Prince of Scandal

by Annie West

  ‘Here.’ A deep voice cut through her swirling thoughts. ‘Let me.’ Warm hands, large and capable, unclipped the seat belt and brushed it off her lap.

  Sensation jittered through her stomach and across her thighs. Luisa looked up sharply to find Raul bending over her, his eyes warm with an expression she couldn’t fathom.

  Her heart rose in her throat, pounding fast. The memory of last night’s madness filled her. The feel of his tight embrace and her need for more. Despite today’s polite formality, nothing could obliterate the recollection. Even the knowledge it had been a lie. He’d felt nothing.

  He stepped back and she sucked in an uneven breath.

  ‘It’s time to go.’ He extended an arm.

  Luisa nodded, her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth. What was happening to her? She had no desire to fall into Raul’s arms again, yet she imagined warmth in his gaze. When all he cared about was her usefulness to him.

  Silently she let him drape a cashmere coat over her shoulders, then stepped to the door. The sooner she reached their destination, the sooner she could sort out this mess.

  A roar filled her ears and she stopped abruptly at the head of the stairs. She blinked into the bright light, wishing she’d brought sunglasses.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Raul said. ‘They’re just glad to see us.’

  He slid an arm slid round her, drawing her to him. Instinctively she pulled away but his hold was unbreakable.

  ‘Relax,’ he murmured. ‘I’m just making sure you don’t trip on those high heels. Come on.’

  At his urging they descended, Luisa clinging to the railing and inordinately grateful for his support. Sheer bravado had led her to wear the highest heels in her new wardrobe, determined to look as sophisticated as possible. The move had backfired when she’d come face to face with Raul and discovered the extra height merely brought her closer to his knowing gaze.

  Another roar made her blink and focus on the scene ahead.

  Crowds massed behind the fence at the edge of the tarmac. Maritzian flags waved and excited voices called out. Luisa’s Maritzian was rusty so all she could make out was Raul’s name. And hers.

  She stumbled to a stop on the narrow stairs and only Raul’s firm grip saved her. Adrenalin pumped hard in her blood. From the near fall or perhaps from the impact of meeting his intent scrutiny head-on.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  He shrugged and she felt the movement against her as he kept a tight hold of her waist.

  ‘Well-wishers. Nothing to worry about.’

  Luisa frowned, battling a rising sense of unreality. ‘But how do they know my name?’

  Something flickered in his eyes. ‘Your identity isn’t a secret. Is it?’

  Dazedly she shook her head, beginning her descent again at his urging. ‘But it makes no sense. How could—’

  The sight of a placard in the throng cut off the words mid-flow. It showed her name and Raul’s, linked in a massive love heart topped with a crown.

  She swung round and read satisfaction in his face.

  ‘What have you done?’ Every muscle tightened as she fought the impulse to run back up the steps and hide in the royal jet.

  His brows arched. ‘I authorised my staff to confirm your identity if queried. Now, it’s time we moved.’

  Mutinously Luisa stared up at him, her hand tightening on the rail.

  His eyes flashed, then his lips tilted in a one-sided smile that obliterated the grimness engraved around his lips, making him look younger. ‘As you wish, madam.’

  He bowed. But it wasn’t a bow, she realised as his arms circled her.

  Seconds later he hefted her up against his chest. The noise of the crowd crested in a swell of approval. But Luisa barely heard it over the thunderous beat of blood in her ears.

  She should hate being manhandled. She did! Almost.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, trying not to focus on the feel of tough muscle and bone surrounding her.

  His smile deepened and something flipped over inside Luisa’s chest. He shrugged again and this time the movement rippled around her, drawing her closer.

  It scared her how much she enjoyed being held by Raul.

  ‘Carrying my bride down the stairs.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LUISA walked across the tarmac towards the crowd. It was daunting. So huge, so excited. For an insane moment she wished she were back in his arms. To her consternation she’d felt … safe there.

  Her knees shook with every step. His arm around her waist was both a torment and a support.

