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The Prince's Cinderella Bride
Christine Rimmer
From Texas nanny…to palace princess! It should never have happened - the night of forbidden magic that turned Lani Vasquez and Prince Maximilian Bravo-Calabretti into lovers. After all, Lani knew all too well that an affair between a lowly nanny and the heir to the throne could only end in heartbreak - her own. Which was why she had to end it before she lost her herself completely… His New Year's Eve with Lani had rocked Max's world - and now the Texas beauty wanted to be just friends? The single father had sworn he'd never marry again, but Lani had charmed his children and awakened his guarded heart. Will the prince catch his Cinderella before the clock strikes midnight?


Her heart kind of melted about then.
How could she help but melt? He not only made her want to rip off her clothes and climb him like a tree, but he was a very good man. He was constantly finding new ways to show her that he really did care about her and the things that mattered to her. It wasn't his fault that she had trouble trusting her own emotions.
Her throat burned with all the difficult stuff she didn't know how to tell him. “Max, I …” She had no idea where to go from there.
And then it didn't matter what she might have said. He wiped her mind free of all thought by the simple act of lifting her chin lightly with his free hand and lowering his lips to hers.

* * *

The Bravo Royales:
When it comes to love, Bravos rule!
The Prince’s Cinderella Bride
Christine Rimmer


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHRISTINE RIMMER came to her profession the long way around. Before settling down to write about the magic of romance, she'd been everything from an actress to a salesclerk to a waitress. Now that she's finally found work that suits her perfectly, she insists she never had a problem keeping a job—she was merely gaining “life experience” for her future as a novelist. Christine is grateful not only for the joy she finds in writing, but for what waits when the day's work is through: a man she loves who loves her right back, and the privilege of watching their children grow and change day to day. She lives with her family in Oregon. Visit Christine at www.christinerimmer.com (http://www.christinerimmer.com).
For MSR, always
Contents
Chapter One (#ud01ef61d-a9e9-506a-8ef0-64ca680b43e6)
Chapter Two (#u51355e31-a2ae-54a9-b6d8-62cc228e9491)
Chapter Three (#uea44aa42-57be-5f46-bea1-13ea9ff87ee7)
Chapter Four (#ua63d8a92-fbad-5c91-838a-cb3bdbbdda6e)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
Maximilian Bravo-Calabretti, heir to the Montedoran throne, stepped out from behind a low cluster of fan palms and directly into the path of the woman who’d hardly spoken to him since New Year’s.
Lani Vasquez let out a small squeak of surprise and jumped back. She almost dropped the book she was carrying. “Your Highness.” She shot him a glare. “You scared me.”
The high garden path that wove along the cliffside was deserted. It was just the two of them at the moment. But anyone might come wandering toward them—one of the gardeners looking for a hedge to trim, or a palace guest out for a brisk early-morning stroll. Max wanted privacy for this. He grabbed her hand, which caused her to let out another sharp cry.
“Come with me,” he commanded and pulled her forward on the path. “This way.”
She dug in her heels. “No, Max. Really.”
He turned to face her. She flashed him a look of defiance. Still, he refused to let go of her soft little hand. Her sweet face was flushed, her thick midnight hair loose on her shoulders, tangled by the wind off the sea far below. He wanted to haul her close and kiss her. But he needed to get her to talk to him first. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
Her mouth quivered in the most tempting way. “Yes, I have. Let go of my hand.”
“We have to talk.”
“No, we don’t.”
“We do.”
“It was a mistake,” she insisted in a ragged little whisper.
“Don’t say that.”
“But it’s the truth. It was a mistake and there’s no point in going into it. I don’t want to talk about it.”
And he didn’t want to hear that. “Just come with me, that’s all I’m asking.”
“I’m expected at the villa.” She worked as a nanny for his brother Rule and his wife. They owned a villa in the nearby ward of Fontebleu. “I have to go now.”
“This won’t take long.” He turned and started forward again.
She let out a low, unhappy sound, and for a moment, he was certain she would simply refuse to budge.
But then she gave in and followed. He kept hold of her hand and pulled her along. Not glancing back, he cut off the overlook path and onto the rocky hillside, finding a second path that twisted up and around, through a copse of olive trees and on to where the land flattened out to a more cultivated formal garden.
High, green hedges surrounded them, and they walked on thick grass. The grass gave way to a rose garden. Now, in February, the buds were only just forming on the thorny stems. Beyond the budding roses, he took a curving stone path beneath a series of trellises. Still she followed, saying nothing, occasionally dragging her feet a little to let him know she was far from willing.
They came to a gate in a stone wall. He pushed through the gate and held it for her, with his free hand, going through after her and then closing it behind them.
Across another swath of lawn, between a pair of silk floss trees, the stone cottage waited. He led her on, across the grass, along the stepping-stones that stopped at the rough wood trellis twined with bare, twisted grapevines. The trellis shaded the rough wood door.
He pushed the door open, let go of her hand and ushered her in first. With a quick, suspicious glance at him, she went.
Two windows let in enough light to see by. Sheets covered the plain furniture. It took him only a moment to whip off the coverings and drop them to the rough wooden floor, revealing a scarred table with four chairs, a sofa, a couple of side tables and two floral-patterned wing chairs. The rudimentary kitchen took up one wall. Stairs climbed another wall to the sleeping area above.
“Have a seat,” he offered.
She pressed her lips together, shook her head and remained standing by the door, clutching her book tightly between her two hands. “What is this place?”
“It’s just a gardener’s cottage. No one’s using it now. Sit down.”
She still refused to budge. “What are you doing, Your High—?”
“Certainly we’re past that.”
For a moment, she said nothing, only stared at him, her dark eyes huge in the soft oval of her face. He wanted to reach out and gather her close and soothe all her troubles away. But everything about her warned, Don’t touch me.
She let out a breath and her slim shoulders drooped. “Max. Really. Can’t you just admit it? We both know it was a mistake.”
“Wrong.” He moved a step closer. She stiffened a little, but she didn’t back away. He whispered, “It was beautiful. Perfect. At the time, you thought so, too—or so you said.”
“Oh, Max. Why can’t I get through to you?” She turned from him and went to one of the windows.
He stared at her back, at her hair curling, black as a crow’s wing, on her shoulders. And he remembered...
It was New Year’s Eve. At the Sovereign’s New Year’s Ball.
He asked her to dance and as soon as he had her in his arms, he only wanted to keep her there. So he did. When the first dance ended, he held her lightly until the music started up again. He kept her with him through five dances. Each dance went by in the blink of an eye. He would have gone on dancing with her, every dance, until the band stopped playing. But people noticed and she didn’t like it.
By the fifth dance she was gazing up at him much too solemnly. And when that dance ended, she said, “I think it’s time for me to say good-night.”
He’d watched her leave the ballroom and couldn’t bear to see her go. So he followed her. They’d shared their first kiss in the shadows of the long gallery outside the ballroom, beneath the frescoes depicting martyred saints and muscular angels. She’d pulled away sharply, dark fire in her eyes.
So he kissed her again.
And a third time, as well. By some heady miracle, with those kisses, he’d secured her surrender. Lani led him up to her small room in the deserted apartment of his brother Rule’s family. When he left her hours later, she was smiling and tender and she’d kissed him good-night.
But ever since then, for five endless weeks, she’d barely spoken to him.
“Lani. Look at me....”
She whirled and faced him again. Her mouth had softened and so had her eyes. Had she been remembering that night, too? For a moment, he almost dared to hope she would melt into his arms.
But then she drew herself up again. “It was a mistake,” she insisted for the fourth time. “And this is impossible. I have to go.” She headed for the door.
He accused, “Coward.”
The single word seemed to hit her between the shoulder blades. She let go of the doorknob, dropped her book to the rough entry table and turned once more to meet his waiting eyes. “Please. It was just one of those things that happen even though it shouldn’t have. We got carried away....”
Carried away? Maybe. “I have no regrets. Not a one.” He was glad it had happened, and on New Year’s Eve, too. To him it had seemed the ideal way to ring in a whole new year—and right then, a dangerous thought occurred to him. God. Was there a baby? If so, he needed to know. “We should have been more careful, though. You’re right. Is that why you keep running away from me? Are you—?”
“No,” she cut in before he could even get the question out. “We were lucky. You can stop worrying.”
“I miss you,” he said, before she could start in again about how she had to go. “I miss our discussions, our talks in the library. Lani, we have so much in common. We’ve been good friends.”
“Oh, please,” she scoffed. But there was real pain in her eyes, in the tightness of her mouth. “You and I were never friends.” All at once, her eyes were too bright. She blinked away tears.
He wanted only to comfort her. “Lani...” He took a step toward her.
But she put up a hand and he stopped in midstride. “We’ve been friendly,” she corrected. “But to be more is beyond inappropriate. I work for your brother and sister-in-law. I’m the nanny. I’m supposed to set an example and show good judgment.” She swallowed. Hard. “I never should have let it happen.”
