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“I was planning to run out on the wedding, yes,” she replied, and smiled as she said it, which made no sense. Surely she could not be soflippantabout something that would throw both of their kingdoms into disarray—and rip his heart out in the process. Surely he’d only imagined she’d said such a thing. But Valentina nodded across the room. “But the good news is thatshelooks like she’s planning to stay.”
And on some level he knew before he turned. But it still stole his breath.
His princess was standing in the door to what must have been her dressing room, clad in a long white dress. There was a veil pinned to a shining tiara on her head that flowed to the ground behind her. She was so lovely it made his throat tight, andhergreen eyes were dark with emotion and shone with tears. He looked back to check, to make sure he wasn’t losing his own mind, but the spitting image of her was still sitting on the end of the bed, still dressed in the wrong clothes.
He’d known something was off about her the moment he’d walked in.Hisprincess lit him up. She gazed at him and he wanted to fly off into the blue Mediterranean sky outside the windows. More, he believed he could.
She was looking at him that way now, and his heart soared.
He thought he could lose himself in those eyes of hers. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Since you walked in the door,” she whispered.
“Natalie,” he said, his voice rough, because she’d heard everything. Because he really had been talking to the right princess after all. “You told me you were Natalie.”
She smiled at him, a tearful, gorgeous smile that changed the world around. “I am,” she whispered. “But I would have been Valentina for you, if that was what you wanted. I tried.”
Valentina was talking, but Rodolfo was no longer listening. He moved tohis princessand took her hands in his, and there it was. Fire and need. That sense of homecoming.Life.
He didn’t hesitate. He went down on his knees before her.
“Marry me, Natalie,” he said. Or begged, really. Her hands trembled in his. “Marry me because you want to, not because our fathers decided a prince from Tissely should marry a princess from Murin almost thirty years ago. Marry me because, when you were not pretending to be Valentina and I was not being an ass, I suspect we were halfway to falling in love.”
She pulled a hand from his and slid it down to stroke over his cheek, holding him. Blessing him. Making him whole.
“I suspect it’s a lot more than halfway,” she whispered. “When you saidmine,you meant it.” Natalie shook her head, and the cascading veil moved with her, making her look almost ethereal. But the hand at his jaw was all too real. “No one ever meant it, Rodolfo. My mother told me I grew up, you see. And everything else was a job I did, not anything real. Not anything true. Not you.”
“I want to live,” he told her with all the solemnity of the most sacred vow. “I want to live with you, Natalie.”
“I love you,” she whispered, and then she bent down or he surged up, and his mouth was on hers again. At last.
She tasted like love. Like freedom. Like falling end over end through an endless blue sky only with this woman, Rodolfo didn’t care if there was a parachute. He didn’t care if he touched ground. He wanted to carry on falling forever, just like this.
Only when there was the delicate sound of a throat being cleared did he remember that Valentina was still in the room.
He pulled back from Natalie, taking great satisfaction in her flushed cheeks and that hectic gleam in her green eyes. Later, he thought, he would lay her out on a wide, soft bed and learn every single inch of her delectable body. He would let her do the same when he was sated. He estimated that would take only a few years.
Outside, the church bells began to ring.
“I believe that is our cue,” he said, holding fast to her hand.
Natalie’s breath deserted her in a rush, and Rodolfo braced himself.
“I want to marry you,” she said fiercely. “You have no idea how much. I wanted it from the moment I met you, whether I could admit it to myself or not.” She shook her head. “But I can’t. Not like this.”
“Like what?” He lifted her fingers to his mouth. “What can be terrible enough to prevent us from marrying? I haven’t felt alive in two decades, princess. Now that I do, I do not want to waste a single moment of the time I have left. Especially if I get to share that time with you.”
“Rodolfo, listen to me.” She took his hand between hers, frowning up at him. “Your whole life was plotted out for you since the moment you were born. Even when your brother was alive. My mother might have made some questionable choices, but because she did, I got something you didn’t. I lived exactly how I wanted to live. I found out what made me happy and I did it. That’s what you should do.Truly live.I would hate myself if I stood between you and the life you deserve.”
“You love me,” he reminded her, and he slid his hand around to hold the nape of her neck, smiling when she shivered. “You want to marry me. How can it be that even in this, you are defiant and impossible?”
“Oh, she’s more than that,” Valentina chimed in from the bed, and then smiled when they both turned to stare at her. A little too widely, Rodolfo thought. “She’s pregnant.”
His head whipped back to Natalie and he saw the truth in his princess’s eyes, wide and green. He let go of her, letting his gaze move over what little of her body he could see in that flowing, beautiful dress, even though he knew it was ridiculous. He could count—and he knew exactly when he’d been with her on that couch in Rome. To the minute.
He’d longed for her every minute since.
But mostly, he felt a deep, supremely male and wildly possessive triumph course through him like a brand-new kind of fire.
