Chapter Five #2
The space was, of course, less formal than the spaces seen by the public.
Amelia had, for a while, been able to assuage her great unhappiness at their arranged marriage by pouring herself into the renovation of their suite.
The result was an extraordinarily modern space within the ancient walls of the castle.
With its sleek lines and a sophisticated palette of neutrals—with the odd splash of color in an abstract canvas—it could have been an apartment in a penthouse in Los Angeles. It was tasteful, and beautiful.
And not the least welcoming, warm or cozy. It reminded Enrique of some of the very posh hotel presidential suites he had stayed in.
Why had he really not ever noticed that before?
Gabriela.
Without even trying, he could feel his perceptions of everything shifting. And he didn’t like it.
“We’ll ask Miss—uh—” He remembered Miss Penny had just resigned. Still, there was an entire staff of nannies, one of whom was coming toward them now.
“Caravanno,” he remembered her name.
“Your Highnesses,” she greeted them quietly, giving Marcello a warm smile, which he did not return.
Enrique was not unaware of his own desire to abscond on the responsibility of making the decision, and it bothered him. Still, he did not want to play the bad guy—to deepen already existing fissures—between him and his son.
Marcello’s brows dropped.
“Yes, Miss Caravanno will know,” Enrique said firmly.
She raised an eyebrow at them.
“We wanted to know about the appropriateness of a sword as a toy.”
“Oh,” she said, uneasily, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
His son gave him, not her, a withering look, and Enrique could not help but think how Gabriela had used distraction so masterfully.
“Isn’t it time for tea?” he asked.
“It is indeed. I have it all ready in the nursery,” Miss Caravanno said, holding out her hand to Marcello, who ignored it and marched by her with his chin in the air.
Much later, Enrique went into the nursery to tuck Marcello into bed and say good-night. Thankfully, after the distractions of this morning, his day had gotten back on track, filled with business meetings, phone calls and one charity event that had just ended. He was still in his formal tuxedo.
“How was the rest of your day with Miss Caravanno?” he asked, perching on the edge of the bed.
“I don’t like her. I don’t like any of them,” Marcello declared, pulling his sheets up around his chin. “Guido would know about the sword.”
His son was still on about the sword. And it was very likely true that Guido would have a good answer, but Enrique didn’t think he should undermine the authority of the nanny by revisiting the question.
He tried the distraction technique. “What was your favorite thing that you and Miss Caravanno did today?”
“Nothing,” he said darkly. And then the darkness suddenly left Marcello’s face, and a beautiful light went on. “I will have Guido’s little girl for my nanny!”
This suggestion was posed with utter confidence, in the same way his son had posed Gabriela climbing on Enrique’s shoulders as a solution for getting the cat. The result should serve as a warning about taking suggestions from his son.
Besides, after seeing Gabriela in a state of undress, Enrique was not sure he could ever think of her as a little girl again.
And secondly, he had just decided, because of that encounter, that he needed to avoid Gabriela, not invite her to join his personal household staff!
“That won’t work,” he said, firmly.
The happiness went from Marcello as if a needle had pierced the outer shell of a balloon. His face crumpled and he burst into tears. “I want her,” he sobbed.
“We can’t have everything we want.”
His son gave him a look that said, without words, he already knew that, thank you very much. Then he rolled over, putting his back on his father, and defiantly put his thumb in his mouth.
Enrique didn’t have the heart for a correction. “Good night, Marcello.”
No response. Enrique turned and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. He had sent the staff away, and he took off his jacket, loosened his tie, made himself a drink and wandered over to the window.
Over the garden wall, he could see lights on in the Olivera house.
It made him think of the predicament Marcello had put them in on the bed with Guido, refusing his father’s instructions, and of Gabriela coming to the rescue. She would know the answer to the sword question even better than Miss Caravanno or Guido. He knew she would.
He didn’t want to think about Marcello’s impossible suggestion! And yet, gazing at the lit-up cottage, his mind turned over the possibilities.
Having Gabriela as a nanny would be difficult and fraught with complexities. But now that the idea had been planted, Enrique was not sure he could think of a better person to coax some happiness back out of his son.
And in the end, wasn’t this what a good father did?
Put the well-being of his child ahead of his own?
Gabriela would be good for Marcello. Did anything, beyond that, matter?
Startled, he realized he had made the decision. Equally as startling, it was an impulsive decision, an unexpected turn of events, in a world where he relied heavily on complete order.
He debated how he should approach Gabriela, and decided it would be imperative that he kept things on a strictly business footing. Nothing but trouble could come from revisiting the bonds of old friendships.
Particularly now, after the unexpectedly sensual events of the morning with Gabriela were emblazoned on his brain, and he would probably wonder, for the rest of his life, whether she considered panties optional.
