Temporarily His Princess

“When I take you to my bed this time, it will be far better than ever before.”

“I will never sign an agreement to that!”

“And I’d never ask you to. This has nothing to do with the marriage deal. I’m only letting you know I want you in my bed. And you will come. Because you want to. Because you want me.”

Her pupils fluctuated, her cheeks flushed. Proof positive of his claims.

Still she scoffed. “You really have to see someone for that head of yours, before it snaps off your neck under its own weight.”

He buried his face in her neck, inhaled her, absorbing her shudder into his. “I don’t want you in my bed. I need you there. I’ve craved you there for six long years.”

OLIVIA GATES has always pursued creative passions such as singing and handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career—writing.

She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heart-wrenching heartache and hope, their every heart-pounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.

When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding Angora cat. Visit Olivia at www.oliviagates.com.

Temporarily His Princess

Olivia Gates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To everyone at Harlequin, RWA, RT Book Reviews, NINC and CataRomance who helped me realize a dream and get to a much better place. No thanks are enough.

Prologue

Six years ago

Vincenzo froze as he heard someone fumbling open the door.

She was here.

Every muscle turned to rock, every nerve fired like a high-voltage cable. Then the door slammed with an urgent thud and frantic footsteps followed, each jarring his equilibrium with the force of an earthquake.

There’d been no alert from his guards. No doorbell had announced her arrival. She was the only one he’d ever given unlimited access and keys to his penthouse.

But he’d given her more than access to his personal space—he’d given her dominion over his priorities and passions. She’d been the only woman he’d fully trusted, believed in. Loved.

And it had all been a lie.

The spear embedded in his gut twisted. Rage. Mostly at himself.

Even after he’d gotten proof of her betrayal, he’d clung to the belief that it would be explained away. She’d had him that deeply in her power.

That alone should have alerted him something was seriously wrong. It wasn’t in his nature to trust. He’d never let anyone come that close or become anywhere near that vital. As a prince of Castaldini, he’d always been suspicious of people’s intentions. After he’d become the rising-star researcher in the cutthroat field of energy alternatives, he’d believed any hope of a genuine relationship was over.

Until her. Until Glory.

From the first glance, he’d reeled at the attraction that had kept intensifying. From the first conversation, he’d sunk into a well of affinity, the deepest he’d ever known. It had been magical, how they’d hungered, connected. She’d aroused his every emotion, appeased his every need—physical, intellectual and spiritual.

But he’d just been a means to an end. An end she’d achieved.

After the first firestorm of agony had almost wrecked him, logic had doused it with its sobering ice. Seeking retribution would have only compounded the damage. He’d decided to let pain consume him, rather than give her more than what she’d already snatched from him. He’d walked away without a word.

Not that she’d let him walk away.

Her nonstop messages had morphed from worried to frantic. With each one, his heart had almost exploded, first with the need to soothe her, then with fury at falling for her act yet again. Then had come that last message. A heart-stopping simulation of a woman going out of her mind fearing for her loved one’s safety.

The pain had been so acute it had seared him with clarity.

He’d realized there could only be one reason behind her desperate persistence. Her plan must not be concluded yet. Even if she thought his avoidance meant he suspected her, she seemed to be willing to risk anything to get close to him again, to pull the strings of his addiction to her for the opportunity to finish what she started.

So he’d let her find out he’d returned. He’d known she’d zoom right over to corner him.

But though he’d planned this face-off, he wasn’t ready. Not for the sight of her, or for what he had to do.

Mannaggia! He shouldn’t have given her the chance to invade his life again for any reason. He just wasn’t ready….

“Vincenzo!”

A pale creature, who barely resembled the vibrant one who’d captured him body and heart, burst into his bedroom.

She stumbled to a halt, eyes turbid and swollen with what so convincingly looked like incessant weeping, and stood facing him across the bedroom where they’d shared unimaginable pleasures for the past six months.

Before another synapse could fire, she exploded across the room. Before he could draw another breath, her arms were around him, clinging like a woman would to a life raft.

And he knew. He’d missed it all, every nuance of her. He’d yearn for her, the woman he’d loved but who didn’t exist, until the end of his days.

His mind unraveled with the need to crush her back, breathe her in so he could breathe again. He struggled not to bury his aching hands in her hair, not to drag her face to his and take of her breath. His lips went numb, needing to feel hers, just one last time….

As if sensing his impending capitulation, she surged up, pulled his head down and stormed his face in kisses.

Temptation tightened around his throat like a noose. His hands moved without volition.

They stopped before they closed around her, his body going rigid as if guarding against a blow as what she’d been reiterating in that tremulous, strangled voice sank into his fogged awareness.

“My love, my love.”

Barely suppressing a roar, he clamped her arms before she sucked him dry of will and coherence.

