made its way into Del Sol, Alma’s capital, people on the streets craned their necks to get a glimpse of the Montoros. Rafe was used to a certain level of fame and notoriety in Miami, but not this. There he was one of the jet-set Montoros. The young generation who worked hard and played harder.
Here he was the future monarch. He’d be the face of Alma to the world. And while his ego was sort of jazzed about that, another part of him wasn’t.
“Maybe you should put the window down and do that princess wave,” his sister Bella said with a sparkle in her blue eyes. Their father and the rest of their party were in a separate vehicle.
“Princess wave? That’s more your cup of tea,” he said. “Maybe I’ll throw up the peace sign.”
She giggled. He’d always been close to his little sister, and making her laugh helped him to relax.
Bella looked like a fairy-tale princess with her pretty blond hair. Not anything like Emily. He wondered what Emily would think of Alma. It was an island not that unlike her hometown of Key West, but the laid-back attitude in the Keys was a world away from this charming European nation.
For a country that had been ruled by a dictator for decades, the people in the streets seemed happy and prosperous and the buildings were clean and well-maintained. Rafe didn’t see any signs of financial ruin. But economic danger lurked whenever there was a change of regime. And if there was one thing he was good at, it was making money.
But would the government here listen to him?
To be honest he wasn’t the kind of person to negotiate for what he wanted. That was one of the reasons Montoro Enterprises had thrived under his leadership. He made bold decisions. Sometimes they didn’t pay off, but most of the time they did.
“You okay?” Bella asked.
He started to shrug it off. There was no way he was going to mention Emily or the fact that she was pregnant to his sister. Not until he had a chance to figure it out for himself. But the family stuff was also getting to him, especially how Juan Carlos was going really crazy about protocol and proper image and all that.
“This return to Alma is throwing me,” he admitted to her.
“How?” she asked. “You’ve always handled whatever the family has dished out. This will be no different. Pretend you’re the CEO of the country.”
As if. Being the king was a “name only” position. No power. Maybe that was why he hesitated to fully embrace it. He was a man of action. Not a figurehead.
“Good suggestion,” he said, glancing out the window as they approached the castle. Surrounded by glittering blue water on three sides, it rose from the land like a sand castle at the beach. He groaned.
“What?”
“I was hoping the castle would be in disrepair.”
“Why?”
“So I could hate it.”
Bella laughed again. “I love it. It’s everything I thought it would be,” she said.
“What if there’s not a hopping club scene? Will you still love it then?” he asked. Bella liked to party. Hell, they all did. They hadn’t been raised to assume the throne. They were all more likely to show up in the tabloids in a compromising position than on the society pages at a formal tea. The closer he got to the throne the less sure he was that he wanted to be there.
He felt Bella’s hand on his shoulder. “You’re going to be fine. I think you’ll make a great king.”
“Why? I’m not sure at all.”
“You’ve been a great big brother and always ensured our family’s place in business and in society.”
“Business is easy. I understand that world,” Rafe countered.
“I never thought the day would come when you’d admit that you aren’t sure of yourself,” she said, taking her phone from her handbag.
“What are you doing?”
“Texting Gabe that you have feet of clay.”
“He already knows that.”
“We all do,” Bella said. “Why are you acting like you are just figuring it out?”
“I’m going to be a king, Bella. It’s making me nutty,” he said.
“You weren’t as thrown by it a week ago,” she said. “What happened yesterday to make you delay your flight?”
Nothing.
Everything.
Something that could change the man he was. If he let it.
“Business. Running Montoro Enterprises does take a lot of time,” he said.
The car pulled to a stop and an attendant in full livery came to open the door for them. Bella climbed out first but looked back at Rafe.
“Lying to me is one thing. You can keep your secrets if you want to,” she said. “But I hope you aren’t lying to yourself.”
He followed her out of the car, and the warm Mediterranean air swept around him. She had a point. He knew in his gut that this didn’t feel right. He should be in Miami with Emily. He missed her.
The porte-cochere led to an inner brick-lined courtyard. There was a fountain underneath a statue of Rafe’s great-grandfather Rafael I. He was surprised it hadn’t been torn down when the dictator had taken over. Bella stopped walking and spun around on her heel, taking in the beauty of the palace.
For the first time he felt a sense of his royal lineage settling over him. If their family hadn’t been forced to flee he would have grown up in this palace. His memories would be of this place that smelled wonderfully of jasmine and lavender. Where was the scent coming from?
His father came up beside him and put his hand on his shoulder not saying a word. Something passed between them. An emotion that Rafe didn’t want to define. But Alma became real to him. In a way that it hadn’t been before. In Miami it had been easy to say he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be king but seeing this palace—he felt the history. And he sort of understood Juan Carlos’s perspective for once. Rafe didn’t want to let down their family line.
If Alma wanted the Montoros back on the throne than Rafe would have to put aside the feelings he felt stirring for Emily and figure out how to be their king.
That surprised him. He hadn’t expected to feel this torn. He was isolated from the rest of his family who seemed to think this return to royalty was just the thing they needed. They were all caught up in being back in the homeland. But as much as he felt swept up in the majesty of their return to Alma he knew he was still trying to figure out where home really was.
* * *
Emily worked the closing shift at Harry’s and walked home at 2:00 a.m. Key West wasn’t like the mean streets of Miami, but she moved quickly and kept her eyes open for danger. It was something she’d teach her kid.
She
