The Prince's Secret Baby Read online

  Dinner was several courses. The food was delicious. There was wine. Excellent French wine. As she’d done since she first suspected she might be pregnant, Sydney took care to drink very little of it.

  Later, back in their own apartment, she and Rule celebrated her move to Montedoro by making love—twice. Once, while standing up against the tall, beautifully carved bedroom doors. Very well hung, those doors, she’d teased, as he was moving so deliciously inside her. Those doors didn’t rattle once no matter how enthusiastic they became.

  Eventually, they got into bed, where they made love the second time. It was after that second time, when she lay tucked close against him, that she told him, “Your mother says there’s a large library here at the palace. A lot of books on Montedoran history. She also says the palace librarian can answer just about any question I might have about your country.”

  He stroked her arm in an idle, thoroughly distracting way. “Going to become a Montedoran scholar, are you?”

  “I need to catch up, to understand how things work here, so I can begin to consider the kind of work I want to do, to discover where and how I can be most useful to my new country.”

  “So ambitious.” He said it admiringly as he caressed her breast.

  “You know I lose IQ points when you do that…”

  He covered her breast with his warm hand. “I love your breasts.”

  “Good. You’ll be seeing a lot of them as the years go by.”

  He caught her nipple between his fingers and squeezed. She sighed. He said, in a gentle, careful voice, “I believe they are fuller than they used to be.”

  It was the perfect opportunity to tell him that there was a reason her breasts were bigger: she was having his baby. But instead, she elbowed him in the ribs. “Oh. You like them because they’re bigger.”

  He nuzzled her hair. “Are they bigger?”

  She got up on one elbow, where she could see his eyes. “Yes.” She knew then. She could see it in his face, in the breathless way he looked at her. He knew already. She gave him a teasing smile. “My breasts are bigger. It’s a miracle.”

  He asked, almost shyly, “Sydney…is it possible that you…?”

  She smiled even wider. “That I what, Rule?”

  “Don’t tease me. Please.” His eyes had gone dark as the middle of the night. It was a soft, yearning sort of darkness. He really, really wanted to know.

  And her heart just…expanded. It felt suddenly twice as big as a moment before, as if it were pushing at her ribs, trying to make more room inside her chest. “I think so,” she whispered. “I think we’re going to have a baby.”

  He held her gaze, steadily, surely. “You think?”

  “All the signs are there. The same ones I had with Trev. And my period is almost three weeks late. I haven’t taken the home test I bought yet, though.”

  He touched her chin, brushed his thumb across her lips. “When will you take it?”

  She smiled against his touch. “How about tomorrow morning?”

  “Sydney…”

  “What?”

  “That’s all. Just Sydney. Sydney, Sydney, Sydney…” He took her shoulders and pulled her close so he could kiss her. A long kiss, so tender. So thorough. So right.

  She settled back onto his chest again, her chin on her arms. “So. You’re happy?”

  He stroked her hair. “I am. I can’t tell you how happy.”

  “You’re a good father. Trev is crazy about you.”

  He smoothed her hair, guided it behind her ear. “Trevor is everything I ever wanted in a son. And you are everything I ever dreamed of in a wife.”

  She remembered his mother’s reaction at her first sight of Trev and smiled to herself. “Did you see how surprised your mother was when she met Trev? I’m guessing she noticed the uncanny resemblance between you two.”

  His hand stilled on her hair. “What makes you think that?”

  Had something changed in his eyes?

  She asked herself the question—and then decided it was nothing. He was stroking her hair again, regarding her so tenderly. She said, “I thought she looked pretty stunned when she saw him—you didn’t notice the look on her face?”

  “Hmm. Yes, I suppose…”

  She asked, “Did you see it, or didn’t you?” At his shrug, she frowned. “It was only there for a second and then gone. I guess I might have imagined it… .”

  He framed her face between his hands. “Come here. Kiss me.”

  She pretended to consider. “Well, now. That’s a pretty tempting offer.”

  “Come here. Let me show you how tempting… .”

  She lifted up over him and then, with a happy sigh, settled her mouth on his. He was right. The kiss tempted her to kiss him some more.

  Kisses led to more caresses and they made love again. Slowly. Beautifully.

  She gazed up at his unforgettable face above her and thought how it just kept getting better between them. How there was nothing, ever, that could tear them apart.

  * * *

  An hour later, Rule lay in the dark staring up at the ceiling, listening to his wife’s even, relaxed breathing beside him.

  His pregnant wife…

  He was sure of it. And so was she. The test in the morning was only a formality. She was having his baby.

  His second baby.

  And yes. He’d seen that look on his mother’s face, too.

  His mother had known that Trevor was his. One look at the boy and she’d had no doubt.

  Very soon now, Her Sovereign Highness would be summoning him for a private talk. She was going to want to discuss the startling resemblance between him and his supposed stepson.

  She would also be going after his father, working on the poor man. She would be insisting that her Prince Consort tell her the truth if he knew anything about what was really going on with Rule and his new wife and the child who was the mirror image of Rule at that age. One way or another, Adrienne would get to the bottom of it.

