Chapter Two
With that sturdy little hand in hers, the garden space that had felt like a sanctuary just moments ago, that place that was as much a longing as a reality—home—suddenly felt like the most dangerous place of all.
Gabriela and Marcello moved from the brightness of the garden and through the Dutch door—the top portion open—directly into the kitchen. The cottage was constructed of thick whitewashed stone and so the interior was dark and cool compared with outside.
“Maria!” Marcello let go of Gabriela’s hand and flew across the cool tiles of the kitchen floor into her mother’s embrace.
“Your Highness,” her mother said, contradicting the formality of the title by covering the little upturned face with as many kisses as Marcello had bestowed on the cat, “where on earth is Miss Penny?”
He shrugged.
“I’ve come to see Guido.”
Maria and Gabriela exchanged a look over the child’s head. Would Marcello be shocked by the swift changes illness was bringing in Guido? Would it be best to protect him? Was Guido up to a visit?
But Marcello broke free from Maria’s embrace, and familiar with the cottage, just as his father had once been, he raced down the hall and threw open the sickroom door.
“Guido! Cello is here!”
“Where is his nanny?” Gabriela asked.
Maria shrugged, distracted, sad. She picked up the old wall phone receiver and said something into it—no doubt alerting the palace to the whereabouts of their missing prince—and then she turned back to the stove.
The aroma of soup—her father’s favorite—filled the space and increased Gabriela’s awareness of how much she had missed home.
She followed Marcello down the hallway and arrived at the bedroom just in time to see Marcello launch himself onto the solid, antique bed, where her father was sitting up against pillows, and into his arms. Guido’s face was alight as Marcello twined his arms around his neck and pulled himself deep against the man.
And then he was sobbing, as Guido patted his back.
“Are you going to die? Just like my mommy?” he wailed. “Don’t die, Guido! Don’t!”
He was saying out loud the words that Gabriela wanted to say, too, and with the same amount of feeling.
She could feel the tears she had been holding in since her arrival back on the island spill down her cheeks.
She scrubbed them quickly away with the back of her hand, not wanting to upset the little Prince—or her father—any further.
But she had not hidden her sadness from her father, who looked at her and smiled softly. He patted the bed on the other side of him, and she went to it and sank down beside him and the little boy.
“Listen,” her father said, “both of you. I will tell you the story of an olive tree.”
And so he did. He told them the story of how each tree was born, and eventually each tree would die, but when it died it would become part of the soil that nurtured the trees, born of its seeds.
He talked of how each of the trees was born with new life inside it already, and that would mean it never really died; in fact, it multiplied.
“And it is the same,” he said quietly, “with all living things. The cycles of life have sadness in them, but in the end, it is what is most beautiful that remains.”
Both she and Marcello were calmed by him, the little boy nestled into his chest, sucking lustily on his thumb, and she in the crook under his shoulder, her eyes closed, feeling her father’s heart beating still, and being so grateful for one more moment of that steady thud being in her world.
She had a sudden sensation of being watched that made her open her eyes again.
Prince Enrique was standing in the doorway.
Gabriela drank him in, thirsty, as if she had dragged herself across a desert and caught sight of water.
She had seen photos of him, of course, since she had left the island, but photos did not do justice to reality.
Enrique now, as always, radiated presence. He did so even though he was, at the moment, dressed very casually, in pressed khakis and a navy blue polo shirt, the royal emblem ever so subtly emblazoned over his right breast.
Gabriela knew, from the photos she had seen, that his curls had long since become a thing of the past. His hair was very short-cropped, obviously an effort to keep those wayward loops at bay. Still, it was shiny and sleek, as black as a raven’s wing.
The short hairstyle drew attention to the chiseled perfection of his features, the broad forehead, the slash of his dark brows, the fringe of his lashes and, of course, the amazing melted dark chocolate of his eyes.
He had high cheekbones and a perfect nose, full lips, a faintly clefted chin.
All that, coupled with the natural tones of his skin kissed golden by his Mediterranean heritage, made him unfairly gorgeous, like a film star or a male model.
His looks, when taken together with his status as a real prince, had made him a global phenomenon. Media clamored for his pictures, young women lined streets hoping for a glimpse of their heartthrob, the internet lit up with excitement at any news of him.
Even as a young man, he had disliked the celebrity status he could do nothing about.
He was largely protected on this island, but as soon as he set foot off it, he was besieged.
Early in his life, the worldwide media had discovered the marketability of a real-life prince who also happened to be utterly gorgeous.
The royal family was constantly seeking the balance between how celebrity helped them promote Hermosa Mariposa and its products and allowing the royals to have some semblance of privacy.
Still, Prince Enrique was one of the most recognizable and sought-after celebrities in the world.
Added to his natural good looks was an incredible physical presence. He stood just a hair over six feet tall, was broad at his shoulders, deep through his chest and narrow at his waist. Even in trousers, the strength and length of his legs were evident.
