Chapter Seven
The prince looked at Gabriela, and though he was plainly exasperated, he proceeded carefully. “Given the, er, incident, yesterday, I thought you might not appreciate me being overly familiar.”
“Oh,” she said. “When you sent the summons you were being considerate. I see. How nice.”
“Well, yes, so I hoped. Plus, I wanted to discuss a proposition with you and I thought we should keep any arrangement we came to on a professional level.”
“A proposition?” she echoed, caught off guard.
“Yes, a business proposition. As you witnessed yesterday, Miss Penny has suddenly resigned. I watched you with Marcello yesterday. He likes you. You like him. Of course, the remuneration will be very generous, and you will immediately be assigned as his primary caregiver.”
Will. Immediately be assigned.
As if all of this was already decided. As if she had no choice.
“My life,” she said icily, “beyond servicing the royal family’s needs is of no consequence at all, is it?”
“I don’t understand.”
She didn’t even mention that she had a degree in marketing and had been steadily climbing the ranks of the corporate ladder.
She loved her job! She’d been given a leave of absence from her position in New York, but she had no doubt she would return there eventually when Guido’s situation resolved, and she had ascertained her mother would be okay.
What would the point be of staying here when the thing she wanted the most from this island—her very own prince—was an unrealistic fairy tale.
And here was that very prince presuming she’d give up her very satisfying life on his whim, to be a nanny, a field she had absolutely no qualifications in?
Even as some weak part of her actually longed to be with Marcello. But what if that longing was really about being with him? Prince Enrique? The hopeless love from her past?
No, this door had to be shut, quickly, firmly, irrevocably.
“This is eerily like the last time I was summoned,” she said. “Now, as then, it’s not an offer, it’s an order.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” There was a certain edginess in his own voice now, too.
And she liked it. She liked that she was getting under his skin.
“Don’t you? Don’t you know your mother, Queen Katalina, summoned me here the day I finished high school?”
The expression on his face said he really had not known this.
“Yes, I was offered a scholarship, at a fine university in America. And then, when I graduated, I was offered a position with the Royal House of Falcon’s head office in New York City.
But they weren’t really offers. They were orders.
I was ordered by your mother to leave this island and I was never invited back. ”
Prince Enrique looked genuinely stunned by this information.
“And because of that,” she finished, softly, “I have missed the last years of my father’s life.”
“Gabriela—”
“And now Leon has warned me I should prepare for the worst with Geraldo, too. I’ve had that cat since I was nine years old. My father found him in the olive grove when he was so tiny. He gave him to me.”
“Gabriela—”
“So, I’ve missed the last years of my cat’s life, too.”
“Gabriela—”
She held up her hand to stop him, but to stop herself, too, from leaning toward the comfort she heard in his voice, to stay strong. There was strength in anger.
“So,” she said, springing from her chair and whirling toward the door, “you can take your offer and shove it right up your Royal Highness.”
She honestly did not know whether she was appalled or pleased at her uncharacteristic punchiness!
Prince Enrique stared at the empty place where Gabriela had sat, totally flummoxed. He’d been wrong that Marcello was the only one who dared to say no to him!
In the space of a few minutes, Gabriela had told him he was ridiculous, and now this. Had she really told him to shove his offer?
In no uncertain terms, actually.
She was also on a first-name basis with the vet, which should be of no importance at all, and yet it needled him, in a way he couldn’t quite define.
Enrique took a deep, steadying breath. He contemplated his mother’s interference in his life.
It certainly explained Gabriela’s radio silence when he’d tried to contact her.
He felt a rare, burning rush of resentment, not just at his mother, but at a life that was mapped out, and exploring beyond the designated boundaries of that map was thwarted both secretively and openly.
He was reminded, with an ache, what Gabriela had been to him: his breath of fresh air, his intoxicating brush with freedom.
She had been the one person in his world who had never seemed intimidated by his status, who had always spoken her truth to him, who had always allowed him to be himself in a world that required him to play roles.
He went back around his desk and sank into the chair. It was so good that she had said no. His heart was racing like crazy, as if he had just survived a hurricane. Or a wildfire. Or a storm at sea. Or all three.
