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The Once and Future Prince by Olivia Gates

“Should we get on with the negotiations, Prince D’Agostino?”

The title that he hadn’t heard in eight years and the formality that had never before passed her lips were like claws swiped across raw tissue.

“Leandro.” He couldn’t temper his anger. “You remember my name, don’t you, Phoebe? Say it. You once moaned it, sobbed it, screamed it. I’m sure you can now pay me the courtesy of just saying it.”

Her eyes wavered before they hardened, her lips twitched before they thinned. “I see no reason to. Prince D’Agostino is what’s proper in this situation. And I demand you pay me the courtesy of not bringing up our past liaison again.”

He gave a rough huff. “You’d better realise fast that I don’t respond well to demands, Phoebe. I’m also notorious for being impossible to steer. So quit wasting your breath trying to manoeuvre this ‘negotiation.’ We’re doing this my way.”

Pretend Mistress, Bona Fide Boss by Yvonne Lindsay

“Why hide everything?”

Lainey pulled away and took a step back, nervously smoothing the jacket of her beige suit.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play games with me, Lainey. You know exactly what I’m talking about. This—” He gestured to her suit which, while well cut, was a size too large and gave the impression she was heavier than she really was. “And this.”

He gestured this time to her hair, his hand snaking out and pulling at the pronged pin she’d used to secure her habitual bun for the office. As her hair tumbled over her shoulders, she saw again the same burn of interest in his eyes that had halted her in her tracks last night at the casino. The near feral look of possession, or at least the desire to possess, that had both excited and terrified her in one fell swoop.

Eight hundred years ago, Antonio D’Agostino founded the Mediterranean kingdom of Castaldini. With a culture mixing Italian and Moorish influences, the kingdom was unique. But what set it apart from the world’s monarchies was the succession law Antonio D’Agostino created. He knew none of his sons was fit to wear a crown after him, so he decreed that the succession would not be by blood but by merit. Anyone from the extensive D’Agostino clan, all now considered the royal family, could prove himself worthy of being the next king. He set stringent rules that had to be satisfied before someone could be a candidate for the crown, including that the selection of the next king had to be with the unanimous approval of the royal council of the reigning king.

And the other rules? That the future king be of impeccable reputation, of sturdy health and no vices, of solid lineage from both sides, a leader people followed due to the power of his character and charisma, and above all, a self-made success of the highest order.

So it had always been—D’Agostino men vying for the crown, striving to deserve it. Throughout history, one D’Agostino man always won over all competitors and claimed the crown. He chose his council from the royal family and during his reign selected the next king to be his crown prince, so that the transition of power occurred smoothly in case anything befell him.

And the kingdom’s motto was Lasci l’uomo migliore vincere.

Let the best man win.

Available in April 2010 from Mills & Boon® Desire™

Inherited: One Child by Day Leclaire & Dakota Daddy by Sara Orwig

Propositioned Into a Foreign Affair by Catherine Mann & Seduced Into a Paper Marriage by Maureen Child

Mini-series— THE HUDSONS OF BEVERLY HILLS

The Once and Future Prince by Olivia Gates & Pretend Mistress, Bona Fide Boss by Yvonne Lindsay

The Once and Future Prince

by

Olivia Gates
Pretend Mistress, Bona Fide Boss

by

Yvonne Lindsay

MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Once and Future Prince

by

Olivia Gates

Dear Reader,

After my THRONE OF JUDAR series, which was magical to write, I wondered what to do next. I wanted to continue writing to that same level of sumptuousness and enchantment, with the same world-shaking stakes. I longed to create more irresistible, über-alpha, larger-than-life men and the women who are their perfect counterparts. I wanted to tell more stories of impossible riches and towering passions.

And so was born THE CASTALDINI CROWN, a trilogy set on a lush Mediterranean island drenched in sun and history, a kingdom that has refused to follow the rules of the world. For in Castaldini the crown is won, not inherited.

For the first time in eight hundred years, Castaldini is in jeopardy. The reigning king is sick and the quest for the next king is made more desperate because, according to the ancient laws, each of the only three men suited to hold the crown has one major criterion that makes him ineligible for it.

THE CASTALDINI CROWN launches with The Once and Future Prince, as renegade Prince Leandro D’Agostino wrestles with the decision to return to the kingdom that exiled him and with his fear of surrendering his heart again to the woman who deserted him. Or did she?

The storyline continues in the next two months with The Prodigal Prince’s Seduction and The Illegitimate King.

I would love to hear your thoughts at oliviagates@olivia gates.com. Also please visit me at www.oliviagates.com.

Thank you for reading.

Olivia Gates

Olivia Gates has always pursued creative passions—painting, singing and many handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career: writing.

