The Prince's Scandalous Baby Read online

  The anger welled up in her again and she went into the auditorium. The ceremony was just getting started.

  Juliette stood in the press section, watching the crowd. There were some introductions, mostly giving information about the program that everyone in the room (except Juliette) already knew. The children were antsy, fidgeting in their chairs.

  “When is the Prince coming?” she heard one child nearby ask.

  But then he was introduced, and thunderous applause filled the auditorium. Many of the children stood.

  Juliette didn’t want to look. As much as she’d come here specifically to see him, a part of her hesitated, now. Would she fall in his thrall the way she had before?

  She scanned the faces of those cheering and clapping for him. They admired him. They thought he was wonderful.

  She looked down sharply. They didn’t know him. Why did it matter what they thought? Maybe she would be doing all these people a favor by revealing that Prince Giancarlo wasn’t the man they thought he was. Maybe that was her responsibility.

  And then the crowd quieted, and she heard his voice. She breathed in sharply. She’d remembered how it had affected her when he’d spoken to her the first time, but she hadn’t been prepared for it to happen again. Now, as she listened, those same feelings came rushing back to the surface.

  The music. The depth. He was speaking in Italian and it was even better than when she had heard his English. She could already feel herself slipping away, forgetting so easily what he had done to her and how he’d just tried to deny her and their child.

  She tried to keep her eyes glued to her phone, pretending to take notes the way the reporters surrounding her were doing. But she couldn’t stop her gaze from slipping back up to the podium.

  As she’d come to expect, the Prince was sharply dressed. He looked like he had done when he’d been at the fountain and she was pulling away in the back of the cab. She’d have that image of him seared into her mind for the rest of her life. And, now, she’d have this one seared in there, too.

  Juliette was only dimly aware of what the Prince was saying as he congratulated the students on their achievements and told them they should be proud of themselves. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she realized he had finished his speech and the auditorium was once again erupting in applause.

  Then began the giving of the awards. It reminded Juliette of a graduation ceremony. Each of the students went up to the podium, and the Prince gave each of them a pin. The children smiled bashfully. A couple of them self-consciously remembered their manners and bowed or curtsied, which Juliette couldn’t help but find adorable. For a moment, each child had the Prince’s complete, undivided attention. And they loved it.

  “Are you OK?”

  The question had come from a gruff cameraman standing next to her. Juliette nodded, bringing her hand up to her cheeks. She hadn’t realized that a few tears had managed to seep out.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” she said. “Just allergies.”

  It was a thin excuse, she knew, but the man wasn’t really interested, so it was good enough.

  Juliette couldn’t sit and watch this anymore. Not if she wanted to preserve the anger towards the Prince that he so richly deserved.

  She went and waited in the press room, where a little area had been set up for interviews after the fact. She found somewhere to stand near the back, obscured by the various cameras and large pieces of equipment in the room.

  After the ceremony, the room flooded with press, and the interviews began as soon as the Prince arrived.

  The reporters all asked the same questions, one after another. Juliette got the sense that these were small-town internet and print news sources from each of the places the children had come from. Everyone loved a story about local children getting to meet the Prince, it seemed.

  Between each interview there was a little break while the next one got set up—the crews taking pictures and setting up video cameras if they needed them. Sometimes, the reporters who had done their interview left. Sometimes they stayed, and waited to hear if the Prince would say anything of interest in his other interviews.

  By the time they had gone through the whole process for everyone else, the room was mostly empty. Juliette had taken to slouching behind a camera so that she wouldn’t be seen. Finally, it was time.

  A voice called out for her in Italian.

  “Now we have the Americans. ACXN, are you here?”

  Juliette took a deep breath in, and let it out. It was the moment of truth.

  “Yes,” she said, stepping forward and into the light, so that Giancarlo could see her. She looked him right in the eye.

  “I’m here.”

  FOURTEEN

  His face froze. Juliette didn’t know what she’d been expecting to see there; anger, maybe? Fear? But what she got instead was just a half second of a blank expression before his public persona reasserted itself.

  “Always happy to give an interview to our friends across the ocean,” Giancarlo said smoothly. “But I’m surprised that you should take an interest in a small, local competition for children.”

  If she hadn’t known better, she would swear he’d never seen her before. If that wasn’t evidence that he was a skillful liar, Juliette didn’t know what was.

  “Well, we have our reasons,” she said. “But I’m afraid I need to speak to His Highness in private, before we get started with the interview. Is that all right?”

