The Prince's Baby

Chapter Three

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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