“Will you stop saying that it shouldn’t have happened?”
“But it shouldn’t have.”
“Excuse me. We are two single adults and we have every right to—”
“Stop.” She backed a step toward the door. “I want you to listen, Max. It can’t happen again. I won’t let it.” Her eyes were dry now. And way too determined.
He opened his mouth to insist that it most certainly would happen again. But where would such insistence get him? Except to send her whirling, flinging the door wide, racing off down the walk and out the gate.
He didn’t want that. And arguing with her over whether that unforgettable night should or should not have happened was getting him nowhere, anyway. They didn’t need arguing. They needed to reestablish their earlier ease with each other.
So in the end he answered mildly, “Of course you’re right. It won’t happen again.”
She blinked in surprise. “I don’t... What are you saying?”
“I’ll make an agreement with you.”
She narrowed her eyes and peered at him sideways. “I don’t want to bargain about this.”
“How can you know that? You haven’t heard my offer yet.”
“Offer?” She sneered the word. He held his silence as she nibbled her lower lip in indecision. Finally, she threw up both hands. “Oh, all right. What, then? What is your offer?”
“I’ll promise not to try to seduce you,” he suggested with what he hoped was just the right touch of wry humor, “and you’ll stop avoiding me. We can be...” He hesitated, remembering how she’d scoffed when he’d called them friends. “...what we used to be.”
She aimed a put-upon look at the single beam in the rough-textured ceiling. “Oh, come on. Seriously? That never works.”
“I disagree.” Light. Reasonable. Yes, just the right tone. “And it’s unfair to generalize. I think it can work. We can make it work.” Until she admitted that being what they used to be wasn’t nearly enough. Then they could make it work in much more satisfying ways.
She hovered there in front of the door, staring at him, unblinking. He stared right back, trying to look calm and reasonable and completely relaxed when in reality his gut was clenched tight and he’d begun to lose hope he would ever get through to her.
But then, at last, she dropped her gaze. She went to the rustic dinner table, where she ran her finger along the back of one of the plain straight chairs. He watched her, remembering the cool, thrilling wonder of her fingers on his naked skin.
Finally, she slanted him a look. “I love Montedoro. I came here with Sydney thinking I would stay for six months or a year, just for the life experience.” Sydney was his brother Rule’s wife and Lani’s closest friend. “Two years later, I’m still here. I have this feeling, and it’s such a powerful feeling, that Montedoro is my real home and I was only waiting to come here, to find the place I was meant to be. I want to write a hundred novels, all of them set right here. I never want to leave.”
“I know. And no one wants you to leave.”
“Oh, Max. What I’m trying to say is, as much as I love it here, as much as I want to stay forever, if you or any of your family wanted me gone, my visa would be revoked in a heartbeat.”
“How many times do I have to tell you? No one wants you to go.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t get it. Love affairs end. And when they end, things can get awkward. You’re a good man, a kind man. But you’re also the heir to the throne. I’m the help. It’s...well, it’s hardly a relationship of equals.”
Why did she insist on seeing trouble where there was none? “You’re wrong. We are equals in all the ways that really matter.”
She made a humphing sound. “Thanks for that, Your Highness.”
He wanted to grab her and shake her. But somehow he managed to remain still, to speak with calm reproach. “You know me better than that.”
She shook her head. “Don’t you get it? We went too far. We need to back off and let it go.”
Let it go—let her go? Never. “Listen. I’m going to say it again. This time I’m hopeful you’ll actually hear me. I would never expect you to leave Montedoro, no matter what happened. You have my sworn word on that. The last thing I would ever want is to make things difficult for you.”
Heat flared in her eyes again. “But that’s exactly what you’ve done—what you are doing right now.”
“Forgive me.” He said it evenly, holding her dark gaze.
Another silence ensued. An endless one.
And then, at last, she spoke again, her head drooping, her shining, softly curling hair swinging out to hide her flushed cheeks. “I hate this.”
“So do I.”
She lifted her head and stared at him, emotions chasing themselves across her sweet face: misery, exasperation, frustration, sorrow. After a moment she confessed, “All right. It’s true that I miss...having you to talk to.”
Progress. His heart slammed against his rib cage.
She added, “And I adore Nick and Constance.” His son, Nicholas, was eight. Connie was six. Lani was good friends with Gerta, Nick and Connie’s nanny. Rule’s children and his often played together. “I...” She peered at him so closely, her expression disbelieving. “Do you honestly think we could do that, be...friendly again?”
“I know we could.”
“Just that and only that.” Doubt shadowed her eyes. “Friendly. Nothing more.”
“Only that,” he vowed, silently adding, Until you realize you want more as much as I do.
She sighed. “I... Well, I would like to be on good terms with you.”
Light, he reminded himself as his pulse ratcheted higher. Keep it light. “All right, then. We are...as we were.” He dared to hold out his hand to her.
She frowned. He waited, arm outstretched, arching a brow, trying to appear hopeful and harmless. Her gaze darted from his face to his offered hand, and back to his face again. Just when he was certain he would have to drop his hand, she left the table and came and took it. His fingers closed over hers. He reveled in the thrill that shivered up his arm at her touch.
Too soon, she eased her hand free and snatched up her book. “Now, will you let me go?”
No. He cast about for a way to keep her there. If she wouldn’t let him kiss her or hold her or smooth her shining hair, all right. He accepted that. But couldn’t they at least talk for a while the way they used to do?
“Max?” A slight frown creased her brow.
He was fresh out of new tactics and had no clue how to get her to let down her guard. Plus he had a very strong feeling that he’d pushed her as far as she would go for now. This was looking to be an extended campaign. He didn’t like that, but if it was the only way to finally reach her, so be it. “I’ll be seeing you in the library—where you will no longer scuttle away every time I get near you.”
A hint of the old humor flashed in her eyes. “I never scuttle.”
“Scamper? Dart? Dash?”
“Stop it.” Her mouth twitched. A good sign, he told himself.
“Promise me you won’t run off the next time we meet.”
The spark of humor winked out. “I just don’t like this.”
“You’ve already said that. I’m going to show you there’s nothing to be afraid of. Do we have an understanding?”
“Oh, Max...”
“Say yes.”
And finally, she gave in and said the words he needed to hear. “Yes. I’ll, um, look forward to seeing you.”
He didn’t believe her. How could he believe her when she sounded so grim, when that mouth he wanted beneath his own was twisted with resignation? He didn’t believe her, and he almost wished he could give her what she said she wanted, let her go, say goodbye. He almost wished he could not care.
But he’d had years of not caring—long, empty years when he’d told himself that not caring was for the best.
And then the small, dark-haired woman in front of him changed everything.
She turned for the door.
He was out of ways to keep her there, and he needed to accept that. “Lani, wait...”
She stopped, shoulders tensing, head slightly bowed. “What now?” But she didn’t turn back to him.
“Let me.” He eased around her and pulled the door wide. She nodded, barely glancing at him, and went through, passing beneath the rough-hewn trellis into the cool winter sunlight. He lingered in the open doorway, watching her as she walked away from him.
Chapter Two
“What is going on in that head of yours?” Sydney O’Shea Bravo-Calabretti, formerly kick-ass corporate lawyer and currently Princess of Montedoro, demanded. “Something’s bugging you.” The women sat in kid-size chairs at the round table in the playroom of the villa Sydney and Rule had bought and remodeled shortly after their marriage two years before.
Lani, holding Sydney’s one-year-old, Ellie, kissed the little one’s silky strawberry curls and lied without shame. “Nothing’s bugging me. Not a thing.”
“Yes, there is. You’ve got this weird, worried, faraway look in your eye.”
Okay, yeah. Yesterday’s confrontation with Max in the little stone house had seriously unnerved her. She’d thought about little else since then. She’d told no one what had happened on New Year’s, not even Sydney. And she never would. But she had to give Syd something, some reason she might be distracted—anything but the truth that, while Sydney and Rule and the kids were here at the family’s villa, Lani had led His Highness up to her room at the palace and done any number of un-nannylike things to his magnificent body.
Limply, she offered, “Well, the current book is giving me fits.” That should fly. She was in the middle of writing the final book in a trilogy of historical novels set in Montedoro. Syd had been her best friend for seven years and knew that she could get pretty stressed out while struggling with the middle of a book where the story had a tendency to drag.
Syd was so not buying. “The current book is always giving you fits. There’s something else.”
Crap. Lani frowned and pretended to think it over for a minute. “No, really. It’s the book. That’s all. There’s nothing else.”
“Yolanda Vasquez, you are lying through your teeth.”
So much for the sagging-middle excuse. What to try next?
No way was Lani busting herself. Syd had her back, always. But it was just too tacky to get into, the nanny-slash-wannabe-writer getting naked at New Year’s with the widowed heir to the throne—whom the whole world knew was still hopelessly in love with his lost wife. “Lying through your teeth,” she echoed brightly. “What does that mean, really? Some expressions are not only overused, they make no real sense. I mean, everything we say, we say through our teeth, right? I mean, unless we have no teeth.”
