The Prince's Virgin Wife

“Maggie, what are you doing here?” Tom demanded, his blue eyes wide with shock, his hair obviously mussed from what they’d been doing before coming into the room.

“Sleeping,” she blurted out blankly.

An explanation for her motives in being there was totally beyond her and Maggie’s heart shattered while the beautiful brunette looked at her like a particularly nasty bug caught under her shoe.

The light of understanding dawned in Tom’s blue gaze and along with it a wary chagrin that hurt as much as his new girlfriend’s sneering regard.

“Maggie, I…” For the first time in eighteen months she saw Tom Prince at a total loss for words, but his girlfriend wasn’t.

“Why is your housekeeper sleeping in your bed?” she asked Tom, her voice laced with suspicion.

“I forgot to tell her I was coming home tonight. It’s wash day. Her bedding must have been unavailable.” As excuses thought off the top of the head and given without the least advanced warning, it was a pretty good one.

However, the knowledge he didn’t want the other woman to know Maggie might have another reason for being in his bed burned through her like acid.

The beautiful woman’s lips pursed in disapproval. “I should think she’d sleep on the sofa, then.”

“Yes. I should have,” Maggie said with quiet dignity. She stared at Tom, her eyes accusing. “It was a big mistake to come in here.”

“The timing was unfortunate,” he replied, a wealth of meaning in his words.

“Most unfortunate,” the brunette agreed. “However, the problem can now be rectified, can’t it?”

“Of course.” Maggie climbed from the bed, glad she’d worn her white cotton gown.

If she’d been naked, she wasn’t sure she could have survived the humiliation. As it was, she felt angry and mortified, tears burning the back of her throat. She’d been such an idiot not to realize a man like Tom Prince wanting her could only be a temporary aberration.

Refusing to justify herself, and frankly incapable of saying another word, she spun on her heel and rushed from the room. She sprinted down the hall to her own room and rushed inside, slamming the door and locking it before collapsing on the floor and giving into the pain mushrooming inside her.

She’d been so stupid to think he really wanted her. She’d thought he was avoiding her because he couldn’t handle the fact she’d said no, when in fact he’d simply found another woman and had been spending time with her. Her foolish dreams mocked her with painful indictment.

But he hadn’t bothered to tell her he’d found someone else. Probably because in his mind it wasn’t someone “else” but merely someone. What he’d said hadn’t meant anything more to him than a reassurance about her job after the embarrassing debacle the week before. His comment hadn’t been an invitation at all. It couldn’t have been, not with him going out with another woman immediately after.

It had all been a product of her overactive imagination. Nothing more. But he shouldn’t have said it if he didn’t mean it. It wasn’t fair. Maggie felt like she was going to be sick, but she swallowed down her bile. Instead, for the first time in years, she let the silent tears flow.

In that moment, she hated Tom Prince as much as she loved him.

CHAPTER THREE

THE next morning, Maggie woke feeling like she had an empty hole in her chest. Her relationship with Tom was irrevocably altered and she knew now without the shadow of a doubt that her feelings for him could never be returned. There would always be another beautiful woman waiting around the corner for men like Tom Prince.

She would have to find a roommate sooner than she had expected…and another job. It wouldn’t be easy, most of the part-time jobs that worked around student hours had been filled at the beginning of the year, but she had no choice.

She walked on silent feet into the kitchen, not wanting to wake the other occupants of the house. Unfortunately, Tom was standing near the coffeepot waiting for it to finish brewing when she entered.

He eyed her warily. “Good morning.”

“Is it?” she asked in a flat tone. She supposed for him, a highly sexed male whose sexual fast had ended the night before, it was.

He winced. “I am sorry about last night.”

“Are you?”

“Yes. It was unfortunate.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“I did not mean for you to be embarrassed that way.”

Was that all he thought had happened? That she’d been embarrassed? She wished. He’d broken her heart and, like Humpty Dumpty, not all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could put it back together again.

