‘What you’ve asked me to do is unexpected.’ Stunningly so. ‘But I ended up here, you can’t swap me for Nicolette, and if I don’t agree, the game is up with your father and you either have to marry someone for real and stay married to her, or your father won’t grant you the “concessions” you asked for.’
‘I’m afraid I didn’t allow for collecting the wrong woman outside Nicolette’s home, but that is not your fault.’ He frowned and sipped his coffee. ‘It’s important you don’t make your decision based on guilt. A mistake happened that was out of my control, and yours.’
She did feel at least partially responsible, but Mel kept that thought to herself and instead took a small bite of a tasty grilled vegetable before she went on. ‘I’d like to know what the concessions are that your father has agreed to.’
‘I am determined that the truffle crop this year will not fail.’ Rikardo set down his knife and fork and turned to face her. ‘When it flourishes, I’ll need a spectacular marketing idea to get buyers back onside to buy our product. Many of them have lost faith because of the blight that struck our crop two years running.’
Mel, too, set down her utensils. ‘What is this marketing idea?’
‘On the palace grounds there are truffles that grow naturally.’ Rik’s gaze shifted to where the palace sat in splendour in the distance. ‘For centuries those truffles have been eaten only by royals. It probably sounds rather archaic but—’ He shrugged and went on.
‘These truffles are particularly fine. If buyers are given the chance to obtain small quantities of them in exchange for purchasing commercial quantities of our regular truffles, I believe they will jump at the opportunity.’
‘What a clever idea.’ Melanie spoke without hesitation. ‘People will go nuts for a chance like that. I can also imagine that you might have had a job on your hands to get the king to allow you to use those truffles.’
‘Correct. My father tends to adhere to a lot of the old ways and does not want to consider change.’ Georgio was strong, stubborn, unbending. Rik preferred to take the strengths he’d inherited from his father, and turn them to better purpose.
As for Melanie, she looked beautiful and innocent and wary and uncertain all rolled into one as she sat beside Rik on the bench. Yet she also seemed well able to think with a business mind, too, and her eyes shone with genuine encouragement for him as she heard his plans for the truffle marketing.
Would she agree to help him out of the corner he’d got himself stuck in? Did he even have the right to ask that of her?
‘I don’t want to harm you through this agreement, Melanie.’ That, too, had to be said. ‘I have asked for your help, but if it is not something you can do, you do not have to give it.’
‘But you want to help your people.’ Her gaze turned to meet his, and held. ‘You chose Nicolette because you weren’t…romantically attached to her or anything like that, didn’t you?’
‘I did. That allowed the situation to remain as uncomplicated as possible.’
‘It would be easy to end the marriage and get on with what you really wanted to do with your life afterwards.’
He dipped his head. ‘Yes.’
‘I’m not ready to consider marriage yet. The real thing, I mean.’ Even as Melanie spoke the words, a part deep inside her whispered a question. Did she believe she would ever be ready? Did she even feel she had the right—?
What did she mean by that? Of course she had the right, and she would still have the right if she married Rikardo and they then divorced. Melanie pushed the strange question aside.
And she thought about all those people subject to circumstances beyond their control, just trying to get on with their daily lives. People in a lot of ways who would be just like her. Not royal people, but everyday people who simply needed a bit of a hand up.
Mel could do this. She could be of help. She could make it so Rikardo didn’t have to lock himself into a long-term marriage he didn’t want. Maybe later he would find someone and be able to be happy. The little prick she felt in her chest must have been hope that he would indeed find that happiness.
‘I’ll do it.’ Melanie spoke the words softly, and said them again more forcefully. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll marry you so you can make your plan work. I want to help you.’
‘You’re quite certain?’ Rik leaned towards her as he spoke.
‘I am. I’m totally sure.’ And in that moment, Mel was. She could help him. She could do this to make up for him not being able to marry her cousin.
‘Thank you, Melanie.’
‘You’re welcome.’ Her face softened and the beginnings of a smile came to her lips. Her gaze moved to his lips and suddenly she had to swallow because something told her he was going to kiss her as part of that thank you.
She thought it, and her breath caught, and then he did.
Rik’s lips brushed hers in a soft press. His hand cupped her shoulder, and even through layers of cloth Mel felt that. Registered that as she received a kiss from a prince.
That was why it felt so remarkable. It had to be the reason—a kiss from a prince to thank her for agreeing to help him out of a tight corner.
Yet Melanie didn’t feel as though a prince was kissing her. She was being kissed…by a man, and it felt wonderful in a way no kiss had before.
In that moment her response was completely beyond her control. Her mouth softened against his, gave itself to his ministrations before her thoughts could catch up or stop her. If those thoughts had surfaced, would the kiss have ended there, with a simple brushing of lips against lips? A simple “thank you” expressed in those terms? Because that was indeed what Rik had set out to do.
It had to have been and yet somehow, for Mel at least, it had become something very different.
