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The Prince's Baby
Lisa Kaye Laurel


ROYAL WEDDINGSROYAL WEDDINGS. Three small-town women find happily-ever-after with three irresistible princes!A PRINCE OF A DADDYConvinced she was a princess, a six-year-old girl sent Prince Whit Anders a message beseeching him to prove her right. Which gave the child's single mom, Drew Davis, cause for concern. After all, Drew and the prince had shared a magical summer long ago–and her daughter's claim to royalty wasn't as far-fetched as everyone thought….When His Royal Highness Whit Anders discovered that he and lovely Drew had made more than a sweet teenage memory, he was ready to claim their child as his heir. But winning the beautiful–and independent–woman would put his reputation as the Prince of Hearts to the test!









Table of Contents


Cover Page (#uf0f2fa6d-7888-5fa4-bfd8-81cb829637d0)

Excerpt (#u6f88da48-c3d7-5522-a568-83d7adb263e3)

Dear Reader (#u67ef1085-0f4f-5750-bbdb-54914c9e59c6)

Title Page (#u18cdf35f-836f-5ff5-bc71-831f98dfafce)

Dedication (#u5282e86b-71ae-520d-952b-598a09628b93)

About the Author (#ucfae7eee-c63a-5f36-8a04-16169aa1e20d)

Chapter One (#udef2bde5-0f90-520f-a8fc-e582a984ecaa)

Chapter Two (#u2ce6e423-7819-5472-ab1b-bc7f847ec603)

Chapter Three (#u0d85d128-53c0-53e6-ac5c-a847283b1692)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)




“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” Whit demanded.


“You weren’t here,” Drew reminded him. It still hurt to remember. Safe in his love, she had dared to dream for the first time in her life—foolish, foolish girl. She had built them a lovely castle in the sky, and when her prince had walked away, it had come crashing down all around her. After he had left her, she had found out she was pregnant. Day by day, challenge by challenge, she had survived. She would survive this day, this challenge, too.



“I wasn’t here—but you knew how to find me. Why didn’t you even try?”



Drew looked him in the eye. “Why didn’t I?”



A spasm of emotion crossed Whit’s face before his expression turned as hard as granite.



“Your secret’s out now, Drew, and that changes everything…”


Dear Reader,



This month, Silhouette Romance is celebrating the classic love story. That intensely romantic, emotional and compelling novel you just can’t resist. And leading our month of classic love stories is Wife without a Past by Elizabeth Harbison, a deeply felt tale of an amnesiac wife who doesn’t recognize the FABULOUS FATHER she’d married…

Pregnant with His Child… by bestselling author Carla Cassidy will warm your heart as a man is reunited with the child he never knew existed—and the woman he never stopped loving. Next, our MEN! promotion continues, as Silhouette Romance proves a good man isn’t hard to find in The Stranger’s Surprise by Laura Anthony. In Patricia Thayer’s moving love story, The Cowboy’s Convenient Bride, a woman turns up at a Texas ranch with a very poignant secret. And in Plain Jane Gets Her Man by Robin Wells, you’ll be delighted by the modern-day Cinderella who wins the man of her dreams. Finally, Lisa Kaye Laurel’s wonderful miniseries, ROYAL WEDDINGS, continues with The Prince’s Baby.

As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, I’d like to give a special thanks to all of you, the readers, for making Silhouette Romance such a popular and beloved series of books. Enjoy November’s titles!



Regards,



Melissa Senate

Senior Editor

Silhouette Books

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3




The Prince’s Baby

Lisa Kaye Laurel







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


Dedicated with love and pride to my Nana,

in tribute to her ninety-five years;

and in memory of my beloved Pop Pop,

whose gentle kindness lives on.




LISA KAYE LAUREL


has worked in a number of fields, but says that nothing she’s done compares to the challenges—and rewards— of being a full-time mom. Her extra energy is channeled into creating stories. She counts writing high on her list of blessings, which is topped by the love and support of her husband, her son, her daughter, her mother and her father.




Chapter One (#ulink_86fc2404-dbb7-53ab-a3a6-635c15e50918)


“She has her heart set on a fairy tale, but all the wishing in the world won’t make it come true.”

As the teacher’s words sank in, Drew Davis felt a protest rise in her throat. “I don’t—” she began, and then stopped herself. It was a rare and unwelcome mental lapse that had taken her back to a time when those words applied to her. Shaking it off, she looked around the first-grade classroom and then at the teacher. “Oh. You’re talking about my daughter, aren’t you?”

Mrs. Vittorini regarded her quizzically. “Of course I’m talking about Lexi. Why else would I have called you in for an emergency meeting?”

The urgent message on her office answering machine had struck fear in Drew’s heart—blood-chilling, mind-numbing, parent fear. After rushing to school, she was relieved to learn that the emergency didn’t involve broken bones or a quarantinable disease—but still, teachers didn’t call parents in the middle of the school day with good news.

“I assume this has to do with Lexi’s princess complex,” Drew said.

“Yes. Frankly, I’m worried that she’s taken it too far.”

Drew had been afraid that would happen. She could think of no reason for her six-year-old daughter to think that she might be a real-life princess—yet Lexi was absolutely convinced that she was. For some time now her little girl had been living the part, acting out elaborate fairy-tale fantasies and always wearing some homemade crown or other. Telling herself that pretend play was an important part of childhood, Drew had given her daughter’s fancies free rein and hoped the phase would soon pass.

The teacher went on. “The other day some of the children asked Lexi about her father, and do you know what she told them?”

Drew shook her head, while apprehension prickled along her scalp.

“She told them she didn’t have a father, but she was going to have a prince.”

“A…prince?”

Mrs. Vittorini nodded. “She made a ‘magic lamp’ at the craft table, and the class gathered around while she rubbed it, asking for a prince to appear. I got them all busy doing something else, but not before a few of them laughed at her.”

Drew felt for her daughter. She herself had developed a tough veneer—that was what made her a survivor—but she had not passed that trait on to her sensitive daughter. Drew tried her best, but it still hurt to know that she couldn’t always protect Lexi. “Thank you for being tuned in to her,” she said.

“There’s more. Yesterday she got into the art supplies and sprinkled glitter all over the room, saying that it was magic pixie dust that was going to make her prince appear.”

“Oh, my gosh. I’m so sorry.”

Mrs. Vittorini brushed the apology aside. “Messes happen. Lexi did the lion’s share of the cleanup, believe me.”

“Good. And if anything else happens—”

“It did.”

Drew groaned inwardly. “What else?”

