by Kate Hardy
‘But I can’t stay here. I haven’t got any clean clothes with me, or even a toothbrush.’ This was ridiculous. Tia was used to being independent, sorting things out. Their financial circumstances had taught her to be resourceful. So why did she suddenly feel like bursting into tears?
Maybe that fish-out-of-water feeling showed in her voice, because Grace said, ‘I’m sure someone at the palace will be able to lend you something to wear, and you can ask them to launder what you’re wearing right now. They must have guests all the time. I’m sure they’ll have a spare toothbrush and toiletries, at the very least.’
‘I don’t want to have to ask. I don’t want to be depend—’ Then she remembered who she was talking to. Someone who also didn’t want to be dependent on others, but who didn’t have a choice because of her health.
‘Darling, sometimes you have to lean on others,’ Grace said, as if guessing what Tia was thinking. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll be absolutely fine.’
‘And you’ll let me know how you are?’
‘I’ll text you every day while you’re away,’ Grace said. ‘Or I’ll call you. But right now you need to put yourself first.’
Something Tia had never done, and it didn’t feel right for her to do that now.
As if Grace guessed, she added, ‘And the baby.’
Tia thought about it.
OK. She could do this. But only for the baby’s sake. And so her mother wouldn’t worry.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘But I want you to promise me you’ll let me know if you need me, Mum. I mean really promise. Otherwise I’m going to worry myself sick about you.’
‘I promise,’ Grace said. ‘Love you, Tia.’
‘Love you, too, Mum.’
After Tia ended the call, she went in search of Antonio. He seemed to be checking something on his phone; he looked up when she walked in. ‘How’s your mother?’
‘She’s fine.’ It was Tia’s stock answer.
‘So you’ll stay here with me for a while?’
‘Three days,’ she said, ‘until we’ve talked.’ But she needed to make it very clear it wasn’t for her own sake. ‘For the baby’s sake.’
‘Good.’ He smiled at her, and Tia was unnerved to realise that it was the first genuine smile she’d seen from him since she’d been in Casavalle. A smile that actually reached his eyes.
Antonio Valenti was absolutely gorgeous when he smiled. Tall, with melting brown eyes and dark hair that was just a shade longer than it should be for the military.
Not that she should be noticing how attractive he was, or remembering how good it had felt when he’d kissed her and touched her. They didn’t have a future. All they needed to do was to talk about the baby and arrange access—if he wanted it, and she had no idea at all what he was thinking.
‘And I need to let my bosses know that I’m staying here for longer than I expected,’ she added. ‘They’ll need to arrange cover for me in my absence.’
‘Of course. Call them. Then, when you’re ready, we’ll go to the mountains,’ he said. ‘My family has a house in a quiet village there—a bolt-hole, if you like. It’s where I go when I need some space.’
Because, as a member of the Casavallian royal family, Antonio must live his life virtually in a goldfish bowl. He was always on public view.
‘Is there any way we can stop at a shop on the way?’ she asked. ‘Just... I don’t have anything with me. No toiletries, no pyjamas, no clean clothes.’ Even if Antonio happened to have a whole wardrobe of things that his previous girlfriends or guests had left behind, it was pretty unlikely that any of them would fit a six-months-pregnant woman.
‘Give me a list of everything you need and your clothing size,’ he said, ‘and I’ll arrange things.’
He was probably used to ordering clothes from high-end designers, whereas she bought hers second-hand from charity shops. And her toiletries were supermarket own-brand basics, not from expensive Parisian perfume houses. She couldn’t afford to waste money on luxuries. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said carefully, ‘but I’m not sure your budget would fit mine.’
He sighed. ‘Look, it’s my fault that you have to stay here for a few days in the first place. So please, Tia, let me buy you a few basics.’
‘As long as they are basics,’ she said. The idea of having to accept things from him made her feel awkward, even though she understood that a prince couldn’t exactly go browsing in a charity shop or a supermarket. ‘One change of clothes—and I assume I can have access to a washing machine and a tumble-dryer at this house in the mountains?’
‘Yes. Give me a list of what you’d like,’ Antonio said. ‘And then we’ll go to Picco Innevato.’
Snowy Peak, she translated mentally. He was taking her to a place called Snowy Peak. Well, he’d said his house was in the mountains, and it was late November. Winter. The name probably suited the place perfectly.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘I assume we’ll drive there?’
‘No. We’ll fly,’ he said. ‘I have a private jet.’
She blinked at him. ‘Of course you do.’ A private jet. Something far, far beyond the reach of normal mortals. She hadn’t flown very often, and when she had—like today—it was always economy class. It was yet another reminder of the huge gulf between them.
‘Tia, it makes sense to fly. Otherwise we’ll be driving on difficult roads in the dark,’ he said. ‘We’ll drive to the airport from here and fly over to the mountains, then drive to Picco Innevato from there. And hopefully that will mean the media won’t work out where we are—or at least not until we’ve worked out how to manage the situation.’
