Read His Royal Love-Child Online

Authors: Lucy Monroe

Tags: #ROMANCE

His Royal Love-Child (8 page)

BOOK: His Royal Love-Child
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She was saved from finding out when Ramon stood up with a smile, his hand extended to Marcello. The men greeted one another. Then Marcello introduced all of them to his family…as employees of
Scorsolini
Shipping.

He did not linger over his introduction of her, not even by a millisecond, and there could be no indication to his family that she was special to him in any way. Which was exactly what she should have expected, but she still felt horribly slighted. It hurt, and it didn’t matter that he had not really betrayed her or that he was acting only as he had always said he would.

Her heart was tight with pain and the rest of her felt numb.

She said something in response to the introductions, though she had no idea what. Her brain wasn’t functioning all that well. Marcello’s eyes
narrowed,
and she wondered if she’d said something wrong, but no one else reacted strangely.
So
, it must have been okay.

Conversation flowed back and forth, but none of it penetrated the pain imploding inside her.

Lizzy
made a comment and they laughed, but they were looking at
Danette
and she realized she’d missed something.

Lizzy
grinned. “Her head’s in the clouds. She just finished an important project and she put so much into it, I think she frazzled her brain.”

“And here I had hoped it was that she was overawed because she finally agreed to go out with me,” Ramon said with such blatant humor that even
Danette’s
lips curved in a tiny smile.

Everyone else laughed out loud…except Marcello.

For the space of a single heartbeat his glare could have singed concrete, but then a mask of imperturbability settled over his face.

“You see, Marcello? This is what you should be doing, my son.”

“And what is that, Mama?”

“Like these young men, you should be dating some nice girl, but it is always work, work,
work
with you. The hours he puts in.” She shook her head.

Ai,
ai
,
ai
.
He thinks of nothing but business. And here we see there are plenty of lovely young women who work for you that you could socialize with.”

“I do not make it a habit to date employees,” he said with a perfectly straight face.

Danette
gasped,
her face stinging with heat as if it had been struck.

His look of concern lasted longer than the glare, but she ignored it. So, he didn’t date
employees?
What was their relationship then, a series of clandestine
meetings
? Even as she asked herself the question, her heart knew the answer.

That was exactly what they had.
A series of secret trysts that meant nothing more to him than a one-night stand.
They couldn’t and have him deny her to his family so completely.

“I am glad you do not expect your employees to adhere to that principle,” Ramon said with a smile for
Danette
.

Lizzy
and her date chimed in and Marcello merely shrugged, but there was something feral in the cobalt-blue gaze he fixed on Ramon.

Danette
could not leave it there.
Would not do so…it wasn’t right.
“So, you
never
date employees?” she asked with a voice that sounded to her like shattered glass.

“I keep my private life private,” he said by way of a
nonanswer
.

“There aren’t any women at
Scorsolini
Shipping glamorous enough for the prince,”
Lizzy
said cheekily. “I’ve seen pictures of the women he dates. They’re cover model types for sure. I
mean if they ended up married, she’d be a princess wouldn’t she
? Someone like Miss Thompson here fits the bill.” She indicated Prince
Tomasso’s
perfectly groomed and thoroughly lovely fiancée with a nod of her head. “But I can’t see any of the women at
Scorsolini
shipping being that kind of glamour material.”

Maggie Thompson made a strange sound.

Prince
Tomasso
smiled at her. “I told you that you are my perfect mate.”

Lizzy’s
eyes went all dreamy. “Isn’t that romantic?” she asked the table in general.

“Very,”
Danette
said, feeling as far from romantic herself as it was possible to get. “No doubt if Marcello was dating a cover model or someone as lovely as the soon-to-be princess, he wouldn’t be such a stickler for privacy.”

Her words held a message for him that no one else would get, but it was only after speaking that she realized she’d used his first name. While he encouraged a less formal address amongst his employees than “Your Highness”, she still should have called him Signor
Scorsolini
.

She didn’t know if the anger tightening his jaw was for her slip or her implication.

“Are you kidding?”
Lizzy
demanded, filling the awkward silence. “There wasn’t anything private about the picture of Signor
Scorsolini
dancing with that gorgeous blonde at his father’s birthday party.
Oooh
, la, la.
What a couple.” She waggled her eyebrows dramatically, making everyone laugh again.

“She was only one of many gorgeous creatures he danced with that night,” Maggie Thomson said, her smile wide. “I don’t mind telling you, I was glad he was there to draw some of the attention away from
Tomasso
.”

“I live to serve,” Marcello said with a forced facetiousness she doubted anyone else noticed was not entirely natural.

Danette
wasn’t feeling humorous, either. She cocked her head to one side and examined his brother. In many ways the two men looked alike. They were both tall and shared the same cobalt-blue eyes, though Marcello’s skin was darker. His hair was lighter, but both men wore it a little long and had matching widow’s peaks. The expression of supreme male confidence they wore was identical, too.

“Tell me something, Prince
Tomasso
, if you don’t mind.”

Sliding an arm around his fiancée’s waist, he smiled at
Danette
. “What would you like to know?”

“How do you manage to balance your princely duty to socialize with your personal life? For example, could you dance with one woman as your brother did, while wooing your fiancée, persuading her you cared about her?”

“Ah, you must remember, my brother is smart enough not to have told any woman such a thing, so the question doesn’t arise in his case. He’s very adept at juggling excess amounts of female attention.
But
in answer to your question, Maggie would brain me if I danced with another woman the way my brother danced at our father’s party.
And
rightly so. I prefer to keep my head in one piece and therefore would not risk it, no.”

