PIA FELT AS if she had whiplash. Everything had been in hideous slow motion at her father’s graveside, but now, it was as if events were tumbling of their own accord. A glance out the window showed the scrum of reporters, all shouting and shoving. Her gut felt much the same.
She felt as if she was a train on a broken track, careening out of control.
Though she knew better. There was no train. Events weren’t carrying on of their own volition. And while she might feel out of control, that didn’t make it so.
It was him.
Prince Ares.
His name was not Eric. It had never been Eric. And now that she knew who he was, she couldn’t quite imagine how she’d believed he was just...some guy. That he was royal appeared stamped deep into him, today. How had she missed it in New York? It was the way he stood. It was the way he lifted that imperious brow of his. It was the way he assumed command, instantly.
He drew her back from the window. He barked out an order to his guard, then returned his considerable attention to her, green and gold and grave.
How had she convinced herself there was anything regular about this man at all?
“We cannot get to the bottom of this here,” he told her in a tone that matched the expression on his face. And made everything in her careen about all the more. “You will have to come with me.”
“Come with you?” she repeated, dazed. “What do you mean? Where?”
But Ares did not wait for her acquiescence. Perhaps he assumed it wasn’t necessary. Perhaps, where he came from, agreement with his every whim and desire was the law of the land. He certainly acted as if it was. He strode off, his long legs eating up the floor of the library in only a few strides. And then he stopped at the door, turning back to her with that astonished, arrogant look of his.
“Pia. That is your name, is it not?”
In case she’d forgotten that every single part of this situation shamed her and humiliated her.
“It is, yes,” she said, threading her fingers together and making herself smile the way she’d been taught. Serene and smooth. “And in all the confusion and violence, I believe I missed your formal introduction. You are...?”
She watched that hit him, like a slap. He blinked as if it had never occurred to him that any person alive might not know precisely who he was—suggesting that he’d thought she was only pretending not to know him in New York.
Pia should have been more sympathetic. After all, she knew what it was like to be known, often when she would have preferred to be anonymous. She knew what it was like to have an inescapable family identity that followed her around and often preceded her. And possibly, if she had been a better sort of person, she wouldn’t have taken such enjoyment in watching Ares’s struggle.
Alas.
“I am His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Ares of Atilia. Duke of this, Earl of that. But no need to address me by my full title. Ares will do.”
He certainly didn’t appear the least bit ashamed that he could have spent a night like that with someone and not know their name. Pia resolved she should feel no shame herself.
And while she couldn’t quite get there, she could certainly fake it. She lifted her chin and tried to exude a sunniness she didn’t quite feel.
“It’s lovely to meet you, at last,” she said. “But you should know that I have no intention of going off somewhere with you. I did just meet you, after all.”
And she remembered every scandalous searingly hot detail of the night she’d spent with him. She had seen all kinds of expressions cross his face. She had seen him laugh, go tense and hot, shatter.
But she had never seen him look dangerous until now.
“You do not understand, so allow me to enlighten you.” His voice was almost as striking as that expression on his face. Dark. Powerful. Nothing lazy or offhand about him, and his green eyes blazed. “You have made a claim to the throne of the kingdom of Atilia. If what you say is true, you are pregnant with my child.”
“What does it matter?” she asked, with a brazen sort of calmness she did not feel. “You said you have no intention of marrying. And so what if you have illegitimate children? Don’t all kings litter them about, here and there, down through the history books?”
His perfect, sculpted lips thinned and if possible, his gaze grew hotter. And more dangerous. “Atilia is an ancient kingdom, bound by ancient rules. I cannot imagine you truly want a lesson in our laws and customs regarding succession.”
“I’m certain I didn’t ask for a lesson in anything.”
He ignored that. Or didn’t care, more likely. “Legitimate issue takes precedence over illegitimate issue. But only if they are male.”
“What a shock.”
“I am next in line to the throne. Any legitimate child of mine would ascend that throne after me. In the absence of children, a line of succession would move on. Either to any children my father’s second wife produces, or to my cousin. If any children I have are illegitimate, they would precede my father’s second round of children only if my father had girls.”
