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“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 the first time he had seen her in seven long years, and the power of the attraction he had always felt for her had hit him full force. And that was without even speaking to her, because Drew had pointedly avoided him. He himself was painfully aware of the memory of having broken her heart by leaving. So while he had respected her obvious wishes and steered clear of her, even from across the ballroom it had been impossible to keep his eyes off her.
Finding out that the little blond girl was her daughter had been a shock. He remembered feeling a stab of jealousy that Drew had replaced him so quickly. Well, why not? He had stepped aside and left her with the hope that she would find the kind of family man she was looking for—a marrying man, steady and responsible, whom she could depend on to stand by her and give her the children she wanted and the happiness she deserved. Then he’d discovered that there was no husband to complete the family picture.
The idea that this replacement lover had left Drew alone to raise his child had filled Whit with anger. It had never dawned on him that there was a chance that Drew’s little girl might be his, because he had figured Lexi to be four or five at most. When she had announced this morning that she was in first grade, it had been his first hint at the truth. Then, when she had looked up at him, the resemblance he’d seen had told him the rest.
Drew’s little girl didn’t have a daddy because he was her daddy.
There would be no nine-month waiting period for Whit. Fatherhood had been thrust upon him. And he knew precious little about first-grade girls in general, and even less about his daughter in particular. Lexi had done six years of growing up without him, and already had her own set of likes and dislikes, quirks and charms, fears and strengths, none of which he knew anything about.
He thought about that, and decided it wasn’t quite true. He knew she was fascinated by royalty; seemed to think, in fact, that she was a princess, without knowing that it was true. He knew she had her mother’s courage and stubbornness, having seen her facing a crowd of dubious peers with nothing but the strength of her own conviction. He knew she was vulnerable, too. That was why he had come to her rescue, before he had even known she was his. Something more than the words in red crayon had spoken to him when he’d read that note.
Had she needed rescuing in the past, when he wasn’t there to do it? Would he get to do it again, to feel that rush of protectiveness, to bask in the warmth of a gap-toothed smile that made him feel ten feet tall?
He didn’t know. He didn’t know where Drew would want to go with this; not only had she kept Lexi a secret from him all this time, but she had also made no secret of why. What’s more, he didn’t know where he wanted to go with this. It was too new to him, too foreign to his life, too earthshaking.
But from the first moment the discovery had rocked his world, one fact had remained unshaken, solid to the core. He had first put this immutable fact into words for Drew: he could not walk away and forget he had a daughter. Beyond that, everything else was still trembling from the aftershocks. If things ever fell into place, he might have a clue as to what he was going to do.
By late afternoon Whit was beginning to feel like a tiger in a cage. He had to go somewhere—anywhere. Grabbing his battered leather jacket, he slammed out of the castle and let habit take his feet around back, to the outbuilding.
The distant rumble of a motorcycle through her office window, a sound out of place in Anders Point, captured Drew’s attention. Life in crisis or not, she was the sheriff; and although here in this small New England town that meant more paper pushing than outlaw chasing, she still would have to find out which local teenager had gotten himself a new toy and then lecture him about not launching himself off the edge of the bluff by taking a curve too fast.
And it could happen, Drew knew. When she was a teenager, she herself had ridden the curvy roads overlooking the ocean on the back of a motorcycleWhit’s motorcycle. Somehow she had survived those wild and carefree days.
These days, Drew had a hard time remembering she had ever been wild and carefree. Mature and responsible had been her style for the past six years, since Lexi had been born. If her job as the town’s only elected official wasn’t quite what she had aspired to once upon a time, at least it provided a steady income. If that income was just enough to get by on, at least her hours were flexible. If the demanding life of a single mother wasn’t her fairy tale come true, the rewards of having Lexi made it all worthwhile. Luckily she had the help of her friend Annah, for moral support as much as for emergency baby-sitting. All in all, she was managing. She had hardly wasted time these busy years wishing for her prince to come back to her. Far from it. But like it or not, here he was.
She had to try her best to hang on to her disappointment and hurt, her down-to-earth realism and down-East practicality, because coming face-to-face with her past was too much to handle without them. Without them, she was very much afraid that the awareness she’d felt earlier, during that first unguarded moment when she’d looked at Whit, might spring up in their place.
And that would be a mistake she couldn’t afford to make, for her sake and for Lexi’s.
As it turned out, the prince was all that the kids talked about after school, as Drew stopped traffic for them during crossing guard duty. The younger ones were wide-eyed; the sixth-grade girls jabbered excitedly about how “cute” the prince was; even the boys decided that the whole thing had been “way cool.”
From where Lexi sat on the curb, waiting, Drew could see her eyes shining. After she had taken the last group across, Drew went over and sat next to her.
“Mommy, did you hear what happened today?” Lexi asked.
“Actually, I saw it,” Drew told her.
“You were there? You saw the prince appear, like magic?”
