“ALL ARE ONE...” The last words of the Corinthian national anthem rose from the crowd gathered below the balcony. Arianna and Max had been officially presented as a royal couple.
Leaving Father and the happy couple to greet their well wishers, Armando stepped back inside. There was only so much joy a man could take, and he had met his limit.
He was happy for his sister, truly he was, but if he had to watch her and Max gaze into each other’s eyes a second longer, he would scream.
A few moments alone in the empty gallery would clear his head. Then he would be ready to tackle the rest of Christmas Day. Mona and her father were joining the celebration. Another day being reminded of the hole he’d dug himself into. At least he’d apologized to Rosa, taking that guilt off his shoulders. Somewhat. He doubted he would ever be completely guilt-free.
Because part of him would never regret kissing her.
To his surprise, Rosa was in the gallery when he entered, studying one of the china cabinets. One look and his energy returned, even if she was wearing one of those ridiculous long blazers he hated. He hadn’t expected to see her for a few days. He’d wanted to—oh, Lord, had he wanted to—but common sense had made a rare appearance and suggested otherwise. If he went to her apartment, he would be tempted to pull her into his arms. Much like he was tempted right now.
When she saw him, she smiled. “Merry Christmas,” she greeted.
Something wasn’t right. He could tell by the sound of her voice. “The crowd sounds thrilled with their princess’s new husband” she said.
“So it would seem. If I were a gambling man, I would bet Max embraces his royal role very quickly.”
“That would be good for Corinthia.”
“Yes.” That was what mattered, wasn’t it? The best for Corinthia? “What are you doing here?” he asked. The question came out more accusatory than he meant. “I thought you were helping out at the shelter this afternoon.”
“I wanted to come by and give you your Christmas present.” She pointed to a wrapped box on the seat of a nearby chair.
Armando walked over and fingered the cheerful silver bow. He didn’t know what to say.
“Don’t worry, it’s not booby-trapped, I promise,” she said. A halfhearted attempt to shake off the awkward atmosphere.
It wasn’t booby trapping that had him off balance—it was wondering whether he deserved the kindness.
“My gift for you is under the tree upstairs,” he said. A gold charm bracelet marking moments from their friendship.
“You can give it to me later. I can’t stay long, and I want to see you open yours. Go ahead,” she urged.
He peeled back the gift wrap. It was an antique wood statue of Babbo Natale. The colors were fading, but the carving itself was flawless.
“I found it in a shop outside the city. The owner thought he was handmade around the turn of the century. Silly, I know, but what else do you get the guy who has everything? You’ve already got plenty of ties,” she added with a self-conscious laugh.
“Don’t apologize,” Armando told her. “It’s beautiful. Truly handcrafted pieces are hard to find.”
“When I saw him, I thought he looked a little like you do when you’re wearing the costume. Around the eyes.”
He turned the statue over in his hands. “I’ll take your word for it.” It didn’t matter if the statue resembled him or the queen of England. She could have given him a paper doll and he would have treasured the piece. Because it came from her.
He longed to pull her into a hug. “Thank you. I love it.” And you.
“I...” All of a sudden, she stopped talking and pivoted abruptly so she stood with her back turned to him. Something was definitely wrong, he thought, his shoulders stiffening. “I thought it would make a good memory to share with your child,” she continued. “About those times you played Santa Claus at the shelter.”
“You talk as if I won’t be there anymore.” That was never going to happen. The shelter and its mission were too important to him. More so now that he knew her story.
“Not you,” Rosa replied, her back still turned. “Me.”
Her? Armando’s stomach dropped. “What are you talking about?”
When she didn’t reply right away, he reached for her shoulder. To hell with not touching her. “What do you mean, you?”
“I-I’m leaving.”
No. She couldn’t be. Armando’s hand fell away short of its goal. “You’re not going to be my assistant anymore?”
“I can’t.” Finally, she turned around. When he saw her face, Armando almost wished he hadn’t. Her eyes were damp and shining. “I can’t come to work every day and see you. It’s too dangerous.”
