‘I know what you’re going to say,’ Antonietta had interrupted. ‘If I see him again I just have to hold on to my heart.’
‘No.’ Aurora had shaken her head. ‘Do you trust him?’
Antonietta had thought for a moment.
Oh, there was a whole lot of evidence not to, but while her head told her to be cautious, her heart said otherwise. She thought of her time with Rafe. The man who had taught her to dance and so much more.
‘Yes, I believe that I do.’
‘Then you have to do the bravest thing and let go of your heart.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
BUT THERE WAS no opportunity to let go of her heart. No chance to proceed, even with caution, for there was no gentle knock at her door that night.
She slept fitfully and awoke with a jolt, unsure if she had missed the sound of Rafe’s chopper leaving. It was her last day off before Christmas, and though Antonietta knew she should head into the village to finish her shopping, she couldn’t face it.
This afternoon, perhaps, but right now she had never felt less Christmassy in her life.
She pulled on a denim skirt, a thin jumper and flat shoes and decided a walk might clear her head.
The temple ruins had been her and Aurora’s playground. As little girls they would go there to play and lose an entire day, sitting on the steps and watching each other sing, or running through the columns. Aurora had loved the remains of the altar in the cellar area and would dress it with flowers and dream out loud about her wedding to Nico.
Aurora had always known what she wanted—family and home, Nico and babies, and all that she held dear on this very spot on earth...
But Antonietta had always looked beyond. Even as a little girl she had sat hugging her knees and looking out, dreaming of places, some near, some far. Picking up the orange dirt, she would run it through her hands and imagine grains of Saharan sand. There was a whole world she hadn’t seen, and as Aurora sang, Antonietta would lie back on the stone and imagine that she lay in a glass igloo, looking up at the Northern Lights, or that she was stretched out on a manicured lawn at the Palace of Versailles...
She had tried that, Antonietta told herself now, and she had been told off for being on the grass.
Her ponderings were interrupted by the sight of Rafe, running in the distance. He was still here, then, and that brought a sense of relief in itself. His form was magnificent, his body a masterpiece, and she admired it for a stolen few moments before he noticed and ran in her direction.
‘Hey,’ she said as he approached. ‘No minders?’
‘I’m on the hotel grounds.’
‘Not technically.’
She smiled, because the ruins were outside the boundaries of the Old Monastery. Then her smile slipped and she felt suddenly a bit awkward and shy. It had nothing to do with their lovemaking. Now she knew about his royal status, she couldn’t pretend. It had been far easier not to know.
‘I thought you were leaving yesterday?’
‘That was the plan.’
‘Why did you tell Francesca that you wanted me to service your suite?’
‘I didn’t,’ Rafe said. ‘I told her I did not want Chi-Chi.’
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely,’ Rafe said.
He held out his hand and helped her to stand and they started walking. She offered him her water bottle and he took a long, refreshing drink.
‘The ruins are spectacular,’ Rafe said.
‘I love them,’ Antonietta agreed. ‘Aurora and I used to play here when we were little. Or rather, Aurora used to play and I used to daydream.’
‘About what?’
‘The world,’ Antonietta said. ‘This is where she and Nico were married.’ She glanced sideways at him. ‘You weren’t at their wedding?’ She would certainly have remembered if he had been.
‘No, I had prior engagements,’ Rafe said.
And usually he would have left it at that. Certainly, he rarely explained himself, and yet he found himself telling Antonietta more than he usually would.
‘Nico and I are friends, yes, but perhaps not in the way you and Aurora are. It’s more that we shared the same social scene for a while.’
‘But not now?’
‘No, not now. If that were the case I doubt Aurora would be pleased.’
‘So, a bit wild?’
‘Quite a bit.’ He gave a wry laugh. ‘You don’t want to know.’
‘But I do.’ And then she was honest. ‘I know who you are,’ she admitted. ‘Aurora told me.’
‘And how does that make you feel?’
‘Better and worse.’
Rafe frowned.
‘Better because I understand now why this can go nowhere,’ Antonietta said. ‘And worse because I understand now why this can go nowhere.’
Rafe laughed ruefully and they carried on walking.
The air was cold on his cooling body and yet the company was invigorating. As they walked he told her something of his life. The endless calls to duty interspersed with a jet-set lifestyle, and the endless stream of heavily vetted company aboard luxurious yachts and invitation-only parties. And he told her how boring it got, for there was no fear of missing out when you were the draw card. And there was no thrill to the chase when all the women in the room had already signed a document to be discreetly yours.
But there were penalties to be paid for living in the fast lane, and he knew his reckless ways upset his people. ‘I’m supposed to lie low until the bruises heal,’ he said.
‘They’re still pretty spectacular,’ she said, looking at his blackened shoulder and the purple lines there to match the yellow and grey ones she knew were on his ribs. ‘And your eye is still black...’
Her voice trailed off because it could easily be covered with make-up, if he chose, since the swelling had all but gone now. Or she could paint him!
Antonietta gave a soft laugh as she recalled a time from her childhood.
