Her Royal Baby Read online

  ‘I know that.’

  His words shocked her. ‘You know it?’

  ‘Jean-Paul was a mindless, arrogant twit,’ he said grimly. ‘He’d been overindulged since birth. He was an alcoholic by the time he was eighteen. If you’re thinking he changed after your sister married him then think again. She knew exactly what she was getting into.’

  Tammy flinched. ‘Then why…?’

  ‘Why did she marry him?’ Marc’s lips compressed into a smile that held no humour at all. He stared down at the ripped pieces of cheque littering the floor and shook his head. ‘Lara would never have done that.’

  ‘Ripped your cheque?’

  ‘Ripped anyone’s cheque. She and your mother… I remember them at the wedding. They thought they’d won the ultimate trophy. And all they’d won was Jean-Paul.’

  ‘She’d won the chance to be a princess.’

  ‘It came at a cost.’

  She was staring up at him, her breathing coming way too fast. He was still holding her, but absently. He didn’t know his own strength, she thought. He held her as if he could take on three of her.

  He probably could.

  ‘Let me go,’ she breathed, and he stared down her, and his dark eyes glittered with something she didn’t understand.

  ‘Will you hit me again?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Then maybe I shouldn’t let you go.’

  ‘You could just leave,’ she managed through gritted teeth. ‘That’d solve all our problems.’

  ‘It wouldn’t solve anything.’ He stared down at her for a long moment. They were so close. She could feel his breath on her hair. She bit her lip and stared straight ahead-at the fine linen of his shirt. His top two buttons were unfastened and his throat was tanned. There was a trace of wisping hair on his muscled chest…

  The way her body was reacting was crazy, she thought frantically. She needed every ounce of concentration to focus on Henry, and yet this man had the ability to sidetrack her-to make her think about his body…

  Henry. She had to focus on Henry.

  ‘What did your sister say?’ He put her away from him then, with a rough little gesture that made her stumble. His hands caught her again-as if he hadn’t meant to be so rough. He righted her as he’d right a doll, then stood back and watched her.

  ‘I don’t have to tell you.’

  ‘I can’t answer your allegations until I know what they are,’ he said bluntly. ‘I think it’s time for the truth. Don’t you?’

  ‘I…’

  But she got no further. There was an urgent knock on the door, cutting through her attempt at speech.

  ‘Damn,’ Marc said.

  Tammy didn’t move.

  ‘Are you expecting someone?’ he demanded, but still she didn’t move.

  ‘Is everything all right in there?’ It was a loud male voice, raised in authority. ‘Miss, can you open the door? We’ve had a report of violence.’

  Great. Security. Exactly what she needed. Tammy gave Marc a look that was almost triumphant and marched to the door. She swung it open to find two burly security guards on the other side.

  ‘Miss Dexter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They looked past her to Marc, standing behind her. ‘Is this man bothering you?’

  Yes. She should say yes. She should have them drag him out of here so she could slam the door behind him and that would be that. They could speak to each other through their lawyers.

  ‘We need to talk,’ he said urgently as she hesitated. She looked back at him, which was a mistake. His eyes were urgent and compelling, and sending her messages she didn’t understand.

  ‘Why?’ she managed, and the urgency in his voice increased.

  ‘Because you and I are all the family Henry has. Because, regardless of what you think of me, I care. Because I have responsibilities I need to face, and because Henry has a heritage neither of us can avoid.’

  ‘Henry stays with me,’ she said flatly as the security guards looked on.

  ‘Can we organise a babysitter and talk over dinner?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want us to remove him?’ one of the security guards said, and still she hesitated.

  There was so much she didn’t know. She glanced back and found Marc still watching her with the expression she was coming to know. Watchful and non-judgmental.

  She’d thought when she first met him that he had a good face. Kind. Maybe she was wrong-her wrist was tingling now from the force with which he’d held her-but still he watched, and she needed to come to a decision.

