A Queen for the Taking?

‘I will never love you.’ Even if he had once longed for a loving relationship, he knew he would never find it with this woman. Even if she wanted to be queen for the sake of some charity—a notion that still seemed ridiculous—she still wanted to be queen. Wanted his title, not him. Did the reason why really matter?

‘I’m not interested in love,’ she answered, seeming completely unfazed by his bald statement. ‘And since it appears you aren’t either, I don’t know why our arrangement can’t suit us both. You might not want to marry, Your Highness—’

‘Sandro.’

‘Sandro,’ she amended with a brief nod, ‘but obviously you have to. I have my own reasons for agreeing to this marriage, as you know. Why can we not come to an amicable arrangement instead of festering with resentment over what neither of us can change?’

‘You could change, if you wanted to,’ Sandro pointed out. ‘As much as you might wish to help this charity of yours, you are not bound by duty in quite the same way as I am.’

Her expression shuttered, and he felt instinctively that she was hiding something, some secret sorrow. ‘No,’ she agreed quietly, ‘not in quite the same way.’

She held his gaze for a moment that felt suspended, stretching into something else. All of a sudden, with an intensity that caught him by surprise, he felt his body tighten with both awareness and desire. He wanted to know what the shadows in her eyes hid and he wanted to chase them away. He wanted to see them replaced with the light of desire, the blaze of need.

His gaze swept over her elegant form, her slight yet tempting curves draped in champagne-coloured silk, and desire coiled tighter inside him.

An amicable arrangement, indeed. Why not?

She broke the gaze first, taking a sip of wine, and he forced his mind back to more immediate concerns...such as actually getting to know this woman.

‘So you live in Milan. Your parents have an apartment there?’

‘They do, but I have my own as well.’

‘You enjoy city life?’

She shrugged. ‘It has proved convenient for my work.’

Her charity work, for which she didn’t even get paid. Could she possibly be speaking the truth when she said she was marrying him to promote the charity she supported? It seemed absurd and extreme, yet he had seen the blazing, determined light in her eyes when she spoke of it.

‘What has made you so devoted to that particular charity?’ he asked and everything in her went tense and still.

‘It’s a good cause,’ she answered after a moment, her expression decidedly wary.

‘There are plenty of good causes. What did you say Hands To Help did? Support families with disabled children?’

‘Yes.’

A few moments ago she’d been blazing with confidence as she’d spoken about it, but now every word she spoke was offered reluctantly, every movement repressive. She was hiding something, Sandro thought, but he had no idea what it could be.

‘And did anything in particular draw you to this charity?’ he asked patiently. Getting answers from her now felt akin to drawing blood from a stone.

For a second, no more, she looked conflicted, almost tormented. Her features twisted and her eyes appealed to him with an agony he didn’t understand. Then her expression shuttered once more, like a veil being drawn across her face, and she looked away. ‘Like I said, it’s a good cause.’

And that, Sandro thought bemusedly, was that. Very well. He had plenty of time to discover the secrets his bride-to-be was hiding, should he want to know them. ‘And what about before you moved to Milan? You went to university?’

‘No. I started working with Hands To Help when I was eighteen.’ She shifted restlessly, then pinned a bright smile on her face that Sandro could see straight through.

‘What about you, Sandro?’ she asked, stumbling only slightly over his name. ‘Did you enjoy your university days?’

He thought of those four years at Cambridge, the heady freedom and the bitter disillusionment. Had he enjoyed them? In some respects, yes, but in others he had been too angry and hurt to enjoy anything.

‘They served a purpose,’ he said after a moment, and she cocked her head.

‘Which was?’

‘To educate myself.’

‘You renounced your title upon your graduation, did you not?’

Tension coiled inside him. That much at least was common knowledge, but he still didn’t like talking about it, had no desire for her to dig. They both had secrets, it seemed.

‘I did.’

‘Why?’

Such a bald question. Who had ever asked him that? No one had dared, and yet this slip of a woman with her violet eyes and carefully blank expression did, and without a tremor. ‘It felt necessary at the time.’ He spoke repressively, just as she had, and she accepted it, just as he had. Truce.