She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heart-wrenching heartache and hope, their every heart-pounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.

When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding angora cat. Visit Olivia at www.oliviagates. com.

To Melissa Jeglinski.

Thank you for the wonderful new path. I wish you happiness and success in everything you endeavour, MJ.

To Natashya Wilson, my incredible editor.

Can’t be happier that we’re a team, Tashya.

Prologue

Eight years ago

“Come closer, Phoebe. I won’t bite. Not too hard.”

Leandro’s rumble reverberated in Phoebe’s bones.

She choked on the surge of response, on the breath that was trapped inside her lungs. The breath she’d been holding waiting for him to contact her. The one she always held until he did.

She still couldn’t breathe. He stood as if carved from rock, staring out of his penthouse’s floor-to-ceiling windows at the Manhattan skyline, which glittered like clusters of stars set in arcane patterns. Her starved senses registered only him.

The power of his physique, the silken layers crowning his head, dimmed spotlights overhead caressing copper overtones from the hairs’ deepest mahogany. Her hands stung with the memory of convulsing in that hair as he’d exposed her to the mercilessness of his pleasuring.

His scent invaded her with a maleness and a potency that were only his, an aphrodisiac even from the distance he bade her to eliminate. He’d already gotten her to travel four thousand miles to “come closer.”

Eight hours ago, she’d received a message from Ernesto—Leandro’s right-hand man, and their secret go-between—during Julia’s daily physiotherapy session. She’d thought he was inviting her to yet another clandestine rendezvous, one even more secret because Leandro’s situation in Castaldini was more delicate than ever after his resignation from his ambassador post. But she hadn’t found Leandro. Just his jet. There’d been no word from him all through the seven-hour flight to New York.

There hadn’t been one in four months. She’d feared silence had been his way of informing her it was over. But it wasn’t…

“I turned thirty, two months ago.”

She lurched at his rasp, a twist of longing in her gut. She’d known that. On October 26th. The urge to call him that day had frayed what had remained intact of her nerves. But his rules had been clear. He contacted her. It had seemed he wouldn’t anymore.

“Happy birthday.” She winced as the lame response left her lips.

His huff abraded her. “Indeed. The happiest birthday ever.”

He turned to her then. She would have staggered if she hadn’t been incapable of moving a muscle, even involuntarily.

“Nothing more to say, bella malaki?” My beautiful angel. The endearment shuddered through her, that mix of Italian and Moorish only he used. He prowled toward her, his shirt phosphorescent in the dimness, unbuttoned to his waist, revealing chiseled power that bunched and gleamed with every step. “Shall I make it easier? Give you a lead?” He stopped half a breath away, his emerald eyes flaring and subsiding like pulsars. “Miss me?”

She’d thought so. She’d been wrong. She’d starved for him.

He reached out to her, warm, large hands singeing her, steadying her body, shaking everything else. “Shall I find out?”

Yes, her every cell shrieked.

But he did nothing, stilled. She started to shake.

The moment her tremors hit him, his pupils obliterated his irises, black holes that sucked coherence from her mind, wrenched hunger from her depths. She pitched forward, a helpless satellite yanked to an inexorable planet, hurtled into his containment.

It was like a dam had burst. Violent. Deluging. Their mouths collided, merged, flooding her with what she’d never thought to find until him. Oneness. Need that sliced her open.

Her world churned, with the delight of reconnection, with his savagery and what it betrayed of a hunger as searing as hers as his power bore them deeper into passion.

“Next time, bellezza helwa…next time I’ll take hours…days to worship you…but this time…this time…”

He threw her down, and she could only moan as she sank into the luxury of silk sheets and his scent, anticipation becoming agony as their clothes disappeared under the force of his impatience. Her arms shook, begged for his possession. He obeyed, impacted her with the force she was gasping for, thrust inside her, no preliminaries, no way to withstand any, fierce and full and beyond her endurance, razing her with pleasure, ripping an orgasm from the core that clenched around his invasion. He snatched her scream of release into his ravaging mouth, roared his own, jetting into her depths to the rhythm of her convulsions until she lay beneath him, boneless. Devoured. Replete. Leandro. Her lion man. Back in her life. No longer in secret…?

He drove deeper inside her, ending questions. She arched beneath him, taking, offering all. He growled into her neck, the darkness of it shaking through her with the reverberation of satiation, the accumulation of renewed need.

Until the words it carried lodged in her brain.

“I will never return to Castaldini.”

Everything stilled. She knew the situation had been tense for him in Castaldini. But not to return there, ever? Nothing could be that bad. That final. Could it?

She squirmed beneath his suddenly crushing weight. “What d-do you mean you w-won’t return? You have to…”

He pulled back, stared down at her for a long, incredulous moment, before he made an explosive sound deep in his gut, then jerked away, separated from her body, left it aching. Bereft.

