Kitabı oku: «Once Upon a King»

One

“Michael, stop your pacing. You look like a nervous bride on her wedding night rather than a commanding prince of the land.”

Try as he might, Michael couldn’t help but smile. “A bride, Marstel? You couldn’t at least have said bridegroom?”

“A figure of speech,” Marstel Marriott said with a smile.

Michael gave his childhood friend a lot more latitude than most employees had. As Michael’s personal assistant and right-hand man, Marstel was privy to many things, but as a lifelong friend, he knew even more.

All joking aside, Marstel suddenly looked serious. “Just take a deep breath and settle down.”

“Settle down?” Michael raked his fingers through his dark hair in utter frustration.

“Settle down?” he repeated. “I shouldn’t be here playing host to my sister’s friend. I shouldn’t be playing surrogate wedding planner.” His sister, Parker, was getting married soon and was sending her friend ahead to help finalize the plans. “I should be back in Erie, looking for her.”

Her.

He didn’t even know her name.

Cara mia, he’d called her.

He remembered the way she’d smiled when he’d murmured the endearment in her ear the first time.

Cara mia.

That’s how he thought of her.

A chance meeting, a brief tryst…she’d altered the very fabric of his life.

“I should be out there looking for her, instead of chauffeuring around this Cara.”

Just saying the woman’s name grated on him, multiplying his level of frustration.

A Cara, but not his cara mia.

“Your soon-to-be brother-in-law has been looking for your mystery woman, but without a name…” Marstel let the rest of the sentence trail off.

He didn’t need to finish it.

Michael understood that the odds were stacked against him. That night, she’d simply been cara mia. He’d planned to find out her real name in the light of day, but hadn’t wanted to ruin the spell of that night. But in the morning she was gone. And without a name his chances of finding her were slim.

Erie, Pennsylvania, wasn’t a huge city, but finding one unnamed woman in a city of one hundred thousand people was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

More than one hundred thousand people.

Michael had looked up the number online.

He was a firm believer in facing the odds, in looking obstacles square in the face…103,717 according to the last census figures.

And that didn’t even take into account the outlying communities. He’d researched that as well. Mill-creek, North East, Wesleyville, Harborcreek, Girard, Fairview…she could be in any one of those townships that surrounded Erie.

Somewhere among all those people was his cara mia.

As soon as the double wedding was over, he was going back to Erie and find her himself, even if he knew it would be like looking for that proverbial needle in the haystack.

Michael knew in his gut that, despite the odds, their one night together couldn’t be the end of it. That it wasn’t all they would ever have.

He’d known the minute he’d seen her that she was it for him. At that first combustible meeting, he’d been too consumed by feelings to ask the questions that had needed asking. And once he’d had rational thinking return, she was already gone.

He’d let her slip from his fingers. And because he was on a diplomatic mission, he’d had only a few hours to search for her. A search that had proved futile.

As soon as he’d taken care of this last duty, he was going back, and he wouldn’t leave Erie, Pennsylvania, until he’d found her.

Michael wasn’t some hopeless romantic who fell in love at the drop of a hat. But the moment he bumped into her on the street he’d known in his gut that she was it. She was the one.

His father had found his mother in such a lightning-strike manner—found her in Erie as well, as a matter of fact. And his sister Parker had done the same when she’d fallen for the man their father had hired to find out why she wouldn’t come home. Jace O’Donnell, a private detective.

Love at first sight.

He’d doubted it could happen. He hadn’t been able to believe in that type of love even though he was the product of such a union. Michael was the type of man who needed more than someone else’s say-so for it to be true.

So he hadn’t believed…until it had happened to him.

And every day he delayed finding her was one day too many.

One more month and he’d go after her. As soon as he’d honored his obligation to his family, to his sister, Parker, he was going back to Erie and he wouldn’t come home without his cara mia.

“They’re here,” Marstel announced.

The plane drew closer to the runway and touched down lightly.

Most people had to wait at luggage claim to greet the travelers. So much in the world had changed in recent years, even here in Eliason. There were new rules and restrictions designed to make air travel safer. But there were a few perks to being a prince.

Very few.

Michael and Marstel stood in the security doorway and watched as the passengers began to deplane.

Families.

Businessmen and women.

About a dozen people had come out of the doorway when he saw her.

He sucked in his breath, sure he was hallucinating.

“Michael, are you all right?” Marstel asked, concern in his voice.

“Her,” he murmured, studying the woman. “It’s her. Cara mia.”

“Your mystery woman?”

Three months ago, on his trip to Perry Square, Michael was supposed to have convinced his sister to come home. He could have told his father that there was no convincing Parker of anything when her mind was made up.