Yet stupidly, he felt almost disappointed. She wasn’t interested in him; of course she wasn’t. She’d already said as much. And he didn’t want to talk about it, so why did he care?

He didn’t. He was just being contrary because even as he accepted the necessity of this marriage, everything in him rebelled against it. Rebelled against entering this prison of a palace, with its hateful memories and endless expectations. Rebelled against marrying a woman he would never love, who would never love him. Would their convenient marriage become as bitter and acrimonious as his parents’? He hoped not, but he didn’t know how they would keep themselves from it.

‘We should eat,’ he said, his voice becoming a bit brusque, and he went to pull out her chair, gesturing for her to come forward.

She did, her dress whispering about her legs as she moved, her head held high, her bearing as straight and proud as always. As she sat down, Sandro breathed in the perfumed scent of her, something subtle and floral, perhaps rosewater.

He glanced down at the back of her neck as she sat, the skin so pale with a sprinkling of fine golden hairs. He had the sudden urge to touch that soft bit of skin, to press his lips to it. He imagined how she would react and his mouth curved in a mocking smile. He wondered again if the ice princess was ice all the way through. He would, he decided, find out before too long. Perhaps they could enjoy that aspect of their marriage, if nothing else.

‘What have you been doing in California?’ she asked as one of the palace staff came in with their first course, plates of mussels nestled in their shells and steamed in white wine and butter.

‘I ran my own IT firm.’

‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘Very much so.’

‘Yet you gave it up to return to Maldinia.’

It had been the most agonising decision he’d ever made, and yet it had been no decision at all. ‘I did,’ he answered shortly.

She cocked her head, her lavender gaze sweeping thoughtfully over him. ‘Are you glad you did?’

‘Glad doesn’t come into it,’ he replied. ‘It was simply what I needed to do.’

‘Your duty.’

‘Yes.’

Sandro pried a mussel from its shell and ate the succulent meat, draining the shell of its juices. Liana, he noticed, had not touched her meal; her mouth was drawn into a prim little line. He arched an eyebrow.

‘Are mussels not to your liking?’

‘They’re delicious, I’m sure.’ With dainty precision she pierced a mussel with her fork and attempted, delicately, to wrest it from its shell. Sandro watched, amused, as she wrangled with the mussel and failed. This was a food that required greasy fingers and smacking lips, a wholehearted and messy commitment to the endeavour. He sat back in his chair and waited to see what his bride-to-be would do next.

She took a deep breath, pressed her lips together, and tried again. She stabbed the mussel a bit harder this time, and then pulled her fork back. The utensil came away empty and the mussel flew across her plate, the shell clattering against the porcelain. Sandro’s lips twitched.

Liana glanced up, her eyes narrowing. ‘You’re laughing at me.’

‘You need to hold the mussel with your fingers,’ he explained, leaning forward, his mouth curving into a mocking smile. ‘And that means you might actually get them dirty.’

Her gaze was all cool challenge. ‘Or you could provide a knife.’

‘But this is so much more interesting.’ He took another mussel, holding the shell between his fingers, and prised the meat from inside, then slurped the juice and tossed the empty shell into a bowl provided for that purpose. ‘See?’ He lounged back in his chair, licking his fingers with deliberate relish. He enjoyed discomfiting Liana. He’d enjoy seeing her getting her fingers dirty and her mouth smeared with butter even more, actually living life inside of merely observing it, but he trusted she would find a way to eat her dinner without putting a single hair out of place. That was the kind of woman she was.

Liana didn’t respond, just watched him in that chilly way of hers, as if he was a specimen she was meant to examine. And what conclusions would she draw? He doubted whether she could understand what drove him, just as he found her so impossibly cold and distant. They were simply too far apart in their experience of and desire for life to ever see eye to eye on anything, even a plate of mussels.

‘Do you think you’ll manage any of them?’ he asked, nodding towards her still-full plate, and her mouth firmed.

Without replying she reached down and held one shell with the tips of her fingers, stabbing the meat with her fork. With some effort she managed to wrench the mussel from its shell and put it in her mouth, chewing resolutely. She left the juice.

‘Is that what we call compromise?’ Sandro asked softly and she lifted her chin.

‘I call it necessity.’

‘We’ll have to employ both in our marriage.’

