Читать книгу: «The Prince's Baby»

Chapter One

“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.”