The Prince's Baby. Lisa Laurel Kaye
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