“On the playground this morning she tried to pull a prince out of Jason Greenwell’s hat. This time she had the whole first grade laughing at her.” The teacher’s eyebrows puckered with concern. “And right before the children went in to the all-school nature assembly today, she announced to the class that her prince was definitely going to show up before the end of the day.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. That’s why I called you,” Mrs. Vittorini said. “I just don’t know what she’s going to try next. Not to mention that her hopes are so high she’s bound to come down with a crash by the end of the day. The assembly is going to end shortly and I thought that having you nearby—”

A burst of shouting and laughter from the gym brought Mrs. Vittorini to her feet. Her teacher’s antennae were up. Without a word she headed down the hall toward the gym, with Drew right behind her.

The assembly had apparently gotten out of control. Looking through the gym door, Drew saw right away what all the laughter and shouting was about. And what she saw made her heart drop right into her toes.

In front of the crowded bleachers, under a banner that said Reptiles and Amphibians, were an assortment of cages and tanks filled with live specimens. And all alone at one of them stood Lexi, a smile on her face, a crown on her head and a frog in her hands. As Drew watched in dismay, her daughter bent down and gave the frog a kiss on the top of its head.

“There’s no prince!” the children in the stands shouted.

“There will be!” Lexi shouted right back. She picked up another frog and gave that one a kiss, too.

“There’s no prince!” The chant was louder this time, and the laughter in the stands grew, but Lexi determinedly reached for another frog.

“There will be!”

Drew stood rooted to the ground, both in awe of her daughter’s guts and in dread of the inevitable humiliation Lexi would suffer after she kissed the last frog. Mrs. Vittorini rushed in to help the other teachers, who were in the stands trying to restore order, but to no avail.

Kiss.

“There’s no prince!”

“There will be!”

Kiss.

“There’s no prince!”

“There will be!”

A collective intake of breath was heard as Lexi picked up the last frog.

Kiss.

The stands fairly erupted with the shout, “There’s no prince!”

Something inside Drew tore apart as she watched Lexi standing there, small and alone and with a handful of frog, unable to make her defiant reply this time. Drew started forward.

Suddenly a deep, commanding voice cut across the shrieks of laughter that filled the big room.

“Yes…there…is.”

Silence fell. Drew watched in disbelief as a man strode from behind one of the big tanks to stand before Lexi. He was the last person she ever expected to see. But here he was—back in Anders Point after all these years. She froze, unable to do anything but stare, an old but familiar ache slicing through her.

In his jeans and leather jacket, he looked more like a bad-boy rebel than a fairy-tale prince, but there wasn’t a woman in the world who wouldn’t recognize the Prince of Hearts on sight, and Drew could tell by their murmurs of astonishment that the teachers in the audience were no exception.

His face perfectly serious, he bowed to Lexi. “I am Prince Whit of Isle Anders,” he said.

Drew closed her gaping mouth and tried to get a grip on the emotions that churned inside her. Surprise at seeing Whit was quickly supplanted by dread, as she watched the prince kneel before Lexi, studying the little girl’s delighted features.

Incredibly, Whit stood and looked at the audience, then, right at Drew. Her heart stopped in mid-beat as their glances caught and held for an electrifying moment; it was almost a physical connection. She stood motionless, helpless to break the contact.

Then Whit returned his gaze to Lexi, who looked up at him, enthralled.

“I am here at your wish,” he said to her.

Whit spoke with the barest trace of an accent. His father was the ruler of Isle Anders, a small island not far from Iceland, but his mother had been born right here in Anders Point, Maine, and Whit had gone to college in the States. But there was a richness to his deep tones, a thrumming vibrancy that suggested the faraway, the exotic, the forbidden.

No one knew that better than Drew, who had been the first of many women to fall victim to Whit’s powerful masculine lure. His having been born a prince was a quirk of fate, and his good looks were a gift from his parents’ gene pool; but his reputation as the Prince of Hearts he had earned by his own willful actions.

And if she’d been the first to fall, she’d also been the first to break free, she reminded herself pointedly.

She had seen him for the first time in seven years just a few weeks ago, at the marriage of her friend Julie to his brother, Prince Erik. Among the guests, it had been easy to keep her distance from him, during those few hours. Other than that, she hadn’t been this close to Whit since the summer she had fallen so deeply in love with him that she’d thought she wouldn’t be able to draw breath without him by her side.

Now she saw that the passing of time had only served to enhance his appeal. He was, as all media accounts made him out to be, an extraordinarily handsome man. A handsome prince, no less; complete with stunning blue eyes, black hair that fell to his shoulders in luxuriant waves and the kind of body that looked scrumptious in everything from tuxedos to gym shorts. And then there was his legendary smile, the one he was right now beaming at her daughter, who stood looking up at him, spellbound, holding a papier mâché crown on the top of her head.

The daughter who meant the world to her. The daughter she would protect to her dying breath.

Lexi. Fear tightened every muscle in Drew’s body until she ached with tension. She couldn’t let him find out about Lexi. She had to hide her daughter from him. No matter what.

But there they stood, face-to-face. The tension became almost unbearable for Drew. She had to fight the impulse to run up front and snatch Lexi away, out of his sight; instead, she took a deep breath and tried to relax enough to allow rationality to regain a toehold. Of course Whit wouldn’t suspect anything about Lexi, she told herself firmly. He had seen her at the wedding, and hadn’t. There was no reason he would now, either. Drew herself was the only one who knew the truth—and she would never tell him.

Lexi found her tongue at last. “I am Princess Lexi of the first grade,” she said proudly, dropping a curtsy. And then she smiled at him, her bewitching, little-girl smile. It revealed the gap where her two bottom teeth were missing. It revealed the dimple in her left cheek. And, in some intangible, inexplicable way, it revealed the secret that had weighed heavily on Drew’s heart for seven long years.

Drew knew it had as she watched Whit’s smile slowly fade. She squeezed her eyes shut, but when she opened them, the scene was still before her, the excited whispers of the crowd still flowing around her.

“I am at your service, princess,” Whit said formally.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Lexi said gravely. She conjured up her best royal vocabulary for the occasion. “When I require your services again, I shall not hesitate to summon you.”

The prince bowed to Lexi once more. “Then I will bid you good-day.” As abruptly as he had materialized, he disappeared, but not before looking out into the audience again. This time he skewered Drew with a sharp, questioning glance that boded ill.

The lunch bell rang, and teachers began lining up their classes at the gym door. Everyone was still buzzing about the fact that Lexi had conjured up a real prince, and Drew saw that the smile was still on her daughter’s face as she got in line. Mrs. Vittorini reappeared at Drew’s side.

“I thought she was doomed to disappointment,” the teacher said to Drew, still breathless with the excitement of the royal visit. “But it looks like your little girl got her happy ending after all. I only wish the prince would have stuck around to fill us in on how she managed it.” She sighed dreamily. “Oh well, I guess you can go now. I’m sure Lexi will be fine. As for the rest of us women—” She paused, her eyes twinkling.

As she studied Mrs. Vittorini’s flushed face, Drew realized she wasn’t the only one who’d been affected by the prince’s startling appearance at the school. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your concern for Lexi,” she said, not wanting to speculate with the teacher about the reasons for Whit’s visit. “I apologize for the disruptions she’s been causing. I assure you, that behavior is going to stop.”

