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Damn!
“I don’t know what to say,” he said, bringing his thoughts back to her kind gesture.
“Don’t say anything. Owen is your son, too.”
He took a breath, praying for strength in dealing with this woman who was drawing him under her spell again.
“Unfortunately, any visitation agreement that you and I create will have to be approved by my father’s barrister,” she said, sending him crashing back to reality.
“I don’t see why,” Seth said as anger spiked through him. He wasn’t upset about the fact that Lucy wanted a lawyer to represent her; he simply didn’t like the counsel she had chosen. Her father’s barrister. The royal lawyer. The one who looked out for the rights of the monarchy first. Not even Lucy. The monarchy. “Why don’t you just hire an attorney here?”
“Because that’s not how it’s done in Xavier.”
“Well, honey, you’re not in Xavier right now.”
“I’m aware of that. However, you seem to be missing the big picture. Your son isn’t just your son. He isn’t even simply my son. He is Xavier’s next king. And Xavier has a say in what goes on in his life.”
Seth stared at her. “Are you kidding me? You’re telling me that some guys in long black robes, probably wearing powdered wigs, are going to dictate how I raise my son?”
“Not dictate,” Lucy insisted. “But they will participate in things like his baptism, where he will also be consecrated as Xavier’s next sovereign.”
“Is that anything like selling your soul to the devil?”
“Seth, please. It’s a ceremony. There will be approximately ten or twelve ceremonies Owen will be required to attend. Until his coronation, when he will live in Xavier.”
Seth combed his fingers through his hair, mad at himself for getting angry with her, but knowing he’d panicked because the last royal decree of her country’s sovereign had destroyed their marriage and God only knew what the monarchy would do to an innocent little boy destined to be king.
Seth suddenly realized that controlling himself around Xavier’s beautiful princess wasn’t the only challenge he faced. He also had to fight for Owen’s rights. If he didn’t do something, there would be no Little League for his son, no mountain adventures, no cabins, cars, dates…Hell, his son might not even go to high school! Who knew what school a future king would have to attend.
Somehow or another, over the next few weeks Seth had to figure out a way to keep Owen in America.
Because if he didn’t, Owen Bryant would end up like his princess mother, controlled by the wishes and whims of her country. And that was the real bottom line. That was what had hurt Seth the most. When Lucy was told she couldn’t get married because she was already betrothed, she hadn’t fought to get out of the betrothal. She’d simply left him.
That was why he could never lose an inch of his heart to this woman again.
Chapter Two
“I thought you were taking me to a hotel,” Lucy Santos said quietly, as she glanced at Seth’s brown brick house. Seated in the back of his SUV with her son who was sleeping soundly in his infant car seat, she caught Seth’s gaze in the rearview mirror.
Seth tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “I brought you here because I think it’s smarter for you to stay with me than to get a hotel room.”
Smarter? Lucy almost laughed as she considered the man she’d decided to marry in less time than she typically spent choosing a gown for one of her father’s formal affairs. This morning Seth wore a pale green Polo shirt that brought out the green of his eyes, khaki trousers and brown loafers. But when she had arrived at his door the night before, he’d been wearing only jeans that hung low on his lean hips and she’d collapsed against his naked chest. At the time, she’d been in too much pain to register a reaction to his smooth, warm skin. But right now, she couldn’t stop picturing the hard muscles of his torso, or remembering how nice it was to fall against the security of his strong body and realizing with sudden clarity why she’d married him after knowing him only two short weeks.
Tall and sexily slim, with sandy brown hair and unusual pale green eyes, Seth Bryant was gorgeous. But he was also a little rough around the edges. When she had met him and his older brother Ty at the site proposed for her father’s Miami mansion, Seth hadn’t known she was a princess, the daughter of the king building the magnificent home. Because she was an architect, he had assumed she was simply the project manager.
It was so nice to be treated normally that even though they’d fought over a few contract details, she hadn’t told him she was a princess until after he’d invited her to dinner. Seth was bold, intelligent, and just rebellious enough to make her feel decadent. To a woman who had been sheltered most of her life, being with him was like living an adventure. They hadn’t even known each other twelve hours before they had fallen into bed.
So, no. She didn’t think it “smarter” for her to stay here rather than at a hotel, but their attraction to each other wasn’t the most important thing to consider in this situation. Before Lucy took Owen home to Xavier Island, she also needed to know how to care for him without the help of a nanny. Her own mother, Queen Marianna, had died unexpectedly when Lucy was six. Lucy had felt more empty than sad, as if she hadn’t really known her mother, and she refused to curse her son to that fate.
