Beauty and the Reclusive Prince (8 page)

She pulled a scrapbook out of her bag and put it on the
table, close to his mat. She’d put it together, using the computer to blow up pictures that would illustrate her family history and help Max understand what Rosa, and the special herb, meant to them all.

“Here is a picture of my father as a young man when he had the food stand on the Via Roma. And the next picture was taken when he was finally able to open a real restaurant, the place we call Rosa, after my grandmother, the culmination of all his hard work.”

Max turned and leaned forward, taking the book from her and frowning at the first picture she’d turned to.

“This is your father?” he asked.

“Yes. Luca Casali.”

He nodded slowly. “I remember him. He used to come here when I was a child.”

Isabella stared at him. This was the first she’d heard of such a thing. “Here? To the Rossi palazzo?”

“Yes.” He looked at her, noting an element or two of resemblance to the man. “I think he cooked for us occasionally.”

She suddenly felt a bit smaller than before, reminded that she was from a different world than the one this man was from.

“Oh,” she said, looking around the cavernous room and trying unsuccessfully to picture her father here. But she took a deep breath and went back to her story.

“Here is a picture of my aunt Lisa. Do you know her, too?”

He looked at the picture and shook his head. “No. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before.”

For some reason, that was a huge relief to her.

“Good,” she muttered, turning pages. “Here are my brothers, Cristiano and Valentino.”

Max nodded, his interest only barely retained. “Nice-
looking young men,” he murmured, looking back at what was left of his pasta.

“
Very
nice-looking young men,” she corrected. She was crazy about her brothers. “They are both away. Cristiano is a firefighter. He’s in Australia right now, helping them with their terrible brush fires. And Valentino is a race-car driver. He’s always somewhere racing around trying to challenge death at every turn.”

He raised his head in surprise at the bitterness of her tone, and she smiled quickly to take the edge off it.

“So neither one is here helping run the restaurant,” he noted.

“That’s what my father has me for,” she maintained stoutly. “But I do wish they would come home more often.”

“Of course.”

“And finally, here is a picture of Rosa as it was two months ago, when we still had a plentiful stock of the basil. See how crowded it is? Doesn’t everyone look well fed and happy?”

He laughed softly at her characterization. “Yes,” he admitted. “I see what you mean.”

“And here is the restaurant now.” She plunked down a picture of the half-empty room and threw out her hands to emphasize how overwhelming the situation was. “Without the basil, no one is happy anymore.”

He groaned, turning his head and refusing to study that last picture. “Isabella, I get the point. You don’t have to rub my nose in it.”

“It seems I do.” She gazed at him fiercely. “I want you to understand how important this is. How it means everything to my father.”

“And to you.”

“To me?” She pressed her lips together and thought
about it. Hearing his words surprised her, but what surprised her even more was that he might be right.

For years she’d chafed at being the one everybody depended on, the one who had to stay behind and help with the restaurant while her brothers went off in search of adventurous lives and her cousins went off to explore places like England and Australia. Isabella was the one who stayed home and kept the flames going. Sometimes it didn’t seem fair. She’d had daydreams about leaving a note pinned to her pillow and slipping out into the night, getting on a train to Rome, flying to Singapore or Brazil, or maybe even New York. Meeting a dark, handsome stranger in an elevator. Talking over a drink in a hotel bar. Walking city streets in the rain, sharing an umbrella. All scenes snatched from romantic movies, all scenes folded into her momentary fantasies. What seemed hopeful at first eventually mutated into melancholy as it aged.

And lately, even those dreams had faded. She’d been as wrapped up in finding ways to save the restaurant as her father was. So maybe Max was right. Maybe it did mean everything to her, too.

“Maybe,” she said faintly.

What did it mean when you gave up your dreams? Did they grow mellow and rich, like fine wine, warming you even as they faded? Or did they dry up and turn to powder that blew away with the wind?

“Maybe.”

