The Prince's Nine-Month Scandal

CHAPTER THREE

PRINCE RODOLFO WAS not what Natalie was expecting.

No picture—and there were thousands, at a conservative estimate, every week he continued to draw breath—could adequately capture the size of Europe’s favorite royal adrenaline junkie. That was the first thing that struck her. Sure, she’d seen the detailed telephoto shots of his much-hallowed abs as he emerged from various sparkling Mediterranean waters that had dominated whole summers of international swooning. And there was that famous morning he’d spent on a Barcelona balcony one spring, stretching and taking in the sunlight in boxer briefs and nothing else, but somehow all of those revealing pictures had managed to obscure the sheer size of the man. He was well over six feet, with hard, strong shoulders that could block out a day or two. And more than that, there was a leashed, humming sort of power in the man that photographs of him concealed entirely.

Or, Natalie thought, maybe he’s the one who does the concealing.

But she couldn’t think about what this man might be hiding beneath the surface. Not when the surface itself was so mesmerizing. She still felt as dazed as she’d been when she’d walked in this room and seen him waiting for her, dwarfing the furniture with all that contained physicality as he stood before the grand old fireplace. He looked like an athlete masquerading as a prince, with thick dark hair that was not quite tamed and the sort of dark chocolate eyes that a woman could lose herself in for a lifetime or three. His lean and rangy hard male beauty was packed into black trousers and a soft-looking button-down shirt that strained to handle his biceps and his gloriously sculpted chest. His hands were large and aristocratic at once, his voice was an authoritative rumble that seemed to murmur deep within her and then sink into a bright flame between her legs, his gaze was shockingly direct—and Natalie was not at all prepared. For any of it. For him.

She’d expected this real-life Prince Charming to be as repellent as he’d always been in the stories her mother had told her as a child about men just like him. Dull and vapid. Obsessed with something obscure, like hound breeding. Vain and huffy and bland, all the way through. Not...this.

Valentina had said that her fiancé was attractive in an offhanded, uncomplimentary way. She’d failed to mention that he was, in fact, upsettingly—almost incomprehensibly—stunning. The millions of fawning, admiring pictures of Crown Prince Rodolfo did not do him any justice, it turned out, and the truth of him took all the air from the room. From Natalie’s lungs, for that matter. Her stomach felt scraped hollow as it plummeted to her feet, and then stayed there. But after a moment in the doorway where she’d seen nothing but him and the world had seemed to smudge a little bit around its luxe, literally palatial edges, Natalie had rallied.

It was hard enough trying to walk in the ridiculous shoes she was wearing—with her weight back on her heels, as ordered—and not goggle in slack-jawed astonishment at the palace all around her. The actual, real live palace. Valentina had pointed out that Natalie had likely visited remarkable places before, thanks to her job, and that was certainly true. But it was one thing to be treated as a guest in a place like Murin Castle. Or more precisely, as the employee of a guest, however valued by the guest in question. It was something else entirely to be treated as if it was all...hers.

The staff had curtsied and bowed when Natalie had stepped onto the royal jet. The guards had stood at attention. A person who was clearly her personal aide had catered to her during the quick flight, quickly filling her in on the princess’s schedule and plans and then leaving her to her own devices. Natalie had spent years doing the exact same thing, so she’d learned a few things about Valentina in the way her efficient staff operated around her look-alike. That she was well liked by those who worked for her, which made Natalie feel oddly warm inside, as if that was some kind of reflection on her instead of the princess. That Valentina was not overly fussy or precious, given the way the staff served her food and acted while they did it. And that she was addicted to romance novels, if the stacks of books with bright-colored covers laid out for her perusal was any indication.

Then, soon enough, the plane had landed on the tiny little jewel of an island nestled in the Mediterranean Sea. Natalie’s impressions were scattered as they flew in. Hills stretched high toward the sun, then sloped into the sea, covered in olive groves, tidy red roofs and the soaring arches of bell towers and churches. Blue water gleamed everywhere she looked, and white sand beaches nestled up tight to colorful fishing villages and picturesque marinas. There were cheerful sails in the graceful bay and a great, iconic castle set high on a hill. A perfect postcard of an island.

A dream. Except Natalie was wide-awake, and this was really, truly happening.