  She thought fast, forcing her confused mind to focus. This was a five-star Australian hotel. Henry was an Australian citizen. Marc could hardly drag the baby from her arms and remove him. If he was planning on removing Henry from the country illegally he’d hardly have gone to the effort of finding her in the first place.

  No. This man was a Head of State. He’d have to do things above board.

  He could try and persuade her all he wanted. She could afford to listen.

  ‘We’ll have dinner,’ she told him.

  ‘I’ll organise…’

  ‘No. I’ll organise dinner. We’ll have Room Service here in my room, where I can watch Henry.’ She glanced back at the security officers and managed a smile. ‘We’ll be fine,’ she told them. ‘His Royal Highness has a temper, but he’s trying his best to fit into civilised society. If he promises to behave then he can stay. You guys are on call if he steps out of line again, aren’t you?’

  There was a sharp intake of breath behind her but she didn’t care. Serves him right, she thought, rubbing her wrist.

  Serves him right.

  ‘We’re at the end of the phone, miss,’ one of the guards told her. Clearly in this hotel they were accustomed to all sorts, and violent patrons were nothing new. ‘Dial 8 or scream. Either way we’ll be here in seconds.’

  But they weren’t speaking to Tammy. They were speaking directly to Marc, and their body language said they’d like to haul him out of there right now.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘GREAT.’

  ‘Great?’

  ‘Do you know what you’ve just done for inter-country relations?’ Marc demanded as the door closed. ‘These people know who I am and now they’re thinking I’m somewhere between Godzilla and Attila the Hun.’

  ‘As if I care.’

  ‘You might not, but I do.’

  ‘Were there reporters out there with cameramen attached?’ They were both past fury now, and moving on to a level they didn’t know. Sparks were flashing off them like two electric cables coming into contact. You could practically smell the burning. ‘Are the press in this country interested in the doings of some tinpot prince? I don’t think so. Broitenburg is a tiny country. I think you have an exaggerated idea of your own importance… Your Highness.’

  She ended her words on a note of bitter sarcasm.

  Tinpot prince… She’d called him a tinpot prince.

  The words hung between them

  With anger still driving her, she turned her back to check Henry. The child was obviously accustomed to sleeping through noise. Now he snoozed on, tiny lashes fluttering closed over his dark eyes. She’d wrapped him snugly in a blanket and he was using a corner of it for comfort, sucking it in his sleep.

  Henry was the important one here, she thought, trying desperately to get her thoughts in some sort of order. Henry. Not some crazy foreign prince with an overblown idea of his own importance.

  ‘Will you tell me what was in the letter?’ Marc asked, and Tammy whirled to face him again. She had so many emotions spinning in her head it was hard to know where to begin. His voice had calmed, but she was still a long way from anywhere approaching calm.

  He saw it. His hands came up in a gesture that said he wanted to placate, not inflame the situation further. ‘You must be hungry,’ he said softly. ‘I know I am.’ He picked up the Room Service menu and flicked it open. ‘Let me order dinner for both
of us and we’ll eat and talk at the same time.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Of course here. You’ve made that plain.’ He managed a smile. ‘If I object your very efficient security officers will come and eject me. They’ll create an international incident and that will be that. So… I’m in your hands, Miss Dexter.’

  She backed off a pace and glared. ‘Why don’t I trust that smile?’

  ‘You can trust me,’ he said, so softly that she hardly heard.

  But she did hear. She looked at him for a long moment. Their eyes locked and she found her colour mounting. This time it wasn’t from anger.

  You can trust me? Did she? What was it about this man?

  ‘Fine,’ she stammered. ‘Order. Only not frogs’ legs.’

  ‘Or kangaroo steak,’ he said gravely. ‘Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘At last. We have consensus.’

  They might have had a consensus on dinner, but they sat at either side of Tammy’s tiny table and eyed each other as if either could produce a loaded automatic at any minute.

  Marc poured wine, and Tammy eyed that, too, with distrust.

  ‘No, Miss Dexter,’ he told her. ‘The wine doesn’t contain poison, and I’m not trying to get you drunk.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past you.’

