Daniel ran into the kitchen. “Daddy, Daddy! You’ve been gone so long!”
The boy raced right up to him. Rafael bent down and instinctively caught him as he jumped. Then he pulled him close and smiled at him.
“I am here now,” he said.
“I missed you.”
He stared into familiar brown eyes. “I have missed you as well.”
“Look what I got.” Daniel held out his wrist and rubbed a small metal band. “Uncle Joe says real soldiers wear one just like this. Now I’m a real soldier.”
The tracking device. Of course. “Very nice,” he told his son.
“Come play with me,” Daniel said. “We can play soldiers and then I want to ride my pony and then read a story. Five stories.”
“That is much to accomplish. Do you know how many stories five is?”
“A lot.”
Rafael chuckled. “It is indeed.”
The boy felt good to hold, he thought. He’d been telling the truth when he’d said he’d missed Daniel. In a matter of weeks, the boy had become important to him. In time he, Rafael, would have to return to Calandria and then what would happen? Would he truly be forced to leave Daniel behind?
Mia walked into the kitchen. Rafael stared as need flooded him. Not just to have her in his bed, but to talk to her, be with her. Ridiculous. He would stop needing her this instant.
“It’s a little hot for pony riding,” she said from the doorway to the kitchen. “Let’s leave that for next time. But you can play soldier in the family room. I cleared off a big space. You can have a whole war.”
“Mommy, no!” Daniel protested. “I want to ride my pony. I’m the heir and I said.”
“I think your mother is right,” Rafael said. “It’s not good to be out when it is so hot. Not good for you or Gaspare.”
Daniel pouted for a moment, then squirmed to be let down. “I’ll get more soldiers. I’ll get them all.”
“Sounds like fun,” Mia said. She turned her back and returned to the family room.
Rafael followed her. All right, perhaps he had expected some acknowledgment of him for taking her side, but if she chose not to give it, he would survive.
He found pieces of white satin scattered on the coffee table. There were several bags of open beads nearby.
“I did not know you sewed,” he said.
“I don’t,” Mia told him as she sat down and picked up a small piece of satin.
The Grands came in and took their seats across from Mia. Each of them went to work on a larger piece of satin without speaking to him.
“We’re beading a vest for David,” Grammy M said grudgingly into the silence. “It’s a tradition in the Marcelli family. Generally we bead the bride’s wedding dress. Actually, we make the whole thing by hand. Katie’s in charge. She made all the girls’ dresses, which was a lot of work, let me tell you.”
“Mary!” Tessa snapped. “He doesn’t need to know.”
Mia set down her beadwork and looked at him. “Maybe he does. Maybe he needs to understand that a family doesn’t have to be royal to have traditions. Maybe then he could start to understand how much we all matter to each other and know cutting off an arm or a leg would hurt a lot less than losing a member of that family.”
There was another pause, but this one felt much more awkward. Three pairs of eyes glared at him. He felt their combined anger as it grew and moved closer to him.
For the first time, he understood that he hadn’t just upset Mia-he’d alienated the entire Marcelli family and anyone remotely associated with them. If they had their way, he would disappear, never to be heard from again.
He’d faced adversity before. Many people resented who he was, pointedly reminding him that he was a prince only by an accident of birth. In school, other boys had wanted to be smarter or stronger or faster. They had taken great pleasure in defeating him in the classroom or on the playing field. There were women who wanted to be with him simply to say they had, and others who wanted to make him fall in love so that they could break his heart. Simply because he was Prince Rafael of Calandria.
But this was different. This was personal. The Marcellis hadn’t especially cared he was a prince before, and that title certainly didn’t influence them now. They hated him for what he had done. For his acts, not his title.
Which meant they could have liked him for the same reason.
Over the past few days, he had wrestled with his own temper and frustration. He resented having to come up with a new plan and take more time to achieve what he wanted. He’d never once considered what he might have lost.
Not just Daniel, but all of them. Mia and the rest of the Marcellis.
Did he care?
He couldn’t answer the question. Shouldn’t he be able to instantly say no? He was here for a single purpose. Nothing else could get in the way.
Yet sometime in the past few weeks Daniel and his family had become entwined. He wasn’t sure he could have one without the other. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.
If he lost, he would lose more than the heir, his son. He would lose his family and the woman he had never been able to forget.
14
“Back to the hotel?” Oliver asked as he and Rafael walked toward the limo.
It was the logical choice, Rafael thought. He had finished his visit with his son. It wasn’t as if he had business in town or knew other people.
Perhaps that was the problem. He had too much time on his hands. At home there were matters of state and different organizations to occupy his day. But here, now that he was in exile at that ridiculous hotel, he had nothing.
“A computer store,” he said. “I will purchase a laptop and work from the hotel.”
Oliver nodded and opened the rear door of the limo. Rafael glanced back at the house. No one stood at a window watching him go. No doubt the women inside had carefully distracted his son so Daniel would not miss him. He had been in the boy’s life for such a short time. Would he now be forced out of it?
He knew that technically Mia couldn’t exclude him forever, but there were subtle ways to make him matter less. If he had always been in the boy’s life, she would have a more difficult time, but he had not. He was new and exciting, but not permanent. Not yet.
The thought of not seeing Daniel, of not watching him grow from a small boy to an active teenager, made his chest ache. The sensation was unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
“Your highness?” Oliver prompted, still holding open the door.
Rafael took a step forward then stopped. He would not lose his son, nor would he lose Mia.
But how? How would he make things better with her? How could he…
A bit of information came into his brain. Before flying out to meet the Marcellis, he had asked his staff to research them thoroughly. If he recalled correctly, Brenna Marcelli had had a rocky start with her husband. Nicholas Giovanni had planned to secretly buy the Marcelli vineyard and strip the family of everything. His plan had been discovered in time to stop it.
Yet Brenna had still married him. So she had forgiven him.
“The winery,” Rafael said as he stepped into the limo. “The main offices.”
“Yes, your highness.”
Brenna’s office was large and cluttered, with a huge map of the winery filling one wall. The massive desk had a heavy masculine style, and when Rafael entered the room and saw it, he wondered if it had belonged to her grandfather.
She was on the phone. When she glanced up and recognized him, her entire body stiffened. Her expression closed, her mouth tightened, and she quickly ended the call.
“Get your slimy royal ass out of my office,” she said as she came to her feet and pointed at the door. “I don’t want to see you or talk to you. I hope you get some horrible wasting disease brought on by a congenital defect inherent in lying, selfish, bastard princes.”