The Prince's Scandalous Baby (8 page)

TWELVE

“Won’t you come in, dear?”

The King’s words were kind, but his tone was not. Juliette recognized his voice immediately as the one she had heard on the phone. The icy chill it had had before was only more intense in person.

She followed his gesturing hand inside the house, and wandered forward as he led her into the salon.

The view was still amazing. The frescoes—the ones she’d been too upset to look at on her way out—were easier to see in the daylight than they had been at night. They were beautiful. She found herself fixating on them. Something gorgeous in the midst of all this uncertainty. It was a small comfort.

“Please,” the King said, pulling her attention away from the walls. “Won’t you sit down?”

Two large, uncomfortable-looking wooden chairs had been set in the middle of the living room. They hadn’t been here before, Juliette knew. She imagined they’d been brought in just for the purpose. They seemed out of place in the midst of all the signs of renovation around them.

She sat in one of them, finding it exactly as uncomfortable as it had looked.

“You are Juliette, correct?”

Juliette cleared her throat to speak. It was the first time she’d spoken since she’d told the driver where to go, and her voice sounded weak even to her own ears.

“Yes, I am.”

“And you’ve been attempting to contact my son, have you not?”

She nodded. Her eyes were large, she knew. It probably made her look even more out of place than she already felt, but she couldn’t change it. Something about the man and the situation terrified her.

“Ah, what am I doing?” the King said. His tone had gotten a little bit friendlier—or at least he’d tried to make it so. To Juliette, the malevolent tones underneath still rang through. “I’ve been drinking a lovely Pinot as I’ve been waiting for you. Would you like a glass?”

He was putting on a show as though he had just remembered he had it on hand, and that it would be a good thing to offer to a guest. He hadn’t forgotten. It wasn’t a coincidence. Juliette felt her blood boil just as it had the last time she was here. Only this time, her ire was directed at a more deserving target.

“No, thank you,” she said, quietly. This was a trap.

He smiled at her widely, but not kindly. “I’m afraid I insist! Any friend of my son’s is a friend of mine, and I always like to share an afternoon glass of wine with my friends. Will you refuse the King of Campania?”

“Why don’t you just come out and say it?” Juliette said. She could feel her hands trembling as she clasped them in her lap.

“You want to speak plainly? Very well, then. It will save us both some time.”

He set down the glass he’d been offering her on the floor beside him. A servant appeared from nowhere and whisked it away. The King’s servants were probably all like that, Juliette imagined—chosen for their ability to just fade into the background.

“You are not to first girl with a baby in her belly to try to come crying to the Prince.”

She didn’t like his way of talking. It was grand and cruel at the same time. But then, it was the content of his words that Juliette found most objectionable. If the Prince had other children, where were they? Was he always so careless? Why had
she
been so careless?

She had so many questions, but she only had space in the air between them for one.

“My child is going to have brothers and sisters?”

The King’s eyes narrowed, as though he couldn’t tell if she was serious or not.

“I only said that other women have come here claiming the same. Who knows? It might be true. My son might have a whole stable full of children. Or, it might not be. You might be telling the truth, or, you might not be.”

He didn’t know her. He didn’t where she was from or how she had been raised. He didn’t know how insulting he was being. Juliette tried to keep this in mind as her anger fought her sense of propriety.

The King, for his part, just shrugged. “I am not an unkind man. I understand the impulse. If you are going to have a child, why not go through the men you’ve seen recently and pick the best. And my son may be a lot of things, but he is a prince. A golden opportunity. I don’t think most of the girls do it on purpose. I don’t think they are so calculating.”

Something about the way he said it made Juliette feel like he was targeting her with that last phrase, but she didn’t rise to the bait. He wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth any of the emotions that were rocking through her body.

“In any case, it does not matter. We have wealth, and privilege, and if the cost of that wealth or privilege is that whatever little flower my son feels like spending a night with wants to show up later claiming she has a souvenir, then that’s just the way it is. Paying for such a thing, whether it’s right or wrong, just makes good business sense to me.”

The King held out his hand, and another servant appeared. Juliette couldn’t tell for sure if it was the same one, or another one. Her attention was drawn to the slip of paper that the man put in the King’s hand.

“This is the standard amount. It is non-negotiable. We will not haggle with you. If you cash this check, you will be agreeing to certain non-disclosure contingencies.”

This time there was a servant at her elbow, instead. This one was a woman. Juliette wondered if it were the same woman who had spoken to her on the phone, but it wasn’t the time to ask.