“You don’t know?”

She winced at his rage. “Know what?”

“Dio, could it be? They’ve kept their decree a secret in Castaldini? This is much worse than I thought. They’re not only culturally and economically isolating Castaldini, they’re keeping it behind their own brand of iron curtain.”

“Please, Leandro…I don’t understand.”

“You want to know what spread like wildfire through the world news before the media found something else to exploit? The trivial news that I, Prince Leandro D’Agostino, whom the world was certain would be named Castaldini’s crown prince and next king, through merit and lifelong achievement—the moment I defied the current king and his men, I was declared a renegade and stripped of all my titles.”

“Oh, no…”

He barked a harsh laugh. “Don’t ‘oh, no’ yet. There’s more. I was stripped of my Castaldinian nationality, too.”

She went still, as if under the weight of a collapsing wall. She struggled for breath. “That c-can’t be true.”

“Oh, it can. I’ve been offered American citizenship and I’ve accepted it. I’m never setting foot on Castaldini again.” Suddenly he hauled her to him, stabbed his fingers into the tumble of her locks, plundered her lips in a kiss that branded her. His urgency chased everything away, had her clinging until he rasped against her lips, “And you’re never going back, either.”

The fierceness of his declaration jolted through her, had her wrenching her lips away. “I have to.”

His eyes became slits of hypnosis as he spread her, loomed over her, the embodiment of her desires. “No, you don’t. This is your country, as it now is mine. You’ll stay with me.”

She wrestled the rest out. “I have to go back to Julia.”

His hand stilled its caresses on her aching-from-pleasure breast. “Oh, yes, your poor dependent sister. The princess with a whole kingdom at her disposal and her service.”

“You know it’s not like that. She needs me.”

“I need you.”

The agonized confession lurched through her heart, each syllable a stab. Of shock.

Out of paralysis, hope started to quiver, only to be stilled in the cold grip of…suspicion.

He needed her? How? And why now? He hadn’t needed her before, apart from the obvious. Leandro didn’t know the meaning of need. His one and only need had been to become king of Castaldini, and nothing else had mattered in his quest for the crown. Least of all her. He’d proved that over and over.

He’d kept her a secret, had escorted other women—especially his second cousin Stella—to formal functions, passing Phoebe with that malignant woman on his arm and nodding to her as if she were nothing more than his cousin Paolo’s sister-in-law.

He’d said he’d done it to divert suspicion from their intimate liaison, which would have damaged both his chance at the crown and her reputation. At first she’d thought his claim that his measures were “to protect them both in these sensitive times” meant that he’d been planning for a future together and was being discreet to protect her reputation in the highly conservative kingdom.

But he certainly hadn’t said or done anything overt to support this belief. And that had been before Stella—who went around swatting away fawning females from Leandro as she would flies—had told her what Phoebe realized she’d been the last to know. A fact that was widely accepted. That in order to take the crown, Leandro would have to marry an “acceptable” woman. And Phoebe was certainly far less acceptable than the royal-blooded Stella D’Agostino. In fact, Stella herself was second best, and it was just as widely known that she’d get him only if his perfect match and ideal running companion for the crown turned him down. That woman was someone who’d become Phoebe’s friend—Clarissa D’Agostino, the king’s daughter.

Now, finally, she let herself face it. The truth. He’d feared exposure not for the sake of their future together, but for his as king. That Clarissa, or even Stella, boosted his chances and she didn’t—she’d never even been in the running for his future bride. That she’d been cowardly, fearing that if she brought up any of her grievances or suspicions, he would have ended their affair. That she’d been so weak, so in love, she’d forced herself not even to think about it, had buried her head in the sand so that she could take what she could get.

But self-deception hadn’t done a thing to stop her anguish from mounting. Hadn’t she become more distraught the closer he’d gotten to the crown? Hadn’t she subconsciously wished he wouldn’t get it, so that he could settle on her? Hadn’t she feared that if he did take it—and Clarissa or Stella with it—and still wanted her, that she wouldn’t be able say no? She’d started to understand how some women ended up being the “other woman.”

And she’d gotten the wish she’d hidden even from herself. He was not in the running for the crown anymore. And he wanted her. Had said what she’d never thought he’d say. That he needed her.

Yeah. Right. After treating her like a dirty secret for more than a year, then cutting her off for four months without a word?

All her anguish burst out of her. “What do you need me for, Leandro? As your on-demand lover, like before? Or perhaps something a bit more permanent, now that you’ve run out of better options? What would I be in your life at this point? The ever-present outlet for your frustrations? The convenient body when you need sexual relief? Would I even be the only one to provide that? Have I been the only one?”

