The countryside gave way to the city itself, where gorgeous Gothic structures loomed like sentinels over the city. Peppered about, she saw statues of ancient Greek and Roman gods, and soon, the train was passing what had to be the palace: a large stone structure of immense proportion, with turrets and spires and crenellated battlements. She tried to imagine some stranded princess, hundreds of years ago, waiting for someone to rescue her from her lair, with dragons swooping down at her and enemy arrows flinging in her direction. Good thing she had a vivid imagination.
She squinted to see the gorgeous stone gargoyles suspended from the upper levels of the building, though the tall, black wrought iron fence, complete with gold flourishes topped with gold fleurs-de-lis obscured a better look at the palace. And everything was sprinkled in fairy lights, appropriately enough.
God, was she actually going to be there, behind that fence? And if so, what in the hell was she, mild-mannered, plain ol’ Larkin Mallory, doing there? This should be a job for someone far more exceptional than she. But as she thought that, she gave herself a little mental smack. Why not her? Why wouldn’t she be as deserving of this opportunity as anyone else? She was a good reporter; she knew her stuff. She’d done her research (this time). She even knew her subject— which of course was the sticky wicket in this whole thing, now, wasn’t it?
The train approached the station, a looming old Belle Epoque-style building, with a series of monumental arches with doorways opening to the station. Between the arches were beautiful marble sculptures, and looming above the arches was a strong horizontal band of windows capped with an enormous clock tower. It was quite an imposing structure.
As the train slowed to a halt, Larkin quickly slipped her ballerina flats back on, grabbed her bag from the overhead bin, stood, and pressed her hands against her black jeans to flatten any sitting-induced creases. She tugged down her black blazer, straightened the white T beneath that, and rewrapped her subtly colored russet scarf just as Taylor had instructed her to do.
She stepped down from the train with the help of the conductor, and once on the platform, followed the crowd to the inner sanctum of the station, bright with lights and polished copper treatments and a buzz of cheerful people.
As she approached a coffee bar, thinking how much she’d love a quick espresso, she looked up to see a man with a black cap, crisp leather gloves, and a seasonally appropriate black topcoat holding a sign emblazoned with her name. Actually her name plus a smiley face. She couldn’t help but smile back at it, considering those signs were usually propped up by somber-faced men who looked bored with their lives.
She approached him and gave a nod, and he reached out his arm to link it with hers, a sort of funny but chivalrous way to escort her to the car. She was somewhat surprised Luca hadn’t been there to greet her personally, but maybe this was some sort of power play in which he attempted to impress her with his manpower. Or whatever. Better than impressing me with his manhood. Which, alas, he’d already done, before she’d backed herself away from that whole thing. That big thing, ha-ha. No way was she going to let his manhood do any impressing this weekend. This was all business, all weekend long.
He introduced himself as Jerome, and the two of them chatted as they made their way to the front exits. Larkin couldn’t help but feel more like she could relate to Jerome, the driver, than to Luca the prince. Well, at least from a socioeconomic standpoint. From a who-made-her-heart-flutter-dammit standpoint, it was a no-brainer. The only problem is she’d have to have no brains to follow her heart in that fool’s journey. All business, all weekend long. It was going to have to be her mantra. That along with Interview, not intercourse. Crap, she was doomed.
They walked down the wide steps that flanked the entryway, and Jerome led her to a cream-colored Rolls-Royce Phantom that sat idling in front of the station. It was a magnificent vehicle, and Larkin had to stand and just take it in for a moment, still marveling that she was even going to have the opportunity to step foot in it. If she were the selfie-taking type, she’d be trying to fit herself and that car in a wide shot, but that wasn’t her style. She was never one to need pictures of herself, be it in front of her bathroom mirror or before the most spectacular ride she’d probably ever have the chance to take.