Everyone laughed while
Danette
felt the blood draining from her face.
The way that Marcello had danced with the other women
…he hadn’t just been putting on a front. He’d been enjoying himself, playing the field.
Maybe even looking for her replacement.
Okay, so it was probable he hadn’t slept with any of them, but she still felt a holocaust of pain where her heart should be.

Her eyes met Marcello’s and she knew that right that second, all the pain she was feeling was there for him to see.

He cursed, shocking everyone around them and Prince
Tomasso
said, “What’s the matter?”

“I did not dance like a damned gigolo.”

“I never said you did. You merely acted like the single man you are and had a lot of fun doing it. I, however, am content to be attached.”
And
the look he gave Maggie left no one at the table, or standing beside it, in any doubt how very sincerely he felt those words.

Tears burned the back of
Danette’s
eyes and she blinked furiously to get rid of them. Marcello looked livid. She couldn’t imagine why. His brother only spoke the truth after all.

Lizzy
sighed, the dreamy look back. “That’s just so sweet.”

Her date grinned. “I can be just as sweet, do you doubt it?”

She laughed.
“Of course not.
I wouldn’t be here with you otherwise.”

“We shouldn’t keep you from your table any longer,”
Danette
said to Marcello through stiff lips, not meeting his eyes.

She wanted them gone and did not care if she wasn’t at her subtle best in achieving that goal. As it was, she had no idea how she was going to hold it together for the remainder of dinner.
But
she would somehow. She wasn’t making an idiot of herself in public over a relationship that no one but
her
and Marcello even knew about.

“And we should not keep you from your dinner any longer,”
Flavia
Scorsolini
said.

Marcello and the others followed the now moving Giuseppe, but the former queen stopped beside
Danette
and put her elegant hand on her shoulder, then squeezed gently. “It was a pleasure meeting you. All of you.”

Danette
looked at the older woman and willed the pain inside of her to stay hidden. “Thank you,” she forced
out
. “It was a pleasure meeting you, too.”

Her companions chipped in with more of the same.

Flavia
shook her head as if her thoughts troubled her. “Perhaps I will see you again.”

“That is very unlikely.”

Flavia
cocked her head to one side and studied
Danette
for a nerve-racking moment. “I wonder.”
And then
without another word, she moved on.


Wow, that
was odd. Did you think the boss was acting strangely?”
Lizzy
asked when
Flavia
was gone.

“I would say he was acting true to form,”
Danette
replied.

“I thought I was going to die when you called him
Marcello
, and in front of his family, no less.”
Lizzy
shivered. “I’m just glad he’s not as hung up on protocol as some Italian men.”

“He would never fire an employee for that kind of thing, but other men might,” Ramon agreed.

Then he and
Lizzy’s
date spent ten minutes rhapsodizing over what a great guy Marcello was and how much they admired the way he didn’t trade on his royal status to run the company.

Danette
let the conversation flow around her for the rest of dinner, replying only when she was asked a direct question.

Marcello’s table turned out to be right in her line of sight and he had taken a seat facing her. She tried to keep her gaze from straying to him, but at one point she simply had to look and found his eyes directed at her. Their gazes locked, but she broke eye contact before he had the chance to. She’d suffered enough rejection at his hands tonight.

She was careful not to look that way again, though she felt his eyes on her more than once.

When it was time to go, Ramon offered to see her to her door and she gratefully accepted. She had no desire to ride with
Lizzy
as planned earlier, not knowing then as she did now that
Lizzy’s
boyfriend would be in the car, too. She had no desire to play fifth wheel.

Ramon stopped in front of her cottage and got out to let her out of the car. He walked her to the door and waited while she unlocked it. “Thank you for an enjoyable evening.”

She didn’t think she’d added much to it. It had taken all her self-control not to break down and cry. “Thank you, Ramon.”

He grasped her shoulders and went to kiss her goodnight, but she pulled her head back. “I’m sorry. I don’t…”

He changed the direction of his lips and kissed her cheek before stepping back and smiling. “You know, I think it is just as well. The boss kept watching you during dinner and he gave me a couple of looks that wished me to Outer Mongolia. I like my job. I think I will keep it.”

“I’m sure he would never fire you for dating me.”

“Perhaps not, but I do not mind not putting it to the test.” Then he stood straighter. “I would date you regardless if you had offered encouragement, you understand?”

“I do understand. You’re not the kind of man to be cowed.” She said it for the benefit of his ego, but she thought really that she might very well be speaking the truth.

After all, he had tried to kiss her
after
deciding that Marcello was interested in her.
But
she hadn’t encouraged him and he had decided to cut his losses.

“Watch out for him, though. He is in a league far beyond us normal mortals.”

“I believe you.”

She was sitting rigid in a chair by the window when Marcello arrived an hour later. She’d known he would come, but she hadn’t expected him for another hour, or more. He must have cut his evening short with his family.

She wondered why. Surely he wasn’t worried. His supreme male confidence would not allow him to expect anything to have changed between them from something as simple as an unexpected meeting at dinner.
But
it had. She couldn’t stand being his secret mistress any longer.

She had the door open when he got out of his car.

He walked toward her, his expression grim. “It is a good thing Ramon is not here. The entire way over, I played one scenario after another in my head of what I would do if you were entertaining him for after dinner coffee.”

“I can only imagine one scenario myself,” she said quietly and without rancor. She hurt so
much,
there was no room for anger. “You would have turned around and driven away if you saw his car. Any other option would have risked exposing the fact that you were here to see me.”

“Your imagination is sadly lacking then. My fantasies centered on a very satisfying letting of blood and definitely required me getting out of my car.”

“How primitive.”
But
she didn’t believe a word of it.

BOOK: His Royal Love-Child
13.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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