Cover Page
Excerpt
Dear Reader
Title Page
Dedication
About the Author
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Copyright
“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
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
Pulsuz fraqment bitdi.