  Marc closed his eyes. When he opened them the humour had gone. There was bleak acceptance of where she was coming from.

  ‘What was in the letter?’

  ‘I’d imagine you know.’

  ‘I know very little,’ he told her. ‘I had little to do with my cousin. Our families were not close.’

  ‘How can you be Prince Regent if your families were not close?’

  ‘I never expected to inherit the crown. Jean-Paul had an older brother, Franz, who was killed in a car racing accident five years ago. After Franz’s death Jean-Paul inherited the crown. With two cousins before me I’d never imagined it could come to me. And I don’t want it.’

  She frowned. ‘You don’t want it?’

  ‘Believe it or not, no.’

  ‘So why…?’

  ‘There’s no one else,’ he said heavily. ‘Except Henry. Tell me what was in the letter.’

  Tammy bit her lip. She took a sip of the wine, which was gorgeous-Marc certainly knew how to order wine-and thought about it. The letter was intensely personal, but maybe the time for keeping secrets was past.

  She focused on the food for a bit: lobster and salad and fries. It was a combination that was just what she felt like. At some level she was very, very hungry.

  But overriding hunger was the sensation that maybe she needed to be honest with this man.

  There’d been enough secrets.

  ‘My sister seemed…desperate,’ she told him. ‘Her letter sounds like she was way out of her depth. She apologised for not letting me know about her marriage and her pregnancy. She said our mother engineered her meeting with Jean-Paul and pushed them both into marriage. I can believe that.’

  ‘I can believe it too,’ Marc said softly. ‘I hate to say it, but your sister seemed…well, she seemed a wimp. I only met her the once, at her wedding. She was a fairytale princess but a wimp just the same.’

  ‘Lara always did what my mother wanted,’ Tammy said sadly. ‘From the time Isobelle took any notice of her Lara was her puppet. Fights are all that was ever between my mother and me, from as far back as I can remember, but by the time Lara was ten or eleven she was beautiful and she was biddable. Isobelle schooled her well in the art of making it in the world by using men.’

  ‘So Jean-Paul would have seemed desirable?’

  ‘Isobelle used to call Lara a princess,’ Tammy said, and the old bitterness was still in her voice. ‘She wanted it so much. My father was titled and moneyed, and for a while Isobelle thought she’d scored a title for herself. That was why she got pregnant with me. But even after she had me my father refused to marry her. It was a waste of a pregnancy so far as Isobelle was concerned. And maybe it explains why she hates me so much.’

  ‘She hates you?’

  But Tammy wasn’t about to be sidetracked onto things that didn’t matter. ‘Isobelle married four times,’ she told him. ‘Lara was another pregnancy to force some man to marry her. And she succeeded. The marriage lasted for a whole eighteen months.’

  ‘Lara was like her?’

  ‘Obedience was her way of getting affection. We did what our mother wanted or there was no affection at all.’

  Marc’s eyes watched Tammy. He knew what she was saying. There was a lifetime of bitterness behind the words. But he didn’t comment. He waited for her to continue, and in a while she did.

  ‘Anyway…anyway, as Lara got older my mother dragged Lara with her in her stupid schemes. Lara was too weak to see the pitfalls of the men my mother found for her. According to her letter, Jean-Paul scared her but she was too spineless to do anything about it. She let Isobelle push her into marriage. Then when Henry was six months old-they were in Paris and Isobelle had dropped in for a flying visit-Lara went shopping and returned to find one of Jean-Paul’s crazy friends trying to feed Henry drugs. Jean-Paul thought it was funny. That was enough to get through Lara’s thick skull. She wasn’t bad. She was just…spineless.’

  ‘So she sent Henry back to Australia with your mother?’

  ‘She sent him to me.’

  ‘To you?’

  ‘According to her letter she asked Isobelle to bring the baby to me.’ Tammy shrugged. ‘I’m the one who’s dragged Lara out of trouble in the past. Even though we were separated, Lara knew I wouldn’t have refused.’

