His Royal Bride Replacement

Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

It was Rosy’s turn to frown. ‘You mean, you actually assumed that I would ?’

‘Of course, I did,’ Alessio proclaimed without a shade of discomfiture.

‘Well, I’m not doing that with you and I can’t think why you’d expect it anyway with us barely knowing each other,’ she began, talking faster and faster as embarrassment threatened to consume her. ‘I couldn’t do that with a stranger!’

‘I haven’t felt as though you were a stranger from the first moment I met you,’ Alessio told her truthfully. ‘But that’s not a reproach or an argument. We should’ve had this conversation before the wedding but I was in too much of a rush to win your agreement.’

‘To be fair, you didn’t have the luxury of time or space with that announcement about Graziana to make.’ Rosy shook her head and turned away, still scarcely able to credit that he had simply assumed sex would be included in their agreement.

But were his expectations so far removed from reality? a little voice chimed inside her head. In a world where men and women could meet once and have sex and never meet again? Suddenly she was quite sure that she had come across as a terrible prude but she wasn’t about to apologise for it. There were limits to what she was prepared to do on her family’s behalf and casual sex was a hard limit for her.

She had stayed a virgin to the age of twenty-two not because she was a moralist, not by any specific choice but mostly by an awareness of her own nature. She was a romantic, she was cautious, and she was cynical about attachments based on sex because she had seen so many of those fail around her. She didn’t want to risk falling for some loser who wanted her only for the fleeting release her body could give him. She valued herself a little higher than that. Undoubtedly, she had been helped by the simple fact that she had never met anyone she truly craved a closer physical connection with.

And then Alessio had appeared on that bridge and raw, visceral attraction had flared through every inch of her being the instant she’d met his stunning eyes. Ever since then she had been determined to protect herself and not yield to that shocking physical chemistry. Alessio would forget her existence the day the ink was dry on their divorce papers. He would remarry some lofty, titled lady similar to Graziana, have children and probably never think about the Cinderella who had briefly dug him out of a difficult predicament ever again. That was just a hard fact of life.

‘We’ll discuss it…some other time. Not while I’m wondering where I can sleep tonight,’ Alessio murmured with wry humour.

So, he wasn’t about to dispute her stance. Relief filled Rosy. ‘I’ll look for bed linen and you can pick a sofa in that nightmare-inducing drawing room. When was this house last checked by the palace?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘It must’ve been years ago. The roof is leaking like a sieve upstairs. You can’t leave a property like this untended for so long. Whoever is responsible for property on your staff dropped the ball, and, if I were you, that would make me ask for a check on any other properties you have in your portfolio.’

‘You’re cooking… I am so grateful that you can cook,’ Alessio groaned, appreciating her point. ‘I’ll check out the bed linen, take a look upstairs. I’m not helpless.’

He strode out, leaving her at the stove, engaged in making one of Patrick’s signature quick pasta dishes. She listened to him hefting cases up from the hall and she smiled, deciding that she might even be kind enough to make up the chosen sofa for his benefit.

* * *

Alessio wandered round the upper floor in a daze. It was a dump on the brink of extinction, and he was inclined to let it self-destruct. He walked into the single habitable bedroom and immediately recognised his mother’s signature colour scheme of white with touches of blue. His stomach churned and he no longer wanted to argue about sleeping downstairs on a sofa. But the sharing of the single dry full-functioning bathroom in the house still had to be negotiated. He might be willing to sleep on a sofa but he wasn’t willing to do it unwashed.

And what about that? A wife who wasn’t a wife? He had made an unbelievably na?ve assumption. He had imagined that Rosy understood what he intended with their marriage. He had never, not for one moment, planned on fake . She believed that he had married her to be a figurehead, presumably, a last-minute replacement and no more for Graziana. It hadn’t occurred to Rosy that he found her far more attractive and appealing than his former fiancée, that he wasn’t a man who had ever expected to have much say in who he married or much genuine liking or desire for his bride. But Rosy had broken the mould of his expectations, giving him a glimpse of brighter possibilities in his future…and he had simply reached for her and grabbed.

Without explanation.

That was where he had gone wrong. He was a man who from adolescence had been surrounded by women who would give him anything he wanted without question. He had never ever had to explain his wants, needs or wishes. Everything had come to him without him even asking for it. All those women had wanted one or more of three things from him. Sex. Luxury. Status. Only it seemed Rosy didn’t crave any of those benefits. And yet when he had kissed her, he had fully believed she desired him as much as he desired her. So, what else had he got wrong aside from the horror-movie wedding night in a hopefully un-haunted house?

He located a linen cupboard for the first time in his life, ridiculously relieved that the dripping water hadn’t accessed its contents. He yanked out musty sheets and a pillow and returned to the drawing room. It creeped him out too, all those moth-eaten trophies with their glassy eyes staring down. He shook out a sheet and draped it over a sofa, dropped the pillow into place.

