A Royal Marriage

And they’d never see each other again.

Which was not a good ending for a fairy tale, but a far more realistic one for the way life really was, something she should be well-versed in by now.

Still, the thought of never seeing him again filled Rachel with an ache that felt oddly like sadness. Regardless of his station, he seemed like the rarest of finds.

A nice guy.

“I’d love some tea.” He turned and looked at her, and the light in his green-gold eyes confirmed that. A nice guy. Not at all above sharing tea with a distressed woman in her humble hovel, despite the fact he must be used to grander things, and grander company.

“I’ll take your coat then.” He shrugged out of it, and for a moment she just stared at him with the coat suspended in the air between them.

The coat had really hidden a great deal of his masculine potency. She wasn’t so sure about the nice guy definition anymore. Didn’t nice guys generally have freckles and eyeglasses and arms the size of toothpicks?

But Damon Montague exuded an almost electrical sensuality. He had on a white shirt, pristine, definitely silk, but at sometime during the evening he had abandoned both the tie and jacket that must have gone with it. Now it was unbuttoned at the throat, showing enticing whorls of dark hair, and rolled up at the cuff, revealing forearms that looked powerful and sinewy.

The passionate part of her that had raised its ugly head so swiftly and powerfully in her past made its presence known again. Just when she thought she had successfully laid it to rest, there it was, that sensation of a fist tightening in her tummy, that sensation of wanting that made her mouth go dry, and her hands curl into the rich fabric of his coat. She yanked it out of his grasp, and spun away from him. She could feel the heat in her cheeks. She took a great deal of time arranging the coat on its hanger. Even when that was done she stayed behind the open door of her coat closet for a moment, afraid to come back out, afraid everything she was feeling would show in her face.

“This painting is quite good. Where did you get it?”

“At the thrift store,” she said bluntly, shutting the closet door with a snap. There. A nice reminder of the chasms between their worlds.

“A good find,” he said and then turned and regarded her solemnly. “Tell me if I’m being too personal, but is it very difficult? Being a single mother?”

“At least it’s anonymous,” she said.

He looked startled and then he grinned. It erased years from his face, and made him look roguish and even more handsome than before.

The fist did that thing in her stomach again.

“You’re right. It’s not as much fun as one might think being recognized everywhere you go, having your family’s private affairs brought up for discussion by every Sergeant Crenshaw and Mrs. Brumble you meet.”

His smile reappeared, boyish and charming. “On the other hand, if being royal is my biggest problem, you should come over and give me a slap for complaining.”

“I don’t think my life’s as difficult as you imagine,” she said with dignity. “I’ve enjoyed some success as a technical writer. And I’ve written a children’s book that I have currently submitted. If that were published, it would mean a great deal of freedom for me.” She found herself blushing wildly. Why on earth had she told him about the book? She hadn’t told another soul in the whole world—except for Carly. She hurried on, “Of course, parts of bringing up a baby alone are hard. But parts of it are absolutely heavenly, and they far outweigh any challenges I face.”

He looked at the baby, busy once again dumping the basket she had just refilled. “I don’t have to ask about the heavenly part, do I?” he asked. “And the hard parts?”

“Really, I think they’re the same difficulties anyone has. Never enough time or money.” She realized everyone but him would have those kinds of problems. He was still looking at Carly, a look on his face she could not quite decipher.

“Do you have children?” she asked.

He looked at her shrewdly. “My wife, Sharon, was pregnant with our first child. A boy. They both died.”

“Oh, Damon!” His name came off her lips as though she had always spoken it, always known him so familiarly. “I’m so terribly sorry.” Still emotionally vulnerable from her visit at the police station, her eyes filled with tears again. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Quite frankly, it’s refreshing when someone genuinely doesn’t know. As I said, the world seems to know everything about me. Sometimes I catch a line in one of the trash papers that announces to the world something I didn’t even know about myself.”

“I don’t read them. I don’t have a television, either. I don’t know one single thing about you that you don’t know about yourself.”

He laughed at that. “Go make tea. And then I want to ask you some questions about your sister.”

She left the room and he took his cell phone out of his pocket and called Phillip to see what had become of him after he had dropped off Lady Beatrice Sheffield. He told Phillip where he was and asked him to come and get the key for Rachel’s car.

When he lowered the antenna and folded up the phone, he turned back into the room and nearly fell over the plump pink-clad baby.

“You shouldn’t sneak up on people,” he admonished her.

She cooed at him, batted thick eyelashes over eyes the exact shade of green as her mother’s. The little outfit she was wearing was fuzzy and made her look like a teddy bear.

“Quit trying to charm me,” he told her. “It won’t work. Some of the greatest in the world have given it their best shot.”

She gurgled at this, tilted her head at him, and said, “Uppie.”

“Yuppie? I think they call them something else now. And since I was born where most people want to be, I don’t qualify as upwardly mobile. A few notches down would suit me most days.”

“Uppie,” she said again, and something dangerous was happening to her mouth. It was turning down. And the brows over her eyes were furrowing downward, too.

“Puppy?” he said. He scanned the room, saw a plush purple dog sticking out of the toy box, and strode over to it, snagged it and brought it back to her. “Puppy,” he said, handing it to her.

She grabbed the dog by his long floppy ear and threw it across the room with astonishing force. “Uppie,” she shrieked.

He could hear the kettle whistling in the kitchen. Was that why Rachel wasn’t coming to his rescue? How could this huge voice be coming from such a small scrap of humanity?

“Uppie!”

Maybe it was a good thing Rachel couldn’t hear. She would think he was killing her daughter!

“Suppie?” he asked frantically. “You’re hungry, right? Your mother can fix that for you.” He began to edge his way toward the closed kitchen door. “I’ll just get her.”

A small fist tangled in his trouser leg.

He shook his leg a little, but the fist remained firm. As did the voice.

He bent over and tried to undo the little fingers, surprisingly powerful, one finger at a time.

Sweat was beginning to bead on his brow. He undid the fist, but it reattached itself to his shirt collar. Now he was caught in a most undignified position, anchored bent over, to a squalling baby.

Then, using his shirt collar, the baby pulled herself to standing. For a moment she looked gleeful, and then her arms began to windmill, and she staggered back a step. She pitched forward and wound surprisingly strong arms around his neck.

“Uppie.”

“I’m not your uppie. Or your auntie,” he told her. And then a light went on in his head. He got it, and it was so simple, he had to smile at himself for not getting it sooner. “Oh, up. Up.”

The squalling stopped, but the pause was expectant.

So he had to choose. Pick her up or run to her mother for help.

He picked her up, rather than admit there was nothing in twenty-nine years of preparing to take command of a small kingdom that had prepared him, even remotely, for a few minutes alone with twenty-five or so pounds of baby.