The Once and Future Prince by Olivia Gates

“Should we get on with the negotiations, Prince D’Agostino?”

The title that he hadn’t heard in eight years and the formality that had never before passed her lips were like claws swiped across raw tissue.

“Leandro.” He couldn’t temper his anger. “You remember my name, don’t you, Phoebe? Say it. You once moaned it, sobbed it, screamed it. I’m sure you can now pay me the courtesy of just saying it.”

Her eyes wavered before they hardened, her lips twitched before they thinned. “I see no reason to. Prince D’Agostino is what’s proper in this situation. And I demand you pay me the courtesy of not bringing up our past liaison again.”

He gave a rough huff. “You’d better realise fast that I don’t respond well to demands, Phoebe. I’m also notorious for being impossible to steer. So quit wasting your breath trying to manoeuvre this ‘negotiation.’ We’re doing this my way.”

Pretend Mistress, Bona Fide Boss by Yvonne Lindsay

“Why hide everything?”

Lainey pulled away and took a step back, nervously smoothing the jacket of her beige suit.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play games with me, Lainey. You know exactly what I’m talking about. This—” He gestured to her suit which, while well cut, was a size too large and gave the impression she was heavier than she really was. “And this.”

He gestured this time to her hair, his hand snaking out and pulling at the pronged pin she’d used to secure her habitual bun for the office. As her hair tumbled over her shoulders, she saw again the same burn of interest in his eyes that had halted her in her tracks last night at the casino. The near feral look of possession, or at least the desire to possess, that had both excited and terrified her in one fell swoop.

Eight hundred years ago, Antonio D’Agostino founded the Mediterranean kingdom of Castaldini. With a culture mixing Italian and Moorish influences, the kingdom was unique. But what set it apart from the world’s monarchies was the succession law Antonio D’Agostino created. He knew none of his sons was fit to wear a crown after him, so he decreed that the succession would not be by blood but by merit. Anyone from the extensive D’Agostino clan, all now considered the royal family, could prove himself worthy of being the next king. He set stringent rules that had to be satisfied before someone could be a candidate for the crown, including that the selection of the next king had to be with the unanimous approval of the royal council of the reigning king.

And the other rules? That the future king be of impeccable reputation, of sturdy health and no vices, of solid lineage from both sides, a leader people followed due to the power of his character and charisma, and above all, a self-made success of the highest order.

So it had always been—D’Agostino men vying for the crown, striving to deserve it. Throughout history, one D’Agostino man always won over all competitors and claimed the crown. He chose his council from the royal family and during his reign selected the next king to be his crown prince, so that the transition of power occurred smoothly in case anything befell him.

And the kingdom’s motto was Lasci l’uomo migliore vincere.

Let the best man win.

Available in April 2010 from Mills & Boon® Desire™

Inherited: One Child by Day Leclaire & Dakota Daddy by Sara Orwig

Propositioned Into a Foreign Affair by Catherine Mann & Seduced Into a Paper Marriage by Maureen Child

Mini-series— THE HUDSONS OF BEVERLY HILLS

The Once and Future Prince by Olivia Gates & Pretend Mistress, Bona Fide Boss by Yvonne Lindsay

The Once and Future Prince

by

Olivia Gates
Pretend Mistress, Bona Fide Boss

by

Yvonne Lindsay

MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Once and Future Prince

by

Olivia Gates

Dear Reader,

After my THRONE OF JUDAR series, which was magical to write, I wondered what to do next. I wanted to continue writing to that same level of sumptuousness and enchantment, with the same world-shaking stakes. I longed to create more irresistible, über-alpha, larger-than-life men and the women who are their perfect counterparts. I wanted to tell more stories of impossible riches and towering passions.

And so was born THE CASTALDINI CROWN, a trilogy set on a lush Mediterranean island drenched in sun and history, a kingdom that has refused to follow the rules of the world. For in Castaldini the crown is won, not inherited.

For the first time in eight hundred years, Castaldini is in jeopardy. The reigning king is sick and the quest for the next king is made more desperate because, according to the ancient laws, each of the only three men suited to hold the crown has one major criterion that makes him ineligible for it.

THE CASTALDINI CROWN launches with The Once and Future Prince, as renegade Prince Leandro D’Agostino wrestles with the decision to return to the kingdom that exiled him and with his fear of surrendering his heart again to the woman who deserted him. Or did she?

The storyline continues in the next two months with The Prodigal Prince’s Seduction and The Illegitimate King.

I would love to hear your thoughts at oliviagates@olivia gates.com. Also please visit me at www.oliviagates.com.

Thank you for reading.

Olivia Gates

Olivia Gates has always pursued creative passions—painting, singing and many 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.

To Melissa Jeglinski.

Thank you for the wonderful new path. I wish you happiness and success in everything you endeavour, MJ.

To Natashya Wilson, my incredible editor.

Can’t be happier that we’re a team, Tashya.

Prologue

Eight years ago

“Come closer, Phoebe. I won’t bite. Not too hard.”

Leandro’s rumble reverberated in Phoebe’s bones.

She choked on the surge of response, on the breath that was trapped inside her lungs. The breath she’d been holding waiting for him to contact her. The one she always held until he did.

She still couldn’t breathe. He stood as if carved from rock, staring out of his penthouse’s floor-to-ceiling windows at the Manhattan skyline, which glittered like clusters of stars set in arcane patterns. Her starved senses registered only him.

The power of his physique, the silken layers crowning his head, dimmed spotlights overhead caressing copper overtones from the hairs’ deepest mahogany. Her hands stung with the memory of convulsing in that hair as he’d exposed her to the mercilessness of his pleasuring.

His scent invaded her with a maleness and a potency that were only his, an aphrodisiac even from the distance he bade her to eliminate. He’d already gotten her to travel four thousand miles to “come closer.”

Eight hours ago, she’d received a message from Ernesto—Leandro’s right-hand man, and their secret go-between—during Julia’s daily physiotherapy session. She’d thought he was inviting her to yet another clandestine rendezvous, one even more secret because Leandro’s situation in Castaldini was more delicate than ever after his resignation from his ambassador post. But she hadn’t found Leandro. Just his jet. There’d been no word from him all through the seven-hour flight to New York.

There hadn’t been one in four months. She’d feared silence had been his way of informing her it was over. But it wasn’t…

“I turned thirty, two months ago.”

She lurched at his rasp, a twist of longing in her gut. She’d known that. On October 26th. The urge to call him that day had frayed what had remained intact of her nerves. But his rules had been clear. He contacted her. It had seemed he wouldn’t anymore.

“Happy birthday.” She winced as the lame response left her lips.

His huff abraded her. “Indeed. The happiest birthday ever.”

He turned to her then. She would have staggered if she hadn’t been incapable of moving a muscle, even involuntarily.

“Nothing more to say, bella malaki?” My beautiful angel. The endearment shuddered through her, that mix of Italian and Moorish only he used. He prowled toward her, his shirt phosphorescent in the dimness, unbuttoned to his waist, revealing chiseled power that bunched and gleamed with every step. “Shall I make it easier? Give you a lead?” He stopped half a breath away, his emerald eyes flaring and subsiding like pulsars. “Miss me?”

She’d thought so. She’d been wrong. She’d starved for him.

He reached out to her, warm, large hands singeing her, steadying her body, shaking everything else. “Shall I find out?”

Yes, her every cell shrieked.

But he did nothing, stilled. She started to shake.

The moment her tremors hit him, his pupils obliterated his irises, black holes that sucked coherence from her mind, wrenched hunger from her depths. She pitched forward, a helpless satellite yanked to an inexorable planet, hurtled into his containment.

It was like a dam had burst. Violent. Deluging. Their mouths collided, merged, flooding her with what she’d never thought to find until him. Oneness. Need that sliced her open.

Her world churned, with the delight of reconnection, with his savagery and what it betrayed of a hunger as searing as hers as his power bore them deeper into passion.

“Next time, bellezza helwa…next time I’ll take hours…days to worship you…but this time…this time…”

He threw her down, and she could only moan as she sank into the luxury of silk sheets and his scent, anticipation becoming agony as their clothes disappeared under the force of his impatience. Her arms shook, begged for his possession. He obeyed, impacted her with the force she was gasping for, thrust inside her, no preliminaries, no way to withstand any, fierce and full and beyond her endurance, razing her with pleasure, ripping an orgasm from the core that clenched around his invasion. He snatched her scream of release into his ravaging mouth, roared his own, jetting into her depths to the rhythm of her convulsions until she lay beneath him, boneless. Devoured. Replete. Leandro. Her lion man. Back in her life. No longer in secret…?

He drove deeper inside her, ending questions. She arched beneath him, taking, offering all. He growled into her neck, the darkness of it shaking through her with the reverberation of satiation, the accumulation of renewed need.

Until the words it carried lodged in her brain.

“I will never return to Castaldini.”

Everything stilled. She knew the situation had been tense for him in Castaldini. But not to return there, ever? Nothing could be that bad. That final. Could it?

She squirmed beneath his suddenly crushing weight. “What d-do you mean you w-won’t return? You have to…”

He pulled back, stared down at her for a long, incredulous moment, before he made an explosive sound deep in his gut, then jerked away, separated from her body, left it aching. Bereft.

“You don’t know?”

She winced at his rage. “Know what?”

“Dio, could it be? They’ve kept their decree a secret in Castaldini? This is much worse than I thought. They’re not only culturally and economically isolating Castaldini, they’re keeping it behind their own brand of iron curtain.”

“Please, Leandro…I don’t understand.”

“You want to know what spread like wildfire through the world news before the media found something else to exploit? The trivial news that I, Prince Leandro D’Agostino, whom the world was certain would be named Castaldini’s crown prince and next king, through merit and lifelong achievement—the moment I defied the current king and his men, I was declared a renegade and stripped of all my titles.”

“Oh, no…”

He barked a harsh laugh. “Don’t ‘oh, no’ yet. There’s more. I was stripped of my Castaldinian nationality, too.”

She went still, as if under the weight of a collapsing wall. She struggled for breath. “That c-can’t be true.”

“Oh, it can. I’ve been offered American citizenship and I’ve accepted it. I’m never setting foot on Castaldini again.” Suddenly he hauled her to him, stabbed his fingers into the tumble of her locks, plundered her lips in a kiss that branded her. His urgency chased everything away, had her clinging until he rasped against her lips, “And you’re never going back, either.”

The fierceness of his declaration jolted through her, had her wrenching her lips away. “I have to.”

His eyes became slits of hypnosis as he spread her, loomed over her, the embodiment of her desires. “No, you don’t. This is your country, as it now is mine. You’ll stay with me.”

She wrestled the rest out. “I have to go back to Julia.”

His hand stilled its caresses on her aching-from-pleasure breast. “Oh, yes, your poor dependent sister. The princess with a whole kingdom at her disposal and her service.”

“You know it’s not like that. She needs me.”

“I need you.”

The agonized confession lurched through her heart, each syllable a stab. Of shock.

Out of paralysis, hope started to quiver, only to be stilled in the cold grip of…suspicion.

He needed her? How? And why now? He hadn’t needed her before, apart from the obvious. Leandro didn’t know the meaning of need. His one and only need had been to become king of Castaldini, and nothing else had mattered in his quest for the crown. Least of all her. He’d proved that over and over.

He’d kept her a secret, had escorted other women—especially his second cousin Stella—to formal functions, passing Phoebe with that malignant woman on his arm and nodding to her as if she were nothing more than his cousin Paolo’s sister-in-law.

He’d said he’d done it to divert suspicion from their intimate liaison, which would have damaged both his chance at the crown and her reputation. At first she’d thought his claim that his measures were “to protect them both in these sensitive times” meant that he’d been planning for a future together and was being discreet to protect her reputation in the highly conservative kingdom.

But he certainly hadn’t said or done anything overt to support this belief. And that had been before Stella—who went around swatting away fawning females from Leandro as she would flies—had told her what Phoebe realized she’d been the last to know. A fact that was widely accepted. That in order to take the crown, Leandro would have to marry an “acceptable” woman. And Phoebe was certainly far less acceptable than the royal-blooded Stella D’Agostino. In fact, Stella herself was second best, and it was just as widely known that she’d get him only if his perfect match and ideal running companion for the crown turned him down. That woman was someone who’d become Phoebe’s friend—Clarissa D’Agostino, the king’s daughter.

Now, finally, she let herself face it. The truth. He’d feared exposure not for the sake of their future together, but for his as king. That Clarissa, or even Stella, boosted his chances and she didn’t—she’d never even been in the running for his future bride. That she’d been cowardly, fearing that if she brought up any of her grievances or suspicions, he would have ended their affair. That she’d been so weak, so in love, she’d forced herself not even to think about it, had buried her head in the sand so that she could take what she could get.

