Susan Mallery - The Marcelli Princess

“I did not know you sewed,” he said.

“I don’t,” Mia told him as she sat down and picked up a small piece of satin.

The Grands came in and took their seats across from Mia. Each of them went to work on a larger piece of satin without speaking to him.

“We’re beading a vest for David,” Grammy M said grudgingly into the silence. “It’s a tradition in the Marcelli family. Generally we bead the bride’s wedding dress. Actually, we make the whole thing by hand. Katie’s in charge. She made all the girls’ dresses, which was a lot of work, let me tell you.”

“Mary!” Tessa snapped. “He doesn’t need to know.”

Mia set down her beadwork and looked at him. “Maybe he does. Maybe he needs to understand that a family doesn’t have to be royal to have traditions. Maybe then he could start to understand how much we all matter to each other and know cutting off an arm or a leg would hurt a lot less than losing a member of that family.”

There was another pause, but this one felt much more awkward. Three pairs of eyes glared at him. He felt their combined anger as it grew and moved closer to him.

For the first time, he understood that he hadn’t just upset Mia-he’d alienated the entire Marcelli family and anyone remotely associated with them. If they had their way, he would disappear, never to be heard from again.

He’d faced adversity before. Many people resented who he was, pointedly reminding him that he was a prince only by an accident of birth. In school, other boys had wanted to be smarter or stronger or faster. They had taken great pleasure in defeating him in the classroom or on the playing field. There were women who wanted to be with him simply to say they had, and others who wanted to make him fall in love so that they could break his heart. Simply because he was Prince Rafael of Calandria.

But this was different. This was personal. The Marcellis hadn’t especially cared he was a prince before, and that title certainly didn’t influence them now. They hated him for what he had done. For his acts, not his title.

Which meant they could have liked him for the same reason.

Over the past few days, he had wrestled with his own temper and frustration. He resented having to come up with a new plan and take more time to achieve what he wanted. He’d never once considered what he might have lost.

Not just Daniel, but all of them. Mia and the rest of the Marcellis.

Did he care?

He couldn’t answer the question. Shouldn’t he be able to instantly say no? He was here for a single purpose. Nothing else could get in the way.

Yet sometime in the past few weeks Daniel and his family had become entwined. He wasn’t sure he could have one without the other. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

If he lost, he would lose more than the heir, his son. He would lose his family and the woman he had never been able to forget.

“Back to the hotel?” Oliver asked as he and Rafael walked toward the limo.

It was the logical choice, Rafael thought. He had finished his visit with his son. It wasn’t as if he had business in town or knew other people.

Perhaps that was the problem. He had too much time on his hands. At home there were matters of state and different organizations to occupy his day. But here, now that he was in exile at that ridiculous hotel, he had nothing.

“A computer store,” he said. “I will purchase a laptop and work from the hotel.”

Oliver nodded and opened the rear door of the limo. Rafael glanced back at the house. No one stood at a window watching him go. No doubt the women inside had carefully distracted his son so Daniel would not miss him. He had been in the boy’s life for such a short time. Would he now be forced out of it?

He knew that technically Mia couldn’t exclude him forever, but there were subtle ways to make him matter less. If he had always been in the boy’s life, she would have a more difficult time, but he had not. He was new and exciting, but not permanent. Not yet.

The thought of not seeing Daniel, of not watching him grow from a small boy to an active teenager, made his chest ache. The sensation was unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

“Your highness?” Oliver prompted, still holding open the door.

Rafael took a step forward then stopped. He would not lose his son, nor would he lose Mia.

But how? How would he make things better with her? How could he…

A bit of information came into his brain. Before flying out to meet the Marcellis, he had asked his staff to research them thoroughly. If he recalled correctly, Brenna Marcelli had had a rocky start with her husband. Nicholas Giovanni had planned to secretly buy the Marcelli vineyard and strip the family of everything. His plan had been discovered in time to stop it.

Yet Brenna had still married him. So she had forgiven him.

“The winery,” Rafael said as he stepped into the limo. “The main offices.”

“Yes, your highness.”

Brenna’s office was large and cluttered, with a huge map of the winery filling one wall. The massive desk had a heavy masculine style, and when Rafael entered the room and saw it, he wondered if it had belonged to her grandfather.

She was on the phone. When she glanced up and recognized him, her entire body stiffened. Her expression closed, her mouth tightened, and she quickly ended the call.

“Get your slimy royal ass out of my office,” she said as she came to her feet and pointed at the door. “I don’t want to see you or talk to you. I hope you get some horrible wasting disease brought on by a congenital defect inherent in lying, selfish, bastard princes.”

He closed the door behind him and crossed to her desk. “I see that Mia gets her verbal skills honestly. It is a fascinating trait in the Marcelli women. I wish to speak with you.”

“I have no interest in listening.” She reached for the phone. “I can call security. Actually, I can call my brother. The ex-SEAL. He doesn’t like you much, and seeing as he’s a man who could take you out with a Q-tip, I’d be a little worried if I were you.”

Rafael held out both hands, palms up. “Am I so frightening as all that? You have to call in reinforcements because you are afraid that by listening to me you might change your mind?”

“You’re manipulating me.”

