ARIANNA SPRANG FROM Max’s arms, practically shoving him in an effort to be free before Father saw her. She couldn’t believe he was here. How did he know where to find her? A quick look at Max said he was as shocked as she.
Was it possible she heard wrong? Maybe it was someone else with an accent that sounded like Father.
“Is anyone here? I demand you show yourselves immediately!”
It was definitely Father. Smoothing her hair, and praying it wasn’t too obvious what she and Max had been up to, Arianna stepped out from behind the tree.
There, in the middle of the dining room, surrounded by discarded garlands and plastic cups, stood His Majesty King Carlos IV, wearing a scowl to beat all scowls.
“I thought you said she was here,” he hissed to Vittorio. “Aria—”
She took a deep breath. “Hello, Father.”
“Arianna!” The scowl vanished in favor of relief as he rushed to the stage, his arms around her before she could say another word. “Oh, my precious little girl! I’m so glad to see you.” He crushed her to him, enveloping her in a ferocious cocoon of wool and fatherly affection.
Arianna closed her eyes. While she’d had bouts of homesickness, she hadn’t until this moment realized how much she missed her family. She clung to him just as ferociously, feeling his body tremble with emotion. His coat smelled of nicotine, the aroma sending guilt stabbing through her. He only smoked when he was extremely distraught. “I’m sorry, Father,” she murmured against his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to make you worry.”
She pulled back to see unshed tears glistening in his eyes. “Worry?” he said. “You frightened me half to death.”
“Didn’t you get my note?”
“You mean that slip of paper telling me you needed a couple weeks alone to ‘think’?” He tossed up his hands and made a scoffing sound. “How was that supposed to keep me from worrying? When I didn’t know where you were or what had happened? I was afraid I’d...”
His words might have drifted off, but Arianna heard them anyway. He was afraid he’d lost her, too. Like her mother and sister-in-law.
Now that she looked closer, she saw how badly the uncertainty had taken a toll. He looked older. Weary. Normally pale, his face looked even gaunter than usual, the bags under his eyes looking more like bruises than circles. It was the same face he’d worn for weeks following Mama’s and Christina’s deaths. Realizing she was responsible for its return made her sick to her stomach.
“But you found me now,” she said, touching his cheek. “I’m all right.”
“Thank goodness. And thank goodness Vittorio tracked you down to New York, or I would still be... What did you do to your hair?”
“My...?” Her fingers brushed the ends. Right. Her hair. She’d grown so used to the new color, she’d forgotten.
“I suspect she changed colors so she would be harder to spot in a crowd,” Vittorio replied, with, to her surprise, a hint of admiration.
“But why? Why run away in the first place? Did something happen? You look pale. Are you sick?” He cupped her face, like he used to do when she was little and came to him crying, a tender gesture that only made her feel guiltier.
“No, Father, I’m not sick.”
“Then I don’t understand? If you needed time to think, why not go to the apartment in Milan or have Sergio take you on the yacht? Why hide yourself in some...” He shook a piece of tinsel from his shoe. “Some common nightclub.”
“I beg your pardon. The Fox Club is hardly common.”
Max. Distracted as she’d been with her father’s appearance, she’d forgotten he was standing behind her. She watched him as he stepped off the stage, the familiar tingle running through her from his presence.
From the way his eyes widened, Father hadn’t noticed Max, either. “Who are you?” he asked, in his best dismissive tone.
“Max Brown. I own this establishment.”
She heard Vittorio suck in his breath as Max extended a hand. Royal protocol dictated that commoners wait until the king offered his hand. Doing otherwise was considered not only presumptuous, but a huge breach of decorum.
Her father shook it. Arianna and Vittorio exchanged a look. The last time someone broke protocol, Father stared him down. Either he was too tired to protest, or he actually saw Max as someone worthy of respect. Considering Max’s natural air of authority, she liked to think it was the latter.
Especially since Max acted as if shaking hands with royalty was something he did every day. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Your Majesty,” he said. “And, nice to see you, too, Mr. Mastella. I wasn’t expecting to see you again.”