Mel closed her eyes. For a moment she forgot she was on a mountainside in Europe with a royal prince, seated at a table with a picnic breakfast spread before them and the most amazing scenic vistas on all sides.
She forgot that it was chilly here but that the sun shone and they were sheltered from the wind. A man was simply kissing her and she was kissing him back and that man had a pet truffle hog he’d named and whom he doted on, even though he tried very hard to hide the fact. He cared for his brothers and for the people who lived in his country, and she’d liked him from the moment she’d thought he was a gorgeous cab driver come to take her away to the airport so she could make her way to Sydney.
‘Rik.’ She’d slept on his shoulder and blabbed at him when she wasn’t quite sensible, and, despite all the smart things she should be thinking right now, the kiss felt right.
‘Hmm?’ He whispered the half-question against
her lips.
Mel didn’t know whether she said it, or thought it. She simply knew the words.
Kiss me again.
CHAPTER FIVE
I WOULD kiss you for ever and it would not be enough.
Rik thought the words inside his mind, thought them in his native language. Thought them even though they could not possibly be true and he must simply be swept up in gratitude and relief.
Yet deep within himself he knew that now, in this moment, Melanie would welcome the prolonging of this kiss. His instincts told him this. The way she yielded petal-soft lips to him told him this.
It was that thought of her willingness that finally prompted him to stop something that he should not have started in the first place, and that he hadn’t expected would make his heart pound. He, who rarely lost his cool over anything, had been taken by surprise by kissing a slip of a girl up high on a mountainside.
‘Thank you…’ Rik released Melanie and drew back, and for a moment couldn’t think what he was thanking her for.
For rescuing him. The prince was being rescued by the same generosity that he’d felt in Melanie’s soft lips.
You are on dangerous ground with this thinking, Rikardo. If she is kind, then she is kind and that is something indeed to be appreciated. But the awareness of each other—that cannot be, and it cannot go on.
He shouldn’t have touched her. Arrogantly, he hadn’t known that doing so would be such a stunning thing.
The kiss had been startling in its loveliness. It wasn’t a manly description. But with Melanie it felt exactly right to describe it in this way.
Melanie was startling in her loveliness, and that came from the generous way she gave of herself.
He’d meant only to touch her lips with his, should perhaps not have considered even that much. Rik would like to say that he’d expected not to feel any attraction to Melanie, that he had expected to feel as indifferent towards her as he had felt towards Nicolette, but he’d known it would be different.
Yet he had kissed her, and had ended up shocked and a little taken aback by just how much he had enjoyed that kiss. Her response to him had felt unrehearsed and open. That, too, had added to her appeal.
Maybe she had simply wanted to kiss a prince.
In many other circumstances, Rik would have accepted the thought and yet Melanie had agreed to help him for no reason other than out of generosity to try to help others. She hadn’t asked him what she would get out of the arrangement. She’d wanted to hear the problems and then she’d made a decision based on what she felt she could do to help.
‘I guess we just sealed the bargain.’ Her words held a tremor. She turned to the picnic basket and started to carefully repack it. ‘We should probably get back. Now that we’ve made this decision, your father will want that official meeting. That’s assuming he can fit me into his schedule. I imagine royal families are very busy and I certainly wouldn’t presume—’
‘It will be all right, Melanie.’ She was fully back into ‘dealing with a prince and a promise and a royal family’ mode and in feeling out of her depth, though she had valiantly jumped into this for his sake.
And for the sake of the people of Braston.
Did that mean she hadn’t thought of Rik in that light as they kissed? That he had simply been a man kissing a woman, and she a woman kissing a man? Had his impact on her come completely from Rikardo the man, not from him being the third prince in line to the throne of Braston?
It wasn’t a question that should even have mattered. Rik had accepted that women were attracted to his title first, sometimes to the man within, second, but always that first was there.
Perhaps some of his questioning came from the relief of knowing he hadn’t blown his chance of avoiding being locked into a miserable marriage as part of his bargain with his father.
Melanie’s gaze meshed with his. ‘Are you quite sure you want to do this? I want to help you and help the people of Braston, but in the end what you do has to be really what you want.’
‘I’m sure.’ He got to his feet and lifted the picnic basket. ‘We may not get much done today other than the meeting with my father if he is available, but Dominico will want to get the ball rolling on a few things.’
Melanie agreed. Now that she had committed to marrying Rikardo, she wanted to get things moving.
She didn’t want to stop and give herself too much time to think about the next month and the three that would follow it.
That might have been rather easier for her before they shared that kiss. Mel stumbled slightly on the uneven ground. She didn’t want to think about the kiss, either! Her heart still beat hard from its impact.
‘I have you.’ Rik’s hand shot out and grasped her arm.
And I have received the most moving kiss I’ve ever experienced.
Not that Mel had a great deal of experience. Her life with the family had kept her busy. Oh, she’d dated here and there with men that she met out in her ‘normal’ world. At the fresh produce store, or once it was the delivery guy from the local butcher’s shop. There hadn’t been a lot of time or opportunity.