  She didn’t take her eyes off him for one moment, but in her peripheral vision, she saw one of the event organizers nod.

  Hoping that her body language didn’t give away the intense nerves she felt, Juliette strode towards the door. She wasn’t sure what was out there, but when she stepped out there, she found an abandoned hallway. That would have to do.

  She heard the Prince come out after her and close the door behind him. She turned, her mind reeling through all the things she’d been wanting to say since his father had told her she was just one in a long line of women that he’d used and left in the cold.

  But, instead, she felt his arms wrap around her, drawing her up close to his chest and lifting her weight from her toes. She felt like a feather, held up in his arms like that.

  “You came back.”

  His lips were close to her ears, and she could feel the air that carried his words as she spoke.

  Immediately, Juliette was launched into confusion. This was not what she’d been expecting.

  Nevertheless, she composed herself quickly. She had a plan, and she was going to follow it. She brought her arms up, gently forcing away his embrace.

  He let go, his face awash in confusion. “What’s wrong?” he asked, reluctantly letting go of her.

  It had to be a trick, Juliette decided. He had to know that here, in front of all these people, she was a ticking time bomb for his reputation. He was just trying to diffuse the situation by playing dumb.

  With this realization, the anger she’d been relying on to carry her through this conversation rose up in her again.

  “As if you don’t know,” she spat.

  He raised his hands, as though they would defend him from her words. “Please, Juliette, I don’t know. Tell me why you’re so angry. I know that when we first met, I wasn’t upfront about who I was, but…”

  A cold laugh emitted from her chest. “This isn’t about that. This is about you getting your father to do your dirty work for you. Couldn’t face the consequences of your actions yourself, could you? Just have daddy fix it. Have him make anything uncomfortable or difficult go away.”

  At those words, a change came over the Prince’s face. At the mention of his father, all the confusion was swept away by a tide of rage. He pushed it down immediately, but she saw his lip was twitching.

  When he spoke again, he did so with an even, controlled tone.

  “What do you think I had my father do for me? What do you think I had him fix?”

  With every passing second, Juliette’s c
onviction was melting. Of the two images she had in her mind of the Prince, the noble, honest one was seeming more and more like the only possible reality. What was more likely, that he was a pathological liar, or that the King was just as awful to his son as he was to strangers?

  “I emailed. I tried to call. I tried to tell you…”

  Her voice was shaking now, devoid of the righteous indignation that had shored it up just a moment ago. She felt his hands grasp her upper arms in reassurance and rub them gently with his thumbs. He was still furious—that much was clear. But he wasn’t furious at her.

  “What did you try to tell me?”

  “That night…”

  She could feel their hearts beating together. In that moment, nothing existed except the two of them. She wanted to say something clever, or smart. She wanted to find a good way of expressing it. But, in that moment, all she had was the simple truth—the way they should have dealt with each other to begin with.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  She saw the effect of her wards ripple through his whole body. It started at his eyes, widening and softening them. His mouth dropped slightly open and she saw his chest move as he took in a breath. His hands, that had been so gently stroking her arms, clenched. He was holding her tightly, his vicelike grip almost hurting her, but his mind clearly not even noticing he was doing it.

  He pulled himself up straight, and his eyes went off into the distance, as though he couldn’t make sense of what he had just heard.

  “A child,” he murmured, not to her or to anyone in particular.

  And his expression changed again. It started at his lips, which curled up into the biggest smile Juliette had ever seen. He looked back at her, his eyes dancing. He released his hands from her arms and gently cradled her face in his hands.

  “A child,” he said again, this time with a quiet, joyful intensity that made Juliette want to close the short distance between them with a kiss.

  He looked down at her belly, as though he expected to see it there.

  “I’m very early along…” she said, as though he needed a reminder.

  Juliette realized that despite herself, she was smiling right along with him. She’d been carried along with the tide of his joy. When he swept her up into his arms again, this time she wrapped her arms around him as well.

  She breathed in deeply. The smell of him took her straight back to that night—the night they’d made their child. She could feel him beside her as they stared up at the stars. She could feel his body in bed with her as they slept. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the scent of him, and how warm, safe and happy it made her feel.

  They held each other for what could have been a minute or what could have been five. Juliette couldn’t tell anymore. Time seemed to stretch and distort around them. All she knew was the feeling of his arms and the occasional murmuring from his lips.

  “I’m going to be a father.”

  “We’re having a baby.”