Jerome opened the back door and motioned for her to have a seat. Only as she stepped foot onto the plush cream carpet and reached her hand down to get situated on the kid-soft leather upholstery did she see who was going to be her travel companion for the rest of the journey. There Luca sat on a phone call, and as she eavesdropped—because, well, of course, she was going to eavesdrop—she couldn’t help but feel a little turned on because he handled himself with such confidence, the stern, secure tenor of his voice vibrating in the air. It all seemed so thoroughly masculine. And hot.
He wore a pair of black jeans and a soft pink button-down, the top button undone, a tie loosely knotted around his neck, and a black cashmere V-neck sweater over top of it, the sleeves casually inching up his arms, exposing that sexy stretch of hair on his forearms that about did her in. He looked almost as delicious as a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies. Actually, he looked a thousand times more delicious than that, and for what she feared would only be the first of many times this weekend, Larkin wondered how the hell she was going to keep her hands off of the man. This was going to be a test of wills: her very own marshmallow test.
Ugh, the infamous marshmallow test. She was certain that if administered to her, she’d have failed that in a split second. In this the study, psychologists offered a child extra marshmallows if they could resist indulging in the one placed in front of them for a fixed period of time. The test of willpower, if ever there was one for a child and for Larkin, who had a sweet tooth to beat all sweet tooths (or would that be sweet teeth?), wouldn’t have lasted.
Alas, she had started to realize, Luca was going to be her marshmallow. The only problem is if she resisted, if she let her willpower rule the day, even then, she didn’t win the extra marshmallow. She’d go home with no consolation prize, merely the memory of suppressed sexual yearning, of a need that kindled a hunger in her much like a tart aroma could trigger her salivary glands. Looked like her sweet tooth had turned into something a little more grown-up.
Shit, this was going to be one long damned weekend.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Luca held out a finger as he wrapped up his call, indicating he’d be right with Larkin. He hated that he was unable to be the first thing she saw at the foot of the steps when that train arrived and that he wasn’t there to grab Larkin in a bear hug and smother her with kisses. Though he knew that wasn’t gonna happen anyhow. Knowing her, she’d have employed some sort of martial arts self-defense skills he didn’t know she’d mastered and would have hurled him down onto electrified train tracks while a speeding locomotive barreled down on him. It was a shame he felt conditioned to merely give her credit for potentially causing him bodily harm rather than bodily, say, massages. Now that would be something to look forward to. He hoped by the end of the weekend, that would all be a thing of the past and they could get down to the business of those body massages.
But for now, he had to wrap up this business call; his mother had tasked him with negotiating the lending of several priceless works of art from the palace for an upcoming tour of Renaissance masters, including paintings by Botticelli, Titian, and Raphael, even a sculpture by Michelangelo, that would travel the world for three years. The negotiations were delicate, as there was much at stake. Of course, the palace was happy to lend out these spectacular works of art, but Luca needed to ensure their utmost safekeeping. He couldn’t risk something happening to the treasures that had been in his family for hundreds of years.
Finally, he was able to end the call, at which point he turned off his phone to avoid any distractions. His sole focus would be on Larkin now that he’d gotten her here.
He turned to clasp her hands in his, entwining their fingers if only to reinforce to her ho
w thrilled he was to finally be together. The great unknown was whether she felt quite the same way as he and only time would tell. In the meantime, he had to lay it on thick to woo her over.
“I missed you, bella,” he said to her then corrected himself with a wag of his finger. “Bellissima.” She wasn’t only beautiful, she was the most beautiful in his eyes, and he wanted her to know it.
She gave an ambivalent nod while extricating her fingers from his. “Luca,” she said as if greeting the man who made her morning cappuccino at the local coffee bar rather than the one who’d used those very fingers to pleasure her nearly to orgasm only a few short weeks ago.
So she was going to be aloof, was she? That was fine. He had time on his side. Surely, after a weekend in Monaforte, she’d no longer be able to resist his many charms. He had home-field advantage on his side. And maybe a slightly scheming sister.
