The Prince's Scandalous Baby (11 page)

“So how can you possibly know how far apart you are? How can you know that any love she has for you is any more than a love of your money? She can’t relate to you. She can’t share anything of her life with you. She sees you as a solution to a problem, and the problem is her life. You’re a checkbook to her, Giancarlo. That’s all.”

Juliette’s anger bloomed in her chest. She rose, wanting to answer the charges the King had just laid on her, but still Giancarlo stood between them as the King continued his tirade.

“And the worst part of all of it is that you don’t see it! Everyone else sees this little American student, desperately doing anything she can to get back into our country. Everyone else sees her generic clothes and her mediocre life and they all
know
that you’re just a way out of it. They
know
that the child is just a tool she’s using to climb out of her miserable existence.

“And everyone sees you falling for it! They all see you falling right into her little trap. How would they ever trust you to be king when you can’t see a con right in front of your face?”

The King was breathing heavily. Juliette could hear it, even from her position behind Giancarlo.

After a moment, she heard Giancarlo’s deep, steady voice ring out over the sound of his father’s haggard breath.

“Are you finished, Father?”

A long pause. Maybe he nodded. Juliette didn’t know or care. She was too focused on the man she had just discovered she loved, and what he was about to say. He spoke in English, she noticed. But the Italian rhythms she’d noticed in his English before were notably missing. He spoke like his words were holding back an ocean of anger, and the slightest disturbance might cause the levies to break.

“You’ve said a lot of things to me over my life, Father, and I always tried to listen. When I was a child, I thought you knew everything there was to know about being a king, and being a prince. I thought I would learn from you. I thought that if I could just be like you, then everything would take care of itself and the people would love me. But as I grew older, I grew to know that that wasn’t true. Do you know how I knew?”

He let the question hang in the air. When the King didn’t answer, he continued.

“I knew because they didn’t love you. They didn’t want you. They didn’t care about you. This isn’t the Middle Ages anymore. We don’t get any power from armies, or from divine right. We exist to please them, and remind them of traditions and bring a sense of continuity to their lives. We are for
them
. They aren’t for us.

“And that’s why I’ve gone out to try and get to know them. That’s why I show that I care about their children. Because I do. Because that is the part of being a prince that’s actually worth doing.

“But you don’t understand that, Father. You don’t understand any of it. And I’ve watched you get more and more jealous as you watched the people grow to love me. I’ve watched you spread rumors. I’ve watched you sit at my own table and insult me. And I’ve let you do it. Because you’re my father, and I thought it was my duty somehow. I thought you deserved respect. I even stayed in Italy, when I wanted to go see the world, because you demanded it, and I thought that if I just gave you want you wanted, eventually things would get better between us. But this…”

For a moment, his voice quivered, overcome with emotion. But he steadied it, and continued.

“This is too much. You go after the woman I love, and you tell her lies about me. The single greatest thing that has ever happened to me in my life, and you do all you can to try and ruin it. You tried to take my child from me.”

There was a long silence as the two men stared each other down. It was the King who broke it, finally, with a hollow bluster to his voice.

“I see you haven’t been listening to—”

“Enough!” the Prince broke in. “You are a trespasser here. This apartment belongs to me, and you are no longer welcome. I am here with the woman I love, celebrating the fact that we are going to become parents together. If you are not going to join in that celebration, it is time for you to go.”

The King looked as though his face had frozen in anger. The only movement Juliette could see was his jaw clenching and unclenching. And then, as though something had snapped, the man turned his back on the two of them. He pressed the button for the elevator, and the sound of the doors opening was the only thing breaking the tense silence of the room.

The King stepped into it and pressed the button. As the doors closed on him, his gaze caught Juliette’s, and a shiver ran down her spine at the look her gave her.

But then the doors closed, and he was gone. They were alone, again, at last.

SIXTEEN

Juliette’s arms flew around Giancarlo.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said, but Juliette only laughed.

“I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry at all. That man is awful. I don’t care that he’s your father, and I don’t care that he’s the King. You see him for who he is. And, even though he’s all those things to you, you stood up to him.”

