Chapter Eight
But Gabriela’s heart told her something completely different from her head, because when she pushed the button on the flashlight, there was no denying she felt a quick jolt of elation when the beam did, indeed, come on.
Of course, the businesswoman in her pointed out, it was not any kind of a miracle. Of course her father would have changed the batteries.
The shaft of light illuminated the garden shed, throwing eerie shadows, and she acknowledged that she felt excited, as if she was embarking on a great adventure.
She took the flashlight outside, then climbed on the bench so she could look over the wall and at the moon-washed marble of the palace.
Everything, she knew, had changed. Enrique probably did not even have the same window. And yet, this was how she was going to make this decision? It was like flipping a coin, heads for no, tails for yes.
It was whimsical, and irrational, and dreamy, the antithesis of everything she had learned at university, of every lesson being in the business world had taught her.
But there she had it.
If Prince Enrique got her summons, and answered it, she would make an arrangement with him. On her terms. Not his.
And if he didn’t answer, it was over before it began.
Noticing her hand was trembling, ever so slightly, she aimed the beam of the flashlight on the darkened window that had once been the Prince’s bedroom.
On. Off. On. Off. On. Off.
Pause.
And then she repeated the pattern, twice more. She set the flashlight down, firmly. She was not going to flash that window all night, as if she was leaning toward one answer and not the other.
She realized she was in her pajamas: a silky combination of a pair of smoky-gray shorts and a matching camisole. Entirely inappropriate to meet Enrique in the darkness of the garden.
Where once their lips had met…
She leaped up from the bench, reentered the house quietly. Should she get dressed? Redo her makeup? Do something with her hair?
Of course not! For one thing, she did not want to risk waking the soundly sleeping household. And for another, she did not want to look as if she was trying too hard.
She sighed heavily. This was exactly why becoming Marcello’s nanny, even temporarily, was going to be fraught with complications. Even the simplest decision suddenly seemed to be weighty with repercussions.
Gabriela threw a housecoat—lightweight and silky, chosen for its ease of packing and suitability for warm weather—over her pajamas and went back into the garden, then again sat on the bench.
When she saw Geraldo still lurking under the shrubs, she patted the bench beside her and softly called his name.
He ignored her.
The minutes ticked by, each one an eternity.
So, Enrique was not coming. There. If the universe really aligned for human purposes, as her papa believed, she had her answer. The great coincidence of the Prince being in the right place at the right time—standing at the window she had flashed that beam at—had not occurred.
Things were as they were meant to be, though she was very aware she had been leaning in one direction more than the other.
Despite all the complications it would give rise to in her life, she had hoped he would come.
She pulled her wrapper tighter around her, and got up from the bench. She tried, one last time, to reconcile with Geraldo. She crouched beside the shrub bed trying to coax him out, but the cat withdrew deeper into the shadow.
Just as she straightened, the gate squeaked open. Enrique paused there, bathed in moonlight, and then stepped inside. Gabriela’s heart went very still.
And she could not hide from herself that what she understood rationally, and what she had hoped for, were two entirely different things.
He scanned the garden, saw her, and she thought she saw something in his face, a lowering of barriers, an absence of remoteness. Had she secretly nurtured the hope that she would see that look on his face again someday?
Was it part of what her fiancé had seen in her?
Some unspoken holding back on her part? As if her heart already belonged to another.
On the other hand, it could have been a trick of moonlight.
“You called?” His tone was light. He crossed the garden in a single stride, coming to her. “I saw the light on Marcello’s window. I had heard a noise in there. He has my old room. I have the master suite, now. The Queen has her own suite on the second floor.”
She saw he, too, must have been in bed, or close to retiring. He was not in pajamas but the crisp shirt of earlier had been replaced with a slightly rumpled tee and a pair of running pants that looked as if they had been pulled on hastily, as if he slept naked.
Now there was a place she could not let her mind go!
His substantial presence was not in any way lessened by the casual clothing. She suspected it would not be lessened by nakedness, either. He carried it within him, like a flame.
He stood in front of her, gazed down at her face, and there was nothing lighthearted in his eyes to match the tone he had used coming through the gate.
But it was not that remoteness, either.
In fact, there was a stunning intensity sparking in those dark depths. He lifted his hand. She held her breath. For a moment, it seemed as if he was going to brush her cheek with his palm.
But then he thrust his hand into his pocket.
She sank onto the bench, and he took the seat beside her. She could smell the warm masculine scent of him mingling with the garden herbs, the blooming olive trees, all of it woven against the backdrop of the scent of the sea.
Geraldo, who had been so pointed in his rejection of her, emerged from the shadows, gathered himself and jumped on Enrique’s lap.
“Are his claws going to get stuck in my shorts?” he asked.
“Probably. Don’t worry. You can take them off.”
Suddenly, the thing she was least expecting happened. They were both laughing, softly, trying desperately not to wake the sleeping household just steps away from them.
“I don’t think I could get them off without serious damage from Geraldo. You’d have to help,” he told her. He was teasing, and yet there was an undertone of seriousness that whispered along her skin like a touch.
She gulped. He was joking. So wrong to envision her fingertips skimming the waistband of those shorts, tugging…
“And what if I don’t have on underwear?” he said, softly, the taunt she had thrown at him being tossed back at her.