Syd didn’t even crack a smile. “You think you’re distracting me from asking what’s up with you. You’re not.”
“Nani, Nani...” Ellie squirmed around until she was facing Lani. Then she reached up her plump right hand and tried to stick her fingers into Lani’s mouth.
Lani gummed them. “Mmm. Yummy, tasty little fingers...” Ellie giggled and bounced up and down. Lani kissed her again, that time on her button of a nose, after which she started squirming again and Lani hoisted her high. Ellie laughed in delight as Lani swung her to the floor.
The little sweetheart was only thirteen months and already walking. For a moment, she wobbled, steadying herself on her fat little feet. And then she toddled to her brother’s open toy box and started rooting around in it.
Syd’s phone chirped. A text. She took it out and read the message. “Rule. He won’t be home till after seven.” She started composing a reply. Lani breathed a cautious sigh of relief that the subject of what could be bothering her was closed.
Over at the toy box, Ellie pulled out a soft green rubber turtle, which she carried across the playroom to four-year-old Trevor, who sat quietly building a slightly tilted Lego tower.
“Turt,” she said, beaming proudly, and held it out to him as Syd chuckled and texted.
Trev gave Ellie his usual so-patient big-brother look, took the toy from her and set it down on his other side. Ellie frowned and toddled carefully around to reach the turtle again. She bent with great concentration and picked it up. “Tev,” she said.
Trevor went on building his tower.
Sydney put her phone down. “So you’re not going to tell me?”
Resigned to continued denials, Lani dished out yet another lame evasion. “Syd, I promise you, there’s nothing to tell.” Were her pants on fire? They ought to be.
And right then, before Sydney could say anything else, Ellie cheerfully bopped Trev on the head with the rubber turtle—not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to get his full attention.
Trev scowled. “No hitting,” he said, and gave her a light shove.
She let out a cry as her baby legs collapsed and she landed, plop, on her butt. The impact caused Trevor’s shaky tower to collapse to the playroom floor.
Trev protested, “Lani! Mom! Ellie is being rude!”
Ellie promptly burst into tears.
Both women got up and went over to sort out the conflict. There were hugs and kisses for Ellie and a reminder to Trev that his sister was only one year old and he should be gentle with her.
Trev apologized. “I’m sorry, Ellie.”
And Ellie sniffed. “Tev. Sor-sor.” She sighed and laid her bright head on Sydney’s shoulder.
Then Sydney’s phone rang. She passed Ellie to Lani and took the call, after which she had to go and attend a meeting of one of her international legal aid groups. Lani was left to put the kids down for their nap.
She felt guilty and grateful simultaneously. Once again, she’d escaped having to tell Sydney that she’d had sex with Max on New Year’s Eve.
* * *
At the muffled creak of one of the tall, carved library doors, Lani glanced up from her laptop.
Max.
He wore a soft white crewneck sweater and gray slacks, and his wonderfully unruly hair shone chestnut brown in the glow from the milk-glass chandeliers above. His iron-blue eyes were on her, and her heart was galloping so fast she could hardly catch her breath.
He’d said he wanted them to be as they used to be.
Impossible. Who did he think he was kidding? There was no going back to the way it had been before. And the more she thought about it—which was all the time since their conversation in the gardener’s cottage—the more she was certain he knew that they couldn’t go back.
And she would bet that was fine with him. Because he didn’t want to go back. He wanted to be her lover, wanted more of the heat and wonder of New Year’s Eve.
And okay, she wanted that, too. And she knew it would be fabulous, perfect, beautiful. For as long as it lasted. Until things went wrong.
Because, as she’d tried so very hard to get him to see, love affairs ended. And there were too many ways it all could go bad, too large of a likelihood she’d be put on a plane back to Texas. Yes, all right. It might end amicably. But it also might not. And she wasn’t willing to risk finding out which of the two it would be.
She stared in those beautiful eyes of his and thought that she ought to confront him for being a big, fat liar, for saying how he missed her friendship when he really only wanted to get back in bed with her.
But then, who was she to get all up in anyone’s face about lying? She’d yet to tell Syd the truth. And she wanted to be Max’s lover as much as he wanted to be hers.
However, she wanted the life she had planned for herself more. Risking all of her dreams on a love affair? She’d tried that once. It hadn’t ended well.
He gave her a slow nod. “Lani.” A shiver went through her—just from the sound of her name in his mouth.
“Hi, Max,” she chirped way too brightly.
“Go on, do your work. I’m not here to distract you.”
Liar. “Great.” She flashed him a smile as bright and fake as her tone and turned her gaze back to her laptop.
He walked by her table on his way to the stairs that led to the upper level. She stared a hole in her laptop screen and saw him pass as a blur of movement, his footfalls hushed on the inlaid floor. He mounted the stairs, his back to her. The temptation was too great. She watched him go up.
At the top, he disappeared from sight and she heard another door open, no doubt to one of the locked rooms, the vaults where the rarest books and documents were kept. She wasn’t allowed into any of those special rooms without the watchful company of the ancient scholar who acted as palace librarian or one of his two dedicated assistants.
In fact, she wouldn’t be allowed into the library at all at eight o’clock at night if it wasn’t for Max.
A year ago, he’d presented her with her own key to the ornate, book-lined, two-story main room. To her, it was a gift beyond price. Now, whenever she wanted to go there, anytime of day or night, she could let herself in and be surrounded by beautiful old books, by a stunning array of original materials for her research.
Library hours were limited and pretty much coincided with the hours when she needed to be with Trev and Ellie. However, most days from about 5:00 p.m. on, Rule and Sydney enjoyed time alone with each other and their children—usually at their villa. They welcomed Lani as part of the family if she wanted to stay on in the evening, but they had no problem if she took most nights off to work on her latest book.
With the key, she could spend as many evening hours as she pleased at the library. And later, at bedtime, her room in the family’s palace apartment was right there waiting. Then, early in the morning, it was only a brisk walk along landscaped garden paths down Cap Royale, the rocky hill on which the palace stood, to Fontebleu and the villa.
Pure heaven: the laws, culture and history of Montedoro at her fingertips in the lovely, silent library with its enormous mahogany reading tables and carved, velvet-upholstered chairs. Yes, there were some language issues for her. Much of the original material was in French or Spanish. The French, she managed all right with the aid of her rusty college French and a couple of French/English dictionaries. She knew a little Spanish, but not as much as she probably should, given her Latino heritage. Max, however, spoke and read Spanish fluently and was always happy to translate for her, so the Spanish texts were completely accessible to her, too. Until New Year’s, anyway.
It had worked out so perfectly. Lani stayed at the palace several nights a week. She took her laptop and worked for hours. No one disturbed her in the library, not in the evening.
No one but Max—though he didn’t really disturb her. He came to the library at night to work, too. An internationally respected scholar and expert on all things Montedoran, he’d written a book about the special, centuries-long relationship between Montedoro and her “big sister,” France. He’d also penned any number of articles on various points of Montedoran law and history. And he traveled several times a year to speak at colleges, events and consortia around the world.
Before New Year’s, when he would join her in the library, they would sit in companionable silence as she wrote and he checked his sources or typed notes for an upcoming paper or speech. He’d always shown respect for her writing time, and she appreciated his thoughtfulness.
Sometimes, alone together in the quiet, they would put their work aside and talk. And not only in the library. Often when they met in the gardens or at some event or other, they might talk for hours. They had the same interests—writing and history and anything to do with Montedoro.
They’d shared a special kind of friendship.
Until New Year’s. Until she finally had to admit that she’d done it again: gotten in too deep with the wrong guy when she needed to be concentrating on the goals she’d set for herself, the goals that she never quite seemed to reach, no matter how hard she worked.
Right now, she should get up and leave—and she would, if only she hadn’t foolishly agreed that they could go back to the way they were before.
Right. As if that was even possible.
But still. She’d said she would try. And the hopeless romantic idiot within her wanted at the very least to remain friendly with him, to be his friend, which she had been before New Year’s, in spite of her denials the other day.
So she stayed in her seat, laptop open in front of her.
A full ten minutes passed before he reappeared on the stairs—ten minutes during which she did nothing but stare at the cursor on her screen and listen for the sound of his footsteps above and call herself five thousand kinds of stupid. When he finally did come down, he was carrying a stack of folders and books.
She waited for him to engage her in some way, her teeth hurting she was clenching them so hard. But he only took a chair across and down from her, gave her another perfectly easy, friendly nod and bent his gorgeous head over the old books and papers.
Well, okay. Apparently, he was just there to work.
Which was great. Fabulous. She put her hands on her keyboard and her focus on the screen.
Nothing happened. Her mind was a sloppy soup, a hot mess of annoyance, frustration and forbidden longing. She yearned to jump up and get out of there.
