve earned the right to comment on my level of taxation.”
“As ruling government of an entire nation, taxation falls under my purview.”
“Oh, well, that’s fabulous. I guess we know which things are certain. Death, taxes and Raphael.”
“I’m hardly going to kill you, cara. I’m going to make you a princess.”
Suddenly, she felt so tired she could barely hold her head up. She could not be a princess. She was a waitress. And waitresses didn’t become princesses. “I’m going to have that nap now.”
Bailey wandered to the back of the plane, opening the door to the bedroom, then closing it tightly behind her. It was bigger than her bedroom in her apartment. With a large, ornate bed that looked like it was designed for much more than sleeping. It was ridiculous. He was ridiculous. This whole thing was ridiculous.
She kicked her shoes off, crossing to the bed before throwing herself down on her face like some tragic cartoon princess. She shut her eyes tight, trying not to give in to the tears that were building behind them.
This had to be a dream. All of it. When she woke up in the morning, her head would be clearer. She would be single, alone and pregnant. Her ex-boyfriend would be nothing more than that jerk pharmaceutical rep from Italy who had left her in the lurch. He would absolutely not be the prince of some obscure country, and she would not be a future princess.
The alternative was unthinkable.
* * *
When they disembarked in Santa Firenze, Raphael had them pull the car right up to the plane. He was feeling more than slightly concerned for Bailey’s health. Or, at the very least, the health of their unborn baby.
She had been especially pale ever since he had first seen her in her apartment, and she had gotten only more waxen as the trip had worn on. Though he had only seen her once after she had gone to the bedroom to sleep, and that was only to use the restroom about a half hour before they landed.
He was confused by her. By their every interaction. She was not grateful for the offer of marriage. Not especially pleased that he was giving her the chance to be a princess. His wife. A position of great honor. One that most women would fight over.
And yet the two who’d had it offered to them both seemed to have rejected it.
Allegra was a separate issue.
“The car is waiting,” he said through the closed bathroom door.
Bailey emerged a moment later, wet-haired, gritty-eyed and cranky, wearing a university sweatshirt and a pair of stretch pants.
“I see you availed yourself of the shower,” he said.
“How often do you get a shower at thirty thousand feet? I thought that if I didn’t at least give it a try, I would be seriously failing in the luxury stakes.”
“Well, you will have ample opportunity to use the facilities again. Even if I upgrade jets, it will still have a shower.”
“You’re assuming that I will be making use of your jet in the future.”
“Of course, you’re marrying me. Pretending otherwise is ridiculous.” He grabbed hold of her elbow, leading her from the plane, carefully helping her down the steps. “Now, come get in the car.”
She sputtered, “Just because you say nothing else makes sense does not mean that nothing else makes sense.”
He opened the door to the car, gesturing for her to get in. She shot him a deadly glare, then complied. He got in beside her, slamming the door shut. “You seem to be misunderstanding,” he said, feeling very much like he was speaking a different language. Because Bailey seemed to persist in misunderstanding him. “I am the ruler of Santa Firenze. No one in my family has produced an illegitimate child. Not one. No one in my family has ever been divorced. We are a hallowed and storied lineage. I am offering you a chance to become part of it. The fact that you have rejected me is outrageous on so many levels I cannot even begin to list them all.”
“By all means,” she said, leaning back in her seat. “List them. If you have time.”
“It isn’t that long of a drive to the castle.”
She blinked. “Castle?”
“What part of prince are you having trouble comprehending? I speak very good English, though Italian is my first language. You, however, are making me question my linguistic skills.”
“I would hate to be the cause of you questioning your linguistics. I’m sure that they’re fantastic.”
“They can’t be overly fantastic, because you do not seem to understand anything of what I am telling you.” There was no point arguing.
She would understand the moment his family home came into view. It was the jewel of Santa Firenze. Settled in the middle of the Alps, overlooking one of the deepest and bluest lakes in Europe, craggy peaks rising up around it. She would understand then. What he was offering. Understand what a gift he was presenting her with.
As the car made its way down the narrow, winding two-lane road, Bailey insisted on shifting constantly in her seat and letting out long, huffy sighs.
“Your distress is noted,” he said.
“Not overly. You keep accusing me of not understanding, and yet I think you’re the one who has not fully taken on board that I am not happy about this.”
“I am offering you marriage. Legitimacy for your child, an end to your financial concerns.”
“About that,” she snapped. “Where was your offer to end my financial concerns when I was working double shifts at that horrible restaurant? As I was killing myself to get through college, and you were presenting yourself as a businessman there on your company’s dime?”
“Would you have accepted my offer of financial assistance?”
Her face went blank then, her mouth settling into a stubborn line. “Yes,” she said.
“You’re a terrible liar. You would not have accepted. Not from Raphael the businessman. And you seem to like Raphael the prince a lot less.”