“That is a fascinating history lesson. Thank you.” She smiled at him still, though it felt more...fixed, somehow. “An alternative would be for you to go away. And never tell anyone. I will do the same. And we will never again talk about issue.”
Or anything else, she thought stoutly. And waited to feel relief rush in.
But instead, she felt something far more bittersweet flood her, though she couldn’t quite name it.
“I’m afraid it is much too late for that, Pia,” Ares said, with that quiet power of his that shook through her no matter how solid she told herself she was. “Because speculation already exists. Reporters clamor outside even now. What they cannot learn for certain, they will make up to suit themselves.”
“You must know the folly of living your life by what the tabloids say,” she chided him. Gently.
“I never have.”
“Wonderful.” She smiled. “Then no need to start now.”
“You said yourself that you have never appeared in the tabloids before. There is no reason to throw yourself in the midst of a nasty little scrum of them, like a bone to pick.”
If Pia didn’t know better, she might have been tempted to think he was trying to protect her.
“More than that, there were reporters who heard you make your claim,” Ares said. He shook his head. “Do you know nothing of the history of this planet? Wars have been fought for much less than a claim to a throne.”
“You talk about war a lot,” she said, and felt herself flush when his gaze turned considering. “In case you were unaware.”
“I am a prince. One of my main roles in this life is preventing wars from ever taking place. One way to do that is to conduct my private affairs in private.” He inclined his head, though Pia was aware it was a command and not a sign of obedience or surrender. “My car awaits.”
“And if I refuse to get into it with you?”
“I have a security detail who will put you in the vehicle, no matter your protests. But you know this.” Again, that dark, considering look that seemed to peel her open. “Is that what you want? Plausible deniability?”
For a moment, Pia didn’t know what she wanted. She felt the way she had when her doctor had come into the exam room and told her the news. Pia had been fairly certain she was dying of something. All those strange cramps. The fact that she kept getting sick. She was certain something was eating her away from the inside out.
It had never occurred to her that she could be pregnant. The word itself hadn’t made sense.
She’d made the doctor repeat herself three times.
Looking at Ares, here in the library of Combe Manor where she had spent so much of her childhood, was much the same.
That train kept jumping the tracks and hurtling away into the messy night, no matter how still she stood or how gracefully she tried to hold herself together.
But she could hear her brother’s clipped tone from the other side of the door, issuing his own orders. She’d seen that scrum of ravenous reporters out in front of the house, clamoring for a comment and ready to pounce.
“Let me tell you what sort of life you will lead,” her mother had said in the days following her graduation from finishing school, right here in this very same manor house, stuffed full of pictures of all the battle-hardened Combes who had charged out of their circumstances and had made something of themselves, no matter what.
Pia knew she was meant to feel deeply proud of them all. When instead, all that desperate clawing for purchase made her feel...tired. And unequal to the task.
“Am I supposed to know what to do with my life?” Pia had asked. “I can’t seem to make up my mind.”
“It’s not for you to decide, dear girl,” said her mother, who only called Pia dear when she was in one of her less affectionate moods. Pia had sat straighter, waiting for the inevitable other shoe to fall. “Your father has gone to a tremendous amount of trouble to make you into the perfect heiress. Biddable and sweet enough. Reasonably accomplished in the classic sense of the term. And very, very wealthy, of course.”
It had seemed wiser not to say anything. Pia had sat there at the breakfast table off the kitchen where her mother drank her hot water and lemon, murmured about how refreshed she felt with each sip, and raised her brows at Pia’s slice of toast with a bit of creamery butter.
Which was to say, it was a normal breakfast at Combe Manor. Pia could have drunk the hot lemon water herself, but she’d long ago learned that it was better to disappoint her mother as early in the day as possible, so there could be no grand expectations over the course of the day she would then fail to meet.
