by Lynn, Sophia
Philip's smile was as brilliant as she remembered it being. "Good," he said, stepping closer. "Then perhaps you would come out and have some dinner with me. I have a feeling we have a lot of catching up to do."
For a moment, she was twenty again, and there was nothing in the world she wanted better than to step out with a man who made her feel the way that Philip always had. Then her real life crashed through, and she knew that it was an impossibility. She started to flail around for an excuse, but then Cassie, wonderful Cassie who had been silent throughout this entire mad exchange, stepped in.
"Sorry, I'm sure Marnie would love to, but tonight she promised that she would get me home safely."
Philip looked startled, but nodded. "That is … very good of her," he said. "Marnie … it was a pleasure to see you. Here, take my card. If you want to see me again, just call, all right?"
She took the card from him with hands that felt as if they were frozen in ice, and she nodded. At that moment, the owner of one of the local presses flagged Philip down, and Cassie and Marnie made their escape.
"Thank you," Marnie said as they walked down the street. "That was getting strange to say the least."
"No problem at all. I'll do that for you any time, but seriously, what's going on with you and Mr. Kinda European? That was pretty intense."
Marnie took a deep breath and started to tell her friend all about her history with Philip, but her mind was already skipping ahead to her own apartment and the person who was waiting for her there.
When she had gone out this evening for the poetry reading, everything had been so simple.
Now nothing was.
*
When Philip managed to break away from the grasp of a particularly unctuous publisher, he was disappointed to see that Marnie was gone. He hadn't been fooled by her friend in the least. He had gone to enough public functions to know when one woman was extricating a friend from a situation perceived to be troublesome, and he bore her no ill will.
However, when he thought about it, he had to admit that he was stung that Marnie had gone along with it. When he had seen her, he had been catapulted back to that summer he had spent in New York. If he was honest with himself, that was what had set him on the path that had taken him back to New York this very week.
Less than two weeks ago, he had walked out of a dinner with the royal family of Svarta and had turned to his parents with disbelief.
"You cannot be serious," he had said, and his father had frowned.
"She is a perfectly delightful woman," Alexander had rumbled. "She is attractive. What more do you want?"
"I want a great deal more," he had shot back. "If I am to be married, I am certainly not interested in it being to some placid little cow."
"Keep your voice down," his mother had hissed. "She was perfectly polite and kind to you, and the last thing you should be doing is hurting your future wife's feelings."
“Future—? Mother, Father, no. I have nothing but respect for you, but I am not going to marry Johanna. There is no way in hell."
Alexander had stepped up to his son and for a moment, Philip had wondered if they were actually going to come to blows. The older man was still hale and hearty, but Philip matched him pound for pound. The prince had narrowed his eyes, but his father only came close to him, eyes cold as icy steel.
"You have been raised to serve this country," he had said. "And from the time you were a child, you know that part of serving the country would be to marry a suitable woman and to have an heir for the throne. This is not a duty that you can abdicate while still remaining the Prince."
Philip had met his father's gaze without flinching. "Do you think you are going to frighten me with my disinheritance?"
"You are a full-grown man, and for the most part, I respect you as much as I care for you. I wouldn't threaten you, but I will tell you this." Alexander had paused, as if the words that he was going to say were too heavy for him. "I am not threatening you," he had said solemnly. "I am not going to rail at you or try to punish you. You are a man, and the only thing I will say is that your actions contribute to an inevitable result. If you refuse to do your duty, if you will not take up the responsibilities that have been part and parcel of the duty of every Demarier male heir, I will disinherit you. You will no longer be a prince. You will no longer be my heir."
Philip had frozen. His father had intimated that Philip could be disinherited before, but he had never come out and said so quite so bluntly. Philip's first emotions had been an empty grief that he could be so easily ushered out of his own family, and then it was followed with a raw and red rage.
He couldn't trust himself in that moment. If he had continued, he might have said something that he didn't mean, something that was even more disastrous than a disinheritance might be. Instead, he had stared at his parents, bowed abruptly, turned on his heel and had left.
They probably had thought he was going to go to his own home to sulk, or that he was even going to go on a tear through the capital. Instead, he had walked straight up to his own apartments, packed a bag, and had booked a ticket.
Less than five hours later, he had been on a plane bound for New York.
New York had always been a kind of promised land for him. It was a place where he could disappear into the tumult, where cashiers and waitresses rubbed elbows so often with stars and politicians that it simply wasn't worth mentioning anymore.
It was in New York where he had met the first great love of his life, and though he knew that time had passed and the world had moved on, he would have been lying if he said he harbored no hope of seeing her.
He had appeared in New York, and spent some time at the hot spots before he began craving something more sustaining. The poetry reading was dismal, however, and he was just beginning to think about excusing himself when he had seen her from across the room.
His brain might not have known how he was going to react, but his heart had its own ideas. His heart throbbed with a kind of recognition that made him ache, and it was all he could do not to walk over and try to pick up where they had left off.