But self-deception hadn’t done a thing to stop her anguish from mounting. Hadn’t she become more distraught the closer he’d gotten to the crown? Hadn’t she subconsciously wished he wouldn’t get it, so that he could settle on her? Hadn’t she feared that if he did take it—and Clarissa or Stella with it—and still wanted her, that she wouldn’t be able say no? She’d started to understand how some women ended up being the “other woman.”

And she’d gotten the wish she’d hidden even from herself. He was not in the running for the crown anymore. And he wanted her. Had said what she’d never thought he’d say. That he needed her.

Yeah. Right. After treating her like a dirty secret for more than a year, then cutting her off for four months without a word?

All her anguish burst out of her. “What do you need me for, Leandro? As your on-demand lover, like before? Or perhaps something a bit more permanent, now that you’ve run out of better options? What would I be in your life at this point? The ever-present outlet for your frustrations? The convenient body when you need sexual relief? Would I even be the only one to provide that? Have I been the only one?”

He gaped at her, as if she’d metamorphosed into an alien being right in front of him. The cold rage that crept into his eyes almost made her cringe and cry out a retraction.

Almost. She stood her ground. She had to. She needed to. It felt as if she’d been slowly poisoned by humiliation.

He tore his hands off her, stood and glared daggers at her enervated body. “You’re accusing me, after all I’ve done, all you’ve cost me? Why don’t you be up-front about what’s really happening here, what I suspected during those four months that you didn’t even bother to pick up the phone to inquire if I was alive or dead? I was worth your while when I was lined up to be the next king. Minutes ago you melted in my arms when you still didn’t know there was no longer any chance of that. Now I’m suddenly patently resistible.”

His aggression and the unjust accusations felt like a one-two combo. But the sting only strengthened her resolve, ignited her anger, sent it raging.

She struggled up. “You can think what you like.”

He swooped down on her, dragged her into his arms. “You’re not turning your back on me, too.”

She looked up and started to push at him and…stopped. Slumped into his hold. His eyes. What she saw there hit her harder than a KO would have. Pain. Such Pain.

And it all slotted in her mind. The loss that must be gnawing at him, corroding his spirit as the realization that he’d ceased to be everything that defined him congealed into reality. Need to absorb his pain, need for him hammered at her. And he’d said he needed her…

No. He didn’t need her. He’d never needed her. He just needed to assert his thwarted will, to placate his wounded pride.

All the pain that she’d been fooling herself she hadn’t been accumulating for the past year and a half ripped through her as she tore out of his arms and jerked on her clothes.

“I hope you’ll be very happy in your new country with your miserable view of others and your self-absorption. They sure are winning you many allies.”

He approached her, his fury causing her to freeze. “So first you throw this out-of-the-blue accusation at me, and when I throw back something relevant, instead of showing me I’m wrong, you use it as the excuse to do what you’d do anyway. Desert me. And I’m supposed to take part in this act? Speak the lines where we pretend I’m the callous offender and you’re the noble accused?”

Indignation thawed her. She yanked up her zipper. “It’s I who’ve been reading the lines you dictated. And I’m through.”

“I dictated that you tell me you only felt fully alive when I touched you, took you? That was an act? That’s why it’s so easy to walk away now? To leave me?”

His harshness no longer shook her, only stirred all the pent-up hurt and humiliation she’d hidden from herself. “Leave you? When was I ever with you? All I ever was to you was the adoring fool who stroked your ego when you could spare me the odd hour. You sure liked hearing me say those things, didn’t you? That colossal ego of yours is wounded, and you need a constant supply of worship.” She stopped, panting. Then another wave of bitterness gushed out. “You don’t need me, Leandro—you just need to know that I need you. But contrary to what I may have let you believe, my life doesn’t revolve around you. I have responsibilities and aspirations—I’m not a toy you can drag out whenever you feel the urge.”

“Yet when I felt that urge you begged for more.” He caught her against his body, his rough breathing a furnace blast against her neck as he nuzzled her, his hands dipping below her clothes, one cupping her breast, the other her core, each knowing probe and caress a jolt of stimulation. “Your body is mine, has just writhed in need beneath me, convulsed in pleasure around me, is still begging for me now even as you say otherwise.”

The cruelty of his manipulation of her emotions and responses even as he exposed his true opinion of her smeared her self-worth in the truth. A truth she’d still been hoping she was wrong about.

He cared nothing for her. She’d merely served a purpose to him. Now that she was refusing to serve it anymore, he’d torn off the mask he’d worn around her. Just like he had with his king and country.

She wrenched out of his arms, ran out of his penthouse.

She didn’t stop until she’d put half a world between them.

Where she prayed she’d never hear of or from him again.

One

The present

“Castaldini’s future depends on you.”

The slightly slurred words hit Phoebe Alexander like a sledgehammer.

She gaped at the man who’d spoken them before she’d even cleared the towering doors to his state room. He was approaching her like a slow-motion, head-on collision.

She watched King Benedetto limp across the gigantic Castaldini crest that bulls-eyed the carpet sprawling over acres of mosaic hardwood floor. Each shuffle transmitted its struggle to her muscles. His cane thumped the ground to the rhythm of her haywire heartbeats.

If she hoped she’d misheard what he’d said, he said it again as if to underline the acuteness of her hearing.

“It all depends on you, figlia mia.”

Every word from his mouth tugged on a rawness inside her.

She’d come to love him like the father she’d never had, her own having walked out when she was two and her mother was pregnant with her sister, Julia. But she still couldn’t handle him calling her daughter. She sure didn’t belong in the same place in his heart where his grandchildren and their mother—her sister—reigned supreme. She never knew what to do with the reflected affection, but tried to be of as much use as she could to feel entitled to it. She still wasn’t close to feeling that.

How could Castaldini’s future depend on her when it was facing dangers only a king could divert?

She searched his steel-blue eyes for a qualification. They had that look she’d seen during too many crises. It always meant his mind was made up, his decree final. And in her experience, he had yet to be proven wrong.

King Benedetto hadn’t become the longest-reigning and most beloved king since King Antonio for nothing. In her opinion, he was the shrewdest, most effective ruler of the twentieth century. He was also the most controversial, as his politics had practically segregated Castaldini from the rest of the world during his forty-year reign. But his policies had protected the kingdom from the upheavals that had swept the world during those decades. What’s more, this detachment from the global political scene had boosted Castaldini’s allure, translating into a booming tourist industry.

That had lasted until the end of the twentieth century. The twenty-first century hadn’t proven to be his domain so far, and everything seemed to be falling apart. To compound problems, he also held another record. He had ruled the longest without choosing a crown prince.

He’d been a gracefully aging Olympian who everyone believed would live and rule for forty more years, would turn things around in time. Until he’d been struck down by a stroke four months ago. And the lack of a crown prince was now taking on potentially catastrophic meaning.

King Benedetto stopped a dozen steps from her and leaned on his cane, the asymmetry of his injury exaggerating the spasm of suffering and agitation on his face. “I will never recover enough to continue to rule Castaldini.”

She couldn’t even blurt out reassurances. His stroke had sheared his life force in half. It hurt her to see him now, his face emaciated, his ornate regal uniform flapping emptily around a once formidable physique. But she could say one thing and mean it. “Your Majesty, you are improving.”

“No, figlia mia.” He cut across her attempt at qualification. “I’m barely walking, my left side is all but useless and the least illness leaves me bedridden, barely able to breathe.”

“But it’s not like you need to be in peak physical fitness.”

Half of his face softened, appreciating her efforts, pointing out their foolishness. “Yes, I do. You know it’s the Castaldinian law. And it goes beyond that. My mental faculties…”

This she could contest. Vehemently. “Are as sharp as ever!”

His sigh carried such finality she felt her heart plummet. “That’s not true, no matter how much I or you or my council want to believe it. I forget. I…drift. But even if a miracle happens and I’m back in peak health one day, Castaldini can’t afford to wait in hope anymore. The circling vultures are becoming more daring with each passing day, and finding a successor has become an emergency. I cannot afford to dawdle anymore. I’m guilty of doing that for far too long.”

She couldn’t listen to him piling guilt on top of desperation and regret that way. “You did no such thing. According to the law, you couldn’t have picked any of the candidates.”

He shook his head as he limped to the nearest sitting area and slumped into a gilded Aubusson armchair. “But I could have. At least a decade ago. There’s always been not one worthy candidate, but three. Each can take Castaldini forward into this century, which is proving to be even more turbulent than the last, to keep it safe against the dangers hammering down its doors. Yet they are the only three men who will not come forward to be recognized for their eligibility for the crown.”

So there were three D’Agostino men around who had what it took to be the next king? That was news to her. Another bombshell. One that had her mind veering off on a tangent…

No. Not the one man who’d once answered all the criteria. He had once come forward to be recognized for his eligibility. So the king couldn’t be counting him among those three men. Could he?

Her feet started moving again under the influence of curiosity.…and foreboding. “So, what’s their problem?”

The king let out an uneven exhalation as she came to stand beside him. “Each has one. Each fulfills all criteria but one. A different one in each man’s case, something that makes him unsuitable for the position by Castaldinian law.”

“Then it isn’t your fault you didn’t settle on any of them.”

“Oh, I tried to tell myself that for as long as I could afford to. Now I no longer can. Neither can Castaldini. I brought matters to a head with the Council. They argued that defying the laws Castaldini was built around for any reason would lead to the very loss of identity we guard against. I argued that overlooking the ancient laws this once has become a matter of survival, lest the monarchy crumble and Castaldini be absorbed by one of the neighboring nations vying to assimilate our history and resources into their boundaries. Then, yesterday, I had a ten-minute mental blackout during a council session.”

She gasped. He reached for her hand, squeezed it. He was soothing her? His next words proved that he was. “I couldn’t have asked for a better thing to happen. It seems the reality of my condition was jarring enough that when I regained my senses, my council were singing a different tune. They now unanimously concede that the only way to protect Castaldini is to choose one of the only three men capable of maintaining our sovereignty.”

She pulled her hand back. She didn’t want him to feel it shake. “Whoa, that’s huge. For them to agree to waive the laws. That’s problem solved, isn’t it?”

He grimaced with what looked like self-deprecation. Loathing, even. “Not at all. Each of those men has reason enough to turn his back on me and on Castaldini. They’d be fully justified to leave both to our fate without their intervention.”

“But you’re their king. I know there hasn’t been a precedent for it, but you can draft them into service.”

His eyes widened as if she’d told him he could pole-vault. Then he barked a gravelly laugh, his face growing more asymmetric with the contortion of mirth. “You have no idea how outside my or anyone’s jurisdiction they are. I not only can’t draft them, I can’t afford to antagonize them any more than I already have, or we’ll lose any chance of having a deserving monarch wear the crown, and with it any hope of saving Castaldini.”

“A man who has that much power and doesn’t want to use it to save his kingdom—for whatever reason—isn’t worthy of any crown, let alone Castaldini’s. Whatever happened to the merit part?”

The king’s face settled back into its grimness. “Oh, make no mistake, they all merit it. More than I ever did.”

“I refuse to believe that.”

“Thank you for your faith, figlia mia, but I had forty years to build the history you’re judging me by, thankfully doing more right than wrong. But I did do a lot of wrong. Those three, what disqualified them, how I compounded everything when I alienated them, are among my major mistakes. Another sentimental mistake I’ve been guilty of was that I couldn’t choose between them, leading to this point, where Castaldini is effectively leaderless. But my blessed blackout finally forced the council to choose for me. They recommended going after the one they consider the least of the three evils.”

Though it made no sense, she knew the name he’d say.

She wanted to turn and run out, to outrace her suspicion and the moment he’d turn it into fact. Then it was too late.

“You know him well. My late cousin Osvaldo’s son. Prince…ex-Prince Leandro D’Agostino.”

Her nails dug in her palms. She thought she’d braced herself. Had been bracing herself for eight years. Spending her waking hours doing anything that demanded total focus so she wouldn’t hear that name reverberating through her mind. Going to bed depleted in hope of not having it ignite her unconscious aches and struggles. She’d succeeded. When she hadn’t had relapses and sought mention of his name like an addict would a drug.

Leandro. The man she’d loved beyond reason’s dictates, and those of pride and self-preservation. The man to whom she’d been nothing but a convenience. As she was sure so many others had been. He went through life like a one-man invasion, leveling everything in his path so he could erect his own version of perfection.

And he was the least of the three evils? What were the other two? Demons?

The one thing ameliorating her upheaval at hearing his name again was confusion. At hearing it on the lips of the man who’d banished him from Castaldini, laced with such regret and…affection?

When King Benedetto spoke again, no doubt remained in her mind. It had been both. And more. Far more. The pining and pride of a father speaking of his estranged son. “There was nothing that boy couldn’t do. A true jack-of-all-trades. He built a financial empire and was the best ambassador to the States Castaldini ever had by the time he was just twenty-eight.”