“I don’t understand.” His mind was too stuck on her resignation to make sense of anything else. “Dangerous for whom?”
“Me,” she replied.
She started to pace. Rosa being the one to mark paths on the carpeting for a change would be amusing if the circumstances were different. “I thought about what you said last night, about my deserving better,” she said.
“You do. You deserve—”
She cut him off. “I know. Surprisingly. Fredo convinced me I would never deserve better than dirt, and for a long time I believed it.”
He watched as a tear dripped down her cheek. “Then you said you loved me. Loved. And I started thinking, if a man like you thinks he loves me...”
“I do love you,” he said, rushing toward her.
“Don’t.” With her hands in front of her chest, she shook her head. “This is why I have to quit.”
“You don’t want to be near me.”
“Don’t you understand? I want to be near you too much. You’re marrying someone else, ’Mando.
“And I get it,” she said when he opened his mouth to tell her she was—she would always be—his first choice. “I understand the responsibility you feel toward your country, and why you need to keep your word. I love your sense of honor.
“But if I stay, I’ll be tempted to be with you no matter what the circumstances, and I can’t be the woman you love on the side. I worked too hard on being myself again.”
She was shaking by the time she finished. With tears staining her cheeks. It killed him to stand there when every fiber of his being wanted to steal her away to a place where they could be together. It killed him, but he knew it was what Rosa wanted. Just as he knew he couldn’t fight her leaving.
“What will I do without you?” he asked instead.
“You survived without me for years, ’Mando. I’m sure you’ll survive again.” Armando hated to think the last smile he’d see on her face would be this sad facsimile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Where will you go? What will you do?”
“I don’t know yet. Right now, I’m going to focus on celebrating Christmas. I’ll figure out the rest tomorrow.”
“You survived once, you’ll survive again,” he repeated softly.
“Exactly.” Her fingers were shaking as she wiped her cheeks. “Merry Christmas, Your Highness. Happy New Year, too.”
Not without her in it.
With Babbo Natale cradled in his arms, he stood alone in the gallery and listened to the sound of the elevator doors closing. “Don’t go,” he whispered.
But like her sister had three years before, Rosa left anyway.
“Was that Rosa I saw getting on the elevator?” Arianna asked. She strolled in with Max and Father trailing behind. Her face pink from the cold, she shrugged off her coat and draped it over the arm of a chair. “I wish I’d known she was coming by. I have a Christmas present for her. Is that what Rosa gave you?” she asked, noting the wood carving. “It’s lovely.”
“What’s lovely?” Max asked.
“The carving Rosa gave Max,” Arianna replied.
“I’m not surprised,” Father said. “She’s always had impeccable taste.” He went on to tell Max a story about an ornament Armando’s mother bought the year Arianna was born. Armando continued to watch the doorway in case Rosa decided to return.
“She was determined to find the perfect ornament to mark Arianna’s first Christmas. We must have gone to every shop, craftsman and artist in Corinthia, and nothing was good enough. If I’d thought I could learn fast enough, I would have taken up glassblowing myself so she could design her own. It has to be perfect for our baby, she kept saying.”
Armando had already heard the ending. How his mother finally found the ornament in a gift shop in Florence, and it turned out to have been made by a Corinthian expatriate who insisted on giving the ornament as a gift for the new princess. The reverence in his father’s voice as he spoke was at near worship proportions. His words practically dripped with love.
Armando’s head started to hurt.
“I know she would be thrilled to look down and see the ornament on your tree, for your child.”
“I’m only sorry she isn’t here,” he heard Arianna say with a sniff.
“We can only hope she is watching right now, happy and proud of both of you.”
Would she be proud, Armando wondered. Would she be happy to know her eldest son had let the woman he loved walk away?
He worked up the courage to turn around, only to find a portrait of marital bliss. Max stood behind Arianna, arms wrapped around her to rest his hands on her bump. His father stood a few feet away, beaming with paternal approval. He tried to imagine himself in the picture, his arms around a pregnant Mona. Imagine himself content.
