Italian Groom, Princess Bride

He pounded a fist against his forehead. By now she was on the helicopter winging her way toward Castelmare. With no time to lose he raced back to the farmhouse.

After swearing his uncle to secrecy, he explained he had to go back to Castelmare on an emergency before the day was out. Six hours later his commercial flight landed in Nice, France. He rented a car at the airport, then drove over the speed limit to the capitol city of Capriccio in Castelmare fifteen miles away.

Before he did anything else he needed to talk to his father who would still be on the palace grounds. Since the death of Dizo’s mother, Guido never left for home before seven in the evening.

When he walked in to the greenhouse, three pairs of Fornese eyes widened to see him appear unannounced. His father’s slid away. Guilt had a way of revealing itself.

Over the years Dizo had worked out the important issues with his father, but he’d never been truly angry with him until now.

He flashed his brothers a speaking glance. “If you don’t mind, I have to talk to Papa alone.”

Both looked distinctly uncomfortable before they nodded and left, closing the doors behind them.

Dizo moved closer. “I’ve always been aware of your dislike for Princess Regina, but you chose the wrong day to tell her I left Castelmare because of my nonexistent impending marriage. Do you have any conception of the pain she was in after her father’s funeral yesterday?”

His father’s dark head with only a sprinkling of gray lifted abruptly. “How do you know what I said to her?”

“She told me.” In person. In Technicolor. Dizo was still in shock.

“Of course. The telephone.” He slapped his own leg. “That young woman never leaves you alone. Because she’s the principessa of Castelmare, no place is far enough away from her, is it.”

After what had happened to Dizo last night, he couldn’t honestly answer his father.

“I may not have your college education, figliomio, but I’m not as unintelligent as you think I am.”

“That’s your assessment, not mine.”

“Basta!” He shook his head in fury. “It’s exactly because I knew how hard it was on her I said what I did.” His index finger lifted, a sure sign a lecture was coming. “Since I took this job here sixteen years ago, I’ve seen her traipse after you like a lovesick puppy and you allowed it knowing nothing could ever come of it.”

Tell me something I don’t know, Papa. Gina’s destiny had been decreed the moment her royal parents knew another royal baby was on the way.

“Before your mother died, she made me promise I would put a stop to it, but I couldn’t persuade you to go back home to college. You planned your life so you could be around the princess. You think I don’t know you could have made triple the money doing another kind of part-time job away from the grounds?

“Only one man has ever mattered to her besides her father. That man is you!

“When she came hightailing it in here yesterday after the funeral looking for you, I took matters into my own hands. She’ll be marrying King Nicolas of Pedrosa in the very near future. As long as you finally showed the good sense to leave Castelmare for good, I decided to make certain the umbilical cord got cut once and for all!”

Dizo inhaled sharply. “I’m afraid it didn’t work.”

“Obviously not. You’re back here in twenty-four hours looking like the very devil despite my big brother’s news that you were with a woman last night. What did the princess do? Order you back to the palace on some excuse about the plantings at her father’s grave?”

He experienced more pain remembering the day they’d talked about her father’s love of pine trees and how they could be incorporated when everything else was more tropical. It hadn’t been that long ago.

“She did worse than that, Papa. It’s the reason I’ve come to you for advice.”

“My advice?” he mocked. “Since when did you ever want it?”

“Since this morning when I woke up to find her in my bed.”

A stunning silence followed.

Aghast at the revelation, his father paled and staggered over to the chair to sit down. The two men stared long and hard at each other. “She showed up at the farmhouse?” he asked incredulously.

“I’m afraid so. I left Zitta’s bar around two. Nothing else registered after that except that I had this fantastic dream about her. When I woke up, there she was.”

A ruddy color spilled into his father’s cheeks. “Did you—you know what I mean—”

Yes, Dizo knew esattamente what he meant.

“I don’t really know. She still had her clothes on.” Though admittedly not all. “I was wearing my pants and nothing else.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” he muttered.

Dizo had been thinking about that and had come to the same conclusion. “That’s why I’m here.”

His father wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Did my brother see her?”

“He saw someone in the bed, but I got her out through the window before he could identify her. Unfortunately you and I both know her bodyguards had to be close by.”

“Si, and bodyguards talk.” A serious moan came out of his father before he crossed himself.

“That’s all I’ve been thinking about. I told her to wait for me inside the fruit shed, but when I drove up in the truck, she was gone.”

He jumped to his feet. “It was a trick! She knows every one of them.”

And they work every time.

Dizo rubbed the back of his neck. “Whatever it was, it got me back here on the double.”

His father started to pace, then stopped in front of Dizo. “You don’t have a choice but to go to Lucca and tell him the whole truth. Once King Nicolas finds out—” He shook his head in despair. “If there’s any chance at all you impregnated the princess, her brother has to know before anyone else! That’s one thing the bodyguards don’t know yet.”

“And then what, Papa? If she’s carrying my child, she would never abort it. Nic would have to live with the knowledge that she’d been with another man first.” There was a secret part in Dizo’s heart that rejoiced at the very thought of her giving birth to his son or daughter.

“She could never marry you, let alone acknowledge you or your love child in public, either! How does that sit with you?”

He shut his eyes tightly. “It doesn’t. I have to pray to God I didn’t make total love to her.”

“But you don’t know for sure.”

“No,” he said in a tormented whisper. “She’s the only one who can tell me the truth.”

“Have you ever known her to lie?”

“No.” Gina didn’t have a deceitful bone inside that breathtaking body, but since last night he realized she’d been willing to risk the unthinkable to be with him. He couldn’t believe she would go that far. On the day she’d buried her father, she’d flown all the way from Castelmare in the dead of night to find him. It went against everything her royal training had taught her from the cradle. But it secretly thrilled him.

“Then you have to ask her what happened,” his father said, bringing him back to the present.

“I intend to. No matter the answer, I’ll go to her brother. He deserves to know exactly what happened before King Nicolas finds out.”