He stood and glared at her. "How dare you speak to me this way?"
"I believe you came to me, not the other way around. So I can pretty much talk to you any way I'd like. You're free to leave." She pointed at the door.
He sank back into the chair. "I'm not leaving."
"Then you have a problem, because I'm going to continue to talk to you any way I want." She leaned toward him. "Rafael, no one who genuinely cares about a child could imagine ripping a four-year-old little boy away from his mother and the only family he's ever known. Do you have any idea how that would devastate him? Of what he would go through?"
"He is my heir," he said, but the words came automatically. Without meaning to, he remembered a time long ago. He had been about Daniel's age when his own mother had died. He recalled the activity around her room and then nothing but quiet. No one would speak with him. For days he only saw his nanny. Then one evening his father had appeared and announced his mother was dead. The funeral was the next day and Rafael was expected to behave appropriately.
He'd understood nothing, except the fact that his father was obviously very angry with him. It wasn't until nearly a week later that he'd begun to figure out his mother was gone forever.
He remembered feeling lost and afraid. Sometimes he would creep into her room and curl up on her bed, closing his eyes as tightly as he could, hoping that when he opened them, she would be there.
"I had no intension of keeping Mia from her son," he told Brenna. "I had very specifically planned for her to…" He paused, not sure how to explain what he hadn't decided yet for himself.
"To what?" she asked impatiently. "See him for fifteen minutes every quarter? Don't give me that crap. You didn't have a plan. You didn't think of anything but what you wanted. You're like a kid who only discovers he's interested in a toy after someone else has taken it from him. It's not as if you cared about Danny until now."
"I did not know about him until recently."
Brenna leaned forward and gave him a cold smile that warned him she was about to trap him. "Did you bother to find out if Mia might be pregnant? Did it occur to you to send one of your minions to do a little reconnaissance work? Six or seven months after the last time you two got personal, it would have been really easy to tell. My God, Rafael. You let her think you'd died. What kind of weasel behavior is that?"
"It did not occur to me she could be pregnant."
"Why? Hadn't the little soldiers been potent until then?"
"I used a condom."
"Which obviously failed. Still, you had a responsibility and you're avoiding the question about just letting her go. Not even a good-bye? Wouldn't that at least have showed good manners?"
He shifted in his seat and glanced out the window toward the vineyard. "There were reasons."
"Uh-huh. Let me guess. You didn't want her to know who you really were. You didn't want to risk an American groupie. How embarrassing. Plus she could have told the world how you'd been playing dress-up."
He swung back to her. "I was protecting the heritage of my country. That is hardly playing dress-up." Brenna was a most annoying woman. Nearly as difficult as her sister.
"Call it what you like," she said with a shrug. "What do I care?"
"We are getting off the subject at hand," he said between clenched teeth. "I would appreciate your assistance in finding a way to communicate with Mia."
"I don't think so. I mean, come on. To what end? You had an affair with her once and let her go. Now you tried to steal her kid. You're not a really good catch, despite the title."
His frustration flared into anger. "What did you expect?" he asked heatedly. "That I would marry her?"
"You're the one who proposed."
He stood again and paced the length of the office. "I had no choice. I had to secure Daniel for my people. You think because I have money and a title it is all so easy for me, but you are wrong. With great wealth and power comes responsibility. I must not only think of today, I must think of five hundred years from now. Each law, each pardon, each act has consequences. Like ripples in a pond, they continue endlessly."
He paused by the map on the wall and traced the outline of the Marcelli land. "There are times when I wish it could be different. That I were a man like any other. That my life was my own. But it is not."
Brenna leaned back in her chair. "I wish I had some tissue here so I could weep for your sad little life. Poor rich boy all alone." She straightened. "I don't actually give a rat's ass about you or your sob story. The bottom line is you lied. You lied and you're not even sorry. If you had come to Mia and explained the truth from the beginning, she would have worked with you. She's intelligent and reasonable. But that never occurred to you. I guess compromise isn't a word in the royal vocabulary. You didn't bother to find out anything about her when the two of you were together before or you would have known that number one, she's more than willing to do what's right, and number two, she will die before she lets you take her child away from her."
"You speak of compromise," he said slowly. "I have been thinking about the concept."
"A little too much after the fact. Welcome to the real world, where people actually negotiate things like child custody agreements and stealing is against the law."
He looked at her. "You do not like me."
"No one does, except maybe Danny, and that's because he doesn't know any better. But he will."
"You will turn him against me?"
"I won't have to. I'm guessing you'll do that all on your own."
Her statement insulted him. "You do not know me."
