Her Royal Baby

by Marion Lennox

  ‘You can’t just take him,’ Marc said conversationally and Tammy raised her eyebrows in polite disagreement.

  ‘Yes, I can. You said he’s an Australian citizen and I’m his aunt. And his guardian. You’re not even his uncle.’

  ‘No, but-’

  ‘But nothing. Blood counts.’

  ‘Your mother has given me permission,’ he told her, but even he knew he was clutching at straws. The more he saw of Tammy the more he realised that she was intelligent, and she discarded his statement before he could finish saying it.

  ‘My mother would promise anything if money was involved. If Lara made a will naming me Henry’s guardian, surely that’s what matters?’

  Marc took a deep breath, fighting for words. ‘Look, Miss…’

  ‘Tammy,’ Tammy said pleasantly-and waited.

  ‘Tammy. Can we at least discuss this?’

  ‘That’s what I’m doing.’

  ‘You’ve already made up your mind.’

  ‘To care for my nephew? Yes, I have. I don’t have a choice because I don’t see that anyone else is doing it.’

  ‘I promise you-he’ll be looked after in Broitenburg.’

  ‘By nannies? No.’

  ‘Kylie isn’t a good example.’

  ‘She’s not, is she?’ Tammy agreed politely. She picked up the book Kylie had been reading and grimaced. ‘The Vampire’s Slave. A little bedtime reading for Henry-I don’t think. You can see as well as I can that there’s been minimal attention paid to Henry. He’s had his physical needs met and that’s all. And yet you employed her.’

  ‘I was desperate. I had to find someone fast and I was on the other side of the world.’

  ‘And it took you weeks to come and check on him. Great. Good worrying. Well, now he’s in his aunt’s care, so you don’t need to worry any more.’

  ‘You don’t understand. I need him.’

  She raised her eyebrows at that. ‘You need a baby?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s the heir to the throne.’

  She thought about that for a whole two seconds before rejecting it entirely as a reason for anyone needing a baby. ‘Then he can be heir to the throne right here,’ she told him. ‘I’m not giving him back. He can ascend to the throne, or whatever he has to do, when he’s old enough to choose for himself. But you-the lot of you-have shown yourselves to be incapable of caring for a baby.’

  ‘And you’re capable?’ he demanded, goaded.

  ‘Strangely enough, yes,’ she flung at him. ‘I’m even experienced.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Well, there you go, then. Distrust on either side. We make a perfect pair.’

  This was getting out of hand. ‘Can we at least talk?’ he said urgently. ‘Stay here tonight. I’ll pay for a night for you in this hotel.’

  Tammy took a deep breath. Anger was threatening to overwhelm her. ‘Gee,’ she said, as if awed. ‘In this hotel! A proper bed, with sheets and everything?’

  ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’

  ‘There’s no need to be patronising.’

  ‘You need to stay somewhere.’

  She did. His words made her hesitate. Her fury and her grief made her desperate to be alone, but Henry was cradled against her. His belongings were piled on the armchair, but she needed more than his possessions. She needed to find out everything about the child she intended to take care of. Things like immunizations, allergies… Maybe this man didn’t know, but somewhere there must be records. Maybe she couldn’t flounce out of his life quite yet.

  He could see her weakening and pressed his point. ‘Stay tonight. Kylie can keep the child and we’ll talk.’

  ‘If you call Henry the child one more time,’ she said carefully, ‘then I’ll walk away and never look back. Henry is Henry.’ She hugged him closer. ‘He’s his own little person and it’s time everyone started treating him as such. So, no, Kylie isn’t going to look after Henry. I’ll look after Henry.’

  ‘But we need to talk.’

  ‘Then we talk with Henry.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Can’t incorporate a baby into your busy schedule? Too bad.’ She looked around as Kylie appeared with the suitcase. ‘Thanks.’ She sat on the floor, perched Henry on her lap and started tossing belongings into the case. She handled Henry as if she coped with a baby all the time.