All he could see was Rosa’s back as she walked away.
It wasn’t fair. Father had said last night, their family had seen its share of dark days. Armando had buried his wife, for God’s sake. He turned off a machine and watched her take her last breath! Did that moment truly mean he would never have love again? If that was the case, then why wake his heart up? Why torment him by having him fall in love with Rosa after he’d agreed to marry King Omar’s daughter? Wouldn’t it be better to keep his heart buried? Or was loving and losing another woman his punishment for some kind of cosmic crime?
“Armando!” Arianna was staring at him with wide eyes. “What is wrong with you?”
“You’re choking Santa Claus,” Max added.
He looked down and saw he had a white-knuckle grip on the statue. A more delicate piece would have snapped in two.
“I...” He dropped the figurine on the closest table like it was on fire. Babbo landed off balance and fell over, his wooden sack of toys hitting the table first with a soft thud.
Arianna appeared by his side, reaching past him to set the statue upright. “Are you all right?” she asked him. “You’ve been acting odd since late last night. Did something happen between you and Rosa?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“Because you and she are usually joined at the hip, and the past few days...”
“I have a headache is all,” he snapped. The air in the gallery was feeling close. He needed space. “I’ve got to get some air.”
* * *
Of course he would end up sitting in the archway, under the mistletoe. Trying to put your head on straight always worked best in a room full of memories. Sinking down on the next to last step, he scrubbed his face with his hands, looking to erase the night of the concert from his brain. Instead, he saw Rosa, her face bathed in golden light.
What was he going to do? Leaning back, he stared up at the mistletoe sprig. “You have been nothing but trouble, do you know that?”
If the berries had a retort, they kept it to themselves. Bastards.
A flash of gold and green caught his eye. A few feet to his left, he noticed an angel perched near the top of the tree. Unlike the other ornaments, which were ornate almost to the point of ostentation, the angel was simple and made of felt with a mound of golden hair surrounding her face. He really must be losing his mind; the way the angel was hung, it looked like she was watching him. “What do you think I should do, angel? Do I do the honorable thing and keep my promise to Mona? Or do I go against everything I’ve ever been taught to run after Rosa?”
Nothing.
That’s what he thought. As if a Christmas ornament would know any more than a branch of mistletoe.
Why then did he feel as though the answer was right there, waiting for him to see it? “Why did Christina have to die in the first place?” he asked the angel. “Life would be so much easier if she had just taken the curve a little slower. I wouldn’t have needed to enter an agreement with King Omar because I wouldn’t need a wife.”
And Rosa would still be with Fredo. Unacceptable. As much as he had loved Christina, he would never bring her back if it meant leaving Rosa married and fearful. Christina wouldn’t want to come back under those circumstances.
But she would tell you to follow your heart. That life is too short to waste time feeling angry and unhappy. Not when happiness is within your reach. All you have to do is to be brave enough to take a chance. To sneak out after dark and turn on the Christmas lights.
To leave the abusive husband. If Rosa could be brave enough to walk away from Fredo, if the other women could walk away from worse, then surely he could summon up enough bravery to be happy.
“Armando! Are you here?”
Looked like he would be tested sooner than he thought. “In the archway, Father.”
“I should have known.” King Carlos appeared at the top of the opposite stairs. “I swear you are as bad as your sister regarding these lights,” he said as he navigated the steps.
“It’s too cold to go outside,” Armando told him. “This is the next best thing.”
“You are aware you are sitting under the mistletoe?”
“Believe me, I know. Damn plant is following me.”
His father chuckled. “You, my son, might be the first person I have ever heard complain about kissing traditions. Or is it a more specific problem?” he asked, settling himself on the step as well. “Your sister is right. You’ve been out of sorts for a few days now. Did something happen?”
“You could say that,” Armando replied. He stared at his palms. Maybe one of the lines had the words he needed to explain. “Did you mean what you said last night? About being proud of Arianna and me?”
