Temporarily His Princess Read Free

seem to be destined to have nothing good from now on, to even out the cosmic balance. I will never find anything like the love you all have.”
    “You’re doing everything in your power not to find love, or to let it find you—”
    Vincenzo interrupted him. “I’ve only accepted my fate. Love is not in the cards for me.”
    “And that’s exactly why I want you to get a wife,” Ferruccio interrupted back. “I don’t want you to spend your life without the warmth and intimacy, the allegiance and certainty only a good marriage can bring.”
    “Thanks for the sentiment. But I can’t have any of that.”
    “Because you haven’t found love? Love is a plus, but not a must. Just look at your parents’ example. They started out suitable in theory and turned out right for each other in practice. Pick someone cerebrally and once she’s your wife, the qualities that logically appealed to you will weave a bond between you that will strengthen the longer you are together.”
    “Isn’t that an inverted way of doing things? You loved Clarissa first.”
    “I thought I did, with everything in me. But what I felt for her was a fraction of what I feel for her now. Going by my example, if you start out barely liking your wife, after a year of marriage you’ll be ready to die for her.”
    “Why don’t you just acknowledge that you’re the luckiest bastard alive, Ferruccio? You may be my king and I may have sworn allegiance to you, but it’s not good for your health to keep shoving your happiness in my face when I already told you there’s no chance I’ll find anything like it.”
    “I, too, once believed I had no chance at happiness, either, that emotionally, spiritually, I’d remain vacant, with the one woman I wanted forever out of reach while I was incapable of settling for another.”
    Was Ferruccio just counterarguing with his own example? Or was he putting two and two together and realizing why Vincenzo was so adamant that he’d never find love?
    Suddenly, bitterness and dejection ambushed him as if they’d never subsided.
    Ferruccio went on, “But you’re pushing forty…”
    “I’m thirty-eight!”
    “… and you’ve been alone since your parents died two decades ago…”
    “I’m not alone. I have friends.”
    “ Whom you don’t have time for and who don’t have time for you.” Ferruccio raised his hand, aborting Vincenzo’s interjection. “Make a new family, Vincenzo. It’s the best thing you can do for yourself, and incidentally, for the kingdom.”
    “Next you’ll dictate the wife I should ‘get.’”
    “If you don’t decide on one on your own, ASAP, I will.”
    Vincenzo snorted. “Is that crown you’ve been wearing for the last four years too tight? Or is your head getting bigger? Or is it the mind-scrambling domestic bliss?”
    Ferruccio just smiled that inexorable smile of his.
    Knowing the kind of laserlike determination Ferruccio had, Vincenzo knew there was no refusing him.
    Might as well give in. To an extent he found acceptable.
    He sighed. “If I take the position…”
    “ If implies this is a negotiation, Vincenzo. It isn’t.”
    “… it will be only for a year…”
    “It will be until I say.”
    “A year. This isn’t up for negotiation, either. There will be no more ‘scandals’ in the rags, so this wife thing…”
    Ferruccio gave him his signature discussion-ending smile. “Is also nonnegotiable. ‘Get a wife’ wasn’t a suggestion or a request. It’s a royal decree.”
    *
    Ferruccio had eventually buckled. On Vincenzo’s one-year proviso. Provided that Vincenzo chose and trained his replacement to his satisfaction.
    He hadn’t budged on the “get a wife” stipulation. He’d even made it official. Vincenzo still couldn’t believe what he was looking at. A royal edict ruling that Vincenzo must choose a suitable woman and marry her within two months.
    This deserved an official letter from his own corporation telling Ferruccio not to hold his regal