Prince Damon gave the door a slight push, and the sound of Carly’s robust laughter burst out the open door. The sound never failed to make happiness curl around Rachel. She was determined that, despite the bad start of being born illegitimate, of being abandoned by her father, her child was going to have a better upbringing than her own had been. Full of laughter, and warmth, and love.
Not the kind of childhood Rachel had, that made her so ripe for someone like Bryan. Looking for something she had never had, and yet had believed with her whole heart and soul must exist. Rachel had made the age-old error of mistaking the impostor passion for love.
Did she believe in romance anymore? Did she long for the love that seemed so genuine that others seemed to find but not her? She no longer knew.
Once burned, after all.
Besides, who had the time? The emotional energy? Carly deserved more than that. She deserved not to have daddy candidates trotted in and out of her life. The two of them could take on the world all by themselves.
She beckoned the prince into her tiny entryway, but he did not follow immediately, instead looked beyond her with something like wariness.
“You have a child?” he asked.
She thought he must have known. To her, it had sounded like Crenshaw’s crude remark about her waistline had gone out over a loudspeaker.
A number of times since Carly was born, this had happened to her. A man showed unmistakable interest, until he found out she had a baby. It had made her pretty much lose interest in men, in dating. In some part of herself she realized she had decided, secretly and quietly, that she would never marry if it seemed it might take away from what she could give to Carly.
Of course, her own taste in men, if Bryan was any example, had thrown a scare into Rachel, too.
“A baby girl. She’s twenty months old.”
She reminded herself that Prince Damon of Roxbury’s interest in her was quite different, anyway. Rescuing a damsel in distress, he had called it. She would be foolish to read any more into his interest than that. Theirs were worlds apart.
She was not a sleeping princess about to be kissed.
She was a single mom trying to do the best for her baby.
And then Carly bumped, on her padded rump, sleeper-encased feet first, down the narrow staircase, her blond curls scattered around cheeks flushed from the exertion and delight she attacked life with.
Rachel went down on one knee, and threw open wide her arms.
“Mommeee!”
Carly barreled across the floor, arms flung wide, balance precarious. She slid on the oval rag rug, tilted and then fell into Rachel’s arms with such force that Rachel was nearly knocked over. Laughing, forgetting her dignified visitor, losing herself to the exuberance of her daughter’s greeting, Rachel hugged Carly to her, buried her nose in the child’s silky hair, rose and swung the baby around until she shrieked with delight.
She froze mid-swing. He was too still. She tucked Carly in tight and looked at him. Prince Damon Montague was ashen.
It reminded her of that moment in the car, when he had so definitely gone away, and the place where he had gone had caused him terrible sadness. “What is it?” she asked.
He shook himself, as a man coming out of a dream. Carly leaned toward him, her arms widespread, nearly wriggling out of Rachel’s arms.
It was an invitation to be held that only the hardest heart would have been able to refuse. Damon hesitated, looked amazingly as though he was going to bolt. Instead, he smiled, though it looked as if it cost him.
“The head dwarf, I presume?” he said with complete composure. He did not take Carly, but leaned instead and touched her cheek with his hand. “Hello. Which one are you? Surely not Grumpy? Definitely not Sleepy. Or Doc. Or Dopey. You must be Happy.”
Carly chortled at this, caught his hand and chomped on one of his fingers. He extricated his finger from her mouth with good grace. “Jaws wasn’t one of the seven, was he?”
“No biting,” Rachel admonished sternly. “Your Highness, my daughter, Carly.”
“I really do want you to call me Damon,” he said, and then he bowed, deep at the waist, which charmed Carly completely. Not to mention her mother. “The pleasure is all mine,” he said.
Rachel realized that in her mind he was already Damon, that there was a feeling of having always known him that made formality between them seem stiff and ridiculous.
When he straightened, Carly regarded him solemnly for a minute, ran her plump fingers over the planes of his face, tugged his nose experimentally. Then she nodded her approval, and ordered loudly, “Down.”
Rachel set her down, and Carly plummeted across the floor, arms out like a tightrope walker, always teetering on the very edge of a spill. She made it without hazard, however, to her overflowing toy basket, the contents of which she dumped unceremoniously on the floor. With a sigh, she plopped down on the floor beside her heap of treasures.
“Do you find yourself holding your breath a lot?” Damon asked.
“I think it’s called motherhood. I’ll be holding my breath until her eighteenth birthday.” She thought of her missing sister, who was twenty-seven, and her recent worries, and added woefully, “And probably beyond.”
“She’s an unusually beautiful child,” Damon said, watching with a small smile at the energy with which Carly’s possessions were now being thrust back in the basket.
Of course he would know all the right things to say. They probably taught him that at prince training school, or wherever young royals went to learn to be gracious and courteous and sophisticated.
“Thank you.”
He hesitated. “Her father?”
“The last I heard, running a ski lift in Canada.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. We’re both better off without him.” She said this with a trace of defiance. She did not want his pity. His gaze had drifted from the baby, and he was scanning her small living room with casual interest.
Though he kept his expression deliberately blank, no doubt he parked his car in a larger space.
And she knew the furnishings of the cottage were humble; most of them had come with it. But she had delighted at the cozy atmosphere she had created with a few plaid throws, jugs of dried flowers, bright paintings, small wicker baskets containing books and apples and papers, and the larger basket, the only one Carly could reach, which held her toys.
In one corner was the only thing in the room that qualified as state of the art, the computer that she did her writing on.
The sitter, the elderly lady who lived in the manor house on the property, came down the steps. A few strands of her gray hair had fallen out of her tidy bun, her glasses were askew, her sweater was tugged out of shape at the hem, and she was not looking nearly as sprightly as when she had come in the door several hours ago.
“My goodness,” Mrs. Brumble said with weary graciousness, “she has so much energy. I’ve never seen a baby that age quite so energetic.”
“Mrs. Brumble, was she awful?” Rachel asked, wide-eyed at her dignified landlady’s disheveled appearance.
“Not awful. No, no. Demanding. Inquisitive. Into everything.” The old lady paused, sighed and smiled. “Awful,” she said. “But I meant it. I adore children, and I’ll look after her whenever you have to be away.”
“That’s so kind,” Rachel said, and meant it. Life since Carly seemed to have gotten somewhat harder. Bryan had made it clear he wanted no part of her life, and nothing to do with