She could see the strain that standing up to his father had had on him. In the moment, he had been commanding, and had seemed like a man made of stone. But now, he looked exhausted by the effort.

“I’ve wanted to say those things to him for a long time,” he said. “But I’ve never had the courage to, before.”

Juliette looked up at him. “Why not?”

Now it was Giancarlo’s turn to laugh a little. “Because I didn’t have you to fight for.”

They sat back down on the sofa together, arms around one another. The tension of the moment was gone, and they were left in the aftermath, curled up in each other’s warmth.

“He’s taken a lot from me, over the years,” Giancarlo said, after a while. “He took my freedom. He took my options. But I couldn’t let him take away the right to be a father to my child. I wouldn’t let anyone take that.”

Juliette thought back to earlier that day. She’d compared two versions of Giancarlo, unsure which the real one was. But now, she saw that neither was the true him. The truth was that he was deeper than that—much more complicated than she could have seen during just one night together. She was going to enjoy finding out who he really was.

“No one will take it from you,” she said softly. “I shouldn’t have doubted you. I shouldn’t have thought there was a chance that anything he said was true. I—”

She would have continued, but at that moment she was distracted by a flash of light through the window.

“What is it?” Giancarlo asked, turning his head to see what she was looking at.

“It’s just the press,” he said, turning back to her. “They’re an unfortunate part of being with me, I’m afraid.”

He seemed regretful as he said it, and after the crush of people and the unwanted attention they’d received at the awards ceremony, Juliette understood why. She wanted to reassure him, but wasn’t sure how. She took a shot.

“If that’s the worst thing about being with you,” she said. “I think I can handle it.”

Giancarlo lifted up his hands, metaphorically weighing the options. “Being with a prince… having to deal with the press. Being with a prince… having to deal with the press.”

Juliette shook her head. “No, not a prince.
You
. A prince isn’t all you are, Giancarlo. Not to me.” She nodded her head towards the flashes of the cameras that were beginning to come more often, now. “Maybe to them.”

Giancarlo turned, sliding his hand down Juliette’s arm until his hand clasped hers. Standing, he slowly led her forward, towards the apartment balcony.

“No, I’m even less than that to them. I’m just a story. And, if there’s an interesting story to be had, they’ll ignore that I’m human as well.”

When he stopped, a few feet from the door to the balcony, Juliette stepped forward so that she was close up behind him.

“I’ve heard people talk about it that way, but I’ve never really understood it. I think most think it’s something people sign up for when they get famous; just part of the package.”

Giancarlo looked at her from the side of his eyes, smirking. “What, when we
choose
to be born into royalty?”

She hung her head, and then leaned it into his shoulder. “Well, I guess we don’t factor in royalty.”

She could hear the clamor of the crowd, now that they were standing right next to the balcony door. If he opened the door, the sound would be overwhelming.

“I understand it, now… why you were pretending to be someone else in public. It makes sense to me. I’m sorry I didn’t before.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry I didn’t drop the act when we went to the palace and were alone.”

“You’ve apologized before. You don’t have to apologize again.”

He leaned down and planted a short, sweet peck on her lips. “I do until you say you’ve forgiven me.”

She smiled. “Of course, I’ve forgiven you.”

They stood there for a moment, looking down at the crowd reflected in the glass front of the building across the street. They barely looked like reporters with the way the reflection distorted them; they looked more like an angry mob.

“So, what do you do?” Juliette asked, as she watched the mob grow.

“I’ve never really mastered the art of it. Always just run and hide, after a fashion. The same way I’ve been dealing with my father’s actions. He’s the King. He determines what we do. He always has.”

“And he tells you how to deal with the press?”

There was a long, labored sigh, and then Giancarlo replied. “He did. But not anymore.”

Gently, Giancarlo released Juliette’s hand and stepped forward, raising his hand to the handle on the balcony door. As soon as he opened it, a sea of voices greeted him. They were all talking over each other in Italian. Some were asking questions of the Prince, some sounded like they were giving newscasts into cameras.