She reluctantly let him separate them, raised the face that had embodied his desires and hopes. Her heavenly eyes were drowning in those masterfully feigned emotions.

“Oh, darling, you’re all right.” She hugged him again, seamlessly changing from overwrought relief to agitated curiosity. “I went insane when you answered none of my calls. I thought something … terrible must have happened.”

So that was her strategy. To play innocent to the last.

“Nothing happened.”

Was that his voice? That inhuman rasp?

Pretending not to notice the ice that encased him, dread entered the eyes that hid her soullessness behind that facade of guilelessness. “Did you have another breach? Did your security isolate you this time until they could identify the leak?”

Was she that audacious? Or did she believe she was too ingenious to be exposed? If she were still secure in his obliviousness, she wouldn’t conceive of any other reason he’d stay away while his security team investigated how his research results kept being leaked in spite of their measures.

Good. He preferred to play it that way. It gave him the perfect opportunity to play the misdirection card.

“There haven’t been any breaches.” He pretended a calm that had to be his greatest acting effort. “Ever.”

Momentary relief was chased away with deepening confusion. “But you told me …” She stopped, at a loss for real this time.

Si, that was a genuine reaction at last. For he had told her—every detail of the incidents and the upheavals he’d suffered as his life’s work was being systematically stolen. And she’d pretended such anguish at his losses, at her helplessness to help him.

“Nothing I told you was true. I let decoy results get leaked. I had great pleasure imagining the spies’ reactions when they realized that, not to mention imagining their punishment for delivering useless info. No one knows where or what my real results are. They’re safe until I’m ready to disclose them.”

Every word was a lie. But he hoped she’d relay those lies to her recruiters, hopefully making them discard it without testing it and finding out it was the real deal.

That chameleon hid her shock, seamlessly performing uncertainty with hurt hovering at its edges. “That’s fantastic … but … why didn’t you tell me that? You thought you were being monitored? Even … here?” She hugged herself, as if to ward off invasive eyes. “But a simple note would have saved me endless anguish, and I would have acted my part for the spies.”

He gritted his teeth. “Everyone got the version I needed them to believe, so my opponents would believe it along with them. Only my most trusted people got the truth.”

She stilled. As if afraid to let his words sink in. “And I’m not among those?”

Searing relief scalded through him, that she’d finally given him the opening to vent some antipathy. “How could you be? You were supposed to be a brief liaison, but you were too clingy and I had no time for the hassle of terminating things with you. Not before I found an as-convenient replacement, anyway.”

If he could believe anything from her anymore, he would have thought his words had stabbed her through the heart.

“R-replacement …?”

His lips twisted. “With my schedule, I can only afford sexual partners who jump at my commands. That’s why you were so convenient, being so … compliant. But such accommodating lovers are hard to come by. I let one go when I find another. As I have.”

Hurt blossomed in her eyes like ink through turquoise waters. “It wasn’t like that between us …”

“What did you think it was? Some grand love affair? Whatever gave you that impression?”

Her lips shook, her voice now a choking tremolo. “You did … You said you loved me….”

“I loved your … performance. You did learn to please me exceptionally well. But even such a … malleable sex partner only … keeps up my interest for a short while.”

“Was that all I am … was … to you? A sex partner?”

His heart quivered with the effort to superimpose the truth over her overwhelming act. “No. You’re right. A partner indicates a somewhat significant liaison. Ours certainly wasn’t that. Don’t tell me that wasn’t clear from day one.”

He could have sworn his words hacked her like a dull blade. If he didn’t have proof of her perfidy, the agony she simulated would have torn down his defenses. Its perfection only numbed him now, turning his heart to stone.

He wanted her to rant and rave and shed fake tears, giving him the pretext to tear harder into her. She only stared at him, tears a precarious ripple in her eclipsed eyes.

Then she whispered, “If—if this is a joke, please, stop …”

“Whoa. Did you actually believe you were more to me than a convenient lay?”

She jerked as if he’d backhanded her. His trembling hold on restraint slipped another notch. He had to get this over with before he started to rant, exposing the truth.

“I should have known you wouldn’t take the abundant hints. From the way you believed my every word it was clear you lack any astuteness. You sure didn’t become my executive projects manager through merit. But you’re starting to anger me, acting as if I owe you anything. I already paid for your time and services with far more than either was worth.”

Her tears finally overflowed.

They streaked her hectic cheeks in pale tracks, melting the last of his sanity, making him snarl, “Next time a man walks away, let him. If you’d rather not hear the truth about how worthless you were to him….”

“Stop … please …” Her hands rose, as if to block blows. “I know what I felt from you … it was real and intense. If—if you no longer feel this way, just leave me my memories….”

