Phantom Marriage

by Penny Jordan

  Keep reading to get a glimpse of

  THE HEIR THE PRINCE SECURES

  CHAPTER ONE

  LOVE MEANT EVERYTHING to Tess Foster.

  NOT JUST LOVE. Romance. Pink roses. Castles and hearts.

  As a lonely teenager living in the attic of her aunt and uncle’s Brooklyn bakery, Tess tried to keep her romantic dreams secret. In a modern world of easy hookups and one-night stands, it was embarrassing, even shameful, to be an idealistic virgin waiting for true love. As other girls giggled over their first fumbling sexual experiences in the back seats of cars, Tess kept quiet and hoped no one would notice that she spent her own Saturday nights with dusty books in the library, dreaming of handsome princes.

  She’d known, even then, that when she finally gave herself to a man, it would only be to someone she truly loved. She’d wear white on her wedding day and lose her virginity on their honeymoon. She’d settle for nothing less than the fairy tale.

  Then, at twenty-four, she met Stefano.

  One moment, she’d been working as a waitress at a glamorous cocktail party hosted by a Spanish media mogul. Carrying a silver tray of champagne flutes through a crowd of movie stars and tycoons, Tess had been lost in thought, worrying whether she’d be able to afford another semester of design school.

  Then a handsome stranger’s dark, smoldering gaze had pierced her heart, making her lose her breath.

  That had been it. That one look from him had almost brought her to her knees.

  Because no one had ever looked at her like that. It was as if Tess, the hopeless, invisible wallflower, had suddenly become the most desirable, fascinating woman in all the world.

  And the man who was looking at her…

  Dark and sexy, he’d stood arrogantly apart, his perfectly cut tuxedo a mere veneer of civilization over his powerful, muscular body. His dark eyes had burned through her as he came toward her, moving with an almost feline grace.

  “Buonasera,” he’d said huskily.

  Tess had turned the silver tray toward him so fast the flutes nearly knocked over. Her voice had squeaked. “Champagne?”

  “No.” With a sensual smile, he’d glanced at the martini already in his hand. “I don’t want champagne.”

  “Something else, then?”

  His voice was husky, with the barest trace of an accent. “I want your name.”

  And that had been the start of the most spectacular night of Tess’s life. When she’d finished her shift at the party, he’d whisked her off in his chauffeured town car to an elegant, romantic dinner at the most exclusive restaurant in New York. Afterward, he’d suggested they go dancing. When she’d said she didn’t have a dress, he’d stopped at a designer boutique and bought her one that sparkled and swayed against her skin.

  She’d tried to resist, but she couldn’t. Not when he’d looked at her like that.

  Tess had danced in his arms for hours before he’d kissed her, leaving her intoxicated, breathless. He’d invited her to his suite at the luxurious Leighton Hotel. Looking into his dark, hungry eyes, she’d known only one answer.

  “Yes,” she’d whispered.

  In just one night, he’d ruthlessly taken her virginity. And more than that: he’d dazzled her lonely, romantic heart into loving him.

  But the next morning, waking up alone in the cold, gray dawn, she realized that she’d never even learned his full name.

  A few weeks later, she’d found out she was pregnant. Her uncle had been furious, her aunt disappointed in her.

  For the last fourteen months, even as Tess’s two best friends, Hallie Hatfield and Lola Price, had rolled their eyes, she’d stubbornly insisted that Stefano would someday return to claim her and their baby. After all, even if she didn’t know his last name, he knew hers. Stefano could find her anytime he wanted.

  If he hadn’t come yet, there had to be a good reason. Maybe he had amnesia, or his plane had crashed on a desert island. Those things happened, didn’t they? Tess imagined every reason she could think of, except for the obvious one. Her friends thought she was nuts.

  But Tess had to believe Stefano would return. Because, otherwise, she’d surrendered all her dreams for nothing. She’d given up her chance for a career, for marriage, for one love that would last her whole life—all for a one-night stand that had left her pregnant, abandoned and alone.

