His family was going to have a royal conniption. He thought his mother, Queen Therese, known so well for her patience and calm, might even yell. A prince did not elope.
For the heir to the throne to do so? A criminal offense in his grandfather’s eyes, Micheli had no doubt.
And yet, even knowing the storm he faced—they faced—could not make him regret that so very precious ceremony on the beach.
He moved to touch her shoulder, not to wake her, only to feel the satin smoothness of her skin under his hand. A thunderous pounding on the villa’s front door aborted his movement, Mich’s fingers a centimeter from her shoulder.
A masculine voice shouted in Spanish—the open windows allowing cross breezes to cool the house making it almost as loud as if he were in the room with them.
Kiki sat straight up in bed, her eyes going comically wide as she turned her head side to side. “What? Who... Papa?”
“Constanza Kiki Menendez, open this door immediamente, or I will break it down!”
Then Mich could hear a female voice, but not make out her words.
“I will not call her Scorsolini. I have not even met this man who dares to steal my daughter away!”
Mich had no trouble hearing that.
Kiki had heard the words too, because she was out of the bed, rushing around the room looking for clothes and then just grabbing the sheet.
Wrapping it around her, she ran for the door. “Papa, calm down. You’re upsetting Mom. You know you are. She hates it when you yell.”
Oh, no. Mich’s wife was not tearing through the house to appease another man. Not even her father.
He leaped from the bed, then grabbed his chinos and pulled them on even as he followed Kiki at speed.
He reached her just as she went to open the door. He grabbed her arm and shook his head. “Go back and dress. I will let them in.”
Pure panic glowed in her storm-gray eyes. “No. You don’t understand. I need—”
Another loud knock at the door, what sounded like a single kick and more Spanish, which was close enough to Italian for Micheli to know the older man had demanded once again for the door to be opened.
It was the sound of distress Kiki made that convinced Micheli to open the door, not her father’s clearly increasing ire.
He gently pushed her back so Micheli stood between his new wife and the irate man on the other side. Then he reached out, unlocking and opening the door in one movement.
It could have been his own family on the other side, the group seemed so eerily familiar. A tall man, who was clearly Kiki’s father, vibrated with incandescent fury. Beside him stood a stunning older version of the woman he’d married—Kiki’s mother. Behind them was a full contingent of security.
Micheli drew his royalty around him like the suit he wasn’t wearing and stepped back. “Come in. Signore e Signora Menendez, I presume.” He could have used their Spanish titles, but that would have established a different power dynamic than the one he wanted: the one in which they recognized him as the primary man in Kiki’s life now.
Kiki’s father glowered, making no move to enter the house after all his demands to be let inside. “And you are?”
His wife slapped his arm. “You know very well who he is, Miguel. He’s your daughter’s husband, and if you don’t want to alienate her, I suggest you get your temper under control.”
Miguel’s gaze slid past Micheli to Kiki, and a slight tightening of his mouth said maybe his wife’s warning had been heard and heeded.
“Mom,” sounded from behind him, the single word expressing happiness, anxiety and even desperation.
It was the tiny quaver that had Micheli turning around to see his wife. She was blinking back tears and looking too damn vulnerable.
Ignoring the people behind him, he reached for her. “All will be well, invece. We knew this moment was coming.”
They just hadn’t expected it this quickly.
“Don’t make my daughter promises you may not be able to keep,” Miguel said in strained voice.
His arms firmly around his trembling wife, Micheli turned back to her parents, no doubt in his heart to come through in his expression or tone. “Any promise I make to your daughter, I will honor. All vows I have made to her are permanent.”
Some of the fury in Miguel’s eyes seemed to bank, and it was then Micheli realized the man was worried for his daughter. But why?
“You two need to get dressed immediately. I convinced your father to allow me to collect you, but you are facing a storm of epic proportions when we reach the palace. I will not allow my daughter to be hit by its lightning. You understand me?”
“Palace?” Kiki asked. She tipped her head back to meet his eyes. “Mich, what is my dad talking about?”
Miguel replied before Micheli could. “Kiki, meet your husband. Principe Vittoro Micheli Scorsolini.”
“You’re a prince?” she asked in shock.
“And you are a billionaire’s daughter.” Micheli’s brain had finally started firing on all cylinders, and he recognized Miguel Menendez from the financial news.
Incredibly, she blushed. “Um, yeah, about that...”
He shook his head. “No. It doesn’t matter. I fell in love with you, Kiki Scorsolini.” He wasn’t forgetting her new last name like her father. “And you fell in love with me, not my role.”
“But you are a prince?”
“Heir to the throne of Isole dei Re,” her father answered again.
Micheli glared at him. “I’m capable of speaking for myself.”
“Really? Then why is it that my daughter is not aware that one day she will be queen?” Miguel looked at Kiki, one brow raised. “And you had issues with taking over my company.”
The temptation to clock the billionaire had Micheli clenching his hands into fists.
“Don’t,” Kiki said softly.
He looked down at her.
“I know. The temptation to smack him is almost overwhelming, but it won’t solve anything.”
“I was going to tell you, before—”
“Before you found out I was pregnant with your heir?” she asked, interrupting.
Her mother gasped. Her father cursed.
Kiki ignored them both. “Before you whisked me off to marry you so no one, not even a king, could stop us?”
She understood. The relief flowed through him in a near-debilitating wave. “Sì. I was going to tell you everything today.”
“You do not think you should have told her before you married her?” Miguel demanded.
“Forgive me, please,” he said to Kiki, refusing to acknowledge the Spanish billionaire.
“Yes, Mich. I love you, and there is nothing to forgive. We both wanted to be loved for who we are, not where we come from. Our future is a little more complicated than I thought, though.”
“A little.” He smiled down at her, very glad when she returned it.
“We do need to get back on the plane. The royal family’s PR team is working with ours, but we must face this news with a united front.” Surprisingly, that came from Kiki’s mother.
“Amber, as always, you are the voice of intelligent reason, mi amor.”