  What on earth was her story? Marc wondered. What was her background? Did she have kids of her own? The investigator had said she was single, but…

  He knew nothing about her. She was still in her filthy overalls, but already Henry was relaxing against her, leaning against her breast as if he’d found himself somewhere that might be home.

  And, looking down, Marc felt a tug of something he didn’t recognise. This woman was as far from his world as any woman had ever been, he thought. All the values he’d been brought up to hold dear-all the values the women in his world set store by-they simply didn’t matter to Tammy.

  He had to persuade her to release the baby. He must!

  She wasn’t going to do it.

  The impossibility of the situation crowded in on him, and for a moment he closed his eyes in sheer desperation. When he opened them he found Tammy looking up at him with curiosity.

  ‘You’re in real trouble, then?’ she asked, and for the first time there was a trace of sympathy in her voice.

  He might as well be honest. He had nothing else to lose. ‘I’m in trouble.’

  She regarded him for a long minute, and then seemed to come to a decision. ‘Give me couple of hours alone with Henry now,’ she told him, ‘and then I’ll stay in this hotel tonight. I’ll take a room here, and after I get Henry to sleep we can have dinner together. Is that okay?’

  It wasn’t okay-it wasn’t nearly enough-but it was all he was going to get.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Great.’ She threw the last of the things in the suitcase and jammed it shut, then took the letter Kylie was holding and looked at it with something approaching fear. She stared at it-and then shoved it into her backpack as if it might contain poison.

  ‘Okay. Let’s get me shifted into another room, and we’ll go from there.’

  ‘You can stay here,’ Marc said stiffly. ‘There’s no need to hire another suite. I’m paying for this place to the end of the month.’

  ‘I’m not staying in your suite,’ Tammy said firmly. ‘I have enough to pay for myself. There’s no way I’m being dependent on you, Your Highness. I’ll take my own room and I’ll see you at seven tonight. Not before.’

  And that was that.

  As seven approached Tammy was more confused than ever.

  Confused? That was an understatement. Her head was spinning. Grief and anger and shock were tangling in her mind like some horrible grey web, not letting her go.

  But underneath… Underneath there was Henry. Nothing else mattered, she thought. She’d booked herself a bedroom-not the suite Marc had tried to book for her but one she’d chosen herself. Even in her much more modest room the bed was king-sized. Tammy perched herself and the baby in the middle of the bedclothes and simply sat with him. She hugged him and crooned to him, and tried and tried to make him smile.

  He watched her with enormous eyes, as if she was a part of his window-something to be regarded with vague interest but not interacted with.

  She ordered baby food from Room Service and a grave waiter appeared with a tiny bowl of stewed apple. She sat Henry on her lap and his mouth opened like a little bird. He was obviously accustomed to being fed, but not like this. She played aeroplanes with him, as she’d once played aeroplanes with his mother.

  He looked at the spoon she was waving in front of him as if it had betrayed him. He was obviously accustomed to being fed efficiently and fast-nothing more.

  Undeterred, Tammy kept right on playing. She turned him around so he was facing her and the spoon was spinning.

  ‘Nope, Henry, you have t
o catch the aeroplane. Here it is. Whoooooo…’

  The spoon spun in circles in front of his eyes, touched his tongue, darted away again, and then swooped in.

  Tammy giggled and Henry’s eyes moved to her as if she was the most mysterious creature he’d ever seen.

  ‘Let’s do it again, shall we?’ she asked, still laughing, and the aeroplane started its tortuous circle again.

  And on the fifth swoop…

  Henry’s eyes lit with what Tammy hadn’t yet seen. A tiny gurgle came from deep within his throat and his rosebud mouth curved up into a smile.

  And Tammy reached out to hug him in delight and darn near burst into tears again.

  This would work. Her world had been turned upside down, and she wasn’t sure where she was, but one thing she was sure of-wherever she went, there went Henry.

  She cradled him until he slept and then finally, reluctantly, set him down in the hotel cot. He needed toys, she thought. He needed-something. There hadn’t been a single toy in that cold, huge room.