  She swallowed hard, nervous at what she faced. And furious.

  ‘Don’t faint on me now, Luisa.’

  ‘No chance of that,’ she managed through gritted teeth as instinctively she tried to respond to the broad smiles on so many faces. ‘I’m not going to swoon in your arms. Even for the sake of your audience.’

  ‘Our audience.’

  A barrage of flashes set up around them. He raised one hand in acknowledgement and the crowd cheered harder.

  The information she’d found on the web mentioned his dedication to his country but she hadn’t realised how popular he was. Cynically she did a quick survey of the crowd and noticed women outnumbered men three to one. That explained some of the excitement.

  It would be easy to fall for Raul if you didn’t know the man behind the gorgeous exterior.

  He swept her towards a gleaming limousine. No lengthy wait for passport and customs checks for him.

  They’d almost reached the car when Luisa saw what had provoked such interest. Someone held up a page from a newspaper, with a blown up photo of a couple embracing so passionately it felt voyeuristic to look at them.

  It took a moment for the truth to slam into her. The man staring so intently down at the woman he held possessively was Raul. His face was harsh with stark sexual hunger. Or intense calculation.

  And the woman with her kiss-swollen lips, apparently swooning in his arms, was her!

  Luisa’s skin crawled in horror. Bile rose in her throat and she swallowed frantically. She felt … violated at the knowledge anyone else had seen that moment. Had viewed her vulnerability. Bad enough Raul knew her appalling weakness, but to have others witness it, splash it in newsprint.

  She gasped, her breath sawing painfully in cramped lungs.

  ‘Come, Luisa.’ Raul urged her forwards. ‘Don’t stop here in front of the cameras.’

  The mention of cameras moved her on till she found herself seated, shivering, in a limo. Her brain seemed to have seized up and her teeth were chattering.

  ‘Luisa?’ Warm hands chafed her icy ones. Dazedly she heard a muttered imprecation, then her knees were swathed in warmth as Raul tucked his jacket around her legs.

  ‘I don’t need it. I’m fine.’ Her voice sounded overloud in the thick silence now the privacy screen had been raised. But a chance glance out of the window to the people milling about, watching their vehicle, made her shrink back into the soft leather.

  ‘You’ve had a shock. I apologise. I should have warned you.’ Luisa could almost believe that was genuine regret in his deep voice.

  But her brain was branded with the memory of his expression in that photo. She wasn’t stupid enough to believe he’d been overcome by passion. He’d recovered too fast and too completely. He’d probably been calculating how successful his seduction had been. Assessing how compliant she’d be in future.

  Fury pierced the fog of shock.

  ‘You did that!’ She rounded on him, too angry to feel more than a tremor of surprise at how close he sat, his thigh warm against hers. ‘You set me up for that photo.’ How could she have forgotten her suspicion last night when he’d suggested taking her out? She should have guessed he was up to something.

  Hauteur iced his features.

  ‘I don’t do deals with the paparazzi.’

  Luisa shook her head. ‘Someone did! They were there, waiting for us. You can’t tell me—’

&nb
sp; ‘I do tell you, Luisa.’ His voice held a note of steel that silenced her. ‘I have nothing but contempt for the media outlets and the photographers who spend their time beating up such stories.’ His jaw tightened and Luisa found herself sinking back into her seat.

  Gullible she might be, but everything from the set of his taut shoulders to the glitter in his dark eyes convinced her he was telling the truth.

  ‘The press are always on the watch for photo opportunities. They follow constantly, though given my security detail, usually at a distance. It’s part of being royal. A fact of life.’

  ‘I don’t think much of being royal then.’ Her stomach was painfully tight after the sudden welling nausea.

  To her surprise, Raul’s mouth lifted in a rare smile that made something inside her soften. ‘I don’t either. Not that part of it.’

  His hand enfolded hers and for an instant she knew a bizarre urge to smile back, sharing a moment of intimacy.

  Except it was a mirage. There was no intimacy.

  ‘I regret the photo, Luisa. If I’d realised we were visible …’ He shrugged.

