The Prince's Royal Dilemma

by Brenda Harlen

  She was no longer certain that three weeks would be enough time to get over him.

  She leaned her head back in her seat and closed her eyes against the tears that threatened. Though Tesoro del Mar had become her home in so many ways over the past few years, she enjoyed her frequent visits to Ireland with the children. But now, with every mile that passed, she was conscious not of what she was going toward but who she was leaving behind—the man she loved.

  Maybe a few weeks with family was just what she needed to help her remember where she’d come from, remind her of the distance between herself and the prince and all the reasons their lives wouldn’t mesh. By the time she returned to Tesoro del Mar at the end of the three weeks, she expected that the prince’s engagement would have been announced and he would be deep in the midst of wedding plans.

  Then she would have no choice but to get over him and get on with her life.

  Rowan planned to give Lara a week—long enough to realize she missed him but not too long to worry that he’d forgotten about her. He made it to day five before he decided he was probably suffering more than she was, and he called his brothers together for a family meeting.

  Marcus, despite having no interest in settling down with one woman anytime soon, proceeded to offer both unwanted and unnecessary advice. Eric, always more comfortable with his duties at sea than those required of him by the palace, nevertheless hadn’t hesitated to come back when asked by his brother and had been much more quietly supportive. In the end, all that mattered to Rowan was that he could count on both of them.

  He hadn’t spoken to Lara at all since he’d been gone, but he’d been in touch with Maeve and Brian Seward, the children’s grandparents. He knew they were planning to head up to their summer cottage soon and that Lara was spending a few days with David Mitchell in Kilmore before making the journey to the lake with them. Rowan was determined to put his plan into action before then.

  With that thought in mind, he called Lionel into his office and said, “I’d like you to arrange a press conference.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Tomorrow afternoon. You know my schedule better than I do, so set it up whenever I have a free hour.”

  “May I let the media know what it is regarding?”

  Rowan smiled. “It’s an update on my wedding plans.”

  When Lara thought of family, even before she thought of the mother who had given birth to her, she thought of Stephanie and David. The Mitchells had taken a shy, scared child into their hearts and home and changed her life. Over the years, Lara had acknowledged and accepted the fact that her mother hadn’t ever wanted her, but through some extraordinary stroke of luck, Stephanie and David had.

  When her mother died, Lara had been more frightened and confused than grief-stricken by the loss. When Stephanie passed away, after a long and torturous battle with ALS, Lara had been devastated. She’d returned for the funeral and taken an additional two weeks off to spend with David, worried that he wouldn’t be able to cope with the loss of the woman he’d loved for most of his life.

  Eighteen months had passed since that last trip home, and as eager as Lara had been to get away from the palace and the ongoing preparations for Rowan’s wedding, she was just as eager to see David again.

  When she called to tell him she was in town, he invited her for dinner.

  “It’s from the frozen-food section of the supermarket,” he apologized as he removed the tray of lasagna out of the oven.

  “I came for the company, not the food,” she assured him, though she knew they were both thinking about Stephanie and the wonderful home-cooked meals she always used to put on the table.

  Lara dished up the pasta while David uncorked a bottle of wine, then they carried their plates and glasses to the table.

  “How long are you visiting this time?” he asked.

  “Only a few days. The Sewards want to take the kids up to the lake and, of course, I’ll go with them.”

  “How are the children coping?”

  “The first couple of months were really hard, but they’re doing better now.”

  “It’s so hard to lose someone you love,” he murmured.

  “Especially when that someone is the center of your world.”

  She reached across the table to squeeze his hand. “How are you coping?”

  “The first couple of months were really hard,” he echoed her words.

  “But you’re doing better now?”

  He managed to smile for her. “Yes, I am.”

  They ate in companionable silence for several minutes before Lara broached the topic that had been nagging at the back of her mind since she’d taken the call from that tabloid reporter. Actually, it was a question that had nagged at her for years, though she’d managed to ignore it most of the time, not certain she was prepared for the truth. But now she found herself not just wanting but needing answers. She might not be worthy of a prince, but she had to know who she was and where she came from.

  “I remember Stephanie telling me that she and my mom were friends, as well as second cousins.”

  David nodded. “Very good friends at one time.”

  “The kind of friends who shared their deepest secrets?”

  He hesitated, then asked, “What is it you really want to know, Lara?”

  She traced the base of her wineglass with a fingertip. “I just can’t help wondering if maybe she knew—or at least suspected—who my father is.”

  He laid his fork and knife down, pushed his plate aside. “Yes, Stephanie had some suspicions.”

  “Did she share them with you?”

  His smile was wry. “The subject of your paternity was something we discussed at great length before we went to America to bring you home.”

  “Then you do know?”