‘As you would in any marriage, I imagine,’ she answered evenly, and he acknowledged the point with a terse nod.

Liana laid down her fork; clearly she wasn’t going to attempt another mussel. ‘What exactly is it you dislike about me, Your Highness?’

‘Sandro. My name is Sandro.’ She didn’t respond and he drew a breath, decided for honesty. ‘You ask what I dislike about you? Very well. The fact that you decided on this marriage without even meeting me—save an unremarkable acquaintance fifteen years ago—tells me everything I need to know about you. And I like none of it.’

‘So you have summed me up and dismissed me, all because of one decision I have made? The same decision you have made?’

‘I admit it sounds hypocritical, but I had no choice. You did.’

‘And did it not occur to you,’ she answered back, her voice still so irritatingly calm, ‘that any woman you approached regarding this marriage, any woman who accepted, would do so out of similar purpose? Your wife can’t win, Sandro, whether it’s me or someone else. You are determined to hate your bride, simply because she agreed to marry you.’

Her logic surprised and discomfited him, because he knew she was right. He was acting shamefully, stupidly, taking out his frustration on a woman who was only doing what he’d expected and even requested. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said after a moment. ‘I realise I am making this more difficult for both of us, and to no purpose. We must marry.’

‘You could choose someone else,’ she answered quietly. ‘Someone more to your liking.’

He raised an eyebrow, wearily amused. ‘Are you suggesting I do?’

‘No, but...’ She shrugged, spreading her hands. ‘I do not wish to be your life sentence.’

‘And will I be yours?’

‘I have accepted the limitations of this marriage in a way it appears you have not.’

Which made him sound like a hopeless romantic. No, he’d accepted the limitations. He was simply railing against them, which as she’d pointed out was to no purpose. And he’d stop right now.

‘Forgive me, Liana. I have been taking out my frustrations on you, and I will not do so any longer. I wish to marry you and no other. You are, as I mentioned before, so very suitable, and I apologise for seeming to hold it against you.’ This little speech sounded stiltedly formal, but he did mean it. He’d made his choices. He needed to live with them.

‘Apology accepted,’ she answered quietly, but with no real warmth. Could he even blame her? He’d hardly endeared himself to her. He wasn’t sure he could.

He reached for his wine glass. ‘In any case, after the debacle of my brother’s marriage, not to mention my parents’, our country needs the stability of a shock-free monarchy.’

‘Your brother? Prince Leo?’

‘You know him?’

‘I’ve met him on several occasions. He’s married to Alyse Barras now.’

‘The wedding of the century, apparently. The love story of the century....’ He shook his head, knowing how his brother must have hated the pretence. ‘And it was all a lie.’

‘But they are still together?’

Sandro nodded. ‘The irony is, they actually do love each other. But they didn’t fall in love until after their marriage.’

‘So their six-year engagement was—?’

‘A sham. And the public isn’t likely to forgive that very easily.’

‘It hardly matters, since Leo will no longer be king.’

God, she was cold. ‘I suppose not.’

‘I only meant,’ she clarified, as if she could read his thoughts, ‘that the publicity isn’t an issue for them anymore.’

‘But it will be for us,’ he filled in, ‘which is why I have chosen to be honest about the convenience of our marriage. No one will ever think we’re in love.’

‘Instead of a fairy tale,’ she said, ‘we will have a business partnership.’

‘I suppose that is as good a way of looking at it as any other.’ Even if the thought of having a marriage like his parents’—one born of convenience and rooted in little more than tolerance—made everything in him revolt. If a marriage had no love and perhaps not even any sympathy between the two people involved, how could it not sour? Turn into something despicable and hate-filled?

How could he not?

He had no other example.

Taking a deep breath, he pressed a discreet button to summon the wait staff. It was time for the next course. Time to move on. Instead of fighting his fate, like the unhappy, defiant boy he’d once been, he needed to accept it—and that meant deciding just how he could survive a marriage to Lady Liana Aterno.

CHAPTER THREE

LIANA STUDIED SANDRO’S face and wondered what he was thinking. Her husband-to-be was, so far, an unsettling enigma. She didn’t understand why everything she did, from being polite to trying to eat mussels without splattering herself with butter, seemed to irritate him, but she knew it did. She saw the way his silvery eyes darkened to storm-grey, his mobile mouth tightening into a firm line.