  To her amazement she found herself wanting to believe him. ‘But even if the press had reported our—’ she swallowed, her mouth dry as she remembered his kiss ‘—our trip on the river, I don’t see why the crowd would be excited about my arrival. Surely they don’t turn out to see all your … girlfriends.’

  His smile faded and his grip tightened. Clearly he didn’t like explaining himself.

  Tough!

  Luisa dragged her hand from his, refusing to notice the loss of warmth.

  ‘I told you. I instructed my staff to explain who you are if asked.’

  ‘But my name wouldn’t mean anything!’

  Silently he surveyed her as if waiting for her to catch up. ‘Your title does. Princess Luisa of Ardissia.’

  Luisa froze as the implications sank in. ‘I’m not princess yet. I haven’t signed—’

  ‘But you will.’ His voice was a rich, creamy purr. ‘That’s why you came, isn’t it?’

  She nodded, feeling again that hated sense of being cornered. Suspicion flared.

  ‘That’s not all they said, is it?’ Urgently she leaned towards him, thrusting his jacket off her legs, uncaring she was close enough to see the individual long lashes fringing his eyes, or the hint of a nick on his smoothly shaven jaw. To inhale the warm scent of his skin.

  ‘They just happened to mention the marriage contract, didn’t they?’

  Raul held her gaze unblinkingly and for one crazy moment she felt an echo of last night’s emotions when he’d hauled her close and introduced her to bliss.

  Heat scorched her cheeks and throat.

  ‘Didn’t they?’

  ‘It’s not a secret, Luisa, though the details weren’t widely known.’

  She sat back, her heart pounding.

  ‘You don’t give up, do you?’ It shouldn’t come as a surprise. Not after he’d manoeuvred her into coming here. ‘What did you hope to achieve? Pressure me into agreeing?’

  It was as if he’d known she still held out hope of avoiding marriage. Wearily she raised a hand to her forehead, smoothing the beginning of an ache there.

  ‘I won’t be forced into marriage because your precious public expects it. If I pull out the story would be all about you. How you were jilted. Not about me.’

  In an instant his face whitened to the colour of scoured bone. His nostrils flared and the flesh seemed to draw back, leaving his clear cut features spare and prominent. Almost she could believe she’d scored some unseen injury.

  Energy radiated from him. A sense of barely controlled power. Of danger.

  This time she did retreat.

  ‘There will be no jilting.’ Fascinated, Luisa saw the tic of Raul’s pulse at his jaw.

  ‘I will not leave my people to the chaos that would come if I gave up the throne.’ He paused. ‘Remember why you agreed to come here.’

  Blazing eyes meshed with hers and any hope she’d harboured that he wouldn’t follow through on his threat vanished. This man would do whatever it took to get what he wanted. How had she let last night’s fake tenderness blind her to that? Or his solicitude here in the car?

  Luisa pulled her jacket close and turned to face the window. She couldn’t face him with her emotions so raw.

  They’d left the highway for the old part of the city. Cobblestones rumbled under the wheels as they crossed a wide square of pastel-coloured baroque buildings that housed expensive shops.

  The car turned and before them appeared a steep incline, almost a cliff. Above that, seeming to grow from the living rock, towered the royal castle. Dark grey stone with round towers and forest green roofs just visible behind the massive battlement.

  Guidebooks said the castle was a superb example of medieval construction, updated with spectacular eighteenth century salons and modern amenities. That it commanded extraordinary views to the Alps and down the wide river valley. That its treasure house was unrivalled in central Europe and its ballroom an architectural gem.

  But what stuck in Luisa’s mind was that in almost a millennium of use no one had ever escaped the castle’s dungeons once locked up by order of the king.

  Her suite of rooms was airy, light and sumptuous. Not at all like a dank prison cell. Yet Luisa barely took in the silk and gilt loveliness.