“Something is different with you,” he said, and it wasn’t just her standoffish demeanor since that clearly hadn’t changed a bit. He reached over to tuck a strand of her blond waves behind her ear. “The glasses! You’ve lost the glasses. So now we can see right through those pale blue eyes into your very soul.”
Though in a way he’d preferred her with glasses, because it seemed he was one of the few who looked beyond them and saw into her soul regardless. Now, perhaps more men would notice, dammit.
“And the clothes,” he said, his gaze sweeping her from head to toe. “Cara mia. Perfetto.” He whistled through his teeth and made a hand gesture forming a flattened circle with his thumb and pointer finger, his other three fingers extended, and dragging it horizontally across his chest as if he was pulling a zipper.
Larkin blushed. “You didn’t like me before?”
He playfully scrubbed his fingers on the top of her head. “You know I liked you even with a paper bag for a dress. But this—”
“I never wore a paper bag for a dress. Besides, it’s just an outfit,” she said. “Nothing’s changed. I’m still me.”
“No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s a transformation. My beautiful caterpillar has become an even more stunning butterfly.”
Larkin’s face had turned even more beet red. “Stop.” She lowered her eyes, clearly embarrassed by his fawning attention. “This is a business meeting. We really need to keep the personal things to a minimum.”
The woman seemed desperate to dump a bucket of ice water on him, but he was determined to not let it get to him. Lest he forget, he had all weekend.
“Okay,” he said. “Enough of the personal things, then. You can feel free to look out the window as we head to the palace if you’d prefer. Much to see in my lovely country.” In the meantime, he kept his eyes solely on her.
Ahead of them, four majestic spires rose in the distance.
“Wow,” she said, a hint of awe in her voice. “What is that massive structure?”
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he said. “It’s the Cathedral of Santo Giacomo il Maggiore. It’s where all of our royal weddings take place. Would you like to see the inside?”
He motioned for Jerome to pull over across the street from the main entrance to the cathedral. Jerome opened the back door for Larkin, extending his hand to help her out, and Luca followed.
“So if you look down this boulevard,” he said, pointing along a wide, tree-lined street filled with cars and buses and even the occasional horse-drawn carriage full of tourists. “Imagine a carriage like that one”—he indicated an open-air landau carriage pulled by a sleepy horse clopping slowly down the road—“only much larger and gilded. It’s a landau, with the roof drawn down, which is much preferable as it’s open for better public viewing. It would be pulled by six horses that are led by a coachman in ceremonial costume with the gold braids and the fancy feathered hat and the velvet knickers and the white socks, the whole thing. On the way to the church, the bride would be in here, escorted by her father.
“After the ceremony,” Luca continued, “the royal couple would be comfortably ensconced inside, en route to the palace for the reception, and along the way, they’d wave to the throngs lining the streets. If they wanted to they could even reach around and open the doors with the jewel-encrusted handles. Although really, they don’t open the doors. There are footmen who do that for them.”
Larkin’s eyes were wide in wonderment. Or intimidation. It was hard to differentiate with her.
“Will you have a wedding like that some day?”
He paused to think about the question for a moment. “I suppose it depends on what my fiancée would want,” he said. “Tradition is, of course, very important for my family, so ideally, yes, it would be lovely to have a grand spectacle of a wedding. The people of Monaforte love those events, and we love putting them on. I guess I would want the woman I marry to choose that, but of course, it would be entirely up to her. Would you want it?”
He hoped she didn’t think that was a trick question. Only maybe it was. Maybe he wanted to see how she’d answer, to find out if she’d ever, in her wildest dreams, harbored fantasies about him. Surely, after their little close encounter of the nearly naked kind, she’d harbored a couple of fantasies about him despite herself—perhaps even about marrying him and what marrying a prince would mean.
