eyes, Seth Bryant was gorgeous. But he was also a little rough around the edges. When she had met him and his older brother Ty at the site proposed for her father’s Miami mansion, Seth hadn’t known she was a princess, the daughter of the king building the magnificent home. Because she was an architect, he had assumed she was simply the project manager.
It was so nice to be treated normally that even though they’d fought over a few contract details, she hadn’t told him she was a princess until after he’d invited her to dinner. Seth was bold, intelligent, and just rebellious enough to make her feel decadent. To a woman who had been sheltered most of her life, being with him was like living an adventure. They hadn’t even known each other twelve hours before they had fallen into bed.
So, no. She didn’t think it “smarter” for her to stay here rather than at a hotel, but their attraction to each other wasn’t the most important thing to consider in this situation. Before Lucy took Owen home to Xavier Island, she also needed to know how to care for him without the help of a nanny. Her own mother, Queen Marianna, had died unexpectedly when Lucy was six. Lucy had felt more empty than sad, as if she hadn’t really known her mother, and she refused to curse her son to that fate.
But if she didn’t know how to care of Owen before she returned to Xavier Island, her father would insist on around the clock nannies. Lucy knew she’d never get to mother Owen unless she learned everything she needed to know before she went home, and to do that she needed a block of time with her son completely to herself. And in Porter, Arkansas, she was totally on her own.
As long as she called her dad and let him know Owen had been born and she was fine, her dad wouldn’t panic and come looking for her. He might covertly station a bodyguard or two in Porter. But he wouldn’t show up at Seth’s door. He couldn’t leave Xavier because on Monday Xavier’s legislature went into session and there was no way he could cancel or postpone it without causing a stir.
They’d managed to keep Lucy’s pregnancy a secret by saying she was in Miami working on the mansion. But if the king canceled the legislative session, the curious media would follow him to Arkansas. They would discover not only Lucy and her baby, but also Seth—a man unprepared for a deluge of reporters with questions about their marriage and the baby he didn’t know he was having. Which meant a story her father’s people could very easily control on Xavier Island would become a circus.
So, for the sake of making the facts surrounding the conception of Xavier’s next king appear to be normal or even irrelevant, her father would attend the legislative session as if nothing were wrong. When the session was completed, he would travel to Arkansas and take Lucy and Owen back to Xavier Island with him, where his people would “spin” Owen’s conception and birth to a situation befitting a king. But that would be okay. By then, Seth and Lucy would have decided visitation, and Lucy would know how to care for Owen.
The question was, was it better to be alone in a hotel or in a house with someone who might be able to help her, but to whom she was also unreasonably attracted.
“How can you think my living with you is smarter than staying at a hotel?”
Seth turned on the front seat to face her. “You just had a baby. You shouldn’t be alone. You need someone at least hanging out with you to make sure everything really is okay.”
“Seth, the hotel staff would be a phone call away. Besides, I’m fine.”
“Well, how about this, then? This period that we’ve agreed to spend deciding my place in Owen’s life would be a good time for me to bond with him.”
Lucy frowned. That was a much better argument than Seth knew. This wasn’t merely a “good” opportunity to bond with his son. It might be the last such opportunity he would ever have. As the future sovereign of a small country, Owen would be living across an ocean. No matter how craftily Seth negotiated, Lucy couldn’t promise him he would see his child any more than a few times a year, and those times would be at the palace, not at Seth’s home. She had nearly told Seth that the night before at the hospital, but he looked so shell-shocked from the surprises he’d already experienced that she didn’t have the heart.
She glanced at Seth’s elegant house, beautifully detailed with black lanterns at the entryways and lining the stone walk to the front door. The two-story dwelling was big enough that she and Seth could probably live together for a few weeks without too many complications.
Particularly since Lucy wasn’t worried that Seth was trying to wiggle his way into her life again. When she’d left him, he had been furious that she had dropped everything because her father had summoned her and livid that her royal responsibilities and duties took precedence over anything in her life—even him. When he didn’t return her calls, it was only logical to assume he had regretted his decision to marry a royal. When he didn’t protest their annulment, she considered it proof he had concluded marrying her had been a mistake. It had hurt at first. Actually, it had darned near killed her. But, in the end, she understood that Seth finally comprehended what she had been trying to explain to him from the first day she’d met him—it was not easy to be a member of a monarchy. And soon his son would be as involved as Lucy was.
It didn’t seem fair to deprive Seth of this opportunity to get to know his son. Not when she could easily keep herself away from a man who had been glad to be rid of her, no matter how good-looking he was. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Seth said and pushed open his SUV door. “You get the baby. I’ll grab his luggage.”
Lucy carefully exited the SUV and reached in to unbuckle Owen and lift him from his protective infant seat. She nuzzled her nose against his velvet-soft face.
“Hello,” she whispered. She was so full of awe and delight that this baby was hers that she almost lost her breath. After spending her entire life virtually alone, she had someone with whom she was irrevocably bound. Someone who would love her. Someone she could love without reservation, without fear of loss. Cuddling Owen closer, she squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled his sweet baby scent.
When Owen pressed his nose against her cheek, she knew he recognized her, and the power of instinctive love overwhelmed her again, nearly bringing her to tears and reminding her of how profound the loss of her own mother was.
“Ready?”
She faced Seth, wondering how long he had been standing there, but deciding not to make an issue of whether he’d seen her interaction with Owen. Even if he’d watched the entire time, she knew Seth wasn’t looking at her as much as at the baby. Owen was his child and Seth was interested in him, not his baby’s mother.
“Yes. We’re ready.”
She followed Seth up the long stone walk to the front door, but as he unlocked it, a black SUV roared into his driveway. The man Lucy recognized from working with him as Seth’s brother Ty climbed out of the driver’s side. A red-haired woman jumped out of the passenger’s side. Clearly obsessed with getting to Seth, Ty didn’t wait for his companion. His long footsteps had him rounding the SUV and striding toward the walk as Seth directed Lucy to the house.
In the foyer, she noticed the elaborate design of the pale orange tile floor and the elegance of the crystal chandelier that she had missed the night before. Seth hadn’t had this house when they were married. But even if he had, they had decided to keep their wedding a secret until they figured out a way to explain it to her tyrannical dad. So Seth had never brought her to his hometown, let alone to his house.
“You have a lovely home.”
Seth gave her a sheepish look. “I had to hire a decorator.”
