“So, that’s it, huh? She’s gone for good?”
“She never planned to stay long to begin with.”
“Too bad. She was just beginning to grow on me. You going to be okay?”
“Me? Sure, I’ll be fine,” he said, waving off the question. Wasn’t as though Arianna was the first person to pass through his life. She was just another woman. Another lost puppy. A new one would replace her soon enough.
“You sure?” Darius asked.
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know, maybe because you’re wearing your emergency suit, which tells me you didn’t go home last night.”
“I was busy cleaning.”
“For twenty-four hours?”
His friend got up and walked around to Max’s side of the desk. “Look,” he said, “why don’t you just admit you had a thing for the lady. Last time I looked, it wasn’t a crime.”
“Maybe not, but it never did anyone any favors, either. Or have you forgotten what it was like in our neighborhood?”
“That’s because the people we grew up with were losers. Or hooked on losers.”
“Present company excluded,” Max replied automatically.
“Half of it anyway,” Darius replied. “You’re not like the people in our neighborhood, and Arianna definitely isn’t. In fact, she’s about as far from our neighborhood as you can get. Like, ‘out of this world’ far.”
“What’s your point?” His head was beginning to hurt; the last thing he needed was to be reminded of Arianna’s uniqueness.
“My point is... I don’t know. I just don’t think the world will end if you like her, is all.”
Tell that to the hole in his chest. “Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it? She’s gone.”
“What? They don’t have phones where she’s from? Or email?”
“It’s not that simple,” Max said. “There are complications.”
“These complications have anything to do with the lady being nauseous all the time, and scarfing down saltines from the salad bar?
“I heard the waitresses gossiping,” he said when Max failed to hide his surprise. “I wasn’t sure if they were being catty or what. Is it true?”
He plucked at the seam on his pants. So much for keeping his end of the bargain. “She didn’t want anyone to know.”
“Now I get why you backed off. I mean, pregnant with another man’s kid? That’s some serious baggage. I know I couldn’t—”
“I asked her to marry me.”
“Say what?” Darius looked at him bug-eyed.
“I told her to tell her father I was the one who got her pregnant and that we would get married.”
“What the...? Why would you do that?”
“To give her a choice,” Max explained. “So she wouldn’t have to go back to Corinthia and marry a man she didn’t love.” So the light in those beautiful blue eyes wouldn’t fade under the weight of disregard.
“Yeah, but to step up when the kid’s not even yours?” For the second time in the conversation, Darius swore. “That’s brave even for you.”
“Doesn’t matter. The lady said no.” Max could still hear the door clicking as she walked away.
“Of course she did. Getting out of marrying a guy she doesn’t love by marrying another guy she doesn’t love? Talk about a crazy idea.”
“Her father was getting ready to take her away. I had to come up with something to keep her from leaving.”
“So you proposed? What would you have done if she actually said yes?”
“What do you mean, what would I have done? I would have married her.”
“And spent the rest of your life raising some other dude’s kid.”
To his surprise, the thought didn’t make his pulse race. If anything, his heart grew heavier.
“It wouldn’t have been so bad.” Max could have given the child everything his father never gave him. Attention, affection. “The three of us could have made a pretty decent family.”
But she didn’t want it. She’d rather lock herself to a serial adulterer for the rest of her life.
Why? Why wasn’t his proposal good enough? He’d been asking himself that question since she walked away. It was the one piece of the puzzle he couldn’t figure out, and he was tired of trying to find it. Tired of everything.
He needed a drink. And not a beer, either. He needed something hard enough to silence the thoughts spinning through his head. Like tequila or whiskey. His dad liked Kentucky bourbon. Maybe he should go with that? Take a page from a professional.
“Man, I knew I should have set up a pool.” Darius followed him from out of the office and behind the bar. Taking two tumblers off the top shelf, he set them on the counter, then took the bottle from Max’s hand. “I called this thing from day one.”
“Called what thing?” He pushed the nozzle back toward the glass to keep Darius from pouring.
“You falling for Arianna. Soon as I saw your face, I knew you were a goner.”
“I was not.” It was a feeble protest, at best. Darius was right. He had fallen when he saw Arianna. Who wouldn’t? She was beautiful, sweet, kind...
Special.
The hole inside his chest ripped open, and all the emotions he’d been pretending didn’t exist came pouring out. Years of telling himself love was a waste of time and what happened? He fell anyway. Hard.
Thing was, in the end, he was right anyway. The only thing falling in love did for him was make Arianna’s departure ten times worse.
Groaning, he banged his head against the shelves. “I’m an idiot.”
“I take it that’s your way of saying you got feelings for this woman.”
Feelings? They were talking way more than just feelings. “I love her.” As soon as he said the words, he knew he meant them. He loved Arianna. “What am I going to do?”
After he got good and drunk, that was. How would he ever feel complete again?