  She stood before the wide windows, staring to distant snowcapped mountains. That was where Ardissia lay. The place that tied her to wealth and position and a life of empty gloss instead of emotional warmth and security. Tied her to Raul. A man whose ambition repelled, yet who made her tremble with glorious, dreadful excitement.

  Luisa trailed her fingers appreciatively over the antique desk. It wasn’t that she didn’t like beautiful things, or the designer clothes wealth could buy. It was that she knew they weren’t any substitute for happiness. For warmth and caring and love. She’d grown up with love and her one disastrous foray into romance had taught her she couldn’t accept anything else.

  On impulse she snatched up the phone. A dialling tone buzzed in her ear and her heart leapt at the idea of calling home. She looked at her watch, calculating the time difference. With the help of the phone book she found the international code and rang home.

  ‘Oh, pet! It’s so good to hear your voice.’ Mary’s excited chatter eased some of the tension drawn tight in Luisa’s stomach. She sank back onto a silk upholstered chair in front of the desk.

  ‘We’ve been wondering how you are and what you’re doing. Are you well? How was the trip? Did that lovely Prince Raul look after you?’

  Luisa bit her lip at the memory of how well Raul had looked after her. He’d played on her vulnerability and used his own compelling attraction to lay bare naïve longings she hadn’t even realised she harboured.

  ‘The trip was fine, Mary. I even had my own bed on the plane. And then we stopped in Paris—’

  ‘Paris? Really?’

  Soon Luisa was swept along by Mary’s demands for details, peppered with her aunt’s exclamations and observations. Eventually the talk turned to home.

  ‘We’ve been missing you, love. It seems strange with that new bloke and his son in your house. But I can’t deny they’ve made a good start. He’s a decent manager, by the look of it. And he reckons the changes you and your dad began to modernise the co-op were spot on. Well, I could have told him that! And between you and me, it’s such a relief knowing that debt’s going to be settled. Sam is like a new man without that weighing on him. And Josie’s all agog about moving into town to take up an apprenticeship, now we’ll be able to afford to help her with rent. And little Julia Todd is looking so much better these days. I was worried about her being so wan. It turns out the poor thing is pregnant again and was worried about how they’d afford another child. But now she’s positively radiant …’

  Luisa leaned forward to put her elbow on the desk, letting her head sink onto her hand.

  Mary’s voice tugged at somethin
g deep inside. The part of her that longed for everything familiar and dear.

  Yet with each new breathless revelation it became clear Luisa couldn’t go back. Her past, the life she’d loved, were closed to her.

  The last vestige of hope had been torn away today when she looked into fathomless emerald eyes and a stern, beautiful face. Raul would do whatever it took to get the crown he coveted.

  Already the people she loved were moving on, anticipating the cancellation of the co-op’s debts. Luisa had understood that, but not till this moment had the devastating reality of it all hit her fully.

  Luisa had no choice.

  She lifted her head and looked around the delicately lovely room. A room for a princess.

  She shuddered at the enormity of what faced her.

  But her parents’ example was vivid in her mind. No matter what life threw at them, they’d battled on, making the most of life without complaint.

  Luisa set her jaw. It was time she faced her future.

  ‘Raul.’

  He looked up from the papers he and Lukas were discussing—disturbing reports of more unrest.

  Luisa stood in the doorway. A dart of heat shot through him as he took in her loveliness and remembered the taste of her lips beneath his.

  There was something different about her. Gone was the distressed woman of mere hours ago. And the woman endearingly unsure of herself in high heels. This was Luisa as he’d first seen her—confident and in control, yet with no hint of the farmyard about her.

  She looked … magnificent.

  He shoved back his chair and stood. ‘We’ll continue later, Lukas.’ His assistant hastily packed up the reports and bowed himself from the study, closing the door.

  ‘Please take a seat.’

  She crossed the room to halt before his desk. ‘This won’t take long.’ She paused, her slightly stunned gaze taking in his state-of-the-art computer equipment and the large document storage area behind him. As if surprised to discover he actually worked.

  Raul paced around the desk. ‘What can I do for you, Luisa?’ It was the first time she’d sought him out.