Snapping back into the moment, she looked at Max, trying to see if he’d come around yet. She grimaced lightly. It certainly didn’t look like it. Those gorgeous dark eyes with their long, sweeping lashes were as cool and skeptical as ever.

She sighed. He’d finished eating and he’d finished
looking at her scrapbook and listening to her point of view. She had only one weapon left in her arsenal. Slipping away, she hurried back to the kitchen where she pulled a large portion of a beautiful tiramisu out of the refrigerator. Rummaging in a drawer, she found a candle, which she lit and put atop it. She smiled with satisfaction, then carried it back out into the dining room, singing
“Tanti auguri a te,”
as she went. She stopped, put the blazing pastry down before him, and added,
“Buon compleanno!”

He was laughing again, only this time it was with her, not at her.

“How did you know it was my birthday?” he asked her, letting her see, for just a moment, how pleased he was.

She shrugged grandly. “You told me.”

He frowned. “When?”

“It was the first thing you said when you came into the kitchen, before you realized it was me instead of Renzo.”

“Oh, of course.”

He looked into the flame as though it fascinated him. She watched him. In the afternoon light, his scar looked like a ribbon of silver across his face. She wondered if it gave him any pain. She knew it gave him heartache. And because of that, it gave her heartache, too.

“Make a wish and blow out the candle,” she told him.

He looked at her and almost smiled. “What shall I wish for?”

She shook her head. “It’s your wish. And don’t tell me, or else it won’t come true.”

His face took on a hint of an attitude, teasing her. “Okay. I know what I’m going to wish for.”

She knew he didn’t mean anything by it; still, the implication was there, hovering in the air between them. She felt herself flushing and turned away, biting her lip.

“Go ahead. Blow it out. I won’t watch.”

“Why not?” He blew out the small fire and picked up a fork. “Anyone can watch. It’s not much of an event, you know.”

He broke off a bit of the pastry onto his fork, and, instead of taking the bite himself, he waited until she’d turned back and then popped it between her lips and left it there.

“Hey!” She ate it quickly, half laughing. “That was for you. I ate enough of it myself when I was making the thing.”

He stopped, staring at her. The tiramisu was a thing of beauty, the dark of the coffee flavor and the cocoa topping a striking contrast to the light-as-a-feather, rich, creamy layers. It was a mystery to him how anyone made such a thing, and the thought that she had created it on her own was a revelation. Her talents were legion, it seemed.

“You made it yourself?”

She nodded. Yes, she had, thinking of him the whole time and warding off Susa, who’d wanted to take over.

Max shook his head as he studied her face, searching her eyes, sketching a trail of interest along the line of her chin. “You made me that delicious pasta and you made me my birthday dessert with your own hands.” His eyes seemed to glow with a special light and his voice was so quiet, she could hardly hear him. “What can I do for you in return, Isabella?”

She met his gaze and held it. “You know what I want,” she said, almost as softly as he had spoken.

He stared into her eyes a moment longer, then his face took on an expression she couldn’t translate into anything but regret. Looking down, he began to eat and he didn’t speak again until he had finished.

“Thank you,” he said simply. “I appreciate this.”

She waited. Was he going to relent? Was he going to
tell her she could have another try at his hillside? She waited another moment, but he didn’t seem to have anything else to say, so she sighed and rose, beginning to clear the plates away.

“I suppose I’d better get all this cleaned up,” she said, wondering if she’d actually made any impression on him at all. “I’m sure you have people coming over to help you celebrate tonight.”

He looked up at her with a frown. “I don’t see visitors. Not ever. I thought you understood that.”

She stopped, staring at him. “Not anyone?”

“No. Not anyone.”

Her blue eyes betrayed her bewilderment. “Why not?”

He sighed and threw down his napkin, then said in a clipped tone, “I think that’s self-evident.”

She sank back into her chair and gaped at him. She remembered suddenly what Susa had said about his having lost his young wife years ago. She’d implied that the pain of losing her had brought on his lonely existence, but surely there was more to it than that. “You mean, because of your face?”