  And as soon as she knew the truth, she was going to be after Rule to come clean with his wife. His mother was as much about integrity and truth in life and marriage as his wife was.

  Rule felt the day of reckoning approaching. He had everything now: the woman he’d almost given up on finding; a healthy, happy, perfect son—and a second child on the way.

  The only real question was how much he was going to lose when Sydney finally learned the truth.

  * * *

  Sydney’s hands were shaking.

  She turned her back to the test wand she’d left on the corner of the serpentine marble counter and held both hands out in front of her. Yep. Her fingers trembled like leaves in the wind.

  “Silly,” she whispered. “So silly…” With a low moan, she lifted her hands and covered her face with them.

  Really, there was no reason she should be such a bundle of nerves over this. She was either pregnant or not—and she just knew that she was. In a moment, the timer would go off and she would have proof.

  No reason to be freaked out over it. No reason at all.

  Rule tapped on the bathroom door. “Sydney? Are you all right in there?” As if in response to his question, the timer she’d set on the marble enclosure around the ginormous sunken tub started beeping. “Sydney! Are you all right?”

  She went over and flipped the switch on the timer. It fell blessedly silent.

  Rule didn’t. “Sydney, my God!” He pounded on the door.

  She whirled, stalked to the door, twisted the lock and flung it wide. He stood there looking fabulous, wearing nothing but a worried expression. Through clenched teeth she informed him, “I am fine. Get it? Fine.”

  He held out his arms.

  With a cry, she threw herself into them, wrapped her arms around his lean bare waist and held on tight. She buried her face against his beautiful hard chest. “It’s time,” she said into that wonderful trail of hair that started between his perfect pectoral muscles and went on down, all the way to heaven.
“I can’t look.”

  “Sydney…” He said her name in that special way that only he could, so tenderly, so reassuringly. He stroked her back and then he took her chin and tipped it up. His dark eyes were waiting. “We both know what the test will say.” He brushed a kiss across her lips.

  Her mouth trembled. Sheesh. She was a trembling fool. She bit her lower lip to make it stop and then she said, “I know we both know. But what if we’re wrong?”

  He drew in a slow breath and dared to suggest, “Only one way to find out.”

  She shoved her face into his chest again, feeling like Trevor, the day before, clinging to his precious Roo upon meeting his new grandparents. “You look. I can’t do it.”

  He chuckled. Oh, wasn’t that just like a man? To chuckle at a time like this. He chuckled, and then he kissed the top of her head and then he gently took hold of her arms. “You will have to release me if you want me to be the one to look.”

  Reluctantly, with another soft cry, she let go of him and stepped out of his way. “Do it. Now.”

  He indicated the wand on the edge of the marble sink counter and slanted her a questioning glance.

  She nodded.

  He went to it, picked it up, frowned at it.

  What? Suddenly, he couldn’t read? She said, “The little window, it either says ‘pregnant’ or ‘not pregnant.’”

  He made a big show of squinting at the wand. “Well, now, let’s see here…”

  “I am going to grab that thing and hit you on the head with it. Just see if I don’t.”

  He waved his free hand in a shushing kind of gesture. “All right, all right. It says… Well, what do you know? It says…”

  “Rule. Stop it. I mean it. You stop it right now.”

  And then he dropped the wand in the sink, turned and grabbed her, lifting her high, spinning her around. She squealed and then she laughed. And then he was letting her down, slowly, the short silk nightie she wore catching, riding up, leaving her bare from the waist down. Her feet touched the floor toes-first.

  Finally, he leaned close and whispered in her ear, “Pregnant.”

  Pregnant. The magic word.

  She threw her arms around him. “Oh, I can’t believe it. It’s true. It’s really true. We’re having a baby. We really, really are. How amazing is that?”

  “Extremely amazing,” he agreed.

  And then he scooped her high in his arms and carried her back to the bed where they celebrated the positive test result in their favorite way.

  * * *

  Later, Sydney asked Rule if he would mind keeping the news about the baby to themselves for a while. She was only a few weeks along, after all. No one else needed to know for another month or so, did they? She wanted a little time to have it be just between the two of them.

  He kissed her. “However you want it.”

  “You’re so easy.”

  “For you, anything,” he told her. And he meant it.

  He was feeling so good—about their life together, about the new baby, about everything—that he almost succeeded in forgetting his dread of the eventual moment of truth concerning Trevor.

  And as that day went by and the one after that and his mother failed to invite him to a private audience, his dread diminished even further. For whatever reason, it appeared that his mother was not going to call him to task on the subject of his look-alike “stepson.” Perhaps she’d decided that the similarity was merely a coincidence. Or perhaps she simply didn’t wish to interfere.

  Or possibly, she had come to the conclusion that when Rule was ready to talk about it with her, he would. Whatever her rationale on the subject, she was staying out of it.

  Rule was grateful. And relieved.