Alexandrina had let her gaze sweep over her daughter as if she was sizing her up for market. “You will work in some or other worthy charity that we will vet, of course. You will dedicate yourself to your good works for a year, perhaps two. Then I imagine your father will suggest a suitor. He might even allow you to pick one. From a preselected group, of course.”
“You make it sound as if he plans to marry me off.”
Pia had spent much of her life despairing over the fact that while she had the same dark hair and gray eyes as her mother, Alexandrina’s all...came together. She was simply beautiful, always, no matter what. It was a fact, not a to-do list. Pia had the raw material, but she was put together wrong. No matter how hard she tried to glide about, exuding effortless beauty.
“Dear girl, your brother will run the business,” Alexandrina had replied, as if Pia had said something amusing. “He is already in line to do so. You are here to be decorative, or if not precisely decorative—” the look she’d slid at her daughter had been a knife, true, but Pia had been so used to the cut of it she hadn’t reacted at all “—you can be useful. How will you accomplish this, do you think?”
Pia hadn’t had an answer for her. Her accomplishments, such as they were, had always been a serene collection of tidy, unobjectionable nouns. She’d no idea how one launched off into a verb.
“What did you do?” she asked her mother instead.
She already knew the story, of course. Her father liked to belt it out at cocktail parties. Alexandrina had been set to marry some stuffy old title of her father’s choosing, but then she’d met Eddie. First they’d made headlines. Then they’d made history, uniting the brash, upstart Combe fortune with the traditional gentility of the San Giacomos.
Pia rather doubted that an epic love story was in the cards for her. Epic love was the sort of thing that just happened to women like her mother, and led to decades of true love. Which in the San Giacomo/Combe family had always meant operatic battles, intense reunions, and a revolving door of scandals and sins. Pia had always thought that, really, she’d be quite happy to find herself reasonably content.
“You and I are not the same,” Alexandrina had said softly that day, something making her gray eyes glitter. “And I can see that you think I’m being cruel to you. I am not.”
“Of course not,” Pia had agreed, staring at her plate and wishing she could truly rebel and order a stack of toast instead of her one, lonely slice. But she only dared antagonize her mother—who despaired over Pia’s sturdy figure, inherited from the Combe side of the family and suitable for factory work, not fashion—so far. “I don’t think that at all.”
“We have wrapped you up in cotton wool as a gift, Pia,” Alexandrina had intoned. “Always remember that.”
Pia remembered it, all right. She’d decided she wanted no part of any cotton wool, so she’d charged right out and shed it in New York. Enough with nouns, she’d thought. She wanted to be about verbs, for a change.
And look what that had got her.
“You look as if you’re mulling over a very important decision,” Ares said, still watching her from the door. “But you must realize that you have no choice here.”
“It’s out of the frying pan, into the fire.”
Pia hadn’t meant to say that out loud. But there it was, dancing between them.
Ares didn’t reply with words. He only inclined his head in that way of his, that she already knew was him at his most royal. Too royal to live, really.
And Pia thought of her father, blustering and brash Eddie Combe, who had called her names and then died. She would never see him smile at her again. She would never stand there while he blustered and bullied, then softened. He would never pat her on the head the way he had when she was small and tell her things like, Buck up, girl. Combes don’t cry.
But another thing her father had said, so famously that the vicar had quoted him in the service today, was that if the worst was coming, you might as well walk into it like a man rather than waiting for it to come at you as it pleased.
Control the conversation, Eddie liked to say. And had said, often.
And then did.
Pia told herself that was why she moved then, walking across library floor as if she was doing the bidding of her unexpected prince. That was why she followed after him, ignoring her brother and their guests as his staff led them through the manor house, down and around to the servants’ entrance, far away from the mess of reporters out front. That was why she got into the car that waited for them there, meekly and obediently, and sat next to Prince Ares as he drove her away.
It wasn’t capitulation, she assured herself. She was controlling the conversation.
And it certainly had nothing at all to do with the way looking at those green eyes of his made her heart thump wildly in her chest.
Or that melting feeling everywhere else.