“So I gathered,” Vittorio replied. “How was your trip to Connecticut, by the way? The one you planned to take with Princess Arianna’s luggage?”
He closed his eyes at the security chief’s question, the way someone did when they realized they’d been fooled. “You recognized the suitcase.”
“All members of the royal family carry luggage with very specific markings for security purposes. Although I’ll admit, you and your friend put on a very entertaining show,” he added with a superior smile.
There was regret in Max’s eyes as he turned to her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s not your fault,” she replied. Neither of them could have predicted Vittorio recognizing her suitcase. Nor had she known about the security markings. It was simply a case of bad luck. “Max has been helping me,” she told her father.
“By lying to Vittorio.” Having been assured of her safety, her father had reverted to his imperial self. He jutted his chin, giving the impression of looking down even though Max was several inches taller. “Forgive me if I do not thank you, Mr. Brown.”
“But you should,” Arianna said. Heaven knew what Vittorio told him, but it was important that Father knew the kind of man Max was. That he wasn’t the bad guy in all this. “You have no idea how much he helped me. Without him, I would have... He went out of his way to make me feel safe,” she said, smiling in his direction. “I’m not sure what I would have done without him.”
“It was my pleasure.”
He smiled back, and it was as though they were back behind the tree, sharing a moment meant for only the two of them.
“If that is true...” Her father’s voice interrupted the moment. “Then you have my gratitude, Mr. Brown.”
“Like I said, it was my pleasure. Your daughter is a special lady.”
“May I remind you to whom you are speaking?” Vittorio looked about to have an aneurysm from the lack of protocol. He took a step forward only to be waved off.
“It’s not necessary, Vittorio. I’m sure Mr. Brown means no offense. As for you...” He turned to Arianna. “I trust you are ready to come home?”
The question made her heart ache. She would never be truly ready to leave. Not when her heart wanted to stay in New York. With Max, who was ten times the man Manolo would ever be. But, as she was learning, the heart couldn’t always have what it wanted. It was time for her to stop running away and face reality. She pressed a hand to her stomach. Face her responsibilities. And that meant letting Manolo know he was going to be a father, and letting her child grow up with every advantage possible.
It was the decision she knew she’d make all along. She just hadn’t wanted to face it.
Shoulders heavy, she nodded. “I have to pick up my belongings.” It would give her a chance to see Max’s apartment one last night.
“Wait. You’re going?” Grabbing her arm, Max turned her around to face him with a force that would have had him pinned to the floor if she hadn’t stopped Vittorio with her hand.
Even so, his face looked like it had been slapped, all wild-eyed with disbelief. “Just like that?” he asked. “You’re going to go back?”
Surely, he wasn’t that surprised. They’d both known her returning to Corinthia was inevitable. “I have to. You know that.”
“But what about...?” He looked down to her stomach and back up again. The answer must have shone in her eyes, because his suddenly darkened with remorse. “No.”
“It’s the right thing to do,” Arianna whispered. There was so much more she wanted to say, but with Father standing behind her, she couldn’t. Then again, she wondered if her words would have made a difference. From the look on Max’s face, she didn’t think so, but she tried anyway. “It won’t be the same,” Arianna added.
“Not the same,” he repeated in a rough voice. His jaw was tensed, a tiny muscle twitch revealing precisely how tightly he was clenching his teeth. She waited for him to release her arm. Instead, his grip tightened. “Come with me,” he said.
“I don’t think...” Without waiting for an answer, Max pulled Arianna across the dining room, and before her father or Vittorio were able to respond, pushed her into the room and closed the door behind them.
As a deterrent, it wasn’t the best. If they didn’t come back out, Father would only instruct Vittorio to kick the door in. “You do know—” she began.
“Marry me.”
Arianna froze where she stood. He did not just ask her to...
“Marry me,” Max repeated, this time taking her hands in his. “Tell him I’m the baby’s father and marry me.”
Marry Max. They were the two most incredible words. In her mind, she could see it all. The three of them. A happy, loving family.