But if she didn’t know how to care of Owen before she returned to Xavier Island, her father would insist on around the clock nannies. Lucy knew she’d never get to mother Owen unless she learned everything she needed to know before she went home, and to do that she needed a block of time with her son completely to herself. And in Porter, Arkansas, she was totally on her own.
As long as she called her dad and let him know Owen had been born and she was fine, her dad wouldn’t panic and come looking for her. He might covertly station a bodyguard or two in Porter. But he wouldn’t show up at Seth’s door. He couldn’t leave Xavier because on Monday Xavier’s legislature went into session and there was no way he could cancel or postpone it without causing a stir.
They’d managed to keep Lucy’s pregnancy a secret by saying she was in Miami working on the mansion. But if the king canceled the legislative session, the curious media would follow him to Arkansas. They would discover not only Lucy and her baby, but also Seth—a man unprepared for a deluge of reporters with questions about their marriage and the baby he didn’t know he was having. Which meant a story her father’s people could very easily control on Xavier Island would become a circus.
So, for the sake of making the facts surrounding the conception of Xavier’s next king appear to be normal or even irrelevant, her father would attend the legislative session as if nothing were wrong. When the session was completed, he would travel to Arkansas and take Lucy and Owen back to Xavier Island with him, where his people would “spin” Owen’s conception and birth to a situation befitting a king. But that would be okay. By then, Seth and Lucy would have decided visitation, and Lucy would know how to care for Owen.
The question was, was it better to be alone in a hotel or in a house with someone who might be able to help her, but to whom she was also unreasonably attracted.
“How can you think my living with you is smarter than staying at a hotel?”
Seth turned on the front seat to face her. “You just had a baby. You shouldn’t be alone. You need someone at least hanging out with you to make sure everything really is okay.”
“Seth, the hotel staff would be a phone call away. Besides, I’m fine.”
“Well, how about this, then? This period that we’ve agreed to spend deciding my place in Owen’s life would be a good time for me to bond with him.”
Lucy frowned. That was a much better argument than Seth knew. This wasn’t merely a “good” opportunity to bond with his son. It might be the last such opportunity he would ever have. As the future sovereign of a small country, Owen would be living across an ocean. No matter how craftily Seth negotiated, Lucy couldn’t promise him he would see his child any more than a few times a year, and those times would be at the palace, not at Seth’s home. She had nearly told Seth that the night before at the hospital, but he looked so shell-shocked from the surprises he’d already experienced that she didn’t have the heart.
She glanced at Seth’s elegant house, beautifully detailed with black lanterns at the entryways and lining the stone walk to the front door. The two-story dwelling was big enough that she and Seth could probably live together for a few weeks without too many complications.
Particularly since Lucy wasn’t worried that Seth was trying to wiggle his way into her life again. When she’d left him, he had been furious that she had dropped everything because her father had summoned her and livid that her royal responsibilities and duties took precedence over anything in her life—even him. When he didn’t return her calls, it was only logical to assume he had regretted his decision to marry a royal. When he didn’t protest their annulment, she considered it proof he had concluded marrying her had been a mistake. It had hurt at first. Actually, it had darned near killed her. But, in the end, she understood that Seth finally comprehended what she had been trying to explain to him from the first day she’d met him—it was not easy to be a member of a monarchy. And soon his son would be as involved as Lucy was.
It didn’t seem fair to deprive Seth of this opportunity to get to know his son. Not when she could easily keep herself away from a man who had been glad to be rid of her, no matter how good-looking he was. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Seth said and pushed open his SUV door. “You get the baby. I’ll grab his luggage.”
Lucy carefully exited the SUV and reached in to unbuckle Owen and lift him from his protective infant seat. She nuzzled her nose against his velvet-soft face.
“Hello,” she whispered. She was so full of awe and delight that this baby was hers that she almost lost her breath. After spending her entire life virtually alone, she had someone with whom she was irrevocably bound. Someone who would love her. Someone she could love without reservation, without fear of loss. Cuddling Owen closer, she squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled his sweet baby scent.
When Owen pressed his nose against her cheek, she knew he recognized her, and the power of instinctive love overwhelmed her again, nearly bringing her to tears and reminding her of how profound the loss of her own mother was.
“Ready?”
