Chapter Three #2
The guest quarters Gabriel had been appointed, usually given to family members like her parents’ siblings, were nearly a mirror image of her own.
Laid out like an apartment, it had a bedroom and adjoining bathroom, a guest room with its own bathroom, a dayroom, a dining room, a reception room and an unused kitchen.
Gabriel was nowhere to be seen. Nor were his clothes.
The quarters being on the second floor, a set of iron steps ran off the balcony and led down to the private gardens. She hurried down the steps barefoot.
Although brimming with early-morning birdsong, the garden was empty of human life.
Her heart thumping, she checked each room of his quarters a second time and then a third, her calls of his name gradually weakening to a choked whisper.
Back in the bedroom, she stared at the bed.
It was the very first time she’d shared a bed with another human being.
She could still smell Gabriel. Could still feel his touch on her skin.
In a daze, she stepped back onto the balcony and stared at the plump sofa she’d lost her virginity on.
Limbs now feeling all watery, she somehow managed to climb over the balustrade and back onto her private abode.
Inside, she called the family’s head of housekeeping, not even bothering to think of an excuse to explain why she was enquiring about the whereabouts of the negotiator who’d saved the Berrutis from almost certain destruction.
The answer, although expected, still landed as a blow.
Gabriel had gone.
He hadn’t even left her a note of goodbye.
Alessia closed her eyes and resisted pulling at her just-done hair. She felt sick. After a few minutes spent doing breathing exercises, she felt no better, and briefly considered calling her mother and telling her she felt too ill to attend Amadeo and Elsbeth’s pre-wedding party.
She couldn’t miss the party. A royal princess did not bow out of engagements from something as pathetic as illness, not unless she was at death’s door, which a bout of nausea did not class as.
Not that it was a royal engagement as the public would recognise it.
As far as the public were concerned, the party was a private affair although the carefully selected members of the press corps who’d be in attendance to document the evening—and it was a momentous occasion and not just because the heir to the throne would be showing off his new bride-to-be—would publish the usual photos and video clips to allow the public to feel a part of the event.
So, a private event with as much privacy as the animals in London Zoo had.
And Alessia had to smile and dance with that horrible monster King Dominic Fernandez of Monte Cleure to prove to the world that there was no bad feeling between them.
She’d bet that was the cause of her nausea.
There was a knock on her bedroom door.
Opening her eyes, she stared at her reflection and brought her practised smile to her face before calling out, ‘Come in.’
Rather than a member of her domestic staff, her visitor was her new sister-in-law.
Immediately, Alessia’s spirits lifted. Clara was the woman Marcelo had rescued from King Dominic’s evil clutches.
It was that rescue, photographed and leaked to the world, which had started the diplomatic war between the two countries.
The fallout from the rescue had compelled Marcelo to marry Clara himself and, as a result, Alessia had a brand-new sister-in-law.
What made it even better was that Marcelo and Clara had fallen madly in love for real.
There was an acute pang in her chest as Alessia wondered if a man would ever look at her the way Marcelo looked at Clara, a pang made sharper as Gabriel Serres’s handsome face floated in her eyes. She willed the image away.
She’d not heard even a whisper from him since he’d snuck out of the bed they’d made love in.
For days she’d drifted around the palace in a fugue of disbelief.
Disbelief that she’d fallen head over heels in lust with a man she barely knew, falling so hard and so fast that she’d given her virginity without any thought, too wrapped up in the moment to care about anything but the wonder of what they were sharing.
Disbelief that Gabriel had left without a word of goodbye when they’d shared such an incredible night together.
Disbelief at Gabriel’s subsequent silence.
And then she’d made the fatal mistake of making excuses for his silence.
After three days of this fugue-like drifting, she’d convinced herself an emergency had taken him from their bed and that he’d left without waking her because he wanted her to have more sleep.