Manage the situation. What a horrible way to describe a baby. OK, so she wasn’t the only woman in the world who’d had an unplanned pregnancy, but right at that moment she felt more alone and miserable than she ever had before. Every nerve in her body was telling her to run back to London, where she had family and friends. What was the point of staying here to talk to Antonio? He’d made it pretty clear he wasn’t interested. She was pretty sure she knew how this was going to end: with her and the baby living anonymously in London. And her baby would be very much loved; whereas here in the palace the baby would be seen as a ‘situation’. If only Antonio would let her go back to London now. She’d sign any bit of paper he wanted her to, releasing him from any obligations towards herself or the baby and promising never to talk to the press. Anything. She just wanted to get out of here, be some place where she didn’t feel like something people had to scrape off their shoe.
‘As you wish,’ she said, only just resisting the urge to add ‘Your Royal Highness’ and tug at her forelock, and concentrated on jotting down her list. The sooner this was over with, the better.
CHAPTER TWO
WHEN TIA HAD given Antonio her list and called her bosses to arrange an extension of her leave, Antonio’s driver took them to the airport. Giacomo, one of Antonio’s security officer whom she’d met in London on the evening of the charity gala, accompanied them. And it was nothing like Tia’s previous experience of the airport. This time, she didn’t have to wait in a queue to show her passport to the border officials, or go through any kind of security—presumably because she was travelling with a member of Casavalle’s royal family. And the plane itself...
It was quite a bit smaller than the plane she’d flown on from Rome, but the interior wasn’t the crammed-in rows of seats she’d experienced. This felt more like an office or a living room than an aeroplane, with deep carpeting, four massive and very comfortable-looking seats, and masses of leg room. There were tables, too, so there was plenty of room for working.
‘This is how you fly all the time?’ Tia asked, feeling slightly overawed by it all.
‘I would normally pilot the plane myself,’ Antonio said, ‘but I thought you might prefer some company.’
‘You can fly a plane?’ She regretted the que
stion instantly. How stupid and naive of her. Of course a man like Antonio Valenti would be able to fly a plane.
Antonio shrugged. ‘I learned a few years ago.’
‘And this is how you travel with your family?’
‘Sort of. We don’t tend to go to the same events,’ he said. ‘And we don’t travel together. When we were young, Luca and I would travel with our nanny and our security team, not our parents.’
It hadn’t occurred to her before, but now she realised that if a disaster happened in the air or on the road, it would mean the ruler and his immediate successors would all be involved. For their country’s sake, of course they would have to travel separately.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.
‘I’m used to it,’ he said gently. ‘It’s how things are for me. But I realise it’s not how normal families are.’
She could barely remember flying anywhere with her parents and Nathan; since her father’s death, either her mother hadn’t been well enough to travel, or a holiday abroad had been way out of their budget. The most they’d managed in the last three or four years was the occasional day trip to Brighton, and the effort had exhausted her mother for days afterwards.
‘Tell me about Picco Innevato,’ she said, wanting to change the subject.
‘It means “snowy peak”.’
She wondered if she should tell him that she’d learned to speak Italian over the years she’d been working for Giovanni and Vittoria, but decided maybe not just yet.
‘It’s a very pretty village,’ he said. ‘In winter it serves the ski resort nearby, and in summer people go there for hiking. My family has a house on the outskirts. The villagers are good to me when I visit; they don’t ask questions and they treat me as just another neighbour.’
‘I guess it must be like living in a goldfish bowl when you’re at the palace,’ she said.
‘The media are keen to know my every movement,’ he admitted. ‘But in Picco Innevato I can be myself. I spent quite a few summers there as a child, so I made friends with the local children. We played football and ran around in the park together.’
Things she’d taken very much for granted as a child, going to the park with her mother and Nathan and playing on the swings and slide. It had never occurred to her that other children would have a different kind of upbringing, one where they had to watch everything they did and everything they said. ‘That’s nice,’ she said.
‘It was. And I think it kept me in touch with our people better than if I’d grown up only at the palace,’ he said.
For a moment, he looked sad, but she didn’t want to pry. Because then he might ask her awkward questions, too—things she didn’t want to answer.
‘May I offer you some refreshment?’ he asked. ‘The flight will take about twenty minutes.’
She would’ve liked a cup of tea, but as the flight was so short she could wait. ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ she said.
They made small talk for the rest of the journey, the kind of thing she was very good at from her job at the café, but both of them skirted round the difficult questions they’d need to discuss later. The baby. What Antonio expected from her. Whether he’d let her just go quietly back to London and disappear—which was her preferred option.
Once they’d landed, they were met by another car; this time, Antonio drove them himself, with Tia in the passenger seat next to him and Giacomo in the back of the car.
It wasn’t long before they’d gone from the smooth wide roads around the airport to a narrow pass going through the mountains; the scenery was incredibly pretty, with pine trees and a dusting of snow, but the road was full of hairpin bends and there was a sharp drop straight down the mountain on one side of the car. Not wanting to distract Antonio from driving, Tia remained silent and just tried to enjoy the scenery, even though she felt as if she’d stepped into a completely different world. A magical world, like the ones her mother had read stories about when she was small—where the girl was by the side of the handsome prince and there was a happy-ever-after.
