Royally Romanced (10 page)

“So why aren’t you back in New York with her? You may have a lot of advantages over us non-princes, but sometimes out of sight means out of mind.”

Giorgio rolled his eyes. Francisco Emiliano José Duarte das Aguas Santas was the duke of one of the largest estates in Portugal plus a whole island in the Portuguese Azores and wasn’t exactly hurting for female interest. He also happened to know that Frank hadn’t always been one to talk about “out of sight, out of mind” when it came to women, one in particular, but that was his business. And Giorgio’s business was apparently Frank’s business, as well.

“Go back to New York, George. You deserve to have a private life, too.”

“You know, I couldn’t agree more. That’s why I am on the Italian Riviera—and not all by myself.”

Another silence—that had to be a record. Then Frank started to laugh. “You must have swept her off her feet, George. Good job.”

“I think she likes me, yes.” Giorgio started to wonder how Renata did feel about him, thanks to Frank’s line of questioning.

“Obviously, if you convinced her to go to Europe with you after only a few days.”

Only a few hours, but that
wasn’t
Frank’s business.

“Any progress on planning Stevie’s wedding?” That would distract Frank for a second.

“Yes, but I asked my mother for some advice and she laughed, George. When I told her one day of a wedding was simple compared to a lifetime of running our estates, she laughed even more.”

Giorgio rolled his eyes as Frank continued, “And that was not a nice laugh, George. She told me not to be stupid, that men didn’t know anything about weddings except how to get stinking drunk at them.”

“We
are
bachelors, Frank.”

“Since she wasn’t in the mood to be helpful, I ordered a wedding planner notebook from the bookstore and Stevie and I have been emailing back and forth. Her wedding colors will be gold and ivory, and she and Dieter are looking at their calendar to set a date at the Cathedral of Vinciguerra. We’ll work on the guest list later.”

Wow, Frank needed a different hobby. Or more likely, a woman. Another thought struck him. “About my trip here on the Riviera, Frank…Stevie doesn’t know I’m here and doesn’t know I’m here with Renata, okay?”

“Renata Pavoni, the dress designer? Stevie emailed me a photo of her dress so I could see the style.”

“Right. But keep it quiet, Frank. As far as Stevie knows, I’m back in Vinciguerra.”

“Cutting ribbons for dog pounds, right?” Frank laughed again. “Don’t worry, I won’t say anything. I told you last week you were burning the candle at both ends, eh? A nice vacation with a pretty girl is just what you need.”

“Thank you. Speaking of burning the candle at both ends, have you heard from Jack?” Dr. Jacques needed to write himself a prescription for some R & R.

“He sent me a quick email from his satellite laptop that said he was going upriver and would be incommunicado for a few days. The news service says the flood casualties are even worse than originally reported.”

Giorgio shook his head. “He won’t be happy until he’s come down with some previously unknown dread tropical disease that medical science can name after him.”
Jacques stupidii.

“Or being chased by pirates,” Frank agreed. “Talk about a man who needs to relax, huh?”

“If he makes it that long. Especially since we have a wedding to pull off.” Not that Jack knew anything about that sort of task, either.

“Right, George. Don’t worry about a thing. Stevie and I have it all well in hand, so you enjoy your vacation, okay?”

“And not a word to her about where I am, right?”

“Right. We’re just emailing and texting, so she can’t tell if I am lying or not.” Frank was a terrible liar.

“Good. I’ll let you know when I am back in Vinciguerra.”

“Take your time—and give that pretty
signorina
a kiss from ol’ Frank, okay?”

“Not okay, Frank. Find your own. You should settle down and make little dukes for your mother to spoil.”

“Right.” His voice was cool for the first time. “What’s the American phrase? ‘Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.’ Well, I am happy to be the wedding planner and never the groom.”

Giorgio winced. “Frank—”

“
Tchau,
Giorgio.”

