Though it made no sense, she knew the name he’d say.
She wanted to turn and run out, to outrace her suspicion and the moment he’d turn it into fact. Then it was too late.
“You know him well. My late cousin Osvaldo’s son. Prince…ex-Prince Leandro D’Agostino.”
Her nails dug in her palms. She thought she’d braced herself. Had been bracing herself for eight years. Spending her waking hours doing anything that demanded total focus so she wouldn’t hear that name reverberating through her mind. Going to bed depleted in hope of not having it ignite her unconscious aches and struggles. She’d succeeded. When she hadn’t had relapses and sought mention of his name like an addict would a drug.
Leandro. The man she’d loved beyond reason’s dictates, and those of pride and self-preservation. The man to whom she’d been nothing but a convenience. As she was sure so many others had been. He went through life like a one-man invasion, leveling everything in his path so he could erect his own version of perfection.
And he was the least of the three evils? What were the other two? Demons?
The one thing ameliorating her upheaval at hearing his name again was confusion. At hearing it on the lips of the man who’d banished him from Castaldini, laced with such regret and…affection?
When King Benedetto spoke again, no doubt remained in her mind. It had been both. And more. Far more. The pining and pride of a father speaking of his estranged son. “There was nothing that boy couldn’t do. A true jack-of-all-trades. He built a financial empire and was the best ambassador to the States Castaldini ever had by the time he was just twenty-eight.”
She knew that. That had been when she’d met him, almost ten years ago. A month after she’d set foot on Castaldini, in the fairytale setting of her sister’s wedding.
“You must remember how he walked out on the ambassador’s position over irreconcilable differences in policies, how he escalated his antagonism until I could no longer defend him to the Council, was forced by his actions and their unanimity to declare him renegade and strip him of his Castaldinian nationality.”
Oh, how she remembered that. And what it had led to.
“He is now a tycoon of global power, dividing his time between business and humanitarian endeavors.”
She didn’t want to hear this. But short of walking away, or yelling at the king to quit shoving Leandro’s achievements down her throat, there was nothing she could do but stand there and listen to how he’d moved on, and so spectacularly, with his life.
Focused on his purpose, the king went on. “We approached him to come back, to be given full pardon and become crown prince and regent. He scoffed at our messengers and our offers.”
“Surely that was anger talking.” She started at the croaked protest. It had issued from her. It seemed nothing could silence the negotiator inside her. “Nothing some determined cajoling and ego-boosting concessions won’t alleviate.”
“Oh, yes, that’s what the Council thought, too. I told them they knew nothing about Leandro. But they were confident they could negotiate with him. He told us what we could…do…with our attempts at pride-salving and our middle grounds.”
Phoebe felt every word pushing her to the edge of an abyss. She couldn’t bear to look down, tried again to inch away. “If he so adamantly refuses, why not turn to the other choices?”
“Because the objection against the second is weightier, and he hates me even more. As for the third, the objection against him is the weightiest of all. And I suspect he hates both me and Castaldini. Leandro, as impossible as it seems, is actually the least problematic of all, the one I project will be easiest to reach. And that is where you come in.”
Her heart launched against her ribs. She rocked on her feet with the force of the collision. Don’t say it. Don’t…
He said it. “I’m sending you, the one person I believe can reach Leandro, can convince him to negotiate, or to at least hold down the fort until a more permanent solution is found, if he remains adamant about not accepting the succession.”
Phoebe’s mind emptied. Her tongue fired blanks. “I—I’m not…”
“You’re Castaldini’s most potent negotiator. You’ve bailed us out of situations where my old guard and I were ineffectual, detrimental even. And this is our darkest hour. I am counting on your ability, your infallible diplomatic techniques and your own charms, to lure Leandro back when all else has failed.”
Her own…charms? Now wait a minute here…
Before she could choke out her alarm, the king hurled another declaration at her.
“You’re my—and Castaldini’s—last card.”
“We’re landing, Signorina Alexander.”
Phoebe mirrored the flight attendant’s smile, patted her fastened seatbelt. She waited until the radiant brunette had removed her untouched dinner and hurried away before she let her head thunk against her window. The bonfire of lights that was New York City at night was zooming up at her, an organized maze of the gothic and the postmodern that seemed to be unfurling to engulf Castaldini’s equivalent of Air Force One.
She closed her eyes over the sand that seemed to fill her lids.
She hated flying. She’d come to equate it with upheaval.
The journey that started it all had been ten years ago. Her little sister, Julia, had accepted Paolo’s marriage proposal only to discover he was the King of Castaldini’s son.
Phoebe couldn’t let her eighteen-year-old, special-needs sister go alone to a foreign country and an unknown future. She’d dropped out of law school to accompany Julia. She’d boarded that jet to Castaldini with anxieties and regrets preying on her. The first over the unimaginable future she and her sister were heading to, the second over the life she’d relinquished.
Not that she’d had second thoughts since then. Although she was only two and a half years older than Julia, she’d been more of a mother than a sister to her since their single mother had died just days after Phoebe’s thirteenth birthday. When Julia had become afflicted with Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia—a rare form of partial paralysis—Phoebe’s protectiveness had mushroomed. At fourteen, Julia had started suffering from weakness, stiffness and partial loss of sensation in her lower limbs. By the time she was seventeen, she’d been in a wheelchair. Then she’d met Paolo.
Undaunted by her condition, he’d swept her into a whirl-wind romance. It wasn’t long before he’d proposed. And though Julia had accepted after nearly a year of cajoling and insistence that her physical condition made no difference to him, Julia’s psychological state had been fragile and her dependence on Phoebe had deepened with the anticipation of all the upheaval that becoming a princess overnight would bring.
Phoebe had wondered too many times if she would have done things differently if she’d known her own life would change forever, too. And not just as spillover from the changes in Julia’s.
What if the first time she’d set eyes on Leandro, she’d had the sense to feel alarmed at her volatile reaction, especially when she’d always been steady and cerebral? To realize that something so out of control would lead to a crash? That a man so voracious in both ambition and passion would end up consuming her while giving nothing of himself in return? What if she hadn’t let him sweep her into that first kiss an hour after meeting, hadn’t thrown herself into his bed a week later?
She’d always come to the same conclusion. Any alternative scenario wouldn’t have derailed her life, and she