‘Alessio!’ Rosy called.

He appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘Is there time for me to take a shower before we eat?’

‘If you can accomplish it within twenty minutes,’ she warned him. ‘Is there any wine here that you know of?’

‘I’ll check the drawing room.’

He returned with a dusty bottle and two glasses. ‘There’s a fully stocked wine cellar under the house. I remember that.’

‘You’re not going down into a basement in this place,’ Rosy told him firmly. ‘Not on my watch. There could be rotten wooden steps, rats …who knows?’

Alessio laughed, green eyes glimmering with appreciation. ‘I hear you.’

‘Do you mind if we eat in here? I know it’s a kitchen but it’s clean and the dining room isn’t.’

‘That’s fine with me.’

As he departed, Rosy sighed and set the farmhouse table. He had cooled off quickly, travelling from angry frustration to laid-back acceptance, and that relieved her. Her father had been an angry, offensive drunk whom they had all carefully avoided to the best of their ability when he’d been under the weather.

Alessio returned just as she was putting out the meal. She took a single glance at him, sheathed in jeans and a white tee, and her tongue cleaved to the roof of her suddenly dry mouth. Black hair still damp from the shower and tousled, falling round his lean, sculpted features, green eyes crystalline with clarity and vigour. She snatched a sudden breath and turned away quickly. He had gone through the same day she had and he had not had the chance to sleep and yet he was still buzzing with energy. How could that be?

‘I laid out fresh towels for you from the linen press.’

‘My goodness, you’re very well house-trained,’ Rosy quipped as she set the plates down on the table and he opened the wine. ‘Where are your security team staying?’

‘They have a bunkhouse at a local farm and here they work in two teams, four off and resting and then four on for every shift.’ Alessio speared a piece of pasta and savoured it. ‘You’re a hell of a good cook.’

‘Can’t be anything else growing up with a chef in the house. Patrick imbued me with his love of food. I used to cook with him after school when Vittoria was at work. He usually worked evenings and we’d all have dinner together before he left the house.’

‘Sounds very family orientated.’ Alessio paused. ‘I never had that. Where was your father in all of this?’

Rosy stiffened. ‘How detailed was your background check on me? Dad was an alcoholic but he didn’t want to deal with it. Plenty of people tried to help him and failed. Life was better after Patrick moved in because Dad was scared of him, so the shoving me and Vittoria out of his way and the verbal abuse pretty much stopped then. Mostly, Dad spent half the day in bed and the other half out drinking. He was never there for me or my sister and she had a tough time with him after her mother died.’ Rosy grimaced. ‘Just think, she went through all that and still had enough room in her heart for me ten years later. But then that’s Vittoria, she just puts her head down and gets on with it the best she can.’

‘And that’s why you couldn’t stand back and let your sister and her husband lose their dream with the hotel,’ Alessio slotted in. ‘Evidently you have the same big, soft heart.’

‘Except where you’re concerned!’ Rosy flipped back teasingly. ‘Not about to share a bed with you because you put a ring on my finger!’

‘Wait until I ask,’ Alessio advised, having cleared his plate. ‘And please note, I haven’t asked .’

‘Noted,’ she said, a little breathless, rising from the table to deal with their plates, grateful that there appeared to be a working dishwasher because tiredness was beginning to build on her again with an ache in her back and a heaviness in her eyes. She didn’t even know why she had mentioned the ‘sharing a bed’ angle again, most probably because she felt awkward and a little bad at subjecting him to a sofa.

‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?’ she added abruptly.

Sipping his wine, Alessio leant back in his chair and surveyed her. ‘Anything.’

‘Why did you decide to bring me here to the mountains, and not to a more conventional honeymoon getaway?’

Alessio winced. ‘I assumed that you wouldn’t welcome the attention. Graziana revelled in media interest and in one of the more conventional places there would be a great deal of it for the newly-wed Prince and Princess of Sedovia. Our every expression interpreted, our every outing and gesture and choice of clothing commented on. I didn’t want you to feel that you had to tolerate that level of curiosity. I also believed we could get to know each other here without other distractions. I assumed—possibly wrongly—that peace and quiet would be more your style.’

‘It is ,’ she agreed, disconcerted by his explanation because on some level she had assumed the worst about him: that being seen with her ordinary self in public might embarrass him or that someone like her didn’t need or require an opulent break. But all those kinds of feelings only magnified the insecurity that she had struggled to hide from him, and she didn’t want to admit that out loud. That he had been thinking of her needs, that he had been considering what was best for her instead of what he might want just blew her away. Her conscience twanged and her heart softened.