With a wistful smile, Drew pulled her little girl onto her lap and enfolded her in a hug. After a few minutes Lexi shifted restlessly, so Drew set her back on the curb.
“There was no magic,” she said gently. “This is real life, Lexi, not a fairy tale. And Whit Anders is a real man.”
“A real prince,” Lexi said decidedly.
Drew clamped down on all the responses unfit for six-year-old ears. Instead she said, “Your teacher told me about your behavior over the past few days.”
Lexi looked at her with big green eyes. “I know, and I’m sorry. It was just so important, Mommy.”
“I trust that this won’t happen again?”
“Oh, no,” Lexi assured her happily. “Because now the prince finally came.”
Ugh. Drew bit back her frustration and asked, “Lexi, why don’t you tell me why the prince came to your school?”
Lexi’s expression turned earnest. “Well, you see, I needed a prince. So I wrote a note to King Ivar.”
No surprise. Lexi had taken a shine to the king at Erik and Julie’s wedding. “You asked King Ivar for a prince?”
“Yes, in a note, and I put the note in the gate when we walked up the castle road to pick flowers. And a prince did come! I just knew he would, Mommy.”
Drew sighed. “Lexi, why do you need a prince, anyway?” she asked.
“To be my champion, of course,” Lexi said seriously.
“Your champion?”
“Like the knights that ladies have in stories. My prince will be like that.”
Her prince. Her little girl didn’t have a father, so she wanted a prince to champion her, someone strong and fearless to stand beside her and fight for her. Drew’s heart ached. She took Lexi’s hand, and they walked to the car and got in.
Drew pulled away from the school. “And you think Whit is going to be your prince?” she asked, fearing the inevitable.
To her relief, Lexi frowned. “I don’t know if he’s the one yet. He has to prove himself. This is very important, you see.”
Remembering the stories they had read, Drew felt as if she was finally catching on. “Lexi, are you going to test him, to see if he’s worthy of being your prince?”
“Yes.”
Great. Since his appearance that morning, he was certainly off to a rousing start, in Lexi’s eyes. Drew, who’d had her life so well ordered, had the feeling that parts of it were breaking off and spinning out beyond her reach. Hanging on to part of it that wasn’t—the need for food—she parked the car. “Here we are at McCreedy’s.”
They walked up to the small, family-owned grocery store that served Anders Point. Lexi went first, as usual, jumping on the black rubber mat at the entrance.
“Open…in the name of Princess Lexi,” she commanded, pointing at the door. When it did, she giggled and called for Drew to catch up.
Drew did, and after they went in she turned and pointed back at the door. “Close…in the name of the law,” she said. It did, Lexi giggled, and Drew wondered how many such simple, comfortable rituals in their everyday life together were about to be destroyed.
Whit had found his old motorcycle where he’d left it in a corner of the outbuilding seven years ago, the last time he’d been at the Point for any length of time. After giving it a cursory tune-up and fill-up, he had slung his leg over the leather seat and taken off, faster than he knew he should, down the castle road, which curved its way to town along the bluff that dropped off straight into the Atlantic Ocean. But he could never go fast enough to outrun those old memories. There were reminders everywhere he looked.
The first house he’d passed was hers.
He’d known Drew almost all his life. When they were kids, they’d played together with Julie, during the summers that he spent on the Point. But that summer seven years ago, Julie hadn’t been around, and he and Drew had had a secret romance. What they’d had was powerful, which was what had made it so damn scary. It was real love, Whit knew now, because it had been unselfish. She had wanted a dream, but he’d wanted what was best for her—and that wasn’t a man like him, with his ponytail, motorcycle and crown that didn’t seem to fit. Not wanting to fail her, he had left her.
After cruising the back roads most of the afternoon, he cut his speed as he entered the town, chugging along the quiet streets. A lot of road had disappeared under his wheels since he’d left town seven years ago. He wasn’t proud of his footloose reputation, but he had always been sure he had done the right thing by leaving Drew.
Now he wasn’t sure about anything.
He had just pulled into the only gas station in town when he heard a now-familiar voice.
“Look, Mommy! It’s the prince!”
He looked at the little grocery store next door, and first met Drew’s eyes, which went wide with dismay, before he saw Lexi. She was grinning up at him over a paper bag she hugged to the front of her while she stood on the sidewalk, her homemade crown still perched on her head.
An urge to sweep her into his arms made a sudden, sneak attack on him. Instead, he got off of his cycle and bowed to her as he had earlier. “Princess Lexi, would you do me the honor of allowing me to carry your bundle?”
Momentarily shy, she nodded and surrendered the grocery bag. Before Drew could protest, Whit took the bag she was carrying, too.
“Which way to the royal carriage?” he asked.
Lexi skipped ahead, pointing out a compact car that had seen better days, and lots of them. Whit felt a shaft of regret, thinking of all he could have provided for them, as Drew opened up the trunk.
Lexi had apparently found her voice, for she began peppering him with questions.
