Royally Claimed. Marie Donovan

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      “All right.” He ordered a bottle for her and filled her glass when it arrived. She drank eagerly, as if her throat were dry, then twirled the stem between her fingers. She looked all around the café—anywhere but at him.

      “Julia,” he began, not sure what to say. Why did you leave me when we were college students? sounded more than a bit whiny and pathetic. “How have you been?”

      “Fine.” She gave him a polite smile.

      He tried again. “You finished your nursing degree?”

      “Yes, and after a couple years, I went back to graduate school. I’m a nurse practitioner now and have taken some classes toward my doctoral degree.”

      “Good for you.” Pride for her, misplaced or no, swelled his chest. “You always were the smartest woman I ever met.”

      The compliment broke through her polite shell and she snorted in disbelief. Now that was more like the old Julia he remembered. Or was it the young Julia he remembered? This woozy sense of past and present was mixing him up. “Why do you make that noise?”

      “What?”

      “You don’t believe me.” He shook his head. “Do you remember me as a liar?”

      She pursed her lips. “Surely you’ve met smarter women than I.”

      “No, and just to prove it, all of them would have said ‘smarter women than me.’”

      “Good grammar doesn’t make you smart.”

      He shook his head. “You always were terrible at accepting compliments.” Like how her dark hair shone in the sun, her hazel eyes sparkling like his estate’s premium sherry.

      “I was not!”

      “Argumentative, too.”

      “I am not—” She stopped arguing when he started to laugh. “Frank, that is not fair. You know I can’t say anything to that without arguing.”

      “Then you’ll just have to agree with me.”

      “Hmmph.”

      “Ah, Julia, no need to fuss. We are just old friends who have met again for lunch. What would you like to eat?”

      She pressed her pretty pink lips together. Oh, how could he have forgotten how her dimples appeared when she did that. He had to hide a delighted smile before she really lost her temper and walked out on him. Again.

      Well. Remembering that wiped the smile off his face.

      “Frank?” She gave him a questioning look.

      “Lunch, oh, yes.”

      “Where is the menu?”

      He pointed to the chalkboard outside. “Whatever they feel like cooking today. Chicken with rice, salt cod stew and chouriço de carne—sausage with fava beans.”

      “Mmm. I haven’t had chouriço in years,” she said wistfully.

      “You can’t get Portuguese sausage in Boston?” There was not only a huge Portuguese-American community there, but a large portion of that was specifically of Azorean heritage.

      She shrugged. “I live in a different part of town.”

      That wasn’t much of an answer. How long could it take her to drive to a Portuguese deli? He’d driven to Massachusetts and Rhode Island Portuguese restaurants from New York when he’d had a craving for sausage or the sweet, eggy desserts that were an Azorean specialty. “Well, you must have it here.” He waved to the waiter and ordered the sausage and fava beans for her and the salt cod stew for him. “Sure you don’t want any wine?”

      She shook her head, so he ordered another bottle of water and switched to that, as well. Julia alone was making him light-headed enough.

      He acknowledged she had become even more beautiful in the eleven years since they’d parted. “How is it that you aren’t married yet?” he blurted, then winced. Smooth move, dummy. If she were married, she would either not be here at all or else her husband would be sitting across from him shooting daggers with his eyes at Frank. Maybe they’d have a few small kids, too, who would wonder in embarrassingly loud voices how this foreign guy used to know their mom.

      “I’m not married yet because nobody ever asked me.” Now her lips were really tight, her dimples even deeper.

      “I did.”

      “Out of some misguided sense of obligation. That doesn’t count.”

      He’d taken her virginity and changed her life forever—why wouldn’t he feel obligated toward her? And it wasn’t misguided, but he knew she would run away from him forever rather than discuss that now.

      She jumped to her feet. “Look, Frank, it was nice to see you, but I have to go home.”

      He jumped up, too. “Julia, please stay. I spoke out of turn. I apologize.” He shifted his body in front of her but the look of panic in her eyes made him move out of her way immediately. “But of course, I will not keep you here if you don’t want to be.” Frank wanted to kick himself. Good God, his prize bull at the estate had more finesse than he did.

      She relaxed slightly, but was still wary, and he didn’t blame her. The last time they’d parted, he’d been desperate to keep her and had been too overbearing. But twenty-year-old men in the agonies of first love were often thoughtless, and he’d been no exception. If he’d had a cooler head, he would have backed off, realizing the poor timing. Asking her to forgo the rest of her college education had been a bad idea, to put it mildly. “Come, sit. I promise, no more talk of awkward things. We will just be old friends who are catching up on the past ten years.”

      “Eleven,” she corrected him automatically. So she remembered exactly, as well. That was intriguing.

      “Eleven, of course.” He took her elbow and guided her back to her seat. The waiter, sensing a juicy story, plied them with a basket full of hearty chunks of bread and fresh whipped butter. Frank practically had to shoo him away.

      Julia seemed more amenable once she had a bit of homemade bread and butter in her, asking, “So who is getting married?”

      Frank smiled. “Do you remember me telling you about my best friends from the university?”

      She nodded. “The Italian guy and the French guy. Both were rich noblemen like you.”

      “Basically, yes. Giorgio—George—is the prince of Vinciguerra, a tiny country in the north of Italy. Jacques, who still goes by Jack, is a count, with his holdings in Provence, the south of France.”

      “And you, the Duke of Aguas Santas in Portugal.”

      “Yes.” It wasn’t any secret in the Azores who he was considering he owned a small island there. But the islanders were easygoing and not inclined to give him the paparazzi treatment. He was sure they gossiped about him, but friendly gossip was a national Portuguese pastime.

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