She knew that. That had been when she’d met him, almost ten years ago. A month after she’d set foot on Castaldini, in the fairytale setting of her sister’s wedding.

“You must remember how he walked out on the ambassador’s position over irreconcilable differences in policies, how he escalated his antagonism until I could no longer defend him to the Council, was forced by his actions and their unanimity to declare him renegade and strip him of his Castaldinian nationality.”

Oh, how she remembered that. And what it had led to.

“He is now a tycoon of global power, dividing his time between business and humanitarian endeavors.”

She didn’t want to hear this. But short of walking away, or yelling at the king to quit shoving Leandro’s achievements down her throat, there was nothing she could do but stand there and listen to how he’d moved on, and so spectacularly, with his life.

Focused on his purpose, the king went on. “We approached him to come back, to be given full pardon and become crown prince and regent. He scoffed at our messengers and our offers.”

“Surely that was anger talking.” She started at the croaked protest. It had issued from her. It seemed nothing could silence the negotiator inside her. “Nothing some determined cajoling and ego-boosting concessions won’t alleviate.”

“Oh, yes, that’s what the Council thought, too. I told them they knew nothing about Leandro. But they were confident they could negotiate with him. He told us what we could…do…with our attempts at pride-salving and our middle grounds.”

Phoebe felt every word pushing her to the edge of an abyss. She couldn’t bear to look down, tried again to inch away. “If he so adamantly refuses, why not turn to the other choices?”

“Because the objection against the second is weightier, and he hates me even more. As for the third, the objection against him is the weightiest of all. And I suspect he hates both me and Castaldini. Leandro, as impossible as it seems, is actually the least problematic of all, the one I project will be easiest to reach. And that is where you come in.”

Her heart launched against her ribs. She rocked on her feet with the force of the collision. Don’t say it. Don’t…

He said it. “I’m sending you, the one person I believe can reach Leandro, can convince him to negotiate, or to at least hold down the fort until a more permanent solution is found, if he remains adamant about not accepting the succession.”

Phoebe’s mind emptied. Her tongue fired blanks. “I—I’m not…”

“You’re Castaldini’s most potent negotiator. You’ve bailed us out of situations where my old guard and I were ineffectual, detrimental even. And this is our darkest hour. I am counting on your ability, your infallible diplomatic techniques and your own charms, to lure Leandro back when all else has failed.”

Her own…charms? Now wait a minute here…

Before she could choke out her alarm, the king hurled another declaration at her.

“You’re my—and Castaldini’s—last card.”

“We’re landing, Signorina Alexander.”

Phoebe mirrored the flight attendant’s smile, patted her fastened seatbelt. She waited until the radiant brunette had removed her untouched dinner and hurried away before she let her head thunk against her window. The bonfire of lights that was New York City at night was zooming up at her, an organized maze of the gothic and the postmodern that seemed to be unfurling to engulf Castaldini’s equivalent of Air Force One.

She closed her eyes over the sand that seemed to fill her lids.

She hated flying. She’d come to equate it with upheaval.

The journey that started it all had been ten years ago. Her little sister, Julia, had accepted Paolo’s marriage proposal only to discover he was the King of Castaldini’s son.

Phoebe couldn’t let her eighteen-year-old, special-needs sister go alone to a foreign country and an unknown future. She’d dropped out of law school to accompany Julia. She’d boarded that jet to Castaldini with anxieties and regrets preying on her. The first over the unimaginable future she and her sister were heading to, the second over the life she’d relinquished.

Not that she’d had second thoughts since then. Although she was only two and a half years older than Julia, she’d been more of a mother than a sister to her since their single mother had died just days after Phoebe’s thirteenth birthday. When Julia had become afflicted with Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia—a rare form of partial paralysis—Phoebe’s protectiveness had mushroomed. At fourteen, Julia had started suffering from weakness, stiffness and partial loss of sensation in her lower limbs. By the time she was seventeen, she’d been in a wheelchair. Then she’d met Paolo.

Undaunted by her condition, he’d swept her into a whirl-wind romance. It wasn’t long before he’d proposed. And though Julia had accepted after nearly a year of cajoling and insistence that her physical condition made no difference to him, Julia’s psychological state had been fragile and her dependence on Phoebe had deepened with the anticipation of all the upheaval that becoming a princess overnight would bring.

Phoebe had wondered too many times if she would have done things differently if she’d known her own life would change forever, too. And not just as spillover from the changes in Julia’s.

What if the first time she’d set eyes on Leandro, she’d had the sense to feel alarmed at her volatile reaction, especially when she’d always been steady and cerebral? To realize that something so out of control would lead to a crash? That a man so voracious in both ambition and passion would end up consuming her while giving nothing of himself in return? What if she hadn’t let him sweep her into that first kiss an hour after meeting, hadn’t thrown herself into his bed a week later?

She’d always come to the same conclusion. Any alternative scenario wouldn’t have derailed her life, and she wouldn’t have spent years afterward trying to get back on track. She would have been whole, living a full life, with a family of her own.

And the king thought her the one best equipped to talk Leandro into coming back. The man she hadn’t had one rational discussion with in the fourteen months she’d been his lover.

But she had to be fair here. Their past affair was unknown, thanks to the lengths to which Leandro had gone to keep it a secret. The king was asking her to do her job as Castaldini’s diplomatic troubleshooter, who had negotiated many precarious deals and smoothed potentially treacherous situations on the kingdom’s behalf. If she took personal history and emotions out of it, this, while a one-of-a-kind situation, was still within her job parameters.

Not that she hadn’t tried to excuse herself from the chore, extricate herself from this impending mess. But without admitting why she couldn’t face Leandro, she’d had no ground on which to squirm out of that trap. She thought even a confession would have backfired. The king’s reliance on her “charms” would have only taken on new relevance. As a man, and a desperate monarch to boot, he would have believed a former lover who just happened to be the kingdom’s best negotiator would be a double-barreled weapon that was sure to win the battle.

She had one more reason she couldn’t have used. The consequences of this turn of events.

Leandro must be punishing the king and his Council, forcing them to grovel for his return after they’d banished him. But she had no doubt that when his pride was appeased and his conditions were made and met, he’d become part of the D’Agostino family again, would become its crown prince and future king.

And her time on Castaldini would come to an end.

The moment he came back to stay, she’d leave.

She was an hour away from meeting the man who’d made it impossible for her to love or even want another. From negotiating the deal that she had to succeed in negotiating at any price.

The deal that would end life as she knew it.

Leandro D’Agostino fought the urge building inside him until he felt as if his head were expanding under its pressure, heard the bones in his hand crackle under its force.

He stared down at that hand before he realized it was his cell phone issuing that sound. The cell phone he was crushing.

He swore, threw it away. It clanged on the gleaming wood of his desk, skidded and clattered to the mirror-like hardwood floor. He gritted his teeth as silence filled the racket’s wake.

Dammit. How many phones had he damaged in the past eight years so that he wouldn’t use them to call her? Even though that had been for the exact opposite purpose for which he wanted to call her now?

Well, he was not calling Phoebe Alexander. He was not canceling his meeting with her.

She wanted an interview with him? She was getting one.

For all the good it would do her.

She’d picked a bad day to break an eight-year silence. A bad month. A bad lifetime.

And she was about to find out how a tiger felt when those who’d ripped a claw from his paw came to poke at the festering wound.

They dared call him back. They now offered the mantle of power and responsibility. After they’d slandered him and cast him out, stripped him of his identity before his people, before the world. After he’d spent his life in service of his kingdom and its people, after he’d been certain he’d be named crown prince as the one D’Agostino male who met all the ancient criteria.

The closer he’d come to the crown, the more the Council had panicked. They wanted to remain the ruling body for life, had feared—and correctly—that his first action as king would be to replace them. So they beat him to it while they still could. They’d turned on him, removing him as a threat. After all, they’d still had the power. And King Benedetto’s ear.

King Benedetto. His kin and king. His hero. The king hadn’t just stood aside and let the dogs shred him, he’d delivered the decree that had torn Leandro’s guts out himself.

But being unable to call himself of the royal house of D’Agostino, ceasing to be a Castaldinian, hadn’t been the worst injury he’d sustained. That had been her betrayal. Her desertion.

And she was on her way here. To negotiate on his former king’s behalf. Or was it on her own?

It could be the latter, disguised as the first.

As if he’d fall for her again.

Whatever she was coming here for, he wasn’t letting her have it, or any influence on him again. Not in this life. Or the next.

Si, let her come. He was in the mood to be provoked. Her memory had been the source of heartache for far too long. Let her flesh-and-blood presence inflict something less pathetic. Something hot and harsh. Something he could sink his teeth into. And rip.

It was time to tear out anything soft or stupid from his depths, the remnants of the spell he hadn’t been able to break. It was time to exorcise her…

All his hairs stood on end as if he’d been doused in a field of static electricity. A presence. Unmistakable even after all these years. Here. She was here.

Phoebe.

Ernesto must have met her downstairs, let her up here. Let her walk alone into his den. Like eight years ago.

Caution told him not to move, to make her initiate the confrontation. Every instinct screamed for him to turn, to catch her first uncensored reaction to seeing him after that lifetime.

It was the hot, sharp sound that spilled from lips he knew to be rose-soft and cherry-tinted, that had once wrung all coherence from him with soul-wrenching kisses and moans, that shattered the stalemate. He swung around.

Déjà vu engulfed him.

Time rewound to the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. To the last time he had. And like both times, like every time in between, everything about her bombarded him all at once.

Different droned in his mind. Raven-haired when she’d been caramel blond before, creamy pale when she’d been deeply tanned, curvaceous when she’d been willowy. The woman who stood two dozen feet away had little in common with the younger one who occupied his memory, who’d never relinquished her hold over his senses.

He took in the enhancements in one glance, knew he’d need hours, days, more…far more, to sort through them.

But he didn’t have to catalog them to suffer their effects, to relive that incendiary—and to his rage and resignation, unrepeatable—attraction.

For a stretch that existed outside time, it was as if the only thing that could happen was that he would surge toward her, that she would rush to meet him halfway.

She stood as transfixed as he. As shocked.

That conviction jogged him from the surreal timelessness he’d plunged into, the version where nothing had gone wrong between them. He crash-landed into the distasteful present.

Of course she wasn’t shocked. She was here with full premeditation…

No. She was shocked. This was no act, not any more than his own dive into that time warp had been. So what did it mean?

He exhaled the breath trapped in his lungs, admitted he’d probably never know what anything meant where she was concerned, that he had no more grasp on this situation than he had on anything else that had happened in the past.

But he intended to take control of it. Or at least try to. He’d start by taking control of himself.

He turned fully to her, bracing for the change that would come over her expression as she regained control.

The last of the shock he’d detected in her drained. He caught a stinging lip in his teeth, counted down the seconds before her gaze heated, her posture relaxed, beckoned…

“For the record, I told King Benedetto what I think of a man who refuses to do his duty out of petty pride.”

Leandro blinked. What the…?

“But it’s my job to negotiate on the king’s behalf. Even for a prize I don’t think worth winning.”

Two

Leandro consulted his hearing. And his memory.

Had she really said what he’d heard her say?

A prize I don’t think worth winning.

And that would be…him?

He stared at the woman Phoebe Alexander had become. She strode into his den as if it were her own sanctuary and he the intruder, each stride loud with the bearing of someone who knew her worth, her effect, exuded it to perfection with each breath.

Confusion mounted as his gaze clung to the new lushness encased in the formal attire of her profession, the severity of which only accentuated each long limb and ripe curve. His eyes followed each undulation of feminine assurance and fluid grace, pored over the areas her suit left exposed. That smooth neck with the modest expanse of flesh just below, those molded legs. He could almost taste her new creaminess. Would it taste the same as her honeyed tan once had…?

Abbastanza, you fool. Focus on her face. Fathom her tactic.

He did, only to wish he hadn’t. Lingering on features that had been sculpted to their full potential by a connoisseur god of taste and elegance only intensified the rush of hormones through his system, had every nerve ending rioting like a wheat field in a storm. And there was nothing in her expression to guide him.

She reached the oak coffee table in front of his Chesterfield couch arrangement, bent to place her gray briefcase down with a concise click. Her thick braid fell forward, drawing his gaze to the femininity encased snugly in a jacket that reflected her silver eyes. Fantasies washed over him, of dragging her by the braid, undoing it with fingers made rough by haste to the cadence of her encouraging moans, releasing the twining locks into a cascade of glossy raven waves. Another kick of blood rushed to his loins.

Then she straightened, looked straight at him as if she were looking through spotless glass. She laced her fingers loosely in the pose of a saleswoman waiting on the whims of an ambivalent client, and all he could think was that those supple hands had once been all over him, stroking him to a frenzy, pumping him to oblivion, digging into him in ecstasies of release, that they were now linked right in front of…

Dio. What was wrong with him? He couldn’t finish one thought without taking it to a carnal conclusion? Without imagining her abandoned in his arms as he did everything with her, to her?

