Princes of Castaldini: The Once and Future Prince

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 admonish-ments? 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, even-tempered 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 butt-kissing 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 open-plan 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.