“Liana doesn’t know you came to my bed to make love. She believed my excuse last night.”

“It was a clever story. You think fast on your feet in these situations. Are you sure you haven’t had a little practice at it?” she asked with unusual cynicism.

And did he really think that it would make her feel better to know the other woman saw her as such a noncompetitor that she’d swallowed the story whole?

“Do not be sarcastic. Please. It is not like you and I have said I am sorry.”

“And that is supposed to make it all better?”

“Yes,” he informed her with breathtaking arrogance. “We did not have a relationship. I broke no promises. You should not be so upset.”

Pain that should not be possible considering how numb she felt in her misery sliced through her. “No. We didn’t…don’t have a relationship, but you told me you wouldn’t fire me if I came to your bed.”

His face cleared as if finally he understood what was upsetting her. “And I will not,” he said as if he deserved a medal or something. “It was a simple misunderstanding.”

She shook her head at his misreading of the situation. “I’m going to be looking for another job today.”

He frowned in irritation. “You cannot.”

“I can.”

“Not over this. There is no reason. It was a foolish mistake we would both be better off forgetting.”

“There is every reason. I can’t forget it. I’m sorry.”

“I do not want your apology. I want you to stay on as my housekeeper.”

“How can I?”

“You are being unreasonable. You have no reason to be embarrassed or want to leave. As far as I’m concerned, last night never happened.”

“Does Liana know that?”

“I did not mean—”

“I know what you meant.”

“It is inappropriate for you to comment on my private life in that way.”

“Pardon me. I guess it’s a good thing I’ll be looking for other employment, then, isn’t it? I’m obviously not as discreet as you need me to be.”

“This morning is an aberration. One I intend to forget.”

Just like she had been forgotten when a beautiful woman had come along to usurp her in his sexual desires.

“Have you considered it will not be so easy to find another job?”

“Yes.”

“At least agree to stay until you find something else.”

“Fine.”

She’d ended up staying until the end of the semester as she’d originally planned, because finding another job to work with her tight school schedule had been impossible. But things changed between them.

She still took care of the domestic side of his life, but she spent a lot more time on campus, at the library and with the few friends she’d made. She now prepared most of his meals ahead of time and left instructions for heating. When he wanted Liana to dine with him, she made the extra portions without complaint, but never shared another meal with him herself. Not even breakfast.

Thankfully Liana was not a local college student, so she wasn’t there often, but her presence could be felt in the daily constraint between Tom and Maggie.

When he asked the other woman to marry him, Maggie was not surprised, but being prepared for it did not soften the blow, and her heart bled.

He invited her to the wedding and she told him they didn’t have that kind of relationship, that she didn’t plan to see him again after school ended for the summer. He was her boss, not her friend and when school got out, he would no longer be even that.

For once, he had not stubbornly insisted on getting his own way, which said all she needed to know about how he really saw her.

She’d worked out a job and living arrangements by the end of the semester and moved out a week before he did. She did not bother giving him her new address and did not ask for information on where he planned to live after graduation.

She would not be able to handle seeing him married to the other woman, but she hoped he was happy. She loved him too much to ever wish otherwise.

She attended the graduation ceremony though, sitting high in the bleachers where he would not see her watching him receive his master’s degree with honors. He’d worked hard to be at the top of his class.

She clapped enthusiastically when his name was called, but was gone from the stands by the time the graduates left their designated seating to join the crowd.

She’d never seen Tom Prince again, but she’d never been able to forget him, either.

Some women only fell in love once, or so she’d been told, and she figured she was one of them. He’d married a woman worthy of his incredible looks and dynamic personality, but there was a part of Maggie’s heart that would always belong to him.

Maggie had only been asleep for about forty-five minutes when the feel of a small body climbing into either side of her bed woke her. She opened her eyes. “Gianni?”

“Anna got scared, Maggie. She wants to sleep with you.”