“
Ciao,
Franco,” he replied, but to an empty line. Ah, he’d touched a nerve there with his offhand comment. As if Giorgio ever talked seriously about settling down. He’d apologize later when Frank had regained his normally sunny mood.

He stared at his phone. Frank was more of a home-body than any of them, preferring to work in the fields or build some new and elaborate project for his estate. Giorgio was the dutiful one, working in the palazzo like some CEO, and Jack had been bitten by the travel bug, probably the least harmful than the rest he’d encountered, and put more stamps in his passport saving the world than the Dalai Lama.

But none of them had had more than short-term relationships that fizzled instead of sizzled. He knew about Frank’s unhappy foray into first love only because of a late-night, wine-soaked confession of misery. Giorgio had poured Frank back into his bed that night right before the start of their second year at the university.

Jack had an aloof vibe that drove the girls crazy to learn what was behind the charming, but remote French facade. He’d preferred to go out with the cool, brainy types he met in his premed classes, and once he started medical school, dating fell by the wayside.

And Giorgio had had several girlfriends but had always put Stefania, his grandmother and his country before them—in that exact order. If he’d been his ruthless medieval ancestor, the original Giorgio Martelli di Leone, the Hammer of the Lion, who had carved out a principality from the rugged Italian hills, he would have put country first and women relatives a distant last. He would have sold Stefania off to a husband who offered the most advantage for him, chucked his grandmother in a nunnery if she gave him any grief and would have married the woman with the best dowry, regardless of looks or appeal. That original Giorgio had done pretty much the same thing, additionally fathering roughly a dozen children with nearly as many women. He’d often met other green-eyed Vinciguerran men who looked enough like him to be a cousin, if not a brother.

An odd thing, the fortuitous circumstances of his birth. He’d never thought much about it, traveling through his life like a swimmer in a river, constantly moving and dealing with rocks as they popped up. But if his great-something grandfather had been the son of the dairymaid instead of the son of the lady of the manor, Giorgio would be another tall, green-eyed Vinciguerran man reading the morning paper at his breakfast table and wondering aloud at great volume what that idiot prince of theirs was up to again.

He sipped his coffee thoughtfully. In that cozy Vinciguerran flat, his beautiful Italian wife, a redhead from the Cinque Terre, would shrug at the mysteries of foreigners as she poured him a caffe latte and kissed the nape of his neck.

He brought himself up short. That humble, sweet life that happened every day in his country was not his life. His flat was a gigantic palazzo and his life was not conducive to a normal marriage.

But while he and Renata were here in this lovely town along a lovely sea, he would make little memories like that imaginary breakfast and newspaper. And maybe when he was back at his immense desk arguing over traffic crossings and fishing rights, he would think back to how her hair curled over her breast as she slept on a sunny spring morning.

He set his cup down forcefully, awkwardly so the handle cracked off. Memories. Scraps of life. He was a man who had almost everything, could get almost anything with the snap of his fingers or the ring of his phone—and he was jealously hoarding mental snapshots to remember like an old widow staring at family photos.

Giorgio jumped to his feet, strangely disconcerted. Who was he to live like this? Had he not been living like this since his parents had died? Remembering how they had been happy and whole, Papa, Mamma, brother and sister. Making Stevie’s life happy and whole again seemed to have left a hole in his.

He stalked toward the bedroom. Well, if he was to be a man of memories, he was damn well going to make more.

Slipping off his robe, he slid into bed with Renata. She turned toward him in her sleep, wrapping her soft white arms around him. He swallowed hard and kissed the top of her head. Another memory for Prince Giorgio, rich in worldly goods but a pauper in the things that really mattered.

D
ESPITE HIS BEST EFFORTS
to delegate work back to his assistants, Giorgio had to set aside a couple hours to attend to business. Renata did the same but since she was running a shop and not a country, finished sooner. Despite her decidedly antinuptial tendencies, Flick was a smart cookie and had no trouble managing the shop.

Renata closed the app on her phone and went looking for Giorgio. He was sitting on the couch, leaning over a tablet PC while talking to his assistant in rapid Italian. She waited until he paused for breath and then waved to him.