She knew it was unrealistic to expect a happy-ever-after. Her world was so different from Antonio’s that she would never be able to fit in. Plus she was six months pregnant—something else you never saw in fairy tales. Of course they didn’t have a future together.
Yet, out here, with the mountains and snow and fir trees all around, a tiny bit of her began to hope. Maybe they could find a way to work something out. Maybe he could be part of the baby’s life. Maybe he could even be part of her life, too. Perhaps it was a fantasy and she’d come crashing back down to earth with a bump: but she’d definitely felt a connection with Antonio, the night they’d spent together. Something more than just sex. Something more than physical attraction. Something that made her understand the glances she’d seen between her parents as a child, that sparkle in her mother’s eyes and the special smile her father had reserved for her mother. And when Antonio had kissed her, when he’d carried her to his bed, there had been something special and cherishing about his touch...
She shook herself and concentrated on her surroundings. The village of Picco Innevato was incredibly pretty. Honey-coloured stone houses with terracotta tiled roofs nestled together in the main street, and there was a church with a spire. There was a pretty square in the middle of the village with a fountain and, given that she could see people on ladders hanging Christmas lights, a space for what Tia guessed would be an amazing Christmas tree. It was a picture-postcard village—the sort she’d dreamed about when she was growing up, longing for the space of the countryside rather than being stuck in a cramped flat in a dingy part of London.
Antonio stopped at some gates at the far end of the village and tapped in a code. When the gates swung open, he drove down the long driveway and then parked in front of a large honey-coloured stone house. ‘Welcome to my bolt-hole,’ he said. ‘Let me show you around.’
A bolt-hole to Tia meant somewhere small. This house was huge, especially in comparison with the tiny two-bedroomed flat she shared with her mother.
Feeling slightly intimidated, she followed him up the steps to the house.
Downstairs, there was a massive kitchen that was as big as their entire flat. The counter tops were all polished granite, the cupboards and drawers were solid wood and the sort she recognised from magazines as soft-closing, and the floor was terracotta tiles.
Antonio looked in the large American-style fridge and smiled. ‘Excellent. Gina’s stocked up for us.’
‘Gina?’
‘Our housekeeper,’ he said. ‘She lives in the village, rather than here, but I asked her to do some shopping for me.’
It made sense for Antonio’s family to have someone looking after the house, as they didn’t live here all the time, but Tia was finding it hard to get her head round the idea of having staff. In her world, people were staff. Her previous job before the café had been as a cleaner.
‘I’ll cook for us tonight,’ he said.
Clearly he was trying to make her feel more comfortable, and make her feel as if he was an ordinary man rather than a prince.
Except he wasn’t.
He was the father of her baby.
He’d asked her to come here with him so they could talk.
And she didn’t have a clue about his feelings. Or her own. The whole thing was a muddle. She couldn’t afford to fall in love with someone so out of reach, even if he was the father of her baby. But, if she ignored her practical side... Being in the same room as him made her pulse skitter. It was nothing like the way she’d felt when she’d been on dates in the past. This was something that made her catch her breath, made her feel as if fireworks were going off all around her and lighting up the sky.
And she didn’t know what to do about it.
Was it possible that he felt the same? This whole mixed-up yearning and wishing and wondering? Or was she just kidding herse
lf and setting herself up for disappointment?
She forced herself to smile. ‘Thank you. And I will do the washing up.’
‘We’ll share the washing up,’ he said.
A prince, doing the washing up?
Then again, he’d told her that in the army he’d done exactly the same tasks as everyone else in his team, including cleaning. And he’d told her that this place was his bolt-hole. So maybe being a prince wasn’t the lifestyle he would’ve chosen for himself.
He showed her around the rest of the ground floor. There was an office, a dining room with a table that seated twelve, and two large sitting rooms, both with plenty of room for several comfortable sofas and armchairs. One had a state-of-the-art television, and the other had a piano and a wall full of books. And finally there was an enormous conservatory with a view over a large and very neat garden, with the mountains looming behind.
‘We’re lucky here. We can see the sun setting behind the mountains in the evening, and then at sunrise, when the mountains are covered in snow, it looks all pink,’ he said.
‘That’s lovely,’ she said, but her voice must’ve shown that this kind of luxury and space made her feel out of place.
‘Tia,’ he said gently, ‘it’s all relative. I know this is a bit big for a normal person’s bolt-hole, but please remember it isn’t just my house. It belongs to my family. And our security team needs a bedroom and a bathroom each, plus sometimes we have guests to stay.’
‘Uh-huh,’ she said.
Upstairs, there were eight enormous bedrooms, all with their own bathrooms.
‘I thought you might like this room, because it has a view over the mountains,’ he said, showing her to one bedroom. It was a fairy-tale suite; the king-sized brass bedstead had deep pillows, a thick duvet and pretty floral bedlinen. The beautifully carved dressing table had an ornate mirror; to one side of the room there were doors that she assumed opened to a built-in wardrobe. There was a comfortable armchair by the window; the small coffee table next to it had a vase of beautiful pink and white roses and copies of the latest glossy women’s magazines—in English, she noted, so had they been bought with her in mind?