The woman gave her a pen and a clipboard with papers on it. Juliette didn’t want to read it. She didn’t even want to entertain the notion.

“Payment for what?” she asked hesitantly. “You want me to…”

The King looked shocked. “We want you to do nothing except what is the best for you and the baby. Raise it however you wish. Tell the child its father was whoever you see fit—anyone except for the Prince.”

She was angry, now, but she remembered what her anger had brought her last time she was here. She’d been foolish, and made a decision she regretted. She owed it to herself not to do the same again.

She could at least read the document, she thought. It would be foolish not to. But she only got as far as the first line before she had to stop.

“That’s a lot of money,” she said, her mouth left hanging open when the words had left her mouth.

The corner of the King’s lip twitched, just slightly. “Maybe for you.”

He didn’t need to be so snide, she thought. But she wasn’t in a position to argue.

The money would mean a lot. It would change her life. Far beyond just covering the costs of raising the child, it would mean getting out of her student debt, as well as the debt she’d taken on by making this last-minute trip. It would give her a chance she could never hope to have without it. It would open up all her possibilities.

But even as she let her eyes flow over the rest of the document, she couldn’t help but think of the look on the Prince’s face when he was offering her his car to go back into the city, and asking her to meet him later, once she’d calmed down. If he’d really wanted nothing to do with her, why did he go to the fountain? Why did he wait?

“Does the Prince know you’re here? Does he know you’re offering me this?”

The King laughed, and Juliette was startled by the sound of the servants scattered almost invisibly around the room laughing along.

A grin still tugging at his lips, the King leaned forward in his chair. “Tell me, how did you meet my son?”

“That’s our business,” she said. She wasn’t sure why, but it seemed like that night was the only private thing she had left with the Prince—his father was in on everything else.

“I bet he told you a story, didn’t he? That he was a commoner of some kind. A teacher, maybe. Or some kind of craftsman. And he’d just had some back luck, so you felt bad for him, though he didn’t feel bad for himself. That interested you. That made you want to see more of him, to find out what it was that made him so OK with whatever bad thing had just happened.”

Juliette froze. She tried not to let her face show how accurately the King had surmised the circumstances of their meeting. She didn’t want him to see.

Unfortunately, he seemed to be able to tell, anyway.

“And then when he finally tells you the story, it’s something altruistic. Something noble. So there you are, just having met this common man who is so bright and honorable. So why wouldn’t you follow him wherever he asks? And why wouldn’t you sleep with him?”

With every work the King spoke, Juliette’s heart sank a little further down in her chest. She was no longer disappointed with herself for storming out when she learned the Prince’s secret; she must have been able to tell, even then. She must have known instinctively that he was like this—that she was just one in a long line of poor, gullible women.

The King glanced at his expensive watch and raised his eyebrows. “But all of that is the past, and what matters now is the future. I must insist you sign the paper, so that I can give you the check. Don’t worry, it’s only an agreement saying that if you cash the check, you are bound to those conditions. I don’t have time to sit and wait while you dither and say you couldn’t possibly. I’d rather just skip to the part where you see sense.”

The pen felt heavy in her fingers. She was overwhelmed, and still feeling nauseous. She was exhausted from the flight. She didn’t feel capable of making this kind of decision.

But the King was standing, now, and walking over to her, holding the check out to her with one hand, while holding the other out expectantly for the clipboard. And, as he’d said, this wasn’t a decision. This was just a contingency, to make sure that if she
did
decide to take the money, she would never need to see this awful man or his entourage ever again.

She cleared her throat, and time seemed to stand still.

She signed.

The King grasped the clipboard and let go of the check. He didn’t even stay to see if it would fall fully into her hands before leaving.

“Stay as long as you wish,” she heard the man’s icy voice from the doorway. “When you’ve gotten yourself together, the driver waiting by the gate will take you to the bank, or wherever you wish to go.”

She heard the huge front door swing closed decisively. He was gone. She was alone again.

***

Juliette had thought the King was simply being condescending by telling her that she could stay as long as she wanted. But when she thought about leaving the palace, she realized it was probably just a concession made from experience. She was overwhelmed.

She tried to stand, but felt weak on her feet and sat back down again. She’d just gone through four years of college, and had thought that made her an adult. She was fully capable, she’d thought, of making adult decisions. But now, she was faced with one black-and-white decision that would determine the rest of her life, and she had to face it sick, exhausted, and in a place that was the site of both the best and worst moments of her life.

She sat for a while, before her stomach made her run to the bathroom. When she was finished being sick, she washed her hands and splashed water on her face, gazing at herself in the opulent mirror. She would have to live with the consequences of what she did now for the rest of her life. Which choice would make it easier to look at herself?