She’d convinced herself too that the only reason he hadn’t called was because he didn’t have her personal number and that to ask her brother or parents or any of their staff for it would lead to too many questions.
Gabriel was experienced enough in her world to know a man didn’t just casually ask for a princess’s personal number.
And so she’d decided to put them both out of their misery—because surely he was in as big a flux as she was after what they’d shared—and call him, asking her private secretary to obtain his number for her.
It was a business number answered by an efficient-sounding woman. Alessia left a message. For days she’d waited on tenterhooks, her heart leaping every time her phone buzzed. There had been no call back.
Her pride wouldn’t let her ask her secretary to go one further and obtain his personal number, and even if it wasn’t out of the question for Alessia to obtain it from her parents or brother, she finally opened her eyes and let reality sink in.
It simply wasn’t possible that Gabriel’s assistant hadn’t passed the message on. Gabriel had simply ignored it.
He’d deliberately crept out of their bed without waking her.
He hadn’t called her because he didn’t want to.
Despite everything they’d shared, he didn’t want to see her again and didn’t think her worthy of a two-minute call to tell her this.
Alessia had given her virginity to a man who was treating her like a worthless one-night stand. Now, just over two weeks on, she was well and truly done with hoping and moping.
Gabriel Serres could go to hell.
‘Hi, sis,’ Clara said chirpily, bounding over to the dressing table and bringing out the first smile on Alessia’s face in two weeks. ‘You look fantastic! That dress is amazing! Gosh, I am so envious.’
‘You can talk,’ Alessia laughed, rising from her seat to embrace her tightly. Where she had chosen an elegant deep red strapless ballgown for the party, Clara had gone for a toga-style shimmering silver dress that accentuated the bust Alessia would give her left kidney for. ‘You look beautiful.’
Clara beamed. ‘Thank you. Call me petty but I really want to look my best tonight for King Pig. Rub his face in it a bit more.’
‘You’re not worried about seeing him?’
‘If anyone should be worried, it’s him. Marcelo has promised Amadeo not to make a scene and I think it’s going to kill him to keep that promise. I have to keep reminding him that he got his revenge on the monster when he rescued me from him.’
‘Did Amadeo make you promise not to cause a scene too?’
‘I promised that voluntarily. After all, I’m trying to be the perfect princess and the perfect princess doesn’t karate chop guests at a grand social function, does she?’ She actually looked a touch woebegone at not being able to do this.
Alessia giggled then changed the subject. ‘How did the honeymoon go?’ This was the first time the two old friends had had a chance for a private catch-up since Clara and Marcelo’s return from their honeymoon. ‘Were the Seychelles as pretty as you hoped?’
‘It was amazing! Not that we saw all that much of it as we spent most of our time in bed—’
‘Hold it right there,’ she interrupted before Clara could start giving details. ‘I’m feeling sick enough as it is without having to listen to details about my brother’s sex life.’
Clara cackled but then her brow furrowed. ‘You’re feeling sick? What’s wrong?’
‘I’ve just been feeling a bit off for a couple of days. Probably something I ate.’
She looked even more closely at her. ‘Any other symptoms?’
‘No.’
But Clara continued to scrutinise her. ‘Are you wearing a padded bra?’
‘I’m not wearing a bra. Why?’
‘Your boobs have grown. If I didn’t know better, I’d ask if you were pregnant.’
Those words set off an instantaneous reaction in Alessia. Cold white noise filled her head, cold dread prickled her skin. Instinctively, she put her hand to her abdomen and breathed hard.
‘Alessia? Are you okay? Your face has gone a funny colour.’
But Clara’s voice had become distant and Alessia had to lean into her dressing table to support her weak frame as the room began to spin wildly around her.
Gabriel dispassionately watched the previous evening’s footage of Prince Amadeo and Lady Elsbeth’s pre-wedding party in his hotel room in Rome.
Italy, a country that shared a language and much cultural history with Ceres, was enthralled by the wedding between the glamorous heir to the throne and his pretty bride-to-be.