He gaped at her, as if she’d metamorphosed into an alien being right in front of him. The cold rage that crept into his eyes almost made her cringe and cry out a retraction.

Almost. She stood her ground. She had to. She needed to. It felt as if she’d been slowly poisoned by humiliation.

He tore his hands off her, stood and glared daggers at her enervated body. “You’re accusing me, after all I’ve done, all you’ve cost me? Why don’t you be up-front about what’s really happening here, what I suspected during those four months that you didn’t even bother to pick up the phone to inquire if I was alive or dead? I was worth your while when I was lined up to be the next king. Minutes ago you melted in my arms when you still didn’t know there was no longer any chance of that. Now I’m suddenly patently resistible.”

His aggression and the unjust accusations felt like a one-two combo. But the sting only strengthened her resolve, ignited her anger, sent it raging.

She struggled up. “You can think what you like.”

He swooped down on her, dragged her into his arms. “You’re not turning your back on me, too.”

She looked up and started to push at him and…stopped. Slumped into his hold. His eyes. What she saw there hit her harder than a KO would have. Pain. Such Pain.

And it all slotted in her mind. The loss that must be gnawing at him, corroding his spirit as the realization that he’d ceased to be everything that defined him congealed into reality. Need to absorb his pain, need for him hammered at her. And he’d said he needed her…

No. He didn’t need her. He’d never needed her. He just needed to assert his thwarted will, to placate his wounded pride.

All the pain that she’d been fooling herself she hadn’t been accumulating for the past year and a half ripped through her as she tore out of his arms and jerked on her clothes.

“I hope you’ll be very happy in your new country with your miserable view of others and your self-absorption. They sure are winning you many allies.”

He approached her, his fury causing her to freeze. “So first you throw this out-of-the-blue accusation at me, and when I throw back something relevant, instead of showing me I’m wrong, you use it as the excuse to do what you’d do anyway. Desert me. And I’m supposed to take part in this act? Speak the lines where we pretend I’m the callous offender and you’re the noble accused?”

Indignation thawed her. She yanked up her zipper. “It’s I who’ve been reading the lines you dictated. And I’m through.”

“I dictated that you tell me you only felt fully alive when I touched you, took you? That was an act? That’s why it’s so easy to walk away now? To leave me?”

His harshness no longer shook her, only stirred all the pent-up hurt and humiliation she’d hidden from herself. “Leave you? When was I ever with you? All I ever was to you was the adoring fool who stroked your ego when you could spare me the odd hour. You sure liked hearing me say those things, didn’t you? That colossal ego of yours is wounded, and you need a constant supply of worship.” She stopped, panting. Then another wave of bitterness gushed out. “You don’t need me, Leandro—you just need to know that I need you. But contrary to what I may have let you believe, my life doesn’t revolve around you. I have responsibilities and aspirations—I’m not a toy you can drag out whenever you feel the urge.”

“Yet when I felt that urge you begged for more.” He caught her against his body, his rough breathing a furnace blast against her neck as he nuzzled her, his hands dipping below her clothes, one cupping her breast, the other her core, each knowing probe and caress a jolt of stimulation. “Your body is mine, has just writhed in need beneath me, convulsed in pleasure around me, is still begging for me now even as you say otherwise.”

The cruelty of his manipulation of her emotions and responses even as he exposed his true opinion of her smeared her self-worth in the truth. A truth she’d still been hoping she was wrong about.

He cared nothing for her. She’d merely served a purpose to him. Now that she was refusing to serve it anymore, he’d torn off the mask he’d worn around her. Just like he had with his king and country.

She wrenched out of his arms, ran out of his penthouse.

She didn’t stop until she’d put half a world between them.

Where she prayed she’d never hear of or from him again.

One

The present

“Castaldini’s future depends on you.”

The slightly slurred words hit Phoebe Alexander like a sledgehammer.

She gaped at the man who’d spoken them before she’d even cleared the towering doors to his state room. He was approaching her like a slow-motion, head-on collision.

She watched King Benedetto limp across the gigantic Castaldini crest that bulls-eyed the carpet sprawling over acres of mosaic hardwood floor. Each shuffle transmitted its struggle to her muscles. His cane thumped the ground to the rhythm of her haywire heartbeats.

If she hoped she’d misheard what he’d said, he said it again as if to underline the acuteness of her hearing.

“It all depends on you, figlia mia.”

Every word from his mouth tugged on a rawness inside her.

She’d come to love him like the father she’d never had, her own having walked out when she was two and her mother was pregnant with her sister, Julia. But she still couldn’t handle him calling her daughter. She sure didn’t belong in the same place in his heart where his grandchildren and their mother—her sister—reigned supreme. She never knew what to do with the reflected affection, but tried to be of as much use as she could to feel entitled to it. She still wasn’t close to feeling that.