‘What’s funny?’ Rafe asked.
‘I painted a rash on myself once. I was trying to get out of school.’
‘Did it work?’
‘I thought it did,’ Antonietta said as they walked on in the crisp morning air. ‘My mamma was worried and told me to stay in bed. I said I thought I might be strong enough to lie in the lounge and watch television.’
Rafe smiled.
‘Then she said it was a very serious rash, and she would make me Sopa de Pat...’ She glanced over and translated. ‘Pig’s feet soup. It is the thing I hate most in the world. But my mamma said it was the only cure for the rash I had.’
‘And was it?’ Rafe smiled.
‘I did not wait to find out. I washed off the rash and told my mamma I felt better...’
And now she would be honest, which would take almost more courage than the other night.
‘I would like to paint a rash on you, so you can stay a while.’
‘I would like to stay a while too,’ Rafe agreed. ‘But it won’t change the fact that I have to be home in time for Christmas. I am expected to join my family on the palace balcony on Christmas morning.’ There was more to it than that, though. ‘I’ve been rather reckless in my ways and those days are over.’
‘Have you been told?’ she asked.
‘I have been told the same for more than a decade,’ Rafe admitted, ‘but I know that the time is now. I want to work hard for my country, and to do that I have to marry.’
‘Have to?’
‘I have been told that if I want more responsibility then I must tame my ways.’
This was not a conversation he had ever expected to have with a lover, for he always kept his distance, even in bed. Not with Antonietta, though, and Rafe tried, as gently as he could, to explain the future that had been dictated for him before he had even been born.
&nb
sp; ‘I am to marry a bride my father and his advisors deem suitable. One who will further our country’s connections and who understands the role of Crown Prince’s consort.’
She asked him the same question he had asked her. ‘And how does that make you feel?’
His answer was not so direct, though. ‘I am the sole heir to the Tulano throne. The people have been patient long enough.’
‘But how do you feel?’
‘I prefer not to feel,’ Rafe said. ‘Feelings tend to complicate things.’
‘So you choose not to have them?’
‘Yes.’
Only that wasn’t strictly true, for walking and talking with Antonietta gave him a feeling he would like to capture and store. This morning, walking free, with the winter sun high and Antonietta by his side, his life felt exhilarating rather than complicated.
‘And the women you...’ she swallowed ‘...you date? Are you saying that you don’t have feelings for them?’
‘I am not a machine,’ Rafe said. ‘Nor am I an utter bastard.’ He looked sideways and saw that her head was down. She was frowning slightly as she tried to understand him. ‘It is said by many that I have my father’s heart...’
Antonietta flushed, because Aurora had said much the same thing. ‘And do you?’
‘No,’ Rafe said. ‘I have my mother’s heart. I don’t get close to people, Antonietta. I am cold like that.’
‘Is she cold to you?’
‘Especially to me. My parents were young when they married and I think she blames my arrival for my father’s philandering ways. She is the epitome of the Ice Queen.’
‘Perhaps so—but I don’t find you cold, Rafe.’
‘Because you haven’t seen me when I choose to move on. Then I am as detached and indifferent as she. That is why I prefer to pay for company; that is why I choose to have a contract.’
‘Yet I haven’t signed anything.’
‘No.’ He gave a tight smile at this.
‘So what if I go to the press?’ Antonietta asked. ‘What if in a couple of years’ time I’m on some chat show, revealing all?’
‘All?’ Rafe checked. ‘You mean you would tell the world about the night I took your virginity...?’
He loved it that she blushed, and he loved it that he knew she would never reveal it, and yet he teased her all the same.
‘Would you tell them about the morning I took you in the temple ruins...?’
‘You didn’t, though,’ she said, even as he pulled her towards him. ‘And you won’t—we can be seen from the monastery.’
‘If people have binoculars,’ Rafe pointed out, but as he moved in to kiss her he could taste her tension and feel her distraction, so he halted their kiss and held her a moment.
Rafe thought of how happy she had been when they’d been away from here. How the tension had lifted from her shoulders, how she had laughed and danced and relaxed in his arms. He thought of his yacht, and the privacy that would be afforded them there.
And he decided.
‘Come with me to Capri.’
CHAPTER NINE
HE MADE IT HAPPEN.
Antonietta waited at the cottage while Rafe headed off to change. She would have loved to do the same, but apart from her red silk dress there weren’t many options.
She pulled on some tights, and her most comfortable boots for all the sightseeing ahead, and decided she would just have to do.
By the time Rafe returned, dressed in black jeans and a jumper topped with a fine grey woollen coat, his helicopter was out of the hangar.
Antonietta had only ever heard the choppers, or seen them arriving and leaving, but now she sat in Rafe’s private one, her stomach lurching as it lifted into the sky.
Capri was well known for the capricious nature of its weather, but it turned on the sun today, and the ocean was azure beneath them. She stared at the white cliffs as they approached the island.
‘There it is...’ Rafe spoke to her through headphones and pointed down to his yacht in Marina Grande—possibly the most exclusive marina in the world.