“Don’t be too hard on her. She’s going through a rough patch, as we all do from time to time.” Mrs. Vittorini smiled. “But she’s a bright young lady with a wonderful imagination. Give her lots of support, and she’ll sort things out on her own. Lexi will do just fine in this world.”

“I just hope I survive to see it,” Drew said, managing a weak smile. “Sometimes being a mom makes my job as sheriff seem like a stroll on the beach.”

Mrs. Vittorini laughed. “No one ever said parenting was easy. Especially not me. I’ve got three teenagers.”

And nineteen six-year-olds, Drew thought as she watched her lead a ragged line of jumping, talking, laughing first-graders out of the gym.

Drew made a quick exit herself. It was chickening out, she knew, but she wasn’t ready to face Whit just yet. And though she was curious herself about how he’d known of Lexi’s dilemma, she didn’t like that look he had given her. The last thing she wanted was to run into him now.

She did run into Whit, though. Literally barreled right into him as she left the school building.

He seemed to have been expecting it. He never budged an inch, just propped his hands on his hips and stared down at her.

“That was your daughter,” he said in a dangerously low voice. It wasn’t a question.

Drew didn’t shrink from his gaze. “Yes. Thanks for what you did in there. She—well, she got herself into a tight spot, and if you hadn’t—”

“Forget it,” he said roughly, cutting her off.

“Well, then…goodbye,” Drew finished breathlessly, eager to get away.

She turned to leave, but the sound of Whit’s voice, low and vibrating with warning, stopped her. “It’s time you and I had a little talk, Drew.”

All of Drew’s instincts warned her to go on the defense. “Sorry to refuse your gracious request, Your Highness, but I don’t have time to chat,” she told him, forcing a light tone. “Some people in this world have to work for a living, and I am one of them. So you’ll have to excuse me. It’s late, and I’ve got to get back to my office.”

“Your office be damned. You’re coming with me.” He led her down the front walk toward where a limousine was parked.

She planted her feet. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Fine. Then we can have it out right here on the sidewalk.”

From the look on his face, Drew knew that he meant it. She glanced at the school building with its row of windows facing in their direction. One of those rooms was Lexi’s classroom.

“All right,” she said shortly, giving in. “Since I have no alternative.”

The driver started to get out of the limo, but Whit waved him off and held the back door open for Drew himself. She refused to look at him then, or during the drive, which lasted no more than a minute. Whit had the driver pull into a turnoff for a scenic overlook of the ocean. No one else was there.

As soon as the limo rolled to a stop, Drew opened the door herself and scrambled out of the back seat. She waited while Whit followed, his movements slow and deliberate.

Drew faced him defiantly, knowing that she had to make the most of her anger, because it was the only thing holding her together right now.

“What did you want to talk about, Your Highness, that you had to practically kidnap me?” she asked, her voice sounding far more in control than her insides felt. Her heart was pounding so hard it drowned out the sound of the surf crashing onto the rocks below.

His jaw looked like it was carved out of granite. “You owe me an answer, Drew.”

“What answer?” she asked, crossing her arms to stop them from shaking.

“Let’s not play games, here. This is damned well as important to you as it is to me.”

Drew hitched her trembling chin higher and forced herself to keep looking right at him, her silence warning him to go on only if he dared.

He did dare. His blue eyes were cold as the icy waters surrounding his North Atlantic homeland as he fixed a stare on her.

“So tell me. Tell me how a little girl kissing frogs in Maine could bear such a striking resemblance to a portrait of a child that hangs in my father’s castle on Isle Anders.” His voice was low, strained. “My portrait, Drew.”




Chapter Two (#ulink_b4ea7abd-a8ac-53ef-9e65-415a2bf13660)


The moment Drew had been dreading for years had arrived at last, and it was far worse than she had feared.

All of her maternal instincts screamed at her to protect Lexi at any cost. Warring with them was her conscience, which protested that, no matter what the consequences, Whit had a right to know the truth.

Her inner battle raged until she heard Whit speak again. This time his voice was rough with emotion.

“Drew, tell me. Is Lexi my daughter?”

The word that would change three people’s lives forever came out as barely a whisper.

“Yes.”

It had come down to no decision at all, for Drew. It was one thing not to have sought Whit out to tell him about Lexi. It would be something else entirely to stand there and answer his direct question with a lie.

She watched the reactions play across his face and was relieved when he settled on anger. That gave her back the strength to face him.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.

“You weren’t here,” she reminded him. It still hurt to remember. Safe in his love, she had dared to dream for the first time in her life—-foolish, foolish girl. She had built them a lovely castle in the sky, and when her prince had walked away, it had come crashing down all around her. After he’d left her, she’d found out she was pregnant. Day by day, challenge by challenge, she had survived. She would survive this day, this challenge, too. Taking a deep breath, she returned Whit’s stony stare.

“I had no reason to suspect you might be pregnant when I left,” he said, his expression as hard as the rocky shoreline they stood above. “How did it happen, anyway?”

Drew raised one eyebrow eloquently.

“You know what I mean,” he said, his voice warning that his patience was being stretched to its limits. “We always took precautions.”

As the daughter of an unwed mother, who had left her to be raised by her grandmother, Drew had often vowed that the last thing she would ever do was repeat her mother’s mistake. Whit had been her first lover—her only lover—and as hot as the lovemaking they’d shared that golden summer was, he had taken full responsibility for protecting her. She had seen that as yet another proof of his love; which only showed that a person could make two mistakes at the same time.

“No method is foolproof,” she said. And there was no bigger fool in the world than she had been that summer. “We’re not the only two people that this has ever happened to.”

“That’s right. It took two of us,” he snapped. “Okay, I wasn’t here—but you knew how to find me. Why didn’t you even try?”

She looked him right in the eye. “Why didn’t I?” she flung back.

He looked away then, but before he did, she thought she saw a spasm of emotion cross his face. For a moment she felt for him, automatically starting down a well-worn path of caring that had long been blocked off. Don’t go that way, Drew, she warned herself. Let him sweat this out. Just let him! His silence told her that he must have some memory of the day he had shattered her dreams.

After a moment he swung his glance back to her; it was as hard as granite. “I still think you should have told me about the baby.”

Like she hadn’t thought about that, for endless hours. Her pride would keep her safe from him—she didn’t need to learn a painful lesson twice—but the baby was another matter entirely. She’d had to decide which was worse for Lexi: no father at all, or a man who didn’t want to be a father, who might up and leave again at any time, as he had left her. The rambling ways of the Prince of Hearts had been documented enough by the media over the ensuing years to make Drew sure she’d done the right thing.