How could Castaldini’s future depend on her when it was facing dangers only a king could divert?

She searched his steel-blue eyes for a qualification. They had that look she’d seen during too many crises. It always meant his mind was made up, his decree final. And in her experience, he had yet to be proven wrong.

King Benedetto hadn’t become the longest-reigning and most beloved king since King Antonio for nothing. In her opinion, he was the shrewdest, most effective ruler of the twentieth century. He was also the most controversial, as his politics had practically segregated Castaldini from the rest of the world during his forty-year reign. But his policies had protected the kingdom from the upheavals that had swept the world during those decades. What’s more, this detachment from the global political scene had boosted Castaldini’s allure, translating into a booming tourist industry.

That had lasted until the end of the twentieth century. The twenty-first century hadn’t proven to be his domain so far, and everything seemed to be falling apart. To compound problems, he also held another record. He had ruled the longest without choosing a crown prince.

He’d been a gracefully aging Olympian who everyone believed would live and rule for forty more years, would turn things around in time. Until he’d been struck down by a stroke four months ago. And the lack of a crown prince was now taking on potentially catastrophic meaning.

King Benedetto stopped a dozen steps from her and leaned on his cane, the asymmetry of his injury exaggerating the spasm of suffering and agitation on his face. “I will never recover enough to continue to rule Castaldini.”

She couldn’t even blurt out reassurances. His stroke had sheared his life force in half. It hurt her to see him now, his face emaciated, his ornate regal uniform flapping emptily around a once formidable physique. But she could say one thing and mean it. “Your Majesty, you are improving.”

“No, figlia mia.” He cut across her attempt at qualification. “I’m barely walking, my left side is all but useless and the least illness leaves me bedridden, barely able to breathe.”

“But it’s not like you need to be in peak physical fitness.”

Half of his face softened, appreciating her efforts, pointing out their foolishness. “Yes, I do. You know it’s the Castaldinian law. And it goes beyond that. My mental faculties…”

This she could contest. Vehemently. “Are as sharp as ever!”

His sigh carried such finality she felt her heart plummet. “That’s not true, no matter how much I or you or my council want to believe it. I forget. I…drift. But even if a miracle happens and I’m back in peak health one day, Castaldini can’t afford to wait in hope anymore. The circling vultures are becoming more daring with each passing day, and finding a successor has become an emergency. I cannot afford to dawdle anymore. I’m guilty of doing that for far too long.”

She couldn’t listen to him piling guilt on top of desperation and regret that way. “You did no such thing. According to the law, you couldn’t have picked any of the candidates.”

He shook his head as he limped to the nearest sitting area and slumped into a gilded Aubusson armchair. “But I could have. At least a decade ago. There’s always been not one worthy candidate, but three. Each can take Castaldini forward into this century, which is proving to be even more turbulent than the last, to keep it safe against the dangers hammering down its doors. Yet they are the only three men who will not come forward to be recognized for their eligibility for the crown.”

So there were three D’Agostino men around who had what it took to be the next king? That was news to her. Another bombshell. One that had her mind veering off on a tangent…

No. Not the one man who’d once answered all the criteria. He had once come forward to be recognized for his eligibility. So the king couldn’t be counting him among those three men. Could he?

Her feet started moving again under the influence of curiosity.…and foreboding. “So, what’s their problem?”

The king let out an uneven exhalation as she came to stand beside him. “Each has one. Each fulfills all criteria but one. A different one in each man’s case, something that makes him unsuitable for the position by Castaldinian law.”

“Then it isn’t your fault you didn’t settle on any of them.”

“Oh, I tried to tell myself that for as long as I could afford to. Now I no longer can. Neither can Castaldini. I brought matters to a head with the Council. They argued that defying the laws Castaldini was built around for any reason would lead to the very loss of identity we guard against. I argued that overlooking the ancient laws this once has become a matter of survival, lest the monarchy crumble and Castaldini be absorbed by one of the neighboring nations vying to assimilate our history and resources into their boundaries. Then, yesterday, I had a ten-minute mental blackout during a council session.”

She gasped. He reached for her hand, squeezed it. He was soothing her? His next words proved that he was. “I couldn’t have asked for a better thing to happen. It seems the reality of my condition was jarring enough that when I regained my senses, my council were singing a different tune. They now unanimously concede that the only way to protect Castaldini is to choose one of the only three men capable of maintaining our sovereignty.”

She pulled her hand back. She didn’t want him to feel it shake. “Whoa, that’s huge. For them to agree to waive the laws. That’s problem solved, isn’t it?”

