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The Prince's Baby
Lisa Kaye Laurel
ROYAL WEDDINGSROYAL WEDDINGS. Three small-town women find happily-ever-after with three irresistible princes!A PRINCE OF A DADDYConvinced she was a princess, a six-year-old girl sent Prince Whit Anders a message beseeching him to prove her right. Which gave the child's single mom, Drew Davis, cause for concern. After all, Drew and the prince had shared a magical summer long ago–and her daughter's claim to royalty wasn't as far-fetched as everyone thought….When His Royal Highness Whit Anders discovered that he and lovely Drew had made more than a sweet teenage memory, he was ready to claim their child as his heir. But winning the beautiful–and independent–woman would put his reputation as the Prince of Hearts to the test!
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#uf0f2fa6d-7888-5fa4-bfd8-81cb829637d0)
Excerpt (#u6f88da48-c3d7-5522-a568-83d7adb263e3)
Dear Reader (#u67ef1085-0f4f-5750-bbdb-54914c9e59c6)
Title Page (#u18cdf35f-836f-5ff5-bc71-831f98dfafce)
Dedication (#u5282e86b-71ae-520d-952b-598a09628b93)
About the Author (#ucfae7eee-c63a-5f36-8a04-16169aa1e20d)
Chapter One (#udef2bde5-0f90-520f-a8fc-e582a984ecaa)
Chapter Two (#u2ce6e423-7819-5472-ab1b-bc7f847ec603)
Chapter Three (#u0d85d128-53c0-53e6-ac5c-a847283b1692)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” Whit demanded.
“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
The Prince’s Baby
Lisa Kaye Laurel
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
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.
LISA KAYE LAUREL
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.
Chapter One (#ulink_86fc2404-dbb7-53ab-a3a6-635c15e50918)
“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.