But something—her pride or her promise to him yesterday, maybe—kept her sitting there, staring blankly at her own words, which right then might have been hieroglyphics for all the sense they made to her.
Eventually, she managed to type a sentence. And then another. The writing felt stiff and unnatural. But sometimes you had to write through a distraction. Even a really big distraction, like a certain six-foot-plus hunk of regal manliness sitting across and down from you.
For two full hours, she sat there. So did he, tapping away on a tablet computer, poring over the materials he’d brought down from upstairs. She sat there and she wrote. It was all just garbage she’d end up deleting, but so what? They were being as they used to be, sitting in silence, working in the library.
Except that it was nothing like it used to be. Not to her, anyway. To her, the air felt electrically charged. Her tummy was one big knot, and the words she was writing made no sense at all.
At ten after ten, she decided she’d sat there writing meaningless drivel and pretending there was nothing wrong for long enough. She closed her laptop, gathered up her stuff and rose.
He glanced up then. “Leaving?”
She hit him with another big, fake smile. “Yeah.” She hooked her purse on her shoulder and picked up her laptop. “Good night.”
“Good night, Lani.” He bent his head to his notes again.
And somehow, she couldn’t move. She stood there like a complete fool, staring at his shining, thick hair, at his impossibly broad shoulders to which his soft white sweater clung so lovingly. She wanted to drop back into her chair and ask him about his day, to tell him the real truth—that she missed him in the deepest, most elemental part of herself. That she wished things were different, but she was not a good choice for him as a friend or a lover or anything else, and he ought to know that....
He glanced up a second time. “What is it?” he asked. Gently. Coaxingly.
“Nothing,” she lied yet again.
He began closing books and stacking papers. “I need to take everything back upstairs. Only a minute, and I’ll walk you out.”
“No, really. It’s fine, I—”
He stopped and pinned her with a look. “Wait. Please.”
The problem was, in spite of everything—all she could lose, all the ways it wasn’t going to work—she wanted to wait for him. She wanted to be his friend again.
And more. So much more...
“Fine,” she said tightly.
He tipped his head sideways. “You won’t run out on me?”
She pressed her lips together and shook her head while a frantic voice in her mind screamed, You idiot, what’s wrong with you? Get out and get out now. “I’ll be right here.”
He gathered the materials into his big arms and turned for the stairs. She stood rooted to the spot as he went up, knowing she ought to just duck out while he wasn’t looking—but somehow unable to budge.
He came back down again and picked up his tablet. “All right. Let’s go.”
* * *
A few minutes later, along a wide, marble-floored corridor on the way to Rule and Sydney’s apartment, he stopped at a gilt-trimmed blue door.
She frowned at him. “What’s this?”
He clasped the ornate gold latch and pushed the door inward. On the other side, dimly, she saw a sitting room. “An empty suite,” he said. “Come inside with me.”
She moved back a step. “Bad idea.”
He held her gaze, levelly. “A few private minutes together in a neutral setting. We’ll talk, that’s all.”
“Talk.” She said the word with complete disbelief.
“And only talk,” he insisted. He sounded sincere.
And she was tired of resisting, fighting not only him, but also herself. She wanted to go in that room with him. It was hopeless. Every minute she was near him only made her want to steal one minute more.
She let him usher her in.
He turned on a lamp. She sat on a velvet sofa and he took a floral-patterned armchair.
“All right,” she said. “Talk about what?”
“Why making love with me on New Year’s Eve has upset you so much. To me, it was exactly right, a natural step. The next step for us. I don’t understand why you can’t see that.”
She stared at him and said nothing. The truth was too dangerous.
He watched her face as though memorizing it. “I miss those black-rimmed glasses you used to wear. They made you look so serious and studious.”
She’d had laser surgery six months before. “Life is easier without them in a whole lot of ways.”
“Still, they were charming.”
She almost messed up and gave him a real smile. But not quite. “You dragged me in here to talk about how you miss my glasses?”
He set his tablet on the low table between them. “Put down your laptop.”
She had it clutched to her chest with both hands. It was comforting, actually. Like a shield against doing what she really wanted and getting too close to him. But fine. She set it down—and felt suddenly naked. “This is ridiculous.”
“I’ve been thinking it over,” he said as though she hadn’t spoken, a thoughtful frown carving twin lines between his straight, thick brows.
“Max. Why are we doing this? There’s just no point.”
He shrugged. “Of course there’s a point. You. Me. That something special between us.”
“You still love your wife,” she accused. And yeah, it was a cheap shot, the kind of thing a jealous girlfriend looking for promises of forever might be worried about. Lani was not looking for promises of any kind, no way.
He answered without heat. “My wife is gone. It’s almost four years now. This is about you and me.”
“See?” she taunted, childishly. Jealously. “You’re not denying that you’re still in love with her. She’s still the one who’s in your heart.”
Something happened in his wonderful face then. Some kind of withdrawal. But then, in an instant, he was fully engaged again. “This is not about Sophia. And we both know that. You’re just blowing smoke.”
Busted. “Can’t you just...? I mean, there have to be any number of women you could have sex with, be friends with, any number of women who would jump at the chance to get something going with you.”
His mouth twitched. What? He thought this was funny? “Any number of women simply won’t do. I want only one, Lani. I want only you.”
Okay. Crap. That sounded good. Really, really good. She made herself glare at him. “You’re working me. I know what you’re doing.”
He sat there so calmly, looking every inch the prince he was, all square-jawed and achingly handsome and good-hearted and pulled-together. And sincere and fair. And way, way too hot. “If working you is telling you the truth, then yes. I am shamelessly working you. I waited five endless weeks for you to come to me again, to tell me whatever it is that’s keeping you away from me. It was too long. So I took action. I’m not giving up. I’m not. And if you could only be honest, I think you would admit that you don’t want me to give up.”
Why did he have to know that? It wasn’t fair. And she needed, desperately, to get out of there. She grabbed her laptop and popped to her feet. “I need to go.”
He shifted, but he didn’t rise. He stared up the length of her and straight into her eyes. “No, Lani. You need to stay. You need to talk to me.”
Talk to him. Oh, no. Talking to him seemed only to get her in deeper, which was not what she wanted.
Except for when it was exactly what she wanted.
He arched a brow and asked so calmly, “Won’t you please sit back down?”
She shut her eyes tight, drew in a slow, painful breath—and sat. “I’m not...ready for any of this with you, Max.”
He reached out and took her laptop from her and carefully set it back on the low table. “Not ready, how?”
Her arms felt too empty. She wrapped them around herself. “It’s all too much, too...consuming, you know? Too overwhelming. And what about the children?” she demanded.
He only asked, “What about them?”
“They have a right to a nanny who isn’t doing their daddy.”
“And they have just such a nanny. Her name is Gerta—and in any case, you’re not doing me, not anymore.”
She let out a hard, frustrated breath. “I’m just saying it’s impossible. It’s too much.”
He kept right on pushing her. “What you feel for me, you mean?”
She nodded, frantically. “Yes. That. Exactly that.”
“So...I’m too much?” His voice poured through her, deep and sweet and way too tempting. It wasn’t fair, that he should be able to do this to her. It made keeping her distance from him way too hard.
She bobbed her head some more and babbled, “Yes. That’s right. Too much.”
“I’m too much and Michael Cort wasn’t enough?”
Michael. Oh, why had she told him about Michael? She’d dated the software designer until she saw Sydney with Rule and realized that what she had with Michael was...exactly what Max had just said it was: not enough. “You and Michael are two different things,” she insisted, and hated how wimpy and weak she sounded.
“But we’re the same in the sense that Michael Cort and I are both men you decided not to see anymore.”
“Uh-uh. No. I was with Michael for over a year—and yes, I then decided to break it off. But you and me? We’re friends who slept together. Once.”
His eyes gleamed. “So then, we are friends?”
She threw up both hands. “All right. Have it your way. We’re friends.”
“Thank you, I will—and about Michael Cort...”
“There is nothing more to say about Michael.”
“Except that I’m not in the same league with him vis-à-vis you, correct?” He waited for her to answer. When she didn’t, he mildly remarked, “Ouch.”
God. Did he have to be so calm and reasonable on top of all the hotness and being so easy to talk to and having the same interests as she did? He was a quadruple threat. At least. “Can we just not talk about Michael?”
“All right. Tell me why you find this thing between us...how did you put it? ‘Overwhelming’ and ‘consuming’ and ‘too much.’”
“Isn’t that self-evident?”
“Tell me anyway.”
Against her better judgment, she went ahead and tried. “Well, I just...I don’t have time to be consumed with, er, passion, now. There are only so many hours in a day and I...” Dear Lord. Not enough time to be consumed with passion? Had she really said that?
“Tell me the rest,” he prompted evenly.
She groaned. “It’s only that, well, my dad’s a wonderful teacher, the head of the English department at Beaufort State College in Beaufort, Texas, which is west of Fort Worth...” He was frowning, no doubt wondering what any of that had to do with the subject at hand—and why wouldn’t he wonder? For a person who hoped someday to write for a living, she was doing a terrible job of keeping to the point and making herself understood.
