The Prince's Scandalous Baby (10 page)

FIFTEEN

Juliette felt Giancarlo’s arm around her, sheltering her as he pulled her forward with him. The sound of the microphone snapping as Giancarlo roughly pulled it off him was so close to her ears, and she could hear the sound of the battery pack spinning its way across the floor and hitting a wall as he tossed it aside.

She couldn’t make out the individual questions from any of the reporters, but she wasn’t trying anymore. They wouldn’t be answering any questions. Not now.

There were more flashes, and they blinded Juliette’s eyes. She had to close them, and relied entirely on Giancarlo to guide her forward.

Giancarlo pulled them into the crowd. She could hear the voices all around her, and the heat from their ravenous bodies. She felt like she was about to be smothered by them and their insatiable questions, but Giancarlo just kept moving them forward, guiding them towards safety.

Once they were on the other side of the pack, and Juliette found she could breathe again, they picked up the pace. The reporters were still coming after them, with their questions and flashbulbs, but she looked up at Giancarlo and saw the determined look on his face, and knew that they were getting as far away from these awful people as he could take them.

She recognized the car, and the driver. The last time she’d been in it, she’d felt like she had been betrayed. This time it was a bastion of safety.

They slid in quickly through the open door, and closed it firmly behind them.

“Drive,” the Prince commanded, and the car sped into motion.

Here, in the relative quiet of the limo, Juliette could feel the frantic beating of her heart.

“Are you all right?” Giancarlo was asking her. “Are you OK?”

She swallowed hard and did her best to begin calming her heartbeat. “Yes,” she said. “It was only people with cameras. I’m fine.”

She tried to sound brave and unaffected, but he saw through it, pulling her to his chest and wrapping his arms around her again. They stayed that way the entire ride.

Being mobbed by the press and the public looked different from the outside. It looked inconvenient, maybe, but it didn’t look like it felt. In reality, Juliette realized, it felt like they were all after you. Like they all wanted a piece of you, and that after they were done taking what they thought was their due, there would be none of you left. It was claustrophobic, and terrifying.

And it was what Giancarlo had to put up with whenever he went out in public.

The more Juliette calmed down, the more she began to feel ashamed. She’d judged him so harshly for putting on a role for her when they first met, but she hadn’t really understood why he had done it. She hadn’t fully comprehended what being a prince really meant.

It was only a ten-minute drive to their downtown destination. They got out of the car, Juliette still with Giancarlo’s arm firmly around her. There were no reporters here, thank goodness. The news must not have spread yet.

It was a tall, striking residential building Juliette had walked past many times during her student days. It was, in some ways, very similar to the renovated theater she and Giancarlo had discussed on their first and only date. It was old, but with a modern flair to it.

She’d often wondered what it looked like on the inside, and if it was as luxurious as it looked on the outside. As soon as she stepped into the lobby, she knew it was.

Giancarlo kept a protective arm around her as they walked inside, but as they crossed the threshold he relaxed visibly. This was home, she knew before he even told her. The palace might be the place where he had grown up, but this was where he lived now.

They got in the elevator and took it straight up to the top floor, Giancarlo having to put hold up a keycard to get the elevator to take them there. When the doors opened, Juliette saw why: the elevator opened directly into his living room.

It was luxurious, but not gaudy. Everything seemed planned and thoughtful in its layout. The sofas were rich Italian leather, and somehow managed to look comfortable without looking formless.

Giancarlo deposited her on one of them, and Juliette sighed in relief. Her exhaustion was beginning to get the better of her, and now she was safe from the frothing jaws of the media, the adrenaline was starting to wear off.

“Do you want something to drink? Tea, maybe?”

No servants here, she noticed. Not the way his father would have done it. But then, Giancarlo was very much not his father, and for that, she was glad.

“Some water would be nice.”

He brought it to her, and she downed the whole glassful, only realizing then how thirsty she’d been. Giancarlo sat down next to her on the sofa, and she lay in his lap without thinking about it. It felt like the most natural thing in the world—like they had been together for years and this was how they always sat.

“I’m so, so sorry,” Giancarlo said, after they’d had a moment to settle in.

Juliette shook her head. “It’s me who should be sorry; I didn’t know your mic was on.”

“No, don’t worry about that. I mean my father.”

Juliette saw it all again in her mind: the King and his henchmen; the uncomfortable chairs and the prop bottle of wine; the check and the clipboard. She shuddered. It all felt so sinister in retrospect.

“It’s not your fault,” she said softly. “He’s your father. You can’t predict what he’s going to do.”

“No,” he stroked her hair back from her face. “Maybe not exactly. But I know what he’s like. I should have seen it coming.”

She sighed. Part of her wanted to just forget all of that, but the rest of her knew that she couldn’t. They were going to have to face his father eventually, and Giancarlo needed to know what he’d done.

“He said that I was just the latest in a long line of women. He acted like you make a habit out of seducing girls like me.”