  If Stefano didn’t come back, it would mean the world was a cold and unforgiving place, and all the fairy tales her mother had read her as a child were wrong. Tess didn’t want to live in a world like that. So she’d done her best to believe.

  Suddenly, tonight, she couldn’t.

  Not for one more second.

  Tess’s shoulders drooped as she wearily pushed her five-month-old baby’s stroller out of the Campania Hotel New York. It was ten o’clock on a warm, humid night in early September, but the night was just getting started. The streets were crowded with people leaving restaurants and streaming out of Broadway theaters, their faces animated and bright as they passed beneath the sparkling lights of the hotel’s porte cochere.

  Tess felt empty and sad. She’d just watched her friend Hallie sing at her husband’s luxury hotel. After Hallie’s amazing performance, Cristiano had publicly declared his love for his wife.

  She was glad for Hallie, truly she was. Her friend deserved every happiness, especially after what she’d gone through. Normally, Tess would have told herself that seeing a couple so deeply in love proved that it might still happen for her, too.

  But not tonight.

  She’d been up since four that morning, working at her uncle’s bakery while also caring for her baby. She felt sweaty and exhausted. Tendrils of her long red hair were plastered to her neck. Even Tess’s jaunty handmade outfit, a vintage-style shirt and midi pencil skirt with mixing patterns, was wrinkled. She looked down at her adorable sleeping baby, her plump cheeks and dark hair, and a hard lump rose to her throat.

  For over a year, she’d ignored her uncle’s criticism, her aunt’s disappointed sighs and her friends’ teasing. She’d told herself Stefano would come back to her. But after seeing Hallie and Cristiano together, so happy together in their own little world, Tess had realized she was fooling herself.

  Give it up. A memory came of Lola’s tart voice. He’s never coming back, Tess.

  Tess stopped. As streams of people passed by her stroller on both sides of the sidewalk, she savagely wiped tears off her cheeks. She’d planned to take the subway back to Brooklyn with her baby rather than ask Hallie for a ride and risk crying in front of her. Her friends always teased her about being too cheerful and optimistic. She couldn’t let them know how she really felt inside.

  But that was wrong. Hallie was her friend, and Tess had left without so much as a farewell. Taking a deep breath, she tried to smooth her face into a smile. She’d go back inside now and congratulate Hallie. And if she asked why Tess was crying—

  As Tess started to turn, she walked into a wall.

  Not a wall. A man.

  For a second, she saw stars from the blunt force of hitting her head against his chest. Dizzy, she shook her head, mortified.

  “I’m so sorry,” she blurted out. “It was my fault—”

  Then she saw him.

  For a second, Tess couldn’t breathe. Her heart pounded in her throat as she tilted her head back to stare at the man’s handsome face, his sharp cheekbones and jawline shadowed by the lights of the hotel’s grand porte cochere.

  Tall and dark-haired, the man wore a sleek black jacket that emphasized his broad shoulders, and trousers that fit snugly over powerful thighs. His tailored shirt was open a single button at the neck.

  He wasn’t strictly handsome, perhaps. His aquiline profile was a bit too arrogant, the set of his square jaw too thuggish. But he gave the impression of intense masculine beauty. His face was arresting, his body powerful, giving him the look of a dark angel.

  The man’s eyes widened, the irises so dark as to be almost black against his olive-colored
skin.

  Tess’s lips parted.

  “Stefano?” she whispered, gripping the handle of the stroller for balance. “Is it really you?”

  She knew those dark eyes. That handsome face. Those cruel, sensual lips. She knew every bit of him. She’d dreamed of him, day and night, for over a year.

  “Tess,” he murmured.

  His low, husky voice caressed the short syllable of her name. So he was real, then. He was real.

  “You came back for me,” she whispered. Joy rose inside her, brighter than all the lights of Broadway and Times Square put together. “You came back!”

  His jaw tightened. He looked down at her from his lofty height, his broad shoulders towering over her. “What do you want?”

  What did she want? She wanted to throw her arms around him, to cry out her happiness to all the world. After a difficult year, with everyone mocking her, this proved that happy endings still happened as long as your heart was true and you had faith. She’d been right!

