The Prince from Her Past

Chapter One

Gabriela Olivera sat down on a stone bench in the walled garden.

The bench was warm from the caress of the sun, and she lifted her face to that same kiss.

The scent of the olive tree—said to be the oldest tree on the island—tickled her nostrils with its sweet spicy aroma.

The tree was in full flower, and butterflies danced amid the thick clusters of creamy white blooms.

She breathed in the sensations that enveloped her, relishing the scents and the silence, so different from what she had experienced over the last two years in New York City.

There could only be one name for these feelings of history, of deep familiarity, of contentment, of safety.

Home.

She was home, at last, to her island that bore the name of those endemic butterflies—slightly larger than monarchs, with a brilliant blue heart-shaped dot on their hind wings—that floated around the olive tree.

Isla Hermosa Mariposa was a nation in the western Mediterranean Sea.

Governed by monarchy, the small but extremely prosperous isle was most famous for olives.

Gabriela’s father and his father before him, stretching as far back in the history of Hermosa Mariposa as could be traced, had been keepers of the Royal House of Falcon groves, hence her family’s surname.

Her mother—and also her mother before her—had been in charge of the palace kitchen.

And so Gabriela had grown up in the white-walled cottage that sat on the edge of the castle wall and at the beginning of the acres and acres of ancient olive groves that stretched over the slopes and down to the very private and sheltered turquoise Bay of Butterflies.

That sense inside her—of being home—did not erase the challenges of her world. Her beloved father, always so robust and vital, had been ill for weeks, too weak to get out of his bed this morning. His health was the reason she had taken an indefinite leave from her job.

Or at least it was the biggest part of the reason. The truth was her life was in flux, at a crossroads since the end of her engagement to her longtime fiancé, Timothy Hardy, had been triggered by her decision to come home.

Timothy has been absolutely right, of course, that something was missing, which, also of course, meant the walls she had put up throughout their relationship had not gone unnoticed. He had thought he should be invited to come to the island with her when she’d made the decision to come home.

The truth was she could not imagine Timothy here. The truth was she had not wanted to see him against the backdrop of the place where she had loved a different man.

And perhaps loved him still, a voice inside her whispered.

She did not! She had left her childish fantasies and infatuations behind her. She had long ago accepted the love that could not be.

But if that was totally true, why had she felt something akin to panic when Timothy had suggested he come back with her, particularly when she had thought of him possibly meeting the forbidden love of her younger self?

Gabriela firmly put the tumultuous thoughts behind her and focused on the sensation of home and all it brought with it.

Her sense of her own strength, her ability to handle what life gave her, had come from within the thick, sturdy walls of that kitchen cottage, and her days growing up playing in this garden.

As if summoned by her memories of a childhood in this garden, the tall wooden gate that connected the cottage to the pathway to the palace creaked open, and a little boy slipped in.

Gabriela’s heart went still.

She knew instantly who the boy was because he was identical to the child she had once spent endless sun-filled days in this garden with.

She knew he was five, of course, and his name. The whole world knew his name, though he had been, as much as possible, fiercely guarded against a celebrity- and royalty-besotted world.

He was sturdy, as his father had been at that age, and sported the same mop of dark, unruly curls. He had huge brown eyes, golden skin and a mouth set with determination that did not match his age.

Gabriela sat very still, and he didn’t notice her, squinting with a singleness of purpose underneath the shrubs that lined the walls of the garden. She followed his gaze to see what he was so intent on and bit back a chortle when she saw what he was after.

The ancient black cat, Geraldo, notoriously cranky, was doing his very best to shrink back into the shadows of the wall, but to no avail.

Marcello’s eyes lit up, and he gave a little cry. “Aha!”

He dropped to all fours, darted under the shrub and made a grab for the cat, who had missed his opportunity to slink away.

Gabriela watched, ready to spring to the rescue, if needed.

This morning when she had cuddled the cat, aside from noticing his fur was beginning to mat with age, she had also realized he was unable to retract his claws, which had been momentarily caught in her blouse.

She had made a note to make a vet appointment, knowing her mother was distracted.

These small things that she could do to take some of the burden off her parents made her so glad she had come home.

As she watched, the boy emerged with his prize, the cat hanging with limp resignation in the grasp of the chubby fists that were knotted under its stomach.

Marcello brought the cat to his lips and covered the furry face with kisses, unaware of Geraldo’s trying to squirm away in aversion to all this affection.

“You are my best friend in the whole world,” Marcello announced to the cat.

It seemed like a sad statement for the little boy to make. Still, Gabriela, satisfied the cat was too old to make a strenuous effort to escape the attentions—or perhaps even secretly was enjoying them—looked at the gate.

Where on earth was the nanny?

Or was this another way the Prince took after his father? Adept at escaping the necessary strictures of being born royal?

Though not when it had mattered…

She stopped herself. She would not go there. She would not go to the secret place within her that had longed for this boy’s father, Prince Enrique, to rebel against being ordered to marry…

The little boy’s mother, Princess Amelia.

The fact the Princess was now dead made the thoughts seem even more like something that Gabriela must forbid herself.