“Well, I didn’t,” she said, looking up at him in defiance. “And if you hadn’t figured it out on your own, I still wouldn’t”

“Your secret’s out now, Drew, and that changes everything,” he said, his voice taut with warning.

Fear wrapped its icy fingers around Drew’s throat. “What do you mean?” she asked, unable to keep a note of desperation from creeping into her voice.

“You’ve played God for seven years, Drew. No more.”

“But no one else knows, Whit—I swear! No one knows we were lovers, and I’ve never told anyone who Lexi’s father is. I’ll never expose you publicly or bring a suit against you or anything like that! If I’d wanted that, I would have done it long ago. Lexi and I are doing fine. Nothing has to change. We go our way, and you go yours.”

Whit stared at her. “Do you expect me to just turn my back and forget I have a daughter?”

No. Even through her anger Drew could see that there was a world of difference between the nineteenyear-old who didn’t want to be a family man and the grown man who’d just discovered he had a child of his own. But his feelings weren’t her concern. Lexi was. She looked up at him. “Whit, please. For Lexi’s sake, don’t do anything about this.”

He set his jaw and said tightly, “I am most definitely going to do something.”

Determination to protect her daughter gave Drew a backbone of steel. “Just what are you going to do, Your Highness?” she demanded, hands on hips.

“How the hell do I know?” he shot back. “But I’ll think of something, with or without your cooperation.”

Drew didn’t feel like cooperating! What she felt like doing was belting him. “My first choice is for you to leave, just like you did seven years ago. But since you seem determined to be difficult about this, you had better believe that I will darn well have a major say in how this affects my daughter,” she said. She lowered her voice and added, “All I care about is what’s best for Lexi.”

Whit’s flare of anger seemed to be spent. “You might not believe it, but so do I,” he said feelingly. “We need to figure this out, together.”

Drew took a step backward, holding up her hands. “Look, Whit, I can’t talk about this now. I have to get to work.” What she really needed was to get away from him, to think.

“All right,” he conceded. “Tonight. I’ll come to your house.”

“No!” She almost shouted it.

The line of his mouth was grim. “At the castle, then. Can you get someone to watch Lexi?”

“Yes,” said Drew, unable to keep the disappointment of defeat out of her voice. “I’ll be there at eight.”



After the limo dropped Drew off at her car in the school parking lot, Whit ordered the driver to go back home. It sounded funny to say that. He was a citizen of the world, as the saying went, and he’d always had more roam than home in him. But for the foreseeable future, he would be living right here in Maine, in the castle at the tip of Anders Point that had been owned by his family for years. Not that it was his decision to be stuck on this finger of land on the Maine coast. He was here on his father’s orders.

He sat back in the seat, and a crackling sound reminded him of the crumpled piece of paper that nestled in his pocket. Finding it stuck in the big iron gate when he’d arrived at the castle had not only sent him to the school, it had sent his life into turmoil. His thoughts turned to the beautiful little girl he’d met today—his little girl. A lump thickened in his throat as he remembered her features—so very like his own. How could Drew have kept his daughter from him?

“Phone call for you, Your Highness,” the driver said, interrupting Whit’s chaotic thoughts.

It was Whit’s father. “I wanted to see how you were doing since you left Isle Anders,” King Ivar said.

“You mean, since you sent me away,” Whit clarified. For the past months, following his father’s heart surgery, Whit had been shouldering the major responsibility for ruling the kingdom. But now King Ivar’s recovery was complete and Whit’s older brother, Prince Erik, had returned from his honeymoon with his bride, Julie. The king decided that Erik, his elder son and heir to the throne, should resume his former duties. And he wanted Whit to move on to the next in a long string of different jobs he had given him.

“Yes. Since I sent you to Anders Point,” the king agreed.

Whit had learned long ago that he couldn’t argue with his father’s reasoning where his ever-changing assignments were concerned. And right now, he had more important things on his mind than his next royal duty, not that he was going to discuss those things with his father. Telling the king about Lexi would only confirm his father’s feeling that his second son knew nothing of duty and responsibility. “Have you decided what you want me to do?” he asked.

“What would you like to do?”

Whit held his hand over the mouthpiece and swore. He was in no mood to play games. “Your Majesty, I stand ready to perform whatever duty you assign me,” he said. “As usual.”

The king was silent for a moment, as if thinking. “I have been considering giving you some time off.”

“Time off? Why?”

“I had a hiatus during my surgery, Erik had a honeymoon. Why shouldn’t you take a little vacation, too?”

“I don’t need a vacation, Your Majesty.” What he needed was his usual fast-paced life-style—fast enough to use up some of his boundless energy, too fast to allow any introspection. “What would you like me to do while I’m here?”

The king paused, as if choosing his words carefully. “Just do what comes naturally,” he said.

“As a prince?” Whit gave a derisive laugh. That was one thing that didn’t come naturally to him, as his father very well knew. One of his botch-ups had nearly made the whole country grind to a halt. Whit wasn’t like his father, or even like his responsible older brother. From the get-go he was the sort who colored outside of the lines, not a prime qualification for a role that’s heavy on tradition. Whit was a prince by birth, a rebel by trade, and he’d walked an uneasy line his whole life—never disobeying a royal command, but never living up to his father’s expectations either.

“Do what needs doing, my son, and trust that all things unfold in the fullness of time,” the king said, unperturbed.

“As you wish, Your Majesty,” Whit said, swearing again as he hung up the phone. His father loved to talk like that, and it drove him crazy.

The limo bumped up the gravel road that led to the castle, stopping at the iron gate, which this time had no ragged piece of paper stuck in it. A lifetime had gone by since he’d found that note, which at a cursory glance he’d been ready to tear up. Then at second glance he saw that it wasn’t written in red lipstick, but red crayon. This wasn’t the usual tawdry proposition, but a missive with words of hope and longing written in a child’s unschooled hand.

His child’s, he now knew. Was that why it had beckoned him, so irresistibly, to the school?

After opening the gate, the driver pulled the limo up to the steps leading to the front door.

“Which room would you like your bags in, Your Highness?” he asked.

“I don’t care,” Whit said.

“The north suite has a lovely view this time of—”

“Fine, fine. Whatever.”

“After that, is there anything else you’d like me to—”

“Yes,” said Whit. “Get lost.”

The young man stared at him. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me, Sloane. Get lost.”

Sloane blinked. “Do you mean permanently? When your father hired me, he told me my services would be needed at least until the end of the year.”

Whit looked at him. He was young—about nineteen, the age when young men make stupid, selfish mistakes. He was also handsome, cocky and, it seemed, chatty—all of which Whit found unspeakably irritating right now. “What’s your real name, kid?”

“Sloane.”

Whit glared at him.

“Okay, that’s my last. name. It’s Gary Sloane, but Gary didn’t sound right for a chauffeur,” the young man said amiably, adding, as an afterthought, “Your Highness.”