There is always the time and the opportunity if you want it enough.
Well, now there was a prince.
No, there wasn’t. Not like that. She wasn’t dating Prince Rik. She was going to marry him, but that was for an agreed purpose that had nothing to do with romance. Right. So she was safe from getting any of the wrong kind of ideas about him or anything like that.
Why then, with Rik’s hand on her arm, and the memory of a kiss still fresh in her mind and stamped on her lips, did Mel feel anything but safe?
From what? Falling for him? That would be insane. Much more than falling down a rabbit hole or wearing sparkling magic shoes that would take her anywhere.
So focus on getting back to the palace to start this process that will help lift the country’s economy. Rather than thinking about kisses, you should think of how you can find out as much as possible about truffle crops so you really can be of help to Rik for the short time you’re here.
‘Do you have books about truffle cropping in the palace?’ She glanced towards the prince.
Yes, the prince! That was what Rik was, and Mel mustn’t forget it. And since when had she started to think of him as Rik?
He said you could.
And if you have a shred of self preservation left, then you should address him as ‘Your Highness’ or something equally distancing, in person and in your thoughts.
‘I have books at the palace and also at my personal home up in the mountains.’ He glanced at her, and then up and beyond her to where those two tourists had found their way to what to Mel looked like a sheer wall of ice.
Rikardo had a second home in the mountains?
Well, duh, Mel. He’s got to be about thirty and he’s a prince. Did you think he’d still live permanently in a couple of rooms in the palace? Even if those rooms were quite glorious and added up to more like a small house. ‘I’d like to look at the books, if that would be okay. I’d like to learn more about the industry.’
She might not be able to do anything to help with the problems they’d had, but if Rik planned to harvest truffles from the royal grounds that, too, would be rather special. Maybe there were records about that, as well.
‘The kitchen staff would have special truffle
recipes, wouldn’t they? Maybe handed down through the centuries? I’d love to see those!’ Mel tried hard to walk normally and not lean into him. He still had hold of her arm and her silly response receptors wanted to melt into his side as though they had every right just because he’d kissed her.
He might be marrying Mel, but he was doing that to help him avoid a committed relationship.
And Mel was marrying him to help him out, and she didn’t need to add the complication of being attracted to him to that mix. So it was just as well they’d shared that kiss and put it behind them. They could get on with the business end of things now.
As if it will be that easy, Mel. What about the wedding preparations? The fact that his father will think the two of you want to marry for real?
‘I need to have the right things to say to your father!’ The words blurted out of her with a panicky edge she didn’t anticipate until it was too late to cover it up. ‘That is, I don’t want to be unable to answer any questions he might ask about how we met, how long we’ve known each other, that kind of thing.’
‘We met through your cousin Nicolette when I was at university in Australia. Six months ago we came across each other on a computer forum and we’ve been chatting online and on the phone ever since.’ He turned his head and deep blue eyes looked into hers. ‘I wanted you for my princess. You are calm and pleasant and I felt I could spend the rest of my life with you. It’s not the entire truth, but it’s as close as we’ll get.’
‘Okay. That will work. I know the years that Nicolette was at university, though I didn’t attend myself.’ There was one other issue, thoug
h. ‘What’s my story? Why did I say yes?’
Before he could answer, she shook her head. ‘If your father asks me that question, I’d rather tell him that I will do everything in my power to be as supportive of you as I possibly can in all the time we’re together.’
He dipped his head. ‘Then stick to that. Commitment to me is implied in such statements. My father should find that more than acceptable.’
‘Wh-what will be expected…otherwise?’ Mel asked the question tentatively, and she didn’t want to be tentative. She needed to know, therefore she was asking. She straightened her spine. ‘When we’re married, will we be in your suite as we are now, or…?’ Despite the straighter spine she couldn’t quite bring herself to put it into words.
His gaze met hers. In it was steadiness. ‘For the sake of appearances we would be sharing my room and…bed at first. This is something that can be managed with a little creative imagination without needing to cause you undue concern. Just for the look of things, you understand?’
‘Just—just part of our overall practical arrangement. Yes. I understand totally. That’s very sensible.’ Mel tried not to stutter the words, tried to sound mature and au fait with the situation and what it might entail. They might be sleeping together at the start—her mind tried to boggle and she forced it not to—but they wouldn’t be sleeping together. Not, well, you know. Not like that. She drew a breath. ‘Right. That’s okay, then. We can make that work.’
‘We will, Melanie, so do not worry.’ His words again held reassurance.
And Mel…relaxed into that reassurance.
They were at a turn in their downward descent where the two mountainsides faced each other when a cry ripped through the air, shattering her composure and bringing Rikardo to an abrupt stop.
‘Damn. What’s the man doing? He’s tangled in his equipment!’ Rik dumped the picnic basket and strode towards the source of the cry.
Mel followed, and after a few moments managed to spot what Rik had already seen. A man dangled against that icy outcrop. It was one of the two men she’d seen earlier. The other—Mel couldn’t see.
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