Only, Max didn’t say anything about love, did he?
She looked down at their joined hands. Max’s grip was solid and warm, like the support he offered. “You want to take Manolo’s place?”
“Why not? You said yourself you don’t love Manolo. This way you’ll be in control. You can please your father and not have to spend your life stuck in a bad marriage.”
Of course she wouldn’t, because when the time came, Max would no doubt devise a way for them to part amicably. What he was offering was a business partnership complete with an exit strategy. It was an incredibly generous and selfless offer.
“The lesser of two evils,” she said flatly.
No need to ask him why. He was stepping up, the way he always did. Trying to save the world, or at least trying to save her from falling into the same hopeless morass as his mother.
Too late, she wanted to tell him. She’d fallen the moment he’d had the tree lit in Rockefeller Center for her. Maybe even before.
“It’s the perfect solution,” he said, his certainty painful to listen to.
On the contrary, it was no solution at all. Spending a month, a year, married to Max, knowing he’d only agreed out of some overblown sense of nobility? The fantasy of what she wished could be would haunt her forever.
Nor could she do it to him. Tie him to a woman and child that weren’t his. She cared for him far too much.
If anyone was going to make a sacrifice in this room, it would be her.
The pounding started on the door. “Your Highness, is everything all right? Do you need help?”
“I’m fine, Vittorio,” she called back. “I will be out in a moment.” Reluctantly, she pulled her hands free. “We’d best open the door or they will knock it down.”
“They better not. That’s solid oak.” He strode across the room and turned the latch. The tumbler clicked loudly. Vittorio, standing on the other side, had to have heard.
Max pressed a hand against the wood. One hand wouldn’t be enough to stop Vittorio entering, but it didn’t matter. They only needed a moment; they would be leaving soon enough. “How do you want to tell them?” he asked her.
Her stomach twisted into a knot. “I’m not.”
“What?” Door forgotten, Max’s hand dropped to his side. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not telling them you’re the father,” she replied. She couldn’t.
A storm flashed behind Max’s eyes as they widened in disbelief. What had been cool and gray had become mottled steel and navy. “Why the hell not?” he asked. “I just told you, it’s the perfect solution.”
Except there was no love. If he would offer but one tiny word to make her believe he cared... Anything at all. It didn’t even have to be the word love. One word and she would stay with him forever.
But all he had to offer was a business partnership and an exit strategy. It hurt to look him in the eye. She had to turn to his desk. “I cannot keep the truth from Manolo. He has a right to know he is going to be a father.”
“Even if he doesn’t deserve to be? The child deserves a happy home.”
“He will have one. His mother will love him. His grandfather, his uncle. He will be surrounded by love. Besides, people can change. Who is to say fatherhood isn’t exactly what Manolo needs? People do grow up.” She had. Just now.
“Besides,” she added, her fingers tapping out a nervous rhythm on the desktop, “being honest with him is the right thing to do.”
“The right thing...” There was a thud, and she realized Max had punched the door. “So that’s it? You’re just going to walk out of here and marry a man you don’t love—who doesn’t love you—because it’s the right thing.”
Better than marrying a man she did love who didn’t love her. “Yes, I am.”
“Unbelievable,” he muttered.
Arianna wanted to punch a door herself. She was tired of having this discussion. Max could remind her about Manolo until he was blue in the face, but it wouldn’t change anything. She would still be pregnant, and neither man would love her.
“I told you,” she said, whirling around. It was the first time she’d looked him in the eye since he’d offered marriage. “The rules are different for people like me. There are traditions, expectations I’m expected to live up to. My father—”
“Your father would want you to be happy,” he growled. “How does sacrificing yourself accomplish that? Tell me.”
“It doesn’t...”
Matter, she was going to say, but Vittorio chose that moment to open the door. Max attempted to push it shut, but the security chief wedged his foot in the space, blocking him.
“Your father is wondering if you’re ready to leave. We have a rather long flight ahead of us.”
