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“Mia amata—” He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her with such passion they were both breathless. “Whatever world I choose, I need the answer to one question. Will you marry me?”
Nico reached in his pocket and pulled out a ring. “This is a blue diamond, close to the color of your eyes. I bought this after we spent that day in the country together. Tonight, I intended to give it to you. That’s how real my love has been for you from the beginning.”
A gasp escaped her lips. He felt for her left hand, but she wouldn’t cooperate. “I—I can’t accept it,” she stammered.
“In the name of heaven, why not? Have you decided you don’t love me?”
Her cry resonated in the interior of the car. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m so in love with you, I’ve been half out of my mind since the first evening you took me to dinner.”
“Then why won’t you let me put it on you?”
She threw her head back. “If you were the doctor from the hospital asking me to spend the rest of my life with you, I would put it on myself and never take it off. But you’re not Nico Barsotti. Your name is Massimo Carlo Umberto, the future king of La Valazzura, and you’re going to have a remarkable reign.”
“You don’t know that!” he cried in frustration. “Hell, I don’t even know what I’m feeling yet.”
“You’re still too close to it, but I feel it in my bones. Unlike you, I’ve known who I was and have known my own feelings from the time I was a young girl. I knew I was a loved princess who had to sit still for the royal family pictures and wait all the time to see my father for a few minutes. I didn’t like that life then, and I don’t like it now. I want to marry a man with a normal life like the magnificent family practice doctor I fell so hard for.”
“Fausta—”
“When you fixed dinner for us in your apartment, I thought you were going to propose to me. I’d been picturing our life together. I even went so far in my thoughts to imagine that if we couldn’t have children because either one of us had a problem, we’d go to the orphanage and adopt a little Nicolo or Maria. The dreams I’ve had...”
She pressed her lips to his. “Those dreams will keep me warm in my old age. Years from tonight I’ll remember that the great king of La Valazzura once asked me to marry him. And now I’m going to say good-night and goodbye. Please don’t see me inside the hotel or call me. I need to be by myself.”
* * *
“What am I going to do, Enzo?”
Nico had driven to the castello on Wednesday morning after watching Fausta leave the hotel in her car. He hadn’t slept all night. His heart had gone with her, leaving him in agony.
His white-haired mentor eyed him with a solemn expression after Nico had poured out his soul to him. “I wish I could help. The only advice I have for you is that you don’t make your decision hastily then live a lifetime of regret if it’s the wrong one.”
“That’s my biggest worry. I only have a month before I must act one way or the other. There are so many unknowns, Enzo. Fausta has brought me the greatest happiness I’ve ever known. Whatever I do, there can be no joy in my life without her. She lights up my world and everyone else’s.”
“Indeed she does,” Pippa chimed in. “Even as a girl she had a spirit and vivaciousness we noticed immediately. According to Lorenzo, she’s been a worry to her parents because she’s not biddable like her sisters and has rebelled over being a royal. She knows her own mind.”
Nico clung to the back of a damask chair, unable to sit. “She made that painfully clear last night when she refused the ring I bought her.”
Enzo sighed. “Fausta is Victor’s daughter and wise beyond her years. Not only has she shown her superb taste in falling for you, she has learned the lesson of not jumping into the fire too soon. Give her time to assimilate what you’ve told her.”
“If you’d heard her last night, you’d know there’s no hope.”
Pippa smiled at him. “There’s always hope when there’s love.”
“I’ve got to pray you’re right, Pippa.”
“Don’t forget she’s been imagining being the wife of a doctor at the risk of estranging her parents. She’s been comfortable with that idea and has figured out how she’s going to keep you close to her so the two of you can have a wonderful life together. But now you’ve thrown her a huge curve.”
“A royal curve she doesn’t like,” Enzo concurred.
Pippa wheeled herself closer. “Fausta needs time to get used to the fact that you might become king of another country, one foreign to both of you.”
“I’m still having trouble comprehending it.”
“Just remember that she has watched her mother deal with being her father’s queen since she was a toddler. I believe her fear stems from a lot more than living a royal life with you if she has to.”
“What do you mean?”
“Fausta has been there and done that while she too has been forced to wait for her father’s attention. It’s no mystery why she has grown up wanting marriage with a man who comes home from work to her at five every evening.”
