The Prince's Second Chance

by Brenda Harlen

  “We were both too young to marry.”

  “But old enough to make a baby.”

  Gabriella sighed. “And don’t you think I’m a little too old for this lecture now, madre?”

  Katarina shrugged. “Perhaps. It’s just that I look at Sierra sometimes and she reminds me so much of you that it’s scary. She’s so beautiful and willful and I worry that she will follow her heart as you did, and have it broken.”

  “A broken heart heals,” she said.

  “And yet, you have never loved anyone else,” her mother noted.

  Gabriella thought, fleetingly, of Rafe, and wanted to protest, but the words stuck in her throat. Her mother was right. As much as she’d wanted to love Rafe, to share her life and build a future with him, she’d never been able to give him her heart. Because she’d already—foolishly—given it away too many years before. “I have you and Sierra. I don’t need anyone else.”

  “If I had known—” Katarina shook her head. “I should have known. I should have seen that you were in love and always making excuses to get out of the house.”

  “I was pretty industrious,” Gabriella admitted.

  Her mother nodded. “But he was older, more sophisticated and experienced.”

  “And I was blind and naive,” Gabriella interjected. “I know, and I’d rather not go down that road again.” She’d spent enough time, during the darkest hours of the night, remembering what she’d had, what she’d lost, and wondering how things might have turned out if both she and Cameron had handled the situation differently.

  “He broke your heart.” There was anger and accusation in Katarina’s tone.

  “He gave me my daughter,” Gabriella said softly.

  “You always did look on the bright side of things.”

  “And she is the brightest part of my life.”

  Katarina smiled and touched a hand to her daughter’s cheek. “I know how you feel.”

  When her hand dropped away, Gabriella reached for it, held on. “I’m scared,” she admitted.

  “Of telling Sierra?” Katarina guessed.

  “Of losing Sierra,” she admitted softly. “He can offer her so much more than I can.”

  “Things, perhaps.” Katarina waved a hand dismissively. “But he cannot love her more than you do, and nothing he can offer her now will undermine the solid foundation you have given her over the past sixteen years.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “You believe, then, that he is planning to acknowledge that he is her father?”

  “I think he would have done so already, if I hadn’t convinced him to wait—to give Sierra some time.”

  “He doesn’t strike me as the patient type,” Katarina mused.

  “Not at all,” Gabriella agreed.

  “Which makes me wonder if maybe I was wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “About what he wants from you.” Her mother’s tone was quiet now, reflective, and made Gabriella squirm uneasily.

  “He wants a relationship with his daughter,” she pointed out.

  “Maybe that’s true,” Katarina agreed, “but it might not be the whole truth.”

  “Care to explain that? Because it’s too early for me to wrap my head around one of your riddles.”

  “It’s not early at all,” her mother denied. “In fact, if I don’t hurry now, I will be late for church.”

  Then she dropped a kiss on her daughter’s cheek and was gone.

  After she’d taken a quick shower to clear the last of the cobwebs from her brain and tugged on some clothes, Gabriella made her way down to the kitchen, following the scent of the coffee her mother had already brewed. She knew that some of her friends and colleagues had wondered about her living arrangement—a thirty-four-year-old mother of a teenage daughter living with her own mother—but Katarina had truly been her rock, not just since that fateful day when the results of an over-the-counter pregnancy test had changed her world, but for as long as she could remember.

  She’d been so scared to tell her mother that she was pregnant. Not because she worried that her mother would turn her out of her home, but because she knew she would be disappointed. She’d raised Gabriella with traditional values and morals, and learning that her unwed teenage daughter was pregnant was a slap in the face to everything she believed in. Still, she’d never wavered in her support of her daughter, and the only time they’d seriously argued was when Gabriella refused to reveal the name of her baby’s father.

  In fact, it was only a few weeks earlier, after Cameron’s first visit to her home, that Gabriella had been shaken enough to confess the truth. Based on her mother’s reaction to the news—and her uncensored comments to Cameron the night before—Gabriella had been wise to keep that information to herself for so long.

  But now, the secret that she’d so closely guarded for so many years was about to be revealed. And she couldn’t help but wonder how the princess royal would respond to that.

  Gabriella had kept her end of the bargain—she’d never told Cameron about his child. In fact, she’d gone one step further and denied that he was the father when he’d asked. She hadn’t counted on Cameron making any further inquiries on his own, and she didn’t think Elena would have anticipated such interest, either.

  The doorbell rang as she was refilling her mug with coffee and she carried it with her when she went to answer the summons. Cameron was on the step, but unlike his first visit to her home two weeks earlier, this time she didn’t hesitate to step back and let him inside.

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  “Please,” he said, sounding desperately grateful.

  She returned to the kitchen, pulled a second mug from the cupboard. “Cream? Sugar?”

  “Just black.”

  She glanced over her shoulder as he dropped into a chair at the table. “You look like you had a rough night.”

  “I haven’t slept,” he admitted.

  She pushed the mug across the table to him. “At all?”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t even been home. After I left here last night, I went to see my mother. And then I just drove.”

  “That’s a lot of driving,” she said lightly.