Darius handed him a drink. “Does she know how you feel?”
“I asked the woman to marry me.”
“Yeah, but did you tell her why you wanted to marry her?”
“No.” So far as Arianna knew, he was offering another solution to her problems, like staying in his apartment or working at the restaurant.
“Well, I’m no expert,” Darius said, “but I spend enough time behind here listening to drunk people complain to know that if a lady gets a marriage proposal, she wants to know it’s because the man loves her. Especially if she’s already got one potential fiancé who doesn’t.”
In other words, Max had messed up badly. He should have told Arianna how he felt before she walked out. “I’m going to need more than one bottle,” he said. It was going to take a good long drink before he stopped kicking himself. If he ever did.
Darius’s hand grabbed the bottle before he could. “It’s not too late, you know. You could still tell her.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Max asked, tossing back the one drink he did have. “She’s halfway across the world.”
The bartender arched his brow. “They’ve got airports, right?”
“Of course they do, but...”
“But what?”
What if going to Corinthia didn’t change anything? He’d already had his heart ripped open. Was it worth getting his hopes up only to have it ripped open anew? “Who’s to say she cares?”
“Who’s to say she doesn’t?” his friend immediately replied. “You won’t know unless you ask.”
Max reached for the bourbon.
“Of course, it’s up to you,” Darius said, grabbing the bottle before Max could and pouring out the smallest of swallows into Max’s glass. “I gotta say this, though—if you’d been this cautious when we worked at Mac�
��s, we’d still be bar-backing.”
He turned and shelved the bottle with the rest of the inventory. “I better let the waitstaff know I’m closing the bar.”
With that, he left Max alone to stare into his glass. Darius was right. At age eighteen, he didn’t think twice about risks; he leaped at any opportunity to raise himself up. Then again, that was about making money. Failing didn’t leave him feeling shattered.
Did he dare fly to Arianna and bare his soul? Was it possible she felt the same?
There was only one way to know for certain, and that was to ask her. Otherwise, he would be spending the rest of his life wondering. And if she said no...? What was the worst that could happen?
His heart didn’t really have that much left to break anyway.
CHAPTER TEN
“ARE YOU SURE you’re all right, sweetheart? You haven’t been yourself since we left New York.”
That was because she’d left part of herself behind. Noting the worry in her father’s eyes, Arianna replaced the thought with a smile. “I’m fine, Father. Just a bit jet-lagged from the time change, that’s all.”
Her acting skills needed work because her father did not look convinced. “I wish you would tell me what is going on. You know Armando and I would do whatever we can to help.”
“I know.” Sadly, there was not much they could do.
After they had left Max, she’d told her father to head straight to the airport rather than stop to retrieve her luggage. The few pieces of clothing she left behind weren’t worth the hardship of visiting Max’s apartment. There was no way she would be able to maintain her composure while being assaulted by memories. While it had only been a few days, in her mind it felt like a lifetime. There’d been such an overwhelming sense of rightness to sharing breakfast with him, or sitting next to him on the sofa.
If her father had suspected the yearning behind her suggestion, he said nothing.
She hadn’t told him about the baby yet, either. Almost did, on the plane, but she changed her mind at the last minute. In spite of everything, she felt as though Manolo deserved to hear the news first.
Hugging her midsection, she wandered from her seat on Father’s sofa to the large bay window. Corinthia was readying for the holidays. The grounds crew was hanging garlands of evergreen along the palace walls. The interior had already been decorated. The tree had been erected in the archway and candles had been placed in the windows. Next door, in her mother’s music room, a large spray of green sat atop the grand piano.
As they did every year, the designers had outdone themselves. The palace was a Christmas wonderland of red, gold and purple.
It all paled in comparison to cheap store-bought garlands and a misshapen piece of plastic.
And tomorrow, when Father lit the palace tree and announced to Corinthia that the holidays had begun, it, too, would be lacking because it wasn’t a snowy afternoon in Rockefeller Center, and Max wouldn’t be standing behind her.
Oh, Max. She pressed her forehead against the glass. Marry me. His words refused to leave her alone. Every time she thought about the baby or Manolo, there they were, clear and strong. Marry me.
Why did he have to say anything? Why couldn’t he have remained silent and simply let her go, instead of teasing her with an unachievable fantasy?
The soft knock on the door made her stomach drop. Fate had arrived. Taking a deep breath, she recovered her composure in time to see her brother’s secretary, Rosa, step inside. “I’m sorry to bother you, Your Highness, but Signor Tutuola is here to see Princess Arianna.”
“Manolo?” Her father’s face brightened at the announcement, making her anxiety worse. “That is a surprise. How did he find out you had returned?”
“I called and asked him to come,” she told him.
Her father smiled. “I would be lying if I said I wasn’t pleased to hear it. I always thought the two of you made an attractive couple.”
