CHAPTER ONE
The Winter Palace of Prince Cesar Romano di Sestieri Ardente, Isla Ardente
‘SOFIA ACOSTA? Are you serious?’ Cesar speared a look at his long-suffering equerry, Domenico de Sufriente. Dom had been reading out the proposed guest list for Prince Cesar’s annual banquet celebrating the start of the polo season, to be held at Cesar’s palazzo in Rome.
‘Signorina Acosta should be invited with her brothers,’ Dom pointed out, ‘or you risk insulting the entire Acosta family.’
Cesar frowned. That would not do. He planned to play exhibition matches in aid of charity with the Acosta brothers’ Team Lobos in various locations across the world. Working out a way to exclude his least favourite woman without offending her brothers was impossible. It couldn’t be done.
Dom cleared his throat to attract Cesar’s attention. ‘You expressed a wish to field a mixed team for your next charity event. Having grown up in competition with her brothers, Sofia Acosta is—’
‘Don’t mention that woman to me!’
‘One of the finest riders of her generation,’ Dom ventured.
‘But not a professional rider like her brothers,’ Cesar pointed out.
‘True, but there are few who can match her on the field of play.’
After the furore she had created, Sofia would pull in the crowds, Cesar silently conceded. The exhibition matches would benefit all his charities. ‘Her skill on horseback is undeniable, but I’ll never forgive her for what she did.’ Using his hand like a blade showed his feelings on the matter.
‘The article?’ Dom proposed mildly.
‘Of course the article.’ What Sofia had written was the most florid pack of lies, and with her by-line brazenly plastered over the rubbish in a newspaper belonging to Cesar’s old adversary Howard Blake. He’d been at odds with the man since their schooldays, when Blake had stopped at nothing to get some innocent fellow student to take any blame directed at him—until he’d tried it on with Cesar. That hadn’t gone too well for Blake, Cesar recalled.
What was the relationship between Blake and Sofia? Was she another innocent dupe, playing a role in some new tactic Howard had thought up to bring Cesar down to repay him for policing Blake during their years at school? Was it possible Sofia hadn’t realised the harm the article could do to her family and to his? Why target him at all? They met in passing at polo matches, so why had she set out to destroy his reputation?
He only knew the woman through her brothers, though he’d registered Sofia’s face and figure, as both were outstanding. Was she in cahoots with Blake? Without knowing the facts, he could rule nothing out. There was only one certainty, and that was that he refused to dignify her smut with a response.
‘I will deal with Sofia Acosta in my own time.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Dom bowed his head, but not before Cesar had caught sight of the expression on his equerry’s face. ‘Why are you looking so smug, almost as if this pleases you? You’re lucky that you still have a job—that anyone in the palace has a job. Sofia Acosta tried to bring us all down, so please don’t suggest she has any finer qualities. She’s a typical over-achiever, dipping her snout into multiple troughs because she can’t bring herself to keep it out. I applaud dynamism, but not when the only possible motive is profit.’
‘She rides like a demon,’ Dom reminded him.
‘Perhaps you would too, if you’d grown up in a horse-mad family.’
‘I doubt it,’ Dom murmured beneath his breath as he straightened his perfectly straight tie.
‘Regrettably, she would be an asset to the team,’ Cesar added, musing out loud. ‘She’d draw the crowds based on her scandalous nib-dipping alone.’
Money-grabbing siren, he raged inwardly. Sofia Acosta might have the face of an angel, and a body made for sin, but it seemed to him that she’d stop at nothing, even bringing down a country, if it stood in the way of her lining her pockets.
A warm breeze chose that moment to steal in through an open window. It went some way to softening his tension, by reminding him of what lay outside the palace. However luxurious—and Palazzo Ardente was exquisite—a palace was just a set of rooms, static and unchanging, while the ocean and the beach were fresh and new every day.
‘Just don’t put that woman anywhere near me,’ he instructed as he left his desk.
‘The banquet will be held at your palazzo in Rome where there is a very long dining table...’
‘Excellent. I will sit at the head, while Sofia will be at the far end with my mother and sister.’ The hint of a smile tugged his hard mouth. ‘I’d like to see Signorina Nib-Scribbler lecture them on the error of my ways.’
Sofia Acosta, outstanding polo player, amateur artist and sometime journalist, had famously written an article about European royalty, mostly featuring Cesar, though she had also taken a passing swipe at her brothers. The headline banner had screamed, ‘Is Royalty Necessary in Today’s World?’ The piece had caused a storm on social media. As an ex-Special Forces, polo-playing billionaire prince, Cesar had been put under the microscope—Sofia’s fantasy microscope. His reported success with women, according to her, had made him sound more like a rampaging satyr than a dutiful prince.
She’d found numerous archive shots, showing him in every form of undress: playing polo bareback, barefoot, in banged-up jeans, topless, with a bandana tied around his head, making him look more like a kickboxer on vacation than a serious-minded working royal. There was even one of him naked beneath a waterfall, slicking back his hair as if he had nothing better to do than idle away his time in a tropical lagoon.
Granted, a few shots showed him in his official capacity, but always with an array of different women on his arm.