He grimaced with what looked like self-deprecation. Loathing, even. “Not at all. Each of those men has reason enough to turn his back on me and on Castaldini. They’d be fully justified to leave both to our fate without their intervention.”

“But you’re their king. I know there hasn’t been a precedent for it, but you can draft them into service.”

His eyes widened as if she’d told him he could pole-vault. Then he barked a gravelly laugh, his face growing more asymmetric with the contortion of mirth. “You have no idea how outside my or anyone’s jurisdiction they are. I not only can’t draft them, I can’t afford to antagonize them any more than I already have, or we’ll lose any chance of having a deserving monarch wear the crown, and with it any hope of saving Castaldini.”

“A man who has that much power and doesn’t want to use it to save his kingdom—for whatever reason—isn’t worthy of any crown, let alone Castaldini’s. Whatever happened to the merit part?”

The king’s face settled back into its grimness. “Oh, make no mistake, they all merit it. More than I ever did.”

“I refuse to believe that.”

“Thank you for your faith, figlia mia, but I had forty years to build the history you’re judging me by, thankfully doing more right than wrong. But I did do a lot of wrong. Those three, what disqualified them, how I compounded everything when I alienated them, are among my major mistakes. Another sentimental mistake I’ve been guilty of was that I couldn’t choose between them, leading to this point, where Castaldini is effectively leaderless. But my blessed blackout finally forced the council to choose for me. They recommended going after the one they consider the least of the three evils.”

Though it made no sense, she knew the name he’d say.

She wanted to turn and run out, to outrace her suspicion and the moment he’d turn it into fact. Then it was too late.

“You know him well. My late cousin Osvaldo’s son. Prince…ex-Prince Leandro D’Agostino.”

Her nails dug in her palms. She thought she’d braced herself. Had been bracing herself for eight years. Spending her waking hours doing anything that demanded total focus so she wouldn’t hear that name reverberating through her mind. Going to bed depleted in hope of not having it ignite her unconscious aches and struggles. She’d succeeded. When she hadn’t had relapses and sought mention of his name like an addict would a drug.

Leandro. The man she’d loved beyond reason’s dictates, and those of pride and self-preservation. The man to whom she’d been nothing but a convenience. As she was sure so many others had been. He went through life like a one-man invasion, leveling everything in his path so he could erect his own version of perfection.

And he was the least of the three evils? What were the other two? Demons?

The one thing ameliorating her upheaval at hearing his name again was confusion. At hearing it on the lips of the man who’d banished him from Castaldini, laced with such regret and…affection?

When King Benedetto spoke again, no doubt remained in her mind. It had been both. And more. Far more. The pining and pride of a father speaking of his estranged son. “There was nothing that boy couldn’t do. A true jack-of-all-trades. He built a financial empire and was the best ambassador to the States Castaldini ever had by the time he was just twenty-eight.”

She knew that. That had been when she’d met him, almost ten years ago. A month after she’d set foot on Castaldini, in the fairytale setting of her sister’s wedding.

“You must remember how he walked out on the ambassador’s position over irreconcilable differences in policies, how he escalated his antagonism until I could no longer defend him to the Council, was forced by his actions and their unanimity to declare him renegade and strip him of his Castaldinian nationality.”

Oh, how she remembered that. And what it had led to.

“He is now a tycoon of global power, dividing his time between business and humanitarian endeavors.”

She didn’t want to hear this. But short of walking away, or yelling at the king to quit shoving Leandro’s achievements down her throat, there was nothing she could do but stand there and listen to how he’d moved on, and so spectacularly, with his life.

Focused on his purpose, the king went on. “We approached him to come back, to be given full pardon and become crown prince and regent. He scoffed at our messengers and our offers.”

“Surely that was anger talking.” She started at the croaked protest. It had issued from her. It seemed nothing could silence the negotiator inside her. “Nothing some determined cajoling and ego-boosting concessions won’t alleviate.”

“Oh, yes, that’s what the Council thought, too. I told them they knew nothing about Leandro. But they were confident they could negotiate with him. He told us what we could…do…with our attempts at pride-salving and our middle grounds.”

Phoebe felt every word pushing her to the edge of an abyss. She couldn’t bear to look down, tried again to inch away. “If he so adamantly refuses, why not turn to the other choices?”

“Because the objection against the second is weightier, and he hates me even more. As for the third, the objection against him is the weightiest of all. And I suspect he hates both me and Castaldini. Leandro, as impossible as it seems, is actually the least problematic of all, the one I project will be easiest to reach. And that is where you come in.”

Her heart launched against her ribs. She rocked on her feet with the force of the collision. Don’t say it. Don’t…

He said it. “I’m sending you, the one person I believe can reach Leandro, can convince him to negotiate, or to at least hold down the fort until a more permanent solution is found, if he remains adamant about not accepting the succession.”

