Temporarily His Princess

by Olivia Gates

  “Get a wife. ASAP.”

  When his king says Prince Vincenzo D’Agostino must marry, the confirmed bachelor knows only one woman will do: Glory Monaghan, the lover who betrayed him six years ago. By forcing her hand, he’ll appease his ruler—and get the woman he can’t forget out of his system forever.

  But Vincenzo’s proposal is the last thing Glory expects. His long-ago rejection nearly destroyed her—how can she say yes now, even for show? Yet she has no choice. Becoming Vincenzo’s temporary wife will save her family—even if giving in to the prince’s passion will surely leave her yearning for more….

  “When I Take You To My Bed This Time, It Will Be Far Better Than Ever Before.”

  “I will never sign an agreement to that!”

  “And I’d never ask you to. This has nothing to do with the marriage deal. I’m only letting you know I want you in my bed. And you will come. Because you want to. Because you want me.”

  Her pupils fluctuated, her cheeks flushed. Proof positive of his claims.

  Still she scoffed. “You really have to see someone for that head of yours, before it snaps off your neck under its own weight.”

  He buried his face in her neck, inhaled her, absorbing her shudder into his. “I don’t want you in my bed. I need you there. I’ve craved you there for six long years.”

  Dear Reader, Temporarily His Princess was such a treat to write! It was a much anticipated return to an exotic world I created years ago: my Mediterranean kingdom of Castaldini with its rich history and glamorous present. I revisited some of my most beloved characters, to get a delightful glimpse into their happily-ever-after. All that, while going along for the intensely passionate ride of two new star-crossed lovers as they navigate a turbulent journey to their own happiness, among so many obstacles, secrets and twists.

  I loved writing Vincenzo and Glory’s story as they overcome so much heartache, tear down so many barriers, inside and out, and come together in a much-deserved and glorious destiny. I really hope you enjoy reading their story as much as I did writing it!

  I love to hear from readers, so please visit my website for my latest news at www.oliviagates.com, email me at oliviagates@gmail.com, and connect with me on Facebook, Goodreads and Twitter.

  Thanks for reading!

  Olivia Gates

  Olivia Gates

  Temporarily His Princess

  Books by Olivia Gates

  Harlequin Desire

  The Sarantos Secret Baby #2080

  **To Touch a Sheikh #2103

  A Secret Birthright #2136

  ††The Sheikh’s Redemption #2165

  ††The Sheikh’s Claim #2183

  ††The Sheikh’s Destiny #2201

  §Temporarily His Princess #2231

  Silhouette Desire

  *The Desert Lord’s Baby #1872

  *The Desert Lord’s Bride #1884

  *The Desert King #1896

  †The Once and Future Prince #1942

  †The Prodigal Prince’s Seduction #1948

  †The Illegitimate King #1954

  Billionaire, M.D. #2005

  In Too Deep #2025 “The Sheikh’s Bargained Bride”

  **To Tame a Sheikh #2050

  **To Tempt a Sheikh #2069

  *Throne of Judar

  †The Castaldini Crown

  **Pride of Zohayd

  ††Desert Knights

  §Married by Royal Decree

  Other titles by this author available in ebook format.

  OLIVIA GATES

  has always pursued creative passions such as singing and handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career—writing.

  She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heart-wrenching heartache and hope, their every heart-pounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.

  When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding Angora cat. Visit Olivia at www.oliviagates.com.

  To everyone at Harlequin, RWA, RT Book Reviews, NINC and CataRomance who helped me realize a dream and get to a much better place. No thanks are enough.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Excerpt

  Prologue

  Six years ago

  Vincenzo froze as he heard someone fumbling open the door.

  She was here.

  Every muscle turned to rock, every nerve fired like a high-voltage cable. Then the door slammed with an urgent thud and frantic footsteps followed, each jarring his equilibrium with the force of an earthquake.

  There’d been no alert from his guards. No doorbell had announced her arrival. She was the only one he’d ever given unlimited access and keys to his penthouse.

  But he’d given her more than access to his personal space—he’d given her dominion over his priorities and passions. She’d been the only woman he’d fully trusted, believed in. Loved.

  And it had all been a lie.

  The spear embedded in his gut twisted. Rage. Mostly at himself.

  Even after he’d gotten proof of her betrayal, he’d clung to the belief that it would be explained away. She’d had him that deeply in her power.

  That alone should have alerted him something was seriously wrong. It wasn’t in his nature to trust. He’d never let anyone come that close or become anywhere near that vital. As a prince of Castaldini, he’d always been suspicious of people’s intentions. After he’d become the rising-star researcher in the cutthroat field of energy alternatives, he’d believed any hope of a genuine relationship was over.

  Until her. Until Glory.

  From the first glance, he’d reeled at the attraction that had kept intensifying. From the first conversation, he’d sunk into a well of affinity, the deepest he’d ever known. It had been magical, how they’d hungered, connected. She’d aroused his every emotion, appeased his every need—physical, intellectual and spiritual.

