Page 2 of Cursed
“Prince?” she nearly choked out, looking between them, trying desperately not to sound unhinged. “You’re a prince?” The curse of the Saleris clanged loudly in her head, but surely this man—surely it wasn’t possible—
“And a gentleman and a scholar,” Marks assured her, then addressed Rallis, speaking quickly as he glanced to his own car and back again. “Marguerite is already asking about arrangements with the security team, how long they’ll be assigned, scope of the operation. Seems there’s a resort she’s eager to visit. How much information should I provide?”
Rallis turned to her and Edeena sighed. Marguerite far more than Caroline had chafed under the need for security, especially since she’d managed to pull several strings in advance of their departure from Garronia to ensure she wouldn’t be “wasting her time” while on vacation. Through an intercession by Count Matretti, Garronia’s ambassador to the US, she’d finagled some internship for the remainder of the summer at a vacation resort near their residence on the island—the perfect capstone to her hospitality management degree, she’d insisted. And she wanted to visit that resort immediately.
“Tell her that security will accompany her everywhere,” Edeena said tersely, and Marks’s brows lifted at her tone. “Everywhere. She won’t like it, but at least for the first several days, I don’t want to take chances.”
“I’ve assigned Rob here and his wife, Cindy, as their detail,” Rallis told her. “They’re the best I have. Your sisters will be safe.”
“You got my word on it.” Marks grinned. He nodded again to Rallis, then turned on his heel.
“We should get going,” Rallis said before she could ask him about the husband-wife security duo. Instead he ushered her into the SUV with an almost stern formality. Sighing with frustration, Edeena slipped into the back seat, then watched him stride around the front of the vehicle. His gaze never stopped moving, and he waved Marks’s town car forward as he slid into the front seat.
Then he stared at her in the rearview mirror with exactly the kind of searching intensity she’d been hoping to avoid.
Edeena cut off whatever he was going to say. First things first, and her heart was already in her throat. There simply was no way this drop dead gorgeous Greek-American could be a prince…especially when a prince—a real prince—could potentially solve all Edeena’s problems. Her life simply didn’t work that way.
But she had to know for sure.
“Before we discuss anything, Mr. Rallis,” she said in her sternest voice. “You mind explaining why your associate called you Prince?”
Vincent “Prince” Rallis had seen his share of beautiful, tightly-wound women, but the gaggle of females that had bustled off the airplane in the Charleston International Airport had taken him by surprise, even though he’d been emailed their photo IDs in advance. On screen, they’d been pretty enough, but in person they’d turned out to be vibrant balls of energy, each more vivacious than the last.
Except for the most senior of the Saleri women, anyway, who now glared at him in the mirror, her rigid demeanor and frankly bizarre question at odds with her lush Mediterranean beauty. But she seriously needed to chill out—at least until he figured out why she was such a bag of nerves. He knew she hadn’t told him everything up front—clients frequently didn’t—but that didn’t account for the tension that’d practically radiated off her from the moment he’d locked eyes on her. A tension that hadn’t abated despite his and Marks’s presence. And nobody stayed tense around Marks very long.
Edeena Saleri continued staring at him stonily, however, so he needed to clear up her strange confusion first. “It’s a nickname,” he said, keeping his voice as patient as he could manage. “My first name, as you know, is Vince. I’m the oldest son of a very proud Greek family who are first generation Greek immigrants, and our home looks ever so slightly like a temple. Since we live in South Carolina and not, say, Greece, the building didn’t so much say ‘temple’ to our friends and neighbors as it did ‘castle.’ You see where I’m going with this? I’m not a prince, Miss Saleri. It’s simply an old name that stuck, and Marks and I go back far enough that he uses it all the time. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough,” Edeena said, her cheeks flaring with embarrassment. “It’s just—I thought…” she sighed. “I don’t know what I thought. The word caught me off guard. I apologize.”
“I’ll instruct the team not to use it,” he said mildly. “No apologies necessary.” Apologies, no. Information, yes.
“Thank you.” Edeena slid her gaze away to look out the window, and as he idled at a light Vince was able to examine her more closely. No question about it, she was a stunner—a pile of dark curls framed her face, which was dominated by large, flashing eyes, a heart-breaker of a mouth, and smooth olive-toned skin. She was the same medium build as her sisters, but her coloring was decidedly darker than theirs, her features more delicate. Yet she nevertheless gave an impression of overall strength, carrying an air of somberness far weightier than her siblings’ playful demeanors.
What had happened to her to make her so serious? He wondered. Her face looked like it had been fashioned for laughter, not frowns, but she wasn’t laughing now—and hadn’t for a while, he suspected.
Then again, Edeena Saleri’s penchant for worry was why he was there. According to her cousin Prudence, a friend of his mother’s and the woman who’d first contacted him about the Saleri job, the young countess ‘could fret an ocean into a thimbleful of salt.’ He’d done some research of his own, of course, but the Saleris seemed fairly run of the mill, for all that they were nobility. There was nothing about the sisters, their long-deceased mother, their newly-remarried father, or his somewhat younger and by all accounts heavily pregnant wife that bespoke more than the usual amount of family drama. Yet Edeena was acting like she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders and had a knot of enemies on her tail.
And he needed to know why.
“Miss Saleri,” he began, but Edeena held up her hand, the faint blush remaining on her face.
“Please, call me Edeena,” she said. She glanced to meet his gaze then stared resolutely away, as if preparing to give a speech that pained her. “And allow me to forestall your questions. I haven’t been entirely forthcoming with you about the nature of our stay in Sea Haven. I owe you that full explanation.”
Well, that was certainly easier than he’d expected it to be. Easier and ever so slightly disappointing. If Vince was honest with himself, he’d been secretly looking forward to interrogating the woman, getting her alone like this, forcing her to focus on him—
Annnnd…boom. With that one highly inappropriate, totally unprofessional thought, his entire body had gone hard, alert and ready for action.
Vince grimaced. Great. This was going to be one hell of a job.
Fortunately, Edeena was far too caught up in her own confession to notice how tightly he was gripping the steering wheel.
“The Saleri name is a very old one, stretching back to the founding of the country of Garronia and even earlier,” she said, and Vince gratefully refocused his attention. “Unfortunately, we’ve suffered a fair amount of adversity over the years and made our share of poor choices, and our continued misfortune became so famous that it was formally calcified in the mid-tenth century as a curse.”
“A curse.” Vince was proud of himself for keeping his voice steady, because of all the things he’d expected, this wasn’t one of them. “What kind of curse?”
Edeena sighed again as they approached the bridge that would lead them to Sea Haven Island. Her tense frown lightened somewhat at the sight of water, and despite himself, Vince felt a pang of pity for the woman. Whatever she was facing, she believed it was real. He needed to respect that until he knew the whole story.
“The kind of curse that presaged that doom, gloom, and dire happenings would continue to beset our family, unless a set of highly specialized demands were met. The oldest records of the curse maintain that a child from a special generation is destined to marry a prince—or princess, presumably. If the child succeeds in fulfilling that destiny, the curse will be broken.”