Betrothed to the Prince

“Not quite as satisfying as the hair of the dog,” he murmured as he made his way painfully toward the kitchen table. “But probably more effective.”

Slumping into a chair, he threw his head back and closed his eyes and wondered, and not for the first time, why he put himself through this sort of punishment. Admittedly, it had been a good long time since he’d tied one on like he had the night before. At one time it had actually seemed like fun. As the years went on, it had become rather dreary, and he’d pretty much given up the party scene. But last night…

He wasn’t kidding anyone. He knew why he’d tried to drown himself in a bottle the night before. The anniversary of his parents’ murder was a tough thing to get past, and last night had been the twentieth one. Hopefully by next year this time he’d be too busy in Nabotavia to go through this yearly ritual.

He opened his eyes and found himself staring right into the steady green gaze of the young woman gently pacing back and forth in front of him. Suddenly he was almost embarrassed by his condition. She was so young and bright and clean-looking. He felt shopworn and seedy in contrast. He sat up a bit straighter.

“What have you got there?” he asked, noting the bundle she carried close to her chest.

She cuddled it closer, pressing a kiss to the tiny head. “A baby,” she replied, gazing at him over the top of the blanket.

Suddenly he was wide-awake. “A baby?” He sat up even straighter as the implications became clear to him. “Your baby?”

“No.” She glanced at him, then away again. “Someone left her out in the yard. I just brought her in out of the rain.”

“Uh-huh.”

That hardly seemed likely. Now he was guarded. He tried to remember if she’d been carrying the baby when he’d first seen her in the gazebo, but he hadn’t been thinking clearly enough at the time to notice much of anything. He frowned, focusing. Had he ever seen her before? No, he didn’t think so. He would have remembered. And she wasn’t claiming any previous relationship at this point.

“I know nothing about babies,” he said, as though merely making conversation. “I’ve heard they have something to do with human beings, in much the same way the acorn magically transforms itself into the mighty oak, but I have a hard time believing it.”

She wasn’t paying any attention to his jesting declaration. Her face was bent down to the little one and she was murmuring soft sounds to it. He frowned. She did seem inordinately attached to a baby she’d only just met. He couldn’t help but be suspicious.

One thing he’d been scrupulously careful about all his adult life was to make sure there would never be a woman who could claim her baby was his. There had been a few who had tried that scam, but the claims had never held up. Still, it had happened often enough to make him very wary.

He’d learned very young that his special station in life meant there weren’t many people he could trust. Everybody seemed to want something from him, whether it was influence or favors or just the extra prestige of being able to say they had been hanging out with the prince. He didn’t often let his guard down. The few times he’d done that had led to pain and disaster. His carefully maintained image of vaguely good-natured cynicism was real in part, but it also served to hide an inner vulnerability he wouldn’t ever risk again.

“So what’s it doing here?” he asked.

She looked at him as though she was beginning to doubt his intelligence. “It’s a baby,” she said carefully.

“But not yours.”

“No, I found it in the yard.”

“So you said.” His mouth turned down at the corners. “So whose is it really?”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “I don’t know, but your gate was unattended. Almost anyone could have sauntered in.”

“True.” He wasn’t convinced, but then, it didn’t really matter. He didn’t have much interest in babies anyway. But he did like the look of the woman who held it. “So you think things are a little lax around here, do you?”

“That’s putting it mildly,” she said without bothering to soften her judgment. “This place is run like a public park.”

“Oh. I suppose you think you could do a better job.”

She gave a short laugh. “I know I could.” He liked her attitude. It was refreshing to meet an attractive woman who didn’t seem to be bowled over by just being in his presence. “Really. If you took over management, what would you do to improve it?”

She gave him a sideways look and went back to rocking the baby in her arms. “My first item of business would probably be to fire you.”

“Fire me?” He stared at her for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed.

“Absolutely.” She followed up her assertion with a scathing glance that went up and down the long, muscular length of him, and was meant to convey disapproval, but ended up feeling too much like admiration for comfort and she quickly looked away. “I would never put up with an employee who acted like you do.” She shifted the baby from one hip to the other. “What do you do around here, anyway?”

He grinned. She really didn’t know he was the prince of this castle. That was great. “Oh, not a whole heck of a lot. Mostly they just keep me around for comic relief.”

“Really?” Her look told him she halfway believed it. “Well you could make yourself useful right now. Would you like to hold the baby for a moment?” She offered the little bundle with the blanket open so that the baby could be seen.

He glanced at it and looked away, shaking his head dismissively. “I’m not much of a baby person.” She stepped toward him. “Hold her anyway, while I fix a place to put her down.”

Not likely. Something about the thought of taking charge of that little piece of life gave him the willies. He threw her a baleful look. “I’ll do it,” he said, rising and looking around the kitchen, grabbing a large basket and arranging the napkins it held into a sort of bed. “Here you go.”

She carefully laid the sleeping child in the impromptu bed and pushed it to a safe place on the counter, then looked down with a sweet smile. “She’s so beautiful.”

He’d never considered red and wrinkled to be beautiful, but he did like the look of the woman. She interested him. She kept looking at him in the oddest way. It wasn’t just that she was attracted to him. Women usually were. But there was something more, something mysterious in her smoky green eyes.

She was very pretty, but it was a careless sort of beauty. The way she held herself, the way she moved, he could tell she didn’t think about her looks any more than she thought about the weather. There was an innocence about her, and yet at the same time, a sophistication, as though she knew a lot, but it was mostly secondhand information, experience gained from books and not from mixing with the masses.

“Funny,” he said softly, looking at the way her bronze hair lay against the smooth pale skin of her neck and wondering if she smelled as good as she looked. “You don’t look like a pastry chef.”

“I am not a pastry chef,” she responded automatically, looking up at him. It didn’t occur to her to say she was a princess. She never said things like that. If she had her way, the whole princess thing would fade from her life and no one would ever know about it again. Of course, being a princess was the very reason she was here, a fact she had practically forgotten by now.

“I saw Milla, the kitchen maid, in the hall and she said you’d come about the pastry chef position.”

Tianna gave him a long suffering look. “Milla was wrong.”

He frowned. Thinking wasn’t as painful as it had been a few minutes earlier, but it still wasn’t back with its usual zing. “What are you, then?”

“I’m a photographer.”

He groaned, dropping back down into the chair and stretching. “Not another photojournalist sniffing around for a story on the royals.”

“I’m not a photojournalist,” she assured him quickly. “I told you, I’m a photographer. I mainly concentrate on architectural photography. And I have no interest in photographing royals.”

“Good. Then we won’t have to kick you out on your ear.”

She bristled. “I’d like to see you try,” she said sharply, one hand on her hip.

“Oh. That’s right. I forgot you were the dangerous one.” His blue eyes glinted at her in a way that sent a new awareness skittering along her nerve endings. “Quite the little wild cat, aren’t you?” he said in a tone that made her sound downright erotic.

Her breath caught in her throat and color flooded her cheeks, but she lifted her chin and tried to ignore it. “I’m nothing of the sort. But I do know how to defend myself.”

“I’ll say you do. I’ve got the sore hand to prove it.” He shook the hand, deemed it basically unscathed, but looked up at her accusingly anyway. “That was quite a nice demonstration of the old thumb trick you put on this morning. What other escape moves do you have up your sleeve?”

She looked fully at him and for just a moment, their gazes seemed to connect, fuse, and sizzle.

“I…I think I’d better keep that to myself,” she said, feeling a bit muddled and looking toward the window, absently noting that the rain was coming down pretty steadily now. “The element of surprise is half the battle.”

“Here,” he said, coming to his feet. “I’ll show you a good one.”