The little girl snuggled up to Maggie’s back, giving credence to her brother’s words.

“And you do, too?”

Gianni nodded in the shadowy dark of the room. “I had a bad dream.”

“I miss Papa,” Anna said from behind Maggie.

Maggie was too tired herself after staying up with her memories and the movie to argue. She merely cuddled them both close and slipped back into sleep herself.

However, two hours later, after the third small and pointy elbow poked a sensitive body part, she carefully climbed out of her bed and went in search of somewhere else to sleep.

Both children were sleeping too soundly for her to willingly wake them and put them back in their own bed, but she wasn’t sure what to do with herself.

Their beds were much too short for a grown person, even a woman of her no more than average height. The Victorian-style sofa in her sitting room was no longer than a love seat and no better a proposition. To her knowledge, the only other bed made up was in the master suite.

She stumbled sleepily down the hall to Anna and Gianni’s father’s room. He would never know she’d slept there. She’d get up in the morning and wash the sheets and replace them and when he returned the next day, he would be none the wiser.

She tossed the extra decorative pillows from the bed onto the floor and slid between the sheets. There was something vaguely familiar about the scent on the pillow where she laid her head, but she was too tired to work out what it was.

Tomasso let himself into his home quietly, forcing a brain muddled by lack of sleep and other things to remember the alarm codes to allow his entry without setting off sirens. He’d pushed himself mercilessly for the last five days so he could finish his business early and come home. He missed his children and he was impatient to see Maggie again, to find out if she was all that he remembered.

He’d gone totally without sleep for the last thirty-six hours, catching only a catnap on the plane between bouts of work. He didn’t want to go into his office for a couple of days and that meant getting ahead on everything. He’d taken meds for the motion sickness he got flying when he was too tired, and then forgotten he’d taken them and had a glass of wine with his dinner and a neat Scotch whiskey an hour later.

He’d never been drunk in his entire thirty years, but he thought this graceless fumbling was as close as he had come to doing so.

Nevertheless, he scaled the stairs with a sense of anticipation and relief he had not felt in a very long time. Tomorrow Maggie would learn she was working for him. He had no idea how she would react to that news, but now that she was bonded with the children, he did not believe her first reaction would be to quit her job.

He had planned it that way of course, doing his best to stack the odds in his favor, like he did with any business deal. Unlike his first marriage, where he had allowed lust and foolish emotion to cloud his judgment, he planned to approach the situation with Maggie from the same perspective he did business. With cool, calculated reason and an intent to win.

Regardless of how she reacted to learning she was working for Tom Prince again, or that he was really Principe Tomasso Scorsolini of Isole dei Re, he had no intention of letting her walk away from him a second time.

He dropped his briefcase in the study connected to his bedroom and his carryall in the room beyond. He pressed a small button on the panel beside the door and low-level recessed lighting came on. Even so, it felt glaring to his bloodshot eyes. He was never taking that antinausea medication again.

He was loosening his tie as his gaze landed on the pile of pillows on the floor. His foggy brain could not work out why they would be there. His staff was impeccable and his children far too respectful to have had a pillow fight in his bedroom, even assuming the new nanny would let them.

Frowning over that mystery, he peeled off his jacket and hung it over the suit valet while his gaze skimmed the rest of his room. As it landed on his bed, he stopped still in his tracks.

The bed was occupied.

Who would have the temerity to invade his sanctuary? No woman he knew could make it past his security and his staff were too loyal to help any woman intent on snagging a royal lover and/or husband.

And no one, man or woman, would have been expecting him to sleep in his bed tonight. As far as anyone but his personal security team and pilot was concerned, Tomasso was still out of the country on business.

He moved closer to the bed to get a closer look. He had to brush back the mass of curling blond hair to reveal the woman’s features. He did it carefully, so as not to wake her.

Disbelief warred with a feral sense of purpose as his brain identified the intruder.

Maggie.

What was she doing in his bed?