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

Bingo. “Listen, Sloane,” Whit said. “When I want to fire you, I’ll say, ‘You’re fired.’ When I want you to get lost, I’ll say, ‘Get lost.’ Do you see the difference?”

“Yes, Your Highness. Absolutely.”

“Good.” Whit took the steps two at a time and yanked open the front door.

“Your Highness.” Sloane’s voice from behind stopped him.

Whit turned back around. “Aren’t you lost yet, Sloane?”

“Yes. No. I mean, almost. But I wanted to know how long you want me to stay lost for.”

“Until tomorrow morning.”

Sloane was taken aback. “But, Your Highness, I live here at the castle. The king hired me to be the caretaker, too, since Julie used to do that before Prince Erik married her and—”

Whit held up his hand. “Do you have somewhere else to stay?”

Sloane’s youthful brow frowned in thought. “Well, I suppose I could stay at my sister’s. She’s—”

“Good. Do it. Get lost until tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Oh, and Sloane?”

“Yes?”

“Where I go, what I do and with whom I speak are my own business. Not yours or your sister’s or anyone else’s. Is that clear?”

“Like crystal, Your Highness,” Sloane said, and gave him a snappy salute.

With a groan, Whit went into the castle and slammed the heavy wooden door shut behind him.



Luckily no emergency calls came into the sheriff’s office the rest of the afternoon, because Drew could do nothing but worry about what had happened.

Whit knew. He knew.

Her fears tormented her. What if he tried to take Lexi away from her? He was rich and powerful. Surely, if it came down to any battle between them, he would win easily. How could she live without Lexi?

The thought was too horrible to contemplate. Whit wouldn’t, couldn’t, do that to her—to them. Anyway, it made no sense for a playboy like him to want a child around, cramping his style. Her worries on that front subsided, only to be replaced by more realistic, and therefore, more haunting, ones.

Lexi was very needy right now. And no one would fit the bill for what she needed—at least, on the surface—except Whit. First of all, he was charming. No female, no matter how old or young, was immune to that charm. Second, he had rescued her. The look of worshipful gratitude on her face had reached Drew way in the back of the gym. But most of all, he was a prince. Of course Lexi would love him!

But where would that leave her daughter? Drew wondered. In the same place Whit had left her—all alone with the shattered fragments of her beautiful dreams?

* * *

Whit spent the afternoon pacing for miles along the stone-walled corridors of the castle.

He had been totally and completely thrown by the news he’d gotten that day. He had a daughter. A daughter!

The unexpectedness of it had sent him into turmoil, and the color of his reaction was as ever-changing as a kaleidoscope. He would pace by the refrigerator and get an inexplicable urge to pop open one of the champagne bottles left from Erik and Julie’s wedding. Then he’d pace into his father’s library and want a shot of something stronger from the liquor cabinet to fortify his jangling nerves. When he passed a telephone, his fingers itched to dial his brother or his friend Prince Lucas for moral support. When he passed one of the windows that overlooked the town, he would stop and wonder what his daughter was doing. When he passed a mirror, he’d wonder what he was doing. When he passed the big clock, whose hands moved in slow motion, he’d wonder how he was going to last until eight o’clock, when Drew would come.

He’d never had any father fantasies. They were too far from reality for him, starting as they did with a minister saying, “You may kiss the bride,” and gradually progressing to a doctor saying, “Congratulations, it’s a—”

It was a girl. He felt a sudden, irrational guilt that he hadn’t paid more attention to her the first time he had ever seen her, at Erik and Julie’s wedding here at the Anders Point castle. But the littlest guest at the wedding had been rather preoccupied with his father, the king, charming him out of his crown with her beguiling smile.

And Whit had been preoccupied with Drew. That occasion had been the first time he had seen her in seven long years, and the power of the attraction he had always felt for her had hit him full force. And that was without even speaking to her, because Drew had pointedly avoided him. He himself was painfully aware of the memory of having broken her heart by leaving. So while he had respected her obvious wishes and steered clear of her, even from across the ballroom it had been impossible to keep his eyes off her.

Finding out that the little blond girl was her daughter had been a shock. He remembered feeling a stab of jealousy that Drew had replaced him so quickly. Well, why not? He had stepped aside and left her with the hope that she would find the kind of family man she was looking for—a marrying man, steady and responsible, whom she could depend on to stand by her and give her the children she wanted and the happiness she deserved. Then he’d discovered that there was no husband to complete the family picture.

The idea that this replacement lover had left Drew alone to raise his child had filled Whit with anger. It had never dawned on him that there was a chance that Drew’s little girl might be his, because he had figured Lexi to be four or five at most. When she had announced this morning that she was in first grade, it had been his first hint at the truth. Then, when she had looked up at him, the resemblance he’d seen had told him the rest.

Drew’s little girl didn’t have a daddy because he was her daddy.

There would be no nine-month waiting period for Whit. Fatherhood had been thrust upon him. And he knew precious little about first-grade girls in general, and even less about his daughter in particular. Lexi had done six years of growing up without him, and already had her own set of likes and dislikes, quirks and charms, fears and strengths, none of which he knew anything about.

He thought about that, and decided it wasn’t quite true. He knew she was fascinated by royalty; seemed to think, in fact, that she was a princess, without knowing that it was true. He knew she had her mother’s courage and stubbornness, having seen her facing a crowd of dubious peers with nothing but the strength of her own conviction. He knew she was vulnerable, too. That was why he had come to her rescue, before he had even known she was his. Something more than the words in red crayon had spoken to him when he’d read that note.

Had she needed rescuing in the past, when he wasn’t there to do it? Would he get to do it again, to feel that rush of protectiveness, to bask in the warmth of a gap-toothed smile that made him feel ten feet tall?

He didn’t know. He didn’t know where Drew would want to go with this; not only had she kept Lexi a secret from him all this time, but she had also made no secret of why. What’s more, he didn’t know where he wanted to go with this. It was too new to him, too foreign to his life, too earthshaking.

But from the first moment the discovery had rocked his world, one fact had remained unshaken, solid to the core. He had first put this immutable fact into words for Drew: he could not walk away and forget he had a daughter. Beyond that, everything else was still trembling from the aftershocks. If things ever fell into place, he might have a clue as to what he was going to do.

By late afternoon Whit was beginning to feel like a tiger in a cage. He had to go somewhere—anywhere. Grabbing his battered leather jacket, he slammed out of the castle and let habit take his feet around back, to the outbuilding.



The distant rumble of a motorcycle through her office window, a sound out of place in Anders Point, captured Drew’s attention. Life in crisis or not, she was the sheriff; and although here in this small New England town that meant more paper pushing than outlaw chasing, she still would have to find out which local teenager had gotten himself a new toy and then lecture him about not launching himself off the edge of the bluff by taking a curve too fast.

And it could happen, Drew knew. When she was a teenager, she herself had ridden the curvy roads overlooking the ocean on the back of a motorcycleWhit’s motorcycle. Somehow she had survived those wild and carefree days.