“You told me months ago that your father’s a teacher,” he reminded her patiently.
“My father is successful. He’s head of his department. My mother’s a pediatrician. And my big brother, Carlos, owns five restaurants. Carlos got married last year to a gorgeous, brilliant woman who runs her own dancing school. In my family, we figure out what we want to do and we get out there and do it. Okay, we don’t rule principalities or anything. But we contribute to our community. We find work we love and we excel at it.”
“You have no problem then. You have work you love and you’re very good at it.”
“Yes, I’m good with children, and I love taking care of Trev and Ellie.”
“You’re an excellent nanny, I know. But that isn’t the work you love, really, is it?”
She folded her hands in her lap and stared down at them—and wandered off topic some more. “My dad wanted me to follow in his footsteps and be a teacher. From the first, I knew I wanted to write. He said I could do both. Of course, he was right. But I didn’t want to do it his way, didn’t want to teach. We argued a lot. And the truth is I wasn’t dedicated to my writing, not at first. I had some...difficulties. And I took my sweet time getting through college.”
“Difficulties?”
Why had she even hinted at any of that? “Just difficulties, that’s all.”
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
She shook her head tightly and went on with her story. “My parents would have paid for my education, even though they weren’t happy with my choices. But I was proud. I wanted to make it on my own.”
“You were proud?” he teased.
She felt her cheeks grow warm. “Okay, yeah. I am proud. I met Syd and we were like sisters from the first. I went to work for her, became her live-in housekeeper before she had Trev, to help put myself through school. And then once I got my degree, I stayed on with her, working for her, but with plenty of time to write. I worked hard at the writing, but it never took off for me. I lacked focus. Until I came here, until I knew the stories I wanted to write. And now I do know, Max. Now I’ve got the focus and the drive that I need, plus the stories I want to tell.”
Max was sitting forward in the chair, his gray-blue gaze intense. “Have I somehow given you the idea that I think you should stop writing and spend every spare moment in bed with me?”
“Uh, no. No, of course you haven’t. It’s just that I have goals and I need to meet them. I need, you know, to make something of myself. I really do, Max.”
He went on leaning forward in the chair, watching her. And she had that feeling she sometimes got around him, the feeling that used to make her all warm and fuzzy inside, because he knew her, he understood her. Too bad that lately, since New Year’s, that feeling made her worry that he knew too much about her, and that he would use what he knew to push her to do things his way. He said, “You want your parents to be proud of you—and you don’t feel that they are right now.”
Her mouth went dry. She licked her lips. “I didn’t say that.”
He went further. “You’re embarrassed that it bothers you, what your parents think. Because you’re twenty-nine years old and you believe you should be beyond trying to live up to their ideals. But you’re not beyond it, Lani. You’re afraid that it will somehow get out that we’ve been lovers and that your mother and father will read about it in the tabloids, tacky stories of the nanny shagging the prince. You’re afraid they’ll judge you in all the ways you’re judging yourself. You’re afraid they’ll think less of you, and you already feel they look down on you as it is.”
“No. Really, they’re good people. They don’t look down on me, and I love them very much.”
“Plus, you’re clinging to a completely unfounded idea that I’ll grow tired of you and have you banished from Montedoro in shame.”
She groaned. “Okay, it really sounds silly when you put it that way.”
“Good. Because it is silly. I’ve given you my word that it’s never going to happen. And I never break my word.” He was frowning again, holding her gaze as though he could look right through her eyes into her mind. “There’s more, isn’t there? Something deeper, something you haven’t told me yet. Something to do with those ‘difficulties’ you had that you wouldn’t explain to me.”
Uh-uh. No. Not going there. Never going there. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does.”
It was long in the past. She’d survived and moved on, and she didn’t want to get into it with him now—or ever. She lifted her chin to a defiant angle and kept her mouth firmly shut.
Without warning, he stood. She gasped and stared up at him, a breathless weakness stealing through her at the sheer masculine beauty of him. And then he held down his hand to her. “Take it,” he said with such command and composure that it never occurred to her to do anything else.
She put her fingers in his. A dart of hungry fire flew up her arm, across her chest and downward, straight into the secret core of her. She should tell him to let go. But she didn’t. She only rose on shaky feet to stand with him and then stared up at him dazedly as hot, sweet memories of New Year’s Eve flashed through her brain.
He said gruffly, “There’s nothing wrong with wanting your mother and father to be proud of you. It gets dangerous only when you let your need for their approval run your life.”
She managed to muster a little attitude. “Do you have any idea how patronizing you sound?”
He only smiled. “Hit a nerve, did I? Also, you should know that very few authors can write a decent book before the age of thirty. Good writing requires life experience.”
“Do you think you’re reassuring me? Because you’re not.”
“I’m praising you. You’ve written five books and you’re not thirty yet. One is okay, two are quite good and the most recent two are amazing.”
“Five and a half books.” She was currently stuck in the middle of number six. “And how do you know how good they all are? You’ve only read the last two.” He’d actually offered to read them. And she’d been grateful for his helpful ideas on how to make them better. That was before New Year’s, of course.
He added, “And you’re published.”
Yes, she was. In ebook. Just that past December, as a Christmas present to herself, she’d self-published the three women’s fiction novels she’d written before she moved to Montedoro. So far, unfortunately, her e-book sales gave a whole new meaning to the word unimpressive. She was holding off on self-pubbing the new trilogy, hoping to sell them as a package to a traditional publisher.
And suddenly she got what he was hinting at. “You downloaded the three books I e-pubbed, didn’t you?”
One big shoulder lifted in a half shrug. “Isn’t that what you put them on sale for—so that people will buy them?”
Her heart kind of melted about then. How could she help but melt? He not only made her want to rip off her clothes and climb him like a tree, but he was a very good man. He was constantly finding new ways to show her that he really did care about her and the things that mattered to her. It wasn’t his fault that she had trouble trusting her own emotions.
Her throat burned with all the difficult stuff she didn’t know how to tell him. “Max, I...” She had no idea where to go from there.
And then it didn’t matter what she might have said. He wiped her mind free of all thought by the simple act of lifting her chin lightly with his free hand and lowering his lips to hers.
Chapter Three
Max knew he was out of line to kiss her.
He’d made a bargain with her to keep his hands to himself, and yet here he was with one hand tipping up her soft chin and the other wrapped firmly around her trembling fingers. It was not playing fair.
Too bad. He wanted to kiss her, and at the moment she was going to let him do it.
So he did. Lightly, gently, so as not to startle her or have her jerking away, he settled his mouth on hers.
Pleasure stole through him. Warm velvet, those lips of hers. They trembled like her hand. He made no attempt to deepen the kiss, only drew in the haunting scent of her perfume: gardenias, vanilla and a hint of oranges all tangled up with that special, indefinable something that belonged only to her skin.
Lani. Yolanda Ynez. Her name in his mind like a promise. Her warmth and softness so close, calling to him, making him burn as he hadn’t burned in years.
Making him feel as he’d never thought to feel again.
She made things difficult when they didn’t have to be.
And yet, there was, simply, something about her. Some combination of mind and spirit, heart and scent and skin and bone that worked for him, that spoke to him. There was something in the core of her that called to him. Something within her that recognized him in a way he’d despaired long ago of ever being known.
He’d been asleep for almost four years, walking through his life like a ghost of himself, a dutiful creature, half-alive.
No more. Now his eyes were open, his mind and body one, whole, fully engaged.
Whatever it took, whatever he had to do to keep feeling this way, he would do it. He refused to go back to being half-alive again.
“Max.” She breathed his name against his mouth.
He wanted to continue kissing her for the next century or two. But she wasn’t ready for a century of kisses. Not yet. He lifted his head. “Not giving up on you,” he vowed.
For once, she didn’t argue, only stepped away and snatched up her laptop. He got his tablet and ushered her ahead of him out the door.
* * *
“Nicholas!” Gerta Bauer called sharply as the eight-year-old aimed his N-Strike Elite Retaliator Blaster Nerf gun at the back of his unsuspecting sister’s head.
Nick sent his nanny a rebellious glance. Gerta narrowed her eyes at him and stared him down. Nick glared some more, but he did turn the toy gun away from Connie’s head. He shot the trunk of a rubber tree instead, letting out a “Hoo-rah!” of triumph as the soft dart hit the target, wiggled in place for a moment and then dropped to the ground.
Connie, totally unaware she’d almost been Nerfed, continued carefully combing the long, straight black-and-white hair of her Frankie Stein doll. Meanwhile, Nick grabbed the fallen dart and forged off into a clump of bushes in search of new prey.
Trev, armed with his Supergalactic Laser Light Blaster, charged after him. “Nicky! Wait for me!” He pulled the trigger. The gun lit up and a volley of blasting sounds filled the air.