“Prince Rodolfo awaits your pleasure, Your Highness,” a man she assumed was some kind of high-level butler had informed her when she’d been escorted into the palace itself, with guards saluting her arrival. She’d been too busy trying to look as if the splendor pressing in on her from all sides was so terribly common that she hardly noticed it to do more than nod, in some approximation of the princess’s elegant inclination of her head. Then she’d had to follow the same butler through the palace, trying to walk with ease and confidence in shoes she was certain were not meant to be walked in at all, much less down endless marble halls.

She’d expected Prince Rodolfo to be seedier in person than in his photos. Softer of jaw, meaner of eye. And up himself in every possible way. She had not expected to find herself so stunned at the sight of him that she’d had to reach out and hold on to the furniture to keep her knees from giving out beneath her, for the love of all that was holy.

And then he’d spoken, and Natalie had understood—with a certain, sinking feeling that only made that breathlessness worse—that she was in more than a little hot water. It had never crossed her mind that she might find this prince—or any prince—attractive. It had never even occurred to her that she might be affected in any way by a man who carried that sort of title or courted the sort of attention Prince Rodolfo did. Natalie had never liked flashy. It was always a deliberate distraction, never anything real. Working for one of the most powerful men in the world had made her more than a little jaded when it came to other male displays of supposed strength. She knew what real might look like, how it was maintained and more, how it was wielded. A petty little princeling who liked to fling himself out of airplanes could only be deeply unappealing in person, she’d imagined.

She’d never imagined...this.

It was possible her mouth had run away with her, as some kind of defense mechanism.

And then, far more surprising, Prince Rodolfo wasn’t the royal dullard she’d been expecting—all party and no substance. The sculpted mouth of his...did things to her as he revealed himself to be something a bit more intriguing than the airhead she’d expected. Especially when that look in his dark eyes took a turn toward the feral.

Stop, she ordered herself sternly. This is another woman’s fiancé, no matter what she might think of him.

Natalie had to order herself to pay attention to what was happening as the Prince’s surprisingly possessive words rang through the large room that teemed with antiques and the sort of dour portraits that usually turned out to have been painted by ancient masters, were always worth unconscionable amounts of money and made everyone in them look shriveled and dour. Or more precisely, she had to focus on their conversation, and not the madness that was going on inside her body.

You are mine didn’t sound like the kind of thing the man Valentina had described would say. Ever. It didn’t sound at all like the man the tabloids drooled over, or all those ex-lovers moaned about in exclusive interviews, mostly to complain about how quickly each and every one of them was replaced with the next.

In fact, unless she was mistaken, His Royal Highness, Prince Rodolfo, he of so many paramours in so many places that there were many internet graphs and user forums dedicated to tracking them all, looked as surprised by that outburst as she was.

“That hardly seems fair, does it?” she asked mildly, hoping he couldn’t tell how thrown she was by him. Hoping it would go away if she ignored it. “I don’t see why I have to confine myself to only you when you don’t feel compelled to limit yourself. In any way at all, according to my research.”

“Is there someone you wish to add to your stable, princess?” Rodolfo asked, in a smooth sort of way that was at complete odds with that hard, near-gold gleam in his dark eyes that set off every alarm in her body. Whether she ignored it or not. “Name the lucky gentleman.”

“A lady never shares such things,” she demurred. Then smiled the way she always had at the officious secretaries of her boss’s rivals, all of whom underestimated her. Once. “Unlike you, Your Highness.”

“I cannot help it if the press follows me everywhere I go.” She sensed more than heard the growl in his voice. He was still standing where he’d been when she arrived, arranged before the immense fireplace like some kind of royal offering, but if he’d thought it made him look idle and at his ease he’d miscalculated. All she could see when she looked at him was how big he was. Big and hard and beautiful from head to toe and, God help her, she couldn’t seem to control her reaction to him. “Just as I cannot keep them from writing any fabrication they desire. They prefer a certain narrative, of course. It sells.”

“How tragic. I had no idea you were a misunderstood monk.”

“I am a man, princess.” He didn’t quite bare his teeth. There was no reason at all Natalie should feel the cut of them against her skin. “Were you in some doubt?”