Phoebe’s mind emptied. Her tongue fired blanks. “I—I’m not…”

“You’re Castaldini’s most potent negotiator. You’ve bailed us out of situations where my old guard and I were ineffectual, detrimental even. And this is our darkest hour. I am counting on your ability, your infallible diplomatic techniques and your own charms, to lure Leandro back when all else has failed.”

Her own…charms? Now wait a minute here…

Before she could choke out her alarm, the king hurled another declaration at her.

“You’re my—and Castaldini’s—last card.”

“We’re landing, Signorina Alexander.”

Phoebe mirrored the flight attendant’s smile, patted her fastened seatbelt. She waited until the radiant brunette had removed her untouched dinner and hurried away before she let her head thunk against her window. The bonfire of lights that was New York City at night was zooming up at her, an organized maze of the gothic and the postmodern that seemed to be unfurling to engulf Castaldini’s equivalent of Air Force One.

She closed her eyes over the sand that seemed to fill her lids.

She hated flying. She’d come to equate it with upheaval.

The journey that started it all had been ten years ago. Her little sister, Julia, had accepted Paolo’s marriage proposal only to discover he was the King of Castaldini’s son.

Phoebe couldn’t let her eighteen-year-old, special-needs sister go alone to a foreign country and an unknown future. She’d dropped out of law school to accompany Julia. She’d boarded that jet to Castaldini with anxieties and regrets preying on her. The first over the unimaginable future she and her sister were heading to, the second over the life she’d relinquished.

Not that she’d had second thoughts since then. Although she was only two and a half years older than Julia, she’d been more of a mother than a sister to her since their single mother had died just days after Phoebe’s thirteenth birthday. When Julia had become afflicted with Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia—a rare form of partial paralysis—Phoebe’s protectiveness had mushroomed. At fourteen, Julia had started suffering from weakness, stiffness and partial loss of sensation in her lower limbs. By the time she was seventeen, she’d been in a wheelchair. Then she’d met Paolo.

Undaunted by her condition, he’d swept her into a whirl-wind romance. It wasn’t long before he’d proposed. And though Julia had accepted after nearly a year of cajoling and insistence that her physical condition made no difference to him, Julia’s psychological state had been fragile and her dependence on Phoebe had deepened with the anticipation of all the upheaval that becoming a princess overnight would bring.

Phoebe had wondered too many times if she would have done things differently if she’d known her own life would change forever, too. And not just as spillover from the changes in Julia’s.

What if the first time she’d set eyes on Leandro, she’d had the sense to feel alarmed at her volatile reaction, especially when she’d always been steady and cerebral? To realize that something so out of control would lead to a crash? That a man so voracious in both ambition and passion would end up consuming her while giving nothing of himself in return? What if she hadn’t let him sweep her into that first kiss an hour after meeting, hadn’t thrown herself into his bed a week later?

She’d always come to the same conclusion. Any alternative scenario wouldn’t have derailed her life, and she wouldn’t have spent years afterward trying to get back on track. She would have been whole, living a full life, with a family of her own.

And the king thought her the one best equipped to talk Leandro into coming back. The man she hadn’t had one rational discussion with in the fourteen months she’d been his lover.

But she had to be fair here. Their past affair was unknown, thanks to the lengths to which Leandro had gone to keep it a secret. The king was asking her to do her job as Castaldini’s diplomatic troubleshooter, who had negotiated many precarious deals and smoothed potentially treacherous situations on the kingdom’s behalf. If she took personal history and emotions out of it, this, while a one-of-a-kind situation, was still within her job parameters.

Not that she hadn’t tried to excuse herself from the chore, extricate herself from this impending mess. But without admitting why she couldn’t face Leandro, she’d had no ground on which to squirm out of that trap. She thought even a confession would have backfired. The king’s reliance on her “charms” would have only taken on new relevance. As a man, and a desperate monarch to boot, he would have believed a former lover who just happened to be the kingdom’s best negotiator would be a double-barreled weapon that was sure to win the battle.

She had one more reason she couldn’t have used. The consequences of this turn of events.

Leandro must be punishing the king and his Council, forcing them to grovel for his return after they’d banished him. But she had no doubt that when his pride was appeased and his conditions were made and met, he’d become part of the D’Agostino family again, would become its crown prince and future king.

And her time on Castaldini would come to an end.

The moment he came back to stay, she’d leave.

She was an hour away from meeting the man who’d made it impossible for her to love or even want another. From negotiating the deal that she had to succeed in negotiating at any price.

The deal that would end life as she knew it.

