Princes of Castaldini: The Once and Future Prince. Olivia Gates

      Phoebe mirrored the flight attendant’s smile, patted her fastened seatbelt. She waited until the radiant brunette had removed her untouched dinner and hurried away before she let her head thunk against her window. The bonfire of lights that was New York City at night was zooming up at her, an organized maze of the gothic and the postmodern that seemed to be unfurling to engulf Castaldini’s equivalent of Air Force One.

      She closed her eyes over the sand that seemed to fill her lids.

      She hated flying. She’d come to equate it with upheaval.

      The journey that started it all had been ten years ago. Her little sister, Julia, had accepted Paolo’s marriage proposal only to discover he was the King of Castaldini’s son.

      Phoebe couldn’t let her eighteen-year-old, special-needs sister go alone to a foreign country and an unknown future. She’d dropped out of law school to accompany Julia. She’d boarded that jet to Castaldini with anxieties and regrets preying on her. The first over the unimaginable future she and her sister were heading to, the second over the life she’d relinquished.

      Not that she’d had second thoughts since then. Although she was only two and a half years older than Julia, she’d been more of a mother than a sister to her since their single mother had died just days after Phoebe’s thirteenth birthday. When Julia had become afflicted with Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia—a rare form of partial paralysis—Phoebe’s protectiveness had mushroomed. At fourteen, Julia had started suffering from weakness, stiffness and partial loss of sensation in her lower limbs. By the time she was seventeen, she’d been in a wheelchair. Then she’d met Paolo.

      Undaunted by her condition, he’d swept her into a whirlwind romance. It wasn’t long before he’d proposed. And though Julia had accepted after nearly a year of cajoling and insistence that her physical condition made no difference to him, Julia’s psychological state had been fragile and her dependence on Phoebe had deepened with the anticipation of all the upheaval that becoming a princess overnight would bring.

      Phoebe had wondered too many times if she would have done things differently if she’d known her own life would change forever, too. And not just as spillover from the changes in Julia’s.

      What if the first time she’d set eyes on Leandro, she’d had the sense to feel alarmed at her volatile reaction, especially when she’d always been steady and cerebral? To realize that something so out of control would lead to a crash? That a man so voracious in both ambition and passion would end up consuming her while giving nothing of himself in return? What if she hadn’t let him sweep her into that first kiss an hour after meeting, hadn’t thrown herself into his bed a week later?

      She’d always come to the same conclusion. Any alternative scenario wouldn’t have derailed her life, and she wouldn’t have spent years afterward trying to get back on track. She would have been whole, living a full life, with a family of her own.

      And the king thought her the one best equipped to talk Leandro into coming back. The man she hadn’t had one rational discussion with in the fourteen months she’d been his lover.

      But she had to be fair here. Their past affair was unknown, thanks to the lengths to which Leandro had gone to keep it a secret. The king was asking her to do her job as Castaldini’s diplomatic troubleshooter, who had negotiated many precarious deals and smoothed potentially treacherous situations on the kingdom’s behalf. If she took personal history and emotions out of it, this, while a one-of-a-kind situation, was still within her job parameters.

      Not that she hadn’t tried to excuse herself from the chore, extricate herself from this impending mess. But without ad-mitting why she couldn’t face Leandro, she’d had no ground on which to squirm out of that trap. She thought even a confession would have backfired. The king’s reliance on her “charms” would have only taken on new relevance. As a man, and a desperate monarch to boot, he would have believed a former lover who just happened to be the kingdom’s best negotiator would be a double-barreled weapon that was sure to win the battle.

      She had one more reason she couldn’t have used. The consequences of this turn of events.

      Leandro must be punishing the king and his Council, forcing them to grovel for his return after they’d banished him. But she had no doubt that when his pride was appeased and his conditions were made and met, he’d become part of the D’Agostino family again, would become its crown prince and future king.

      And her time on Castaldini would come to an end.

      The moment he came back to stay, she’d leave.

      She was an hour away from meeting the man who’d made it impossible for her to love or even want another. From negotiating the deal that she had to succeed in negotiating at any price.

      The deal that would end life as she knew it.

      Leandro D’Agostino fought the urge building inside him until he felt as if his head were expanding under its pressure, heard the bones in his hand crackle under its force.

      He stared down at that hand before he realized it was his cell phone issuing that sound. The cell phone he was crushing.

      He swore, threw it away. It clanged on the gleaming wood of his desk, skidded and clattered to the mirror-like hardwood floor. He gritted his teeth as silence filled the racket’s wake.

      Dammit. How many phones had he damaged in the past eight years so that he wouldn’t use them to call her? Even though that had been for the exact opposite purpose for which he wanted to call her now?

      Well, he was not calling Phoebe Alexander. He was not canceling his meeting with her.

      She wanted an interview with him? She was getting one.

      For all the good it would do her.

      She’d picked a bad day to break an eight-year silence. A bad month. A bad lifetime.

      And she was about to find out how a tiger felt when those who’d ripped a claw from his paw came to poke at the festering wound.

      They dared call him back. They now offered the mantle of power and responsibility. After they’d slandered him and cast him out, stripped him of his identity before his people, before the world.After he’d spent his life in service of his kingdom and its people, after he’d been certain he’d be named crown prince as the one D’Agostino male who met all the ancient criteria.

      The closer he’d come to the crown, the more the Council had panicked. They wanted to remain the ruling body for life, had feared—and correctly—that his first action as king would be to replace them. So they beat him to it while they still could. They’d turned on him, removing him as a threat. After all, they’d still had the power. And King Benedetto’s ear.

      King Benedetto. His kin and king. His hero. The king hadn’t just stood aside and let the dogs shred him, he’d delivered the decree that had torn Leandro’s guts out himself.

      But being unable to call himself of the royal house of D’Agostino, ceasing to be a Castaldinian, hadn’t been the worst injury he’d sustained. That had been her betrayal. Her desertion.

      And she was on her way here. To negotiate on his former king’s behalf. Or was it on her own?

      It could be the latter, disguised as the first.

      As if he’d fall for her again.

      Whatever she was coming here for, he wasn’t letting her have it, or any influence on him again. Not in this life. Or the next.

      Si, let her come. He was in the mood to be provoked. Her memory had been the source of heartache for far too long. Let her flesh-and-blood presence inflict something less pathetic. Something hot and harsh. Something he could sink his teeth into. And rip.

      It was time to tear out anything soft or stupid from his depths, the remnants of the spell he hadn’t been able to break. It was time to exorcise her…

      All his hairs stood on end as if he’d