His wedding had been the most-watched event of the decade, easily surpassing royal happenings in more well-known countries.
Though the island was in a unique position to protect his privacy, it found the balance it needed to capitalize also on his popularity so its products remained in the public eye.
Carefully controlled photos and news items about the Prince, the Princess and then Marcello were released to a world hungry for details.
Gabriela had been as hungry as anyone else for details of him.
But she also saw things that no one else would see in those artistic shots released by the palace.
Something remote in Enrique’s eyes, even when he was smiling down at his wife and his baby. Some rigidity in Amelia’s body language as she turned ever so slightly away from her husband, instead of toward him.
Still, the palace had managed to maintain the illusion of the fairy tale that the world wanted so badly.
Even so, Gabriela was aware that, no matter the circumstances of his marriage, Enrique’s character was such that he would have given it his all, he would have been steadfast in his loyalty to his partner, that his grief for both Amelia and the daughter he had never met would have been overwhelming and real.
He’d be devastated and angry that now, with Amelia gone, a new industry was springing up around the Prince: bereaved husband, single dad.
The interest in him was more lascivious—and intrusive—than it had ever been.
Enrique, excused by his year of mourning, now rarely left the island.
Photos of both he and his son were extraordinarily rare.
Which meant Gabriela had not seen him—not even in a photograph—for a long time.
Would it have helped if she had? She doubted it. She doubted if anything could prepare a woman for the impact of Enrique in the flesh.
And that was probably doubly true of a woman who had loved him.
And not the public image of him.
The real him.
Just as he stood before her now, she saw him as she had always seen him.
Stripped of his royalty and as a man. A spectacular man, no doubt, but beyond that, beyond the compelling nature of his appearance, she saw a man of deep complexities, now layered with sorrow for a lost wife and child, and a helpless love for his son.
It occurred to Gabriela that what Timothy had implied he always knew—you aren’t completely in this, it’s as if part of you is not here—had truth in it.
Her heart had never received the memo that loving Prince Enrique Falcon was like standing outside the wall of a fortress that could not be penetrated, that could not be breached.
To try would be to end up bloodied and beaten, as she already well knew.
And yet her heart rose at the sight of him, wanting desperately to break through the new remoteness in his eyes, the walls around him. Her heart was entirely indifferent to all the lessons that had broken it the first time.
But she was not the same young woman, still in her teens, who had left this island.
She had a new maturity, and new sophistication of thought, and Gabriela knew she had to use every tool she had developed over her years away to fight her instinctive attraction to Enrique, her heart’s cry that somehow he formed part of the equation that made this place home. But more, that made her complete.
Enrique stood in the thick doorframe of the small cottage he was so familiar with. In the days of his boyhood, he had torn through this small space as if it was his own. He had felt things with the Oliveras that he had never experienced with his own family.
Family being his mother, the Queen. His father had died in a horseback riding accident when he was a baby.
So maybe it had been the masculine influence of Guido that had drawn him, as a fatherless little boy, to this house, to this man whom he had trailed through the olive groves, over and over again.
But no, he was certain, especially looking at the three people on that bed now, that it had been more.
It had been the warmth in that kitchen. The good smells. The teasing between Maria and Guido, their utter and undisguised delight in Gabriela, and in him.
In this house, he had come to know what the bonds of family were. In these walls Enrique had encountered, for the first time, the warmth, the laughter, the closeness of people who loved one another, deeply and unconditionally.
In this house he had experienced a family, people who saw each other, not through the lens of their usefulness, their role, their duty, their lineage, but through the window of their hearts.
Since the death of his wife, Enrique had seen his son, Marcello, drawn to the same things in this cottage and in the olive groves that Enrique had once experienced himself.
His young son was inserting himself into Guido and Maria’s lives like a puppy who had been neglected and finally found affection. Marcello was drawn to this place like a magnet to steel.
The irony that it was this humble space, and not the grand castle they lived in, that nurtured a sense of true enchantment was not lost on Enrique.
Looking at those three people, unselfconsciously cuddled together on the bed, the Prince tasted the bitterness of his failure.
He had vowed his son would know a less rigid upbringing than he had known himself. He had vowed his son would feel loved.
While Amelia had lived, Marcello had flourished under the brilliant light of his mother’s love.
It was after her death that Enrique had to face the truth that he had somehow been excluded, that his son regarded him as outside the circle of that love, and woefully unqualified to give him what he obviously craved now, more than ever.
Enrique stood in the irony of the fact he was a man who looked to the entire world as if he had everything.
And yet all his power, all his wealth, all his influence—the station in life that had cost him so much personally—had been worthless in the face of preventing the tragedy that had taken his wife and his unborn daughter.
It seemed to have no value at all in developing the bond he wanted with his son.
Enrique allowed himself, finally, to look away from his son and toward Gabriela.
He had been steeling himself for the moment, but once again he faced his own powerlessness.
Because he felt his heart drop into an endless abyss, one that felt as if it had no bottom. Maybe it even stopped beating altogether.