  But, as Tess moved to throw her arms around him, Stefano stepped back from her.

  Something was wrong. She bit her lip, bewildered. “I am so happy to see you. Did you just get back?”

  “Get back?”

  “To New York.” When he didn’t answer, she continued with a blush, “Our night together, you said that you had to return to Europe but you’d be back soon—”

  “Oh. Yes.” His chiseled face was dark with shadow beneath his hard cheekbones as the lights of passing traffic moved past them on the avenue. “I’ve been in New York often this summer. And now for Fashion Week, of course.”

  “You’ve been here all this time?” A chill went through her as her joy withered inside her. She whispered, “And you didn’t want to see me?”

  Stefano frowned. His voice was a low baritone. “I liked you very much, Tess. It was an amazing night. But…”

  “But?” she croaked.

  Coming closer, he looked down at her, his dark eyes glittering. “But it was just a night.”

  To him it had just been a one-night stand, nothing more? One night, easily enjoyed and easily forgotten?

  Tess’s cheeks went hot as she remembered telling him in bed, in the hushed quiet before dawn with their naked bodies still intertwined, “I’m already falling in love with you.”

  In her innocence, Tess had meant every word. She’d been intoxicated by sensual pleasure she’d never imagined. In just twelve hours, he’d given her the most intense happiness of her life, more emotion and joy and beauty than she’d known for twelve years before. If that wasn’t love, what was?

  Now, looking at his coldly handsome face, Tess realized that her honesty had been a fatal mistake. Because when she woke the next morning, he’d been gone.

  “Your Highness!” A young girl caught up behind him on the sidewalk. She was obviously a model—tall, slender, dark-haired and incredibly beautiful in a white dress that set off her dark skin. She held out a small notebook to Stefano. “You forgot this.”

  “Thanks, Kebe,” he said gruffly.

  She tossed her dark curls. “See you in Paris.”

  She left in a perfect catwalk stride.

  “Who was that?” Tess whispered.

  “A friend,” he said. His dark eyes flicked briefly to the sleeping baby in the stroller behind her. “Well. It was nice to see you again.” His expression was cool. Courteous. Distant. “Goodbye.”

  Pain and shock spread through Tess’s body, making her knees shake.

  He hadn’t been looking for her.

  At all.

  He’d rejected her long ago. She just hadn’t known it till now. Stinging tears filled her eyes.

  All this time she’d dreamed of him as a romantic hero who was desperate to return to her. The truth was that Stefano simply hadn’t wanted to see her again.

  Over the last year, as Tess had dropped out of college to work full-time at her uncle’s bakery, struggling to provide and care for their baby, Stefano had been traveling the world, enjoying himself. In fact, it seemed he’d just been out on a date with a beautiful girl who looked barely eighteen. Whom he’d promised to see again in Paris.

  Stricken, she looked at him with tears in her eyes.

  Stefano’s expression hardened. “Tess, it was for the best.”

  Wordlessly shaking her head, she backed away. For so long, she’d held out hope, imagining one perfect love brought by destiny, by fate. She’d remained faithful to Stefano’s memory, dreaming of the day her handsome prince would return on a white horse to whisk her and the baby to his castle.

  But Stefano was no prince.

  Her friends and family had been right.

  Tess gripped the stroller for support as anguish and exhaustion punched through her.

  They’d been right.

  “Come now. Don’t act like your heart’s broken,” he said sharply. “How long did it take you to get over me? A few days?”

  “How can you say that?” she whispered.

  He looked pointedly at the baby in the stroller. “She’s yours, isn’t she?”

  Yes. And yours. The words rose inside her, but got caught in her throat.

  “And what about her father?” he demanded. “How would he feel if he knew you were here now, talking to me?”

  “You tell me.”

  “How would I know?” Reaching out, he cupped her cheek. For a moment, in spite of everything, she closed her eyes, shivering at his touch as a flash of heat pulsed through her.

  Stefano dropped his hand. “Let’s not try to make more of our night than it was.” He glanced at the baby. “Obviously, you quickly moved on. So did I. Our night was enjoyable enough. But it was meaningless.”