“That’s because the first time I met Raphael the prince was when he was breaking up with me at midnight after what I had thought was a very romantic date. Only then you threw me out into the snow.”
“I wanted a clean break. I felt it was better for both of us.”
“Don’t try to convince me that you lost any sleep over any of that.”
He had. She had no idea. He had lost countless hours of sleep, lying there hard and aching, wanting something that only she could give to him. She had cast a spell over him from the moment he had first seen her, and he had never been able to explain it. He only knew that she affected him in a way no other woman ever had. And it had nothing to do with skill.
He could remember the first time she had knelt down before him and taken him into her mouth. The way that she had tasted him, with shy, timid strokes of her tongue, how she had taken him in as deep as she could, her every movement uncertain. It was not her skill that enticed, but her sincerity. Her intense dedication to him. He was a man who had always felt a certain level of worship was his due, but it meant so much more coming from such a willing supplicant, rather than a trained one.
So yes, he had lost sleep. He’d had no desire to touch another woman, and, in fact, that had worked to his advantage, since he had purposed that he would not until his wedding night with Allegra. In that time he had attempted to drum up some kind of enthusiasm for the woman he was engaged to. But he had found none. Allegra was beautiful, with golden skin and dark, shimmering curls.
But he had craved the pale, flaxen-haired beauty of Bailey.
It was all vaguely ridiculous. He was fantasizing about a university student named Bailey. Princess Bailey.
But that was the thing with honor. It was supposed to matter even if it was hard. A truly strong oak didn’t bend in the wind, and neither could the ruler of Santa Firenze.
As a boy, when he’d hurt himself, his father had not allowed his mother or the servants to comfort him. It had been up to him to breathe through the pain and carry on. That, his father had told him once, was how a man learned to soldier on in all things. If you could do it with a cut, you would do it with an emotional wound, too.
When he was older, his father had told him it applied to other physical aches, as well. A man might want a certain woman, might burn for her, but if there was potential a dalliance would harm the country, that craving—like all other harmful desires—had to be cast aside.
The prince of Santa Firenze could have whatever his heart desired. And that was why his heart, soul and sense of honor had to be made strong.
Raphael knew that he was strong. Had been, utterly and completely all his life.
Until her.
It was truly ridiculous. But here they were. And she, somehow, felt like she was in a position to play hardball.
The limo wound itself around the last curve, and, finally, the stately palace gates came into view. Wrought iron and scrolling, the family crest emblazoned upon them. They parted for the car as if by magic, and the limo rolled through a lane lined with hedges until they reached the magnificent courtyard in front of the palace.
The ground was overlaid with brick. A giant fountain dominated the center. At its top was a golden statue and there were many others fashioned from marble all around, representing the great leaders of his country. His very bloodline carved into stone in front of this hallowed castle that had housed generations.
He looked over at her and was satisfied to see that, finally, she had the decency to look impressed. She was staring up at the castle, at its turrets, with ivy climbing up the side and the blue-and-white flags of his country waving in the breeze from the very top of the shining palace.
“This is my home,” he said, stating the obvious for dramatic effect. “And when you are my wife, it will be your home. When our child is born, it will be his home. Do you still think you should raise him in an apartment in Colorado with your roommate?”
“I... I had no idea.”
“It is not my fault you don’t pay attention to current affairs. Or perhaps it is my fault, for keeping my country financially sound and free of most of the conflicts that happen in the world. We have very few reasons to be in the news because the citizens are happy, the coffers are full and we have no national security crises or natural disasters to speak of.”
“Is this Narnia?”
“If it were, then a breath would turn all of the statues back to flesh. However, it is the real world. And they are only stone.”
“That’s a shame,” she said. “Then all I would have to do is walk back to the wardrobe and I could be free of you.”
She was mutinous. And he had never dealt with mutiny before. Like his father before him, he’d made Santa Firenze his life. Nothing had ever come before it. And as such, no one in his country had ever had cause for complaint.
“You don’t actually want to be free of me,” he said. How could she? “You’re putting up a fight because you have an idea of what your life should be. I would argue that you are putting up a fight additionally because you have an idea of what consequences you should suffer for your sins.”
“My sins?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, “your sins. You think you should be punished for this. Because you allowed yourself to get pregnant. And now you must pay penance. The sad, single mother, waiting tables, having been abandoned by her lover. It’s a very nice narrative, but it is not a situation you find yourself in. You have a man willing to step up and take responsibility. More than a man, you have a prince. Saying anything but an emphatic yes is a waste of your resources.”
She looked up at the palace, her eyes wide, her lips parted slightly. He was struck in that moment by the fullness of her beauty. Just as he had been the first time he’d seen her. And now she was carrying his child. She would be his wife.