Gerta chuckled and tipped her head up to the afternoon sun. “Did I tell you that Nicholas is all grown up? He’s too old for his nanny. He told me so this morning before school. ‘Only babies have nannies,’ he said.”
Lani, on the garden bench beside her with Ellie in her lap, caught the butterfly rattle the toddler had dropped before it hit the ground. “He’s exercising his independence.”
“Me!” Ellie demanded, exercising a little independence of her own.
Lani kissed the top of her head and gave her back the rattle, which she gleefully began shaking again. “Is he still throwing fits when it’s time to do his homework?”
Gerta’s broad, ruddy face wore a self-satisfied expression. “For the past week, he’s been getting right to it and getting it done. I took your advice and had his father talk to him about it.”
Lani’s pulse accelerated at the mere mention of Max. Honestly, she was hopeless, telling him no over and over—and then kissing him last night.
She needed a large dose of therapy. Or a backbone. Or both.
Gerta was watching her. “What’s the matter?”
“Not a thing,” Lani answered too quickly. Gerta frowned but didn’t press her. And Lani asked, “So the homework is getting done?”
Gerta turned her head up to the sky again. “Yes, the homework is getting done.”
Ellie giggled and said, “Uh-oh. Poopy.”
She definitely had.
Gerta laughed, waved her freckled hand in front of her face at the smell and offered, “You could change her right here on the bench....”
But Lani was already shouldering the baby bag and lifting Ellie into her arms as she stood. “No. It’s a little chilly out here.” Ellie dropped the rattle again. Lani caught it as it fell and tucked it in the bag. “Plus I doubt a few baby wipes are going to cut it.”
Ellie giggled some more and pecked a baby kiss on Lani’s chin. “Nani, Nani...” The weak winter sunlight made her hair shine like polished copper. Even with a loaded diaper, she was the sweetest thing. Lani felt the old familiar ache inside as she gently freed her hair from the perfect, plump little fist. It was an ache of love for this particular child, Syd’s baby girl, all mixed up with a bone-deep sorrow for what might have been, if only she’d been a little wiser and not nearly so selfish way back when.
Gerta held up a key. “Use our apartment. It’s much closer.” She meant the palace apartment she lived in with Nick and Connie. And Max.
Lani’s thoroughly shameless heart thumped faster. Would Max be there?
Not that it mattered. It didn’t, not at all. No big deal. She knew the apartment’s layout. She and Gerta sometimes filled in for each other, so Lani had been there to help out with Nick and Connie more than once. Once she’d let herself in the door, she would go straight to the children’s bathroom, clean Ellie up and get out. Fast.
She took the key. “Keep an eye on Trev?”
“Will do.”
* * *
The apartment was quiet when she let herself in. The maids had been and gone for the day, leaving a faint scent of lemon polish detectable when she pushed the door open, but quickly overpowered by what Ellie had in her diaper.
No sign of Max. Lani breathed a quick sigh of relief.
In the children’s bathroom, she hoisted the diaper bag onto one of the long white quartz counters, shifting Ellie onto her hip as she grabbed a few washcloths from the linen shelves by the big tub. Returning to the counter, she pulled the changing pad from its side pocket and opened it up. Ellie giggled and waved her arms, trying to grab Lani’s hair as Lani laid her down.
“You need a toy.” Lani gave her the butterfly rattle, which she promptly threw on the floor. Lani played stern. “If I give you another toy, you have to promise not to throw it.”
Ellie imitated her serious face. “K,” she replied with a quick nod of her tiny chin.
There was an apple-shaped teething ring in the bag. Lani gave her that. She promptly started chewing on it, making happy little cooing sounds.
Lani flipped the water on and set to work. She had the diaper off and rolled up nice and tight and was busy using up the stack of cloths, wiping and rinsing and wiping some more, when her phone in the diaper bag started playing “Radioactive.” It was the ringtone she’d assigned to her agent, Marie.
Her heart rate instantly rocketed into high gear.
Okay, it could be nothing.
But what if it wasn’t nothing?
What if this was her moment, the moment every wannabe author dreamed of, the moment she got the call, the one that meant there was an actual publisher out there who wanted to buy her book?
She let out a moan of frustration and wiped faster. Not a big deal, she promised herself. She could call Marie back in just a few minutes. If there was an offer, it wouldn’t evaporate while she finished mopping Ellie’s bottom.
“Let me help,” said the wonderful deep voice that haunted her dreams.
Slowly, her heart galloping faster than ever, she turned her head enough to see him lounging in the doorway wearing gray slacks and a light blue shirt.
The phone stopped ringing and she scowled at him. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Only a minute or two.” He straightened and came toward her, all confidence and easy male grace. “I was in my study and I heard your voice and Ellie’s laughter....” He stopped beside her at the counter. His niece giggled up at him as she drooled on her teething ring. “Give me the washcloth.”
“I... What?”
“The washcloth.” He reached out and took the smelly wet cloth in his long-fingered, elegant hand. “Return your call.”
“No, really. I’ll do this. It’s fine.” She tried to grab it back.
He held it away. “I have two children. I know how to diaper a baby.” Ellie uttered a string of nonsense syllables, followed by a goofy little giggle. “See? Ellie knows I can handle it.” On cue, Ellie babbled some more. “Make your call,” he commanded a second time as he stuck the washcloth under the water. He wrung it out and got to work.
Lani washed her hands, grabbed her phone and called Marie back. She watched Max diaper Ellie while Marie Garabondi, the agent she’d been working with for just over a month now, talked fast in her ear.
Somewhere in the third or fourth sentence, Marie said the longed-for word: “offer.” And everything spun away. Lani listened from a distance, watching Max, so manly and tender, bending over Ellie, doing a stinky job gently and efficiently.
And Marie kept on talking. Lani held the phone to her ear, hardly believing, understanding everything Marie was telling her, only somehow feeling detached, not fully present.
She held up her end, answered, “Yes. All right. Okay, then. Great.” But it all seemed unreal to her, not really happening, some odd little dream she was having in the middle of the day. “Yes. Good. Let’s do it, yes...” Marie talked some more. And then she said goodbye.
Lani was left standing there in the bathroom holding the phone.
Max had finished changing Ellie and lifted her onto his shoulder. She promptly pulled on his ear and babbled out more happy sounds that didn’t quite amount to real words.
“Well?” he asked. Lani blinked and tried to bring herself back to reality. “Lani, what’s happened?” he demanded. He was starting to look a little worried.
She sucked in a long breath and shared the news. “That was my agent. We have a deal. A very good deal. I just sold three books.”
Max smiled. It was the biggest, happiest smile she’d ever seen on his wonderful face. And it was for her. “Congratulations,” he said.
Ellie seemed to pick up on the spirit of the moment. She stopped pulling Max’s ear and clapped her hands.
Very carefully, Lani set her phone down on the bathroom counter. “I’ll be right back.”
Max didn’t say anything. He just stood there grinning, holding the baby.
And Lani took off like a shot. She ran out into the hallway of Max’s apartment, shouting, “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” When she got to the kitchen, she turned around and ran back again, shouting “Yes!” all the way.
Max was waiting, leaning in the bathroom doorway with Ellie in his arms, when she returned to him. “Feel good?”
“Oh, yeah.” She wanted to grab him and plant one right on him, to take his hand and lead him back to the kitchen where they could sit and talk and...
She stopped the dangerous thought before it could really get rolling.
“Nani, Nani...” Ellie swayed toward her.
She took the little sweetheart in her arms. “I’d, um, better get back. Gerta will wonder.”
He was still smiling, but there was something somber in his eyes. “All right, then.”
Neither of them moved.
“Nani...” Ellie patted her cheek—and then started squirming. “Dow, Nani, dow...”
Lani broke the tempting hold of his gaze. “I need to get back.” He was blocking the doorway. “The diaper bag?”
He went and got it for her. “Here you are.”
She took it from his outstretched hand and carried the wiggling toddler out of there, away from him.
* * *
“It’s time and you know it,” Sydney said the next day.
They were at the villa, just Syd and Lani, sitting at the table in the kitchen, sharing a late lunch while Trev and Ellie napped.
Everything had changed with that single call from Marie. And the time had come for Lani and Syd to deal with that.
Lani couldn’t seem to stop herself from arguing against taking the next step. “But I love Trev and Ellie. And I have plenty of time to write and to take care of them.”
Syd wasn’t buying. “Why do I have to tell you what you already know? You’ll be needing to network, to put together a PR plan. And what about that website you still don’t have? And you keep saying you’re going to establish more of an online presence, see if you can do more to boost the sales of those three e-books you have out.”
“You’re making me dizzy. You know that, right?”
“What I’m saying isn’t news. It’s what we always agreed. As soon as you were making enough with your writing to live on for a year, you would put all your work time into building a career. This sale does that for you.”
“I know, but...”
“But what, Lani?”