He merely stared at her, confirming her suspicions.

“But…” She choked, unable to comprehend his motives. “Why would you let something like that ruin your life? You need people around you, you need…”

She stopped before she said something ill-advised. He needed love. That much was obvious. He needed a woman, someone to care for him and make him happy. Every man needed that.

But did she have any business saying such a thing? Of course not. Especially since she needed a man just as badly, and look how she’d been unable to take care of that little problem for years now. She didn’t even have the excuses he had. So who was she to talk?

But she couldn’t leave the subject alone.

“If I were like you,” she said, pointing to her own injured eye, “I would have hidden myself away and we would have had to close down the restaurant for the last week and a half.”

He half smiled at her characterization and he looked at her black eye almost affectionately.

“Did you get any reaction from your customers?”

“Of course.” She stared at him again. He was a prince, rich and probably famous in certain circles, powerful, with resources she could only dream of. So how had he let this happen? How had others around him let it go this far? How had he become such a recluse, and how could he stand it for so long?

“I get plenty of reaction,” she continued slowly, “lots of double takes, people turning back to have another look at me. Then I get the opposite, people who notice, then look away quickly as though thinking I must have been beaten up and would be embarrassed if they acknowledged seeing the evidence of it.”

He nodded, recognizing the experience from his own ventures out into the world.

“I even have little children making fun of me in the street.” She tossed her hair back with a defiant snap of her head. “But who cares? That’s their problem.”

He gazed at her in complete admiration. She was a tough one. She could handle what life threw at her in ways he didn’t seem capable of. But there was so much more to his situation that she didn’t know about. “Our conditions are not comparable,” he said.

She shook her head. “Maybe not to the degree, but the basics are very much the same.”

He frowned, beginning to feel a bit of backlash against
her attitude. “You don’t understand.” He glanced at her, then away. “You don’t know why this happened.”

She leaned forward, her elbow on the table, her chin in her hand, ready to hear, ready to understand. “So tell me.”

His gaze darkened. For just a moment he saw it all again, the trees rushing past his window, the huge old bridge standing right in his path, the flash as they hit, the flames, the fire, the horrible sound of metal against concrete. They said no one should have lived through that crash. And there were times when he’d cursed his own powers of survival.

Looking up, he spoke dismissively. “No.”

Her eyes widened. “Why not?”

His own eyes were as cold as they’d ever been as he turned to gaze at her again. “It’s none of your business.”

He was right, of course, but she drew back as though he’d slapped her.

“Oh.”

She rose again and turned toward the door. He’d hurt her with those words, with that manner. She’d thought they were becoming friends and he’d shown her just how far from that they really were. She was not allowed into his real life. Of course, what had she expected? This was a cold, cruel world, after all.

“I’ll just get out of your way, then,” she said stiffly. She walked firmly out of the room, waiting at each step for him to call her back. But he didn’t say a word.

It only took her a few minutes to get her things washed up and ready to go, but she banged the pots a bit more than necessary. She was angry. There was no denying it. After all she’d done, all she’d said, and he still didn’t understand!

She was packing her supplies away in her backpack when he came into the kitchen again. She looked up hopefully, but his eyes were still cold as ice.

“Where did you park your car?” he asked.

She went back to putting her full attention on what she was doing, stuffing the last of her utensils into the bag. “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

He erased the distance between them and took her chin in his hand, forcing her to look up at him. “I’ve told you I won’t have you wandering around the grounds on your own,” he reminded her sternly. “I’ll drive you to your car.”

A captive, she stared back at him without saying anything. She wasn’t fooled. He wanted to see where it was that she was sneaking in. Good thing she’d parked a distance away from the chink in the wall. If he was going to find her secret, he was going to have to survey the wall himself, brick by brick.

“I’ll do fine on my own,” she said again.

“I’m going to drive you. I brought my car around while you were cleaning up.”

Slowly, deliberately, she pushed his hand away from her chin. “If you insist,” she said coldly.