“
Momento,
Alessandro.” He pressed mute on the phone. “Renata, sweetheart, I am so sorry. An issue about the new seaport came up. Something about how deep the water must be. I’m in a conference call with our consultants—retired American Naval officers as a matter of fact.”

She saluted him and smiled.

“Are you bored? I can have Paolo take you somewhere.”

She gestured dismissively. Vernazza wasn’t exactly New York, and there she didn’t need a bodyguard, either. “I thought I’d take a walk and do some shopping. I need to buy Flick a gift and a little something for my parents and Aunt Barbara. Maybe a bottle or two of Scciachetrà for a special occasion.”

Giorgio peeled several large-denomination euro bills from his clip. “Buy one for us. I can think of several special occasions we can create.”

Renata raised an eyebrow. “That’s way too much money for a bottle of wine.”

“Then buy something for yourself.” He pressed the money into her hand. “I know how independent you are, but let me treat you. Something small even.”

“Oh, all right.” Renata still had mixed feelings about accepting his money but after accepting a whole luxury trip, what was some spending money for wine? He’d drink it, too.

But she had one more favor to ask him. “While you have your assistant on the phone, don’t forget, I have to have some fabric samples to take back to New York, or else my cover is blown.”

“I’ve already put Alessandro to work.” He kissed the back of her hand. “He tells me the samples from Milan will arrive in a few days.”

“Thank you, Giorgio.”

“You are very welcome.” He reached for the phone. “We can go out for dinner later or else have something brought in.”

“Either sounds good.”

He nodded and returned to his previous conference call.

Renata stared at him, realizing all his focus was back on business. Well, he was a prince after all. What did she expect? He certainly had more responsibilities than the junior executives she saw running around New York with a phone attached to their ear and several other devices attached to their belts. It would be negligent of him to avoid his country’s business, even for a week.

She remembered how easily her own place was running despite her being gone. Of course Flick was doing sales and management only, not design. If Giorgio thought some of her wedding dresses were wild, she could only imagine Flick’s ideas. Knowing what her friend thought of holy matrimony, it would probably have an embroidered panel of Edvard Munch’s
The Scream
over the bodice and tiny handcuffs stitched in metallic steel gray over the skirt.

Renata stifled a giggle but Giorgio heard her. He winked at her and grinned.

It was like when one of her brothers elbowed her in the solar plexus and knocked the breath out of her. She actually had to suck in air before she swooned off her wedge sandals at His Sexy Highness.

Giorgio had been drawn back into his princely duties and didn’t realize what he’d done to her. Since when did a casual smile make her give goo-goo eyes to a man who wasn’t paying her a bit of attention?

On the other hand, maybe that was a good thing. She was sure if she looked into a mirror she would be absolutely mortified at her mushy expression.

She mentally slapped herself and escaped with some shred of dignity before she tossed his phone over the balcony and shoved herself into his arms.

She stepped carefully down the narrow stone stairway from their little apartment. The fresh air outside was a welcome relief to her overheated self.

As if summoned by a genie rubbing a lamp, Paolo appeared across from the foot of the steps, trying to look inconspicuous in a village of six hundred people who were probably all related to each other.

“Paolo?” She beckoned to him and he looked around as if she were talking to some other giant security man named Paolo.
Who, me?

She huffed in frustration and strode over to him. “Honestly, Paolo, you don’t need to follow me. Nobody’s going to mess with me in a tiny town like this.”

He just stared at her. She tried again in Italian. “I will be fine.
No problema.
Go check on
him.
” She waved her hand in the direction of the villa. “
Signorina, he
is fine. On the phone much time, not go out. But you are here. With me,
no problema
for you.”

Paolo was dead serious. Good Lord, a few days of nooky with His Royal Highness and she needed a bodyguard? Besides Giorgio, of course, who was jealously guarding her body whenever he could.