There was certainly nothing more to be said here. At least nothing she could say aloud. Slipping back behind her regal facade, she offered Vittorio a cool and efficient nod. “Of course. I was just leaving.”
When she reached the office door, she paused long enough to steal one last memory of Max’s movie-star face. The storm still raged in his eyes. “Arianna,” he said, trying one last time.
“Goodbye, Max,” she replied. “Thank you for everything.”
Do not turn around, she told herself as she joined her father. Do not cast a final glance at the club that you will never forget. Do not think about how soon there will be another desperate soul who needs help, making you a dim memory. Above all, do not let anyone know that leaving the Fox Club is killing you on the inside.
Head held high, she followed her father out the door.
* * *
Max stood shell-shocked, his feet frozen in place. That was it? She was just going to leave? Less than an hour ago the two of them were kissing behind the Christmas tree. The most mind-blowing kiss of his life. And now she was walking out without so much as a look back?
The door closed. The sound of the click reverberating in the empty club did what the sight of her leaving couldn’t and that was prod him to move. Rushing to the entrance, he yanked open the door and stepped outside, making it to the sidewalk in time to see the limousine’s taillights pulling into the traffic. He stood there in the cold, and his gaze followed the red lights until they became one with a sea of taillights and disappeared into the night.
She was gone.
He could try and intercept her at his apartment, but what good would it do? The woman had made up her mind. Chosen to throw her life away and subject her child to a loveless marriage.
At least he could say that he’d tried. Offered her a chance to please her father and control her destiny.
Why on earth did she reject him?
He didn’t want to think about the panic that had spurred him to ask in the first place. The same icy fear that was squeezing his chest right now. The one that felt like the earth was crumbling beneath his feet, leaving him without purchase.
Slowly, he made his way back into the restaurant. Someone had decided to create a display atop the reservation desk. Boughs of evergreen and holly surrounded one of the hurricane candles he’d bought for the dining room. He twisted a branch between his thumb and forefinger.
Green for life; candles for the blessings to come in the future. The tradition of Corinthia.
He’d have Javier remove the greenery tomorrow.
Right now, he needed to clean away the remains of the day. Maybe by the time he had done that, this hollow, off-balance sensation would have faded.
Honestly, he didn’t know why he was disturbed in the first place. Arianna’s leaving was hardly a surprise; he’d known all along her stay was temporary.
After all, wasn’t that how life worked?
* * *
The feeling didn’t go away. If anything, the sensation worsened until by the following night it had grown to a heavy ache that weighed him down. He couldn’t seem to do anything. Paperwork sat on his desk untouched while he stared into space for hours at a time. After a couple of luckless attempts, staff members started going to Darius with questions. And as for going home... He didn’t. He thought about it, but then he recalled the image of his Christmas tree in the window, and the inertia would grip him stronger than before.
Shortly after midnight, a knock sounded on his office door and Darius’s head appeared. “We’re down to just a few tables. I’m going to go ahead and announce last call.”
“Sure.” His voice sounded as distant as his thoughts. “What about that paralegal party? They still here?”
“That’s tomorrow, boss.”
“Sorry. I lost track of the day.”
“You’ve been losing track of a lot today. I’d blame last night’s party, but you didn’t drink.” The bartender stepped inside and closed the door. “Everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” Max replied. “I’m just a little out of it, is all.”
“No kidding. I noticed your new roommate isn’t around tonight, either. You two have a fight?”
“You could say that.” If by fight he meant Arianna walking out. “She’s gone.”
Darius’s jaw dropped. He sat down, wearing a look of confusion. “What do you mean gone? Where’d she go?”
“Home. Back to Corinthia.”
“You mean, where that guy the other day was from?”
Max nodded. He thought about sighing, but exhaling seemed like too much work. “That’s the place.”
“But I thought she didn’t want to go back. What happened?”
Max told him about King Carlos. When he finished, Darius sat back, his jaw lower than before. “An actual king here in the restaurant. So that dude wasn’t kidding about Arianna being a princess.”
“Nope.”
The swear word he muttered under his breath was the same one Max had been mentally repeating since last night.