So he didn’t want to marry her. That undeniable truth lodged inside her like a cold, hard stone. She hadn’t expected that, but could she really be surprised? He’d spent fifteen years escaping his royal duty. Just because he’d decided finally to honour his commitments didn’t mean, as he’d admitted himself, that he relished the prospect.

And yet it was hard not to take his annoyance personally. Not to let it hurt—which was foolish, because this marriage wasn’t personal. She didn’t want his love or even his affection, but she had, she realised, hoped for agreement. Understanding.

A footman came in and cleared their plates, and Liana was glad to see the last of the mussels. She felt resentment stir inside her at the memory of Sandro’s mocking smile. He’d enjoyed seeing her discomfited, would have probably laughed aloud if she’d dropped a mussel in her lap or sent it spinning across the table.

Perhaps she should have dived in and smeared her face and fingers with butter; perhaps he would have liked her better then. But a lifetime of careful, quiet choices had kept her from making a mess of anything, even a plate of mussels. She couldn’t change now, not even over something so trivial.

The footman laid their plates down, a main course of lamb garnished with fresh mint.

‘At least this shouldn’t present you with too much trouble,’ Sandro said softly as the door clicked shut. Liana glanced up at him.

She felt irritation flare once more, surprising her, because she usually didn’t let herself feel irritated or angry...or anything. Yet this man called feelings up from deep within her, and she didn’t even know why or how. She definitely didn’t like it. ‘You seem to enjoy amusing yourself at my expense.’

‘I meant only to tease,’ he said quietly. ‘I apologise if I’ve offended you. But you are so very perfect, Lady Liana—and I’d like to see you a little less so.’

Perfect? If only he knew the truth. ‘No one is perfect.’

‘You come close.’

‘That is not, I believe, a compliment.’

His lips twitched, drawing her attention to them. He had such sculpted lips, almost as if they belonged on a statue. She yanked her gaze upwards, but his eyes were no better. Silvery grey and glinting with amusement.

She felt as if a fist had taken hold of her heart, plunged into her belly. Everything quivered, and the sensation was not particularly pleasant. Or perhaps it was too pleasant; she felt that same thrill of fascination that had taken hold of her when she’d first met him.

‘I would like to see you,’ Sandro said, his voice lowering to a husky murmur, ‘with your hair cascading over your shoulders. Your lips rosy and parted, your face flushed.’

And as if he could command it by royal decree, she felt herself begin to blush. The image he painted was so suggestive. And it made that fist inside her squeeze her heart once more, made awareness tauten muscles she’d never even known she had.

‘Why do you wish to see me like that?’ she asked, relieved her voice sounded as calm as always. Almost.

‘Because I think you would look even more beautiful then than you already are. You’d look warm and real and alive.’

She drew back, strangely hurt by his words. ‘I am quite real already. And alive, thank you very much.’

Sandro’s gaze swept over her, assessing, knowing. ‘You remind me of a statue.’

A statue? A statue was cold and lifeless, without blood or bone, thought or feeling. And he thought that was what she was?

Wasn’t it what she’d been for the past twenty years? The thought was like a hammer blow to the heart. She blinked, tried to keep her face expressionless. Blank, just like the statue he accused her of being. ‘Are you trying to be offensive?’ she answered, striving to keep her voice mild and not quite managing it.

His honesty shouldn’t hurt her, she knew. There was certainly truth in it, and yet... She didn’t want to be a statue. Not to this man.

A thought that alarmed her more than anything else.

‘Not trying, no,’ Sandro answered. ‘I suppose it comes naturally.’

‘I suppose it does.’

He shook his head slowly. ‘Do you ever lose your temper? Shout? Curse?’

‘Would you prefer to be marrying a shrew?’ she answered evenly and his mouth quirked in a small smile.

‘Does anything make you angry?’ he asked, and before she could think better of it, she snapped, ‘Right now, you do.’

He laughed, a rich chuckle of amusement, the sound spreading over her like chocolate, warming her in a way she didn’t even understand. This man was frustrating and even hurting her and yet...

She liked his laugh.