But what possible trouble could she find in a quiet morning of shopping in a small Italian town? “Paparazzi?” she asked.

He nodded seriously.

“You know if anyone bothers me I’ll brain them with a bottle of Scciachetrà.” She mimed whacking somebody over the head, and his mouth turned up a millimeter or two. Positively a guffaw from anyone else. “Oh, all right.” She sighed and rolled her eyes like the worst teenage drama queen. “Let’s go.” She silently vowed to take him into the pharmacy and spend twenty minutes in the “feminine protection” aisle.

But off they went, Paolo hanging fairly far behind her so she at least didn’t have to try to converse with the man in her Brooklyn Italian, which consisted mainly of curses and food items.

She bought herself a nice cappuccino at a café where the barista sketched a heart into the foam with chocolate syrup or something. Paolo, apparently not needing to eat and drink like a normal human being, declined. Then it was off to the stores. Renata found a boutique that had items from all over the Riviera. A length of lace from Portofino for Aunt Barbara, a small model of Christopher Columbus’s ship
La Santa Maria
for her father, who had been in the U.S. Navy. A carved wooden Madonna and Child for her mother, who was still asking the Holy Mother to find Renata a husband, and a bottle of
limoncello
lemon liquor for her grandmother, who had given up on Renata and turned to drink. Actually her grandmother had always loved anything with lemon.

She considered buying jars of the famous Ligurian anchovies in olive oil for her brothers, but the idea of carrying four glass jars of oily fish home in her luggage was enough to make her quail. So they each got a miniature wooden version of a ship’s figurehead—long-haired and bare-breasted, of course, so all the guys at the police and fire stations could get a yuk out of it.

By then she was famished and collared Paolo. “I’m hungry and these are heavy. You carry the packages, and let’s eat.”

She picked a quiet trattoria on a side street that had great smells coming from it and dragged him in.
“Mangia, mangia.”
Paolo stood awkwardly next to her tiny table, blocking the waiter who was lugging a big tray of soup and antipasti.

“Come, sit.” She motioned him into a chair. He hesitated but seemed to acknowledge he was drawing more attention standing like a Roman statue in the middle of the restaurant.

“Grazie, signorina,”
he muttered.

“You are most welcome. What is good to eat?”

“Here, the fish.”

“Ah, of course.” No concerns here that the fish had sat in the back of a delivery truck for a dangerous amount of time. “You like
pulpo?
”

His eyes lit up and he nodded. A fellow octopus devotee. She loved it, too, but hadn’t wanted to order it in front of Giorgio since eating the chewy seafood was less than sexy.

“Okay, why don’t you order
pulpo
and whatever else you think is good.”

The octopus was cut into rounds and deep fried. Renata and Paolo chewed their way through an order. Really, she didn’t understand why people hated octopus. When it was fresh, it was almost tender.

“Good octopus, right, Paolo?”

He nodded.

“Does your boss like octopus?”

He finished chewing and gave her a considering look. Probably he’d been pumped for information before about Giorgio, but decided his master’s preference for invertebrate seafood was not a state secret and nodded. The few days she’d spent with Giorgio were much more juicy than his eating habits but she wouldn’t be one to blab.

The soup was tomato based with seafood and herbs with fresh garlic toast rounds plopped right on top and the main course was a whole fish cooked with white wine, lemon and herbs.

“He like this soup,” Paolo offered. “We make this at home.”

“It’s very good.” She noticed how Paolo never mentioned Giorgio or Vinciguerra by name and figured it was part of security. “What else do you eat at home?”

“Our part is more
del nord
—north. We like polenta, sausage, much butter and
crema.
Meat roasts and risotto. Good food.”

It was the longest speech she’d ever heard. Food was close to his heart. “You should write a cookbook for recipes from—” She’d almost slipped and mentioned Vinciguerra. “From your home.”

He made a self-deprecating sound. “Nobody need a cookbook. Everybody know how to cook.”