Giancarlo almost seemed amused by this. “If I made a habit out of getting attached to women who leave me, the way I’ve gotten attached to you, I wouldn’t be long for this world. No, there haven’t…there haven’t been other women like you. There are rumors. There are always rumors. But mostly, the press just likes a story.”

“So, no secret children of secret mothers who your father has paid off?”

He shook his head, slowly. “The relationships I’ve had have all ended on good terms—well, as much as they ever do. If I already had children, I’d definitely know about it.”

Juliette stared at the rich detailing on the painted ceiling. A relic from the original building, no doubt. She wondered how old it was.

“So, he just lied completely? But he knew…he knew details…”

“What you have to understand about my father,” Giancarlo said, “is that he will do absolutely anything in the world as long as he thinks he has a good reason for doing it. If he knew things about me, about how I— it’s because he found people to pay to tell him. He’s old-fashioned in the worst way and he’d do anything in his power to stop me having children with someone he considers to be “beneath” me. If he couldn’t do that, well, he’d stop at nothing to prevent the news getting out. The old fool cares more about bloodlines than people.”

She could hear the contempt in his voice as he spoke. It was justified, and in many ways Juliette felt the same. But still, she didn’t want to see Giancarlo consumed by his anger towards his own father.

“But you don’t feel that way, right?” she said hesitantly, reaching up and laying her palm on his cheek.

He smiled. “No, of course not, and I don’t care that the entire press of Italy found out at the same time as I did. I’ve never been happier in my life, Juliette. I thought that nothing could be better than you coming back to me and telling me you’d changed your mind. I was wrong.”

She saw him, now, for the man he was—the man she’d always thought he was. And his warmth, and kindness pulled her towards him, almost as though there was a string attached to her lips, pulling her up.

When their lips met, she felt the same excitement spreading through her body as she had felt that night when she thought his name was Nico and they were both simply adventurous trespassers. Only, this time, it was all the stronger for the fact that she knew who he was, and she knew that their life together was the only life she could have wanted.

She felt herself melting further into him with ever subtle movement of his lips on hers. She was losing herself, and all the things that she had thought worth of worrying about, in the quiet depths of his soul.

But then a loud sound cut through the air, and Juliette felt Giancarlo’s pocket vibrating against her chest.

“I don’t have to get it,” he mumbled, as he reached for the phone to silence it. But, when he saw the screen, his face dropped.

“What is it?” Juliette asked, fearing she already knew the answer.

“It’s him.”

“You have to answer it.”

Juliette said the words with sadness in her voice, but she knew they were true. As much as she resented the King, he was the father of the man she loved, and she knew they could only ignore him for so long. She could tell, from the way that Giancarlo was looking at the phone, that he knew it too.

But then, something changed.

“No,” Giancarlo said. “I don’t.”

Resolutely, he pressed the button to ignore the call, and tossed the phone on the sofa next to him.

Juliette felt Giancarlo take her chin with his hand, and gently direct her face back to his. He’d drawn close to her again, and she was struck by the little flecks of gold in his eyes. She hadn’t noticed those before. Would it always be this way, she wondered. Would there always be more precious surprises to discover about him? Would their child, when it came, have the same gold flecks in its eyes?

“Now,” Giancarlo said. “Where were we?”

Then he kissed her again, and she drank in the sweetness of his mouth. She could hear the buzz of the ignored phone on the sofa beside them. She drew back, just an inch, but it was too far for Giancarlo.

“Ignore it,” he said. “He has no place here. You and the baby, you are all that matters to me.”

Juliette sighed. She hadn’t realized how much she’d been longing to hear those words since she first discovered she was pregnant. Now that she’d heard them, she felt as though a mountain of stress and worry and pain had been lifted off her shoulders. Her lips curled upwards, and she leaned back forward to continue the kiss.

But the movement was interrupted by a loud, familiar voice calling out from the doorway.

“All that matters?”

As one, Giancarlo and Juliette snapped their eyes to the man standing by the elevator. Juliette hadn’t even heard the doors open, so distracted had she been by the sweetness of the Prince’s kiss. The old man’s phone was clenched in his hands, and he was staring daggers at Juliette.

Giancarlo stood, positioning himself in front of Juliette as though to protect her, but that couldn’t stop the words from coming through. The King spoke in quick, brusque Italian, and Juliette was amazed at how ugly he made a beautiful language sound.

“Are you stupid, boy? I thought you’d grown up. I thought you’d gotten this stupid habit of walking around, pretending to be a commoner, out of your system. I thought I was finally going to get the son I deserved—the son I was
supposed
to have. But no. You have to go and make a fool of yourself in front of everyone. You have to be careless, and make a mockery of our family.”

Juliette saw Giancarlo’s fist clench at this, and she reached her hand out to take his, to try to soothe him.

“This is just like you. You forget how the world works. You wander around, pretending to be something you’re not, and think that means that you know how the common people are. But you don’t. You don’t know what their lives are like. You don’t know how they worry about things you’ve never had to worry about. You don’t know the choices they face.