Chapter Eighteen
Gabriela watched, a touch ruefully, as Darla and Prince Marcello bent over a paper at the small table.
The little Prince’s tongue was caught between his teeth as he earnestly practiced the alphabet Darla was showing him.
Darla had come every day this week. Her absolute affection for Marcello—and his for her—practically shimmered in the air around them.
The gate squeaked open and Enrique slipped in, came and sat beside Gabriela on the bench. Cello’s concentration was such that he had not even noticed his father.
“She’s a treasure, isn’t she?” Enrique asked.
Gabriela was so glad he saw it, too. “Yes. She wants to start taking Marcello, Henri and a few of the other boys on excursions. Mariposa Gardens. The museum. She has come up with lesson plans, intent on teaching them in such delightful ways they won’t even realize they’re being taught.
She wondered what would be involved in setting up something like that. ”
“Well, security, of course. As soon as she has a schedule, I’ll see to it.”
Gabriela passed him a piece of paper. Their hands touched. And lingered. She pulled her hand away. Where was all this going? How naive to think it was going anywhere at all!
“She’s already done a schedule. It might be nice if you put William in charge of the security.”
“William?” For a moment, a look crossed his face that could almost be interpreted as jealousy. “Why William?”
“He kind of has a swoon-worthy way about him, doesn’t he?” she couldn’t resist teasing.
“How would I know?” he sputtered, and then, “But I suppose you find him good-looking?”
“Good-looking,” she agreed, “but it’s more. Supremely masculine. In charge.”
Enrique was scowling at her.
“Perfect for Darla,” she said, after a beat.
He glared at her when she giggled, seeing how completely he had walked into her trap.
“Ah, Darla,” he said, apparently quite happy to change topics. “What a wonderful string of coincidences brought us to her.”
“Yes,” she said.
He heard some hesitation in her voice.
“What?” he asked. “You don’t think she’s working out?”
“Oh, no, she’s working out. Too well, maybe.”
“How is that possible?”
“She’s going to start transitioning to the palace nursery next week.”
It dawned on him, just as it had on her, what this would mean.
“I think my time as your nanny is drawing to a close,” she said softly.
The morning-coffee time they’d come to share would be over. The easy conversations, the lighthearted kidding, the crossword puzzles, the cat between them.
Over, too, would be those lingering afternoons when he came to pick up his son, that time when he’d told her about his day and she’d told him about hers.
Those times had been different since the kiss, since their exquisite brush with freedom.
Both of them were deliberately keeping a lid on the chemistry that was so strong between them.
But something else, even deeper, was unfolding, and it felt as if she would be bereft without the routine, without the possibility of seeing Enrique every single day. What would there be to look forward to?
No more long, easy talks about everything and anything. No more games with Marcello. No more laughter.
Oh, the laughter! For some reason, Gabriela had allowed herself to believe these times between them could last forever, to avoid the question, Where was it all going?
She, of all people, in the face of her losses—her childhood love of Enrique, in particular—but also the more recent loss of Timothy, and now her impending losses, her father and her cat, should know better than to invest in a childish belief of forever.
Of a happily-ever-after.
To nurture dreams of these two beautiful princes being part of her daily life for as long as she had a daily life.
She slid a look at Enrique, and was shocked to see he appeared as happy about her impending end as his nanny as she was dismayed by it.
Silence spread between them. Eventually, he broke it.
“I wondered,” he said. He suddenly stopped. He looked at his hands, then over at Marcello and Darla. He gazed everywhere but at her.
“You wondered?” she prodded him.
“I wondered if you’d have dinner with me tomorrow night.”
Not with Marcello and him.
It was the first time this was out in the open between them. He, one of the most sophisticated, sought-after, sexy men in the world was asking her out! And he seemed as nervous as a schoolboy, worried he had rivals in someone like William.
“Since you don’t work for me, anymore,” he added hastily.
She felt something tingle along her spine at how everything seemed to be working together, how the sheer coincidence of finding Darla was having a domino effect in the best possible way.
Was that why he had called an abrupt halt to that kiss at the beach? Bound as her employer to act with complete honor?
“I would love to have dinner with you,” she said.
What had seemed like a terrible thing only moments ago, Marcello moving back to the nursery, had turned completely on its head. A window had closed and a door had been flung open.
A door to possibilities, the likes of which she had never, ever allowed herself to contemplate.
“I’ll send a car for you.”
“Can I just meet you?”
He cocked his head at her.
“Guido. Maria,” she said. Why didn’t she want them to know? Because they would make too much of it, that’s why.
Maybe she was making too much of it. They were going out for dinner but maybe it wasn’t a date, despite his nervousness in asking.