‘Look, I’m going to head to bed,’ she murmured, having loaded the dishwasher and put it on. ‘I’ll probably be better company in the morning.’

‘Goodnight,’ Alessio said lazily. ‘We’ll find out what happened to this place tomorrow and then head down to the beach for a break.’

Rosy paused and turned her head back with a frown. ‘What beach?’

‘There’s a private cove below the woods. I remember it from childhood. That’s why there’s no pool here and we can probably be grateful for that because that would have been left to go to rack and ruin as well.’

‘I’ll look forward to that,’ Rosy muttered before heading for the stairs while thinking abstractedly of Alessio as a little boy who had once enjoyed bucket and spade holidays at his grandparents’ summer home.

She went for a shower, used the towels he had replaced for her, and avoided washing her hair because she always let it dry naturally. She climbed into the giant bed and felt guilty. It was so big that she could’ve let him share it. It wasn’t as though she were afraid that he might assault her. And there would surely be occasions while they remained married that they would have to share a bedroom, particularly if they were away from the palace, so, really, what had she been whinging about? The fact that he had dared to assume that she might have sex with him? Was she punishing him for that?

Of course, she hadn’t expected to share a bed with him when their marriage wasn’t real. But, at the same time, any sort of intimacy with Alessio would expose her to experiencing the sort of possessive feelings about him that she really couldn’t afford to have in her situation.

Still tired though she was, she shifted, sleepless in the surprisingly comfortable bed. About an hour later, her every joint snapped taut when she heard a soft knock on the door. She sat up and switched on the bedside lamp. ‘Yes?’ she called.

Alessio stepped through the door, bare-chested, a pair of black pyjama pants anchored to his lean hips and a clutch of bedding clamped below one arm. ‘May I sleep on your floor? The sofa is damp and feels like a rock. It’s in here or the kitchen,’ he told her flatly. ‘They’re the only dry places in this house.’

Rosy clutched the sheet to her pink-flamingo-clad breasts, her favourite pyjamas chosen for comfort. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Stripped, he was pretty intimidating. So tall, so bronzed, so built from his powerful shoulders to the lean, honed musculature of a torso worthy of a centrefold. ‘OK,’ she breathed, and before she could change her mind added jerkily, ‘But I think you’d be more comfortable in the bed. Goodness knows, it’s big enough.’

Green eyes glimmered with surprise. ‘But I thought—’

‘I was being unreasonable,’ Rosy interrupted ruefully and she lay back down again. After all, there was no point in making an enemy of the man she’d married, was there? To a certain extent, their arrangement would be much easier if they fashioned, at the very least, a friendlier bond.

Unfortunately, she had the best view of Alessio climbing into bed and she shut her eyes fast. All those muscles flexing, not to mention the tattoos that she craved a closer look at. A shuddering breath filled her lungs because she was remembering that kiss and those sensations were stealing back into her treacherous body, filling her with a different kind of tension altogether.

‘Mind if I switch off the light?’ he murmured, his dark deep voice sibilant and somehow unbearably sexy that close.

‘No.’

And she should have done it herself because he rolled closer and stretched up over her, enveloping her in a tormentingly intimate scent trail that was purely him: outdoorsy, earthy, clean, warm masculinity. Her nostrils flared and she breathed in deep again as the light went out.

‘Thanks,’ he said wearily in the darkness. ‘I was freezing cold down there. We need wood for the fire in there. I’ll get everything sorted out tomorrow. I appreciate you bearing with me and cooking and dealing with it all without complaint.’

A sudden giggle escaped Rosy. ‘I’m sorry. I was just trying to imagine what would have happened if you’d brought Graziana here…but, of course, you weren’t bringing her here, you were taking her to Barbados. I think I was a little jealous of that, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed the media fascination or the idea that I was on show all the time.’

‘I’ll make up for my oversights in the future,’ he promised drowsily. ‘Go to sleep—you’ve got breakfast to make in the morning… I hope .’

‘Hmm,’ she mumbled and slid into slumber between one moment and the next.

* * *

Rosy wakened sprawled across a living, breathing furnace. She gazed down at Alessio and slumbrous green eyes assailed hers. ‘You’re a real snuggler,’ he told her. ‘Every time I moved away, you found me again and hooked a leg or an arm around me.’

Rosy leapt off him as though she had been burned. ‘I’m so sorry!’ she framed before scrambling out of the bed and disappearing into the bathroom, where she was relieved to see the sunlight drenching the woods behind the cabin.

But even inside the shower she was reliving the feel of Alessio’s hot, urgent body under hers, the bold press of his arousal, and her face flamed. She wasn’t so na?ve that she didn’t know that it was normal for a man to wake up that way but there was nothing normal about the way that intimacy had made her feel. All on edge and jumpy, parts of her heated up in dangerous response. Hair washed and patted dry, she returned to the empty bedroom to ferret out something suitable to wear. She yanked a blue swimsuit out and donned it, wrinkling her nose at her reflection before tugging out shorts, a loose top and a pair of canvas shoes.