He realized, absurdly, when she had sprung to her feet and stood inches away from him, the air around her crackling with her indignation, he had sensed the passion between them. Had he actually considered stepping toward her and claiming her lips with his own?
Of course he hadn’t!
Well, all right, maybe for one heated second, he had felt the raw pull of an essential force between them.
That pull had been there, he remembered, the last time he had seen her, too. Almost a decade ago, and yet his memories were as fresh as if his first—and only—taste of her lips had happened yesterday.
He’d been home from his private school in Switzerland on a spring break.
He’d met her in the garden on the eve of his return to school.
There had been something in the air between them since the day he’d arrived home.
Not new, exactly; it had been bubbling beneath the surface since they had both hit puberty.
An awareness, an almost electrical tingle, an aching hunger to know more, to explore brand-new territories.
They had never talked about it.
Neither of them had ever mentioned it.
But there it was, in the accidental touching of hands, in lingering gazes, in the ways they moved around each other.
There it was when they swam together in the turquoise waters of the Bay of Butterflies, sensing each other’s youth and strength and beauty in brand-new ways.
Resisting. Resisting. Resisting.
Like an elastic band pulled tighter and tighter and tighter.
Until—SNAP.
They had parted ways, that final day before he had to go back to Switzerland, but he’d been restless that night. Apparently so had she. He’d used the childish signal between them, a flashlight turned on and off directed at her window. The answering signal had come from the Olivera garden.
He’d gone to her, and they had sat on the wall in a darkened corner of the garden, the scent of herbs and olive flowers heavy in the warm night air around them.
He had taken her hand, oh, so tentatively. He had turned it over, and kissed her palm.
She had turned to look at him, her face uplifted, painted in moonlight, her eyes—those incredible green and gold and brown eyes—luminous with need.
She had leaned toward him, and he toward her.
The elastic band stretching.
Snap.
Their lips had connected.
Did a man ever forget the tender awkwardness of a first kiss? The joyousness of it? The door to new and enticing worlds squeaking open? A door that could never be shut once it had been opened?
To this day—right now—he could remember, with aching melancholy, the sweet taste of her lips, her openness to him, the trust between them. Kissing her had felt like the most natural step in the world, an evolution of everything they had been to each other forever.
Kissing her had felt as if the very stars danced in the sky, celebrating all that was meant to be, coming to fruition, a universal force that would not be denied.
Maybe that was why he’d felt a little prick of—What? Jealousy?—when she had casually mentioned the palace veterinarian by his first name.
Now, of course, he could see how hopelessly naive he had been, how blinded he had been to the realities of his life.
And tonight, she had revealed to him the realities of hers.
Had his mother caught wind of that innocent garden tryst? Or had what had been growing between them been obvious to absolutely everyone who had stood on the perimeter of what was unfolding?
He digested the fact his mother had sent Gabriela away, and he digested the fact that she had not seen her leaving as her own choice.
No wonder, he thought, not without sadness, she had never answered his pleas to have contact with him.
And no wonder she did not want to work for him now.
Enrique was seething from the Queen’s intervention. The rawness of his emotion would not be a good place to confront her from, and yet he knew he could not allow this to pass unaddressed. But he would have to choose the time and place of that battle very carefully.
Gabriela was absolutely fuming as she crossed back over to the cottage. A nanny! Just give up her life…
She was stopped by the scent of smoke as she entered the Olivera garden. She saw her father sitting quietly on the stone bench, puffing contentedly on his pipe, stroking Geraldo, who was on his lap.
She crossed the garden and sat beside him. The cat shot her a baleful look, got up and leaped off Guido’s lap and onto the ground. With one last look, loaded with the accusation of betrayal, the poor partially shaven cat stomped off into the shrub bed.
“You’re not supposed to be doing that,” she told her father, mildly.
He took a long and unrepentant pull on the pipe. “An old man takes his pleasure where he can find it. Don’t tell your mother.”
“All right.”
The silence was comfortable between them. She felt wrapped in the cocoon of the familiar scent of his pipe.