He shouldn’t have abstained. Even if he hadn’t felt any urge for female company, for physical gratification, he should have sought both. Just like he sought sustenance. He shouldn’t have convinced himself he didn’t need the release, needed all his drive intact for his endeavors. Now it seemed he was starving.

Ma, maledizione…he hadn’t been. Not until she’d walked in.

“Shall we begin the negotiation?”

He winced. Her voice was the same, velvety and rich like chocolate and red wine. But even when she’d spat her last words at him before walking out of his life, she hadn’t sounded so—arctic. And that frostiness was nothing compared to how those eyes swept over him as if examining an icky lifeform.

She dropped his gaze like a hot potato, swept hers around as if seeking something worthy of her focus. “You do want to get this over with so you can get on with the rest of your day, don’t you?”

The answer that almost escaped was What I want is for you to tell me who you are and what you did with the Phoebe I knew.

Did the change in her extend so deeply beyond the physical? Had the woman who’d inundated him with hunger and appreciation and exuded passion from every pore disappeared? Was this what had replaced her? A woman who was finally true to her namesake?

The name of a goddess of the moon had been such a misnomer for the sunny entity she’d been. But now the name and the myths woven around it seemed to have been invented for her. Where once her skin and hair and figure and vibe had glowed with the sun’s heat and energy, they were now permeated by the moon’s light, by its night and fullness. By its coldness.

But then the changes were probably only superficial. Her old spontaneity and warmth must have been an act. One he’d fallen for.

So why had she dropped the facade now, when she was here to insinuate herself into his favor?

A scoff almost burst from his lips. Favor? That she now hoped to win by telling him how worthless she thought him?

Which was a strange declaration. As one of the most powerful men in the world, he epitomized worth. She herself must have plotted to ensnare him the moment she’d recognized his potential.

She’d read him, played him like a virtuoso. The endlessly loving sister, the innocent who’d gone up in flames at his first touch, the one presence in his life that had been undemanding and soothing during conflicted times. She’d projected everything that had captivated him with unerring consistency.

She’d moved on after he’d been wiped out of the picture, looking for a replacement prince. And she’d found one—and lost him. To this day, Leandro had been unable to find out the true circumstances of her broken engagement to one of his second cousins, Prince Armando D’Agostino.

But she’d had a contingency plan. She’d become the indispensable presence that connected the über-traditional monarchy to the modern world. The one the kingdom relied on in its hours of need. The one they’d sent to him.

And she wanted to “start the negotiations.” Wanted to get it over with so he could “get on with the rest of his day.”

Not the words or attitude of someone who cared one way or the other if those negotiations bore fruit.

So what was she up to now?

She must have a plan. A new act. She must have decided to walk in here, pretend antagonism, condescension, and before he interpreted any level of emotional involvement in either, she would switch to indifference. Keep him guessing. Keep him off-balance and enmeshed in the game, trying to anticipate her next move and how to counteract it.

Masterful. A resounding success.

And why not? He’d let her perform this new scenario. Watching her execute it should be therapeutic.

He advanced on her with steps that he hoped looked measured. His resolve to purge her wasn’t lessening her impact. He stopped two steps away, and it hit him two hundred times harder.

He made another split-second decision, to give in to it rather than fight it and lose more to its sway. He let her aura flood over him, took another step closer.

“And hello to you, too, Phoebe.”

Her eyes swung up to his. Blood grew thicker, demanding harder contractions from his heart to push it through his arteries.

She took half a step back. Slow. Smooth. Dancing with him already? They’d once danced so…exquisitely together.

“There’s no need to pretend we owe each other hellos.”

The matter-of-factness of her tone was like an intravenous stimulant, riding his circulation’s rapids to his fingertips, his toes, his scalp, his erection. He made up for the half step she’d gained. “Don’t we? You keep saying the most interesting things.”

“I’m stating facts. Now, if we can move on?”

“So, me not being a prize worth winning, and us not owing each other hellos are ‘facts.’ Because you say so, of course.”

Her gaze shifted downward. He felt it scrape down his body, as inflammatory as her nails had once been.

But what was the stirring he saw in her eyes? Irritation? At him? Or at herself? Because she hadn’t intended to look? To notice? To become as inflamed?

Before he could make sure, her gaze moved back up to his, smothering whatever it had been in blandness. “Prince D’Agostino…”

The title—what he hadn’t heard in eight years and the formality that had never before passed her lips were like a swipe of claws across raw tissue.

“Leandro.” He couldn’t temper his anger and affront, stop them from making his growl a predator’s. “You remember my name, don’t you, Phoebe? Yalla, say it. You once moaned it, sobbed it, screamed it. I’m sure you can now pay me the courtesy of using it.”

Those eyes wavered before they hardened, those lips twitched before they thinned. “I see no reason to. ‘Prince D’Agostino’ is what’s proper in this situation. And I demand you pay me the courtesy of not bringing up our past liaison again.”

He gave a rough huff. “You’d better realize and fast that I don’t respond well to demands, Phoebe. I’m also notorious for being impossible to steer. So quit wasting your breath trying to maneuver this ‘negotiation’ according to your preset plans.”

To her credit, she didn’t try to contest that he’d pegged her strategy right. Now she’d no doubt swerve into new territory.

But she said nothing. Stood silent. Still. Waiting for him to launch into more unchecked responses, to compromise himself more?

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “No more admonishments? Shall I wait until you think of something concise and annihilating? Something to devolve me from worthless to nonexistent?”

Her gaze remained steady. Vacant. It filled him with urgency. He took a step, farther into her aura, struggled not to breathe deeply of her freshness. He stopped before he touched, gathered, crushed. Her stillness and silence sent his senses haywire. He’d had enough unresponsiveness from her to fill ten lifetimes. He’d take no more.

He opened his mouth, not knowing what he’d say. Only she had ever been able to strip him of coherence.

What came out was, “Nothing more to say?”

Memory flooded him of when he’d said those very words to her before, in this very room. Of what had followed them. And…Dio.

He watched as a jolt emptied her lungs and vulnerability flooded her eyes. Had the memory hit her as hard as it had him? Why would it, if that encounter hadn’t meant much to her, if her emotions had never truly been involved? Could it be there had always been another explanation, one he’d hoped for all these years?

Temptation became an ache, to demand she put him out of his misery once and for all, to reenact the rest.

Exhaling, hoping to purge the irrationality her nearness always afflicted him with, he gestured toward the sitting arrangement behind them.

She didn’t move. After seconds of her ignoring his unspoken invitation, he exhaled again, walked around her. With all he had, he refrained from brushing against her. He still felt as if her essence followed him, enveloped him, its crisp sweetness filling his lungs, the charge of attraction sparking over his skin. Setting his teeth, he snatched a remote off the coffee table, pushed a button as he descended heavily onto the two-seater.

Ernesto appeared at the door in seconds.

The older man’s shrewd gaze took in the situation before turning disapproving eyes on…him? What the…?

Tamping down the ridiculous urge to protest that this tense scene was her fault—past and present—furious that the man who’d practically raised him, who’d seen him at his worst after her desertion should have the temerity to have any doubt of that, he glared back. “See what Phoebe would like, Ernesto. She might talk to you. She seems to be on a speech strike with me.”

Ernesto’s hawklike face grew harsher with displeasure and disappointment, throwing daggers at Leandro’s confused outrage, before softening into fondness and indulgence as he turned to Phoebe. “What would you like, cara mia?”

Cara mia? His dear? Since when? What was going on here?

Before more questions could form, Leandro’s mouth dropped open wider as Phoebe turned a face transformed by affection into the heart-melting one he remembered, and gave Ernesto a tremulous smile that would shake the foundations of a metropolis. “Grazie, Ernesto. Anything. You always know what I like better than I do.”

After the two people who had—had had, in Phoebe’s case—the most emotional influence on his life exchanged one more glance that left Leandro feeling like an outcast, Ernesto walked out.

As soon as the door closed, Leandro’s gaze swung to Phoebe, eager to see softness still possessing her face. But her features had settled back into that mask of impassiveness.

Disappointment roared through him. “Very touching. The affection feels very established and ongoing, too. Are you going to tell me what’s been happening behind my back? Or should I take it up with Ernesto?”

He’d bet lesser men had shriveled up under the brunt of such a look as the one she gave him in answer.

He leaned forward, the better for his resentment to collide with her disdain. “Come here, Phoebe.”

He counted three booming heartbeats, during which she remained unmoving before he ground out, “If you insist on testing the limits of my patience, do remain standing there. And if you insist on playing the prim and proper emissary, do call me ex-Prince D’Agostino. I’ve earned the title the hard way, after all.”

“And you want to earn the removal of the ex part in an even harder way?”

“Ah, there you are. I knew you had plenty more to say.”

He’d thought she’d clam up again when she murmured, “Not if you don’t start behaving in a civilized and professional manner.”

His mouth twisted with a jumble of irritation and stimulation. “There’s another thing I have to warn you about. My severe allergic reaction to conditions and ultimatums.”

Just when he thought she might turn on her heel and walk out, she moved. Forward. Nearer. One prowling stride after the other.

By the time she was standing about two steps away, his mind had hurtled into wish fulfillment, dreaming of bringing her down to straddle him, grinding her heat against his hardness…

Before he dragged her down himself, he bit out, “Sit down, Phoebe.”

She finally did, in one downward sweep of grace and self-possession. On the far side of the couch, on its very edge. As if preparing to spring up and away at his least movement.

“Sit back, Phoebe, relax. Anyone would think you’re afraid I’ll pounce on you. Which is strange when you come to think of it, since you once wanted nothing more than for me to do so.”

She turned on him, and…Dio. A tigress baring her fangs before slashing a tormentor’s head off wouldn’t have been more magnificent, more stunning. More effective.

He didn’t know how he didn’t pounce on her.

“Okay,” she hissed. “Let’s get it all out in the open and out of the way and be done with these juvenile, infringing, lascivious allusions. We had a sexual liaison a lifetime ago. It ended. We moved on. Eight years later, we’re different people, and not only doesn’t today have anything to do with the past, this has nothing to do with us as individuals. I’m not Phoebe to your Leandro here. I’m Ms. Alexander, international law consultant and diplomatic troubleshooter for the Kingdom of Castaldini, present in my professional capacity to negotiate the acceptance of crown-prince status with ex-Prince D’Agostino.”

He stared at her. He’d wanted hot and harsh? He should have prayed he didn’t get what he wished for. He was so engorged now, his jeans might be causing him permanent damage.

Act or no act, the verdict was in. Whatever he remembered of her effect on him had been diluted by time. Or she’d grown a hundred times more potent with maturity. He’d bet on the latter.

Which was weird. He’d thought the malleable, eventempered Phoebe his ideal woman. So why was he finding the guns-blazing, machete-tongued Phoebe far more attractive? He’d never found anything to tolerate in cold, cutting women, let alone something to arouse him to the point of pain. So why did he find her sub-zero bluntness the epitome of overpowering femininity? Especially when she’d just finished confirming everything he’d tormented himself with since she’d walked out on him: That he’d been no more than a sexual liaison to her? That she’d moved on, no problem?

And she wasn’t even finished yet.

He watched as she drew in a breath, the exquisiteness of her face preparing for the next salvo.

He couldn’t wait to be blasted to pieces.

Phoebe felt her heart stumbling in her chest like a panicked horse trying to gallop on slippery ice.

And the source of the turmoil, that huge, criminally majestic and beautiful…rat, was looking at her as she tore into him as if she were showering him with compliments.

This was far worse than she’d expected. And she’d expected the absolute worst ever since she’d arrived at the same building where she’d last seen Leandro. Then Ernesto had ushered her into the same room. Déjà vu had suffocated her by the time she’d seen Leandro with his back to her. And then he’d turned…

She’d seen many high-resolution photos and hours of footage of him throughout the years. She’d had film-quality memories. She’d thought graphic effects had touched up his assets, that memories had been exaggerated by the distortion of passion and inexperience.

They’d been misleading, all right. And mercifully so.

The brunt of the reality of him had shut down her mind, possessed her instincts. Mate, they’d whimpered. She’d seen herself flying to him, seen him storming to her, felt him snatching her in mid-flight, crushing her in his assuagement.

She’d stumbled out of that alternate reality, reeling. She remembered, vaguely, what had hurtled out of her mouth. Survival. Like someone lashing out with flailing arms at a black hole.

Then he’d stalked to her, and with each step, she’d withdrawn into herself to ward off his incursion. But damn him, he’d kept coming, invading her senses, snatching her responses from her self-control’s white-knuckled grip. Then he’d spoken. Teased. Taunted. Pushed and pulled. Until the last anchor of her restraint snapped like an overextended string. She could swear she’d heard that final twang echo throughout her body. And she’d let him have it.