  “A baby…”

  After a while, she felt his muscles begin to clench and his heartrate begin to rise. He pulled back from her just enough so that he could look her in the face.

  “You said my father did something. What have I been missing?”

  The words that she’d come here specifically to say stuck in her throat. She understood how angry it would make him, and, even though the King deserved this anger, she didn’t want to see Giancarlo this way. But she had to. There was no other choice.

  “He offered me money, a lot of money, to go away, and raise the child without a father.”

  A wave of fury ripped through his body. “He did what?”

  For just a moment, Juliette was afraid for the King. As much as she hated the man, she wouldn’t want the fire in Giancarlo’s eyes to be directed at anyone.

  Before Juliette could say anything more to try to calm him, a flash of light ripped through the conversation. It was so bright that it made her squint, and she turned her head to see where it had come from.

  There, to their right, and blocking the whole of the hallway, was a group of reporters; a writhing school of sharks. The first flash of light from one of their cameras was followed by another, and another. In that moment she knew: they’d been fed today.

  Now that the two of them were looking at them, the questions began.

  Isolated words filtered through Juliette’s brain as she processed the rapid-fire interrogation: child, pregnant, announcement…

  Her eyes shot to the door to the interview room, and she saw now that it was wide open.

  “How did they…” she said.

  Her blood ran cold as she heard her own words come spilling through the open door.

  The microphone. It was still on.

  The hateful device was right next to her lips, attached to Giancarlo’s lapel.

  “Hello?” she said, slowly and clearly into the device. And, again, she heard her voice spill through the open doorway.

  She looked up at Giancarlo, who was looking down at her. He wore much the same expression as she did—panic and surprise.

  Their secret was out.

  FIFTEEN

  Juliette felt Giancarlo’s arm around her, sheltering her as he pulled her forward with him. The sound of the microphone snapping as Giancarlo roughly pulled it off him was so close to her ears, and she could hear the sound of the battery pack spinning its way across the floor and hitting a wall as he tossed it aside.

  She couldn’t make out the individual questions from any of the reporters, but she wasn’t trying anymore. They wouldn’t be answering any questions. Not now.

  There were more flashes, and they blinded Juliette’s eyes. She had to close them, and relied entirely on Giancarlo to guide her forward.

  Giancarlo pulled them into the crowd. She could hear the voices all around her, and the heat from their ravenous bodies. She felt like she was about to be smothered by them and their insatiable questions, but Giancarlo just kept moving them forward, guiding them towards safety.

  Once they were on the other side of the pack, and Juliette found she could breathe again, they picked up the pace. The reporters were still coming after them, with their questions and flashbulbs, but she looked up at Giancarlo and saw the determined look on his face, and knew that they were getting as far away from these awful people as he could take them.

  She recognized the car, and the driver. The last time she’d been in it, she’d felt like she had been betrayed. This time it was a bastion of safety.

  They slid in quickly through the open door, and closed it firmly behind them.

  “Drive,” the Prince commanded, and the car sped into motion.

  Here, in the relative quiet of the limo, Juliette could feel the frantic beating of her heart.

  “Are you all right?” Giancarlo was asking her. “Are you OK?”

  She swallowed hard and did her best to begin calming her heartbeat. “Yes,” she said. “It was only people with cameras. I’m fine.”

  She tried to sound brave and unaffected, but he saw through it, pulling her to his chest and wrapping his arms around her again. They stayed that way the entire ride.

  Being mobbed by the press and the public looked different from the outside. It looked inconvenient, maybe, but it didn’t look like it felt. In reality, Juliette realized, it felt like they were all after you. Like they all wanted a piece of you, and that after they were done taking what they thought was their due, there would be none of you left. It was claustrophobic, and terrifying.

  And it was what Giancarlo had to put up with whenever he went out in public.

  The more Juliette calmed down, the more she began to feel ashamed. She’d judged him so harshly for putting on a role for her when they first met, but she hadn’t really understood why he had done it. She hadn’t fully comprehended what being a prince really meant.

  It was only a ten-minute drive to their downtown destination. They got out of the car, Juliette still with Giancarlo’s arm firmly around her. Ther
e were no reporters here, thank goodness. The news must not have spread yet.

  It was a tall, striking residential building Juliette had walked past many times during her student days. It was, in some ways, very similar to the renovated theater she and Giancarlo had discussed on their first and only date. It was old, but with a modern flair to it.

  She’d often wondered what it looked like on the inside, and if it was as luxurious as it looked on the outside. As soon as she stepped into the lobby, she knew it was.