It's Getting Hot in Heir

by Jenny Gardiner

  “So, will you come again?”

  Edouardo scratched his chin, pondering that. “Yeah. Sure. You were an excellent instructor, and even though some of it made me feel uncomfortable, overall I feel much better for having done it. I almost feel a little lighter, less burdened by life.”

  She knit her brows. “I’m sorry that you were feeling burdened. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing anyone can do, I’m afraid. Things will just have to work themselves out.”

  It had become noticeably quiet in the room and they looked around to realize they were the only two left. Gabriella poked her head out and discovered all the cars that had been parked in front were gone.

  “Did you ride here with Clem?” she asked. “Because I hate to tell you, she’s up and left you stranded.”

  Edouardo rolled his eyes. “My sister likes to think she is entitled to make a life for me. I’m not sure where she got that idea, but sometimes it makes me a little crazy.”

  “I’m sorry she stuck you with me,” Gab said. “I guess she’s just trying to be a thoughtful sister. I’ll be happy to give you a ride back.”

  “Not before I treat you to lunch,” he said. “Although we can’t go anywhere too fancy.” He pointed at his workout clothes. “This is all I’ve got with me.”

  “I’d love that,” she said. “Do you mind if I change, though? This is a bit much for dining in public.”

  “Be my guest,” he said as they walked toward the main house. “I’ll just wait in here while you put something proper on.” He sat down on a large, comfortable burgundy paisley damask sofa in the living room.

  Edouardo really wanted to put his feet up on the couch and go back to Savasana or whatever that napping thing was he just did. He was sooooo relaxed....

  “You know she’s had her heart broken twice now,” he heard a voice say.

  “Huh?” he said, lifting his head up and looking around.

  “Gabriella,” her sister Celeste said, taking a seat next to him on the sofa. “She might look like she’s tough but she’s actually really vulnerable. Twice, she completely opened herself up to men she loved, and twice they let her know she wasn’t important enough for them. That they didn’t value her.” She looked him right in the eyes. “I’m not suggesting you’re even trying to start anything with my sister. But I do want you to know you’d better not fuck with her, because you’ll have me to answer to.”

  Edouardo blinked his eyes, surprised that this sweet petite thing with her head of curly dark hair and those friendly brown eyes would be so in-your-face. But he had to give her props for that.

  “Okay, then,” he said, formulating the appropriate response. “I hear you loud and clear. And if it matters at all, I’ve sort of been there, done that, have the souvenir broken heart to show for it. So I understand what she’s been through. Besides, I can’t say I’m very gung-ho about any relationships myself, for what it’s worth.”

  “Just wanted to make sure we’re on the same page,” she said, nodding her head. “My sister deserves someone who will respect her and treasure her.”

  Edouardo heard thumping coming down the stairs. Gabriella looked adorable.

  “How’s this?” she asked, twirling around in a gray hooded T-shirt dress with a pair of cowboy boots. She pointed to her footwear. “Remnants of my life in America.”

  Edouardo smiled. “I like them. You look like a cowgirl.” He stood up. “You ready for lunch?”

  “My stomach’s growling.” She nodded. “It’s on a feed-on-demand schedule and it’s past due. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  They went to a small café down near the beach. The season hadn’t quite started yet, despite some warmer weather promising nice days to come. But the café was open and they were even seated on the sidewalk in front and able to watch people wander by on the beach.

  “I like this place,” Gab said as she sipped a chocolate milkshake through a straw. “I mean who’d have thought you could get a real live chocolate milkshake right here in Monaforte?”

  Edouardo smiled. “I actually expected you’d be more impressed with the hamburgers on the menu.”

  She clapped her hands. “It was a toss-up between that and the fries,” she said. “I have to say, I sure do miss my American French fries. So close to France but so far from good old American fries.”

  “So how’d a nice European girl like you turn into a yoga guru?”

  Gabriella sighed. “It’s a long story.”

  “If you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have anywhere to go. Or at least no way to get there.”

  “You have a point there.” She smiled. “So I had a serious boyfriend at university. Or at least I was under the impression we were serious. We’d talked about marriage. We’d talked about having children together one day. We even talked about moving in together after we finished school. So I guess it was natural for me to make the leap that we had a somewhat defined future together.”

  “Only he had other ideas.”

  She nodded. “Yep. Took off for a job with the Royal Guard.”

  “And that was mutually exclusive from being with you?”

  She frowned, staring into her milkshake as the waitress delivered their food. “This looks amazing,” she said, trying to divert the conversation. She started eating her food, and Edouardo just stared at her.

  “What?” she said.

  “You left me dangling,” he said. “What happened with the Royal Guard?”

  “That’s no life for a married man,” she said with a shrug. “You’re traveling with members of the royal family all the time. No chance to put down roots. He knew it. And I sort of did. Only he wasn’t exactly the most diplomatic about telling me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, one day he was gone. He left for training, didn’t so much as mention it, and that was that.”