  She could hardly bear to take her eyes from him.

  But it was six-thirty. Reluctantly she showered and changed into clean jeans and a T-shirt, which was all her backpack provided, then hauled a comb through her washed curls and settled down to wait for Marc.

  And to read her letter.

  It was from Lara. Written four months ago, it had been stuffed in the suitcase and left unread for all this time.

  It was important.

  She was re-reading the letter for the third time when a knock at the door announced Marc’s arrival.

  For a moment she considered not answering, but then…he had brought her here, she thought. He had paid for a nanny for Henry. If it hadn’t been for Marc, then Tammy might never have learned of Henry’s existence. The letter might have stayed unread for ever.

  Henry’s fate didn’t bear thinking of.

  She set down the letter and crossed to open the door, fury still her overriding emotion.

  But the man on the other side of the door took her breath away. For a moment she forgot all about her anger. Whew!

  His Royal Highness, Prince Regent of Broitenburg, dressed in royal regalia, was really something. But just plain Marc, casually dressed in jeans and an open-necked shirt, was something else entirely.

  His hair was now ruffled and curled. His grey eyes were smiling, the laughter lines on his tanned face creasing into deep and delicious crinkles. His smile was questioning, and his eyes searched the room until he found the sleeping Henry.

  Whew, indeed! He made her want to take a step back…

  Or maybe he made her want to take a step forward-but she wasn’t going into that.

  ‘Henry’s asleep already?’ He was still smiling, and it was a smile that made a girl’s heart do crazy things in her breast. It was some smile.

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was more brusque than she’d intended, and she fought for something polite to say. ‘Come in.’

  ‘Thank you. I brought something for Henry.’ He lifted his hands and there was a soft golden teddy bear. He smiled at the expression on Tammy’s face and her confusion tripled.

  ‘How…how did you know that’s what he needs?’

  ‘I’m not totally insensitive,’ he said gravely. ‘No matter what you think of me.’

  Whatever she’d thought of him had suddenly changed. This was a sure-fire way to defuse anger.

  ‘It’s perfect.’ She took the stuffed toy from Marc’s hands and eyed the bear with wonder. There were teddies and teddies, but this one… He was small, and built so he was deliberately sort of scraggy. His stuffing was soft. His arms and legs were a bit loose and skinny-just perfect for a little one to hold on to. He had a lopsided grin and already he had a much loved look about him. For the first time since she’d met Marc, Tammy felt herself smiling.

  ‘Where did you find him?’ she asked.

  ‘On my twenty-second toy store,’ he told her. ‘Or maybe not that many but it sure felt like it. Did you know there are a whole heap of very unsatisfactory teddies in the world?’

  ‘There are indeed,’ she said unsteadily, trying to swallow her emotion. She carried the teddy across the room and placed it next to the sleeping Henry. ‘He’s just perfect. Oh, Marc…’

  But Marc was distracted. The room he’d entered wasn’t to his liking.

  ‘Suites have separate bedrooms,’ he said, looking round in disapproval. This room had a bed and a cot, and a tiny table and chairs tucked into an alcove by the window. As a dining room it was hardly satisfactory. ‘The phone call I made…I thought I made it clear to the management that you needed a suite.’

  ‘I changed the booking,’ she said brusquely. ‘I want this one.’

  ‘But I’m paying.’

  ‘No.’ She bit her lip, her pleasure from the teddy fading as the conflict re-emerged. ‘I told you. I’m paying. I’m not being any more beholden to you than I need to be.’

  He stared at her as if he’d never met her like in his life. She met his look head on, unflinching, and tilted her chin in an almost unconscious gesture of defiance.

  And a glint of laughter flashed behind those deep grey eyes. Prince Marc of Broitenburg was amused. The peasants were clearly revolting, and royalty was pleased to indulge such idiosyncratic ways.

  ‘Um…maybe we could get a hotel babysitter and go down to the dining room?’

