Chapter Six
Almost the second Gabriela shut the cottage door, there was a tentative rap on it, reminding her that you could not shut something so flimsy as a door against a world pushing its complications at you.
Her father.
Her cat.
Her heart belonging to…
“Miss?”
She threw the door back open. “What?”
The young messenger took a startled step back from her.
“Might I tell Prince Enrique when you would be available?”
“I’ll be at his office at five p.m. He can call me if that’s unsuitable. I believe he has the number.”
The young messenger seemed to be considering how his commander would react to that news. “I will pass on your message,” he said uncomfortably.
She snapped the door shut again without saying thank you.
She turned to see her father and mother at the kitchen table, staring at her, open-mouthed and wide-eyed. They were both holding cards, a pegboard between them.
“What?” she asked them, in the very same tone she had used on the messenger.
They both quickly focused on their cards. She might have tried to soften the what by saying how nice it was to see her father up at the table, except that he seemed to be trying to hide a smirk from her.
“What?” she asked, again.
He glanced at her and smiled, all innocence. He showed her his hand.
“Twenty-four,” he said, but she was pretty sure that wasn’t what he’d been smirking about. But then Guido called her his little angel, in three different languages, which made her feel guilty for snapping at him, though not guilty enough to apologize.
Now that she had set the appointment, Gabriela took her time.
She took the traditional midday nap, then got up and showered.
She blew her hair dry, put on makeup and added a few bandages to her fresh Geraldo wounds.
She dug through the things she had brought home for an outfit that might be suitable for an audience with a prince.
What she needed was a power suit. Naturally, it had not even occurred to her to pack such an item for a trip to Isla Hermosa Mariposa.
She had to settle for wrinkle-free black slacks. She coupled them with a highly structured white linen shirt. The shirt was not wrinkle-free, she had to press it, and, of course, now her mother was smirking as if she was getting ready for a ball rather than answering a rather rude summons.
She put on the string of Hermosa Mariposa pearls her father had gotten her for her sixteenth birthday. At the time, his gift had seemed impossibly extravagant, but the rare and expensive pearls had elevated many an outfit to the next level of chic.
Thankfully, she had packed a single pair of high heels.
The gleaming black stilettos took Gabriela from all business to ever so subtly—but powerfully—sexy.
As she looked at herself in the mirror, she was pleased with what she saw.
A confident woman, not the least put out to be summoned by a prince, not the least hesitant to turn the tables on him and answer his summons on her own terms. Not the least like the little peasant girl that had been ordered to the palace—and away from her beloved home—so many years ago.
Taking one final deep breath, and smoothing her blouse unnecessarily, she stepped out the cottage door and through the gate toward the palace.
Of course, she had crossed this pathway a zillion times as a child, going to visit her mother in the kitchen, playing hide-and-seek in the back passageways with the Prince.
Since the summons had been official, she did not go through the back door, but walked an open-air corridor around the palace to the side entrance that was generally used for royal business.
The palace commissionaire was at a desk at this door, and it was still Angelo Madero.
Most of the palace staff, like her parents, held positions that had been in their families for generations.
Their social circles consisted of each other, and the Maderos had been her mother and father’s best friends. Angelo was her godfather.
He leaped from behind his desk and greeted her by holding her shoulders, and scanning her face, then kissing both her cheeks.
“Beautiful!” he decided. “Oh, it makes an old man’s heart happy to see an island daughter come home. I wish the circumstances were better. How is Guido today?”
“He seems a little better,” she answered truthfully. “He had a good laugh yesterday when our cat got stuck up in a tree and I had to rescue it.” She did not offer the detail that she had not been alone in her rescue.
“Ah, laughter,” Angelo said. “Such good medicine. We have not had enough of it here.”
It reminded Gabriela that the whole palace was still under the shroud of the death of the two princesses, Amelia and her unborn child.
“The Prince has asked to see me,” she said.
“Yes, yes, I have it written here. I’ll take you.”
Which was good, because after her long absence, she had no idea where Enrique’s office would be. Of course, he had not had an office when they had been teenagers.
If Angelo thought the summons was odd, after practicing generations of decorum and navigating royal protocols, he never let on. And so, they went through the palace, with Angelo filling her in amicably about his children and his grandsons.
She was glad for his chatter, for even though she had grown up in the shadow of the palace, she had rarely found herself in its formal spaces.
The grandness—the priceless paintings, the hand-knotted carpets, the crystal-dripping chandeliers, the centuries-old furniture—was all stunningly gorgeous, of course, but more than a little intimidating. The confidence her outfit had given her could only go so far!
But she realized she could not imagine laughter in these spaces, and it made her feel faintly sorry for Enrique, but more so for Marcello. No wonder both princes had found their way to the cottage!
Angelo led her up the grand staircase and down a hallway, then knocked on a door, and opened it for her. She stepped into Enrique’s office.
In the course of her work, she was well accustomed to the opulence of very rich men’s office spaces.