Alessio was already downstairs and opening a cool box in the kitchen. Lightly clad in swim shorts and a tee, he was a vision of lean, powerful masculinity as he bent down, cotton fabric outlining sleek, flexing back muscles and a strip of bronzed flesh and she sucked in a sharp breath.

‘Where did that come from?’ she asked stiffly.

‘At least one maintenance system hasn’t broken down since I was last here. When we’re in residence, fresh baked goods, fruit, eggs, cream et cetera are delivered every day from the farm where my bodyguards are staying.’

‘Convenient,’ Rosy commented as she set about making a lavish breakfast while considering snacks and drinks for the beach, a much easier task with the amount of food that had been delivered.

They were having coffee when a knock sounded on the back door and one of Alessio’s security team stepped in, escorting a teenaged girl who introduced herself with timid hesitance as Bianca Marino, whose family were caretakers for the cabin. Alessio frowned, black brows drawing together, and it was Rosy who stepped in to offer the teenager a cool drink and offer her a seat.

When she admitted under Rosy’s encouragement that she was only sixteen, Rosy gave Alessio a speaking, expectant glance, remarking on how well prepared the kitchen and the main bedroom had been.

As the trembling, anxious girl relaxed a little, Rosy drew out her story. Bianca’s mother had died almost fifteen years earlier, a woman Alessio fondly recalled as Sofia, who had made cakes for him as a child. Sofia had been responsible for cleaning the cabin, her husband for the maintenance. Bianca’s father, however, had suffered a serious back injury the year after he was widowed and her brother, who had initially taken on his father’s job, had left home to find a better-paying position.

‘I will see your father before we leave,’ Alessio pronounced calmly.

‘Nobody ever came here. It didn’t seem to matter what state it was in when it was never used. We didn’t mean any harm,’ the girl muttered in awkward completion.

Alessio saw her out again, his firm mouth taut.

‘Let’s go to the beach,’ Rosy urged brightly, keen to take his mind off what they had just learned.

‘You think I’m being too judgemental?’

‘No, I think first you need to discover how Bianca’s father was injured, because he was maintaining this house at the time and he may not have notified the palace because he was afraid of losing his job. I also think there should be an annual check on every property you own. If the supervision has been this lackadaisical, when was the level of pay for the job last updated? Three of the family were working here at one stage.’

‘Fair point,’ Alessio conceded, the squared set of his broad shoulders easing, while he attempted to prevent his gaze from wandering in the direction of his bride’s truly spectacular long shapely legs. He was still aching from waking up with her lithe body draped over him earlier. Nothing wrong with that, he told himself. Only, unfortunately, there was no outlet for his very healthy libido, he reflected wryly.

Rosy slung cold drinks and some snacks into a rucksack and Alessio swung open the back door with alacrity.

‘You know the way?’ she prompted.

‘There should be a path, probably overgrown by now, and a bridge over the stream and then it’s all downhill from there,’ he promised, taking the rucksack from her shoulder to put it on his own.

They headed into the darkness of the woods, towering trees providing a canopy far above them and shading them from the worst of the summer heat but, still, perspiration broke out on Rosy’s skin. ‘It’s hot.’

‘Yes…let me check this first,’ Alessio urged, stepping onto a roughly built concrete bridge spanning a rushing stream and gripping the wooden guard rail, which fell away from his grasp into the water below.

He strode back, clasping her hand. ‘Let me go first. It’s dangerous.’

‘I’m not one of your little ditsy women, Alessio. I’m a good swimmer and that stream doesn’t look deep,’ Rosy argued with spirit.

‘But if you fell, you could hurt yourself and it’s my responsibility to keep you safe.’

Rosy heaved a sigh and grasped his hand, colliding with glimmering crystalline green eyes that sapped her resistance as easily as a vacuum extractor. He guided her over to the opposite bank and moved her on. They were travelling downhill then and the walking, even though it meant threading a passage through light undergrowth on somewhat slippery ground, was less taxing. They were reaching the edge of the woodland when she saw a blue shimmering glimmer below them. ‘The sea,’ she murmured.

‘The cabin should have been built on this side of the mountain,’ Alessio opined. ‘The views would’ve been spectacular, but my grandmother chose the land side because she was a gardener and the site she chose was more protected from the wind.’

‘There was a garden?’ Rosy asked in surprise.

‘Once upon a time at the front. It’s now run wild.’

As they stepped into full sunshine, Rosy found herself at the edge of a small cliff looking down into a sunlit rocky cove composed of white sand and glimmering blue water.

‘It’s magical,’ she whispered in wonderment.