  “That was crap of him.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “So how does this tie in with you being a yoga guru?”

  “Oh,” she said, taking a bite of her burger. “That.”

  He nodded.

  “So I sort of drowned my sorrows in food,” she said. “I got really fat. Even my Italian mother was telling me to stop eating pasta. It was that bad.”

  “That’s outrageous!” Edouardo said with a laugh, squeezing her hand so she knew he was just joking.

  “Right? Well, it’s hard to kick the pasta habit when you’re living in Rome. Eventually I ran away to America,” she said. “That sort of sounds like I ran away to join the circus, doesn’t it?”

  “Were you any good on the trapeze?” he said, winking at her.

  “I’d have probably broken the thing, I was so overweight,” she said. “Anyhow, I went to Washington. I got work with a nonprofit that helped to resettle war refugees. It was through the Prince’s Trust. You know I’m related to Zander’s family, right? And he’s always looking for good people to work for his charity. Once I started hearing the stories of suffering from the people I was trying to help out, well, my own pathetic story wasn’t quite so pitiful.

  “At some point, I decided I needed to buck up and be accountable for me and be the me I wanted to be. And I wasn’t happy being so overweight that it exhausted me just to climb a flight of steps. I wasn’t happy that my former clothes not only didn’t fit, but my fat clothes didn’t fit either. I just kept thinking that wasn’t me. Or at least it wasn’t who I wanted to be.”

  Edouardo looked at her intently, his brow furrowed, his brown eyes fixed on hers.

  “So then I got into yoga. At first, I did it because I had a friend who persuaded me to do it. She said it really helped her to calm down, which seemed like a good goal. And once I got into yoga, it just spoke to me. I love how centered I feel, how balanced and strong and confident I feel as a result of my practice.”

  Gabriella took a fry and swabbed it in Edouardo’s ketchup.

  “Hey,” he said, “no
double dipping.”

  “It was only a single time.”

  “But you dunked it in yours first, then took a bite, then dipped it in mine.”

  She smiled. “Yeah well now you’ve got my cooties.”

  He looked at her. “That doesn’t bother me in the least.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “So the rumor mill has it that someone else broke your heart. Now that you’re in the confessional booth, maybe you should just get it all out there and that way we won’t have any secrets between us.”

  “You mean I won’t,” she said. “I’ll be totally vulnerable while you’ll be a veritable hive of swarming secrets about which I know nothing.”

  “I’m an open book,” he said.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said. “Maybe one of those books with invisible clues written on it, and you need to figure out the magic spell to know how to solve the riddle.”

  He held up his hands. “I’m as boring as they come. I was born, I’ve lived for a while, I’m here.”

  “Wow,” she said. “Makes me want to know more. Do tell.”

  Edouardo wagged his finger. “First, I want to hear the rest of the story of Gabriella. Who was the other prick who hurt you?”

  Gabriella proceeded to tell Edouardo about her engagement and how suddenly she was no longer a priority in Matthew’s life. It was the first time she recalled it without shedding even one tear, so she felt sort of proud of herself for that.

  “So, Dr. Freud, what do you think is wrong with me,” she said. “Because clearly I am choosing the wrong men.”

  Edouardo scratched his chin in thought. “My professional diagnosis,” he said with a German accent, “is not enough sex.”

  Gabriella burst out laughing. “I’m pretty sure that isn’t the problem. Or wasn’t. Although now, well, that’s a whole different story.”

  “I was just trying to answer the way Dr. Freud would. Perhaps it is penis envy on your part, then?”

  She shook her head. The mention of that word brought back the vision of Edouardo in class earlier, springing to attention every time she glanced his way. When she looked at him, she felt as if he could see right through her. She tried to suppress a giggle.

  “Please, no,” he said. “You didn’t really notice that, did you?”

  She flushed red with embarrassment but put her hands up as if to stop his concern. “Nothing you don’t see when you’re teaching a yoga class every now and then,” she said. “It’s only natural. Everyone’s loosened up a bit. There are usually people there with really fit bodies who you can’t help but notice. It just happens.”

  “Well, then why did it only happen to me?”

  She shifted her eyes, trying to avoid eye contact with him. “How do you know?”

  “Uh, I was hoping for some male solidarity, but didn’t get any proof of that.”

  She shrugged. “I dunno,” she said. “Maybe they all got laid right before they came so they weren’t in an, uh, agitated state to begin with?”

  Edouardo shook his head and buried his face in his hands. “I seriously can’t believe I’m discussing this with you.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Yoga teacher-client privilege. I promise I won’t share this with anyone.”

  “Can I be honest with you?” he said.

  She nodded. “I was hoping that was what we were doing here, what with me slicing open my soul and pouring it out to you over French fries.”

  “I’d be lying if I didn’t admit it was you who made me horny,” he said, letting out a huge sigh and looking into her eyes with a sheepish look on his face. “First of all, you had that fucking amazing outfit on.” He used his hands to outline a curvy body for emphasis. “And then, well, your hands. You came up to me and put your hands on me, all warm and soft and, well, near, and I couldn’t help myself. I’m sorry. It was so embarrassing.”