When he’d gotten to Erie, he’d found it wasn’t just her mind that was made up, but her heart was as well. He’d seen how she’d looked when she spoke of Jace O’Donnell and he’d known that even though she might come home to visit, Parker’s future was no longer in Eliason.

He’d had to leave before he’d met her friends. One friend, Shey Carlson, was marrying Tanner Ericson, the prince of neighboring Amar.

And then there was Parker’s other friend, Cara Phillips.

Cara who was coming to arrange a small, private wedding ceremony for her two friends. A celebration for just family and those closest to both couples. Later there would be a more public celebration for both couples, but in one month, they’d have a secret, double ceremony.

Cara Phillips was here to help plan it.

Parker and Shey wouldn’t arrive until the last minute, hoping to keep the paparazzi off the scent of what would eventually be a very big story.

It all made sense.

He’d met his mystery woman, his cara mia, in the park across from the shops his sister owned with her two friends. Parker’s friend Cara would have been in that area frequently.

And the way his mystery woman had laughed when he’d called her cara mia.

Cara Phillips.

He’d known her name without knowing he’d known it. Just another indication that he was right—that this woman was his destiny.

And now she’d come to him.

What more proof did he need?

“Michael?” Marstel asked, concern still filling his voice.

“It’s fine. Everything’s fine now,” he assured his friend.

Everything was fine.

He didn’t have to find his cara mia.

She’d found him.

Cara got off the plane and breathed deeply. Parker used to say no place smelled quite the same as Eliason.

Maybe she was right. But at the moment, all Cara could smell was the plane’s fuel. It made her stomach move a bit south of where it belonged.

She forced herself to ignore the feeling. She didn’t have time to be ill. She was about to meet Parker’s family—to meet royalty.

She shouldn’t be nervous. After all, Parker was royal. Tanner was royal. And with their marriages, even Jace and Shey would be royal.

Through her years of friendship with Parker, Cara had learned that royalty wasn’t always all it was cracked up to be. As a teen, Parker had been tabloid fodder, hounded and exploited. But through all of it, she’d had the support of her parents. Two people who put their family before their royal duties. And despite wishing their daughter was coming home to stay, they put her happiness first as well.

They’d always sounded wonderful to Cara, which was why she refused to be nervous about meeting Parker’s very royal family and staying in an honest-to-goodness castle. Parker had shown her pictures, and Cara had memorized them. Not really a moat-and-turret sort of castle. It looked more like a huge, gigantic mansion. Gray stone, ornate gardens and one small tower off the west wing.

Parker said she’d never visited all the rooms.

Cara wondered if she could manage it during her month-long visit.

Probably not. She had her work cut out for her. She was here to be a voice, to see to it the double wedding didn’t become a sideshow, that it remained the small intimate ceremony her two best friends envisioned.

She was a woman on a mission. There was no time for exploring. And there was certainly no room to be nervous, she warned the butterflies in her stomach. After all, if she wanted to be nervous about something, she had bigger worries ahead of her.

She walked off the ramp and scanned the area, looking for someone who looked like they were looking for someone they didn’t know. She wasn’t sure who was picking her up. Parker just said someone would meet her.

She hefted her carry-on over her shoulder and started following the crowd.

“Cara mia,” came a voice from behind her.

Cara stopped in her tracks and stood stone-still. She felt a jolt pulse through her body, weakening her knees. All the oxygen whooshed from her lungs.

Could someone asphyxiate from surprise?

No, this was more than surprise.

Shock.

Could she asphyxiate from shock?

She didn’t want to look, couldn’t stand to be disappointed, but somehow she managed to turn, to see for herself.

Mike.

Mike King in Eliason?

“You?” she said, her voice soft because, after all, it was hard to speak when you had no air in your body.

“Me,” he said with a huge smile.

It almost looked as if the fink was happy to see her.

“I found you,” he said.

The sense of hope disappeared in an instant as Cara remembered what Mike King had done.

The jerk.

The creep.

The love-’em-and-leave-’em cad.

Cara knew she was a quiet woman, reserved and shy. But she forgot for a second as she publicly snubbed the smiling Lothario.

“Leave me alone,” she said and then turned on her heels and marched away.

She wasn’t sure where she was going, but it didn’t matter. She just wanted to get away from Mike King, the man who’d shown her one amazing night of passion.

Mike King, the father of her baby.

“Cara, where are you going?” he asked, obviously ignoring her command.

Maybe she hadn’t been clear. She whirled around and faced him.

“Where I go is none of your concern. I want you to forget you ever met me, because believe me, I forgot you the morning I woke up alone in that hotel room.”

