“Cristiano,” she said, and this time, he did not cut her off. And she did not falter. “I love you. And I don’t want to be a princess. You are not a fool, and I am your wife, and we will love each other as best we can, for as long as we can, so that our son grows up and doesn’t spend his time worried about stones and ogres and trolls. But rather, happiness. Family. Love. All the things that make life worth living.”
“I can think of no better happy-ever-after than that,” he said, there against her mouth.
This time, when he kissed her, it tasted like forever.
And kiss by kiss, and stone by stone, they made it so.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JULIENNE WENT INTO labor the following morning, and by nightfall, their son was born.
And in Cristiano’s wholly unbiased opinion, he was perfect.
They named him Pietro, which meant rock, because he was the greatest magic either one of them could imagine. And something far bigger and better than a mere stone.
And the more Cristiano allowed himself to love, the more magic there was to be found.
It took him the better part of a year, but he convinced Paola to start attending family functions, such as they were. To meet her great-grandson, and better still, the woman who had convinced a Cassara man to change.
“Perhaps it is not me who is the witch, then,” the old woman cackled with glee, the first time she and Julienne met.
“I will take that as the highest compliment imaginable,” Julienne replied.
It took him another year to convince Paola to move into the villa, where she could be mistress of the house at last. And his grandmother might have been in her nineties, but she ran the villa with an iron fist. And ordered Cristiano, Pietro and the three other sons Julienne bore him around at her leisure.
“It is not difficult to make a good man,” the old woman told him on her hundredth birthday, grinning at him over her cane. “All it takes is a woman’s firm hand.”
Cristiano could not disagree.
But the hands he preferred on him belonged to his wife.
Julienne was his north star, his lodestone. She carried his babies, she raised his sons and when she was not busy creating tiny humans, she served on the Cassara Corporation board as well.
And, finally, together, they made it the family company it never had been in his grandfather’s hands.
“That’s because you are the man your grandfather never was,” Julienne told him, year after year. “You love your wife. You would die for your family. You have honored your grandmother, and yes, Cristiano, you have rescued each and every one of us. Over and over again.”
But Cristiano always knew the truth.
Julienne might have been the one to walk into that bar, determined to sell herself. But she had been the one to do the rescuing.
“I love you,” he told her, every day of their lives.
And better still, showed her.
In any way he could, in every way that mattered, he showed her.
How he loved her. How crucial she was not only to his happiness, but to the mechanics that kept the world turning. How perfect she was and always had been, just as she was.
And in tougher times, or when things seemed the darkest, they would take out that stone that was shaped like a heart, and it would make them laugh.
Cristiano would tell her stories about ogres and trolls and terrible fools. Julienne would tell him stories about princesses who were born on hilltops, who came down to the sea to find their Prince Charmings.
Again and again, they wove their stories around themselves until they were right again.
Until they were whole.
“Happy-ever-after isn’t made,” Julienne liked to say as they lay in their bed, still wrapped around each other tightly twenty years on. “It’s mended. The days are the thread, the years are the colors, and all we have to do is sew.”
“I love you,” Cristiano told her. “Ti amo, mi amore. Tu mi completi.”
His heart, his love, his wife.
His whole life, gleaming there before him. Light and joy.
And then he rolled her over, and showed her how he loved her in the language he was most fluent in, once again.
Until she sang their love back to him, the way he loved best.
The way she always did, and always would, all the rest of their days.
* * *
Lost in the magic of The Italian’s Pregnant Cinderella? Discover more stories by Caitlin Crews!
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Kidnapped for His Royal Heir
by Maya Blake
CHAPTER ONE
VIOLET BARRINGHALL HELD the thick envelope in her hand, mutiny brimming in her heart. She managed to dredge up a thin smile for the smartly dressed courier before shutting her apartment door.
She knew its sender without peeking inside. Its weighted richness shrieked wealth, and its creamy, seamless perfection stressed its importance. The gold-embossed emblem on the top right-hand corner was distinctive enough without her years-long exposure to the family that bore it with centuries-old pride and unapologetic arrogance.
But more than that she encountered an even purer strain of that pride and arrogance on a daily basis in the form of His Royal Highness Prince Zakary Philippe Montegova—the sender of the envelope in her hand.
It wasn’t a highbrow invitation.
No, this was a summons.
She knew this because she’d been responsible for sending out those invitations for his latest fundraising event herself, in her role as his long-suffering dogsbody for the last twelve weeks.
Three months, and counting, of pure hell. Of relentless commands and impossible expectations of perfection from a man—no, a prince—who demanded the very best of himself and therefore of everyone else around him as well.
As Director of the House of Montegova Trust, a foundation that dealt with everything from managing Montegovan business interests abroad to charity and conservation work all over the world, the trust had gained international acclaim for the small but immensely wealthy Mediterranean kingdom.