In fact, Enrique’s office space was toned down compared with some of those that Gabriela had been in. Still, the space was subtly elegant, and very masculine. There was a meticulous and precise order to his desk; nothing was out of place, a man in control of his world.
In the garden yesterday, she had still caught a glimpse of the boy he had once been. But here, his space spoke of a man of confidence, power and authority.
She allowed herself to look at him. Ah, yes, that professional remoteness was firmly in place.
Still, everything about him was a perfect fit for his office.
He was impeccably and beautifully groomed, not a hair out of place, freshly shaven.
His silk tie was gorgeous, as were the gold cuff links.
He had on a crisp white linen shirt, not unlike her own, though it had probably cost thousands of dollars.
And it had not been pressed by him, of course! He probably didn’t even shave himself!
He rose to his feet. “Thank you for coming. Would you like to sit?”
Gabriela had planned to be completely professional, as versed in and as accepting of strict royal protocols as anyone who had grown up in close proximity to a royal family should be.
Instead, she found herself ignoring his invitation to sit. She cocked her head at him, letting the silence draw out between them, until she saw him shift a little uncomfortably.
“A summons, Your Highness? I could hardly not come, could I?”
“Though not at the appointed time,” he said, and something twitched around his lips. Annoyance?
Or amusement?
And then he disarmed her, when she most needed to be armed.
“How is Guido today?”
“Beating my mother at cribbage.”
She had a sudden unwanted memory of her family teaching Enrique to play that very game on a rainy day around their kitchen table.
“She’s letting him win,” he said, his smile full of fond remembrance. “No one beats Maria at crib.”
But then, a shadow crossed his face as it occurred to him why Maria would be letting Guido win.
“Gabriela, what’s wrong with him?”
His concern was so genuine. How could she not be disarmed by him? Still, she needed to keep her defenses strongly in place.
But she did sink into the chair in front of his desk. But he did not sit down.
“I don’t know for sure,” she admitted. “I hoped maybe you knew. I’ve been assuming cancer, but neither he nor my mother has said that word.”
As if by not saying it, they could hold back the truth of his new thinness, the grayish tinge to his skin, the weariness that settled around him like a cloak.
“I’ve tried to persuade him to go off island,” Enrique confided in her. “I can access some of the best care in the world, but he won’t hear of it.”
“Would it involve flying?” she asked, dryly.
“It would.”
Together they said, “It’s unnatural,” and shared a wry laugh. A little more of the chinking in the defensive barrier she had erected between them fell away.
“I told him I’d bring experts here, if he didn’t want to fly. Same answer.”
“Nature had been my father’s church for his entire life,” she said. “It would be an affront to him to suggest it has made a mistake.”
“I know,” he said softly. “It is hard not to admire a man who will stand by his beliefs even when his own life is at stake.”
“I agree. Thank you for trying.”
“Of course.” He surveyed her for a moment, and then, his gaze fell to her sleeve and he frowned.
“Are you bleeding?” he asked.
She glanced down. Sure enough, one of her scratches was bleeding through the plaster she’d applied. It was her best shirt! She wanted to flee the room and put club soda on it.
Or maybe the reason she wanted to flee the room had nothing to do with her shirt. It was the weakness that his genuine care for Guido had caused.
Her sensation of weakness—when she so desperately needed to be strong—only intensified as Enrique came around his desk and stood before her, then leaned over her arm.
He gently pushed up the cuff of her shirt, his touch cool and blistering at the very same time.
He laid a finger on the bandage with the blood seeping out the edges.
“That’s nasty,” he said. “That didn’t happen yesterday, did it?”
“No.”
She did not miss his look of relief that he might have missed an injury on his watch. Another chunk of chinking fell out of her defensive wall at his protectiveness.
“How did you do that?”
“Leon—Dr. Ferreira—came over to help me with Geraldo. Geraldo objected.”
He lowered her sleeve and his frown deepened. “Why were you holding the cat? Why didn’t you call for an assistant?”
There! That was exactly what was needed as she was nearly melting under the warmth of his touch, his proximity and his concern for her and her family.
“Your Royal Highness,” she said with deliberate stiffness, “we don’t all have assistants at our disposal.”
“Dr. Ferreira should have brought one with him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He was coming to help with a small cat, not to deal with a tiger.” She caught the stunned look on his face. She suspected it had been a long time since someone had told him not to be ridiculous. “Do you have any club soda?”
“Can that be used as a disinfectant? I’ll send for some.”
She didn’t bother to tell him she was more anxious to save her blouse than to stave off possible infection. He didn’t have a bar in his office. For some inexplicable reason, she liked that. She really didn’t want to like anything else about him!
“Of course you can send for club soda,” she said coolly. “Perhaps a glass of 1959 Dom Perignon at the same time?”
He took a step back from her, but did not go back around his desk, nor make any effort to order a club soda. Instead he leaned his backside on the desk, crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes at her.
He was really impossibly good-looking when he did that!
“You seem a little angry,” he noted after a moment.
“An official summons when you wanted to see me?” she said. “Really, Enrique? You couldn’t just pop by the cottage? Or pick up a phone like everyone else?”