Whatever his father had been expecting, that wasn’t it. He leaned back a little so he could see Armando’s face. “Of course I did. You make me immensely proud.”
Would he still feel that way once Armando finished—that was the question. “Even if I dishonored Corinthia?”
“Considering your sister married a man who is not the father of her child, it would be hypocritical of me, don’t you think? Besides, I doubt there’s anything you could do that would dishonor Corinthia too much.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
His father paused as what Armando said sank in. “What have you done?”
“More like what I can’t do,” Armando replied and looked up from his hand. He didn’t need a love or life line to tell him what needed to be said. “I can’t marry Mona.”
“I see.” There was another pause. “And why can’t you?”
“Because I’m in love with someone else.” He laid out the entire story, from why he contacted King Omar in the first place to his goodbye to Rosa a short time earlier. When he finished, he went back to studying his palms. “I know we’re responsible for every light in Corinthia. I know that backing out of this arrangement means dishonoring our reputation and making an enemy out an important economic ally, but I just can’t.
“It’s selfish, but I’m tired of being unhappy, Father,” he said, staring at the shadows flickering along the wall. “It’s been three years of not being among the living. I need to live again.”
By this point, he’d been expecting his father’s silence, so it was a surprise when his father responded immediately. “Every light in Corinthia? Sounds like someone spent time with his grandfather.”
He reached over and patted Armando’s knee, something he hadn’t done in Armando’s childhood. “My father was a good man, but some of his advice could be heavy-handed. If I had known he was putting such notions in your head when you were young... Apparently I’ve failed you as well.”
“No, you didn’t,” Armando said, shifting his weight to face him. “You have been an exemplary king...”
“And a mediocre father,” he replied. “I wallowed in my grief and, as a result, taught you by example. Of course you should be happy, Armando. You can’t lead a country if you’re angry and bitter. If Rosa is the woman who will make you happy, embrace her.”
Armando planned to. He took a deep breath. Perhaps his father had a point. Having made his decision, he no longer felt the pressing weight on his shoulders. Like on the night of the rehearsal dinner, the bits and pieces kicking around his head had solidified, making his thoughts clear. He could breathe.
“Omar is going to be furious,” he said. Mona, too. And deservedly so.
“Omar is also pragmatic. His main concern is helping his people. If we offer economic aid, I think he and Mona will be willing to swallow their hurt pride. Although I wouldn’t expect an invitation to stay at the Yelgierian palace any time soon.”
If that was the only fallout, Armando would live. “I would like to start an initiative as well to encourage Corinthian and other EU doctors to set up practice in Yelgiers. From what Mona says, a dearth of doctors is one of their most pressing concerns.”
“We’ll make it a priority,” his father replied. “Now, what are you doing sitting under a mistletoe with me? Don’t you have a future princess to collect?”
Yes, he did. With his cheek muscles aching from the grin on his face, Armando jumped to his feet.
“Armando!” his father called when he reached the door. “Merry Christmas.”
Impossibly, Armando’s grin grew even wider. “Merry Christmas, Father.”
* * *
Rosa was trying. She was serving food and reminding herself that her life could be a lot worse. She had her brain. She was strong and capable. Moreover, while she might be alone, Armando loved her. Wanted, needed and loved. She should take solace in the fact she was special enough to win the heart of the crown prince.
“I’d rather have Armando.”
“Are you talking to your imaginary friend, Miss Rosa?”
Daniela, she who started everything by spotting the first mistletoe, yanked on her blazer. “I have an imaginary friend, too,” she said. “His name is Boco. He’s a talking elephant. Is your friend an elephant, too?”
“No,” said Rosa, embarrassed to be asked about her imaginary friend. “She’s an angel named Christina.”
“Like the name of this place?”
“That’s right. She’s been helping me make sense of a very confusing problem.”
“Is it helping?” Daniela asked.