Natalie reminded herself that she, personally, had no stake in this. No matter how many stories her mother had told her about men like him and the careless way they lived their lives. No matter that Prince Rodolfo proved that her mother was right every time he swam with sharks or leaped from planes or trekked for a month in remotest Patagonia with no access to the outside world or thought to his country should he never return. And no matter the way her heart was kicking at her and her breath seemed to tangle in her throat. This wasn’t about her at all.

I’m going to sort out your fiancé as a little wedding gift to you, she’d texted Valentina when she’d recovered from her shell shock and had emerged from the fateful bathroom in London to watch Achilles Casilieris’s plane launch itself into the air without her. The beauty of the other princess having taken her bag when she’d left—with Natalie’s phone inside it—was that Natalie knew her own number and could reach the woman who was inhabiting her life. You’re welcome.

Good luck with that, Valentina had responded. He’s unsortable. Deliberately, I imagine.

As far as Natalie was concerned, that was permission to come on in, guns blazing. She had nothing to lose by saying the things Valentina wouldn’t. And there was absolutely no reason she should feel that hot, intent look he was giving her low and tight in her belly. No reason at all.

She made a show of looking around the vast room the scrupulously correct butler who had ushered her here had called a parlor in ringing tones. She’d had to work hard not to seem cowed, by the butler or the scale of the private wing he’d led her through, all dizzying chandeliers and astoundingly beautiful rooms clogged with priceless antiques and jaw-dropping art.

“I don’t see any press here,” she said, instead of debating his masculinity. For God’s sake.

“Obviously not.” Was it her imagination or did Rodolfo sound a little less...civilized? “We are on palace grounds. Your father would have them whipped.”

“If you wanted to avoid the press, you could,” Natalie pointed out. With all the authority of a person who had spent five years keeping Achilles Casilieris out of the press’s meaty claws. “You don’t.”

Was it possible this mighty, beautiful prince looked...ill at ease? If only for a moment?

“I never promised you that I would declaw myself, Valentina,” he said, and it took Natalie a moment to remember why he was calling her Valentina. Because that’s who he thought she was, of course. Princess Valentina, who had to marry him in two months. Not mouthy, distressingly common Natalie, who was unlikely to marry anyone since she spent her entire life embroiled in and catering to the needs of a man who likely wouldn’t be able to pick her out of a lineup. “I told you I would consider it after the wedding. For a time.”

Natalie shrugged, and told herself there was no call for her to feel slapped down by his response. He wasn’t going to marry her. She certainly didn’t need to feel wounded by the way he planned to run his relationship. Critical, certainly. But not wounded.

“As will I,” she said mildly.

Rodolfo studied her for a long moment, and Natalie forced herself to hold that seething dark glare while he did it. She even smiled and settled back against the delicate little couch, as if she was utterly relaxed. When she was nothing even remotely like it.

“No,” he said after a long, long time, his voice dark and lazy and something else she felt more than heard. “I think not.”

Natalie held back the little shiver that threatened her then, because she knew, somehow, that he would see it and leap to the worst possible conclusion.

“You mistake me,” she said coolly. “I wasn’t asking your permission. I was stating a fact.”

“I would suggest that you think very carefully about acting on this little scheme of yours, princess,” Rodolfo said in that same dark, stirring tone. “You will not care for my response, I am certain.”

Natalie crossed her legs and forced herself to relax even more against the back of her little couch. Well. To look it, anyway. As if she had never been more at her ease, despite the drumming of her pulse.

She waved a hand the way Valentina had done in London, so nonchalantly. “Respond however you wish. You have my blessing.”

He laughed, then. The sound was rougher than Natalie would have imagined a royal prince’s laugh ought to have been, and silkier than she wanted to admit as it wrapped itself around her. And all of that was a far second to the way amusement danced over his sculpted, elegant face, making him look not only big and surprisingly powerful, but very nearly approachable. Magnetic, even.

Something a whole lot more than magnetic. It lodged itself inside of her, then glowed.

Good lord, Natalie thought in another sort of daze as she gazed back at him. This is the most dangerous man I’ve ever met.

“I take it this is an academic discussion,” Rodolfo said when he was finished laughing like that and using up all the light in the world, so cavalierly. “I had no idea you felt so strongly about what I did or didn’t do, much less with whom. I had no idea you cared what I did at all. In fact, princess, I wasn’t certain you heard a single word I’ve uttered in your presence in all these months.”