  She rested her hand on his. “Seriously, Edouardo, don’t sweat it. It’s a perfectly natural reaction, and to tell you the God’s honest truth, I’m flattered that I can even have that effect on a man. I didn’t know I actually could. So it makes me crazy happy I can turn someone one.”

  “Not just someone,” he said, pausing. “Me.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” she said. “But really, Edouardo, after last week, well, I don’t want to give you the impression I’m on the prowl and trying to land you or anyone. It was sort of a stupid challenge I set for myself. After leaving DC with my tail between my legs, I guess I wanted to feel desirable.”

  He lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “After what I just confessed to you, I’d say you don’t have to worry about that at all.”

  She sighed. “I hear what you’re saying, but in your defense, you’re a man. You’ve got this, well, this thing, and it just reacts to stuff. I can’t exactly stake my claim on that at all. I’m sure it might do that for any number of reasons. Like, if you saw two girls kissing.”

  He shook his head. “Stop.”

  “I’m serious. Every guy fantasizes about that.”

  He nodded. “Okay, fine, yes that would do it for me.”

  “And probably if you saw two gorillas going at it in the zoo, that would do it.”

  He laughed. “What? Where’d you get that scenario?”

  She smiled. “I was struggling to come up with something that wasn’t obvious. I mean if you were watching porn of course you’d get hard. But I was trying to figure out some weird, everyday occurrence that might do the trick.”

  “I don’t want to argue with you, Gabriella,” he said. “But what did it to me was you. It was me, seeing your beautiful body in that clingy outfit. And you having your hands on me. Awfully close to the object in question, I might add. And me, wishing they’d have shifted that much closer.”

  She smiled. If she was going to be totally honest with herself, it pleased her that she was able to elicit that response from him.

  “Well, then, good.”

  “You know, while I’m sorry your fiancé made you sad, I’m sort of glad he did what he did,” Edouardo said.

  She squinted at him. “What?”

  “Well, if he hadn’t, then you and I would never have had this chance to get to know each other. I would have missed out on the best day of the past year of my life.”

  “The best day?”

  “Times a hundred.”

  “Now this I have to hear more about.”

  Edouardo sighed. He was so not good at talking about his feelings.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “So what does a really handsome, intelligent, sensitive young man like you have to be so glum about?” Gabriella said. “From outward appearances, you have the world at your fingertips.”

  “Right back atcha,” Edouardo said with a slight smirk.

  “So then spill.”

  With a huge sigh, he told her everything. “My father was my best friend,” he said. “I was the youngest, and Papa used to bring me along to everything. I was at his side for the most important years of my life. We hiked in the forests. We hunted together. We shoed horses, mucked stalls, worked the fields. He was a man of such refinement but he wasn’t afraid to get dirty and work hard, even though he didn’t have to. My father was my hero. But then he died suddenly.”

  Jesus, this truth-telling shit was like birthing a damned elephant. It hurt like hell. He could only hope that once it was out, he’d have something good to show for it. Like a baby elephant, only not.

  “Oh, Edouardo,” Gabriella said, reaching her hands out to clasp his. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea what you’ve been through. That must have been horrible to lose your father so unexpectedly.”

  “You can’t imagine,” he said, taking a bite of his burger and wiping his mouth with his napkin. “But then to make matters even worse, all of a sudden, my life was not the life I knew. My brother took over everything. Everything. From the peerage title to the land ownership to the running of the estate to every bloody damned thing in be
tween—leaving me to be the lost boy with no purpose, no value, no nothing.”

  Gabriella shook her head. “Edouardo, stop that. You aren’t valueless. You’re hugely important, and I’m sure your family thinks so as well.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know what I think any more,” he said. “I’m just sort of there. Or more like neither here nor there. I just am. Lost in my own quagmire, not sure what I’m supposed to be or who I’m supposed to be. I guess I’m in a pretty bad midlife crisis, minus the midlife bit.”

  She laughed. “The good news is that means you’re not having an affair on your wife or buying an expensive sports car that you’ll promptly drive into a tree.”

  He shook his head. “Nope, haven’t done any of those yet. But give me time.”

  “Hopefully by the time you’re middle-aged you’ll not be in such a funk,” she said. “And you’ll have a wife who cherishes you and you’ll have found your purpose in your life.”

  “What if I don’t have a purpose?”

  “That’s complete rubbish,” she said, waving her hands. “Everyone has a purpose in this world. Sometimes it just takes longer to figure out what it is.”

  Edouardo moved his plate away and rested his face in the palms of his hands. “What if you never do?”

  “I don’t think it works like that. Like my nonna always said to me, follow your heart and your dreams will come true.”

  “Your nonna sounds like she works for Walt Disney.”

  “My nonna is a tough lady,” she said. “She recently fell off a ladder while pruning her own olive trees. Nonna gets it done.”