She faced Seth, wondering how long he had been standing there, but deciding not to make an issue of whether he’d seen her interaction with Owen. Even if he’d watched the entire time, she knew Seth wasn’t looking at her as much as at the baby. Owen was his child and Seth was interested in him, not his baby’s mother.
“Yes. We’re ready.”
She followed Seth up the long stone walk to the front door, but as he unlocked it, a black SUV roared into his driveway. The man Lucy recognized from working with him as Seth’s brother Ty climbed out of the driver’s side. A red-haired woman jumped out of the passenger’s side. Clearly obsessed with getting to Seth, Ty didn’t wait for his companion. His long footsteps had him rounding the SUV and striding toward the walk as Seth directed Lucy to the house.
In the foyer, she noticed the elaborate design of the pale orange tile floor and the elegance of the crystal chandelier that she had missed the night before. Seth hadn’t had this house when they were married. But even if he had, they had decided to keep their wedding a secret until they figured out a way to explain it to her tyrannical dad. So Seth had never brought her to his hometown, let alone to his house.
“You have a lovely home.”
Seth gave her a sheepish look. “I had to hire a decorator.”
She laughed. “Really? A man who builds for a living had to hire a decorator?”
“I understand floor plans and designs and I can even approve or disapprove the details of an office building, mall or house, but I can’t actually choose fussy things or match colors. God forbid I should have to pick all the frilly stuff for a bedroom.”
Lucy stopped a smile. No, Seth wasn’t much for frilly things. When she thought of him in a bedroom, he wasn’t mulling over the decor. He was naked, on the bed, in a tumble of sheets and bedspread.
The picture that formed in Lucy’s head sent heat through her. She chastised herself for letting her thoughts go in that direction because she was absolutely, positively, through with this man. Nestling Owen closer, she glanced around, peering into the dining room, which was furnished with an oak table and hutch, and beyond that to the living room with hardwood floors and an elegant white sofa. “Your decorator did a beautiful job.”
“Thanks. I took the liberty of having a crib and a few other essentials sent over. I set them up in the master bedroom.”
An image of her and Seth on a bed with the baby between them appeared in her brain. Quick and perfect, the image filled her heart with the same kind of love she had just felt cuddling Owen. Her chest tightened and tingly warmth enveloped her. But on the heels of those feelings came pure panic. Not only did she not want to have these kinds of feelings for Seth again, but also his assumption that she would jump into bed with him was insulting!
Eyes wide, she spun to face him. “Seth! You don’t think I’m sleeping with you! Because of my betrothal, we weren’t ever really married. I can’t…You shouldn’t…”
“Don’t worry, Princess. All that’s behind us. I’m giving you the biggest room so you’ll be more comfortable and so you’ll have more privacy. I’ll sleep in a guest room.”
Relief poured through Lucy but before she could apologize for the assumption or thank Seth for the courtesy, Ty stepped into the open door of the foyer. Like Seth, he wore plain trousers and a short-sleeved Polo shirt, but the similarities stopped there. Seth had pale green eyes and sandy brown hair, while Ty had black hair and eyes so dark they could sometimes be described as black.
Ty said, “Hello, Lucy,” then turned to Seth. “You’re in trouble.”
Seth said, “Hello, Ty.”
“I didn’t even know you and Lucy were dating! You can’t imagine how shocked I was this morning when my future mother-in-law called me to tell me that her sources at the hospital noticed that my brother had a baby the night before!”
Lucy stifled a laugh at the exasperated expression on Ty’s face, but Seth sighed. “Ty, Lucy is my ex-wife.”
Lucy watched Ty’s perfectly chiseled jaw fall. “Ex-wife? You married a princess!”
“Don’t worry. There’s no impact on Bryant Development…”
“No impact! If I remember correctly, we lost a ten-million-dollar contract.”
“Yeah, well, that was all we lost. The marriage wasn’t valid because Lucy was promised to someone else, so she wasn’t free to make that commitment. It’s as if it never happened.”
Ty stared at Seth. “How can you say it’s as if it never happened? You had a baby!”
“We did believe we were married for two weeks.”
“You’re in bigger trouble with Madelyn!”
Madelyn?
Lucy’s chest tightened again, but this time it was from jealousy. Telling herself she wasn’t jealous, only looking out for the interest of her baby by being curious about the people who would be around Owen for the next few weeks, Lucy eased the tightness with a soft, inconspicuous breath and glanced at her former husband. “Madelyn?”
“Ty’s fiancée. The woman who’s probably coming up the walk right now.”