It had been nearly a year since the Princess—and her baby—had died in childbirth. The palace’s official year of mourning would be over soon. Already, rumors swirled in the palace, on the island and beyond about whom Enrique would marry when—not if—he married again.

Some of the most famous women in the world were being bandied about, with the name of Princess Bettina rising most often.

Marcello suddenly realized he was not in the garden alone. His eyes fastened on her, and very slowly—and with one last kiss—he surrendered Geraldo to the ground, then marched toward her.

He stood before Gabriela, regarding her with solemn eyes. She could see the beautiful thick fringe of lash, so like his father’s.

“Hello,” she said. She greeted him in English. The island’s official language was one all its own, a dialect that was an archaic mixture of Spanish and Portuguese, but English had been the go-to for most of the population for decades.

“Hello,” he answered in perfect, unaccented English. “I’m Marcello. You may call me Cello.” He pronounced it Chello.

“I’m Gabriela,” she said.

He tilted his head at her and nodded. “I know,” he said, and then, “I know you.”

That was fitting because even though they had never met, Gabriela also had a sense of knowing him.

“You are Guido’s little girl,” he said.

For some reason, that simple statement brought stinging tears to her eyes. Because she was, still and always, her father’s little girl, and it made the fact that he lay inside that cottage, so desperately ill, feel like a pain she could not bear.

“I’ve come to see him,” the child announced.

“But shouldn’t someone be looking after you?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be with your nanny?”

He considered this for a moment, then leaned into her and announced in a rather loud whisper, “I don’t like Miss Penny.”

“Yes, well, even if you don’t like her, Cello, she’s probably very worried, and we need to let her know where you are.”

Her first impulse was to reach for her cell phone to alert someone to the whereabouts of the wayward Prince, but she remembered her device from New York had proved not compatible with the antiquated island system.

Marcello flicked a wrist, dismissive, and she honestly didn’t know if she was amused or irked that he had somehow reached the conclusion that the rules of mere mortals did not apply to him.

That was very different from Enrique, who, raised under Queen Katalina’s iron will, had carried the knowledge rules applied more to him. Even if he had defied them from time to time, he had always been aware he would pay a steep price for infractions.

Gabriela stood up and held out her hand to the child. “Let’s go ask my mother if Guido is up to a visitor today,” she suggested.

His hand slipped trustingly into hers, and she was stunned by the level of longing—and sadness—that sturdy, small hand in hers caused.

That hand represented the life she had been told, by a formidable Queen Katalina, that she could not have, that she should not even dare to dream of. And then she’d been exiled to America just after she turned eighteen, supposedly to get her marketing degree in service to her island home.

But really it had been to keep her and Prince Enrique, childhood friends—newly aware of each other in exciting and dangerous ways—apart.

Gabriela had done as she was ordered. There was really no other choice in a society stuck in ancient traditions and ruled by centuries-old laws as Isle Hermosa Mariposa was.

The Queen had sent her away, with a scholarship and an order to learn.

And so she had. She had worked hard at university, graduated with the highest honors, and then been asked to head a marketing department for the exclusive Royal House of Falcon Olive Oils, the most sought-after in the world.

And as she had done those things, she had watched from afar as Prince Enrique, the boy she had played with in the garden, the man she had first kissed, the person who had owned her heart since she was five years old, became betrothed to someone else.

Of his own station.

Of another powerful royal family, rulers of the neighboring Mediterranean island of Xavier.

The wedding, of course, despite the royal family’s normal aversion to publicity, had been celebrated worldwide. You were not able to turn on a television, be on the internet or see a newspaper without finding images of the two powerful royal houses being joined together by a marriage.

And so Gabriela had experienced layer upon layer of heartbreak. She had watched, along with the rest of the world, as her prince had given himself to another, committed his life to a gorgeous woman worthy of any fairy tale.

As the whole world had invested in happily-ever-after overdrive, had it only been Gabriela who could see?

Despite all the trappings—gowns and carriages, cakes and ceremonies, well-wishes from the most famous names in the world, wedding gifts of priceless jewels and astounding properties—the bride and groom did not look genuinely happy.

Their smiles were fixed and strained, their first kiss was perfunctory, the way they touched each other was stiff and formal.

Not that those things mattered in the worlds that Enrique and Amelia came from.

All that mattered in their realms was duty, and obedience to that duty.

When, a year later, the pregnancy had been announced, and then the baby born, Gabriela told herself she had to let it all go. She had hardened her broken heart, allowed scar tissue to strengthen the cracks around it.

It couldn’t hurt her any more.

What was one stupid heart in the way of the world?

She had moved on. She had recognized the foolish naivete of some dreams. She had met Timothy and seen that they were compatible. Eventually—and admittedly reluctantly, something he had called her on when he ended the relationship—she had agreed to marry him.

Nearly a year ago, Princess Amelia—and the second royal baby—had both died during a nightmarish childbirth.

And now Gabriela’s father was sick.

It was as if the universe was conspiring to bring her home.

But, she told herself firmly, not to fan long-ago and forbidden sparks of dreams back to life, but to douse them, to lay them to rest, once and for all.