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She’d chosen a simple white silk dress with spaghetti straps that formed a V at the cleavage and a short train that splayed behind her. The royal beauty team had worked their magic, pulling her hair into a loose knot with white flowers carefully entwined into it and loose tendrils framing her face. Subtle makeup and a subtly elegant diamond tiara placed on top of the sheer veil completed the look. The simplicity of the dress had felt fitting for the simplicity of the wedding when she’d chosen it, but looking at it now, all she felt was an unbearable sadness. The dress, like everything, was the opposite of what she’d envisaged whenever she’d daydreamed about her perfect wedding day.
Her father entered the room. Placing his hands on her arms, he kissed her temple, then stepped back to take a proper look at her. ‘You look beautiful.’
She tried to smile but couldn’t make her mouth work.
He looked at her awhile longer then sighed and said heavily, ‘You don’t have to do this.’
She met his eyes. ‘I do.’
‘No.’ He sighed again. ‘It feels wrong. No one will blame you if you change your mind.’
She thought again of the barely suppressed fury in her mother’s eyes when the family had confronted her about the pregnancy. It was a look she’d never seen from her before, worse than the reproach from her unguarded comments about Dominic, and she prayed she’d never see it again. The angry censure had been in all her blood family’s eyes. But not Marcelo, she remembered wistfully. His eyes had been full of sympathy. He’d known exactly how she was feeling because he’d been there himself, trying to fix a mess of his own making.
Their family, though, had never looked at him with the same disappointment they’d looked at Alessia. Their reproval had been laced with understanding of his nature. Their forgiveness for him had come easily.
‘I’llblame me,’ she told her father, whose troubled eyes told her he, at least, had forgiven her. ‘I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if my actions led to the destruction of the monarchy.’ The smile she’d tried to conjure finally came, small though it was, and she took her father’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. ‘This is for the best. We can trust Gabriel with our family. If we honour our side of the deal, he’ll honour his.’ Of that, she was certain.
It was the only certainty she had about him.
Shortly, she would leave her quarters and marry a man she knew so little of that when a woman had appeared on his balcony on her wedding morning, Alessia’s automatic assumption was that the woman had been his lover.
She knew so little about him that she didn’t know if he did have a lover tucked away somewhere. She didn’t know if Mariella was his only sibling.
But there was one more thing she did know, and it frightened her badly. That brief moment earlier on the balcony when she’d automatically assumed Mariella to be his lover...it had felt like she’d been hit by a truck. The relief to learn she was his sister had been dizzying, and then she’d found herself trapped in Gabriel’s stare...
She’d seen the desire in his eyes. She’d seen it and been helpless to stop herself from reacting to it, no more than she’d been unable to stop the swelling of her heart when he’d smiled and his face had lit up into something heartbreaking.
So that’s the one more thing she knew—how he made her feel. Like a giddy, jealous schoolgirl. And it’s what frightened her so badly too.
She didn’t want to feel like that for him, full stop. She believed in the commitment he was about to make to her as his wife but she couldn’t forget how he’d ignored her. If not for their baby, she would never have seen him again because he didn’t think her worth the bother due to their supposed incompatibility. He’d never given her a chance to find out if they could be compatible in ways that didn’t involve sex for the simple reason that he hadn’t wanted to.
And she couldn’t forget how devastated she’d been when she woke up to find him gone.
The Berrutis royal chapel was much bigger than Gabriel had envisaged and so ancient he could feel its history seeping through the high, stone walls and dome ceiling. He could feel his sister’s awe at it all as she stood next to him while they waited for the bride to arrive. He could feel the Berruti family’s bemusement at his choice of a woman for a best man and that the glamorous best man had donned a feminine tuxedo to match his own. Clara, the newest family member, had clapped her hands in glee at Mariella’s outfit.
Gabriel had few friends. He could travel to almost any country in the world and find hospitality from friendly acquaintances, but true friends were rare. Partly this was because of his nomadic lifestyle, always basing himself wherever his current job was located. Partly it was because he liked his own company and would much rather spend a rare evening off sipping a large bourbon and watching a film noir or reading a good thriller. The only person he was close to was his sister. Two years younger than him, they’d been as close as siblings could be since before Mariella was out of nappies. Living in their family’s war zone had cemented their closeness. Trusting her implicitly, he’d confided the entire Alessia and baby situation. There had been no judgement or efforts to tell him he was being a fool to throw his life away by marrying a stranger. She knew him well enough not to bother wasting her breath like that.
‘Mum would wet herself if she could see this,’ Mariella murmured. ‘You, marrying a princess in a royal chapel.’
He gave a subtle mock shudder. ‘I can well believe it.’ Their mother was the most horrendous social climber, a born attention seeker and the root cause of his media hatred. The only thing that stopped her exposing Gabriel as her son to her countless social media followers was the hefty monthly allowance he paid her. A royal wedding, though, no matter how small, would be a temptation too far for her and so he’d made the decision not to invite her. This was his last event as a private person. The circus his life was going to turn into, one that made his guts twist to imagine, could wait a few days longer.
Movement broke the stillness of the chapel and jolted his heart. The bride had arrived. His bride.
Clutching her father’s arm, she walked towards him. The closer she came, the clearer she became and the greater his heart swelled.
When she reached him, he carefully lifted the sheer veil. Her eyes locked with his. The swelling in his heart stopped and his chest tightened, crushing it. His jaw locked. Alessia was simply breathtaking. He’d never imagined such beauty existed.
For a long moment she stared at him, then her shoulders rose and she jutted her chin. ‘Ready?’
He nodded.
‘Good.’ She smiled tightly. ‘Then let’s do this.’
Had there ever been a more miserable excuse for a wedding? Alessia wondered morosely. No wedding march. Only six guests and a priest. She signed her name to the certificate and thought of her large, extended family. They would have loved to be here. She would have loved for them to be here. The only moment that had matched her dreams had been the wedding kiss to seal their vows. Gabriel’s eyes had pulsed with a heady sensuality and the promise of more before his warm lips had brushed hers, but even that had been tainted because she couldn’t forget that she wasn’t his choice for a bride. He wanted her, that was obvious, and he’d said as much in words and body language, but he’d never wanted to want her.
She wished she didn’t want him. She wished the woman he’d unlocked in her would go back into hiding.
The ring he’d slid on her finger felt too weighty. She wished she could wrench it off.