  “She wanted to tell you, but she was waiting for you to ask. She wanted to be sure you were ready to know. When she was dying—” he glanced away, but not before she saw the dampness in his eyes “—she asked me to tell you. I probably should have done so before now, but it wasn’t something I wanted to dump on you right after the funeral and it’s not the type of conversation to have on the telephone.”

  She picked up her glass of wine, sipped.

  “When Felicia first told us about her baby, she claimed that I was the father.”

  Lara bobbled her glass, sloshing cabernet sauvignon over the rim and onto the antique lace tablecloth. She jumped up and ran to the kitchen for a cloth to wipe up the spill. But her efforts at removing the stain only seemed to help it spread.

  David’s hand covered hers, halting her frantic scrubbing. “Leave it.”

  She shook her head, her eyes blurred with tears. “I can’t. This is Stephanie’s favorite—”

  “Lara.” His tone was gentle but firm. “You wanted to know—give me a chance to tell you.”

  She looked up at him, as if she was seeing him for the first time. This man that she’d often thought of as a father. Was it really possible—could he be her father?

  She sank back into her chair. “Is it…true?”

  He gave a slight shake of his head. “No.”

  She let out a breath, uncertain if she was relieved or disappointed. “Then why would my mother say something like that?”

  “Because it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.”

  She couldn’t hide her shock. “You had an affair with my mother?”

  “Very briefly, but yes.” His hand wasn’t quite steady when he lifted his glass to his lips. “I gave her the money to go to America.”

  “To hide what you thought was your bastard child.”

  He winced at the harshness of her words, but didn’t deny the accusation. “I’m not proud of my actions—or my weakness. Felicia used me and lied to me, but I made it possible. I failed to turn her away when I should have, then did turn her away when she needed my help.”

  She should have left the past in the past. But now that she’d started to dig for the answers, s
he found herself with even more questions. “Were you married to Stephanie at the time?”

  He nodded. “We’d been trying to have a baby of our own. After several early-term miscarriages, she finally had a pregnancy that went into its second term. After she passed the six-month mark, we got really excited—planning in earnest for the baby. But there were unexpected complications when she went into labor, and the baby died.”

  Even after so many years, she heard the grief in his voice and knew he still mourned the baby he and Stephanie had lost. Though her heart couldn’t help but ache for what they’d been through, she couldn’t let her empathy distract her from finally getting the truth he’d promised her.

  “What does that have to do with you and my mother?”

  “Steph went through a really tough time after we lost the baby. She was withdrawn and depressed, and every time I tried to reach her, she turned me away. Not just physically but emotionally. I felt so alone, grieving for the child we’d lost and terrified of losing the woman I loved.”

  “And Felicia offered you comfort.” Lara might have been too young at the time to understand what was happening, but she’d seen her mother in action. And though she wasn’t ready to absolve David of all responsibility, she’d never met a man who could turn her mother away once she’d set her sights on him.

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  “Did Stephanie know?”

  “I couldn’t lie to her—which wasn’t something Felicia anticipated. She came back a few weeks later, told me she was pregnant and threatened to tell Stephanie if I didn’t give her money to go to America.”

  “But you gave her the money anyway.”

  “I’d told Stephanie about the affair, but I didn’t want her to know about the pregnancy. She’d just lost our baby—I didn’t know how she’d react to the news of another woman carrying my child.”

  “If you were so anxious to hide the evidence of your affair, why did you bring me back here?”

  “After Felicia died, I thought—I hoped—I would finally have the chance to be a father to a child who desperately needed one.”

  “And Stephanie was okay with that?”

  “As soon as Stephanie knew about you, there was never any question about you coming to live with us. She’d long given up being angry. And you were an innocent child, and she wished only that you had truly been ours.”

  Lara felt her throat tighten because she knew it was true. Stephanie had tried so hard to ease her transition to a new country, to make her feel comfortable in her new family, and she’d always loved her unconditionally.

  “Except that you weren’t a child anymore when you came to us,” David continued. “You were practically a young woman, more wary and distrustful than anyone your age should be, and desperately searching for your place in the world.”

  “When did you find out I wasn’t your child?”

  “Even before we brought you home. We were sorting through your mother’s things to decide what to keep for you and found a copy of your birth certificate. I was with your mother in June, you were born in November.”

  “Then you couldn’t possibly be my father.”

  He shook his head. “No. But Stephanie insisted on a paternity test—I don’t know whether she thought the affair had been going on longer than I’d admitted to or if she believed you might have been born prematurely. And the interesting thing is, when the DNA results came back, they proved that I wasn’t your father but that we did share some genetic markers.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither did I, at first,” he admitted. “Then I remembered that my brother, Derek, was killed in a car accident around the same time that Stephanie lost the baby.”

  “You think he might have been my father?”

  David nodded. “We knew it was possible, but we weren’t certain until we got the letters.

  “It was just a few years ago,” he explained. “Shortly after you moved to Tesoro del Mar, we received a package from Family Services in America. Apparently, in the process of relocating their offices, they’d sorted through old files and found some papers that had belonged to your mother. In those papers were some letters that Derek had written to her.”