  His laughter only had the effect of increasing her tension-making anger surge. ‘I’m not leaving Henry,’ she told him, and watched his smile die. It was all very well for the peasants to revolt, it seemed, as long as it didn’t interfere with this man’s plans.

  ‘The dining room would be more sensible,’ he told her.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Miss Dexter…’

  ‘You’re not taking him,’ she whispered, and they were no longer talking about where they intended eating dinner. ‘I don’t care who you are, and I don’t care how many teddies you buy him. He’s staying with me.’

  ‘It’s imperative for the country that he returns.’ Marc’s laughter had disappeared entirely.

  Tammy hadn’t been laughing in the first place, and she wasn’t laughing now. ‘It’s imperative for him that he stays with me,’ she told him. ‘He’s ten months old and he hardly knows what human contact is.’

  ‘I can provide the very best in childcare.’

  ‘You don’t get it, do you?’ she snapped. ‘You can’t buy someone to love a child. I don’t have your resources, but…’

  But he wasn’t listening. His needs were urgent, and he wasn’t interested in the issues driving her. He couldn’t allow himself to be. ‘Look, if it’s a matter of money…’

  ‘It’s not.’

  ‘I’m extremely wealthy,’ he told her, as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘If I’m prepared to guarantee his welfare, to have child psychologists give him continuous assessment, and to give you this…’

  He held out a slip of paper. A cheque. Tammy looked down at it-and stared.

  How many zeroes? This was more wealth than she believed possible.

  What on earth was happening here? This man might be so good-looking he made her gasp, and he might have a smile to melt ice, but all she felt was fury.

  She thought back to the letter she’d just read, and a cold, hard knot of anger settled and stayed deep within. Money. This had all been about money from the first. Henry himself was the result of a desire for money and prestige and power, and here was this man offering more.

  ‘You could retire on what I’m offering,’ he was saying. ‘You could stay in places like this all the time. You’d never have to work again,’

  She took a deep breath, and breathed again. Then her eyes flickered from the cheque to his face-and he was smiling. The man actually had the gall to be smiling!

  He expected her to accept.

  And at that the knot of pain and fury stretched and snapped. She lifted the cheque he was holding out, read it carefully as if she needed to memorise the crass insensi
tivity of his action, and then ripped it into a thousand pieces. She let them fall onto the luxurious carpet. She stomped on them with her bare toes and then she stared up at him, her face a mixture of hostility and defiance.

  He still didn’t get it. He was staring back at her as if he didn’t understand, and her fury was still there. The knot was coiling again and there was nothing else for it.

  She lifted her hand and she slapped.

  She’d never slapped a man in her life. She’d never slapped anyone. And now… In the course of three hours she’d thrown baby formula all over him and she’d hit him.

  She didn’t care.

  ‘Get out,’ she whispered, choking on her fury as she hauled open the door. ‘Get out. If we never see you again it’ll be too soon. You and your damned family and your stupid money…’

  ‘What…?’ He was holding his face as if he couldn’t believe what she’d done. The peasants were indeed revolting. With violence!

  ‘You killed my Lara.’ She was stammering with rage. ‘You took her life. You…’ She raised her hand again but he was before her, seizing her hands and dragging them behind her back. A middle-aged couple were walking along the hall to their suite and they paused in concern.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ the man asked, and Marc swore through gritted teeth, pushed Tammy back into the room and slammed the door.

  ‘Now see what you’ve done?’

  ‘Spoilt your reputation? I can’t believe you’ve never been hit by a woman.’ She was verging on hysteria but she couldn’t help herself.

  ‘Believe it or not, I haven’t. Until now. What the hell are you saying about my family?’

  ‘I’ve read the letter from my sister. Sent to me four months ago.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘She was sending Henry to me.’ He was still holding her hands behind her, she was pulled in hard against him, but whether or not it was to stop her striking him she didn’t know. She was past thinking of his intent. Her attention was fully on the contents of that dreadful letter. ‘Lara was frightened. She was in way over her head. Her husband was taking drugs. They were running with a crowd she couldn’t control. He was always drunk…’