It was as if she’d let him have exactly what he’d been wishing for. The pleasure flashing across his face singed her, the tension roiling through his body resounded inside hers, spiking when every verbal slash hit home. It was as if she were chafing the exact spot he needed scratched, the very nerve cluster he wanted stimulated.

Who knew he was into S-M. The verbal kind. Maybe the physical, too. No wonder her “yes, Leandro” persona had been so…peripheral to him.

She thought she’d expended all her angst in that tirade. But with Leandro all but licking his lips for an encore, another was coming on.

“Now, to elaborate on what I said as I first came in…” She stopped. Her voice sounded as it once had at the end of the stamina-testing ecstasy sessions he’d exposed her to. She gulped. “Even if you redeem yourself in some huge way, I think it’ll remain inexcusable that you’re playing games when your kingdom’s future is at stake…”

“Former kingdom.”

His indolent words thrilled behind her breastbone. “What?” He leaned closer. Sucked whatever air was left from the universe. “I’m an American now.” She grimaced. “Oh, please.”

Mockery intensified the emerald of his eyes. “Want to see my passport?”

She waved. “You’ll always be Castaldinian.”

The wings of his dense, perfectly formed eyebrows rose in mock interest. “Really? A whole kingdom disagreed for eight years. I don’t have one official tie to the place.”

“Like it or not, you are one.”

He turned his lip down in a perfect parody of a petulant little boy. Yeah. Sure. As if. “I have no say?”

She shook her head. “None.”

“I wonder how you have worked this out.”

“You don’t have a say in your genes, do you? Same thing.”

“Oh, but we do rise above our programming.”

“And you transcended your Castaldinian origins?”

“I was actually culled out of the Castaldinian pool. But I’ve adapted well to life as another species, thank you for caring.”

“Oh, please.”

He leaned back, the seat dipping under his shifting weight, exacerbating her imbalance. He spread his daunting body in a pretense of relaxation, giving her a more complete demonstration of his upgrades. And her effect on him. “You know, the way you keep saying ‘please’…anyone would think you’re inviting more ‘juvenile, infringing, lascivious allusions.’”

His words had the effect of quick-drying concrete. “Okay. It seems we won’t get anything of any value said or done before we indulge your need to harp about the past and drag out the sordid details. Fine. Go ahead. Get it out of your system.”

His gaze seemed to scald her body, to scrape it naked.

“There are…things I can’t get out of my system. Certainly not by…talking. As for other baggage from that phase in my life, don’t worry about it. I channeled any lingering resentment into my work. Whatever remains, I take care of with extreme sports. And punching bags.”

“And turning your back on your kingdom when it needs you.”

A laugh cracked out of his depths, loaded with astonishment and amusement. And virility. “That would be a great outlet. If I were into an eye for an eye.”

“Only it would be a limb—or a life, or even a nation’s worth of either—for an eye, in this situation.”

A chuckle rumbled in his chest, revving up the itchy feeling in hers to an ache. “You think I’m that vital? Very inconsistent of you, when you already said how inconsequential I am.”

“That was a personal opinion,” she mumbled, furious with herself, with him, at the responses he kept yanking from her.

His gaze grew more baiting as he rubbed a languid hand over his chest, drawing her stare to the beauty and power of the first, the breadth and hardness of the second. “Off the record, eh?”

She did her level best to present him with her neutral look. “Do make it on. Your head must be swollen from all the buttkissing you get. Consider my opinion a deflating agent.”

His laughter boomed again. Her heart ricocheted in her rib cage. “Ah, Phoebe, I’m having my head measured first thing in the morning.” He sobered a bit, his grin becoming an X-rated health hazard. “So why try to convince such an irredeemable egomaniac to take the reins of a kingdom?”

She swallowed. “I’m an emissary, as you said. I’m not here to put forward my convictions but rather my employer’s case.”

“Even if you suspect he’s senile and is turning the kingdom over to the one person who’ll drive it into the sea?”

“King Benedetto isn’t senile by a long shot.”

“How else do you explain his change of heart?”

“I am sure he has his reasons.”

“So he hasn’t shared them with you? You’re the little foot solider with need-to-know info you’ll never need to know?”

“One thing I do know is that his heart has always been with you. I believe having to cut you off nearly cut it out.”

He threw his awesome head back with a hoot of delight. “I didn’t see that coming.”

Her throat constricted as the rain-straight silk of his hair cascaded back to frame his head to maximum effect. “What?”

“Appealing to the insecure little boy inside me who craves his hero’s approval, his validation.”

God help her, she actually snorted. “The day I believe there’s an insecure little boy inside you is the day I believe I’ll sprout wings if I cluck hard enough.”

His laughter was louder this time, lasted longer. Spread more damage. “Ah, Phoebe, you know me too well. How about the vindictive little boy inside me, then? Who wants to see the object of his hero worship groveling, admitting how much he’s wronged him, and how the guilt of his transgressions has never given him a moment’s peace?”

She stilled. His eyes lost the crinkle of amusement as he stared back at her. And she saw it.

A groan escaped her. “I don’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t think there’s a vindictive little boy inside you, either. Whatever you have in there, I think it’s still just…just…”

“Angry? Affronted?” he offered, mock helpfully.

“Stunned.”

He went totally still. His stare lengthened. Until she was sure he’d burned a hole between her eyes.

Suddenly he was surrounding her. All her nerves gave way at once. She melted back into the couch. He followed her, still not touching her. She felt as if he’d licked her all over, with fire. When he was inches away from her lips, he rumbled, “Didn’t you notice that you haven’t done any negotiating so far?”

Each word jolted through her, coating her lungs with his scent, his potency. “If—if I’ve learned anything as a negotiator, ” she gasped, “it’s how to know for certain when my…opponent has no intention whatsoever…under any persuasion.…to negotiate.”

Another inch disappeared. “I’m your opponent now?”

“You’re worse. An opponent I can handle. You’re…you’re…”

“I’m…what?” He obliterated half of the last inch.

Her hand went up. To keep him away? All she knew was that her hand met the convergence of silk and steel and searing heat and stuck there like a pin to a magnet.

“Phoebe…”

Her ears rang with her name, the very sound of wonder, of hunger, with the racket of doors slamming shut in her mind. All existence was his lips. Almost there. On hers. At last. Please.

She couldn’t breathe, so she breathed him. He smelled so much better than air. Felt so much more vital. Necessary…

No. No. He wasn’t. She’d let him be that once, and…No.

She twisted away, feeling as if she’d wrenched back from a precipice. Her heart hammered inside her; her lungs burned. Somewhere an auxiliary power source kicked in, yanked her up to her feet.

Her gaze slammed around. Where is the damn door?

“Signorina?”

She swung around blindly, seeking the voice. So welcome. As always. Ernesto. Her ally. Her solace. Her secret-keeper.

He was standing at the door, holding a laden silver tray.

She took a step toward him. The second was harder. The third was too hard to finish, as if Leandro’s influence was pulling her back. Ernesto looked past her, at his master, no doubt, and gave a grudging nod. To her he gave a bolstering look. Then he retreated.

She opened her mouth to cry for him to come back, and Leandro’s drawl lodged between her shoulder blades.

“Forgetting something, Phoebe? Your mission?”

Without turning to him, she gritted words out through her teeth. “You let me come here just to settle a score, to show me it was never anything but a wild goose chase. Just as well. You’re not salvation material. In fact, you would probably be the worst thing that could happen to Castaldini right now.”

She suddenly felt as if he’d let her go. She surged forward. As it had that last time she’d been here, the door seemed to recede…

“Phoebe.”

His murmur hit her with the force of a gunshot.

“Tomorrow night. It’s still up to you.”

She felt as if she were drowning in the bass reaches of his croon. “Wh—what are you talking about now?”

Silence. Until she started to shake. Then she almost fell to her knees when he whispered, “It’s still up to you to convince me. Why I should give…anyone…a second chance.”

Three

Phoebe’s gaze swept over the extravagance surrounding her.

To her right, sunshine soaked in vibrant color filtered through a ten-foot-wide stained-glass window, transferring its tinted image to the pristine white marble floor. All around it clear, eight-foot-tall windows nestled among silk-covered walls, framing glimpses of Central Park and staining the openplan space with sunset’s copper. Among the opulence of the French-chateaux style of décor and furniture, the hand-painted piano caught her eye, its French countryside scenery depiction a poetry of precision. Out of sight, in the bowels of the suite occupying nearly the entire eighteenth floor of the hotel, lay five bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms, two living rooms, a dining room, a powder room and a sauna. The attractions included three marble fireplaces, a terrace and a two-thousand-bottle wine cellar. Amenities included the services of a secretary/butler and the hotel’s chefs.

In a nutshell, all the excess that fifteen grand a night could buy.

This was the upgrade Leandro had insisted she stay in, substituting the suite Castaldini had reserved for her for the Presidential Suite, which was evidently at his disposal year-round.

She’d failed to get him to let her stay in an accommodation made for a normal human being. The kind who had one body, necessitating one bed and one bathroom.

But that wasn’t her biggest problem. Not when she, Phoebe Alexander, negotiator extraordinaire, had walked into a situation that had all the potential of diverting the course of a whole kingdom’s history and had handled it with all the finesse of a bull in a china shop full of red dishes.

In another nutshell, she’d messed up. And she hadn’t even realized it. Not during the process of messing up, anyway.

She’d walked away from that disaster of a meeting thinking she’d held up under Leandro’s power, that although it had been a premeditated, mouse-torturing session run by a master feline, she hadn’t let him get away with it without landing a few blows of her own.

She must owe that delusion to overexposure to him. He’d always nullified her insight, neutralized her logic. But with his evolution from one-of-a-kind male into force of nature, he’d metamorphosed her into her mirror image, the reverse of her hard-earned, calm and cool persona. Blunt, rash, reckless. Inflammatory.

Instead of delivering levelheaded arguments, she’d let herself be provoked and antagonized. Her verbal missiles had only turned him into the opposite of the younger man who’d taken life and himself too seriously, who’d been too consumed by the drive to reach greater success to have—or at least to make use of—a sense of humor.

The new Leandro had reveled in being crossed and criticized, had turned everything—starting with himself—into fodder for repartee. He’d also been blatant about the resurrection of his attraction. Everything he’d said and done had loosened her selfrestraint even more.

Not that that excused what she’d done. The depth of un-professionalism she’d sunk to was appalling. Not only had she not tried to fulfill her mission, she’d done her best to sabotage it. Even his reminder that she hadn’t done any negotiating hadn’t jogged sense into her malfunctioning brain. One minute later, she’d run out, essentially saying what’s the point and good riddance.

But he’d had the final word.

It’s still up to you to convince me. Why I should give…anyone a second chance.

Two sentences that delivered volumes. She’d botched her shot at appealing to him. She’d walked away without garnering a new crown prince for Castaldini, or at least a regent and savior. In his benevolence, he was offering her a replay. Or was it a retrial?

Whichever it was, his charity, should she play her cards right this time, might even extend to her. Awesome.

The arena for this second and final parley was no neutral ground, of course. She’d never had a say in the timing or venue of their encounters, and he wasn’t letting her start now. An official beggar wasn’t any higher up the ranks than an unofficial paramour.

His decree? Dinner. Tonight. At another trap of his choice.

She got to jump through his hoops one more time. Yay her.

Ernesto had come to her hotel this morning bearing advice. And dresses.

His advice she’d accepted without a murmur. He recommended that she keep on doing what she’d done so far. She had no problem with that. She probably could do nothing else. Seeing Leandro again had damaged something inside her, the equivalent of brakes in a car.

What she had a problem with was the dresses. And his second piece of advice, dress to the nines.

“I’m sure as hell not giving Leandro license to get more personal than he already has, Ernesto,” she’d protested. “And that’s what I’d be giving him if I wear any of these—these…” She’d flung a hand in the direction of the haute couture creations crowding a wheeled clothes rack. “He’d take one look at me and think I’m getting personal, shoving feminine wiles into the equation when I’ve failed to do my job any other way.”

“I am the world’s leading expert on Leandro,” Ernesto had said patiently. “I project a very favorable reaction.”

“Favorable in what way?” she’d groaned. “I want his ‘favor’ in only one way, and that isn’t obtained by dressing up like a Mata Hari. In case he is giving my diplomatic mission a real second chance, I may end up insulting him by implying a dress can sway him in such a matter. And even if it could, you’re barking up the wrong tree. A swanky getup does not make a femme fatale. If you think feminine wiles will come to my rescue under fire, think again. I came off the cosmic assembly line without them.”

“You don’t need wiles,” Ernesto had insisted. “You need only yourself. The dress is to suit the setting where he is holding this next session of…negotiations. Trust me now, cara mia.”