“I know.” Even now, there was a smile on Father’s face, eclipsing the concern that had been there the past thirty-six hours. She could but imagine how happy he would be about her and Manolo marrying.
Her father happy and her child’s life scandal-free. That’s why she was doing this.
“You can send him in, Rosa,” she said.
When Father said they made an attractive couple, it wasn’t parental bias. Manolo Tutuola was a handsome man, more runway model than industrialist. His sandy brown hair was perfectly styled, as was his closely cropped beard. When they first met, Arianna had been impressed by his sense of fashion. In a room full of men in dark suits, his flashier, continental style stood out.
That was before she’d learned what the right man could do with a simple dark suit.
Manolo flowed into the salon, and immediately bowed to her father. No extended hand for him. His protocol was flawless.
“It’s good to see you again,” her father said, nodding in return. “Arianna just told me she asked you to pay us a visit.”
“And I was thrilled that she did. I’ve missed you,” he said, bowing in her direction. She could see him struggling not to frown as he took in her dark hair. “You look lovely, as always.”
Arianna nodded in return. She had bags under her eyes and was not wearing an ounce of makeup, not to mention that she had a foreign hair color, all of which left his sincerity open to question. “Father, would you mind if Manolo and I had a few moments alone?”
“Not at all, sweetheart. I need to speak with Armando before our meeting with the minister of finance anyway. Manolo, it is good to see you again. Perhaps we’ll have the opportunity to talk afterward.”
“I’d enjoy that, Your Majesty. Would you please give Signor Baldecci my best as well? I found the interview he gave the Italian press to be quite insightful.”
“I will be sure to let him know. I will see you later as well, sweetheart.”
As her father leaned in to kiss her cheek, Arianna couldn’t help but think it a seal of approval. “Have a good meeting, Father,” she said with a smile. Manolo bowed his goodbye.
Once the door shut, he turned to look at her again, his dark eyes shining triumphantly. “I’m glad you called, Arianna. I was afraid you were going to let our misunderstanding drive a wedge between us.”
“Would that be the misunderstanding where you slept with another woman?” she admonished. Crossing her arms, she marched back to her place at the window.
“I told you, Maria is just a friend who needed a place to stay. I was helping her out of a difficult situation.”
“And I suppose her panties happened to appear in your bed completely by accident.
“Our laundry...”
“That’s enough, Manolo.” Did he really expect her to believe he was playing the Good Samaritan? A real Samaritan did not limit his good deeds to models and aspiring actresses.
He might as well learn right now that she would not be patronized. “I spoke to Maria, and I know all about your extracurricular activities. Frankly, I find your behavior, and your lies, adolescent at best.”
One could call the added comment adolescent on her part as well. Considering how the man had humiliated her, however, she was owed at least one insult. The sight of his face darkening with embarrassment left a warm feeling.
It was a short-lived victory at best. Before she had a chance to say another word, he’d crossed the room to join her. “Not so childish that you didn’t call and request that I visit,” he replied. “Is that because you missed our...closeness as much as I did?”
She shivered as he ran an index finger along her arm. Not a good shiver, like the ones that traveled through her whenever Max came near had been, but rather a cold tremor that left a sour taste behind.
“I have missed you, Arianna,” he whispered. “More than you can imagine. Just the other night I w
as thinking of you... How lucky I was to have you in my bed. A poor, humble servant.” Lifting her hand, he brushed his lips across her knuckles.
Throughout, Arianna kept her eyes on his face and noticed that his eyes never once changed expression. There was no sign of sincerity. There wasn’t even a flicker of desire. At least not on an emotional level.
No wonder instinct told her something was off about him. The man was a total phony.
“I didn’t call because I missed your bed,” she said, snatching her hand back. “I called because you and I needed to talk.”
“All right.” Taking the rejection in his stride, he leaned against the window molding. The shoulder pads of his jacket shifted, giving him a cockeyed posture. “What did you want to talk about?”
Time to bite the bullet. Arianna breathed in deeply. “I’m pregnant.”
For several seconds, Manolo said nothing. “Does your father know?” he asked finally.
“Not yet. I thought...” The words tasted stale on her tongue, forcing her to swallow and start again. “I thought we could tell him together.”
“Yes. That makes sense. Good thinking.” He paced away, toward the center of the room. “He’ll be displeased that we took so long to tell him, of course, but I can say you were afraid something was wrong, and didn’t want to get his hopes up until you knew everything was going to be all right.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “How far along are you anyway?”
“Nine and a half weeks.”
“Great.” Resuming his pacing, he began working something out in his head. “It’ll be tight, but we should be able to fit in a wedding. You will definitely need to watch your diet. Plump up too much and it will show in the photographs. Although, the right designer gown should be able to camouflage any protrusion.”
Camouflage? Gown? “Surely, you’re not talking about having a state wedding.” Considering the circumstances, would it not be better to have a small, family-only ceremony?
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