  “I had a lot of thinking to do.”

  “Do you want something to eat? I could scramble some eggs.”

  He glanced up, the ghost of a smile hovering at the edges of his lips. “I must really look like hell if you’re offering to cook for me.”

  “I don’t cook,” she reminded him. “Scrambling eggs doesn’t count as cooking.”

  “In that case, I would love some.”

  Gabriella took a handful of eggs out of the fridge, cracked them into a bowl. She added some milk, a dash of salt and pepper, then whipped them until they were frothy.

  “For someone who doesn’t cook, you know your way around a kitchen.”

  “I can handle the basics,” she assured him, setting a frying pan on top of the stove.

  “Do you have a recipe that might make a serving of crow more palatable?”

  She slid a couple of slices of bread into the toaster, then turned to him. “A recipe for what?”

  “Crow,” he said again.

  “Are you planning to eat crow?” she asked him.

  “At the very least.”

  Gabriella took the coffee pot to the table, refilled his mug. “Eat your breakfast first,” she instructed. “Before it gets cold.”

  He picked up his fork and dug into the eggs. The meal was simple but delicious, and in minutes, he’d completely cleaned his plate.

  “I owe you an apology.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment,” she said. “But I’d rather focus on where we go from here than rehash the past.”

  “That’s generous of you.”

  “Not really,” she denied. “We’ve both made mistakes.”

  He nodded. “So where do we go from here?”

  She folded her hands around her mug. “I know you’re anxious for Sierra to k
now who you are.”

  “I am,” he agreed. “But it might be better if we spent some time together first, getting to know one another without the father-daughter labels hanging over our heads.”

  “I think that’s a good idea.”

  “Does she like boats?”

  “She’s never been on one,” Gabriella admitted. “But she’s usually game to try new things.”

  “Then why don’t we plan an outing for Wednesday afternoon?”

  “Wednesday?”

  “School’s out for summer break now, isn’t it?”

  Gabriella nodded. “Sierra wrote her last exam Friday morning.”

  “Good,” he said. “My morning is booked solid with meetings, but I should be able to get away from the office by noon and there won’t be nearly as much traffic on the water then as on the weekend.”

  Maybe it should have irritated her that he didn’t ask about her work schedule, but the fact was that as long as she got her columns in to her editor on time, her hours were completely flexible. And the idea of spending an afternoon out on the water instead of in front of her computer was too tempting to resist. “Do you want me to pack a lunch?”

  “No. I’ll have my chef put something together for us.”

  “Well, then, I’m sure we’ll eat better than tuna sandwiches.”

  He frowned at the obvious pique in her tone. “It bothers you that I have a chef?”

  “No,” she denied. “I guess it just reminded me that you aren’t like the rest of us common folk.” And she was glad for the reminder, because allowing herself to think otherwise could be very dangerous.

  “I could fire him, if that would make you feel better,” he teased.

  “Yeah, because putting some guy out of a job would make me happy,” she said dryly.

  “I don’t understand why my title and status are such an issue for you.”

  “Of course you don’t, because you’re the one with the blue blood.”

  “It’s not quite as blue as Elena would like everyone to believe,” he told her.

  “Your father wasn’t of noble birth?” she guessed, aware that his mother had a direct connection to the throne.

  “My father was a farmer,” he told her. “It was quite the scandal when they got married.”

  “She must have really loved him,” Gabriella mused. But try as she might, she couldn’t imagine the woman who had heartlessly bargained with Sierra’s life caring that much about anyone.

  “Or she really wanted to piss off her father,” Cameron suggested.

  That scenario was much easier for Gabriella to envision. It also made her wonder, “Is that why you were with me?”

  “I was with you because you were beautiful and sexy and smart,” he said patiently. “And because the moment I laid eyes on you, I didn’t want to be with anyone else.”

  The words sounded good, and Gabriella wanted to believe them. She wanted to believe in him. But she couldn’t help remembering how careful he’d been to ensure they weren’t seen in public together.

  At the time, she’d thought he was protecting her from the media spotlight. Later, she’d accepted that he’d been protecting himself. After all, it would have damaged his image to be seen in the company of a waitress.

  Sixteen years later, not much had changed. Although “the partying prince” didn’t grace the covers of the tabloids as frequently as he had ten years earlier, he was still accustomed to being photographed in the company of the world’s most wealthy and beautiful women. Gabriella didn’t fit into either category. She was a single mother who had obtained her journalism degree while her daughter was in diapers and the simple fact that her child was also the prince’s child couldn’t magically bridge the distance that separated their two worlds.

  “How many staff do you have on your yacht?” she asked him now.

  “Three.”

  “Do you trust them?”

  “Implicitly,” he assured her without hesitation.

  “Then I guess we’ll see you around noon on Wednesday.”

  On Tuesday, the long-standing trade agreement between Tesoro del Mar and Ardena was officially renewed. Afterward, Cameron tracked down the prince regent in his office.

  “I’m going to play hooky tomorrow afternoon,” Cameron said.

  “It’s not really hooky if you tell me,” Rowan informed him.