That had silenced her. He’d meant she’d never trusted him before, with the reason she’d ended things with Leandro. To him, it must have looked like she’d walked out on Leandro in his darkest hour. And she’d never been able to defend herself. The only way to do that was attack Leandro, the man Ernesto regarded so highly and loved like a son. She wouldn’t risk tainting that regard, that love. Not when he was a far bigger part of Leandro’s life, and losing Ernesto’s esteem would be a far graver injury to Leandro than to her.

Not that she’d lost it. Even without the truth, Ernesto had remained kind and caring. He’d contacted her regularly, always tried to visit her when her job had taken her back to the States. He’d even come to congratulate her on her engagement to Armando, which had been announced on a day that he’d been in Castaldini.

At her continued silence, Ernesto had sighed. “Va bene, Phoebe. I don’t presume to have an opinion on what went wrong between you and Leandro. And since neither of you chose to confide in me or seek my counsel, I haven’t been able to do more than remain neutral, as his right-hand and as your friend.

“But as a friend, I have to point out a few things. No matter what you think of your initial encounter with Leandro, you got much farther than anyone before you. You obtained something other than outright refusal. You did luck out, and it was because of who you are, and what you and Leandro once shared. No matter what you think of him, or feel toward him, he is powerful beyond your dreams. And Castaldini does need him, one way or another. King Benedetto was right to send you, even if he has no idea how right or why. So whether or not you approve of the situation, or of Leandro’s intentions and methods, you are the only one who has a chance to turn his position around.”

And with that, he’d left her. To her fate, it seemed.

He believed she had a chance to turn Leandro’s position around? What she had was the feeling that she was sinking in quicksand, and any move would make her sink faster.

And you know what? What the hell.

Stressing wouldn’t reverse the swiftness of the plunge. The sooner she was submerged and done with it, the better.

She got up, crossed the three-thousand-square-foot reception area to the bedroom she’d selected at random. She walked through to the bathroom full of marble and gold fixtures and showered as if her life depended on it, scrubbing till her skin felt raw. She dried off and plopped down on the capitonné dressing stool across the room, staring at the designer collection laid out on the frilly king-size bed.

After battling the need to hop into the most austere outfit she had with her, she decided to bow to Ernesto’s judgment. And when something wild and wanton seethed inside her, demanding that she go all out and wear one of the most outrageous and shameless creations, she restrained it, kicking and hissing, and chose the most understated dress she could find. She was not going to Leandro’s torment session in blaring red or gold, declaring without words that she was indeed sizzling for far more than juvenile, infringing, lascivious allusions.

After dragging on her chosen dress, she inspected the result. Hmm. Probably dressed only to the fours or fives. They’d all have to live with that.

Half an hour later, she was waiting for Ernesto to escort her to his master, trying to ignore the buzz that was escalating inside her at the thought of seeing said master again. To give herself something to do, she reexamined her reflection in the gilded full-length mirror in the suite’s foyer.

With the heels and freshly styled hair, probably sixes or sevens.

Appropriate. She was at them, too. And she had herself to thank for that. Instead of having one confrontation be the end of it, here she was, through her own idiocy forced to see him again, to hopefully get the result she should have gotten the first time. Or not. He might be…hell, he was stringing her along, to fulfill an objective that probably had nothing to do with Castaldini and everything to do with that still overwhelming attraction that had seared away her resolutions and intentions. She could only let him steer her and everything wherever he pleased. She’d deal with it when she found out where that was.

And if that new, reckless entity that had been awakened inside her told her that she couldn’t wait to go wherever he led, she smacked it silent. Been there, done that.

Never wanted to be there, or do that, again.

Leandro glowered at his watch.

Late. Three…four minutes. And he had a feeling those minutes would soon be accompanied by many more.

Was it her doing, or Ernesto’s? Which of them wanted to keep him human by denying the gratification of his every whim?

Both, probably. And both, damn them, pegged him right. Knew they were the only two people alive he’d let cross him.

A huff exploded from him. Cross him? How about walk all over him? Ernesto knew he could get away with anything. And Phoebe…

Oh, yes. She knew, too.

She knew what she’d been doing last night. She’d parried and attacked until he was at critical mass. Then she’d hit him with what he would have never seen coming. One word. One insight. One verdict. Stunned.

She’d known, when he hadn’t known himself. Not until she’d uttered her analysis.

He was still stunned. And it wasn’t because his king, his people, had gone so far as to exile him, but that it had gone so wrong between him and Phoebe.

He’d once been so certain of her, had plans. Goals. To be named the most worthy, the next king. Then to offer it all to her, his name and future and the controlling shares of his heart.

Be my queen had hovered on his tongue from that first night he’d claimed her, been claimed by her, burning for the moment he could utter the demand.

Ernesto, the one man he trusted, the man who’d raised him after his parents’ deaths, had urged him not to let her occupy his focus as he campaigned for the crown. But he hadn’t been capable of listening, had writhed in impatience until he could rush back to her, join with her, melt in her.

And it had cost him. His enemies had capitalized on his distraction, had hit where he hadn’t anticipated, forced him into retaliations that had grown more uncalculated. They hadn’t guessed to what they’d owed their growing advantage, but they’d used his dwindling finesse against him. And he’d been in the throes of all-consuming hunger for the first time, hadn’t even noticed the damage until it was too late.

It had ended in an injury he couldn’t have anticipated, a dishonor and a deprivation that had felt worse than a death sentence. Fury and frustration had almost finished him those first days. Only one thing had made him hang on to his sanity, had stopped the spiral of retaliation he’d embarked on. Phoebe. He wouldn’t care that his country had disgraced and shunned him, or even if the whole world deserted him. He had her.

He’d waited for her to contact him, to pledge that he did have her, but she didn’t. And each day of silence became a tentacle of suspicion spreading through his thoughts and memories.

He’d been eager to make her his princess, to claim her, but he’d done everything to keep their relationship secret. It hadn’t been official, but it had been made clear to him that the crown came with the woman all those in power wanted as queen attached: Clarissa, the king’s daughter. That was why he hadn’t proposed to Phoebe. If he had, worthy or not, the council would have found a way to deny him the crown. He’d intended to take it, then enforce her as his queen. But they’d denied him the crown anyway.

And her continued silence had started to wear another guise. Self-interest. Could she have been so amenable to secrecy not because she realized the risks of exposure, but because she’d been hedging her bets in case their relationship didn’t lead where she’d hoped? Wallowing in their clandestine affair while keeping her virginal image? Did her silence mean she’d thought it time to drop him now that he’d never be king of Castaldini, wasn’t even a prince anymore? She didn’t even think him worth a phone call? Not even one of consolation, for old times’ sake?

Driven over the edge by the malignancy of doubt, he’d succumbed, reached out to her. But he’d been so damaged by her lack of communication, he’d later wondered if he hadn’t steered their reunion to that mutilating end. He’d spent the next five years tortured by the memory of their last time together, dissecting her every word and expression until he almost went mad. He’d found himself constantly dialing half her number before hurling the phone away.

The only thing that had saved his sanity was launching himself into his work as if possessed, catapulting himself from the roster of prosperous businessmen to the top of the food chain of world-shapers.

And every step of the way he felt sundered down the middle, as if he were missing his other half. He told himself over and over she wasn’t that. But he never succeeded in convincing his heart.

He sought news of her like he did sustenance. He found out the results of her every law-school exam, each report of her sister’s improvement before she did. He made a deal with himself. In case she’d rejected him because he’d asked her to give up “responsibilities and aspirations” he had no right to, when she’d fulfilled those things, he would again demand that she join him in exile. She’d have no reason to say no then, if what they’d shared had been real.

When her sister’s health and marriage had stabilized and she’d obtained her law degree and was about to begin a new phase in her life, he’d sent Ernesto to her again, with a note. All he could bring himself to write. I do need you. Still.

The five words felt like an exposure of his soul with no guarantee that he wasn’t jeopardizing what was left of it.

He dreaded her response. He shouldn’t have worried.

There had been none. In lieu of a response, she’d announced her betrothal to his cousin Armando. That very day. And he’d had to face it once and for all.

She had been after a royal title, like her sister. He’d been her best ticket once. Armando was her new one.

The obliteration of hope, of belief in her, in what they’d shared, had extinguished his humanity for a while, he supposed.

But he’d lived on, risen higher. And the days passed. Then she broke it off with Armando. Almost a year ago. And all his convictions had dissipated again. He went back to feeling like he was constantly holding his breath. He refused to ponder what for.

Then she’d walked back into his life last night.

And he’d admitted it. She was what for. Whatever she was, whatever she felt, her hold on him was unbroken. Maybe even unbreakable.

Just as he’d succumbed, reached for her, and she’d seemed on the verge of surrender, she’d pulled back. She’d left him doubled over from frustration and walked away. Again. This time telling him, in so many eloquent words, good riddance.

It had to be a ploy. What else could it be when she’d run away without gaining any response concerning her mission, proving it wasn’t her objective after all? What other explanation could there be for dangling herself in front of him only to snatch herself away? What else could she want, except for him to give chase?

As she’d walked out, it had come to him. The reason that had been missing from his life. And his plan had formed…

“A spendthrift as well as a man who muddies professional situations with personal vendettas. I’m scratching my head here wondering how you became a mogul and a billionaire.”

Phoebe.

Announcing her arrival with another lash of provocation. He closed his eyes, suffering his body’s reaction in resignation now.

A groan still escaped as he turned to face her. She was framed in the entrance of the restaurant/nightclub, swathed in the stark light he’d had trained there. Wrapped in an invention designed to blow all his valves, a creation of gray-silver that seemed to have been spun from the luminous seas of her eyes, with the flawlessness of her neck and shoulders shown to distressing advantage by an off-shoulder neckline and a chunky, relaxed wave of raven gossamer brushing just above a hint of a cleavage, she could have stepped out of a black-and-white silver screen classic. With the only splash of color spread across the elegance of her cheekbones and the dewiness of her lips, she seemed like…like…

He didn’t know. The feeling crowded inside him, yet couldn’t be translated into words.

But what did he need words for, when he had actions?

He moved just as she did. As if by agreement, they kept a dozen feet between them, moving parallel to each other, mirroring each other’s steps, seeming to fall into the choreography of a memorized dance. They’d always moved to the same internal beat, as if aware of every impulse powering the other’s body. Blood pressure inched upward into that danger zone he was discovering he relished, was getting addicted to.

She glided up the walkway’s curve to the table he’d had set for them, overlooking the dance floor on one side and the blazing Manhattan skyline on the other.

He reached the table the same moment she did, placed his hands palms down on the wine-red silk tablecloth, leaned toward her. “What have I done now to deserve a demotion from simply worthless to seriously wasteful and wretchedly unprofessional?”

She placed a tiny tasseled bag on the table, titled her face at him. “What haven’t you done? First that fifteen-grand-a-night suite, and now this, an exclusive New York night spot where becoming a member carries a hundred-grand price tag and a single visit costs a few grand per person. I won’t even guess what you had to pay for an exclusive night for two. It would probably amount to a developing country’s monthly budget, and I might get sick.”

He cocked his head at her, exhilaration thrumming through his nerve endings. “I’m impressed. Your knowledge of the particulars and costs of high-end living around here is pretty comprehensive.”

“Glad you’re impressed. I’m not. Depressed is more like it.”

He could believe that. In the past, her thorough disinterest in material things had been another quality he’d admired about her. And she’d walked out on him when he’d been almost a billionaire.

But then, it could have been easy to seem disinterested when she already had material excess through her sister. And she could have been holding out for a billionaire with royal status.

There was probably no way to know what the truth was.

He huffed. “Don’t be so eager to feel sick and depressed. And I believe the suite comes with a twenty-grand-a-night tag.”

Her eyes widened, reflecting the indirect lights that made her look otherworldly. “It’s more expensive, and that’s supposed to slow my plunge into depression? I feel I should be arrested for criminal waste. After you are, of course.”

He came around the table, holding his breath until he brushed against her. Air rushed out at the contact, at the tremor passing from her body to his where his thigh seemed to stick to the side of her hip, his hand to the small of her back.

She broke the circuit, descended—to his satisfaction—very unsteadily into the chair his other hand had pulled back for her.

He waited until he’d taken his seat then drawled, “Strange to hear you talking of waste and extravagance. You live in a palace where most articles cost thousands or are literally priceless.”

Her eyes held his as her fingers sought a silver fork, ran up and down its length. He imagined them doing the same to his length.

“You talk as if I furnished the place when I’m just a long-term guest. Even Julia has no say in being surrounded by stuff that belongs in a museum. And you won’t see either of us spending thousands on anything that isn’t needed or at least useful.”

“Very commendable. Of both of you. But since you seem to know such a lot, you must have an idea about the size of my fortune?”