Memories of another bed, another time washed over him.

They’d shared a scorching kiss and he had come very close to making love to her. But she’d been a virgin and she’d hesitated at the last step. He’d wanted her so badly, he was shaking with it, but she had chosen her job over him.

His ego had taken a blow and he’d been both disappointed and angry, but he’d told her he wouldn’t fire her if she changed her mind. Then he’d spent the next week avoiding her and trying to get his libido back under control.

He’d seen their passion as a mistake and was acutely grateful she’d refused to go all the way once he cooled down. Maggie hadn’t been his type back then. She was too ordinary, too innocent and sweet. He went for gorgeous women with sophisticated tastes and a similar outlook on life. He’d thought that was what he wanted, but he’d learned that kind of woman came with a cost.

It was one he would not pay again.

He wanted the simplicity and kindness the woman in his bed had once represented in his life.

One night, six years ago, she had climbed into his bed by way of invitation, but he’d brought Liana home with him and in doing so lost any chance he’d ever had with Maggie.

She was in his bed again. A wholly unlooked-for second chance to rectify the mistakes of the past.

His brain told him there was something wrong with that scenario, that she didn’t even know she was working for him, so she could not be extending any kind of invitation here. Her presence in his bed was no doubt explained by something as prosaic as the excuse he had made up to tell Liana six years ago.

But he didn’t like that logical conclusion.

Okay, so his brain was a bit fuzzy, but even he could see that Maggie Thomson’s presence in his bed was fate. She belonged to him. He should have seen it before. She even bore his name, or a derivative of it, but it meant she was his. Of course it did.

No. Wait. He was supposed to test her out…to see if she fit his life as well as she had before.

But how better to test her than to share her bed? That was important. It was key, even. He already knew from Therese that Maggie and his children were a good fit.

His mind worked sluggishly with arguments for and against sharing the bed with his new nanny while he finished undressing, but in the end it was physical exhaustion that decided him. He was too tired and muddled to worry about finding another place to sleep. She’d opted to use his bed. She could share it.

He slid naked between the sheets. He’d never worn pajamas. He wasn’t about to start tonight. Yet as tired as he was, he did not immediately go to sleep, but turned to watch Maggie’s soft features in repose. Her lips were slightly parted, perfect for kissing.

Would she mind if he kissed her good night? He was a prince. Of course she wouldn’t mind. He’d never had a woman deny him a kiss, not once.

He slid toward her, his tired body reacting to her sweet feminine fragrance with surprising strength. By the time he was close enough to kiss her sleep-relaxed mouth, he was hard and aching, his body taut with need.

He pressed his lips to hers in a chaste kiss.

Her eyes opened and she looked at him as if he were an apparition. “Tom?”

“Yes, little Maggie.” Tomorrow would be soon enough to explain who he was.

She relaxed again, as if his presence did not bother her at all. Her eyes slid shut. “That was nice,” she whispered.

So he kissed her again, and this time she responded with drowsy generosity, parting her lips further so he could find his way inside.

He kissed her with his tongue, tasting the mouth that had haunted his dreams for far too long. She moaned softly against his lips and her small hands began exploring his body the way they had that night six years ago. He deepened the kiss with passion he hadn’t felt for too damn long. She tasted perfect, she felt perfect, and he craved her like he’d never craved culmination with a woman before.

But even as confused as his brain was with exhaustion and the combined effects of the alcohol and the meds, he knew there was something not right about this.

Calling on the last vestiges of his sanity and self-control, he broke the kiss. She made a sound of protest and pressed kisses along his jaw, searching for reconnection to his mouth. His body jerked with need as her hand drifted down his stomach and brushed the hair above his sex.

“Maggie, bella…. do you know what you are doing?”

Her eyes stayed closed, but her lips curved in a sensuous smile. “Oh, yes. I’m kissing you.” And she did it again, this time right on his mouth with unerring accuracy.

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