He moved from the grand fireplace then, and watching him in motion was not exactly an improvement. Or it was a significant improvement, depending on how she looked at it. He was sleek for such a big man, and moved far too smoothly toward the slightly more substantial chair at a diagonal to where Natalie sat. He tossed himself into the stunningly wrought antique with a carelessness that should have snapped it into kindling, but didn’t.

It occurred to her that he was far more aware of himself and his power than he appeared. That he was something of an iceberg, showing only the slightest bit of himself and containing multitudes beneath the surface. She didn’t want to believe it. She wanted him to be a vapid, repellant playboy who she could slap into place during her time as a make-believe princess. But there was that assessing gleam in his dark gaze that told her that whatever else this prince was, he wasn’t the least bit vapid.

And was rather too genuinely charming for her peace of mind, come to that.

He settled in his chair and stretched out his long, muscled legs so that they almost brushed hers, then smiled.

Natalie kept her own legs where they were, because shifting away from him would show a weakness she refused to let him see. She refused, as if her life depended on that refusal, and she didn’t much care for the hysterical notion that it really, truly did.

“I don’t care at all what you do or don’t do,” she assured him. “But it certainly appears that you can’t say the same, for some reason.”

“I am not the one who started making proclamations about my sexual intentions. I think you’ll find that was you. Here. Today.” That curve of his mouth deepened. “Entirely unprovoked.”

“My mistake. Because a man who has grown up manipulating the press in no way sends a distinct message when he spends the bulk of his very public engagement ‘escorting’ other women to various events.”

His gaze grew warmer, and that sculpted mouth curved. “I am a popular man.”

“What I am suggesting to you is that you are not the only popular person in this arrangement. I’m baffled at your Neanderthal-like response to a simple statement of fact, when you have otherwise been at such pains to present yourself as the very image of modernity in royal affairs.”

“We are sitting in an ancient castle on an island with a history that rivals Athens itself, discussing our upcoming marriage, which is the cold-blooded intermingling of two revered family lines for wealth and power, exactly as it might have been were we conducting this conversation in the Parthenon.” His dark brows rose. “What part of this did you find particularly modern?”

“The two of us, I thought, before I walked in this room.” She smiled brightly and let her foot dangle a bit too close to his leg. As if she didn’t care at all that he was encroaching into her personal space. As if the idea of even so innocuous a touch did nothing at all to her central nervous system. As if he were not the sort of man she’d hated all her life, on principle. And as if he were not promised to another, she snapped at herself in disgust, but still, she didn’t retreat the way she should have. In case she was wondering what kind of person she was. “Now I suspect the Social Media Prince is significantly more caveman-like than he wants his millions of adoring followers to realize.”

“I am the very soul of a Renaissance man, I assure you. I am merely aware of what the public will and will not support and I hate to break it you, princess, but the tabloids are not as forgiving of royal indiscretions as you appear to be.”

“You surprise me again, Your Highness. I felt certain that a man in your position could not possibly care what the tabloid hacks did or did not forgive, given how much material you give them to work with. Daily.”

“The two of us can sit in this room and bask in our progressive values, I am sure,” Rodolfo murmured, and the look in his dark eyes did not strike Natalie as particularly progressive. “But public sentiment, I think you will find, is distressingly traditional. People may enjoy any number of their own extramarital affairs. It doesn’t make them tolerant when a supposed fairy-tale princess strays from her charmed life. If anything, it makes the stones they cast heavier and more pointed.”

“So, to unpack that, you personally wish to carry on as if we are single and free, but are prevented from following your heart’s desire because you suddenly fear public perception?” She eyed him balefully and made no attempt to hide it. “That’s a bit hard to believe, coming from the man who told me not twenty minutes ago that he refused to be declawed.”

“You are not this naive, princess.” And the look he gave her then seemed to prickle along her skin, lighting fires Natalie was terribly afraid would never go out. “You know perfectly well that I can do as I like with only minimal repercussions. It is you who cannot. You have built an entire life on your spotless character. What would happen were you to be revealed as nothing more or less than a creature as human as the rest of us?”

CHAPTER FOUR

RODOLFO HAD LONG ceased recognizing himself. And yet he kept talking.

“It will be difficult to maintain the fiction that you are a saint if your lovers are paraded through the tabloids of Europe every week,” he pointed out, as if he didn’t care one way or the other.

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