Lani let out a low cry. “But it’s all happening so fast. And what about Ellie and Trev? They’re used to my being with them all the time. How will they take it, having some stranger for a nanny?”
“They will do fine.” Syd reached across the distance between them and ran a fond hand down her hair. “They grow up, anyway. To a degree, in the end, we lose them to their own lives.”
Lani wrinkled up her nose at her friend. “Okay, I get that you’re trying to make me feel better. But come on. Ellie’s still in diapers and Trev’s four. It’s a long time until they’re on their own. And I know you and Rule are planning to have more children. You need me, you know you do.”
“And you need to get out there.” Syd set down her fork. “Listen, don’t tempt me, okay? You’re amazing with the kids. They love you so much—almost as much as I do. You’re part of the family and I hate to let you go.”
“Then why don’t we just keep it like it is for a while?”
Syd refused to waver. “Uh-uh. No. You need to do this. And it’s not like you’re moving back to Texas or anything. You’ll see them often, every day if you want to.”
“Of course I want to see them every day. I love them. I love you.”
“And I love you,” Syd said. “So much. I’m so crazy happy for you.”
Lani’s throat clutched and her eyes burned.
“Oh, honey...” Syd grabbed the box of tissues off the windowsill and passed them to her.
Lani dabbed at her eyes. “Somehow, I didn’t expect it to be like this. To get what I’ve always wanted—and just feel all weepy and lost about it.”
“It’s all going to work out. Change is a good thing.”
Lani shot Syd a sideways look. “Keep saying that.”
“You’d better believe I will—until you stop trying to go backward and move on.”
Lani pushed her plate away, braced her elbows on the table and rested her chin between her hands. “Unbelievable. Seriously. And yeah. Okay.”
Syd chuckled then. “Okay, what?”
“Okay, you can find a new nanny.”
“Excellent. You’re fired, as of today. And I’m perfectly capable of watching my own children until I find someone else.” In the old days, before she’d married Rule, Sydney had worked killing hours at her law firm in Dallas. A full-time nanny had been a necessity then. Now, Sydney had projects she took on, but her schedule was flexible and she enjoyed being a hands-on mom. “And Gerta’s terrific. I know she’ll be willing to accept a nice bonus and keep an eye on all four kids if I get desperate.”
“I can help if you get desperate.”
“The main thing is you’re a full-time writer and you’re getting out on your own.”
“Yes. Fine. I’ll start looking for a place. Something in Monagalla, maybe...” The southwestern ward was close to the palace. It was known as the tourist ward because room rates were relatively low there. But housing in Montedoro didn’t come cheap no matter where you lived.
Syd seemed to be reading her mind. “If you need help with the money...”
“Don’t even go there. I have enough to tide me over until the advance check comes. I’m just...a little freaked out at making the move.”
“No kidding.”
Lani pulled her plate close again. “God. I’m a basket case. Thrilled. Terrified. Sure that Marie will be calling any minute to tell me never mind, it was all a big mistake.”
Syd sipped her coffee and set the cup back down with care. “Is it a guy?”
Lani almost choked on the chip she’d just poked in her mouth. She swallowed it whole and it went down hard. “Whoa. That came out of nowhere.”
“Did it? I don’t think so. Something’s been bothering you since the beginning of the year. I keep asking you what. And you keep not telling me. Who is he?”
Lani was so tired of lying. And Syd didn’t believe her lies anyway. Still, she tried to hold out. “Syd, come on...”
“No, Lani. You come on. Whatever this is, it’s got you really on edge. And it’s got me more than a little bit worried for you.”
“Don’t be. I’m all right.”
“No, you’re not. You’re kind of a mess lately.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Just talk to me.”
Lani waffled. “It’s only, well, I’m afraid you won’t approve.”
Syd made a sound that was midway between a laugh and a groan. “Don’t give me that. We’ve been friends for too long. There is nothing...nothing you could do that would make me love you any less.”
Lani stared at her friend and wanted to cry again. “You are the best. You know that, right?”
“So tell me.”
The words were right there. And so she just said them. “I slept with Max on New Year’s Eve.”
Syd’s green eyes bugged out and her mouth fell open. “Max. As in Maximilian, aka my brother-in-law?”
Lani drew herself straight in her chair. “Yes. Maximilian as in the heir to the throne. That Max. You know the one.”
“Oh, Lani...” Syd shook her head slowly.
Lani made a low, pained little sound. “See? I shouldn’t have told you. Now you’ve gotta be certain I have a screw loose.”
Syd’s hand came down on top of hers. She squeezed her fingers tight. “Stop.”
Lani turned her hand around and grabbed on to Syd’s. “I know you’re shocked.”
“No—well, surprised, maybe. A little.”
“More like a lot.”
Syd gave her a patient look. “I knew the two of you were friendly....”
“Right. Just not that friendly. I mean, the prince and the nanny ending up in bed together. Ick. It just sounds so tacky.”
“I don’t want to have to tell you again,” Syd scolded. “Stop beating yourself up. You like him. He likes you. You’re both single. It happens. Men and women find each other. I mean, where would we all be if it didn’t happen?” Protectively, she laid her other hand over their joined ones. “I did notice how he was always finding a reason to talk to you, always hanging around with you and Gerta and the children.”
“Well, his kids were there, too.”
“Lani. Let me make myself clearer. I should have guessed.”
“Why should you guess? I mean, everyone talks about how much he loved his wife, about how he’ll never get married again, how nobody has a chance with him.”
“Nobody until you, apparently.”
She pulled her hand free of Syd’s comforting grip and ate another chip without really even tasting it. “It was one night, that’s all.”
Syd leaned a little closer. “Do you want it to be more?”
Lani hardly knew how to answer, so she didn’t.
Syd kept after her. “Is he treating you like it never happened or something? Do I need to kick his ass for you?”
Lani pushed her plate away again, then pulled it back, ate a slice of pickle and teased, “You think you could take him? He’s pretty fit.”
“Answer the question. Has he been disrespecting you?”
“No, he hasn’t. He’s been wonderful. Last night, he kissed me and said he won’t give up on me, even though I’ve done everything I possibly can to chase him away.”
“Wait. Stop. I’m getting whiplash, this conversation is so confusing. He wants to keep seeing you—and you’re just not interested?”
Lani pushed her plate aside for the third time so that she could bang her head on the table. Then she sat up, sucked in a hard breath and said, “No, actually, I’m crazy about him.”
Syd stared at her for a long time. Then she said gently, “So give him a chance.” Lani only looked at her. Syd spoke again. “This is not eleven years ago.”
Lani almost wished she’d never confided in Syd about what had happened when she was eighteen, the terrible choices she’d made and the life-altering domino effect of the ugly consequences that followed. But they were best friends and best friends shared the deepest, hardest secrets. “I just don’t want to get my heart broken, okay? Been there, done that. It almost destroyed me. I don’t want to go there again.”
“The way I remember it, you broke up with Michael Cort because you wanted more than just safety in a man....”
“Yeah, I know that, but—”
“Save the buts. I don’t get this. A big part of the reason I went to lunch with Rule that first day I met him was because you told me to get out there and give another guy a chance. You knew how many times I’d been messed over, and that I was scared it was only going to happen again. But you pushed me to see that you don’t get what really matters without putting yourself out there, without risking big.”
“Well, I’m having a little trouble right now following my own advice.”
“Just think about it.”
“Are you kidding? I do. Constantly. I just made the big sale. I’m living my dream. But all I can think about is this thing with Max.”
* * *
The apartment, in an old villa on a narrow street in Monagalla, had one bedroom, a tiny kitchen nook and a six-by-ten-foot balcony off the living room that the landlady called a terrace. From the terrace you could see the hillside behind the building, and a forest of olive and rubber trees and odd, spiky cactus plants. Lani took the place because the old Spanish-style building charmed her. Also, it was available immediately at a good price and it was only a short walk from the front door up Cap Royale to the palace.
One week after she got the call from Marie, she moved in. She had all the furniture she needed, courtesy of Rule and Sydney, who had led her down into the warren of storage rooms in the basement of the palace and let her choose the few pieces she needed from the mountains of stuff stored there.
It took her two days to make it livable. She designated half of the living room as her office, positioning her desk so she could look out the glass slider at the little square of terrace and the olive trees on the hillside. And she found a housewares shop nearby where she bought pots and pans, dishes, glassware and cooking utensils. The shop had all the linens she needed, too.
At the end of the second day of fixing the place up, when she had it just the way she wanted it, she cooked herself a simple dinner in her little kitchen and she ate on the plain white plates she’d bought from the nearby shop. After she ate, she sat down at her computer and wrote ten pages and felt pretty good about them. It was well after midnight when she closed her laptop and saw the pink sticky note she’d slapped on the top: Call parents.
Actually, she’d been meaning to call them for days now—ever since she made the big sale. They would be thrilled for her, of course. But she’d been putting off making that call.