Juliette was reminded of images of princes that lived a long time ago, back when kings and princes held more power than the press that reported on them. Here he was, greeting his people from a high vantage point. He was looking down on them, and to the casual observer, he seemed completely calm and collected. He seemed as though this were a normal thing that he did all the time.

He raised his arms, and all the talking stopped. Juliette stepped forward to the window beside the balcony so that she could look down at the scene below. Every eye was on the Prince, with some newscasters holding microphones uselessly near their lips. It was perfectly silent except for the distant sounds of the city. Juliette couldn’t believe how far away all those sounds seemed.

When Giancarlo spoke, the words flowed out of him like water. His Italian was at its most musical, and Juliette would have been captivated even had he not been talking about her.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” he began. “I won’t ask you why you have all come to my home. I think I may have a pretty good guess why that might be.”

A nervous laugh filtered through the crowd, as though they weren’t sure if they were being censured or not.

“Earlier today, I made an unfortunate mistake,” Giancarlo continued. “A conversation that should have been private was broadcast throughout a room full of reporters covering an awards ceremony for my reading program. This was, of course, an accident. Things were said about my father, and his actions, and the situation in front of me. Many of you, no doubt, have recordings of this slip.”

Juliette could swear that no one in the crowd was breathing.

“It is a good story, I admit. It will get you people to buy your newspapers and click on your links. And that was why you all became journalists, was it? So that you could give people the dirt? So that you could tear down people who have lived their entire lives trying to be someone to look up to?”

He paused for a moment to let his words sink in, and Juliette scanned the faces in the crowd, trying to get a sense of what they were thinking.

“But I have another option for you. I have a different soundbite. A
better
story. Not a more sensational one. Not one that will have your readers feeling superior. But one that might leave them feeling happy for someone else, for a change.”

He turned his head and reached out his arm, beckoning Juliette to come and join him. She did, stepping out uncertainly in front of the crowd. From the spotlight, it felt much more intense than it did from sitting by the sidelines, but she preferred it up here, looking out across the people, to the crush of the crowd when she and Giancarlo were escaping the auditorium.

She watched as the news anchors signaled to their cameramen to get a good shot of the balcony, and the photographers brought up their cameras. Those with recording devices lifted them, and those with paper put the tips of their pens on the page.

When Giancarlo spoke again, his voice rang out loud and clear, so that every word would be easily discernible from several stories below.

“I’d like to introduce you all to Juliette. She is an American. She is not the sort of woman many have speculated I would end up with. She’s certainly not the kind of woman that my father imagined for me. She’s not from another European royal family. She’s not from old money. She’s not a famous actress or model, the way some of you keep assuming I must want.

“No, she’s something much better than that. She’s herself. And I love her for that.”

Silence. Juliette couldn’t help but feel that she was being carefully examined, standing as she was on the balcony, in front of the gathered crowd. But with every word the Prince spoke, she felt more and more confident in what he was doing.

“I can see some of you out there already writing your headlines, saying things like that I love her ‘in spite’ of her being an American, or being a commoner. And I want you to know that you’re wrong; I don’t love Juliette ‘in spite’ of anything. I love her for who she
is.
She’s bright, and adventurous. She’s brave, and spontaneous. And, as you can see for yourself, she’s absolutely stunning.”

This time the laugh that went through the crowd wasn’t hesitant or scared. Juliette could see that Giancarlo’s words were resonating. But they hadn’t hit the jackpot yet, and everyone knew it. She could see them, already on edge, focusing intently on the Prince and the words coming out of his mouth.

“And, I am very pleased to announce that today is the happiest day of my life. Today, I found out that me and this incredible, beautiful woman, will be welcoming a child into the world together.”

Juliette heard an audible gasp in the crowd, and smiled despite herself. All this attention on something as yet so small! It was amazing how much power Giancarlo suddenly seemed to hold over all the people gathered below.

“I have nothing further to say at this time, and I kindly request that you respect our privacy as we celebrate this good news together. Good evening.”

With that, he turned, and walked back into the apartment, hand in hand with Juliette. Shouted questions from the reporters below followed them, but were completely ignored.