But Antonietta was not looking at it. ‘I’ve always wanted to see the Christmas decorations in Capri,’ she said, with her hands pressed to the window. ‘And to eat struffoli. I can’t believe you’ve brought me here!’
They were not in Capri to see the Christmas lights and eat struffoli, Rafe thought to himself. He had brought them here for the opulent privacy of his yacht and an awful lot of sex.
Yet his self-proclaimed cold indifference seemed to elude him around Antonietta, and he did not want to disappoint her.
As if his yacht had ever disappointed!
But Antonietta clearly thought they were here on some sort of day trip, so a word was had with his pilot in rapid French, and Rafe had to quickly rethink their day...
‘You’ll freeze in what you’re wearing,’ he told her as they sat in a sumptuous café and shared a plate of the famous struffoli. ‘You need to get something warmer to wear.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘We’re going out to the Blue Grotto,’ Rafe said. He’d go anywhere if it meant getting her out of those appalling tights—and for once he wasn’t thinking about sex. ‘You’ll need to rug up.’
‘It’s closed in December,’ she told him, for she had heard the tourists on the next table grumbling about it.
‘It’s not closed for me.’
And so they headed to Via Camerelle, with its designer boutiques, and he sipped coffee and insisted that the pale grey woollen dress that hugged her slender frame required a coat, and boots in the softest suede.
‘And you’ll need a dress and shoes for tonight,’ Rafe told her.
‘I have to be back at work tomorrow,’ she told him.
‘And you shall be,’ Rafe told her. ‘Get a dress.’
He told her he had an appointment to keep, and suggested that while she waited for him she might as well get her hair done.
‘Rafe,’ Antonietta protested. ‘Please don’t try to change me.’
‘I don’t want to change you,’ Rafe said. ‘But I have never known a woman to turn down a couple of hours in a salon in Via Vittorio Emanuele just to wait in a car.’
The suited men were back. Hovering discreetly, but annoyingly present. And Antonietta could tell they were less than pleased with her.
So, yes, she chose to get her hair done—rather than sit in a car with a driver who looked at her through slightly narrowed eyes.
That was the very reason Rafe needed some time away from her. He headed to the private royal residence for a less than straightforward meeting with his aides and minders, who were all appalled that he had brought a woman onto shore. Not just that, the same woman who had been in the August Suite the other night.
‘She has not been vetted,’ his advisor warned. ‘And you still haven’t had her sign the NDA.’
Neither would he. For this was too precious. And he told them none too gently to back off, and that he would deal with the fallout that would inevitably come from a run-in with the King.
It was worth it for this.
Antonietta’s long, straight dark hair was still long, straight and dark, but just a vital inch shorter, and so glossy and thick that he put up a hand just to feel it.
And then he looked into dark eyes that were painted smoky and seductive. He took the coat from the doorman, just so he could help her into it himself, and handed her expensive shades.
‘Wear these,’ he suggested, ‘if you don’t want people at work to know.’
For Crown Prince Rafael was in Capri, and there was a stir in all the best restaurants, where they put a ‘reserved’ sign on their very best table in the hope that he might dine there tonight. And in the cobbled streets the locals soon heard that the Playboy Prince had a woman on his arm.
‘Who is s
he?’ they asked—because usually Rafe did not bring his dates in from his yacht, where he tended to party. Perhaps he was finally serious about someone.
His luxurious yacht would not fit into the Blue Grotto cove, of course, so a speedboat took them in. There they transferred to a small wooden row-boat with a single skipper.
‘We’ll have to lie down,’ Rafe told her.
‘Really?’ she checked, unsure if he was teasing.
‘Really.’
He wasn’t joking, but she wouldn’t have minded if he had been, for it was bliss to lie side by side with him.
And then they entered the grotto. And it was like sliding into heaven as they were bathed in sapphire light.
‘It’s wonderful...’ Antonietta breathed, for the water and its reflection was magical, the cavern illuminated spectacularly. And today, just for them, music was playing, inviting them further in. ‘I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.’
‘Nor have I,’ Rafe told her.
And she decided that even though he might have used that line many times she would let that thought go. For when he looked at her like that, when he kissed her so slowly, she felt like the only girl in his world. She felt as if she belonged.
Rafe felt Antonietta still in his arms and, concerned, he halted. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Yes,’ she answered.
And all those years of searching, and yearning, and never quite fitting in, ended then, and she found her place in the world in his arms.
Oh, it made no logical sense, for it was not about the place she was in, it was the connection she had found.
Only then did she understand what Aurora had meant when she had advised her to let go of her heart. For letting go meant no thoughts of tomorrow and a cold, indifferent end. And to let go meant she didn’t examine the impossibility of them. She just had to let her heart go and it would fly straight to Rafe.
‘Keep kissing me.’
‘I can do that,’ Rafe said.
He kissed her so deep and so long and with such smouldering passion that she felt as if she were floating, and that if he let go of her she might rise to the ceiling of the cove.
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