have a child, would never do to a child what had been done to him. Never.
He gave the door a hefty kick with the flat of his foot. “Nobody makes my life plans for me!” he shouted through the door before he spun on his heel. “Not my father, and not you!”
His mood was only marginally better at nine the next morning. He had tossed and turned half the bloody night. This morning, his eyes felt gritty and he was drinking industrial-strength coffee in an effort to revive the brain cells that were comatose from lack of sleep.
But there were a few brain cells that were alive and well. With no effort at all, he could recall the look on Elizabeth’s face when he’d told her that the baby she carried could belong to anyone.
She’d been shattered.
He felt like pond scum. He might not have any intention of marrying the girl, but he wasn’t a total jerk. He knew, as sure as he knew his own name, that she’d never had another lover. Before him, impossible. After him… If she’d been a bedhopper, she wouldn’t still have been a virgin when he had met her. He wasn’t sure how old she was, but he knew she had to be in her mid-twenties. Definitely not promiscuous.
And her baby was his.
My sister Serena thought it was only fair that you know.
What in bloody hell did that mean? That Elizabeth wouldn’t have told him otherwise?
He might not want it, might be furious about this whole bloody mess, but he wasn’t a man who walked away from his responsibilities. He’d fathered a child, and he’d support it. She’d waited, damn her, far too long for abortion to be an option. He’d counted in his head during the endless nighttime hours, and he figured she was about five months along now.
Abortion. In his heart, he knew he couldn’t let her do that, anyway. It certainly would have been the easy way out, but the solution gave him a sick feeling. Together, he and Elizabeth Wyndham had created a life, and he didn’t believe either of them had the right to end it.
No. Biologically, he was going to be a father, though he had no intention of getting involved in this child’s life. He wondered if Elizabeth had considered adoption. As far as he was concerned, that would be the best thing all around, but somehow, he doubted his redheaded lover would see it that way. Nor would the royal family, come to think of it.
Oh, well. If she wanted to raise the kid, he couldn’t stop her. And he certainly wouldn’t have any trouble supporting it financially. Even though he’d refused to use any of his family’s money, except that from his grandmother’s trust, he’d managed to build quite a respectable business for himself here in the States. Regardless of the hidebound, ambitious schemer he had the misfortune to call his father.
Hell. He wasn’t going to get any more sleep, and he knew he couldn’t work until he’d straightened things out with Elizabeth. Dumping the coffee in the sink, he grabbed his car keys and headed for the garage.
Twenty-five minutes later, he stood in the suite where he’d been only last night, clinging to his temper by a thin thread while the personal assistant provided to Elizabeth during her hotel stay spread her hands helplessly. “I’m sorry, Mr. Thorton, but the princess insisted. I didn’t think it was wise for her to rent a car for herself, but there was simply no stopping her.”
“How many were in her party?”
“Her party? Oh, no one else, sir. She was alone.”
She hadn’t even taken a driver or a bodyguard? The vague tingle of apprehension that had hovered since he’d learned the princess had left the hotel that morning became a full-fledged itch. “What about her bodyguard?”
“She didn’t bring one, sir.”
Rafe swore, a string of curses that clearly shocked the young woman before him. “Where did she go?”
“I don’t know, sir. She was meeting a man, I believe. All she told me was that she planned to be back by the dinner hour.”
Dinner hour. In Wynborough, that could easily mean eight or nine in the evening. No way was he waiting that long to be sure she was all right. With the hotel employee to vouch for him, it was an easy task to get the concierge to supply him with Elizabeth’s intended destination and to get a description of the vehicle she was driving.
Driving! As sheltered as her life had been, he would bet she’d rarely, if ever, driven herself anywhere in her whole life.
Not to mention the little fact that Americans drove on the other side of the road from what she was accustomed at home.
As he waited impatiently for the facts he’d requested, the assistant’s other words sank in. Meeting a man. A man! Who the hell would Elizabeth know in Phoenix other than him? She was pregnant with his baby, damn it!
Five minutes later, he was climbing back into his truck and heading for the highway.
He drove south out of Phoenix on Interstate 10, heading toward Casa Grande. The concierge had told him that Elizabeth had asked for directions to Catalina, a little town nestled between the Tortolita mountain range and the Coronado National Forest just north of Tucson. She had maybe an hour’s start on him—how the hell was he going to find her?
Especially if she was meeting some other man.
It was only with the greatest restraint that he could keep himself from snarling at the woman’s naïveté. She didn’t know the first thing about men. Elizabeth had no business haring off to meet another man, and when he found her he was going to let her know in no uncertain terms that as the father of her baby, he wouldn’t tolerate another man hanging around his…
His what?
Nothing, he told himself. Nothing. She doesn’t belong to you. You need this princess in your life like you need heat rash.
It was hot.
She didn’t think she’d ever experienced this kind of heat before. She’d vacationed on islands in warm climates, but nothing she could recall resembled this dry, draining heat that leached every ounce of energy from her. Of course, she’d never been on a tropical island when she was pregnant, either, and she’d nearly always had a pool or a beautiful ocean in which to cool off.
Elizabeth bent over the motor of the rental car again. This was dreadful. She had no idea what she might be looking for among all the black, greasy parts and metal pipes. All she knew was that a white, billowing cloud of smoke had begun to leak from beneath the bonnet of the automobile about thirty minutes ago, and that when she’d pulled off the road to investigate the sedan wouldn’t start again.
Fear coiled and her fingers shook as she tentatively reached forward and lightly tapped a piece of metal. It was easy to call herself a dunce. An hour ago, a jaunt down an American highway to find the man who might be her brother had sounded like a grand lark. Now it sounded like the height of folly.
No chauffeur. No bodyguard. No car phone. Off the main road on a little side highway with not a building in sight. Her parents would be terribly distressed if they knew. It hadn’t seemed so foolish to her when she’d had the idea. She was so awfully weary of being followed, escorted, fussed over everywhere she went. This had seemed like the perfect time to see how it felt to be normal.
Now all she could think was that if someone