  But he’d just been a means to an end. An end she’d achieved.

  After the first firestorm of agony had almost wrecked him, logic had doused it with its sobering ice. Seeking retribution would have only compounded the damage. He’d decided to let pain consume him, rather than give her more than what she’d already snatched from him. He’d walked away without a word.

  Not that she’d let him walk away.

  Her nonstop messages had morphed from worried to frantic. With each one, his heart had almost exploded, first with the need to soothe her, then with fury at falling for her act yet again. Then had come that last message. A heart-stopping simulation of a woman going out of her mind fearing for her loved one’s safety.

  The pain had been so acute it had seared him with clarity.

  He’d realized there could only be one reason behind her desperate persistence. Her plan must not be concluded yet. Even if she thought his avoidance meant he suspected her, she seemed to be willing to risk anything to get close to him again, to pull the strings of his addiction to her for the opportunity to finish what she started.

  So he’d let her find out he’d returned. He’d known she’d zoom right over to corner him.

  But though he’d planned this face-off, he wasn’t ready. Not for the
sight of her, or for what he had to do.

  Mannaggia! He shouldn’t have given her the chance to invade his life again for any reason. He just wasn’t ready….

  “Vincenzo!”

  A pale creature, who barely resembled the vibrant one who’d captured him body and heart, burst into his bedroom.

  She stumbled to a halt, eyes turbid and swollen with what so convincingly looked like incessant weeping, and stood facing him across the bedroom where they’d shared unimaginable pleasures for the past six months.

  Before another synapse could fire, she exploded across the room. Before he could draw another breath, her arms were around him, clinging like a woman would to a life raft.

  And he knew. He’d missed it all, every nuance of her. He’d yearn for her, the woman he’d loved but who didn’t exist, until the end of his days.

  His mind unraveled with the need to crush her back, breathe her in so he could breathe again. He struggled not to bury his aching hands in her hair, not to drag her face to his and take of her breath. His lips went numb, needing to feel hers, just one last time….

  As if sensing his impending capitulation, she surged up, pulled his head down and stormed his face in kisses.

  Temptation tightened around his throat like a noose. His hands moved without volition.

  They stopped before they closed around her, his body going rigid as if guarding against a blow as what she’d been reiterating in that tremulous, strangled voice sank into his fogged awareness.

  “My love, my love.”

  Barely suppressing a roar, he clamped her arms before she sucked him dry of will and coherence.

  She reluctantly let him separate them, raised the face that had embodied his desires and hopes. Her heavenly eyes were drowning in those masterfully feigned emotions.

  “Oh, darling, you’re all right.” She hugged him again, seamlessly changing from overwrought relief to agitated curiosity. “I went insane when you answered none of my calls. I thought something…terrible must have happened.”

  So that was her strategy. To play innocent to the last.

  “Nothing happened.”

  Was that his voice? That inhuman rasp?

  Pretending not to notice the ice that encased him, dread entered the eyes that hid her soullessness behind that facade of guilelessness. “Did you have another breach? Did your security isolate you this time until they could identify the leak?”

  Was she that audacious? Or did she believe she was too ingenious to be exposed? If she were still secure in his obliviousness, she wouldn’t conceive of any other reason he’d stay away while his security team investigated how his research results kept being leaked in spite of their measures.

  Good. He preferred to play it that way. It gave him the perfect opportunity to play the misdirection card.

  “There haven’t been any breaches.” He pretended a calm that had to be his greatest acting effort. “Ever.”

  Momentary relief was chased away with deepening confusion. “But you told me…” She stopped, at a loss for real this time.

  Si, that was a genuine reaction at last. For he had told her—every detail of the incidents and the upheavals he’d suffered as his life’s work was being systematically stolen. And she’d pretended such anguish at his losses, at her helplessness to help him.

  “Nothing I told you was true. I let decoy results get leaked. I had great pleasure imagining the spies’ reactions when they realized that, not to mention imagining their punishment for delivering useless info. No one knows where or what my real results are. They’re safe until I’m ready to disclose them.”

  Every word was a lie. But he hoped she’d relay those lies to her recruiters, hopefully making them discard it without testing it and finding out it was the real deal.

  That chameleon hid her shock, seamlessly performing uncertainty with hurt hovering at its edges. “That’s fantastic…but…why didn’t you tell me that? You thought you were being monitored? Even…here?” She hugged herself, as if to ward off invasive eyes. “But a simple note would have saved me endless anguish, and I would have acted my part for the spies.”

  He gritted his teeth. “Everyone got the version I needed them to believe, so my opponents would believe it along with them. Only my most trusted people got the truth.”

  She stilled. As if afraid to let his words sink in. “And I’m not among those?”