  That first Tuesday, they got through the press conference where they formally announced their marriage to the press, though by then, their marriage was old news in the fast-moving world of the scandal sheets. Wednesday, they visited with the archbishop of Montedoro to request a wedding in the church. The archbishop was only too happy to help speed up the process. They took their expedited marriage classes on Thursday and Friday and then, quickly and quietly, on the Saturday after Rule moved his new family to Montedoro, he and Sydney were married in the church.

  Rule had three days of meetings in Paris that next week. Sydney, Lani and Trevor stayed in Montedoro, where Sydney and his mother spent some time alone, getting to know each other a little. In bed the night of his return from France, Sydney said that his mother had asked her about Trevor’s father.

  Rule kept his voice light and easy. “And what did you tell her?”

  “The truth, of course. That I wanted a family and I didn’t have a man and so I went to a sperm bank. She took it well, I think. She smiled and said what a determined woman I am.”

  “And you are.” He kissed her. She kissed him back. Nature took its course from there.

  The next day, Liliana returned to Montedoro for a brief visit at HSH Adrienne’s invitation. Sydney got to meet her. The two hit it off—the delicate Alagonian princess and Rule’s tall, brilliant and determined American bride. Rule wasn’t really all that surprised that they got along. They were both good women with tender hearts.

  It was the same with his sisters. Sydney liked them all and the sentiment was mutual.

  Rule and Sydney began to talk of a more private life. Sydney said she would prefer to live in their own house by the time the new baby came. So they engaged an architect to renovate Rule’s nearby villa, modernizing and enlarging it to make it more comfortable for their growing family.

  He and Sydney were so happy. He never wanted to do anything to hurt her, or to damage what they had together. In fact, sometimes he found himself wondering why, realistically, she even needed to know that he was actually Trevor’s father.

  Why should she know? What good could the truth possibly do her—or anyone—now? He had found her and his son and he had made things right for all of them. To tell her now would only upset her and drive a wedge between the two of them. It would threaten, and might even destroy, what they had as a family.

  Rule’s father would keep his secret, especially if his mother wasn’t pushing to know more. And sometimes the wisest course was to do nothing, to leave a perfectly wonderful situation alone. He decided he would do just that.

  And then he would realize how despicable that was. He should have told her at the first. It was information she had every right to know.

  He should tell her now. Today.

  But then, somehow, the moment was never right. Another day would go by.

  Soon, he would promise himself.

  He would tell her soon.

  But he didn’t tell her. And every day he said nothing, it only got harder to imagine being truthful. Every moment that went by in which he kept his silence, he was more and more deeply mired in the lie, more and more convinced that his silence was the best thing for everyone.

  And then, on the last Wednesday in May, the truth finally caught up with him.

  Chapter Twelve

  It happened in the morning two weeks and five days after Rule brought his new family to Montedoro.

  Caroline was waiting for him when he entered his office at the palace. She held a tabloid newspaper in her hand.

  “Sir,” said his secretary, her expression carefully neutral, “a particularly annoying article has appeared in The International Sun.” The Sun was a London-based paper. A weekly, it claimed to deliver news. And it did. News on such burning issues of the day as which celebrity was heading for rehab again and which film star was having a torrid affair with His Grace, the very married Duke of So-and-So. “I thought I should bring it to your attention right away.” It was one of Caroline’s duties to keep up with both the legitimate news of the day and the scandal sheets. She made certain Rule knew of any and all information that appeared in print about him, his country, his business dealings and/or the people who mattered to him.

  Usually, she simply left the various publications o
n the credenza, having red-flagged articles that she thought required particular attention. Her choosing to hand this one to him personally did not bode well.

  “Thank you, Caroline.”

  With a nod and a murmured, “Sir,” she left him, quietly closing the door behind her.

  Circling around behind his desk, he dropped into his chair. Aware of a terrible, crushing sensation of dread, he spread the paper on the leather desk pad before him. For a time, he stared furiously down at it, as if by glaring at it long enough, he could somehow make the words and the pictures rearrange themselves into something else, something that had nothing to do with him or his family.

  But no matter how long and hard he stared, what was printed on the front page didn’t change.

  The headline read, Stepchild—Or Love Child?

  There were several pictures of him—by himself and holding Trevor, pictures of him holding Trevor with Sydney beside him, pictures of him at the same age as Trevor. Since the resemblance between Rule and Trevor really was so strong, the pictures themselves told a very clear story. Anyone glancing at them would say that Rule must be Trevor’s biological father—or at the very least, a close relation.

  The article itself was a total fabrication. It proposed that he and Sydney had earlier enjoyed a “torrid secret affair.” When it ended, she was pregnant with his child. And he had walked out on her, left her to “have his baby alone,” because he felt duty bound to marry in “the aristocracy of Europe.”

  But then, “as fate would have it,” he’d been unable to forget the one woman who “held his heart.” After more than two years had gone by, the “handsome prince” had at last realized that his child and his true love “mattered more than royal blood.” He’d returned to claim the woman he’d “always loved” and the child he’d “left behind.”

  There was even a long explanation of how Sydney had “put it out” that her child was the result of artificial insemination. But The International Sun wasn’t fooled and neither should its readership be.