"I have a good idea about you. You've never had to work for anything in your life. You get what you want and people just get out of the way. That's not happening this time. We're a strong family, and when you screwed Mia, you screwed us all." She paused. "Figuratively, of course, because otherwise, to quote my baby sister, ick."
"I will win."
"I can't see that happening. From where I'm sitting, there is only one win. You really fall in love with Mia and then somehow convince her it's for real. But what are the odds of that? Oooh, you'd have to go against Daddy and marry a commoner. I don't think you have the balls for it."
His blood ran cold. "If you were a man, I would call you out."
"Swords at dawn? I'm all a-tremble."
"You will not speak to me this way."
"How, exactly, are you going to stop me? This isn't Calandria and you can't throw me in the tower. Or is it a dungeon? I can never keep that straight."
"I will win, Brenna. I will defeat you all."
"Not even in seven lifetimes." She stood and walked to the door. "The funny thing is, I'm kind of glad you stopped by."
As if he believed that. "Why?"
"Because I'm not angry with you anymore. I actually feel sorry for you. You're so busy chasing after the moon, which you'll never get, that you can't see the beauty in the moonlight. You hide behind duty and privilege. There's a real world out there, Rafael. You should try leaving the titanium credit card at home and experience how the rest of us live. You might find what you've been missing."
David was being force-fed by the Grands. Mia grinned when she saw him and rushed to his side.
"Do you need rescuing?" she asked as he stood and hugged her.
"Apparently. I'm in danger of exploding."
"A man on his own," Grandma Tessa said. "I know you don't eat right."
"You can't make up for it in one meal," he protested.
"We try," Grammy M told him.
He released Mia and patted his stomach. "I'm going to take Mia for a walk. When I get back, you can ply me with desserts."
"I made a tiramisu just yesterday," Tessa said.
"I have fresh blueberry cobbler," Grammy M offered.
David had spent enough time at the house to know the right answer.
"I look forward to both," he said, then grabbed Mia's hand. "Get me out of here," he whispered.
She laughed and led the way outside.
The afternoon was warm and sunny, as often happened in August. They strolled to a shady tree, then plopped down on the grass.
"Where's Danny?" David asked. "With his dad?"
"Not without me around to supervise. He's at school this afternoon. His preschool class is doing a play and this is their final practice. I almost stayed, but I get so nervous watching him." She smiled. "I don't know how I'll get through the performance."
"You and Rafael are still at odds?"
"What do you think?"
"That you're stubborn and you won't forgive him easily."
That surprised her. "You think I should?"
"You're going to have to eventually. He's Danny's father."
"He's an asshole."
"That doesn't change the whole father part."
She stared at him. "You don't think what he did was so horrible."
"I didn't say that."
"You don't have to. I can see it on your face. What is all this? Guys sticking together?" She couldn't believe it. This was David. She trusted him.
"Mia, I'm not on his side. What he did was inexcusable. I'm simply pointing out that he's Danny's father and nothing is going to change that. You can try to keep Danny from Calandria all you want, but eventually you're going to have to let him go for a visit."
"No way. There's a law that says once he's on Calandrian soil, only a royal parent can say if he's allowed to leave. I would have no rights at all."
"Laws can be changed. You can make that a condition of his visiting." David put his arm around her. "Don't shoot the messenger. You know I'm telling the truth. The reason you're going to have to give in sooner than you'd like has nothing to do with Rafael and everything to do with Danny."
She pouted. "You're saying he'll want to visit Calandria."
"If you were him, wouldn't you want to?"
She couldn't even imagine her reaction if her mother had come to her when she was ten or twelve and told her she was a princess of some country. There was nothing that would have kept her away from visiting. Not even her mother's tears.
"So I should talk to Rafael about changing the law," she muttered. "I did before, but sarcastically. You're saying I should do it for real."
"I would use it as leverage now, before Danny starts making decisions on his own." David touched her chin. "I agree. Rafael is an ass. He acted badly and you shouldn't trust him. But you also have to be realistic about the situation."
She stared into his eyes. "You're the only sensible male in my whole romantic life and we broke up. Why is that?"
"We realized we weren't in love."
"If I'd known how much I was going to screw up every other relationship, I would have tried harder."
"You don't mean that."
She sighed and leaned against him. "I want to, but I know we weren't destined to be each other's great love. Still, I can dream about what if…"
"We wouldn't have made it a year," he told her.
"Stop being so damn practical. Did I say the word dream? Can't you go with that?"
"Sure."
She closed her eyes, but instead of a pretend future with David, she saw Rafael's face and remembered what it had been like to make love with him.