“Not yet,” Rosa replied. “But we’ll keep trying.” Broken hearts were never solved in one day. And when the person you loved had also been the center of your life...she suspected she’d be trying to sort things out for a very long time.
“Maybe cake would help,” Daniela said. “When my mama needs to think, she always eats cake. And ice cream.”
“Your mother is a very smart woman.” Though in this case, cake would only make matters worse. She’d already eaten her weight in Christmas cookies.
Sending the little girl back to play with the other children, Rosa stole a couple more cookies and made her way to the rear picture window. In the distance, Mount Cornier’s snow-covered peak had been swallowed by clouds. She bit a cookie and imagined her sister’s spirit sitting on a fluffy white cushion, watching over her legacy.
Holidays and heartache made her overly poetic.
If Christina was watching, the least she could do was tell her what to do next, since Rosa didn’t know. In some ways, she was worse off than when she left Fredo. Then, she’d had Armando. This time she would have to lean on herself. Maybe she would go to the continent and find a job there. Or America. She didn’t care so long as she could start fresh.
And someday forget Armando.
Maybe.
If she didn’t—couldn’t—forget him, she knew she would still survive. She wasn’t the same woman who had scurried away from Fredo thinking she was a fat, ugly lump of clay. Oh, she still had days...but there were also days when she felt good about herself. The fact she made the choice to walk away from Armando said she was stronger.
In time, she would be all right. Sad. Lonely. But all right.
“If only you could make my heart stop feeling like it was tearing in two,” she whispered to the glass.
“Ho, ho, ho! Buon Natale!”
The entire shelter burst into high-pitched squeals. “Babbo!”
It couldn’t be. They must have hired a professional impersonator for the day, as a surprise for the kids.
The director hadn’t mentioned anything to her, though.
“Is everyone having a good Christmas?”
Uncanny. They even sounded alike. She looked in the glass hoping to catch a reflection, but it was too bright out. All she could see was a darkened silhouette in costume.
“Babbo needs your help, boys and girls.”
This was silly. Armando was not at the shelter playing Babbo. As soon as she turned around she would see that the person...
Was Armando.
Why? He was dressed in costume and surrounded by children. “There’s a very special person whose present Babbo forgot to deliver,” he was telling them in his boisterous Babbo voice, “and I’m afraid she thinks I decided to give her present to another girl. It’s really important I find her, boys and girls, so I can tell her that I would never pick someone else. That she’s the most important person in the world to Babbo. In fact, Babbo cares about her so much that he wants her to come back to the North Pole with him.”
Throughout his speech, Rosa moved closer. Spotting her, he dropped his voice back to normal. “Her name’s Rosa,” he said. “Do you know where I can find her?”
“Right there!” the children screamed, two dozen index fingers pointing in her direction.
Rosa was too stunned to breathe. “What are you doing?” she whispered.
“What do you think I am doing?” Armando said. “I’ve come to bring you back home where you belong.” He reached through the throng to catch her fingertips. “I love you, Rosa.”
Beautiful as those words were to hear, they were still only words. “I told you, Ar—Babbo. I can’t stay at the North Pole.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the children watching intently and lowered her voice to a whisper. “It hurts too much.”
“But you don’t understand,” he whispered back. “Mona’s gone. Come with me.” Grabbing her hand, he led her to the shelter’s lobby and closed the community room door. “I told Mona I couldn’t marry her.”
She had to have heard wrong. “What about your agreement with King Omar? You gave him your word.”
“It’s a long story. What matters is I love you and I don’t want to be with anyone else.”
Rosa couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It was too unreal. “Are you saying that you damaged relations with one of your closest allies for me?”
“When you put it that way...yes.” He pulled off his hat and beard, leaving only his disheveled self. His beautiful, disheveled self. “I would do it again, too. Are you crying?”
“Like a newborn baby.” All those years married to Fredo, believing she wasn’t anyone special. How wrong she had been. Armando made her feel beyond special. Not because he’d nearly created an international incident on her behalf, or tracked her down dressed like Santa Claus, although both were amazingly romantic.