“Papa, what’s wrong with you?”
“How very insulting,” he said, teasing. “There is nothing wrong with me.”
“I meant your health.”
“And still my answer is the same. The laws of nature are immutable. A man is born, he lives, he dies.”
She sighed. “Prince Enrique said he has offered you some of the best medical help in the world.”
He made a scoffing sound. “What could be better medicine than to be in my own home, surrounded by all that I love?”
How could you argue with that? It didn’t seem to be working, that was how!
“Is that what he wanted?” Guido asked, his voice now tinged with amusement. “To let you know he can be in charge of my destiny?”
“Actually, it seems to be my destiny he wants to be in charge of.”
“Oh? How so?”
“He wanted me to look after Marcello.”
“Ah,” he said, drawing in a deep breath, content. “I’m glad. They need you.”
“Oh, Papa, I said no.”
“Why?”
She slid her father a look. “You don’t want the Prince to be in charge of your destiny, but you want me to turn mine over to him?”
“It’s not the same,” he said stubbornly. “Why did you say no?”
“All those years in university, and building my career, to drop everything because the Prince thinks I would make a good nanny?”
He was silent for a long time, and when he spoke, there was faint reproach in his voice. “You think it’s a menial job?”
“I guess,” she admitted uncomfortably.
“Our family has never done that,” he chided her softly.
“We have never considered one job more or less important than the other. We have always done what is given to us with honor and integrity. That is what elevates us in life. Not the job we do, but the spirit we do it with. Besides, there could never be anything menial about playing an important role in the life of a child.”
“I can’t, Papa,” she whispered.
Guido sighed heavily. “I know how you feel about him,” he said softly. “I’ve always known.”
There was no point in protesting the truth of what her father was saying.
“It’s all the more reason to say no.”
“I don’t see it that way,” Guido said. “You are worried about your own heartache, but Enrique needs help. What would he know about being a father? He’s never had one.
And that poor little boy, my Cello. He doesn’t have any friends.
His mother was lonely here. She didn’t teach him about friendship.
She smothered him with neediness masked as love. ”
How did her father, a humble keeper of olive groves, know these things about human nature and its frailties?
Because it was exactly as he said. He had used every opportunity given to him to become a better human being, wiser, kinder, more compassionate.
Gabriela wondered how she was going to survive without him as the constant in her life, the compass, the steady source of radiant light.
“Think of the child,” Guido said. “When love asks something of you, the proper answer is never what is in it for me? The proper answer is never will I be hurt?”
“What is the proper answer?” she asked him, through tears.
He took her hand and squeezed it. “The proper answer is, love, how may I serve you?”
And then he patted her leg, snuffed out the pipe and hid it under the bench, and got up and went to the house.
Geraldo detached himself from some shadow, and followed her father, followed the trail of love he left in his wake as if it were scented with catnip.
Guido paused in the doorway, leaned over and scratched Geraldo behind his ears, and then went in the door, leaving the cat outside.
The house lights went off, and Geraldo sent her a look of naked dislike before stalking off into the shrubbery.
“Who knew cats could hold grudges?” she called after him.
Then, Gabriela sat in the dark, lost in thought.
She did not want to be persuaded by her father.
She wanted, despite everything he had said, to protect herself.
After a while, she got up, went into the house, washed the makeup off her face, put on her pajamas and climbed into the narrow bed of her childhood.
But she tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Her bedroom seemed hot and stuffy and she found herself back in the garden, going over the same mental ground again and again.
Was it possible she could do both? Help those two princes and protect herself?
If she set the perimeters, it was possible, wasn’t it?
But how did she tell Enrique she had changed her mind after that terrible parting line? Was she even sure this was the right decision?
Impulsively, she went to the garden shed. There was the flashlight, sitting on the sill of the dusty window as if it had not been touched in eight years.
She would flash the light at Enrique’s window, the same signal they used since they were children to meet in this garden. If the flashlight worked, if he answered her summons, she would follow Guido’s advice.
If the flashlight did not work, or if Enrique did not respond, she would leave the Prince in her past.
Where her head told her, firmly, he belonged.