  “Okay then, I’m not really playing hooky tomorrow afternoon.”

  Rowan pushed aside the document he’d been reviewing. “Obviously there’s a reason you thought I should be aware of your plans.”

  “I just wanted to give you a heads-up, in case some enterprising photographer catches a picture of me and/or my guests.”

  Rowan waited, patiently, for him to continue.

  “I’m going to spend the afternoon on my yacht with Gabriella Vasquez and her daughter—my daughter—Sierra.”

  The prince regent’s brows shot up. “Your daughter?”

  He nodded.

  Rowan frowned. “Your personal life isn’t any of my business—except when it reflects on this office. And when I appointed you to the cabinet, you promised me that you were finished living the life of a carefree playboy.”

  “And I meant it,” Cameron assured him.

  “Then can you tell me how in hell this happened?”

  Cameron couldn’t blame his cousin for being pissed. Because what Rowan hadn’t said, but Cameron knew was that when he’d named his cousin to the cabinet, it was against the recommendation of several key advisors—and probably both of his brothers, too.

  “A youthful indiscretion?” he suggested.

  The furrow in Rowan’s brow deepened. “Dammit, Cameron, you’re thirty-six years old—”

  “And she’s sixteen.”

  His cousin’s face drained of all color. “The mother?”

  “Dios, no! My daughter.”

  “Oh.” Rowan exhaled. “Thank God.”

  “I can’t believe you’d even think—” Cameron shook his head. “That’s just sick.”

  “I’m sorry.” The apology was automatic but sincere. “I guess the headlines about the king’s daughter are still on my mind.”

  “I only recently learned about Sierra’s existence,” Cameron explained. “And Gabriella and I have agreed to keep the truth of her paternity under wraps until we’ve had a chance to tell her.”

  “How many people do know?”

  “Other than myself and Gabriella, just her mother, my mother, Marissa and now you.”

  “How did your mother respond to the news?”

  “Let’s just say that it wasn’t news to her.” Cameron’s gut still burned with fury whenever he thought about his mother’s lies.

  Rowan, being well-acquainted with Elena’s manipulations and machinations, only nodded. “Then I’d suggest you don’t wait too long to tell your daughter,” he warned. “Secrets have a habit of blowing up when we least expect it.”

  It was a truth that Cameron understood only too well.

  “This is so lame,” Sierra grumbled. She’d been on the phone with Beth, making plans to go down to the waterfront. They were going to spend the afternoon doing some shopping and hanging out, and then she was going to meet Paolo when he finished work.

  It was, in her opinion, the perfect way to spend a summer afternoon. Except that her mother had kiboshed those plans because she wanted Sierra to spend the day with her. Which wouldn’t have been such a hardship, really. Gabriella was pretty cool, as far as mothers went. She didn’t harp on Sierra all the time about her clothes or her make-up, the way Rachel’s mother did. And she was usually flexible about her curfew, as long as she knew where Sierra was and who she was with.

  But when Sierra tried to wriggle out of spending the afternoon with her, this time she was completely inflexible. And it wasn’t even because she wanted some private mother-daughter time, it was because she wanted Sierra to get to know Prince Cameron. And maybe Sierra had thought it was sweet when she’d first met him and r
ealized the man standing in her living room was royalty, but now, it was kind of weird.

  She’d Googled him, out of curiosity, and she’d been stunned by the amount of information that was on the internet about him. The basic facts were well-known. He was the second son and middle child of the princess royal, Elena Marissa Santiago Leandres, and her deceased husband, Gaetan Rainier Leandres, which meant that Prince Cameron was fourteenth in line to the throne—not likely to ever rule the country but not completely out of the running, either, which was sort of cool. He’d been educated at St. Mary’s College in Port Augustine and at Cambridge University and had spent several years traveling abroad before returning home to accept a position in the royal cabinet. His Royal Highness Prince Rowan Santiago, the current prince regent, had made the original appointment and recently named him the country’s new Minister of Trade.

  Aside from all of that, most of the other stuff she found was gossip—photos of women he’d dated, rumors of engagements, reports of break-ups. He’d dated a lot of women, but not any one woman for any length of time, and even if only half the stories she read were true (because she was savvy enough to know she couldn’t believe everything she read on the internet), she felt that she had reason to worry about his interest in her mother.

  Gabriella was every bit as beautiful as any of the other women he’d dated, but she lacked their worldliness and sophistication. Sierra couldn’t help but wonder how her mother had caught his eye and what his intentions were toward her. And she decided that, as much as she resented having to change her own plans, it was probably a good idea for her to keep any eye on things.

  Gabriella finished wrapping the plate of brownies. “I thought you would enjoy an afternoon on the water.”

  “With my mother and her new boyfriend?” she asked, not even trying to hide her sarcasm.

  “It’s not like that,” Gabriella said. “Cameron and I are just friends.”

  Sierra wondered whether she was trying to convince her daughter or herself.

  “I may only be sixteen,” she reminded Gabriella, “but I’m not a child and I’m not an idiot. You dated Rafe for six months before you brought him home to meet me, now this prince is suddenly in your life and you’re pushing me to get to know him.