Leandro D’Agostino fought the urge building inside him until he felt as if his head were expanding under its pressure, heard the bones in his hand crackle under its force.

He stared down at that hand before he realized it was his cell phone issuing that sound. The cell phone he was crushing.

He swore, threw it away. It clanged on the gleaming wood of his desk, skidded and clattered to the mirror-like hardwood floor. He gritted his teeth as silence filled the racket’s wake.

Dammit. How many phones had he damaged in the past eight years so that he wouldn’t use them to call her? Even though that had been for the exact opposite purpose for which he wanted to call her now?

Well, he was not calling Phoebe Alexander. He was not canceling his meeting with her.

She wanted an interview with him? She was getting one.

For all the good it would do her.

She’d picked a bad day to break an eight-year silence. A bad month. A bad lifetime.

And she was about to find out how a tiger felt when those who’d ripped a claw from his paw came to poke at the festering wound.

They dared call him back. They now offered the mantle of power and responsibility. After they’d slandered him and cast him out, stripped him of his identity before his people, before the world. After he’d spent his life in service of his kingdom and its people, after he’d been certain he’d be named crown prince as the one D’Agostino male who met all the ancient criteria.

The closer he’d come to the crown, the more the Council had panicked. They wanted to remain the ruling body for life, had feared—and correctly—that his first action as king would be to replace them. So they beat him to it while they still could. They’d turned on him, removing him as a threat. After all, they’d still had the power. And King Benedetto’s ear.

King Benedetto. His kin and king. His hero. The king hadn’t just stood aside and let the dogs shred him, he’d delivered the decree that had torn Leandro’s guts out himself.

But being unable to call himself of the royal house of D’Agostino, ceasing to be a Castaldinian, hadn’t been the worst injury he’d sustained. That had been her betrayal. Her desertion.

And she was on her way here. To negotiate on his former king’s behalf. Or was it on her own?

It could be the latter, disguised as the first.

As if he’d fall for her again.

Whatever she was coming here for, he wasn’t letting her have it, or any influence on him again. Not in this life. Or the next.

Si, let her come. He was in the mood to be provoked. Her memory had been the source of heartache for far too long. Let her flesh-and-blood presence inflict something less pathetic. Something hot and harsh. Something he could sink his teeth into. And rip.

It was time to tear out anything soft or stupid from his depths, the remnants of the spell he hadn’t been able to break. It was time to exorcise her…

All his hairs stood on end as if he’d been doused in a field of static electricity. A presence. Unmistakable even after all these years. Here. She was here.

Phoebe.

Ernesto must have met her downstairs, let her up here. Let her walk alone into his den. Like eight years ago.

Caution told him not to move, to make her initiate the confrontation. Every instinct screamed for him to turn, to catch her first uncensored reaction to seeing him after that lifetime.

It was the hot, sharp sound that spilled from lips he knew to be rose-soft and cherry-tinted, that had once wrung all coherence from him with soul-wrenching kisses and moans, that shattered the stalemate. He swung around.

Déjà vu engulfed him.

Time rewound to the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. To the last time he had. And like both times, like every time in between, everything about her bombarded him all at once.

Different droned in his mind. Raven-haired when she’d been caramel blond before, creamy pale when she’d been deeply tanned, curvaceous when she’d been willowy. The woman who stood two dozen feet away had little in common with the younger one who occupied his memory, who’d never relinquished her hold over his senses.

He took in the enhancements in one glance, knew he’d need hours, days, more…far more, to sort through them.

But he didn’t have to catalog them to suffer their effects, to relive that incendiary—and to his rage and resignation, unrepeatable—attraction.

For a stretch that existed outside time, it was as if the only thing that could happen was that he would surge toward her, that she would rush to meet him halfway.

She stood as transfixed as he. As shocked.

That conviction jogged him from the surreal timelessness he’d plunged into, the version where nothing had gone wrong between them. He crash-landed into the distasteful present.

Of course she wasn’t shocked. She was here with full premeditation…

No. She was shocked. This was no act, not any more than his own dive into that time warp had been. So what did it mean?

He exhaled the breath trapped in his lungs, admitted he’d probably never know what anything meant where she was concerned, that he had no more grasp on this situation than he had on anything else that had happened in the past.

But he intended to take control of it. Or at least try to. He’d start by taking control of himself.

He turned fully to her, bracing for the change that would come over her expression as she regained control.

The last of the shock he’d detected in her drained. He caught a stinging lip in his teeth, counted down the seconds before her gaze heated, her posture relaxed, beckoned…

“For the record, I told King Benedetto what I think of a man who refuses to do his duty out of petty pride.”

Leandro blinked. What the…?

“But it’s my job to negotiate on the king’s behalf. Even for a prize I don’t think worth winning.”