The breakfast television channel he was watching as he prepared for the day’s meetings with his newest client had so far devoted over two minutes to it.
He’d been invited to the party but politely declined. He had no wish to be part of a montage such as the one being televised.
His stomach clenched when the footage came to its star turn, the attendee its viewers would have been waiting for a glimpse of above all others: Europe’s premiere princess, Princess Alessia.
The clenching sharpened as he watched her laughing with a member of the British royal family before the camera cut to her dancing with the King of Monte Cleure.
The smile on her face belied what he knew would be crawling beneath her skin to be held in the arms of a man she so despised, and Gabriel felt a stab of anger at her family for forcing this dance on her.
‘I think we can safely agree that the animosity between these two nations is now a thing of the past,’ a gushing reporter was saying as the cameras panned back to the studio.
Gabriel turned the television off and pinched the bridge of his nose.
A trade and diplomatic war had been averted.
Any popular uprising against their royal family from the Ceresian people, who would surely have blamed them if the situation had deteriorated further and hit them economically, had been avoided.
Dominic felt valued as a ‘player’ again. Everyone was happy.
This should be a moment of quiet satisfaction at a job well done but the discontent at seeing Alessia again was too strong.
Truth was, Gabriel was furious with himself for what had happened between them and time had not abated that fury an iota.
He’d had a few one-night stands over the years—he wasn’t a saint—but this was the only one he truly regretted.
And the only one he couldn’t erase from his head.
Couldn’t erase her from his head. He still felt the weight of his arousal for her as a memory in his loins.
He still had her number in his wallet from when she’d called the business line. His heart had thumped so hard when his PA passed Alessia’s message to him that he wouldn’t have been surprised if it had smashed straight through his ribcage.
The message had been brief, inviting him to call her if he wished. He’d read it a number of times, his heart deflating as the meaning had become clear.
Alessia wanted to see him again.
It was out of the question.
He should have called her back and politely made his excuses.
What he should have done before that was say goodbye and explain that as great as their night together had been, it was a one-night-only thing.
What he should have done before any of those things was rewind even further and not sleep with her in the first place.
But he should have called her back.
He’d never treated a woman so callously before. But then, he’d never reacted so strongly to a woman before or felt such a strong reaction towards him from a woman before. Or lost his mind the way he had with her.
Despite everything, he removed the folded Post-it note from his wallet and stared at the number he’d committed to memory at the first reading.
It was the strength of his desire to call her back that had stopped him doing just that.
Look at him now—twenty seconds of footage of her had distracted him from his preparations as effectively as a tornado hitting his hotel room.
Alessia Berruti was a princess. She was Europe’s most photographed woman.
She was the antithesis of what he wanted in a partner.
Gabriel’s childhood had been destroyed by press intrusion and he had no wish to experience the media spotlight again under any circumstance.
It would be a disaster for his career too—anonymity was essential for him to be effective.
Even a casual affair with the princess who seemingly loved the spotlight would bring press intrusion of unimaginable levels.
As scalding...as fantastic...as their lovemaking had been, he could never see or speak to Alessia Berruti again.
He had to forget her.
Another burst of unwelcome fury raged through him and he crushed the note into a tight ball. Before he could throw it in the bin—maybe burn it to ash first for good measure—his phone rang.
He gritted his teeth and took a deep breath before reaching for it. Anger was the most futile of emotions, one he rarely succumbed to. He’d suffered more of it these last two weeks than he had the whole of his life and needed to rid himself of it.
His heart managed to jolt and sink at the same time when Prince Amadeo’s name flashed on the screen.
‘Good morning, Your Highness,’ he said smoothly, refusing to allow a trace of his emotions show in his voice. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure. What can I do for you?’
‘You can explain to me how the—’ an expletive was shot into Gabriel’s ear ‘—you managed to get my sister pregnant.’