“Sure. A few hundred grand is pocket change to you. But a few here and a few there, and soon we’re talking real money, even by your standards. And then it’s the principle I’m talking about. Do you usually indulge this kind of extravagance, or are you out to make a statement? I hope that wasn’t your goal as it sure backfired. Unless the statement is that you’re an obnoxious show-off.”

His chuckle overpowered him. If she’d always harbored this confrontational vixen inside her and had been able to project the restful and acquiescent angel he’d known on demand, she was an actress of a scope he couldn’t imagine. “I’m so relieved I wasn’t trying to impress you, then. My intentions were along the lines of…pampering you. I failed to do that, too?”

Her head inclined, sending his heart tripping as her hair cascaded to the same side. “I wonder what gave you the impression that I’d appreciate this.”

“Everyone appreciates luxury.”

“Luxury beyond reason is…”

“Criminal. You’ve already informed me. I can do no right in your eyes, can I? Strange. I remember when you once gave me the impression I could do no wrong.” He gave a sigh of mock regret. “Oh well. I can now shower you with excesses knowing in advance I’ll be reviled for it.” Before she whacked him with another comeback, he went on, “But to settle your mind about my wasting the equivalent of a struggling nation’s income, let me solve the riddle you hurled at me as you came in. I didn’t become who I am by spending money, but by making it. And I make it everywhere you can imagine, and in places you can’t. And no, there is nothing criminal in my pursuits. Everything you’ve seen since you set foot in New York makes me money. From the building I own to the hotel where you’re staying to a dozen others, to this place. Having Presidential suites to offer my guests and exclusive entertainment with no notice are among the many perks of being the major shareholder.”

She glared at him. He managed not to lunge across the table and drag her into his arms. He grinned mockingly at her. “Disappointed I didn’t fork out an obscene amount of money to impress or misguidedly pamper you?”

Her lips twisted. “I was disappointed to think you had.”

“So no perverse disappointment now that you know I didn’t?”

“Now you’re not a spendthrift, but a chauvinist? Harping on the age-old implication that a woman says no when she really means yes?”

“I don’t think it’s female, but human for your logic and morals to clash with your need to feel valued. Criminally extravagant gestures might be abhorrent to one’s ethics, but they sure tickle one’s ego.”

And she smiled. Maledizione, she smiled.

As he tried to deal with a bout of arrhythmia, a giggle escaped her flushed lips. “You became who you are by being an expert on human nature, too, it seems. Okay, I apologize.”

He pressed a hand to his chest. This woman was out to do him some serious damage.

“I jumped to conclusions, ignored obvious explanations because I resented the hell out of you and wanted to believe the worst. And all you did was offer me the benefit of the perks you worked so hard to obtain, when you didn’t have to. When I gave you every reason not to care if I spent the night in a flea-infested motel. Your brand of hospitality may be hard to enjoy without severe pangs of conscience, but I appreciate the thought.”

He pretended to melt back in his chair in relief. He did need the support of something solid with his senses swimming as they were. “Phew. So that’s the obnoxious show-off charge taken care of. What about the unprofessional-wretch accusation?”

Her solitary dimple winked at him. “Yes, what about it?”

He guffawed at her volley, shook his head. The words came to him now, what she felt like; like the sum total of his desires.

And those were indeed fierce. More. They were all-consuming.

Which brought him back to his plan.

He would claim the crown that had once been ripped from him. If he could be convinced once more it was his destiny to wear it.

There were no ifs when it came to her. He would claim her.

If he claimed the crown, it would be on his terms. No negotiations. But in her case…this was were his plot thickened.

He’d pursued her the first time around, always coming back to her as if starved. This time, he would make her do the running. Then he’d claim her.

And when he judged the time right, he would walk away.

He signaled the staff to begin the night’s service, leaned across the table and captured the hand that kept frying his imagination with its restless movements.

“Va bene, Phoebe. Let’s get the myth of my un-professionalism debunked, too. Let’s get down to business. You have the whole night to work…on me.”

Four

The moment Leandro took her hand, Phoebe felt as if he’d taken her will away, infused his own inside her. She wrestled with his hypnotic gaze before snatching her hand away as if from a hot grill, pretended interest in her surroundings.

They sure warranted it, and then some. As he’d said, damn his insight, all this was one colossal ego tickle. He might have easy access to it, but that he’d put this much thought and planning into setting the scene was at once disconcerting and exciting as hell. And there was no doubt what kind of scene it was.

A seduction scene.

Oh, she’d tried to rationalize that this was the done thing, that businessmen flaunted their status and power by conducting negotiations over extravagant meals among backdrops of affluence and exclusivity, that as a businessman in a class of his own, he’d naturally gone beyond what others would.

Those rationalizations lasted for the three seconds it took her to get a load of the place.

With the eyes of experience, she could see this place as it might be on a normal business night, when its three-level interior would provide space to those who craved it, and privacy to those who preferred it. There would be partitions separating the top-level dining area from the mid-level bar and the lower-level lounge. Each would be bustling with its own clientele, feature its own menu, table and bottle service and resident DJ. Tonight the place seemed to have been designed to provide a single couple with expansive, atmospheric surroundings for an unforgettable encounter.

The décor was at once dignified and decadent, bridging borders with a dip into Latin heat in its daring, in the origi-nality of bold yet harmonizing colors and designs. All in all this place had the ambiance of a dimension a few realities removed from the one she belonged to, one that swirled with ultra-modernism, Machiavellian suggestions and a touch of the arcane. The realm of a fallen angel where mortals suffered sensual enslavement and carnal excess. Very appropriate.

And she’d walked willingly into the Prince of Dark Temptation’s web. She’d stood at its threshold, caught in a spotlight, feeling like the subject of an experiment in human response conducted by some higher being.

Said being was sitting there, watching her, overshadowing their surroundings in a suit and shirt, sans tie, that had been sculpted around his magnificence, their darkness and textures deepening the spell that hung around him.

And he’d just invited her to get to work. On him.

The moment the parade of beautiful people dressed in red and black satin finished spreading their table with ingeniously prepared and arranged appetizers and filled their crystal glasses before leaving the bottle of Moët & Chandon in ice, Leandro leaned back in his chair, making his appraisal even more invasive.

“So, have you decided yet what you’ll do with your second shot at convincing me, Phoebe?”

She took a sip from her glass. And inhaled most of it.

After she redirected the fluid down her throat, she managed a strangled, “I’ll start with holding my tongue. How’s that?”

He mirrored her actions, bypassing the coughing-his-lungs-out bit, lids heavy as he licked the taste from his lips, making her feel as if he’d tasted hers. “Is that within your range of abilities?”

She took another sip, bent on proving that she could still manage basic stuff like swallowing. “It used to be. I was renowned for it.”

“Quella è la verità—isn’t that the truth. You had such rare reticence. Only when it came to talking, grazie a Dio. It was a trait I valued beyond measure.”

“Yeah, a woman who’s unrestrained in bed and keeps her mouth shut out of it must be every man’s dream.”

His eyes flickered. Surprised? That she’d put his innuendo into plain English? “I’m not every man, Phoebe. It wasn’t because I was interested only in bedding you that I valued your quietness.”

She plopped one of the hollandaise-covered, crab-stuffed mushrooms on her plate, cut into it. “No? Could’ve fooled me.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re implying you were quiet because my attitude discouraged you from talking?”

She took a bite. Tasted nothing. “Not really. There was nothing to say. But with all you had going on then, I did get the feeling that you wouldn’t have appreciated it if there was.”

“Nothing to say, eh? Strange how there can be two entirely different perspectives on the same situation. I thought you didn’t talk much because you had this innate…understanding of me and of our situation that transcended the need for verbal expression. I thought we didn’t use words because we were on the same wavelength without them. Seems that’s another thing I was wrong about.”

She concentrated. Hard. Swallowing now could end in a real emergency. The implication of what he was saying…

Could be anything really. From the poignant and profound to the meaningless and superficial.

She’d take something toward the end of the spectrum of the second interpretation. This was the man who’d let her walk out of his life and hadn’t even tried to call her again in eight years. She doubted he’d had one poignant or profound thought where she was concerned.

It seemed he was waiting for her to respond. When she didn’t, he sighed. “So you can still call on your tongue-holding talents. I really hope you won’t hold out for long. I find myself valuing your new intensity and contentiousness far more than I ever did your tranquility and acquiescence.”

“That must be maturity. The ‘me against the world until I take it over and no one better oppose-me’ young man has become a ‘the world is mine and I’m dying for a new challenge’ man.”

He threw his head back and let out another of those intoxicating peals of unadulterated maleness. “Ah, Phoebe, siete una sincera, genuina, autentica shaitana rajeema and I sperare ardentemente that you don’t hold your tongue ever again.”

Resigned that she’d live with constant arrhythmia with him around, she picked up what turned out to be a maple-bourbon-glazed chicken wing and nibbled on it. “So although you’ve outgrown some traits, you still make a salad of Italian, English and Moorish.”

His chuckles intensified as he watched her, and she imagined him nibbling on her lips, her neck, lower…“Only when one language doesn’t provide accurate enough words.”

“You couldn’t say I’m an honest-to-goodness wicked devil in English?”

“You understood!” His eyes sparked with wonder and approval. She felt like a child fluttering at her hero’s praise. Stupid. “And no, I couldn’t. The English words—and your translation is as perfect as can be—don’t have the exact nuances I wanted. Sperare ardentmente is more accurate than ‘I pray to God,’ too. Your idiomatic Italian is impressive. Most people who learn it as adults never learn its subtleties. But what made you learn Moorish? Almost no one in the Castaldinian cities uses it anymore.”

Phoebe reached for her glass. The lump in her throat suddenly felt much larger.

Should she tell him she’d wanted to understand what he’d crooned to her at the heights of ecstasy? What, in her reluctance to make any demands of him, she’d let go unexplained?

After she’d resumed breathing again, she decided to tell him part of the truth. “I was intrigued every time you used it. It sounded so…primal and passionate, so different from Italian and any other language I’ve ever heard. And though it’s not prevalent anymore, it—and the people who still speak it—is an integral part of the cultures that weave Castaldini. I felt I should know as much as I can of it. I’m not good by a long shot, but I get the general picture. My pronunciation stinks, though.”

He seemed to weigh her answer. Then he picked up her hand, encased its sweaty coldness in the warmth and torment of his long, beautiful fingers. “Say something…”

“Shai’,” she blurted out.

Another boom of virile amusement rocked her. “And I was going to say don’t take me literally and say shai’.”

“How about I say nothing? La shai’?”

He laughed again as he gave her hand a squeeze that could have left burn marks on her flesh before rocking back in his chair and throwing his hands in the air. “I take it back. Say anything.”

“Ai shai’.”

He leaned across the table, two fingers sealing her lips, his eyes radiating amusement…and arousal. “Ai shai’ out of those lips should be banned as a lethal weapon. But in Moorish it becomes one of mass destruction. Your accent doesn’t stink, it scorches.”

“I basically said one word,” she mumbled against his fingers, wondering what it would do to the course of the evening—and of her life—if she sucked them into her watering mouth.

Good thing he saved her from finding out. He brushed her lips with the backs of his fingers for one heart-bursting moment before withdrawing the temptation. “It was enough to tell me that I need some serious preparation before I hear a full sentence.”

She plopped back in her chair, hopefully out of reach of more will-destroying touches. “So now we know why I speak Moorish. Why do you? None of the younger generation D’Agostinos I know do.”

“Alas, I’m no longer one of the ‘younger generation.’ Everyone from my generation was required to learn it at school.”

“But no one speaks it, apart from smatterings that have made their way into mainstream Castaldinian Italian.”

“There is a section of the population who cling to it as Castaldini’s original language. To the rest it rusted from misuse like any second language learned in school. I had more incentive to learn it. My maternal grandmother was a full-blooded Moor.”

“So that’s where the overriding raider in you comes from!”

He put his glass down, stood, took two steps to her side, and without warning, bent and pulled her up and against him, breast to chest. “This seating arrangement was my worst idea yet.”

Before she could blink, he urged her over to an ensconced corner of the upper level. He half carried her down onto a red leather couch, missing coming on top of her by an inch.

She almost reached out and made him obliterate that inch. This train was hitting her. Why not get it over with?

The knowledge that the impact wouldn’t be the end of the devastation made her freeze as the staff zoomed around them, spreading the square quartz table in front of the couch with hot plates simmering over gentle flames.

As soon as they disappeared, Leandro picked up a shrimp, bit off a piece and leaned over to put the rest to her lips. She again wondered about the damage potential of nibbling on those fingers along with the offered morsel.

Holding his eyes, she bit, hard. Into the shrimp. A harsh intake of breath accompanied the blaze in his eyes. He fed her until only his finger remained, probing her moistness with a to-and-fro motion that kept reversing the polarity of the current zapping through her core until she whimpered, glared at him. She was not licking it. Even if her heart might burst from holding back.