She had changed, he noticed when he got closer. She was still short, with a fall of hair as black as his and those enormous blue eyes. She was a little curvier as well, but it only made her look more womanly to him. He saw her, and his first instinct was still to plant a gentle kiss on her full lips.
He kept himself back however, and when she looked a little frantic, he had let her go.
Philip woke up the day after the reading feeling more contemplative than he had been before. When he checked the news from home, he made a face to see that his parents had revealed that he was taking a trip to New York for family and business purposes. He supposed that telling the press he was running away from a dull-as-dirt future marriage was out of the question.
He skimmed through the society pages, and then with feelings of surprise and fate, he recognized Marnie's name.
Marnie Drake can't be stopped as she heads out tonight to promote her third novel, The Wind that Sustains Us. The prodigy authoress will be giving a talk at Sandhill Bookstore in Manhattan at 7 this evening and signing her new novel shortly thereafter.
Philip debated with himself briefly, and then he gave in. If Marnie didn't want to see him, he would get a book signed by an old flame who had grown into all the promise she had when they knew each other. If she did …
Philip's heart beat a little faster. He told himself that he had to recall his position and hers. If she didn't want to see him, he would be fine with that and move on. Despite that, something in him that felt as if it had been asleep for six years was waking up, and he had no idea what would happen now.
CHAPTER TWO
The Sandhill Bookstore was a gorgeous old building with antique mahogany shelves and an actual crystal chandelier hung high on the ceiling. It covered two floors of books both old and new, and when Philip arrived, it was already filling up with eager fans. He actually h
ad to hustle to pick up Marnie's book, and when he thumbed through it, he was startled to see how much of her came through in her writing. There was something indefinably Marnie about it, and he warmed to her even further.
Philip decided that he didn't want to sit up front, where she might be distracted by seeing an old flame. Instead, he took a seat at the back, where the last stragglers were filling in. It was dimmer there, and he sat waiting for Marnie to appear.
Seated just a seat away from him was a little girl who couldn't be more than five. She was a fey little thing, dressed in a green dress with gold ribbons in her hair. With her dark hair and slim build, she reminded him of some of his cousins' children. Philip wondered at parents who would bring a child to such an adult event, but the little girl seemed to be content to draw in her large pad of recycled paper, making broad black lines with her stub of crayon.
When she felt his eyes on her, the girl looked up, and to his surprise, he saw that her eyes were as dark as ink. Between the dark eyes and pale skin, she could easily have passed for the child of one of his relatives.
She looked supremely unimpressed with him, which was oddly hilarious.
"Hello," he said mildly.
"Hi," she said diffidently. "I'm drawing a mountain."
He supposed that the marks on the paper could have been a mountain. "Oh, I can see that. It's a very nice mountain."
"It's for my mama," she said, almost aggressively. "She likes mountains a lot."
"Well, how lucky it is for her that you will draw them for her," Philip said, but if the little girl was taken in by his flattery, she gave no sign.
"Someday we're going to go live in the mountains," she said with a deep frown. She hesitated for a moment and began drawing a square on her mountain. He wondered if it was a house.
"Oh, really? And what are you going to do there?"
"I'm going to draw. And my mama's going to write."
Philip's mind was beginning to draw some lines, but just then the lights dropped, and Marnie appeared. Dressed in a green dress with golden accents, she looked every inch the bohemian writer she was, and her appearance was met with thunderous applause. The girl sitting next to him lost all pretense of disdain and gasped, putting her hands together with enthusiasm.
"That's my mama!" she whispered to him, but he had come to that conclusion himself.
Philip was certain that Marnie's talk was fascinating. There were certainly enough members of the audience that were impressed. However, he could barely hear what she was saying over the tumult of thought in his own mind. He thought about how quickly he and Marnie had broken things off, and he thought about how the little girl sitting next to him looked. There were coincidences in life, he thought, but he wasn't sure he believed in them. The evidence was there, and he was not leaving this evening until he got to the bottom of this.
After Marnie's talk, the people got up to mill around before she started signing. The little girl darted through the crowd to wrap herself around her mother's hip. Marnie grinned, delighted to see her daughter, and she rested her hand on her daughter's dark head as she continued talking to the people around her.
Philip positioned himself close to the end of the line, his book clutched hard in his hand. As the line progressed at what felt like a snail's pace, he tried to focus and calm himself. There was nothing to be gained by flying off the handle.
He was startled when a bookstore employee offered him a Post-it Note.
"What's this?" he asked with a frown.
"Oh, just write your name on it," the employee told him. "It tells Ms. Drake who to sign the book to. It keeps it simpler than having every one tell her up front. Write down who you want the book signed to, and stick it to the inside of the cover."
Philip hesitated for a moment, scrawled a single word on the Post-it, and shut it into the book. He kept his mind as calm and level as he could.
However, when he got to the front of the line finally, he could see that Marnie looked exhausted. She smiled at him without seeing him at all, and when she took the book from him, he could see that her hands were shaking.