These days, Drew had a hard time remembering she had ever been wild and carefree. Mature and responsible had been her style for the past six years, since Lexi had been born. If her job as the town’s only elected official wasn’t quite what she had aspired to once upon a time, at least it provided a steady income. If that income was just enough to get by on, at least her hours were flexible. If the demanding life of a single mother wasn’t her fairy tale come true, the rewards of having Lexi made it all worthwhile. Luckily she had the help of her friend Annah, for moral support as much as for emergency baby-sitting. All in all, she was managing. She had hardly wasted time these busy years wishing for her prince to come back to her. Far from it. But like it or not, here he was.

She had to try her best to hang on to her disappointment and hurt, her down-to-earth realism and down-East practicality, because coming face-to-face with her past was too much to handle without them. Without them, she was very much afraid that the awareness she’d felt earlier, during that first unguarded moment when she’d looked at Whit, might spring up in their place.

And that would be a mistake she couldn’t afford to make, for her sake and for Lexi’s.

As it turned out, the prince was all that the kids talked about after school, as Drew stopped traffic for them during crossing guard duty. The younger ones were wide-eyed; the sixth-grade girls jabbered excitedly about how “cute” the prince was; even the boys decided that the whole thing had been “way cool.”

From where Lexi sat on the curb, waiting, Drew could see her eyes shining. After she had taken the last group across, Drew went over and sat next to her.

“Mommy, did you hear what happened today?” Lexi asked.

“Actually, I saw it,” Drew told her.

“You were there? You saw the prince appear, like magic?”

With a wistful smile, Drew pulled her little girl onto her lap and enfolded her in a hug. After a few minutes Lexi shifted restlessly, so Drew set her back on the curb.

“There was no magic,” she said gently. “This is real life, Lexi, not a fairy tale. And Whit Anders is a real man.”

“A real prince,” Lexi said decidedly.

Drew clamped down on all the responses unfit for six-year-old ears. Instead she said, “Your teacher told me about your behavior over the past few days.”

Lexi looked at her with big green eyes. “I know, and I’m sorry. It was just so important, Mommy.”

“I trust that this won’t happen again?”

“Oh, no,” Lexi assured her happily. “Because now the prince finally came.”

Ugh. Drew bit back her frustration and asked, “Lexi, why don’t you tell me why the prince came to your school?”

Lexi’s expression turned earnest. “Well, you see, I needed a prince. So I wrote a note to King Ivar.”

No surprise. Lexi had taken a shine to the king at Erik and Julie’s wedding. “You asked King Ivar for a prince?”

“Yes, in a note, and I put the note in the gate when we walked up the castle road to pick flowers. And a prince did come! I just knew he would, Mommy.”

Drew sighed. “Lexi, why do you need a prince, anyway?” she asked.

“To be my champion, of course,” Lexi said seriously.

“Your champion?”

“Like the knights that ladies have in stories. My prince will be like that.”

Her prince. Her little girl didn’t have a father, so she wanted a prince to champion her, someone strong and fearless to stand beside her and fight for her. Drew’s heart ached. She took Lexi’s hand, and they walked to the car and got in.

Drew pulled away from the school. “And you think Whit is going to be your prince?” she asked, fearing the inevitable.

To her relief, Lexi frowned. “I don’t know if he’s the one yet. He has to prove himself. This is very important, you see.”

Remembering the stories they had read, Drew felt as if she was finally catching on. “Lexi, are you going to test him, to see if he’s worthy of being your prince?”

“Yes.”

Great. Since his appearance that morning, he was certainly off to a rousing start, in Lexi’s eyes. Drew, who’d had her life so well ordered, had the feeling that parts of it were breaking off and spinning out beyond her reach. Hanging on to part of it that wasn’t—the need for food—she parked the car. “Here we are at McCreedy’s.”

They walked up to the small, family-owned grocery store that served Anders Point. Lexi went first, as usual, jumping on the black rubber mat at the entrance.

“Open…in the name of Princess Lexi,” she commanded, pointing at the door. When it did, she giggled and called for Drew to catch up.

Drew did, and after they went in she turned and pointed back at the door. “Close…in the name of the law,” she said. It did, Lexi giggled, and Drew wondered how many such simple, comfortable rituals in their everyday life together were about to be destroyed.



Whit had found his old motorcycle where he’d left it in a corner of the outbuilding seven years ago, the last time he’d been at the Point for any length of time. After giving it a cursory tune-up and fill-up, he had slung his leg over the leather seat and taken off, faster than he knew he should, down the castle road, which curved its way to town along the bluff that dropped off straight into the Atlantic Ocean. But he could never go fast enough to outrun those old memories. There were reminders everywhere he looked.

The first house he’d passed was hers.

He’d known Drew almost all his life. When they were kids, they’d played together with Julie, during the summers that he spent on the Point. But that summer seven years ago, Julie hadn’t been around, and he and Drew had had a secret romance. What they’d had was powerful, which was what had made it so damn scary. It was real love, Whit knew now, because it had been unselfish. She had wanted a dream, but he’d wanted what was best for her—and that wasn’t a man like him, with his ponytail, motorcycle and crown that didn’t seem to fit. Not wanting to fail her, he had left her.

After cruising the back roads most of the afternoon, he cut his speed as he entered the town, chugging along the quiet streets. A lot of road had disappeared under his wheels since he’d left town seven years ago. He wasn’t proud of his footloose reputation, but he had always been sure he had done the right thing by leaving Drew.

Now he wasn’t sure about anything.

He had just pulled into the only gas station in town when he heard a now-familiar voice.

“Look, Mommy! It’s the prince!”

He looked at the little grocery store next door, and first met Drew’s eyes, which went wide with dismay, before he saw Lexi. She was grinning up at him over a paper bag she hugged to the front of her while she stood on the sidewalk, her homemade crown still perched on her head.

An urge to sweep her into his arms made a sudden, sneak attack on him. Instead, he got off of his cycle and bowed to her as he had earlier. “Princess Lexi, would you do me the honor of allowing me to carry your bundle?”

Momentarily shy, she nodded and surrendered the grocery bag. Before Drew could protest, Whit took the bag she was carrying, too.

“Which way to the royal carriage?” he asked.

Lexi skipped ahead, pointing out a compact car that had seen better days, and lots of them. Whit felt a shaft of regret, thinking of all he could have provided for them, as Drew opened up the trunk.

Lexi had apparently found her voice, for she began peppering him with questions.

“Where did you come from?” she began.

He stowed the bags in the trunk. “I rode here on my motorcycle from the castle. That’s where I’m staying, here at the Point.”

She registered that information, then continued questioning. “But where did you come from in school this morning?”

“I found your note in the gate.”

“But were you under a spell? Was my kiss magic? Did it turn you from a frog into a prince?”