“And the head of public relations for Bryant Development,” Ty reminded his brother. “How the hell is she going to spin this to make you look sane?”
“She’s not. My private life is my private life. I don’t see any reason this has to be ‘spun’ for anybody.”
Ty sighed, then raked his fingers through his dark hair, as the red-haired woman entered the foyer. Lucy realized Madelyn had taken longer than Ty because she had retrieved a six- or seven-month-old baby. Wearing pink bib overalls and tiny tennis shoes, the little blond girl with the toothless grin was adorable.
“Madelyn Gentry,” Seth said to Ty’s fiancée as the baby she held merrily slapped her cheek, “this is my ex-wife, Lucy Santos.”
Madelyn caught the little girl’s hand, as if suddenly realizing she needed her full mental capacity. “Ex-wife?”
“Here we go again,” Seth said, sighing.
But baby Owen made a mewling sound and he nestled more deeply against Lucy’s breast. She glanced down to be sure everything was okay, and when she looked up, both Madelyn and Ty were staring indulgently at the tiny little boy.
Lucy smiled, proud of her gorgeous new son. “Would you like to hold Owen?”
Ty’s eyes widened comically and he shrunk back. “I’m just getting accustomed to Sabrina.”
“Your baby?” Lucy said, inclining her head in the direction of the little girl Madelyn held.
“Actually Ty got custody of Sabrina when his cousin and his wife were killed in a boating accident. So he’s still learning the ropes,” Madelyn explained, gently handing the little girl to Ty. “But I’m dying to hold Owen.”
Lucy gave the baby to Madelyn as Seth said, “Let’s go in the kitchen so I can make some coffee.”
Ty and Madelyn followed Seth down the short hall by the hand-carved oak stairway, and Lucy followed them. She wasn’t entirely sure she should be in on this discussion and as she reached the huge apple-green kitchen with the light wood cabinets, she decided she should take the baby from Madelyn and bow out.
Unfortunately, Ty was already talking. “And getting back to the gossip mill that squealed on you. You can expect Captain Bunny to be here any minute now.”
Lucy glanced at Madelyn. “Captain Bunny?”
Madelyn clicked her tongue in disgust. “Ty calls my mother Captain Bunny because my dad is retired military, but my mother more or less runs the show in my house. So since my dad was a sergeant, Ty gave my mother a few ranks up and made her a captain. She seems to like that Ty recognizes she’s in charge. The nickname is probably going to stick.”
Lucy laughed. “Ty, I don’t remember you being funny when I met you to discuss the terms of the mansion contract.”
“I wasn’t, but I’m changing.”
He cast a loving glance at Madelyn and Lucy’s heart squeezed with envy. She’d always known there was something missing from her relationship with Seth. This was it. She had loved that she and Seth were so physically attracted that they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, but in the month they were together, there had been no private jokes. No intimate glances. No closeness.
She stopped her thoughts. The very fact that she and Seth never got “close” was another proof that they were not meant to be together.
From the counter where he was pouring water into a coffeemaker, Seth said, “Ty, if you still have the list of prospective nannies you interviewed, I’d love to see it.”
But Lucy shook her head. “I don’t want my baby raised by nannies. I want to care for him. Besides, I thought the whole purpose of us being here was for you to have time with your son.”
Busy adding the filter to his coffeemaker, Seth laughed. “Lucy, I might want to spend time with Owen, but I don’t know how to care for a baby and I don’t think it’s something they taught in princess school.”
She stiffened at the slight. She might be a princess, but she was a woman and she had all the normal motherly instincts.
“A woman who lived down the hall from me in Miami had a new baby,” Lucy said, ignoring the insult to focus on the problem at hand. “When I realized I was pregnant, I asked if I could watch what she did and she let me. She taught me how to hold the baby, how to change a diaper, how to burp him. Then a nurse went over the basics again this morning at the hospital. Plus, I’ve read all the baby books. After a little practice, I’ll be fine.”
Ty shook his head. “Sorry, Lucy, but I’m afraid I have to side with my brother on this one. Your neighbor might have taught you lots of things, but you’re going to discover there are hundreds of details she couldn’t possibly have covered.”
“Yeah, Lucy,” Seth agreed. “Ty has had Sabrina since June. It’s taken me three months just to get accustomed to holding her.”
Lucy understood that she didn’t know every little thing about baby care. She also knew a nanny could certainly be very helpful. But a professional caregiver would also step in every time Owen cried and Lucy wouldn’t have the opportunity she needed to learn to handle him by herself.