  ‘But Isobelle didn’t bring Henry to you?’

  ‘No.’ Tammy shook her head, still thinking it through. ‘How could she have brought the baby to me? She would have had to find me, for a start. Then she would have had to explain what was going on and I might have yelled at her. It was far easier to dump Henry in a hotel with his nanny and tell Lara she couldn’t find me. Or that I wasn’t interested. Or she might even have told Lara that I was involved in caring for him. Heaven knows.’ She bit her lip and her face hardened. ‘Isobelle will tell me.’

  Marc looked across the table at her, his face thoughtful. ‘So there’s no love lost between you and your mother?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Lara’s hardly blameless. Surely a mother would have checked on her baby?’

  ‘By the sound of it…’ Tammy said, her voice fading to a whisper. ‘By the style of the writing it seems as if Lara was out of it, too.’

  He thought about that and nodded. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised. If I’d had live with Jean-Paul maybe that would have been the only way I could face him.’

  ‘He was that bad?’

  ‘He was that bad.’

  ‘My mother must have known.’

  He didn’t respond. There was no response to give. For a while there was total silence.

  ‘Your fries are getting cold,’ he said at last, and Tammy caught herself.

  ‘I…yes.’

  ‘They’re good.’

  ‘They are, aren’t they?’ she said, and managed a smile. He smiled back at her.

  There it was again. That smile. It was a knockout. It brought sunshine where there’d been only blackness. It seemed as if where there was this smile her world couldn’t be all that dreadful.

  Not if this man was in it.

  Now, that was a crazy thing to think, she thought savagely. This man and his family were the cause of all this…mess.

  Henry.

  Her eyes slid sideways to the cot and Marc followed her gaze.

  ‘It’s not a total disaster,’ he said softly, and her eyes swung back to him in surprise. As well as everything else, did he have the capacity to read minds?

  ‘Why do you want him to go home…?’ She corrected herself. ‘To go back to Broitenburg?’

  ‘He must.’

  ‘You surely don’t want a child?’

  ‘No, but…’

  ‘C
harles called you the Prince Regent. So that makes you the ruler of the country. Right?’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘But what?’

  He sighed, refilled his wine glass and settled back, like a man prepared to lay his cards on the table.

  ‘The country is in a mess,’ he told her honestly. ‘Jean-Paul behaved like an absentee landlord for years, and so did his brother before him. The government’s corrupt. Everyone who’s anyone has made themselves positions of power. Charles, for example. Why does a country as small as Broitenburg need an Australian embassy? It doesn’t. Yet here’s Charles-being paid a sickening stipend, driving the car you saw us in, living in an embassy that would house a dozen families. Broitenburg is… was-a prosperous little country, yet when Franz and then Jean-Paul came into power it was bled dry by corrupt officialdom. The whole thing needs a dose of salts.’

  ‘And you’re just the man to give it to them,’ Tammy said thoughtfully, and Marc grinned.

  ‘Actually, yes.’

  ‘Why bother?’ she asked curiously. ‘Why do you care?’

  ‘It’s a wonderful country,’ Marc said softly. ‘I was brought up there and I love it. My cousins didn’t give a toss about it, but Broitenburg under my grandfather’s rule was magic. It breaks me up, seeing what’s happening now.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So why can’t you thunder in and kick some butt?’ Tammy demanded. ‘Instead of throwing obscene amounts of money at me so you can spend the next twenty years babysitting, why not just go home and rule?’

  ‘There’s a problem.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘The succession is Henry’s, not mine. The constitution makes me a caretaker monarch. When he reaches twenty-five, the job is his.’

  Tammy thought that through. A twenty-five-year reign and then honourable retirement? It didn’t sound bad to her. ‘That gives you twenty-five years of playing king,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘If that’s what I have-but I don’t. Not at the moment. My Regency only holds true if Henry’s in the country. If Henry isn’t living in Broitenburg then I have no power at all.’