Whit glanced at Drew, who was biting her lip. He went with his instincts.

“I was already a prince, so your kiss couldn’t turn me into one,” he told Lexi honestly. When her face fell, he couldn’t help adding, “But I’ll be darned if it didn’t look like those frogs were smiling when you kissed them.”

Lexi giggled, then abruptly asked him another question. “Are you a stranger?”

When he hesitated, Drew interrupted. “Lexi, it’s time for us to go.” She slammed the trunk closed.

“Could you wait a minute, please, Mommy? I just have to know this one thing,” Lexi told her firmly, but not impolitely. “Are you?” she asked Whit again.

He thought about it. It was a complicated question, far more complicated than she could know. He was a stranger, yet he was bound to her by one of life’s closest connections.

“Why do you want to know?” he finally asked her, hunkering down so that he was at eye level with her.

“Because if you’re a stranger, I can’t do something I really want to do.”

“You’d better ask your mommy, princess.”

Lexi lost no time in appealing to Drew. “Is he, Mommy?”

Whit watched a thousand shadows roll across the eyes of the woman he had once known so intimately, who was now a stranger to him.

At last she swallowed and said, “I’ve known Whit since I was your age. He’s not a stranger.”

That was all Lexi needed. She straightened her glitter-covered crown and, without hesitation, came up right beside him. He could smell the sweet fragrance of baby shampoo in her silky hair as she leaned toward him with a smile as innocent as youth, as wise as time. Then she planted her puckered lips on his cheek and left a tiny, damp kiss there.

She and her mother were gone before he straightened up from his crouch. No doubt Drew had seen how shaken he was.

Frogs aside, Lexi’s kiss was indeed magic.

It had turned him into a father.




Chapter Three (#ulink_d9d74163-1eb8-5b63-9808-f74101f9e11a)


Drew held on to Lexi a little too long that night when she hugged her at bedtime.

But all the clinging in the world wouldn’t keep Lexi from being hurt, and it might let her daughter pick up on the fear that was flowing through her, cold as the ocean water outside. So Drew put on a determinedly cheerful smile as she said good-night and turned off the light.

She had to tell Annah, who was staying with Lexi, where she was going; but luckily her friend wasn’t one to pry. Although Annah hadn’t grown up on the Point, she knew that Drew and Whit had been friends since childhood, so she thought it natural that they would want to get together now that he was in town.

Drew decided that walking to the castle might calm her fears, and it did. More accurately, the crash of the waves and rush of the wind whipped up her courage. By the time she knocked on the front door of the stone castle, she could have taken on the world with her bare hands.

Whit took a long time answering, so she knocked again, even more forcefully. A moment later the heavy door swung open.

“Sorry,” he said as he let her in. “I didn’t hear your car come up the drive.”

“I walked. It’s not far.”

He looked at her for a moment. “I remember,” he said softly.

Drew looked away, momentarily thrown by his words. She remembered, too. He had walked that same walk many times himself, sometimes going the other way in the middle of the night, hours after he had secretly dropped her off at her grandmother’s house. Those nights he would stand outside her first-floor bedroom, giving her slow, secret kisses through the window, then running his lips along her ear as he whispered that he hadn’t been able to make it until morning without the taste of her. His passion had been intoxicating, and she had savored every drop of it.

But memories of those nights had no bearing on this one. Tonight Drew had to harden herself against that one period of weakness in her past and get by on grit, like she’d done ever since.

“Let’s get started,” she said briefly. “Annah’s baby-sitting for me, and mornings at her coffee shop start early.”

Whit nodded and led her through the front entry-way. He was still wearing his jeans, the worn denim clinging like a beautifully made second skin. To keep her eyes off him as he walked along the stone floor in front of her, Drew looked around her.

The castle had been built long ago by Whit’s ancestors, and had been mostly used by the Anders family as a second home, convenient for official travel to the United States yet secluded for vacations. On occasion, Whit’s father, King Ivar, had held charity balls there. Julie, besides being the castle’s caretaker, had been in charge of planning the last one, a few months earlier. Because King Ivar had been in the hospital for heart surgery, Prince Erik had hosted the ball. That was the night he had announced his engagement to Julie.

But tonight the ballroom was dark and quiet as Drew walked past it. She followed Whit into a room she knew to be the king’s library, declined his offer of a drink and sat down in a leather armchair opposite him. When she sank in too far, she got up and chose instead a straight-backed wooden chair which put her on eye level with Whit. She curled her fists around the ends of the armrests and faced him.

She took a breath and began, her voice strong. “You’re going to have to—”

“Is Lexi in bed?” he asked softly, interrupting her.

She gave him a surprised look. “Yes. Eight o’clock is her bedtime.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, processing the information. He had a daughter. His daughter had a bedtime. “Did you tuck her in?”

“Yes. I do every night.”

That told him that an evening out was a rarity for her, which filled him with an oddly possessive satisfaction. He hadn’t been a father to Lexi, but most likely no other man had been, either.

“Does she like to have a story read?” he asked.

“Every night.”

“Let me guess—a fairy tale?”

Drew rolled her eyes. “It’s her genre of choice,” she said resignedly.

“Does she sleep with a teddy bear?”

In fact, Lexi slept with a stuffed frog, but Drew didn’t know how to deal with Whit’s wistful line of questioning, except to bring it to a halt.

“Look, Whit, this isn’t making things any easier.”

“I wish it could be easier, too,” he said. “Too bad life isn’t like one of Lexi’s fairy tales.” He was darned if he could figure out a way to conjure a happy ending out of this mess.

Drew’s mouth quirked up at the corner. “I couldn’t agree more. If I had a pet dragon, you’d be toast. The end,” she said dryly.

He smiled at her words, but underneath them, he could sense that she felt threatened. He supposed it was natural. Still, he didn’t want her to feel that way.

“Look, Drew,” he said gently. “No one planned things to turn out like this. But it’s not going to help if you and I don’t work together. We share a common past. Let’s draw on that to deal with the present.”

Drew felt her spine stiffen. “What we shared in the past was a mistake, a mistake in judgment made by two reckless teenagers. Now that we’re older and wiser, there’s no need to compound it by making an even bigger one.” She had been foolish enough to dream, and had paid the consequences; but she didn’t want her starry-eyed daughter to have to pay a price that high.

Whit knew she didn’t mean Lexi was a mistake. She meant their relationship had been, and somehow that hurt. “I couldn’t agree more,” he said evenly. Trying to fix that mistake had been why he’d torn his heart apart when he’d torn loose and left her. “There’s no room to mess up, where Lexi is concerned.”

She looked at him, considering. “You really want what’s best for Lexi?”

“Of course. What do you think?”

