Wifed By The Sheikh Read online

  Dear Gabriella,

  Please see below the details of your flight tomorrow evening. You will be flown from New York to Florence on the eleven o’clock flight, if you so choose.

  We hope to see you soon.

  Cordially,

  Giorgio Catalli

  Beneath this was a very real-looking itinerary. Gaby frowned at it for a moment until she realized that her lengthy absence from the feast would not have gone unnoticed, and she tucked her phone away before heading back to the family table. Every head turned to look at her when she returned. She sat down, waiting for the inevitable questioning.

  “What took you so long?” her mother asked. The family had already started in on dessert. Had the phone call really taken that long?

  Gaby shook her head in bewilderment. “Something really weird. Some Italian official inviting me to participate in an Italian-American exchange to ‘build better relations between our two countries.’”

  “Sounds like a scam to me,” Luisa said, taking a bite of chocolate pie.

  Gaby shrugged. “That’s what I thought, too, only the man asked for me by name and knew that I was second generation Italian. He said you’d written to the Italian government, Nonna,” Gaby said, looking searchingly at her grandmother.

  The older woman’s eyes lit up at the reference to her homeland. “Of course I have! Have you seen the way they run things there? Most unprofessional, I must say. I still keep tabs on those officials. I won’t see them ruining my home country.”

  “When would they send you out, Gaby?” Michael asked, then.

  Gaby swallowed and looked at her parents across the table. “Tomorrow, after my shift.”

  “Tomorrow?!” her mother exclaimed.

  Gina looked frantically at her husband, whose expression was calm. He watched his daughter for a moment.

  “Is this something you would like to do, Gaby? Once the restaurant is yours, you will not have much time for travel.”

  His tone was sad, as though the years of missed opportunities lay just beneath the surface of his thoughts. It scared Gaby. Would she have that mournful look in her eyes someday, from all the opportunities she’d missed while working her life away?

  “It is, Papa,” she said, her voice soft.

  Her father stared at her for another moment, then smiled broadly. “Then Gabriella will represent us in Italia, starting tomorrow!”

  The table erupted in cheers as Gaby’s family patted her on the back and began telling her all the things they’d seen when they’d made their own vacations to Italy.

  “You are my only grandchild who has not seen our homeland, Gabriella,” Nonna said, her eyes moist. “Now you will get the chance to experience the beauty of Italy. I am so grateful. I will have to write them another letter.”

  “But who will waitress for us while she’s away? We don’t even know how long she’ll be gone,” Gaby could hear her mother whispering to her father.

  Gaby’s stomach sank. The excitement of her family had made her believe for a moment that going to Italy would be a great idea, but the worry in her mother’s eyes made her hesitate.

  “We’ll figure it out, Gigi. Don’t worry,” her father said warmly. “Gaby deserves this opportunity. And besides, maybe she’ll meet a nice Italian man while she is there.”

  “She’d better,” Gina mumbled, and Gaby fought back a flare of annoyance. Could she not simply go to Italy and enjoy herself? Did it always have to be about finding a man?

  “You have to visit the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore,” her Uncle Tony said, smiling at her. “It’s absolutely stunning.”

  “Sure thing,” Gaby said, suddenly overwhelmed. She’d never stepped a toe outside of New York, and now she was headed for an international trip to Italy? How had this happened so fast?

  “Don’t be scared, Gaby. Life has a way of throwing wonderful surprises our way. You deserve a little happiness in your life, don’t you agree?” Tony said.

  “I am happy,” Gaby said, automatically.

  Tony placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I know. But you’re also a little stuck, and I can see that, even if your parents can’t. Go to Florence. See the world. Then when you come back you can tell all of us where to go the next time we travel there.”

  Gaby smiled at her uncle, glad for his reassurance. He always knew what to say.

  Everyone had eaten their pie and sat back in their chairs with full bellies. Most of Gaby’s nieces and nephews were fast asleep on the booth chairs surrounding the place by the time everything was cleaned up and put away. Gaby and her parents wished everyone a good night and a fond farewell before they left, carrying sleeping children to the cars before they got cold.

  Gaby waved goodbye to her family, kissing each of her parents before she headed upstairs to her own bedroom.

  She supposed she would have to pack, should she actually decide to go.

  THREE

  (Adela)

  “And now announcing, Signorina Adela Barbarini.”

  Adela was frantic as she stared wildly around the backstage area. It was her debutante ball, the single most important day of her life, and he wasn’t here to escort her. He had promised he would, and yet there she stood, alone, about to embarrass herself in front of family, friends, and Italian dignitaries. She fought back tears, desperate not to ruin her makeup and make it even worse.

