Chapter Five
As Enrique walked the well-worn Mediterranean cobble pathway that began outside the Oliveras’ gate and led to the back garden of the palace, he contemplated Gabriela, and her last statement.
His whole body had felt as if it was humming with awareness of her, even before she had said that.
It all was a stark reminder she was not the girl she had once been. Her statement, the loveliness of her bra, told him her years away from this island had made her more sophisticated. Bolder.
It made her—a person he had known his entire life—feel a bit like a stranger, as if there was an exotic, secret side to her that she had never revealed to him.
But once that had occurred, could you ever not see it again? He felt the danger of his intrigue with her.
As soon as that gate had closed behind them, he gave Marcello a stern lecture about escaping from his nanny, but even as he had given it, his heart wasn’t in it.
He was grateful that, in all the world, there was not a safer place than this island. The palace, and the grounds on which the Olivera cottage sat, were further protected by an ancient stone wall that a five-year-old had no hope of scaling.
He was reminded that he, himself, at the same age Marcello was now, had begun to escape to the warmth of the Olivera cottage.
Because of the safety on the grounds, he recalled his own escapes had been treated with sternness, but there had been no mistaking a certain tolerance ran beneath the obligatory reprimands.
Marcello skipped ahead of him, swinging an imaginary sword, but abandoning it to stop, get down on his haunches and inspect an interesting bug or stone or blade of grass.
Enrique was aware of wishing his son would share some of his observations with him, but no, every time he drew close, Marcello would take up his imaginary sword, again, and run ahead.
Still, there was some happiness around his son, and he could feel the relief of that. Marcello had become so somber since his mother’s death.
Enrique contemplated what had just taken place in the Olivera garden, and it was not the resignation of the nanny that was foremost in his thoughts!
No, his mind went to that impulsive moment he had crouched down, and Gabriela had stepped toward him, and straddled his shoulders, the moment his hands had closed around the silky skin on her shins, the way her heat had radiated onto his neck…
It had been crazy, of course, to lift Gabriela up. It had been pure madness. Why had he given any credence, at all, to a five-year-old’s suggestion?
It was simple, really.
He had wanted to make his son happy.
How had something so simple become so complicated?
Not just the sudden physical contact between him and Gabriela, but that startling moment afterward, when he had found himself under her skirt, and then, worse yet, when he had freed her from her blouse—and the cat—to leave her to stand there exposed.
Utterly gorgeous, the blush in her cheeks matching the blush of that exquisitely feminine piece of fabric that had covered her.
Enrique could not unsee that. He could not unfeel the sensation of her strong legs bracketing his neck.
He could not unhear, It’s a good thing I put on panties this morning. He forbade himself to go down that road, though his wayward thoughts blithely ignored his command. Did that mean there were mornings—
Stop, he ordered himself. I mean it.
But still his thoughts, uncharacteristically undisciplined, like a puppy eager to please, but easily distracted, continued to drift back to the encounter in the garden.
There was no denying it was a new Gabriela, light-years removed from the young girl he had grown up with, and shared so many memories of. In warm weather—which was nearly always here on the island—they had lived in bathing suits. Was that much different from what he had just seen?
Yes.
Nothing could have prepared the Prince for how much Gabriela had changed since those long-ago summers, and he had seen, from the sudden heat in her eyes, that so had he.
They’d been children.
And now they were grown-ups. He reminded himself, sternly, that aside from growing up with Gabriela in her bathing suit, as an adult, he had been on some of the most beautiful private beaches in the world and onboard yachts where scantily clad women were the norm.
Why had he been, well, so shocked? So aware?
It was the unexpectedness, he assured himself, it was the fact that the situation was so out of context, that had caused such a deep visceral reaction on his part.
A warning, he told himself firmly, that their worlds had been separated for a long time.
He did not like his thoughts acting like an unruly puppy, running amok.
His position in life required great composure and great control.
To react in such a primal way to Gabriela was, as his mother would point out, unbecoming to his station.
He was going to have to avoid his childhood friend. It was that simple. Until he remembered his vow to Guido, which made it more complicated.
The encounter this morning had shown him his vow would have to be kept at arm’s length. Hopefully, he would not have to keep that vow for a long, long time. He felt his heart clench at the thought of losing Guido.
At the thought of Gabriela losing her father.
And of Marcello facing yet another loss.
There was a shortcut through a hedge that would bring the princes, father and son, to a courtyard off the set of doors that led into Enrique’s ground-floor bedroom, but he didn’t think it was a good idea to show his already wayward son yet another route to the Olivera cottage.
When he cast a look at that secret passageway, he saw it was now almost completely grown over, anyway.
Instead, they crossed the formal back garden of the palace.
It was shaded by huge palm trees and resplendent in colors and scents of shrubs and flower beds.
The gardens spread out like spokes from a wheel around a central fountain that gurgled pleasantly.
It was incredibly opulent, so very different from the cottage garden they had just left.
The palace, Casa del Falcon, was not like the intimidating stone fortresses of European royalty.
Constructed over five hundred years ago out of a very rare local marble—brilliant white shot through with subtle veins of rose—its exterior lines were sweeping, and hinted of the soaring ceilings, held up with huge dark beams, within.
The windows, with the exception of his own main-floor quarters, had no glass, to better invite ocean fresh breezes into the interior, already cool because of the thickness of the walls.
There were heavy wooden shutters that could be closed in event of storms. Centuries-old flowering vines climbed the walls and framed the windows, their scent perfuming the interior.
Many of the corridors were open-air, as was the one they entered now, through a pillared, vine-covered archway.
If they went right, it would lead to the kitchen and utility areas. But they went left, toward the public areas of the castle. The princes ended up in the massive, breeze-swept foyer, with doors off it open to the grand salon, the formal banquet room, the ballroom.
On the far wall, a matched pair of curving marble staircases bracketed the foyer. The right staircase led to more rooms that were for official use: the Queen’s study and his own, a library and staff offices. The hallway off the left of the upper staircase went to guest suites.
Tastefully hidden behind a heavy antique carved wooden panel was the entrance to the elevator that went to the third floor, where the smaller of two personal suites was located.
Queen Katalina had taken that one when he and Amelia had married, giving him the larger ground-floor unit with its nursery wing.
He had been in some of the most beautiful spaces in the entire world, but none had ever compared to his magnificent home. And yet, still, for all that it was inordinately beautiful, it could never achieve the coziness—the feeling—of the small cottage they had just left.
In the hallway on their way to their quarters, Marcello paused and squinted up at a framed sword, sheathed, that hung on the wall, beside a tapestry and framed portraits of their ancestors. The sword’s jeweled hilt glinted in the sun that poured into the space.
“Can I have a sword?”
“No.”
It should have been a simple question, and a simple answer, but nothing, Enrique had discovered about the world of parenting, was ever simple.
“I meant a toy one,” Marcello said.
Was a toy sword acceptable? Little boys played with little-boy things. But toy guns were long since seen as politically incorrect. Where did a sword fall on that continuum of correctness?
Better to play it safe. He had done enough risky things today in service of his son’s happiness.
“No,” Enrique said, hesitating a moment too long, as they continued down the wide hallway to their personal wing.
His son, the only one in his world who would dare to question him, gave him a look Enrique could only interpret as challenging.
“You have a sword,” Marcello pointed out, pouncing on his father’s hesitation.
His son, sadly, had seen his father in full formal dress uniform only once. At his mother’s funeral.
“Yes, it’s ceremonial. It’s not a toy.”
“But there could be a toy one,” Marcello insisted, as they proceeded down the wide marble-floored hallway to the double doors to their quarters.
Enrique opened the door.