She lifted her chin and faced him. “What do you think I’m thinking? Seven years ago you left Anders Point—and me—for the life you wanted. You’ve been in the spotlight ever since, moving from place to exotic place, woman to glamorous woman. You’re the Prince of Hearts,” she said, her voice rising with emotion. “Well, I’m Lexi’s mother. And I’ll do anything in this world—anything!—to protect her from being hurt.”

Her eyes flashed green fire as she pointed a finger at his chest. “So now that you’ve come back, Your Highness, you’d better listen good. Because over my dead body will I let you use my daughter, who has enough to deal with right now without being in the center ring of an international media circus, as some toy you’re going to lay claim to and play with for a while and then toss aside,” she warned. “Because when you leave—and you will—that’ll leave us to deal with the real-people, lifelong consequences.”

While she spoke she could see the muscles in Whit’s jaw flex and harden, but he said nothing. He just got to his feet and turned away from her.

Whit mentally swore a string of oaths in languages that spanned half the globe. Then he went over to the liquor cabinet and poured himself two fingers of something good and strong—no—three. He tossed it back and felt it sear his insides, but not as much as Drew’s words had.

The strange thing was, even burned by it, he still grudgingly admired the fire in her. Her flaming temper, her spark of enthusiasm, her smoldering passion were all the things that had drawn him to her. He had been her first lover, but her honest hunger for him had driven him to a heat he had never experienced with another woman, ever. Other women tried too hard or were too circumspect, both too self-conscious and too conscious of his position. But not Drew; she was an elemental woman.

As the bourbon mellowed him, Whit forced himself to look at her outburst not as an attack on him, but as a valiant defense of her daughter. As elemental a force as a male hungering for his female was the instinct of a mother to protect her child.

He gazed out of the library window, out across the ocean. Looking at it from her viewpoint, Drew had reason to feel threatened by him. As she had pointed out, he had left her, and they both knew why. It was also true that he had gone on to earn his welldocumented reputation as a man who went from woman to woman. As for that, only he knew why.

He turned back around and gave Drew a long look. He had to admit that time had done little to change the girl he had known in the first blush of womanhood, except to make a few improvements. The blond hair that she had worn long then was now cut in a short, sassy style that suited her personality. Her green eyes held even more mysterious shadows, and her lips had achieved a lush fullness. The same might be said for her body: she was still petite and trim, but the gentle curves that had eathralled his unskilled hands had swelled into even more tempting proportions.

Dismayed at the direction his thoughts were taking, Whit swore inwardly and took his seat again. After taking a deep breath, he spoke.

“It is true that I left you,” he began quietly. Leaving her when things got serious was the one noble, princely thing he had done in his entire life.

And staying to figure out what was best for their daughter was going to be the second.

He went on. “But everything else you said was pure speculation. I’m not going to waste my time denying it, because I’ve always believed that a man should be judged by his actions, not his words.” He looked at her, straight-on. “And you have the right to judge me, Drew, from this moment on, when it comes to Lexi.”

“What are you saying, Whit? What exactly is it that you want?”

He ran his fingers through the long waves in his hair. “I honestly don’t know,” he said. “I just found out today that I’m her father.”

Drew swallowed. “It sounds like you’re thinking that you might want to be Lexi’s father—in more than just the biological sense.”

“Yeah, I guess I am.” He might have felt differently if he hadn’t seen his daughter today—Whit didn’t know. All he knew was that seeing Lexi, coming to her rescue, and then that kiss—he felt somehow that Lexi needed him. Him, Whit Anders. He couldn’t explain that to Drew; hell, he really didn’t understand it himself. But he had to find out what Lexi needed from him.

Drew’s reply was determined. “Don’t even think about trying to get custody. Lexi belongs with me. I’ll fight you to my last gasp to keep her.”

“Drew, I don’t want to take her away from you. You’re her mother. That’s something I could never be, even if I wanted to.”

Neither spoke for a few moments. It was a heavy silence, made heavier when Drew quietly asked, “Do you really want to be a father?”

The weight of the past bore down on Whit. Seven years ago his answer to that question had been an honest and emphatic no. Learning that Drew dreamed of having a family had been a harsh wake-up call for him. She had wanted it all—and deserved it all—but there had been no way he’d felt up to taking on that magnitude of responsibility. He’d been having a hard enough time just trying to live up to his responsibilities as a prince without another major screw-up.

But that was then, and this wasn’t a hypothetical question anymore. He had a daughter, a real person with a name and a face and a dangerous knack no one else had ever had for reaching out and touching his heart.

No one else except the little girl’s mother, that is.

Watching Whit, Drew swallowed. This was it in a nutshell. She’d had no choice but to throw the past up in his face, because their past was terribly important to Lexi’s future. On their last night together, when neither of them had known that nature was bonding them together as parents, the issue of parenthood had torn them apart as lovers. The simple truth was that he hadn’t wanted to be a husband and father, and he had admitted that then. And if he still didn’t want to be a father, as she felt sure was the case, far better to come to terms with it now, before this went any further than the two of them.

“Do you, Whit?” Drew asked again. “Do you want to be there with Lexi and for her, day after day, in good times and bad? Never to leave, even when the going gets so rough it’s all you can think of doing? To be a part of her life and her future, forever?”

Whit met her gaze. “Look, Drew. I don’t know if a guy like me could ever fill the traditional father role. Gut instinct tells me no. Lord knows I’ve screwed up enough already. But gut instinct also tells me that there is some role I should play in Lexi’s life.”

Drew had to admit to herself that Whit was taking a reasonable approach to this. If only she could be so reasonable. But this was Lexi they were talking about! No wonder her emotions had a stranglehold on her reason.

He asked quietly, “Has she ever asked about me?”

She rubbed her fingertips on the smooth arm of the chair. “Lexi hasn’t asked as many questions about her father as you might expect,” she said. “They tended to be general, and I always answered them in a general way. I talked about families, and told her honestly that some kids lived with both parents and some didn’t. She knows that I didn’t grow up in a house with my father, either. And she isn’t the only kid on the Point who lives with just one parent.”

“How did she take it?”

Drew shrugged. “Kids tend to take things like that for granted. She never knew any different, so she was always content with the way things were.”

“You’re pretty good at this mom stuff.”

She looked him in the eye. “It’s not easy, Whit.”

“Like when she asked if I was a stranger?”

She sighed. “Sometimes you just cross your fingers and go on instinct.”

“Maybe that’s what we should do. After all, we don’t have to decide the future in one night.”

“I know what my instincts are telling me,” Drew said. But he had already ruled out disappearing. “What are yours telling you?”

Whit pondered that for a moment. “To get to know Lexi, and let her get to know me.”

“As her father?”

He shook his head. “She doesn’t have to know that now, and neither does anyone else.”

Drew’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Are you saying you’re not going to tell anyone about this?”

“Not even my father or brother, if that’s the way you want it.”

Drew found she couldn’t resist a parting shot. “No trumpets, no fanfare, no juicy interviews with the tabloids?”




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