It was likely just his way of thanking her for helping him and Marcello.
“Meet me outside the back gate, then,” he said. “At seven.”
How did you get dressed for a special dinner without letting the other members of your household know it was a special occasion?
As it turned out, the universe lined up for her again, because Guido was having a good day and he and Maria went to have supper and play cards with friends, something they had not done for a long time.
And so she was alone.
To curl her hair, and apply her makeup, to spray the air with perfume and walk through the mist, so the scent just hinted.
She was alone to slip on the dress she had gone to find in the village that morning. Sometimes, Benito shocked, in the best possible way, with what you could find there.
And she had found, in the same little cubbyhole of a shop where she had found her dress for graduation, a dress out of a dream.
It was bold by Hermosa Mariposa standards, which probably explained why it was gathering dust on a sales rack in the back of the store.
It didn’t look like much on the hanger, a limp clump of smoky-colored pleats, and yet as soon as she saw it, as soon as she felt the filmy fabric under her fingers, something in her had sighed.
She had gone into the change room, taken off her clothes and put on the dress, with her back to the mirror.
The dress had settled around her, like mist cascading down a mountainside, and when she turned to look in the mirror, she saw it was an enchantment.
She had been transformed, a Cinderella. She had gone from being Guido the olive keeper’s daughter to a goddess bathed in moonlight.
The structure of the dress was deceptively simple, falling in an A-line from her neck to her mid-thigh.
But the light played in the constant movement of the pleats.
One moment, it looked like that silvery mountain mist, the next white as snow and, after that, the tumultuous gray of lightning-lit skies.
It was, she realized, a dress a woman intent on seducing a man wore.
Was she bold enough to pull it off?
The intensity of her answer rippled through her.
Yes.
Enrique was waiting for her outside the gate. She saw from the look on his face that the dress had accomplished everything she might have wanted. He looked utterly bewitched.
He leaned toward her.
She readied for his kiss, but instead, he kissed both her cheeks, quite formally. When he took her hand, it was lightly, as any gentleman might take the hand of a woman in high heels on uneven ground.
He was dressed as beautifully as she was: a dark dinner jacket, a white dress shirt, a dark tie, knife-creased pants, shoes so shined they reflected the moonlight.
They had known each other since they were children.
And yet, suddenly, it felt as if they were strangers to each other.
He guided her along the path, and then around the palace and past the garden. She could hear a sound, but she didn’t connect it to them, until they came to the helicopter pad, and the shiny machine, embossed with gold royal crests, waited for them, its engines throbbing.
“I thought we could enjoy ourselves more if we were off island,” he said.
The pilot held open the door for them, and Enrique helped her to get in. She settled and he took the seat beside her, picking up the earphones and setting them over her hair, adjusting them for her, before he put on his own.
The pilot got in, joining a copilot who was already seated.
“Your Highness, miss, we have a clear night for flying, and we’re expecting no turbulence. It will be a half hour airtime to Isle Santiago. Enjoy your flight.”
Gabriela, of course, had flown a great deal since she had left this island, but on commercial flights, not private helicopters! She was not sure she had ever experienced anything quite so dreamlike as the flight to Santiago.
First, they lifted, and she watched the palace and her own home become toy-like, lit up in the darkness beneath them.
Then they could see the lights of Benito and finally they left that behind them, and it was only them and the stars, inky ocean water beneath them, broken only by the odd light of a ship.
The lights of Santiago started to come into view a bit later.
Was it so magical because it was a first, or because Enrique’s hand remained in hers, his voice melodic through the headsets, as he pointed out various landmarks along the way, and then constellations?
A long, dark limousine picked them up from the helipad and whisked them through Santiago City, which had much the same style as Benito, except it was much larger.
The streets were full of summer crowds. People stopped to stare at the limo, but the darkened windows protected the privacy of the passengers.
At the edge of town, they took a twisting road upward, until they reached a castle at the top of a mountain.
The door was opened for them, and with her hand in Enrique’s, they followed a black-jacketed man to a huge patio at the back of the castle, which sat on the very edge of a precipice that overlooked the sea and the city below them.
It was obviously a restaurant, but only one table was set, and only one candle burned.
“Is this Café Allegro?” she asked, awed. It was, arguably, the most sought-after reservation in the world.
“It is.”
“But where are all the other customers?”
“It’s closed. For tonight.”
She let the impact of that hit her. He had presumably commandeered one of the poshest restaurants in the world for his own personal use. She did not even want to think what that cost.
This was not the boy she had grown up with in her parents’ garden; not Marcello’s father, either.
This was one of the most powerful men in the world holding out her chair for her.