“Is that obliviousness or just obnoxiousness? Seems you’ve forgotten who I am, and don’t know the caliber of women I’m used to. But it’s not too late to give you a reality check. Your replacement is arriving in minutes. Care to hang around and get a sobering, humbling look at her?”

Her disbelief finally disintegrated and resignation seeped in to fill the vacuum it left behind.

She was giving up the act. At last. It was over.

He turned away, feeling like he’d just kicked down the last pillar in his world.

But she wouldn’t let it be over, her tear-soaked words lodging in his back like knives. “I … loved you, Vincenzo. I believed in you … thought you an exceptional human being. Turns out you’re just a sleazy user. And no one will ever know, since you’re also a flawless liar. I wish I’d never seen you … hope one of my ‘replacements’ pays you back … for what you’ve done to me.”

When his last nerve snapped, he rounded on her. “You want to get ugly, you got it. Get out or I won’t only make you wish you’d never seen me, but that you’d never been born.”

His threat had no effect on her; her eyes remained dead. Then, as if fearing she’d fall apart, she turned and exited the room.

He waited until a muted thud told him she’d left. Then he allowed the pain to overwhelm him.

One

The present

Vincenzo Arsenio D’Agostino stared at his king and reached the only logical conclusion.

The man had lost his mind.

He must have buckled under the pressure of ruling Castaldini while steering his multibillion-dollar business empire. And being the most adoring and attentive husband and father who walked the planet. No man could possibly weather all that with his mental faculties intact.

That must be the explanation for what he’d just said.

Ferruccio Selvaggio-D’Agostino—the bastard king, as his opponents called him, relishing it being a literal slur, since Ferruccio was an illegitimate D’Agostino—twisted his lips. “Do pick your jaw off the floor, Vincenzo. And no, I’m not insane. Get. A. Wife. ASAP.”

Dio. He’d said it again.

This time Vincenzo found himself echoing it. “Get a wife.”

Ferruccio nodded. “ASAP.”

“Stop saying that.”

Mockery gleamed in Ferruccio’s steel eyes. “You’ve got only yourself to blame for the rush. I’ve needed you on this job for years, but every time I bring you up to the council they go apoplectic. Even Leandro and Durante wince when your name is mentioned. That playboy image you’ve been diligently cultivating is now so notorious, even gossip columns are beginning to play it down. And that image won’t cut it in the leagues I need you to play in now.”

“That image never hurt you. Just look where you are today. The king of one of the most conservative kingdoms in the world, with the purest woman on earth as your queen.”

Ferruccio shrugged amusedly at his summation. “I was only known as the ‘Savage Ironman’ in reference to my name and business reputation, and my reported … hazard to women was beyond wildly exaggerated. I had no time for women as I clawed my way up from the gutter to the top, then I was in love with Clarissa for six years before she became mine. But your notoriety as one of the world’s premier womanizers won’t do when you’re Castaldini’s emissary to the United Nations. You’ve got to clean up your act and spray on some respectability to clear away the stench of the scandals that hang around you.”

Vincenzo scowled up at him. “If it’s depriving you of sleep, I’ll tone things down. But I certainly won’t ‘get a wife’ to appease some political fossils, aka your council. And I won’t join your, Leandro’s and Durante’s trio of henpecked husbands. You’re all just jealous you can’t have my lifestyle.”

Ferruccio gave him that look. The one that made Vincenzo feel hollow inside, made him feel like putting his fist through his king’s too-well-arranged face. It was the pitying glance of a man who knew bone-deep contentment and found nothing more pathetic than Vincenzo’s said lifestyle.

“When you’re representing Castaldini, Vincenzo, I want the media only to cover your achievements on behalf of the kingdom, not your conquests’ surgical enhancements or tell-alls after you exchange them for different models. I don’t want the sensitive diplomatic and economic agendas you’ll be negotiating to be overshadowed or even derailed by the media circus your lifestyle generates. A wife will show the world that you’ve changed your ways and will keep the news on the relevant work you’ll be doing.”

Vincenzo shook his head in disbelief. “Dio! When did you become such a stick in the mud, Ferruccio?”

“If you mean when did I become an advocate for marriage and family life, where have you been the last four years? I’m the living, breathing ad for both. And it’s time I did you the favor of shoving you onto that path.”

“What path? The one to happily ever after? Don’t you know that’s a mirage most men pursue to no avail? Don’t you realize you’ve beaten impossible odds in finding Clarissa? That not a man in a million will find a fraction of the perfection you share with her?”

Ferruccio pursed his lips. “I don’t know about those odds, Vincenzo. Durante found Gabrielle. Leandro found Phoebe.”

“Only two more flukes. You all had such terrible things happen during your childhoods and youths, unbelievably good stuff has been happening later in life in compensation. Having lived a blessed life early on, I seem to be destined to have nothing good from now on, to even out the cosmic balance. I will never find anything like the love you all have.”