“Oh, no, we don’t.” Renata had to be the only Italian-American girl in New York who could goof up a pot of pasta. “Think about it. Everybody thinks Italian food is spaghetti and meatballs. You could do something different.”

“Okay,
signorina.
” He was humoring her.

“Look at me, Paolo. Does New York need another dress designer?”

He shrugged in puzzlement.

“I’ll tell you—it doesn’t. But I didn’t care. And now the, um, other signorina has a nice dress and is very happy.”

“Yes, is true. She tell me so. And tell me, and tell me.”

Renata snorted with laughter. Ol’ Paolo had a sense of humor after all. “I’m glad to hear it. A beautiful girl.”

“Si, si.”
They smiled at each other at their mutual fondness for Stefania.

Renata took a sip of coffee but declined dessert, having filled up on the delicious focaccia in addition to the rest of her meal. If she stayed in Italy much longer, she was going to get a shape like her grandmother, who resembled a Magic 8-Ball in her black dresses.

Ah, well, all the walking and romping around with Giorgio would help. He’d shown no signs of slowing his pace, so she was running out of new lingerie to show him. She’d passed a pricey boutique earlier—maybe that was the place to go.

She set down her cup. “One more stop and then we can go back.”

Paolo nodded placidly, as if it were his life’s dream to follow her around Vernazza like some giant shopping cart with arms. There was a brief tussle when she tried to pay for lunch but apparently having a woman pay for his meal was more humiliating than carrying her packages. Renata gave in, figuring Giorgio would reimburse him.

She found the place she was looking for a couple blocks away. Paolo gave the display of bras and panties in the window a wary look.

“Don’t worry. You don’t have to go in.”

“Grazie, signorina.”
He parked himself against a wall across the way where he could see the entrance.

Renata walked into the shop and immediately saw a bunch of possibilities. Racy, demure, corsets, nightgowns, garters, lace, satin…she pulled out her phone. “Hey, Flick, I’m standing here in a lingerie store and don’t know what to buy.”

“Something sexy, of course.”

“Well, duh, but what?”

“What did you bring with you?”

“A bunch of fancy bras, all my garter belts and a corset.”

“Okay, so you’ve got the slutty look covered, let me think.”

Renata made a sound of protest at the “slutty” bit but in the end had to agree.

“How about the total opposite?”

“They don’t sell flannel nighties here, Flick.”

“Not that. You’d sweat to death. How about a nice demure pure white nightgown, as in the ‘please be gentle with me, it’s my first time’ look.”

“Ah, the virginal wedding night, but isn’t that a bit cliché?”

“No more so than running off to Europe with a hot Italian guy. Trust me, ‘Virgin Princess’ is the way to go.”

Renata snorted. “Guys do love that, even if they know better.”

“It lets them pretend they’re breaking new ground, so to speak.”

“Okay.” Renata moved to a billowy rack of white garments. She pulled one off the rack. “Honestly, Flick, this first one here looks like I should be fleeing the manor on the moors in gothic-y terror as the brooding lord chases me.”

“That’s the idea, dummy. If the gothic-y chick has any sense, she’ll pretend to twist her ankle on a rock and let Lord Longmember catch her.”

“Really, Flick. Lord Longmember?” she muttered into the phone.

“Or Laird Lang-member, if you prefer the Scottish fantasy. What’s under his kilt gives new meaning to the phrase
auld lang syne.
”

Renata groaned and reached for another gown. “Hey, this looks promising.”

“Send me a pic.”

Renata hung it back on the rack and took a quick picture and emailed it to Flick. “What do you think?”

“Positively diaphanous.”

“Yep.” The nightgown was a sheer white silk with blousy three-quarter sleeves and a satin ribbon fastening the neckline. The gown was cut on the full side but that didn’t matter since it was practically see-through. “You
have
to buy it. ‘Oh, milord, I do not understand all these strange new feelings in my forbidden places. Are you ill? You have the strangest swelling in your trousers. Ooooohh.’” Flick made a noise as if she were about to swoon.