Okay, so that was a lie.

Not just some little white lie.

A whopper of a lie.

But for the first time in her life, Cara didn’t feel guilty about avoiding the truth. After all, she was crossing her fingers as she said the words, and the creep deserved to think he was so easily forgotten.

She’d never tell him that not a day went by that she didn’t think of him. Not a night went by that she didn’t dream of him.

“I can’t forget,” he said.

She kept walking.

“Go away or I’m going to call security. They’ll arrest you for sure. I’m a guest of this country and I have friends in high places.”

Okay, so Parker’s parents weren’t really friends, but she imagined they’d help protect her from a lunatic ex-lover.

“Tell me where you’re going,” Michael ordered, still walking by her side. His legs were much longer than hers, so she had to take about a step and a half to every one of his long, loping strides.

“None of your business,” she said, trying to lengthen her own step, not wanting to be at a disadvantage. “Leave me alone, you cad.”

“Cad?” he said, his smile quirking sort of sideways with amusement.

“You gigolo.”

“Gigolo?” He chuckled.

That soft, throaty laughter had haunted her dreams for three months.

He placed a hand on her shoulder, as if to slow her down.

She shrugged free and tried to walk even faster. “Stop that, and stop following me.”

“I can’t stop following you. I was sent here to pick you up and take you to the castle, Cara Phillips.”

“You work for the king?” she asked, feeling as if a lightbulb had gone off over her head. “That’s why you were on Perry Square, in Erie. He sent you to try and make Parker go home, didn’t he? Then you met me, figured you could have a bit of fun before you ran back to Eliason. You figured you’d never see me again. Well, let’s pretend it worked, that you never met me back on the square. You can take me to the castle, then get on with your duties and forget we ever met.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, cara mia.”

The endearment whipped at her tenuous self-restraint. “Don’t call me that,” she said, hoping he couldn’t sense the emotion that was riding ever closer to the surface.

“I can’t do that either. You are my cara mia, my beloved,” he said.

He reached out as if he were going to touch her again, but drew his hand back. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Ha.”

“And I can’t leave you alone because my father asked me to assist you in whatever way suits your needs.”

“Your father?” she asked. A sudden sick pitch settled in her stomach as a glimmer of an idea struck her. An unsettling, horrible, the-fates-couldn’t-do-it-to-her kind of idea.

“Your father?” she repeated.

“My father, King Antonio Paul Capelli Mickovich Dillonetti of Eliason.”

This time Cara didn’t just feel weak-kneed, she actually sort of sagged.

Mike caught her elbow and steadied her.

An immediate awareness slammed through her system.

“What’s your real name?” she asked weakly, though she knew.

“I’m Antonio Michael Paul Mickovich Dillonetti. There are a lot of titles that come after that. But my friends call me Michael.”

“Well, Your Highness—”

“Michael,” he corrected.

“Your friends call you Michael, and I assure you I am not your friend. I’ll stick with Your Highness.”

“You’re right of course,” he said, using what he must have thought was a soothing tone.

In reality, it was too husky, too enticing to be soothing.

“You’re not a friend….” he began. “You’re more.”

Cara couldn’t stand it.

She knew that Parker and Shey were counting on her to keep this wedding intimate and not a circus like so many other royal weddings were. But she couldn’t do this.

She couldn’t be here, working with him every day.

Parker and Shey would understand. They’d have to.

She turned and headed for the ticket window.

“Where are you going now?” he asked, once again on her heels.

This time she realized there was a small group of men trailing after Michael as he followed after her.

Bodyguards?

Probably. After all, a prince had to have his entourage.

A prince. The rat.

“To buy a ticket home,” she said without turning around to look at him.

“You’re running away again?” he asked, his voice much softer now.

She whirled around and found herself face-to-face, just inches separating them. “What do you mean again? I woke up and you were gone. There was nothing to do but go. I left, but I certainly didn’t run away.”

Had he been there, she was certain she’d have stayed as long as possible.

“I went to buy us breakfast only to return to the room and find you’d left,” he said softly.

Cara felt light-headed.

“You were coming back?” she whispered.

“Of course. You were in my room, after all.”

Oh, no. He hadn’t left her. He hadn’t used her then discarded her. Her hand fell to her stomach. Her baby’s father wasn’t a scum-sucking Casanova.

Another thought occurred to her.

Her baby’s father was a prince.

Even worse, he was the heir to the Eliason throne.

Cara groaned as she realized that her baby was, in fact, royalty as well.

Oh, no, what had she done?

The blood rushed from her head and Cara did something she’d never done before. She fainted.