Chapter Seven
‘Zia will burn out soon,’ Fiero forecast in a grim whisper three weeks later.
‘What will the governments do then? Nobody’s acknowledging the amount of work she’s accomplishing, the pressure she’s under, the stress of it all.
But you understand it better than anyone.
Why aren’t you urging her to take a weekend off? ’
Orazio breathed in deep and slow. As usual he had barely taken his attention off Zia for a second, watching her work her way round various children, stooping down to join in their pursuits with a level of success he could never have equalled.
It was no wonder that the population of his country, Lower Mandovia, was already complaining about being deprived of exposure to the already renowned Princess.
Upper Mandovia had taken to Zia like ducks to water.
She was everywhere and always the focus of adoring, fascinated crowds.
If there was a hospice, a hospital, a school or a nursery or a dog rescue facility, they were begging for a visit.
Patients, the sick and the dying, children, animals—she had all the compassion he had never managed to produce.
The natural touch, he had labelled it, that unending smile and acceptance, that ability to empathise in the worst possible situations.
But in every way her instincts were innate and she was entirely herself, which he hugely admired.
It wasn’t studied, it wasn’t a learned approach—it galled him, but it came as part of her.
‘So, am I allowed to ask what went wrong that night at the country house when just being around the two of you felt like being a very large, surplus gooseberry?’ his best friend enquired ruefully.
Orazio breathed in deep. ‘It went wrong,’ he acknowledged wryly.
‘So, think simple. You take it back there and do it differently,’ Fiero suggested in an awkward undertone because, as a rule, he never interfered and never ever offered advice.
‘I can’t,’ Orazio confided simply. ‘She rejected me. I was ditched, first time ever…no jokes, please.’
Fiero sucked in his breath sharply at that admission. ‘But you could still suggest that she needs a break—’
‘She doesn’t need me to do that. Right now, here, I’m just the support act,’ Orazio breathed with a slightly bitter edge.
‘OK,’ his best friend acknowledged without any expression at all.
The newspapers had given up hoping for signs of intimacy between them, Raz reflected ruefully.
The media had surrendered their fantasy romance in despair at their failure as a couple to meet their countries’ fond hopes.
They had openly declared the polite, unemotional state of the relationship between him and Zia.
He didn’t touch her in any way unless there was no other choice, and she mirrored that approach.
It was as if a new Ice Age had sprung up between them.
There was no hint of intimacy or friendship, indeed there was nothing.
A sort of chilly indifference invaded her when he got close, ensuring that he didn’t get too familiar, that he knew that any attention would be unwelcome.
Across the room, Zia scrambled upright again, perspiring from her efforts in joining in with the toddlers’ finger painting, knowing her clothing bore stains, knowing she had probably made an ass of herself again but refusing to care.
All Zia knew was that she had never been more unhappy in her life.
She worked through every day in a blind state of misery, grateful to have other stuff to concentrate on.
Somehow, she had fallen insanely in love with Orazio.
The morning after they had gone to bed, when there was a positive chill in the air over breakfast, she had looked at him and finally understood with a piercing pain inside her just how deep her feelings for him already ran.
Every inch of her had longed for that intimacy to be reinstated, every fibre of her being had longed for the return of their shared glances of understanding and the carefully hidden moments of mutual amusement.
It had been an intimacy that had gone far beyond sex.
Why had she realised that only when it was too late to change anything?
Indeed, the pain of loving Orazio crashed up against her defences every time she attempted to deny it.
Removing even her attention from his drop-dead gorgeous person was a challenge and every night she lay in her bed remembering how it had felt when they were together.
In the daylight, those memories felt unreal because, right now, they were further apart than they had been the very first day they had met.
Yet this was the guy she loved. And the love had happened, regardless of whether she wanted it or not.
And she hadn’t wanted it, hadn’t ever wanted to put her emotional stability in the hands of a male.
Yet there it was and he had offered her more and what had she done?
She had turned him down.
The guy who was so kind, so honourable, so honest with her that he had even been frank about his own intentions. He had supported her, protected her, even from her own mistakes, from their first meeting.
And in the intervening weeks, horribly deprived of him, denied even the regular phone calls that she had adored, coming to terms with just how much she craved his company and his counsel, she had slowly come to understand why she had fled what he had offered her.
She hadn’t loved anybody since her mother had vanished from her life and she had worked hard to ensure that she had no expectations of anyone who had followed.
Because there had been nobody. And now she loved Orazio and it was frightening: all of her felt as though she were composed of raw, very sensitive nerve endings.
His every move controlled her and she was fighting all those impulses to run away again in spite of the fact that she had chased him off.
And why had she done that?
In a nutshell: it hurt to love and lose.
And she was an emotional coward because she had never known a successful relationship born out of love.
Her mother had simply disappeared from her life and it had been years before she had finally learned that her unfortunate mother had died.
The wound of her mother’s vanishing act had never really healed.
And that had been followed by the people she had cared for regrettably letting her down, failing to protect her, failing to meet her needs.
But she knew that she needed to move on from that isolationist stance.
How could she ever find happiness if she trusted only herself?
Was she planning to stay alone for ever?
And yet he had said that he could make it work between them.
Wasn’t it horribly, inexcusably cowardly of her to not even have given him that chance?
Particularly when he wouldn’t even be around her for much longer, she reflected miserably.
After all, as the days had moved into weeks, it had been impossible for even governmental wishes to prevent Orazio from having to fly back and forth to take care of his own duties in Lower Mandovia.
Already, he was only present to share main events with her and this evening there was a big party being thrown in her late father’s ghastly gilded former palace at which they would both appear together.
Together? That was a bit of a joke when they could barely manage a civil conversation.
And whose fault was that? Solely hers, she acknowledged wretchedly, knowing she had rejected him out of fear alone.
What normal male would wish to continue being saddled with her company in those circumstances?
She needed to cross the barrier between them that she had imposed.
She needed to speak to him and tell him the truth and do it soon.
Zia pulled a face at her image in the full-length mirror in front of her.
Cream in shade in a glittering ball gown, very flattering, accentuating her small waist and curvier attributes above and below, and what did it matter?
Another photo opportunity? Another chance to prove that she was working the role she was being paid to fulfil?
Yet she had still seen not one red cent of the salary she had been promised, she conceded ruefully.
Her bank account was as empty as it had ever been and she might be sporting designer fashion at the government’s expense, but she remained a literal pauper beneath her fancy trappings.
Orazio watched Zia enter the ballroom as Princess Annunziata and she did it to the manner born.
Tiny though she was even in heels, she exuded class and dignity.
Obviously, he could only admire her for that air of panache when she had grown up in such difficult circumstances.
She was solid steel strength below the intensely feminine trappings, quite unlike any woman he had ever met.
And she was gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous, shimmering like a candle glowing in the dark, the centre of everyone’s attention but, unlike many of her sex, not luxuriating in that attention.
He watched Giancarlo Marone head for her like a guided missile and looked away, annoyed beyond measure, annoyed he couldn’t put a fist in his face and tell him to back off, urges that had never afflicted Orazio before.
Somehow, she had forged him into this guy who was possessive, territorial and jealous.
He despised this new version of himself, being all too well aware that he had no rights over Zia’s body or her affections and that he would have to stand by as an unwilling captive audience to any resulting courtships.
All his life he had associated the stronger emotions with his parents’ hostile marriage, the anger, jealousy and hatred that had powered their volatile confrontations.