He smiled slightly. “I doubt it will work on you, but it is necessary to try.” He stepped closer. “Hear me out, Brenna. What harm is there in that? We both know I’m unlikely to influence you in any way. Later, when I am gone, you can call Mia and mock me behind my back. Think how that will bring you both pleasure.”

She sat back in her chair. “Fine. But only because of the mocking. I’m really going to do that.”

“I’m sure you are.” He claimed the seat opposite hers and wondered how to begin. “I wish to make amends with Mia.”

“Why?”

“I did not plan for things to go this way.”

“Right. You just wanted to steal Danny, then leave town. I’m sorry we got in the way of that. What a serious bummer.”

“Brenna, you deliberately misunderstand me.”

“Oh, no. I understand you perfectly. Mia’s right. You’re sorry about getting caught, but you’re not the least bit sorry about what you tried to do. You don’t care about anyone, not even Danny.”

He narrowed his gaze. “Of course I care about my son.”

“I don’t think so. Oh, sure, Danny as heir is really important to you, but that’s about your country and tradition. It’s not as if Danny is a real person to you. It’s not as if you care about his happiness.”

He stood and glared at her. “How dare you speak to me this way?”

“I believe you came to me, not the other way around. So I can pretty much talk to you any way I’d like. You’re free to leave.” She pointed at the door.

He sank back into the chair. “I’m not leaving.”

“Then you have a problem, because I’m going to continue to talk to you any way I want.” She leaned toward him. “Rafael, no one who genuinely cares about a child could imagine ripping a four-year-old little boy away from his mother and the only family he’s ever known. Do you have any idea how that would devastate him? Of what he would go through?”

“He is my heir,” he said, but the words came automatically. Without meaning to, he remembered a time long ago. He had been about Daniel’s age when his own mother had died. He recalled the activity around her room and then nothing but quiet. No one would speak with him. For days he only saw his nanny. Then one evening his father had appeared and announced his mother was dead. The funeral was the next day and Rafael was expected to behave appropriately.

He’d understood nothing, except the fact that his father was obviously very angry with him. It wasn’t until nearly a week later that he’d begun to figure out his mother was gone forever.

He remembered feeling lost and afraid. Sometimes he would creep into her room and curl up on her bed, closing his eyes as tightly as he could, hoping that when he opened them, she would be there.

“I had no intension of keeping Mia from her son,” he told Brenna. “I had very specifically planned for her to…” He paused, not sure how to explain what he hadn’t decided yet for himself.

“To what?” she asked impatiently. “See him for fifteen minutes every quarter? Don’t give me that crap. You didn’t have a plan. You didn’t think of anything but what you wanted. You’re like a kid who only discovers he’s interested in a toy after someone else has taken it from him. It’s not as if you cared about Danny until now.”

“I did not know about him until recently.”

Brenna leaned forward and gave him a cold smile that warned him she was about to trap him. “Did you bother to find out if Mia might be pregnant? Did it occur to you to send one of your minions to do a little reconnaissance work? Six or seven months after the last time you two got personal, it would have been really easy to tell. My God, Rafael. You let her think you’d died. What kind of weasel behavior is that?”

“It did not occur to me she could be pregnant.”

“Why? Hadn’t the little soldiers been potent until then?”

“I used a condom.”

“Which obviously failed. Still, you had a responsibility and you’re avoiding the question about just letting her go. Not even a good-bye? Wouldn’t that at least have showed good manners?”

He shifted in his seat and glanced out the window toward the vineyard. “There were reasons.”

“Uh-huh. Let me guess. You didn’t want her to know who you really were. You didn’t want to risk an American groupie. How embarrassing. Plus she could have told the world how you’d been playing dress-up.”

He swung back to her. “I was protecting the heritage of my country. That is hardly playing dress-up.” Brenna was a most annoying woman. Nearly as difficult as her sister.

“Call it what you like,” she said with a shrug. “What do I care?”

“We are getting off the subject at hand,” he said between clenched teeth. “I would appreciate your assistance in finding a way to communicate with Mia.”

“I don’t think so. I mean, come on. To what end? You had an affair with her once and let her go. Now you tried to steal her kid. You’re not a really good catch, despite the title.”

His frustration flared into anger. “What did you expect?” he asked heatedly. “That I would marry her?”

“You’re the one who proposed.”

He stood again and paced the length of the office. “I had no choice. I had to secure Daniel for my people. You think because I have money and a title it is all so easy for me, but you are wrong. With great wealth and power comes responsibility. I must not only think of today, I must think of five hundred years from now. Each law, each pardon, each act has consequences. Like ripples in a pond, they continue endlessly.”

He paused by the map on the wall and traced the outline of the Marcelli land. “There are times when I wish it could be different. That I were a man like any other. That my life was my own. But it is not.”

Brenna leaned back in her chair. “I wish I had some tissue here so I could weep for your sad little life. Poor rich boy all alone.” She straightened. “I don’t actually give a rat’s ass about you or your sob story. The bottom line is you lied. You lied and you’re not even sorry. If you had come to Mia and explained the truth from the beginning, she would have worked with you. She’s intelligent and reasonable. But that never occurred to you. I guess compromise isn’t a word in the royal vocabulary. You didn’t bother to find out anything about her when the two of you were together before or you would have known that number one, she’s more than willing to do what’s right, and number two, she will die before she lets you take her child away from her.”