  David pushed away from the table. “Let me get them for you.”

  He cleared away their dishes while she read the letters. There were only three and Derek wasn’t a man of many words so it didn’t take her long, but her throat was tight when she was done.

  “All this time, I thought—my mother told me—my father didn’t want me.”

  “Derek probably panicked when Felicia told him she was pregnant. He was young, a little reckless, more than a little irresponsible. But I also believe, had he not been killed, he would have done the right thing. He would have married your mother and been a father to you. But he never had the chance.”

  She swallowed. “And so she seduced you and tried to pass his baby off as yours.”

  “None of which she could have done without my complicity.”

  “But she lied—to me, to you, to Stephanie.” She shook her head, angered and appalled by her mother’s actions, by the deceptions that had hurt so many.

  “She must have had her reasons.”

  “You’ve forgiven her,” she realized.

  “She gave far more than she took away when she brought you into our lives.”

  Lara held up the slim package of letters. “Can I keep these?”

  “They are yours. I was just holding on to them for you.” He smiled. “Like any good uncle would do.”

  Before she could get her mind around that, never mind respond to it, her cell phone signaled a text message had been received. It was Tanis’s number, and the message was brief.

  TURN ON TV. NOW.

  “What’s wrong?” David asked.

  “I don’t know.” She frowned, wondering about the sense of urgency in her friend’s message. “Tanis wants me to turn on the television.”

  “Then we should move into the other room.”

  She picked up the remote, scrolling through the channels until she found the report that had caught her friend’s attention.

  “Isn’t that your prince?” David asked.

  She knew that he used the term your to distinguish Rowan from British royalty, but she couldn’t help remembering that, for a very brief time, he had been hers, and she had been his.

  “It’s Prince Rowan,” she agreed. And though her heart ached to look at the man she loved but couldn’t have, she was unable to tear her gaze away from the screen.

  “Turn it up,” David urged. “I can’t hear what he’s saying.”

  Though Lara didn’t really want to hear the announcement of Rowan’s engagement, she tapped the volume button.

  “…the laws of Tesoro del Mar require that I marry within six months of my thirty-fifth birthday,” Rowan was saying. “Not wanting to disappoint the good citizens of this country, I have been actively seeking a bride. I didn’t expect to fall in love. In fact, had you asked me six months ago, I would have insisted I didn’t want to fall in love. But somehow that’s what happened.”

  The prince paused to smile as the crowd applauded his announcement with enthusiasm. As the applause slowly faded, questions could be heard from the reporters.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Where is she?”

  “Have you set a date for the wedding?”

  Lara felt her stomach twist into knots as Rowan held up a hand for silence.

  “I should get those dishes washed up.” She started to turn away.

  “Her name,” Rowan said, “is Lara Brennan.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lara felt David’s gaze on her as she sank down onto the footstool, her own eyes riveted back to the television.

  “You’re going to marry the royal nanny?” one of the reporters asked, doubt etched in her voice.

  “That’s my plan,” the prince responded. “But Miss Brennan’s been a little resistant to the idea.”<
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  “Are you saying that she turned down your proposal?”

  “The laws of Tesoro del Mar are very specific about who a royal might marry. As Miss Brennan doesn’t fit the usual requirements, she encouraged me to choose a bride who did. The problem with that, of course, is that I only want Lara.”

  She couldn’t believe he’d said it—during a televised press conference that was probably bouncing from satellite to satellite around the world. This was exactly what she’d been trying to avoid, and yet, maybe exactly what her heart needed.

  “Are you planning to forfeit the throne? Or do you think you can circumvent the requirements of the law?”

  “Thanks to my brother, Marcus, I have recently become aware of a legislative provision that would allow me to marry the woman I love.”

  The crowd was silent now, hanging on his every word.

  “My family is supportive of my wish to make Lara my wife,” he told them. “Both of my brothers believe she will be a princess Tesoro del Mar can be proud of. Prince Christian, Princess Alexandria and Prince Damon absolutely love her, and the staff of the royal household stand behind my decision. But I need the support of the people.

  “I need all of you—all of the people of Tesoro del Mar—to vote ‘yes’ in a national referendum asking for the approval of Lara Brennan as my bride. Without your vote, I’m not sure I can convince her to marry me.”

  He found the camera and stared into it, and though she knew it was ridiculous, Lara felt as if he was looking right at her, speaking directly to her. And her heart pounded hard inside her chest, responding with a plea of its own. A plea to say yes, to accept what she so desperately wanted. But her head continued to resist, convinced that he didn’t fully understand the consequences to the throne if the referendum failed.

  As if he knew exactly what she was thinking, Rowan continued, “The only thing I know for sure is that if I can’t be prince regent and have Lara as my wife, then I will give up my position. Because I won’t give up on her.”