“Ouch!” Dr. Leon Ferreira said. Like many of the people of this close-knit island nation, Gabriela recognized the veterinarian from her childhood, a boy who had gone to school a few years ahead of her.
The cat writhed mightily, and the vet let go. Geraldo bolted away. Leon was wearing huge leather gloves, but Geraldo had managed to bite right through one.
He slipped it off and looked at the damage. “I think the large animals are less dangerous,” he decided.
She looked after Geraldo, who had planted himself in the middle of a clump of oregano, and was glaring at her with betrayed indignation.
And indignant he should be! He had escaped with his clump-ridden fur only partially shaved, so he was down to his dusty scalp in some areas, while black spikes of hair stood straight up in others.
“He looks like a mini-monster,” she said ruefully.
Leon laughed. He was an attractive man. No wedding band, though perhaps his work would make him remove rings. Still, she found herself not interested. At all. And not because of her recent breakup, either.
Had she been waiting, this morning, hopeful for a gate to squeak open, for a small escapee to find her? For his father to come looking?
“Should we catch him and finish?” she said, annoyed with the direction of her thoughts.
“I don’t want to seem like a sissy, but given the go-for-the-jugular look, I’m going to say no. On a professional note, let’s leave it. We’re both bleeding already, and I think we’ve stressed him enough for the day. At least we managed to get all his claws done.”
“I’ll get you some antiseptic,” Gabriela said, slipping off the pair of gloves Leon had provided her with.
“He got you pretty bad, too.”
“Yes, he did. Poor old guy. He had no idea that was for his own good.”
“Don’t worry about the antiseptic,” Leon said. “I’ll look after it when I get back to the stables.”
She stood up and brushed mud and grass off her shorts. “Thank you for coming.”
Leon stood up, too. “Gabriela—”
The gentle tone in his voice made her attention snap back to him.
Please don’t ask me out.
“He’s very old,” he said softly.
“Seventeen,” she said. “At least.”
The doctor nodded. “The clumping is a sign he can’t groom himself anymore. And the claws. Well, you saw the claws.”
Geraldo’s claws had splintered into dust, like rotten wood, when they had cut them.
“What are you saying?” she asked, though her falling heart told her she already knew. She would have preferred being asked out to this.
The vet looked at her gravely. “That the time is coming when you will have to make a decision.”
For some reason his statement, and the sympathy in it, felt as if it knocked the wind out of her.
Of course, she had known her cat was getting old. But somehow, that had never occurred to her.
Thankfully, the back gate opened and a young man slipped in. She was aware of how much she wanted it to be Marcello. It wasn’t, but it still allowed her to avert her attention from the vet and the terrible message he had just delivered.
“Are you Miss Olivera?” the young man asked.
“I am.”
“I’m Phillipe, from Prince Enrique’s office. I have a message for you.”
Once, she had known everyone who worked in the palace offices, and they had known her.
Gabriela stared down at the creamy white piece of paper Phillipe placed in her hand, the familiar House of Falcon crest subtly embossed letterhead.
The young man waited, expectantly, and she opened it. A thick sheet of paper unfolded in her hand and she scanned it, bemused.
She’d been summoned to the office of the Prince! The time was impossible. In an hour? She looked down at herself. She was an absolute mess.
And suddenly it all felt like too much for her. All the changes. Palace staff not knowing her, and her not knowing them. Her father’s illness, the vet giving her a warning about the cat’s longevity.
She thought of the last royal summons she had received, the one from the Queen, and all the years she had missed with both her father and her cat, because of this family, with their crests and impossibly thick stationery and regal summonses.
Enrique couldn’t just call the cottage phone if he needed to speak to her? He had to summon her, to remind her of yet another change in her life, another place she could never go back to, that was lost forever?
Gone were those sunny endless days from her past that they had spent together, unburdened by their different statuses in life.
She felt an insult in the piece of paper she held. Enrique was obviously and deliberately putting up the barriers of their stations between them by asking her to meet him so formally.
The way it used to be, if he had something he wanted to say to her, he would have come to her, crossed the path between the two homes without a thought.
Or flashed a light onto her bedroom window—one garden—and a whole world away.
Or maybe he would have picked up an old rotary-dial phone and called her, perhaps suggested a meeting at one of their old haunts.
But no, a summons. He was making it clear that none of the old existed between them anymore. Was he letting her know how totally inappropriate her final remark had been? Rather than being humbled by that possibility, it made her sense of herself rise up.
“Tell the Prince,” she said haughtily, raising her chin, “I will not be available in an hour.”
There. Hermosa Mariposa was her world, too, and he was not going to make all the rules in it. He was not going to do a full retreat into the kind of remoteness that people like him and his mother wore like shields.
Leaving both the men in shocked silence, she turned her back and walked, with what she could only hope was regal grace, into the humble cottage of her childhood.