They loved her and they worried about her. And every time she talked to them they wanted to know when she was coming home. They didn’t seem to understand that she was home. She’d tried to explain to them that she was never moving back to Texas. So far, they weren’t getting it. Sometimes she doubted they ever would.
Midnight in Montedoro meant five in the afternoon yesterday in Texas. Her mom was probably still at her clinic. But her dad might be home. She made the call.
Her dad answered. “Yolanda.” He sounded tired but pleased to hear from her. “How are things on the Riviera?”
She told him about the sale first. He congratulated her warmly and said he’d always known it would happen. And then she couldn’t resist bragging a little, sharing the dollar amount of the advance.
He got excited then. “But this is wonderful. You won’t have to spend your time babysitting anymore. In fact, you could come home. You know your mama and I would love to have you right here in the house with us. But I know you probably don’t want to live with the old folks. You would want your own place, and we understand that.”
“Well, I already have a place. I moved out of the palace and got myself an apartment.”
“But you could—”
“Papi. Come on. I’ve told you. I don’t want to leave here. I love Montedoro and I plan to stay.”
“But not forever. Your home is here, near your family. And you’re almost thirty. It’s time you found the right man and made me a doting grandfather.”
She didn’t say anything. It seemed pointless to argue.
He kind of took the hint and tried to put a positive spin on what he considered self-destructive stubbornness on her part. “If you have your own apartment there in Montedoro, does that mean you’re not babysitting Sydney’s kids anymore?”
“Yes. That’s what it means.”
“Well, I’m glad for that. You have great talent. I always told you that. If you’re going to take care of babies, they should be your own.”
She couldn’t let that stand. “I’m an excellent nanny, Papi. And I enjoyed every moment with Trevor and Ellie.”
He got the message. More or less. “Well, of course, you will excel at whatever you do.” He said it much too carefully.
That was the problem now, with her and her parents. In the awfulness of what had happened more than ten years ago, something essential had been lost. They continued to go through the motions with each other, but there were barriers, things they didn’t dare talk about with each other—or maybe didn’t know how to talk about.
She asked how he was feeling, and how Mama was doing. “Fine,” he answered. “Very well.” And then he told her that her brother, Carlos, and his bride, Martina, had bought a house in San Antonio. Martina’s family was in San Antonio, and Carlos would be opening a new restaurant there. “Of course, your mama and I are happy for them, and you know how proud we are of Carlito’s success.”
“Yes, I know.” She made her voice bright. “He’s done so well.”
“And they are already trying for a baby. A first grandchild is a precious thing.”
A first grandchild. The words stung, though Lani knew she shouldn’t let them.
After that, the conversation really began to lag. She told him she loved him and to give her love to her mother. They said goodbye.
She went to bed feeling empty and lonely and like a failure as a daughter. Sleep didn’t come. She just stared up at the ceiling fan, trying to turn her mind off.
But instead, she thought about Max.
She’d had zero contact with him since that afternoon in his apartment when he’d diapered Ellie for her while she took the call from Marie. Nine days. And nothing. She hadn’t seen him during the week she was still at the palace. And for the past two days, she’d put all her effort into setting up her place.
He’d made no attempt to get in touch with her. So much for how he wasn’t giving up on her. No doubt he’d had enough of her pushing him away. She didn’t blame him for that. He’d tried and tried and she’d given him nothing back.
She sighed. So all right. It was over between them.
Over without ever really getting started.
And, well, that was fine with her. It was better this way.
Except that it wasn’t.
And she was a complete coward who’d driven away a perfectly wonderful guy. Even if he was too much for her, too overwhelming, way more than she’d bargained for. Even if he was probably still carrying a torch for his lost wife. Even if it scared her a lot, how gone she was on him.
She turned over onto her side and punched at her pillow. But sleep wouldn’t come. Her mind thrummed with energy. With longing. She started thinking about calling him—and yeah, she knew that was a very bad idea.
So she tried not to think about calling him.
And that only made her want to call him more.
She had his cell number. He’d given it to her months ago, long before New Year’s, just taken her phone from her one day when they were out in the gardens with the children and added himself to her contacts.
She’d laughed and said she didn’t need his number. They saw each other all the time. If something came up and she had to reach him, Rule and Sydney had his landline on autodial.
But he’d said he wanted her to have it. Just in case...
Lani reached out a hand through the darkness and felt around on the nightstand until she found her phone. She punched up his number and hit Call without letting herself stop to think about how it was too late and she’d already blown it and calling him at one-thirty in the morning was hardly a good way to reestablish contact.
Not surprisingly, he didn’t answer. The call went to voice mail. She knew she should just hang up. But she didn’t.
“Hi, Max. Um, it’s me. Lani? Yeah, I know it’s almost two in the morning, not to mention you’ve probably decided you’re better off giving me what I said I wanted and leaving me alone. And I, well, I get that. I mean, why wouldn’t you finally just give up on me? I haven’t been anything but a headache lately. Why wouldn’t you just...?” She stopped, closed her eyes and let out a whimper of utter embarrassment. “Okay, this ridiculousness is stopping now. Sorry to bother you. Sorry for everything. ’Night.” She disconnected the call, dropped the phone on the nightstand and then grabbed her pillow and plunked it down hard on top of her face.
For several seconds she lay there in the dark, pressing the pillow down on her nose and mouth as hard as she could. But it was all just more ridiculousness and eventually she gave up, tossed the pillow aside and pushed back the covers.
If she couldn’t sleep, maybe she could work. Not pages, no. Not tonight. But she did need to get going on a marketing program. She could look around online, see what resources were generally available. She needed to find a website designer. And maybe enroll in a few online classes. Things such as how to make the most of social media and how to create an effective PR plan. When the first book in her trilogy came out, she needed to be ready to promote herself and the books, and do it effectively. Gone were the days when an author could sit around and wait for her publisher to set up a few book signings.
Her phone rang as she was reaching for her robe.
Her heart lurched and then began thudding hard and deep in her chest. Sweat bloomed between her breasts, under her arms and on her upper lip. She craned her head toward the nightstand to see the display.
Max.
She dropped the robe and grabbed for the phone. “Uh, hello?”
“Gerta says you’re no longer working for Rule and Sydney.” His voice was careful, measured. Withdrawn. Still, that voice had the power to make her breath come uneven, to make her thudding heart pound even harder. “And I understand you’ve moved out of the palace.”
“Yes. That’s right. I’m not at the palace anymore. And Max, really, I’m sorry about—”
“I don’t want your apologies.”
“Um. Well, all right. I’m okay with that.”
“You’re okay.” His tone was too calm. Calm and yet somehow edged in darkness.
“That’s what I said, yes.”
“You’re okay and you’re no longer a nanny working for my family. No longer at the palace.”
Anger rose up in her. Defensive anger. She reined it in and tried to speak reasonably. “Look, I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I shouldn’t have called you tonight. It was wrong of me to do that and I—”
“Not so.”
“Excuse me?”
“You were very right to call me tonight.”
“I—”
“But you were wrong to run off without a single word to me.”
“Max, I did not ‘run off.’ I moved. I certainly have a right to move without checking with you first.”
He was silent.
“Max?” She was sure he’d hung up on her.
“Where are you?” Low. Soft. But not in any way tender.
“I don’t—”
“An address. Give me your address.”
“Max, I—”
“I must tell you, I could have your address so easily without asking you. Gerta would give it to me. I could get it from Rule. And there are other ways. There are men my family hires to find out whatever we need to know about anyone with whom we associate.”
“Max, what are you doing? I really don’t like this. Is that a threat?”
“No threat. Only an explanation. I can find out whatever I want to know about you. But I would never do that. I care for you. I respect your rights and your privacy. So please. Give me your address or hang up the phone and never call me again.”
“Max, this isn’t like you. Ultimatums have never been your style.”
“My style, as you put it, is not serving me well with you. Make a choice. Do it now.” There was nothing gentle in that voice. He didn’t grant her so much as a hint of the compassionate, patient Max she’d always known.
Obviously, her sweet and tender prince was being a complete jerk and she needed to hang up and forget about him. Let it be and let him go. Move on. It was only what she’d repeatedly told him she wanted.
He spoke again. “Lani. Choose.”
She gave him the address.
Chapter Four
Max was furious.
He’d been furious for a couple of days now. Ever since Gerta had told him that Lani was no longer Trev and Ellie’s nanny, that she’d found an apartment and moved into it.
He left the palace by a side door and walked down Cap Royale under the pale sliver of a new moon. It took him eight minutes to reach her street and a minute more to get to her door.
The old villa was locked up at that hour of the night. But she was waiting in the vestibule, as he’d told her to be.
Their gazes locked through the etched glass at the top of the door. She opened it. He went in. She wore yoga pants and a big sweatshirt that made her look small and vulnerable, her hair curling on her shoulders, a little wild, as though she hadn’t been able to stop herself from raking her fingers through it.
“This way,” she said in a hushed voice, and turned for the stairs.
He caught her arm before she could escape him.

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