“Apparently His Majesty decided to retrieve his errant daughter in person.”
“Wow.” The bartender shook his head. “That sure don’t happen every day, not to guys from our neighborhood. You think you might want to tell me the whole story now?”
“Not much more to tell,” Max replied. “I didn’t know she was a princess until the night she played piano. Before that, I thought she was just another hard-luck case. Turns out she simply wanted a few weeks of anonymity.” Some things, like Arianna’s pregnancy, still weren’t for him to announce. Funny, how he felt honor-bound to keep her secrets, even after she was gone.
He did tell Darius about her being robbed, though, and how she impulsively applied for the job when the bartender mentioned it.
“So, I’m the reason we ended up with her,” he remarked. “This explains why she sucked as a server. And why she was staying at a pit like the Dunphy, too.”
“Yep.” Attempting to project an indifference he didn’t feel, Max leaned back and perched his legs on the edge of his desk. “And why I had her move into my spare room. Once I figured out she was royalty, I couldn’t very well let her go back to that dive.” Not when he could come home to her sitting on his sofa. His apartment was going to feel very different now that he was back to living alone.
“So, that’s it, huh? She’s gone for good?”
“She never planned to stay long to begin with.”
“Too bad. She was just beginning to grow on me. You going to be okay?”
“Me? Sure, I’ll be fine,” he said, waving off the question. Wasn’t as though Arianna was the first person to pass through his life. She was just another woman. Another lost puppy. A new one would replace her soon enough.
“You sure?” Darius asked.
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know, maybe because you’re wearing your emergency suit, which tells me you didn’t go home last night.”
“I was busy cleaning.”
“For twenty-four hours?”
His friend got up and walked around to Max’s side of the desk. “Look,” he said, “why don’t you just admit you had a thing for the lady. Last time I looked, it wasn’t a crime.”
“Maybe not, but it never did anyone any favors, either. Or have you forgotten what it was like in our neighborhood?”
“That’s because the people we grew up with were losers. Or hooked on losers.”
“Present company excluded,” Max replied automatically.
“Half of it anyway,” Darius replied. “You’re not like the people in our neighborhood, and Arianna definitely isn’t. In fact, she’s about as far from our neighborhood as you can get. Like, ‘out of this world’ far.”
“What’s your point?” His head was beginning to hurt; the last thing he needed was to be reminded of Arianna’s uniqueness.
“My point is... I don’t know. I just don’t think the world will end if you like her, is all.”
Tell that to the hole in his chest. “Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it? She’s gone.”
“What? They don’t have phones where she’s from? Or email?”
“It’s not that simple,” Max said. “There are complications.”
“These complications have anything to do with the lady being nauseous all the time, and scarfing down saltines from the salad bar?
“I heard the waitresses gossiping,” he said when Max failed to hide his surprise. “I wasn’t sure if they were being catty or what. Is it true?”
He plucked at the seam on his pants. So much for keeping his end of the bargain. “She didn’t want anyone to know.”
“Now I get why you backed off. I mean, pregnant with another man’s kid? That’s some serious baggage. I know I couldn’t—”
“I asked her to marry me.”
“Say what?” Darius looked at him bug-eyed.
“I told her to tell her father I was the one who got her pregnant and that we would get married.”
“What the...? Why would you do that?”
“To give her a choice,” Max explained. “So she wouldn’t have to go back to Corinthia and marry a man she didn’t love.” So the light in those beautiful blue eyes wouldn’t fade under the weight of disregard.
“Yeah, but to step up when the kid’s not even yours?” For the second time in the conversation, Darius swore. “That’s brave even for you.”
“Doesn’t matter. The lady said no.” Max could still hear the door clicking as she walked away.
“Of course she did. Getting out of marrying a guy she doesn’t love by marrying another guy she doesn’t love? Talk about a crazy idea.”
“Her father was getting ready to take her away. I had to come up with something to keep her from leaving.”
“So you proposed? What would you have done if she actually said yes?”
“What do you mean, what would I have done? I would have married her.”
