The Prince's Baby. Lisa Laurel Kaye
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