LITMIR.BIZ

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monster. Sorry, but that is the way it is.”

      “But—”

      “No. You’re to stay away. And that’s final.”

      He rose as if to add emphasis to his words. She looked up at him and swallowed hard. He looked tall and stern and unyielding, and his shoulders were wide as the horizon. There was no humor in his face, no softness at all. His scars were vivid and his hard eyes made the breath catch in her throat and her heart beat just a little faster. Just that quickly she was back to being a timid petitioner, and he was once again a prince. His gaze met hers and held. She couldn’t say a thing.

      And then, breaking the spell, Renzo appeared.

      “The young lady’s car is here, sir.”

      The prince turned and nodded.

      “Thank you, Renzo.”

      It was very late. The grandfather clock in the hallway was chiming the hour. A part of him wanted to accompany her down to her home. Gallantry would suggest it. But practicalities, as well as common sense, forbade it. Not to mention the fact that he just plain couldn’t do it. So he merely nodded to her, staying back away so that he wouldn’t be tempted to repeat anything as silly as a kiss.

      “Renzo will show you to your car,” he said shortly. “Goodnight.” She opened her mouth to say something, but there was no time. Turning on his heel, he went back into his dark and lonely palazzo, leaving her behind as though that was the main purpose. She sighed, feeling suddenly cold and lonely. Renzo showed her to her car and she drove off toward her home and restaurant in the village with a sense of frustration. But she knew very well that her life had been changed…changed forever, even if she never saw him again.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      “WELL,” Susa said the next morning as she began to mix the dough for the large cake pans that sat waiting. “How’s the prince?”

      Isabella turned bright red and had to pretend to be looking for something in the huge wall refrigerator in order to hide that fact until things cooled.

      “What prince?” she chirped, biding her time.

      Susa’s laugh sounded more like a cackle. “The one who punched you in the eye,” she said, elbowdeep in flour. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

      Isabella whirled and faced the older woman, wondering why she’d never noticed before how annoying she could be. “No one punched me. I…I fell.”

      “Ah.” Susa nodded wisely, a mischievous gleam in her gray eyes. “So he pushed you, did he?”

      “No!”

      Isabella groaned with exasperation and escaped into the pantry to assemble the ingredients for the basic tomato sauce that was the foundation of all the Casali family cuisine. Let Susa cackle if she felt like it. Isabella wasn’t going to tell her anything at all about what had happened. Pressing her lips together firmly, she set about making the sauce and pretended she didn’t know what the older woman was talking about.

      She couldn’t discuss it yet. Not with anyone. She wasn’t even sure herself what exactly had happened. Looking back, it seemed like a dream. When she tried to remember what she’d said or what he’d done, it didn’t seem real. So she washed the clothes the prince’s sister had loaned her, sent them back to the palazzo, and heard nothing in return. She had to put it behind her.

      Besides, she had other problems, big problems, to deal with. She’d been putting off thinking about them because she’d assumed she would go to collect the Monta Rosa Basil and all would be well—or at least in abeyance. Without the basil, she was finally facing the fact that the restaurant was in big trouble.

      Luca, her father and founder of Rosa, had gone into a panic when she had told him a sketchy version of what had happened and then tentatively speculated what life—and the menu—might be like without the herb.

      “What are you talking about?” he demanded, looking a bit wild. A tall, rather elegant-looking man, in Isabella’s eyes, he radiated integrity. Despite the demands he tended to put on her, she loved him to pieces.

      “The old prince said I could come any time.”

      That was news to Isabella. She’d had no idea there was any sort of permission granted, and she had to wonder if it wasn’t just a convenient memory her father had embellished a bit.

      “Well, the new prince says ‘no’.”

      “The new prince?” He stared at her. “You’ve talked to him?”

      “Yes. A little.”

      He frowned. “No, Isabella. Stay away from the royalty. It’s no good to mix with them. They think they can walk all over us and they do it every time.”

      “But, Papa, if I’m going to try to get permission to—”

      “You don’t need permission.”

      She sighed. There was no way she was going to make him understand that the circumstances had changed.

      “I’ll go myself,” he muttered. He tried to rise from his chair and she hurried to coax him back down.

      “Father, you will not go anywhere,” she said fretfully.

      “Don’t you understand how important this is? The Basil is our family’s trademark, our sign of distinction. Without it we are just like all the others, not special at all. It’s who we are, the heart and soul of our cuisine and of our identity. We have to have it.”

      She was feeling even worse about this than before. “But, Papa, if I can’t get it any longer…”

      He shook his head, unable to understand what the difficulty was. “But you can get it. Of course you can.” His tired blue eyes searched hers. “I’ve never had any trouble. I go in right at sunrise. I go quietly, squeezing through the chink in the wall, right where I’ve entered the grounds since I was a young man. A short hike past the river and up the hill, and there it is, green leaves waving in the breeze, reaching up to kiss the morning sun.” He kissed his fingertips in a salute to the wonderful plants that were the making of his reputation.

      Then he frowned at her fiercely. “If you can’t manage to do such a simple thing, I’ll do it myself, even if I have to crawl up that hill. I’ve never failed yet.”

      That was it. She was a failure. She sighed. “The dogs never came after you?” she asked him, feeling almost wistful about it.

      “The dogs are only out at night.”

      “Not anymore,” she said sadly.

      She left him pounding his walking stick on the tile floor and grumbling about incompetence, knowing she couldn’t let him attempt the task. The climb up the hill would kill him in his current condition. She had to find a way.

      Everyone knew there was a problem. The situation was getting desperate. Her father had let things go too long. They were losing customers and had been bleeding money even before this latest problem. To make matters worse, there was some nonsense about a permit her father had never bothered to get. Fredo Cavelli, an old friend of her father’s and now on the local planning commission, had come by a few times, threatening dire consequences if the paperwork for a permit wasn’t cleared up. The trouble was, she wasn’t sure what Fredo was talking about and her father tended to do nothing but foam at the mouth and accuse Fredo of jealousy and double-dealing instead of taking care of the problem as he should.

      It seemed to Isabella that control was slipping away. Without the special ingredient that set their sauce apart, there would be very little reason for anyone to choose their restaurant, Rosa, over the others operating nearby. She was desperate to get a handle on all these problems and get things back on an even keel.

      Something had to be done.

      She knew what it was. She had to go back there.

      Just

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