“And spent the rest of your life raising some other dude’s kid.”
To his surprise, the thought didn’t make his pulse race. If anything, his heart grew heavier.
“It wouldn’t have been so bad.” Max could have given the child everything his father never gave him. Attention, affection. “The three of us could have made a pretty decent family.”
But she didn’t want it. She’d rather lock herself to a serial adulterer for the rest of her life.
Why? Why wasn’t his proposal good enough? He’d been asking himself that question since she walked away. It was the one piece of the puzzle he couldn’t figure out, and he was tired of trying to find it. Tired of everything.
He needed a drink. And not a beer, either. He needed something hard enough to silence the thoughts spinning through his head. Like tequila or whiskey. His dad liked Kentucky bourbon. Maybe he should go with that? Take a page from a professional.
“Man, I knew I should have set up a pool.” Darius followed him from out of the office and behind the bar. Taking two tumblers off the top shelf, he set them on the counter, then took the bottle from Max’s hand. “I called this thing from day one.”
“Called what thing?” He pushed the nozzle back toward the glass to keep Darius from pouring.
“You falling for Arianna. Soon as I saw your face, I knew you were a goner.”
“I was not.” It was a feeble protest, at best. Darius was right. He had fallen when he saw Arianna. Who wouldn’t? She was beautiful, sweet, kind...
Special.
The hole inside his chest ripped open, and all the emotions he’d been pretending didn’t exist came pouring out. Years of telling himself love was a waste of time and what happened? He fell anyway. Hard.
Thing was, in the end, he was right anyway. The only thing falling in love did for him was make Arianna’s departure ten times worse.
Groaning, he banged his head against the shelves. “I’m an idiot.”
“I take it that’s your way of saying you got feelings for this woman.”
Feelings? They were talking way more than just feelings. “I love her.” As soon as he said the words, he knew he meant them. He loved Arianna. “What am I going to do?”
After he got good and drunk, that was. How would he ever feel complete again?
Darius handed him a drink. “Does she know how you feel?”
“I asked the woman to marry me.”
“Yeah, but did you tell her why you wanted to marry her?”
“No.” So far as Arianna knew, he was offering another solution to her problems, like staying in his apartment or working at the restaurant.
“Well, I’m no expert,” Darius said, “but I spend enough time behind here listening to drunk people complain to know that if a lady gets a marriage proposal, she wants to know it’s because the man loves her. Especially if she’s already got one potential fiancé who doesn’t.”
In other words, Max had messed up badly. He should have told Arianna how he felt before she walked out. “I’m going to need more than one bottle,” he said. It was going to take a good long drink before he stopped kicking himself. If he ever did.
Darius’s hand grabbed the bottle before he could. “It’s not too late, you know. You could still tell her.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Max asked, tossing back the one drink he did have. “She’s halfway across the world.”
The bartender arched his brow. “They’ve got airports, right?”
“Of course they do, but...”
“But what?”
What if going to Corinthia didn’t change anything? He’d already had his heart ripped open. Was it worth getting his hopes up only to have it ripped open anew? “Who’s to say she cares?”
“Who’s to say she doesn’t?” his friend immediately replied. “You won’t know unless you ask.”
Max reached for the bourbon.
“Of course, it’s up to you,” Darius said, grabbing the bottle before Max could and pouring out the smallest of swallows into Max’s glass. “I gotta say this, though—if you’d been this cautious when we worked at Mac’s, we’d still be bar-backing.”
He turned and shelved the bottle with the rest of the inventory. “I better let the waitstaff know I’m closing the bar.”
With that, he left Max alone to stare into his glass. Darius was right. At age eighteen, he didn’t think twice about risks; he leaped at any opportunity to raise himself up. Then again, that was about making money. Failing didn’t leave him feeling shattered.
Did he dare fly to Arianna and bare his soul? Was it possible she felt the same?
There was only one way to know for certain, and that was to ask her. Otherwise, he would be spending the rest of his life wondering. And if she said no...? What was the worst that could happen?
His heart didn’t really have that much left to break anyway.