Together with his brother, Crown Prince Remi Montegova, and their mother, the Queen, Zak had elevated the status of the kingdom to even greater heights since the untimely death of the King over a decade ago.
Where others would’ve grown content at achieving multi-billionaire status, unquestioning respect and reverence, and rested on their laurels, Zak was even more driven, his terrifying, breakneck work ethic inexhaustible. Heck, every facet of his life was lived in high octane.
Right down to the revolving-door speed of his personal liaisons.
Violet didn’t want to think about that. Right now, she’d give anything to completely erase Zak Montegova from her memory. At least for the next twelve hours.
But she couldn’t.
She’d committed to being at his beck and call. In fact, that clause was specifically stated in her contract with the trust. While she had several reservations about the man himself, she couldn’t forget that her degree in community development and her personal career ambition as a conservationist would be given a huge boost with a stint at the trust on her CV. It was why her deliberations about accepting the secondment offer in New York had been woefu
lly short but immensely painful.
Because, aside from her grimace-inducing personal history with Zak, it directly played into her mother’s blatant and conniving plans.
Despite telling herself that incident was a thing of the past, Violet hadn’t been able to consign it to history. Like a recurring nightmare, it leapt to life and replayed in vivid Technicolor every time she was in Zak’s presence, which these days happened to be several hours of every day.
Three more months. A mere ninety-odd days. What could possibly go wrong?
Like an impossibly perfect spectre, his face loomed in her mind’s eye.
Formidable perfection. Insufferably handsome, with a royal swagger that shouted his awareness of his charisma. The raw prowess she’d heard whispers about long before she’d first encountered him.
Every dismissive word he’d thrown at her that day in her mother’s garden six years ago had been steeped in pure masculine arrogance. He’d carried that entitlement in his thick, broad shoulders and arrogant slant of his head as he’d walked away, secure in the knowledge that his manhood was assured, even worshipped by yet another woman, while he’d cruelly rebuffed the attention he’d garnered.
Violet’s face heated up at the memory. Her hand curled tighter around the envelope, one heartbeat away from crumpling the expensive paper. Slowly, she unclenched her fist, breathed deeply to restore her equilibrium. She wasn’t eighteen any more, hadn’t been for six long, tough years.
She’d had to grow up pretty damned fast shortly after that eye-opening party, thanks to an unexpected heart attack taking her father, and the discovery that the life of luxury they’d led had been lived on the back of a ruthlessly guarded facade of falsehoods, humiliating ingratiation and a blatant and ultimately futile exercise of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
The shocking revelation that the Earl and Countess Barringhall weren’t as esteemed or as wealthy as they’d led the world to believe, that they were in fact destitute to the point of bankruptcy, had become an open, humiliating secret. Even far away at university, Violet had been subjected to snide and cruel gossip, social media playing its part in serialising the true status of her family to the world.
It was why Violet had buried herself in her work at the International Conservation Trust. And when the opportunity came up to work away from Barringhall and her mother’s ever-increasing efforts to marry her off to someone socially advantageous, Violet had grabbed it with both hands and taken the position in Oxford.
But with senior positions in the field going to more experienced colleagues, not conservationists with less than two years’ experience, she’d known it was only prudent to redouble her efforts to accelerate her career path and put herself entirely out of her mother’s orbit.
She’d taken this job despite knowing her mother’s close friendship with the Queen of Montegova would be exploited to the utmost in her bid to marry her daughter off.
Violet had considered telling her mother not to bother because she wouldn’t succeed. Little did her mother know that Zak Montegova couldn’t have made his feelings for Violet any clearer than he had that night six years ago or during the last few weeks she’d been working alongside him.
To Zak, she barely existed.
So she didn’t understand why this envelope had been delivered here, now. After ten hours’ exposure to His Royal High-Handedness today, she’d hoped for a night’s reprieve before being subjected to his disturbing presence again.
Lips pressed together to hold her feelings inside, she slid a finger beneath the flap.
The note was brief. Succinct. Imperious.
My assistant has been taken ill. You will take her place in accompanying me to the Conservation Society fundraiser, which starts in an hour. A chauffeur is at your disposal.
Don’t let me down.
HRHZ
The inherent threat in those four final words had kept her awake for more nights in the past three months than anything else had done in her whole life.
That need for her to be exemplary in all things lest the stain of gossip, that underlying suspicion that she was a freeloader, a leech, because of her parents’ infamous misdeeds, attach itself to her. So far it’d proved an uphill battle, social media and her mother’s relentless pursuit of status playing their part in keeping the gossip mill alive and robust.
But she only needed to withstand this for a while longer, to earn her place in life through hard work and dedication to her chosen career. Prove sceptics like Zakary Montegova wrong. If that included stepping into his assistant’s shoes for one night...