No, the reason he made her feel special was in his eyes. They were shining as clear and bright as a summer’s day without a trace of melancholy to be found. He was happy being with her, and that was all she needed. “I love you,” she told him.
Her reward was an even brighter shine. “Does that mean you’ll come back with me to the North Pole?”
“Absolutely, Babbo. Right after you kiss me under the mistletoe.”
“Forget the mistletoe,” he said, tossing the beard over his shoulder. Rosa gasped as he pulled her into his arms and dipped her low. “All I need is you.”
New Year’s Eve
“Five minutes left in the year. Will you be sad to see it end?”
Rosa took one of the glasses of champagne Armando was carrying. “Yes,” she said. “And no. I’ll be sorry to see December end. For all the ups and downs, it turned out to be a pretty wonderful month.”
“The last week certainly was.” Armando gave her a champagne-flavored kiss that quickly deepened. “Have I mentioned how glad I am that we decided to skip a formal courtship?” he asked, lips continuing to tease hers.
“Well, it did seem a little silly, considering...”
“Mmm, considering,” he said, kissing her again. What they were discovering was the intimacy that came from being friends before becoming lovers. There was a level of trust that made everything they shared feel deeper. Of course, the fact Armando was an amazingly enthusiastic lover didn’t hurt, either.
“You know what else I’ll miss,” Rosa said, turning in his arms. “Once Epiphany passes, this will become a plain old archway again.”
They were in their archway now, preferring to ring in the new year alone rather than in a ballroom full of dignitaries.
Armando kissed her temple. “If you’d like, I can insist the trees stay up by royal decree.”
“Is this the same royal decree where you’re going to ban the use of fake Babbo beards?”
“The fibers give me a rash.”
“My poor baby. Too sensitive for synthetic fibers.” She snuggled closer. “As much as I’ll miss the decorations, they need to go. How else will they stay special?” Christmas decorations weren’t like the man with his arms around her—Armando woke up being special.
While she woke up feeling like the luckiest woman in the world.
“Besides,” she told him, “we still have tonight.”
“Which switches to tomorrow in less than two minutes,” he replied.
A brand-new year. Given how wonderfully this year was ending, Rosa couldn’t imagine what the next year had in store. As far as she was concerned, she had everything she could want sitting next to her with his arms wrapped around her waist. She loved Armando, and he loved her. What could be better?
“Do you realize,” she said, pausing to take a drink, “that if we hadn’t gotten our act together, you would be announcing your engagement to Mona at this very moment?”
“You’re right—I did plan to be engaged by New Year’s, didn’t I?”
“That was before.” Armando’s breaking the engagement to date his assistant turned out to be scandal enough to push Arianna’s pregnancy out of the papers completely. Fortunately, Mona and King Omar, while hurt, didn’t hold too big a grudge. Hard to be angry at a country that was funding doctors’ relocation efforts.
“There is still the matter of my producing an heir, though,” Armando said, shifting his weight.
“That can be arranged,” Rosa said with a smile.
“Very amusing. If you don’t mind, I would like to establish my family in the proper order. Marriage, then heirs. What do you think?”
“I think that’s a very logical...” Armando had moved to his knee. In his hand was the most beautiful diamond Rosa had ever seen. “Are you—” She couldn’t finish the sentence; her heart was stuck in her throat.
“I am,” he whispered with a nod. “Rosa Lamberti, would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
She never did say the word yes. Instead, Rosa threw her arms around his neck and kissed him until there was no doubt as to her answer. “I would be honored,” she told him.
Down the hall, the crowd began chanting a countdown to midnight. Rosa and Armando didn’t care. Their time was already here.
* * * * *
If you loved Rosa and Armando’s story, find out where it all started with CHRISTMAS BABY FOR THE PRINCESS, the first book in Barbara Wallace’s festive ROYAL HOUSE OF CORINTHIA duet, available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from CHRISTMAS IN THE BOSS’S CASTLE by Scarlet Wilson.
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