“You’re doing everything in your power not to find love, or to let it find you—”

Vincenzo interrupted him. “I’ve only accepted my fate. Love is not in the cards for me.”

“And that’s exactly why I want you to get a wife,” Ferruccio interrupted back. “I don’t want you to spend your life without the warmth and intimacy, the allegiance and certainty only a good marriage can bring.”

“Thanks for the sentiment. But I can’t have any of that.”

“Because you haven’t found love? Love is a plus, but not a must. Just look at your parents’ example. They started out suitable in theory and turned out right for each other in practice. Pick someone cerebrally and once she’s your wife, the qualities that logically appealed to you will weave a bond between you that will strengthen the longer you are together.”

“Isn’t that an inverted way of doing things? You loved Clarissa first.”

“I thought I did, with everything in me. But what I felt for her was a fraction of what I feel for her now. Going by my example, if you start out barely liking your wife, after a year of marriage you’ll be ready to die for her.”

“Why don’t you just acknowledge that you’re the luckiest bastard alive, Ferruccio? You may be my king and I may have sworn allegiance to you, but it’s not good for your health to keep shoving your happiness in my face when I already told you there’s no chance I’ll find anything like it.”

“I, too, once believed I had no chance at happiness, either, that emotionally, spiritually, I’d remain vacant, with the one woman I wanted forever out of reach while I was incapable of settling for another.”

Was Ferruccio just counterarguing with his own example? Or was he putting two and two together and realizing why Vincenzo was so adamant that he’d never find love?

Suddenly, bitterness and dejection ambushed him as if they’d never subsided.

Ferruccio went on, “But you’re pushing forty …”

“I’m thirty-eight!”

“…and you’ve been alone since your parents died two decades ago …”

“I’m not alone. I have friends.”

“Whom you don’t have time for and who don’t have time for you.” Ferruccio raised his hand, aborting Vincenzo’s interjection. “Make a new family, Vincenzo. It’s the best thing you can do for yourself, and incidentally, for the kingdom.”

“Next you’ll dictate the wife I should ‘get.’”

“If you don’t decide on one on your own, ASAP, I will.”

Vincenzo snorted. “Is that crown you’ve been wearing for the last four years too tight? Or is your head getting bigger? Or is it the mind-scrambling domestic bliss?”

Ferruccio just smiled that inexorable smile of his.

Knowing the kind of laserlike determination Ferruccio had, Vincenzo knew there was no refusing him.

Might as well give in. To an extent he found acceptable.

He sighed. “If I take the position …”

“If implies this is a negotiation, Vincenzo. It isn’t.”

“… it will be only for a year …”

“It will be until I say.”

“A year. This isn’t up for negotiation, either. There will be no more ‘scandals’ in the rags, so this wife thing …”

Ferruccio gave him his signature discussion-ending smile. “Is also nonnegotiable. ‘Get a wife’ wasn’t a suggestion or a request. It’s a royal decree.”

Ferruccio had eventually buckled. On Vincenzo’s one-year proviso. Provided that Vincenzo chose and trained his replacement to his satisfaction.

He hadn’t budged on the “get a wife” stipulation. He’d even made it official. Vincenzo still couldn’t believe what he was looking at. A royal edict ruling that Vincenzo must choose a suitable woman and marry her within two months.

This deserved an official letter from his own corporation telling Ferruccio not to hold his regal breath.

There was no way he’d choose a “suitable woman.” Not in two months or two decades. There was no suitable woman for him. Like Ferruccio, he’d been a one-woman man. Unlike him, he’d blown his one shot on an illusion. After six years of being unable to muster the least interest in any other woman he was resigned to his condition.

Though he knew resigned wasn’t the word for it. Not when every time her memory sank its inky tentacles into his mind, his muscles felt as if they’d snap.

He braced himself until this latest attack passed….

A realization went off in his head like a solar flare.

All these years … he’d been going about it all wrong!

Fighting what he felt with every breath had been the worst thing he could have done. After he’d realized none of it was going away, he should have done the opposite. He should have let it run its course, until it was purged from his system.

But it didn’t matter that he hadn’t done that before. Now was the perfect time to do it. And to let all those still-seething emotions work to his advantage for once.

A smile tugged at his lips, fueled by what he hadn’t felt in six years, what he’d thought he’d never feel again. Excitement. Anticipation. Drive. Challenge.

All he needed now were some updates on Glory to use in this acquisition. He already had enough to make it a hostile takeover, but more leverage wouldn’t hurt.

Wouldn’t hurt him.

Now, her—that was a totally different story.

Glory Monaghan stared dazedly at her laptop screen.

She couldn’t be seeing this. An email from him.

She drew a shaky hand across numb lips, shock reverberating in her every nerve.