  Searing relief scalded through him, that she’d finally given him the opening to vent some antipathy. “How could you be? You were supposed to be a brief liaison, but you were too clingy and I had no time for the hassle of terminating things with you. Not before I found an as-convenient replacement, anyway.”

  If he could believe anything from her anymore, he would have thought his words had stabbed her through the heart.

  “R-replacement…?”

  His lips twisted. “With my schedule, I can only afford sexual partners who jump at my commands. That’s why you were so convenient, being so…compliant. But such accommodating lovers are hard to come by. I let one go when I find another. As I have.”

  Hurt blossomed in her eyes like ink through turquoise waters. “It wasn’t like that between us…”

  “What did you think it was? Some grand love affair? Whatever gave you that impression?”

  Her lips shook, her voice now a choking tremolo. “You did… You said you loved me….”

  “I loved your…performance. You did learn to please me exceptionally well. But even such a…malleable sex partner only…keeps up my interest for a short while.”

  “Was that all I am…was…to you? A sex partner?”

  His heart quivered with the effort to superimpose the truth over her overwhelming act. “No. You’re right. A partner indicates a somewhat significant liaison. Ours certainly wasn’t that. Don’t tell me that wasn’t clear from day one.”

  He could have sworn his words hacked her like a dull blade. If he didn’t have proof of her perfidy, the agony she simulated would have torn down his defenses. Its perfection only numbed him now, turning his heart to stone.

  He wanted her to rant and rave and shed fake tears, giving him the pretext to tear harder into her. She only stared at him, tears a precarious ripple in her eclipsed eyes.

  Then she whispered, “If—if this is a joke, please, stop…”

  “Whoa. Did you actually believe you were more to me than a convenient lay?”

  She jerked as if he’d backhanded her. His trembling hold on restraint slipped another notch. He had to get this over with before he started to rant, exposing the truth.

  “I should have known you wouldn’t take the abundant hints. From the way you believed my every word it was clear you lack any astuteness. You sure didn’t become my executive projects manager through merit. But you’re starting to anger me, acting as if I owe you anything. I already paid for your time and services with far more than either was worth.”

  Her tears finally overflowed.

  They streaked her hectic cheeks in pale tracks, melting the last of his sanity, making him snarl, “Next time a man walks away, let him. If you’d rather not hear the truth about how worthless you were to him….”

  “Stop…please…” Her hands rose, as if to block blows. “I know what I felt from you…it was real and intense. If—if you no longer feel this way, just leave me my memories….”

  “Is that obliviousness or just obnoxiousness? Seems you’ve forgotten who I am, and don’t know the caliber of women I’m used to. But it’s not too late to give you a reality check. Your replacement is arriving in minutes. Care to hang around and get a sobering, humbling look at her?”

  Her disbelief finally disintegrated and resignation seeped in to fill the vacuum it left behind.

  She was giving up the act. At last. It was over.

  He turned away, feeling like he’d just kicked down the last pillar in his world.

  But she wouldn’t let it be over, her tear-soaked words lodging in his back like knives. “I…loved you, Vin
cenzo. I believed in you…thought you an exceptional human being. Turns out you’re just a sleazy user. And no one will ever know, since you’re also a flawless liar. I wish I’d never seen you…hope one of my ‘replacements’ pays you back…for what you’ve done to me.”

  When his last nerve snapped, he rounded on her. “You want to get ugly, you got it. Get out or I won’t only make you wish you’d never seen me, but that you’d never been born.”

  His threat had no effect on her; her eyes remained dead. Then, as if fearing she’d fall apart, she turned and exited the room.

  He waited until a muted thud told him she’d left. Then he allowed the pain to overwhelm him.

  One

  The present

  Vincenzo Arsenio D’Agostino stared at his king and reached the only logical conclusion.

  The man had lost his mind.

  He must have buckled under the pressure of ruling Castaldini while steering his multibillion-dollar business empire. And being the most adoring and attentive husband and father who walked the planet. No man could possibly weather all that with his mental faculties intact.

  That must be the explanation for what he’d just said.

  Ferruccio Selvaggio-D’Agostino—the bastard king, as his opponents called him, relishing it being a literal slur, since Ferruccio was an illegitimate D’Agostino—twisted his lips. “Do pick your jaw off the floor, Vincenzo. And no, I’m not insane. Get. A. Wife. ASAP.”

  Dio. He’d said it again.

  This time Vincenzo found himself echoing it. “Get a wife.”

  Ferruccio nodded. “ASAP.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  Mockery gleamed in Ferruccio’s steel eyes. “You’ve got only yourself to blame for the rush. I’ve needed you on this job for years, but every time I bring you up to the council they go apoplectic. Even Leandro and Durante wince when your name is mentioned. That playboy image you’ve been diligently cultivating is now so notorious, even gossip columns are beginning to play it down. And that image won’t cut it in the leagues I need you to play in now.”