"Thanks for supporting my work," she said as cheerfully as she could, "I really appreciate …"
She glanced down at the Post-it Note, and her pale face went even paler. She didn't say the word that was written on the note, but he saw her mouth it.
Daddy?
She looked up at him, finally seeing him. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting. Perhaps she would be guilty, or perhaps she would be furious. Maybe she would dress him down then and there, or perhaps she would ice over. Instead, she looked around, and then scrawled something in the book. She handed it back to him with all the smooth élan of a practiced spy.
"Thanks for reading," she said, and it was only because he had once known her so well that he could tell that her smile was utterly false.
He waited until he got out of line to open the book, and as he read it, he frowned.
Come meet me at DiMartino's down the street in an hour. I will tell you what you need to know.
It was signed Marnie Drake, and for a moment, he ran his thumb over her signature as if he were touching her deliciously full lower lip.
Whatever he had been expecting this evening, it was not this, but once again, that was just like Marnie had always been.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, he smiled.
*
The moment the signing ended, Marnie raced back to where Cassie was sitting with Victoria in the back. Cassie, who was along for moral support since she could get Marnie's signature whenever she wanted it, was showing the dark-haired little girl how to fold a paper crane from scraps of notebook paper.
"… and see, when you open it up like that, the wings flap!" Cassie glanced up at Marnie, raising an eyebrow.
"Did someone get fresh on the signing floor? Do we need to have management ban someone for life again?"
"No, nothing like that, but Cassie, please, please could you take Victoria back to your place? I'll come get her before midnight, I swear, but I really need help …"
Cassie blinked at Marnie's desperation, but she didn't agree right away.
"Does this have something to do with His Royal Highness that we saw yesterday?"
Victoria, whose ears were far sharper than Marnie cared to think about, perked up at Cassie's words. "Royal Highness? Like a prince?"
Marnie winced a little, but nodded. "Exactly like a prince, smart girl. Mama just has some things she needs to see to, that's all …"
Cassie nodded.
"Yeah, I can take her just fine tonight, though I really do need you to show up to take her by midnight. I'm doing the early shift tomorrow."
Marnie nodded with relief. "Thank you so much, I totally owe you."
"Whatever. Just make sure that you tell me what happens tonight."
Marnie turned to Victoria, who was gazing up at her with suspicious eyes. The transition to kindergarten hadn't been an easy one for her, and she had responded by being even more clingy when she wasn't at school. She had gotten a little better, but there were still days when she responded to any deviation in her routine with a meltdown.
"Honey, I know I said we would go home after the bookstore, but there's just a few things I need to do. Cassie's going to take you to her place, and then I'll come pick you up after you are asleep, okay? You'll wake up in your own bed in the morning, just like you like."
Victoria's dark brows knitted together, and Marnie was afraid a real tantrum was on the way when Cassie, blessed Cassie, interjected.
"Come on back with me, kiddo. I'll get out some of my clay and we can make animals."
Victoria brightened at that. Cassie's apartment was a mélange of art supplies, and getting to play with some of them was always a treat.
"What do you say to Cassie, Victoria?"
"Thank you, Cassie," she said dutifully, and then she hugged her mother fiercely.
"Bu
t come get me soon, okay, Mama?"
As always, Marnie could feel her heart melt. Ever since her daughter was born, she had always had that effect on her.
"I will, I promise, sweetie. Go on, you and Cassie should head out."
Once she was alone, Marnie was left to deal with her spinning thoughts, which was hardly much better. If she was being honest with herself, she had always suspected that this day would come, though she had never known exactly how it was going to go. She told herself that she had nothing to be ashamed about, squared her shoulders, and walked out.
DiMartino's was a pleasant all-night coffee shop that was fairly peaceful, given that it had not been swamped by the after-bar crowd yet. She managed to locate Philip sitting in a tucked away alcove near the rear, and taking a deep breath, she went over to sit across the table from him.
For the first time, she looked at him and she wasn't overwhelmed with the past that they shared. Instead, when she looked at him, Marnie saw a man with cold black eyes who was unpredictable and who might bring some very real harm to her small family.
"Is she mine?" The question was uttered flatly, and she supposed that that was fair. If they were there for any other reason, they might have started some other way, but at the moment, that was the only important thing.
She took a deep breath and told him the truth.
"Yes. She is."
For a moment, the silence between them was as thick as a winter fog. She waited to see if he would shout, if he would simply walk straight out of the restaurant. Marnie had no idea how Philip would react, and she finally admitted to herself that daydreams all aside, this was now a full-grown man that she could not predict.
"When did you find out?"
"It took me a month after you left before I even began to suspect," Marnie said. "After that, I was in denial for two weeks, and then Cassie made me take a test. It was positive."
For a moment, she saw a series of emotions flit across Philip's face, too fast for her to see. Then he looked at her, his expression stern. Something in her balked at that. He wasn't her father or her boss. He was not someone who had any degree of authority over her, and he had no right to act as if he did.