  The announcer cleared his throat. “Ahem. Announcing, Signorina Adela Barbarini!” he repeated, his voice a little forced.

  There was nothing to be done for it. Adela squared her shoulders and walked onto the platform by herself, facing a large audience of bewildered faces. As she walked down the stairway to the elaborate ballroom, she stared out in defiance, all the while cursing the name of Prince Luca of Campania. She heard whispers as she approached the bottom step and walked through a parted sea of well-dressed people, most of whom she didn’t know.

  “Wasn’t Luca meant to escort her?” a man in the audience whispered.

  The woman next to him rolled her eyes. “What do you expect? The Prince is hardly reliable. She should have chosen a better escort.”

  “Better than a prince?” the man hissed, and the two of them faced forward and smiled as Adela passed, nodding politely and smiling at her.

  Adela tried to ignore the forced sympathy. She imagined she would find her name in the gossip columns tomorrow as the jilted date of a philandering prince. The woman was correct. She had chosen poorly.

  Prince Luca was nothing but a cad and a liar, and everyone knew it.

  FOUR

  (Luca)

  “Wake up!”

  “What?” Luca mumbled, rolling into his down pillow and burying his face there. Whoever was calling him needed to go away, and fast. He was in no mood for visitors.

  “I said wake up, Luca!”

  Through the fog of his hangover, Luca realized that the voice pestering him belonged to his mother, who almost never deigned to visit.

  Luca tilted his head and cracked open an eyelid, refusing to release his grip on his pillow. His mother stood there with her arms crossed, looking miffed.

  “Mother? What on earth are you doing here? I’m sleeping,” Luca groaned.

  To Luca’s surprise, his mother gripped the edge of his down comforter and ripped it from the bed, tossing it on the floor.

  “Hey!” Luca cried, sitting up and instantly regretting it. He rested his elbows on his knees, cradling his forehead in his hand. He winced as he glanced up at his mother. “What did I do that is deserving of this behavior?” he asked, hoping to get whatever chiding she had over with so he could get back to blissful unconsciousness.

  Queen Felicia tapped her perfectly shod foot in annoyance, crossing her arms once again as she glared at him. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

  Luca racked his brain, trying to think. There was a very large pool to choose from, when it came to the category of “What Did Luca Do Wrong Today?”

  After a few moments of sile
nce, his mother huffed. “Lady Adela’s coming of age event? That was today. And you were meant to be her escort.”

  Luca groaned. His bare chest and legs were turning cold without a blanket, and he reached for a sheet to cover himself. “I’m sorry, I forgot,” he said, shrugging.

  Queen Felicia threw her hands up in the air, pacing wildly about the room. “You forgot! Of course, Prince Luca forgets. He is a feeble-minded, simple fool.”

  “Hey! That’s not true,” Luca said, his tone hurt.

  His parents had been so hard on him, the only child, since he could remember. How could they blame him for wanting to be free, even just a little bit?

  Felicia turned to him, her stare filled with daggers. “Is it not? You, who cannot remember a simple appointment that will now ruin a girl’s reputation for years to come. Adela will now struggle to ever find a good suitor, since a prince has publicly stood her up on the most important day of her young life. You are a selfish fool, Luca, and I am ashamed of you today.”

  With that, Queen Felicia strode from the room, slamming the door behind her.

  Luca winced at the sound. His head was swimming. A moment later, his assistant arrived with a silver tray sporting a glass of cool water and some pain killers.

  “For your head, sir,” Luca’s valet, Rinaldo, said.

  Luca took the pills and tossed them back, gulping the water until the glass was empty.

  “What are the plans for today, Rinaldo?” Luca asked, desperate to busy his mind from the episode that had just occurred. His mother thought very little of him, and sometimes he believed she had the right to do so.

  Luca hadn’t exactly been the ideal heir to the title of Prince of Campania. At twenty-seven, he’d been deemed more of an international embarrassment and serial dater of European royalty. He went through princess after princess, dating them for a few weeks or months, before losing them to his wild behavior. It had got especially bad when Princess Ana had caught him drunk on a yacht with several girls, doing things that he would rather not have had published in the National Enquirer.

  That was the last royal princess to ever bother with him. Once that story went viral, he had found it impossible to find a relationship with anyone, much less another royal. It was why he had agreed to escort Adela; he’d figured he could meet some debutantes and try that avenue, but on the night, when it came down to it, he’d found he didn’t want to attend some stuffy event with a sixteen-year-old, and he’d gotten drunk with his friends and forgot about it instead.

  Maybe his mother was right. He could be quite the fool.

  “You have a polo match with your former University of Bologna