To him, it was old hat: it was what was done. To an outsider, no doubt it could be quite an intimidating concept. He wasn’t, of course, fantasizing about marrying Larkin. Not yet, anyway. Although he also wasn’t not fantasizing about marrying her, either. He was still too busy dreaming about a command performance, minus the precoitus interruptus at Sandro’s palazzo, to remind him how very compatible they could be if they put their minds—and bodies—to it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Well, talk about a trick question, she thought. Would I want that sort of wedding? Crap! How does one answer that question, under the circumstances? If she told him the truth—or at least a partial truth—then he’d think she was bucking for an invite. On bended knee at that. But geez, she wasn’t hinting around for any type of anything, and certainly not a proposal! She hardly knew the man.
Though she pretty much “knew” him, in the biblical sense at least. As an aside, whoever came up with that term of reference? It was sort of weird, really. Because who’s got bibles on your mind when you’re skin to skin, tongue to tongue, panting hard, bodies sweaty, desperately grasping for any part of each other’s flesh you can get purchase of, so in need of physical contact—make that pleasure—you’ve reached that point. Nope, she hadn’t been thinking of bibles at that very moment when she let her guard down with Luca. The very hot, very sexy, very talented Luca.
But the truth was, she was a girl. And what girl hadn’t, at some point in her life, given some credence to that fantasy-wedding scenario, with the prince and the horse-drawn carriages and the adoring crowds and, well, she hadn’t known about the jeweled door handles so they wouldn’t have been part of that delusional thought process. But the rest of it? Hell yeah.
Fact is, if you grew up in an era of Disney movies and happy-ever-afters, princesses and royal weddings became the de facto daydream, didn’t they? Particularly with a girl who stayed home and read books and watched movies on the weekends when the other girls were stealing kisses behind the bleachers and discovering the miracle of the opposite sex in the back seats of their boyfriends’ family minivans.
Meantime, she couldn’t stop hearing his flattering words, which played on an endless loop in her head. He called me a butterfly... and he said I was bellissima. Me! Bellissima!
Her mind wandered, as she tried to imagine sitting in that carriage, one kid-gloved hand clasping the white-gloved one of her new husband, garbed as he would be in his formal military uniform—would that be Luca?—her other hand extended toward the adoring crowds. Wow, how weird would that be?
And footmen! There would be footmen! For that matter, what exactly did a footman do when not opening royal jewel-encrusted carriage door handles? Did he live in one of those m
agical thatch-roofed cottages with smoke curling from the chimney? Were there fireplaces in thatch-roofed houses? Wouldn’t that be a bit of a flame hazard?
“Are you in there?”
She looked over to see Luca snapping his fingers, trying to garner her attention. She’d been lost in thought. Reallllly lost in thought. Oy, vey.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I got distracted. What were we saying?” She mentally kicked herself the minute she asked that question because she knew damned well what he’d asked her and now she had to go and remind him, so that he could put her on the spot all over again.
“A big, fancy, royal wedding,” he said, motioning toward the imaginary wedding they’d been discussing. “What would you do? Would you want that? Or a quickie Vegas wedding?”
She knit her brows. “Why would you think I’d want something as cheesy as a Vegas wedding? Do I look like that type, so desperate to put a ring on it before the man could change his mind, that I’d race to the first available wedding venue?” There, that ought to kill this line of questioning.
He raised his hands to get her to back off. “I couldn’t care if you got married in Vegas or if you never got married,” he said. “I was just asking you because I was trying to be polite.”
She pursed her lips, crossing her arms over her chest, closing down with body language. She might as well have just hung up a sign: This restaurant is closed for business until further notice. Not that she was a restaurant.
“So you’re saying you don’t care if I get married,” she said. “You think no one would want to marry me?”
His eyes grew wide and he put his hands on his hips. “You can be the most vexing woman in the history of women,” he said. “I said nothing about your potential marriageability or your ability to find—and hold onto—a man, even. Though, truth be told, if you treat all of your men the way you treat me, I’d imagine they must go running for the hills on a fairly regular basis.”
A Court Gesture Page 11