She could gain invaluable experience from other conservationists attending the much-vaunted and anticipated event. So why were thoughts of Zak uppermost in her brain? Why was her heart hammering at the prospect of seeing him again?
She jumped when her phone rang from where it lay on the tiny console table next to the front door. Her Greenwich Village apartment was compact enough to cross in a handful of steps, although she suspected who it was before she reached for the phone. Sure enough, the cynical HRH she’d programmed into the contacts was displayed in green.
‘Hello?’
‘You have received my note, yes?’
She hated it that her fingers shook at the deep, faintly accented tones that blended Italian, French and Spanish in an enthralling mix that made up Montegova’s language and history.
‘Since you informed the courier to hand it over personally, no doubt you’ve been told exactly that. And good evening, to you too. Your Highness.’ She couldn’t stem the snippiness from her voice even as she grew irritated with herself for letting him get under her skin. For this heart-banging-against-ribs effect he so effortlessly commanded from her.
But hadn’t he done that to her since she’d first set eyes on him at twelve? Hadn’t she and her twin sister, Sage, watched him that first time from their bedroom window? Hadn’t Violet, freshly done with reading her favourite fairy tale, instantly placed herself in the Princess’s shoes, with Zakary Montegova in the leading role of Prince Charming, because in that seemingly serendipitous moment when he’d looked up and locked eyes with her, he’d been her every wish come to life? The answer to those desperate, seemingly futile prayers for deliverance from her parents’ endless arguments, the whispers and conversations that suddenly stopped when she and her sisters walked into the room, and their mother’s constant badgering about making strategic friendships?
She’d hated herself for that weak moment later, of course. Because books were books. Nothing in real life could mislead her into thinking she needed a boy...or man...to save her. That the answer to her self-worth lay in a prince whose gaze turned cool and dismissive as he stared at her from across the top of his perfectly polished sports car.
His Perfect Highness didn’t immediately respond to her snippiness now, and that drawn-out extra second tightened Violet’s already strung-out nerves. He’d always had a knack for making her feel self-conscious, even awkward once upon a time.
But only if you give him that power.
Where she would’ve rushed into further speech at twelve or eighteen, Violet forced herself to hold her tongue now. To wait him out. As if her heart wasn’t banging harder just from the sound of his voice. As if her palms weren’t growing clammy, reminding her how she’d ruffled him, for a very brief, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it instant, six years ago.
It was infuriating that her brain refused to let go of that moment, the scent and, sweet heaven, the taste of him still lingering, vivid and real and affecting, after all this time.
‘Personal dealings with couriers are outside my remit, so you’ll have to excuse my ignorance,’ Prince Zakary drawled, dragging her attention back to the present. Back to his exclusive importance. To the reminder that he dealt with heads of state and Fortune 500 CEOs, not the common working class. ‘But I’m pleased to note the urgency of the situation was relayed. I trust yo
u’re ready?’
‘No, I’m not. I received the note five minutes ago. I haven’t even thought about what I’m going to wear yet.’
‘Think fast, then, Violet. I’ll be at your apartment in twenty minutes.’
‘What? You said I had an hour before your chauffeur fetched me.’
‘There’s been a change of plan, which necessitated this call. My foreign minister wishes to meet with me before the fundraiser starts.’
‘And what does that have to do with me?’
Again, he paused for an extra beat. ‘Since you’re acting as my assistant, your presence is also required at the meeting. Unless you feel you’re not up to the task...?’
That barely veiled insinuation stung.
‘Not that long ago I spent three weeks under an intense sun, with very little sleep, cleaning and tagging hundreds of birds after an oil tanker spilled its contents on the other side of the world, Your Highness. I’m sure I’m up to taking notes at a meeting. Unless you’ll be conducting it in something other than one of the five languages I speak fluently?’ That need to prove her worth to him, to ram her few but much prideful accomplishments down his throat, grated for a moment before she owned it.
She’d learned to her cost that timid didn’t work with Zak.
Anything other than toe-to-toe combat was just asking to be eaten alive and spat aside with singeing indifference. He responded to challenges, usually attempted by misguided fools who dared to say no to him. But occasionally it didn’t hurt to remind the man that simply because that word didn’t exist in his vocabulary, it didn’t mean she intended to gushingly enquire how high when he said jump.
‘I’m well aware of the contents of your résumé, Lady Barringhall. You don’t need to recite it to me, especially not when time is of the essence.’
‘Of course not. Your Highness. Just as I won’t remind you that you’re the one who called me. That you’re the one wasting time by keeping me on the phone when I could be getting dressed.’
The Italian's Pregnant Cinderella (Passion In Paradise Book 8) Page 15