Juliette shook her head. This was not the place to make her decision. The King had said she could stay as long as she wanted, but that didn’t mean she
should
. And, after all, the longer she stayed here, the more likely it would be that her willpower would falter, and she’d end up going upstairs to see the room where it had all happened.

No, she needed to get out of here.

Decisively, she headed out of the house and down to the driveway. There, as the King had promised, was a car and driver. The gleam of the limo and the little Campanian flag on the antenna, fluttering in the sea breeze, brought back memories. But she pressed them down. She needed to hold on to the semblance of composure she’d gained in the bathroom.

She told the driver the name of her hotel, but even as she said the words, she knew she couldn’t face the idea of staying there until her flight back tomorrow morning. She’d spent all night staring at those walls—and that was before she’d had this decision to make.

No, she would walk. The nervous energy was gone, now, but it had been replaced by a writhing sea of emotions. She needed to think. She needed to work it all out. So she had the driver drop her off in the middle of town.

As Juliette watched the limo pull away and leave her alone, she couldn’t help but smile. This was what she’d been doing the first time she’d met Giancarlo—walking around the city to try and clear her mind. If there was anything right in the world, she’d end up meeting him again.

Of course, life was never that neat and tidy, so she didn’t expect it to happen. But she couldn’t help the thought of it coming up in her mind again and again as she walked.

On the one hand, everything the King had said rang true. He knew his son’s way of seducing women. He’d known, even before she’d walked in the room, what Juliette had wanted to talk to him about. His opinion of his son matched with some parts of reality, and with the rumors she’d read on the internet.

Juliette sighed. If that was who the Prince really was, she’d be happy to be done with that man. She’d be glad to not have to see him again, or have anything to do with him—even without the money. She’d rather do it on her own than have to try and deal with the man the King had described.

But then again, it felt like there was something missing. The Giancarlo the King had described didn’t feel like the same man who had stood surrounded by antique maps, telling her that he admired her; the man who was excited to see the world, but also cautious. The man who had sat on the wall of the palace, reaching his hand down to help her up like they were children sneaking around and it was all one great adventure.

And
that
man? That was the sort of father that Juliette wanted for her child. That was the sort of man that all the money in the world couldn’t buy away from her.

That was the image that kept echoing through her mind. If she took the money, she never would never see that man again. The stipulations of the contract were very clear. Could she live with herself if she took the money, having never found out which man he was? If he really was the lying playboy who had left a string of broken hearts scattered behind him, could she live with knowing that she would never be able to give him a piece of her mind?

She found herself at the Fountain of Neptune. She hadn’t meant to come this way. Her feet had taken her here.

With slow steps, she walked to where she had last seen Giancarlo, when she had been sitting up in the back of the cab looking out the back window. She looked in the direction the cab would have been. Was it a smile of recognition that she had seen as she drove away? She tried to figure it out, standing there. Tried to imagine being him, surrounded by the growing crowd. If the cab was just
there
…

But, as she looked, she saw something else entirely. She saw Giancarlo. Not in person, but on a flickering television screen. On twelve of them, actually.

Swiftly, Juliette went to the window of the TV repair shop with all the images of the Prince spilling from its screens. She’d seen newscasts like this before. It was a puff piece, about the Prince’s support for a reading initiative in grade schools throughout the region. Juliette could hear the newscaster going on and on about it.

If Giancarlo was the sort of man his father said he was, then this was all an act; a stunt curated by his PR team. If he was the man that Juliette thought she had seen, it was genuine. She reached forward, and felt the palms of her hands, warm and sweating from the hot afternoon, press against the cold glass.

She gazed at the images on the screens, trying to interpret them.

“Who are you?” she asked aloud, senseless to how absurd she might look to any passersby who might hear her.

The newscaster’s words droned on, Juliette barely listening until she heard the date and the words “Naples” and “awards ceremony” all said aloud in the same sentence.

She snapped out of her reverie and stepped back, listening closely. The newscaster spoke quickly, but her Italian was clear, and Juliette had no problem following.

“…will be very exciting for the children. The top two boys and girls from each school will get to meet the Prince at the grand concert hall tonight, as he pins their award on them. This is the second annual awards ceremony that the Prince has organized. Last year…”

The newscaster went on, but Juliette was no longer interested in what she had to say; her feet were already carrying her towards the nearest taxi stand. She had to get back to the hotel. She needed to get ready.

Finally, she had a plan.