  Enjoyable enough?

  Meaningless?

  It was the final straw. She felt a flash of despair, the destructive kind that froze to the bone.

  “Our night didn’t mean anything to you?” Heart in her throat, she whispered, “You changed my life.”

  “Sorry,” he said coldly.

  She felt the word like a bullet.

  “Fine.” She closed her eyes briefly, shuddering. “We’ll survive alone.”

  Knees shaking, she turned and walked away from him as fast as she could, away from her broken heart, from her shame that she’d so foolishly believed in the fairy tale. She fled the glittering lights of the Campania toward a shadowy side street, desperate to reach the far-off subway entrance, where she could sob in peace.

  * * *

  Prince Stefano Zacco di Gioreale stared after Tess, shocked by the jolt of her words, by the raw emotion he’d seen on her face and, most of all, by his body’s reaction to seeing her again.

  Tess Foster was even more beautiful than he remembered. He’d lied when he’d said he’d quickly moved on. The truth was that he’d spent the last year trying not to recall her hauntingly lovely heart-shaped face, her red hair, her bright emerald eyes, her sweet pink lips. He’d tried to forget her lush body and the way she’d felt naked in his arms.

  Most of all, he’d tried to erase the memory of her intense, heartfelt whisper the next morning. I’m already falling in love with you.

  For the last year, he’d done his best to forget. He’d told himself he had. Still, when he’d returned to New York in July to preside over the launch of Mercurio’s flagship store, there was a reason he’d chosen to stay at the Campania Hotel rather than return to the Leighton, which had all those sweet, savage memories of their night together.

  From the moment he’d first seen her carrying a tray of champagne at Rodrigo Cabrera’s cocktail party, he’d known he wanted her. He’d felt drawn to Tess in a way he’d never experienced before. Or since.

  He’d made it his mission to seduce her. As beautiful and vivacious as Tess was, it had never occurred to him she might be a virgin. Not until it was too late, not until he’d already pushed himself into her, both of them gasping with ecstasy. His body shivered at the memory.

  He’d felt guilty afterward, though. There wa
s a reason he didn’t seduce virgins. They fell in love too easily and cloyingly imagined a future that bored Stefano to tears. He avoided them at all costs. Virgins didn’t know how to play the game. Play it? They often didn’t even know there was a game.

  His worst fears had been proven true when, after the most spectacular sexual experience of his life, Tess had ruined everything with her outrageous declaration of love.

  So he’d left. He took no pleasure in it. He would have preferred to see her again for many more sensual nights.

  But she’d given him no choice. If she was already imagining herself in love with him after twelve hours, what would she do when he eventually ended their affair? Throw herself off the Empire State Building?

  So Stefano had left. For her own good. He had nothing to offer a dreamy-eyed idealist with a heart full of love. Better to set her free immediately, before anyone got hurt.

  The existence of the baby proved he’d made the right choice. Judging by the infant’s size, Tess couldn’t have waited long before she took another lover.

  An image came to Stefano of another man taking Tess in his arms, doing exactly what he’d done, possessing her in furious, desperate need, in a hot tangle of limbs and sweat and pleasure. Scowling, he pushed the thought away.

  At least Stefano had used protection. Obviously, the other man hadn’t been so careful. The unknown man had gotten her pregnant with his dark-eyed baby.

  He was surprised Tess wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. He would have thought a romantic girl like her wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than happily-ever-after.

  Stefano, a billionaire prince who’d been raised in a Sicilian castle, didn’t believe in such fairy tales.

  But he couldn’t stop his eyes from watching Tess hungrily as her small figure disappeared down the dark street, her shoulders drooping and red hair flying as she pushed the stroller ahead of her.

  Stefano’s hand tingled. Raising his hand, he looked at his fingertips beneath the hotel’s bright lights.

  All he’d done was touch her cheek. That brief, simple touch had scorched his hand. All the emotion and desire he’d repressed for a year had suddenly roared into greedy life, burning him like a fire. Shocked, he’d dropped his hand.