He at last withdrew his hand, slumped back with a shuddering exhalation, threw his head against the couch’s headrest and squeezed his eyes shut. At least she wasn’t the only one having a sensual meltdown. The weapon he was using on her was double-edged.

He opened his eyes, turned his head to her. She realized she was slumped in the same position. Their breathing synchronized as they pored over each other’s faces as if studying for a drawing-from-memory test. Suddenly he feathered one fingertip over the features he’d examined so thoroughly. “You and Ernesto seem to belong to a secret mutual-admiration society.”

Her lips twitched with mirth and heartache. “You didn’t take it up with him? Feared a rap on your knuckles, huh? And you’re now trying to get details out of the easier-to-interrogate party?”

His lips spread to a new level of seduction. “Ernesto does pack one mean knuckle-rap. But where is that party who’s easier to interrogate? You? I’m braving a scratched-out eye here.”

“So you’d rather lose an eye than get a bruised knuckle. What kind of a businessman are you, anyway?”

He bit his lip. “What can I say? The…harder it is, the more I like it. Risky confrontations are the only things worth my while.”

She tsked, ignoring the escalating pounding between her legs. “Not the mentality of a man suitable for any kind of office, let alone that of king. Certainly not ruler of a kingdom that has avoided risks and confrontations throughout its history. The way you make it sound, you’d provoke a war to revel in the ensuing conflict.”

He ran his finger along her jaw. “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. But I’d give my enemies—and my allies—a few scares here, a few sleepless nights there. Keeps them on their toes, makes them more interesting to have in either status.”

She sighed as she melted further into the couch. And into his power. “And you wonder why you were at such explosive cross-purposes with King Benedetto and the Council? They want everything to be steady, to avoid upheaval at all costs.”

One eyebrow quirked in challenge. “And ‘all costs’ include freedom of speech and a few human rights here and there, right?”

She tsked again. “You make it sound like a dictatorship instead of a peaceful kingdom.”

“Where everyone lives happily ever after? Are you sure you’re not talking about a kingdom from one of the bedtime stories you read to your five-and seven-year-old nieces?”

She vaguely wondered that he knew their ages. “Oh, I’m sure, since I read Alba and Gemma stories about girls who save the day and ride into the sunset in search of the next quest.”

“No knight in shining armor or Prince Charming?”

He pretended shock so well she had to snicker. “Not even if he was Knight of Burning Ardor or Prince Overwhelming.”

The expansion of his pupils, the flare of his nostrils hit her before she realized what she’d said. She struggled up, reached for a plate and started piling it haphazardly with food as she felt him move, felt each pull of muscle, each flicker of desire to take her back into that cocoon of intimacy. Then he exhaled.

“Tell me what the king and the Council really want with me.”

She put the plate down before she spilled it into her lap. “Don’t tell me you refused an offer you didn’t fully hear!”

“Oh, I heard it, all right. Go back, receive a full pardon and reinstatement of my titles and add a couple more while we’re at it—crown prince and regent were thrown into the package. Future king was dangled, too, provided I live longer than King B.”

“King B…!” A laugh burst out of her. “Oh, God…King B. I wonder what he’d do if you called him that to his face.”

His grin widened. “I’ll make sure you’re around when I do, and you can have a front-row seat to his reaction.”

She resisted the urge to explore those dimples with everything she had. “You’ve really loosened up, haven’t you?”

He gave a pout of such mock hurt that she started hurting in earnest. “You mean I was a tight-assed bore before, don’t you?”

She remembered the view she’d gotten last night of that certain part of his anatomy, and the comment that he was even more tight-assed now almost escaped.

When she opened her mouth, what came out was, “I don’t know. I was too much of an awestruck idiot to notice.”

Not much better. Judging by the heated look on his face, not better at all.

Before she could beg him to just…do anything, he seemed to make a decision to leave her hanging. “So—they’re still not offering an apology, but a ‘pardon,’ right?” She nodded, not liking where this was going. “They can’t bring themselves to admit even partial responsibility, want us all to pretend I’m the supplicant here. Ajab…incredible. And in return for their clemency what are they offering? Beside something I don’t want anymore?”

“Wanting it or not isn’t an issue here. You are needed.”

“Am I? And am I needed beyond what my massive wealth and power can provide? Are my views—which got me exiled in the first place—suddenly necessary? Or should I leave those behind?”

“I am sure we can achieve a satisfying middle ground.”

“If that’s all they authorized you to offer me, let me tell you what ‘middle ground’ translates to with them: ‘Our way, or the highway.’ They keep saying ‘make a commitment and we’ll work it out.’ But what they really want is for me to uphold the very policies I disagreed with so strongly that I paid the highest price for the chance of changing them. I thought ceasing to be a Castaldinian would be worth it if my punishment started a movement to support my views, instigated a climate to incubate change. But they made sure my side of the matter was never heard. And they want me to be king of this stuck-in-time land? Who do they think they’re kidding?”

She exhaled. “I really think the time for kidding is past.”

“No kidding, pun oh so intended. Say—I gather King B didn’t tell you that his need of me isn’t as desperate as he makes it out to be. He forgot to mention that tiny matter of two more men who are equally capable of taking on the role as I am, didn’t he?”

The way he said King B…! Her lips twitched. “In fact, he did mention them.”

His eyebrows rose, genuine surprise tingeing his expression. “He told you about Durante and Ferruccio?”

“He didn’t mention names. Just that there have always been three candidates for the crown, with you topping the list.”

His face settled back into that knowing expression. “Did he tell you why I topped the list?”

“Just that you, as impossible as it sounds, are less problematic, that you hate him and Castaldini less.”

He shook his head in a mixture of irony and something that looked like grudging admiration, even fondness. “That old fox. Always telling enough truth to make his logic irrefutable, hiding enough to make himself too noble to be denied. So he kept his accounts in the present, didn’t say why only I was considered worthy. Until I blew it big time, that is.”

She sat up. “My conspiracy theory centers are all ears.”

He laughed, lay back on the couch. She didn’t follow, somehow. “It’s not a conspiracy, it’s worse. It’s something far more petty. And far more damaging. You know it well. It goes by many names. Tradition, conservatism, ancestry, bloodlines. All I have on those two men is an accident of birth that made me eligible and eliminated them from the running.”

Suddenly something clicked. “Durante? As in Durante D’Agostino, King Benedetto’s estranged eldest son?”

He nodded.

“Whoa. The current king’s son. The cardinal no-no.”

He gave a vicious snort. “And even in their hour of need, the old farts can’t bring themselves to overlook the letter of a law that should have expired when the need for it did.”

“In their defense, that law has made Castaldini one of the most stable kingdoms in the world.”

“And the most stagnant.”

“And you took advantage of that law yourself,” she retorted. “Seems you always thought Durante—your best friend—as good a candidate as you, yet you didn’t make a peep about changing the law to give him an equal playing field.”

He sat up again, his eyes spitting emerald fire. “And I’m ashamed that I didn’t. I’m even more ashamed that I saw the error of my ways only when I had no choice anymore. But now that I have the choice again, I’m making up for being a party to such a backward practice. I’m daring them to really let the best man win.”

“I do believe that’s who they believe you are.”

“I’m only the best man because I’ll be more acceptable to the masses, who’ve been indoctrinated to accept only the old laws.”

“Isn’t that a huge factor to consider? Don’t you factor in popularity and acceptability when assigning your CEOs?”

“If I ever take the crown, it would be to move Castaldini to the point where laws that no longer suit the times are phased out. I would start by seeing to it that the people come to decide who’s best for Castaldini without ticking off a list of criteria topped by an outdated, demeaning and just plain prejudiced birth requirement.”

She gaped at him as everything he’d said slotted in place. And she exclaimed, “You’re a social reformer and a modernizer!”

“You say this with the same revulsion you’d say ‘a womanizer. ’”

“It’s not revulsion. It’s realization. I’m shocked. I was led to believe you were revolutionary, but not in that sense.”

“In what sense, then?”

“In the establishment-destroying, eco-depleting sense.”

“And you believed that?”

“Why not? You’re ruthless in your takeovers and your enterprises are sprouting mega-size urban developments.”

“So? My conquests are prospering. Go check with my longest-term ones and ask if they’d change a thing. As for developments, I build those where it suits the social and ecological climate, and after careful consideration of all ramifications. I don’t go around haphazardly overdeveloping land and exhausting resources.”

She somehow believed every word, no need to check. She should have let it rest, but she found herself adding, “And why should your being a womanizer revolt me? It’s none of my business.”

One formidable eyebrow shot up. “Really? Interesting.” Then both eyebrows dipped into an ominous line. “And I’m not.”

“Not what?”

“A womanizer. I have too many handicaps to be one.”

“Handicaps?”

“Fastidiousness, wariness, allergies to pointless pursuits…”

“Don’t men consider physical gratification the point?”

“Do you always go around dispensing general condescension on all men, or am I just blessed? And then, you’re counter-asserting that women don’t consider physical gratification of importance? The old paradigm that women want emotion while men want sex?”

“That paradigm has stood the test of time and the approval of the majority. That’s not to say it applies to everyone.”

“It sure doesn’t apply to me. And physical gratification comes with a womanful of traits, whims, demands and trouble.”

“In other words, it comes attached to a sentient being.” His eyes remained steady, as if he was trying to read her mind. She let out a shaky breath. “Phew. The one way to avoid such nuisances is to…rent a companion. And I can’t see you doing that.”

His eyes turned lethal. “You always had perfect sight.”

“Then how do you find any women who fulfill your criteria of being a non-imposition? And you think Castaldinians are unreasonable?”

“My criteria aren’t affecting present and future generations, I can make them as unreasonable as I like. I don’t need to make concessions, either, since feminine wiles no longer work on me.”

“You mean they once did?”

“Oh, yes, all the way.”

Her heart did its best to explode from her ribs.

He’d—he’d been…in love? All the way? Before or after her? And he was telling her all this…why? Warning her off while pulling her in? Was that what her tormentor was trying to do to her?

Suddenly he sat forward, thrust a hand into her hair. He let a thick lock sift through his fingers before he groaned, “Not that it doesn’t suit you, it does, even more than your natural hair color did, but what made you dye your hair black?”

Leandro groaned again. He’d swerved from the vulnerabilities he was exposing, groped for the diversion of something that gnawed at his curiosity. And she looked as if he’d slapped her.

“Don’t you mean why did I stop dyeing my hair blond?”

He gaped at her. “You’re a natural brunette?”

“You didn’t realize that? But then it stands to reason.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You knew nothing about me, apparently.”

“I knew plenty about you. I bet I know everything.”

“You’re talking in the biblical sense? How original of you.”

“I mean in every sense.”

“Yeah? Okay, let’s test this knowledge. Or are you going to plead memory holes due to the time lapse?”

“I have the memory of an entire herd of elephants.”

“And the comparative rampage damage potential.”

He harrumphed. “I never rampage.”

“Of course not. You’re too organized and premeditated for that. I should have said ‘incursion.’ That is your MO, whether it’s on a personal or a global level.”

“By definition, an incursion is hated, resisted. I remember nothing but…approval, encouragement. On a personal level.”

“You have that effect on the people you take over—the super power of Stockholm syndrome. It took me a year and a half to realize what you did to me.”

He went totally still. “What did I do to you?”

She looked at him as if he’d once strangled her cat and didn’t remember it. She finally shook her head, let out a rough chuckle. “You didn’t even realize I dyed my hair.”

“And that made me…insensitive? Negligent? The hair on your head looked so natural with your tan. Thanks to your grooming habits, there was none anywhere else to give me a clue. What else did I allegedly do to you?”

She shook her head again. “You exist in a universe starring you, don’t you? Other people are the bit players who exist just so you can bounce your lines off them.”

“Why are you saying that when you know it wasn’t true…then?”

“Listen, I’m not criticizing you or laying blame…”

“No? You have a strange way of not doing that. The way you tell it, I was an egocentric, exploitative bastard. Come to think of it, I do remember a comment you hurled at me on your way out of my life. About my so-called self-absorption. Is that how you rationalize the way you ended things between us?”

“‘Things’ would have ended between us sooner rather than later, and you know it. I did us both a favor—”

“Why don’t you speak for yourself?”

“Fine, I did myself a favor by not sticking around to experience the deterioration of ‘things’ before their inevitably nasty end.”

He stared into the twin storms of her eyes.

Was this her admission that there’d never been more than self-interest behind her actions? Or was it self-preservation? Her words could be interpreted that way. Had his rage at the time made her fear he’d take his bitterness out on her?

What was he thinking? Why was he debating this yet again? He’d admitted there was no way to find out the truth for sure. And what did it even matter? That was then. This was now.

He was taking now. And when the end came this time, he wouldn’t spend eight more years agonizing over the reasons why. The whys would be of his own orchestration. And his own timing.

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