Something electric, like a broken wire snaking across the ground, snapped and crackled between them.
She reminded herself there were going to be consequences if she touched that wire. She was going to be burned. And probably badly.
Still, she didn’t want him to think she was a gauche girl who couldn’t handle a slightly risqué interchange, particularly since she had been the one who started it, even if it had been a day ago.
“Sadly, I’ll never know about your commando status,” she said.
“Commando?”
“Slang for no underwear.”
“Ah,” he said, “You’ve gone away and become a woman of the world.”
It was the very impression she had hoped to give, so why was she reacting to the faint regret she heard in his voice?
Could she really be having this conversation with a prince?
With both of them in their pajamas? She had to get this back on track.
Obviously, inviting him to the garden had been a misstep on her part.
It would have been much easier to keep the atmosphere strictly professional between them if she had just swallowed her pride and requested another audience with him to discuss his proposal.
“Your Highness, I am happy to inform you Geraldo is not going to be getting stuck on your pants.”
She said it lightly, but she knew Enrique registered the wall of propriety she was trying to erect between them.
He was silent.
“That’s why Leon was here. To trim his claws, and try and clip the clumps out of his coat. You can see only one job got completed.”
“The important one,” he said. “The one that allows me to keep my pants.”
And then, despite her best effort to keep things somewhat official between them, they were laughing again.
Their eyes met. The electrical charge between them was stronger in silence than it had been with the slightly ribald teasing.
Enrique looked away first, and turned his attention to Geraldo.
“Hello, my old friend,” he said, running his hands over the butchered haircut, and eliciting a deep purr. “Such a troublemaker, this last while. Did you scratch your mistress?”
He lowered his head pretending to listen to the cat’s response.
“Well, I agree the haircut is humiliating in its awfulness, but you can’t scratch the people who love you.” Enrique lifted his head, and met Gabriela’s gaze.
“He says he’s sorry.”
And somehow, the apology was not just for the cat or from the cat.
“His apology is accepted.”
“What did Dr. Ferr—Leon—say about him?”
“Just that he’s very old, and that I should prepare myself.” She felt an unexpected catch in her throat, and a smart in her eyes.
“I remember when you got him,” Enrique said. “I was here. Guido came up from the olive grove and there was a little bulge under his shirt, and he opened the buttons, and we heard this pitiful little sound. You raced over and took that little black ball of fluff from him.”
“Don’t,” she warned. “You’re going to make me cry.”
“Then you passed him to me,” Enrique recalled, softly. “I’d never had a pet before. When he snuggled against my chest and started purring, it felt like one of the best moments of my whole life.”
She was crying then.
His hand came around her shoulder, and he tugged her gently into his side. She hesitated, and then gave in. She rested her head on the broadness of his shoulder.
In this moment, finally, he was not a prince, at all, but her lifelong friend and companion. She could feel the warmth and strength of him, though the hum of that electrical current was in the background, now, being replaced by something just as strong.
The bonds of experiences shared. A life shared, really.
“Remember the time he brought the mouse into the kitchen?” Enrique said softly. “It was raining. We were playing a game at the kitchen table. I remember how you used to show me games, and it was like being invited into a brand-new world. I think the game we were playing might have been Sorry.”
“He dropped the mouse,” Gabriela remembered, “and it was alive.”
“And you upended the board game—I’m sure I was winning—and then you were standing on top of the table screaming.”
“A pretext,” she said, “just to keep you from knowing it was because you were winning. Because we both know I am not the hysterical type.”
We both know and that was so true. They both knew so much about each other.
As if to confirm what they both knew, he said, “And of course, I am the save-the-maiden-in-distress type.”
She pushed the thought that he had not saved her, not when it mattered most, to the back of her mind, not wanting to sacrifice the connection they were experiencing right now.
She acknowledged it was probably dangerous, and that they were getting far off track from the original reason she had flashed that beam at his window.
Or, had some part of her known, as soon as she took up that flashlight, that this very thing was a possibility? That in this garden, she would find remnants of whom she had always known? In this garden, she could chase the remoteness from him?
“And then,” she continued, even though she could sense the danger of going too far down this road of shared memories, “you were chasing the mouse around the table, and I was begging you not to kill it.”
“And I caught it inside my hands, and raced to put it out the door. And it bit me, ungrateful cad!”
From tears, to laughter, as they remembered that moment.
“And Geraldo,” he said to the cat, “you just watched, amused, a troublemaker even back then.”
The cat delicately lifted a paw and licked it.
His arm was still around her shoulder, but he seemed to realize it, and he took it off, and shifted slightly, so that there was space between them on the bench.
Given what she was feeling—warmth, longing, hunger for his touch—she should really not say what she was about to say.
She was being shown how dangerous it could be to intertwine her life with his. She had to remember the Prince was a broken heart in waiting.
It was not lost on her that he had broken the contact between them, that he had shifted away. So, she moved down the bench, even farther away from him.
“I’ve decided to accept your proposal.” She was shocked at herself. She had fully intended—rehearsed even—to use the same word as him. Proposition.
Because, somehow, the word proposal was horribly loaded with unrealistic and romantic notions.