‘I am glad for it,’ he told her. ‘Anger is better than indifference.’

‘I have never said I was indifferent.’

‘You have shown it in everything you’ve said or done,’ Sandro replied. ‘Almost.’

‘Almost?’

‘You are not quite,’ he told her in that murmur of a voice, ‘as indifferent as you’d like me to believe—or even to believe yourself.’

She felt her breath bottle in her lungs, catch in her throat. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Your Highness.’

‘Don’t you?’ He leaned forward, his eyes glinting silver in the candlelight. ‘And must I remind you yet again that you are to call me Sandro?’

She felt her blush deepen, every nerve and sinew and sense so agonisingly aware. Feeling this much hurt. She was angry and scared and, most of all, she wanted him...just as he knew she did. ‘I am not inclined,’ she told him, her voice shaking, ‘to call you by your first name just now, Your Highness.’

‘I wonder, under what circumstances would you call me Sandro?’

Her nails dug into her palms. ‘I cannot think of any at the moment.’

Sandro’s silvery gaze swept over her in lingering assessment. ‘I can think of one or two,’ he answered lazily, and everything in her lurched at the sudden predatory intentness in his gaze. She felt her heart beat hard in response, her palms go cold and her mouth dry. ‘Yes, definitely, one or two,’ he murmured, and, throwing his napkin on the table, he rose from the chair.

* * *

She looked, Sandro thought, like a trapped rabbit, although perhaps not quite so frightened a creature. Even in her obvious and wary surprise she clung to her control, to her coldness. He had a fierce urge to strip it away from her and see what lay beneath it. An urge he intended to act on now.

Her eyes had widened and she gazed at him unblinkingly, her hands frozen over her plate, the knife and fork clenched between her slender, white-knuckled fingers.

Sandro moved towards her chair with a loose-limbed, predatory intent; he was acting on instinct now, wanting—needing—to strip away her cold haughtiness, chip away at that damned ice until it shattered all around them. She would call him Sandro. She would melt in his arms.

Gently, yet with firm purpose, he uncurled her clenched fingers from around her cutlery, and the knife and fork clattered onto her plate. She didn’t resist. Her violet gaze was still fastened on him, her lips slightly parted. Her pulse thundered under his thumb as he took her by the wrist and drew her from the chair to stand before him.

Still she didn’t resist, not even as he moved closer to her, nudging his thigh in between her own legs as he lifted his hands to frame her face.

Her skin was cool and unbearably soft, and he brushed his thumb over the fullness of her parted lips, heard her tiny, indrawn grasp, and smiled. He rested his thumb on the soft pad of her lower lip before he slid his hands down to her bare shoulders, her skin like silk under his palms.

He gazed into her eyes, the colour of a bruise, framed by moon-coloured lashes, wide and waiting. Then he bent his head and brushed his mouth across hers, a first kiss that was soft and questioning, and yet she gave no answer.

She remained utterly still, her lips unmoving under his, her hands clenched by her sides. The only movement was the hard beating of her heart that he could feel from where he stood, and Sandro’s determination to make her respond crystallised inside him, diamond hard. He deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue into her luscious mouth, the question turning into a demand.

For a woman who was so coldly determined, her mouth tasted incredibly warm and sweet. He wanted more, any sense of purpose be damned, and as he explored the contours of her mouth with his tongue he moved his hands from her shoulders down the silk of her dress to cup the surprising fullness of her breasts. They fitted his hands perfectly, and he brushed his thumbs lightly over the taut peaks. Still she didn’t move.

She was like the statue he’d accused her of being, frozen into place, rigid and unyielding. A shaft of both sexual and emotional frustration blazed through him. He wanted—needed—her to respond. Physically. Emotionally. He needed something from her, something real and alive, and he would do whatever it took to get it.

Sandro tore his mouth from hers and kissed his way along her jawline, revelling in the silkiness of her skin even as a furious determination took hold of him once more.

Yet as his mouth hovered over the sweet hollow where her jaw met her throat he hesitated, unwilling to continue when she was so unresponsive despite the insistence pulsing through him. He had never forced a woman, not for so much as a kiss, and he wasn’t about to start now. Not with his bride. Submission, he thought grimly, was not the same as acceptance. As want.