The Playboy Prince's Baby

by Sparks, Ana

  Also, while I was building that fantasy, I added a gorgeous man sleeping in the bed, just waiting for me to crawl back in and wake him up. Because as long as we were talking fantasies…

  The thought of a man in my bed made me jump, and I remembered why I was up so early. Francisco. He’d been sent home, and I was on a self-assigned mission to go after him and save the day.

  Or, if not save it, at least get into the same time zone as the guy so we could figure out what we were going to do on a more permanent basis. Because I was getting pretty freaking sick of this whole deal where I only had him for three days at a time, and then lost him to the cops—and a flight right back to Tarana.

  The problem was, I wasn’t completely sure what I could do about it. Not yet. But I knew where to start, and that was with the owner of the bar, Henry. Because no matter what, I figured I was going to need some time off—and that meant talking to the boss man.

  I took one more sip of coffee, then set the mug down on what passed as the windowsill in my tiny apartment and headed for the bedroom, already putting together my outfit for the day and working on the speech I’d started rehearsing last night when I went to bed.

  I needed time off, and I needed Henry to give it to me. And if my previous experience with Henry was any indication, that meant going in there with a terrific script and a bulletproof reason for why I needed said time off.

  The man was a romantic at heart, but he was also a businessman. So I was going to need more than “I fell in love with a man and I have to go find him.”

  * * *

  I strolled into the bar—closed right now, since it was past six a.m. and not yet eight at night—and looked around, going through that weird transition when you see a place you know like the back of your hand and it looks nothing like it does when you usually see it.

  It was almost always crowded in this bar and seeing it empty was weird. I mean yeah, it was empty after closing time at three, but there were always the bouncers and another bartender around, and from three to six, I was usually busy with cleaning and trying to get organized for opening again.

  There were also, on occasion, the people I let sleep there because they’d passed out and I just didn’t have the heart to move them. And I always had music playing and the dishwasher running and the sound of the broom or mop or something else to keep the silence at bay.

  So seeing it right now, in the complete quiet, with no peanut shells on the floor and no dishwasher running or bartender in the kitchen, was weird.

  But I jerked myself out of that little observation and headed for the office, where Henry had said he’d be waiting. Standing around and staring at the bar in all its glorious silence wasn’t going to get this meeting over with, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to get me my time off. I needed to get this done, so I could start figuring out what the next step was going to be.

  The office was down the hall and right next to the kitchen, and it took me about ten steps to get there, given how tiny the bar was once you were out of the main seating area. I ducked into the office and found Henry at his usual place at the desk, going over finances, stacks and stacks of papers surrounding him.

  “Anything good in all that?” I asked, smiling.

  He turned around and smiled back. “Lots of good stuff,” he replied. “Too many numbers, but most of them are good. They’ll be even better once I convince you to start playing here on the weekends instead of going to that other bar, whose name I won’t mention.”

  I sat in the one other seat and rolled my eyes. “I’ll start playing here when I can afford to not be working. Right now, you and I both know that’s not an option.”

  He reached out and grasped my arm, squeezing it gently. “And you and I both know that I will be at the front of the room when it finally happens, yelling my lungs out and jumping up and down like a complete idiot.”

  I laughed out loud at that, because he probably would be. I’d only known Henry for the year that I’d been working here, but he’d always been one of my biggest cheerleaders. He was constantly asking me to play on the open mic nights, and though I usually couldn’t, since I was the one working the bar on those nights—because I had to pay the bills—he’d never stopped asking. Or cheering.

  I’d seen him at a few shows I’d performed in other venues. And he was indeed a very enthusiastic audience member.

  And that thought gave me the guts I needed to leap into why I’d come. Because Henry had always believed in me, even when my own parents didn’t. If anyone could give me advice about what to do about Francisco—and maybe even some ideas about how to make it happen—it was him.

  “Speaking of dreams,” I started. “I have a problem. And I need some time off. And some advice.”

  He leaned back in his chair, folded his hands over his ample stomach, and said, “Awarded. Now tell me what’s going on.”

  Well, that had been easier than I’d anticipated. But I still needed that advice.

  So I told him everything. Letting Francisco sleep off the amount of beer he’d had to drink, and the weekend we’d spent together after that. His sudden trip home, courtesy of his position and his reputation, and the call I’d received a week after that, with the news that he didn’t think he’d be coming back. Finding out I was pregnant. Calling Francisco to tell him—and then finding him on my doorstep two weeks later. That gorgeous speech he made about knowing that something was wrong, and that he had to come save the day. The weekend we’d then spent together. Francisco’s re-arrest.

  “I’m in love with him,” I finished simply. “I know it’s insane. I know he might not be in love with me, but I have to see. I have to go to him and at least try to spend an entire week with him, you know? I have to see if this is the real thing. But I don’t know how to do it.”

  Henry frowned and put one finger to his lips—which wasn’t the reaction I’d been expecting.

  “Where did you say he came from?” he asked.

  “Tarana,” I said slowly. “I’ve never even heard of it, but his brother’s the king there and—”

  Henry turned in his chair, grabbed something off his desk, and shoved it into my hands. “That him?”

  I glanced down to find a tabloid on my lap, and Francisco himself on the cover with a man who looked almost exactly like him, but a little shorter, and far more polished. Like he put more effort into looking clean-cut.

  That had to be the brother. The king. The man who kept dragging Francisco home.

  “That’s him,” I gasped. I looked back up at Henry, surprised. “What is this?”

  Henry gave me a rueful shrug. “That rag did a story about how much trouble Francisco gets into, and you know I can’t say no to gossip magazines. Guilty pleasure.”

  “Well, that’s definitely him,” I said, shaking my head. “His reputation seems to be… large.”

  “So is his house,” Henry said. “They’ve got a spread in there that shows the outside, at least, as well as some of the rooms. The angle, of course, is that this Francisco of yours is insane to ever leave the place. But I’m thinking it’s the perfect map for you.”

  “Map?” I asked, obviously moving a whole lot more slowly than Henry. “Why would I need a map?”

  He turned to his desk again, opened one of the drawers, and then turned back around and handed me a wad of cash.

  “They’re helpful when you’re looking for a place you don’t know how to locate,” he said simply. “Go to Tarana. Ask how to get to the palace. Find your man. And let me know when you’ve figured out whether you’re staying there or coming back. Also,” he added with a grin. “If there’s a wedding, I’ll be expecting an invitation and an open bar. Consider that fair warning.”

  Chapter 25

  Erika

  The flight was awful.

  I’d never been on a plane before, and I turned up at the airport half excited and half terrified, having booked the first flight that I could find. Flights from Chicago to Tarana were surprisingly irregular—which mad
e me wonder how the hell the State Department had deported Francisco so quickly both times—and that had meant that the first flight was actually only two hours later, with the next one not taking place for four days.

  I’d picked the flight in two hours. And I’d packed like the wind and then rushed to the airport. So I arrived with that short-of-breath, freaked-out feeling you get when you’re running late.

  That, on top of that feeling of knowing that I was getting on a plane for the first time, was making for a very, very intense experience.

  I rushed through the check-in and then through security, and then arrived at the gate with only about fifteen minutes to spare.

  Boarding the plane, I was frazzled and insanely nervous. Taking your first flight—and making it one that was going to last nine hours and cross an ocean, depositing you in a country where you didn’t speak the language—was a whole lot scarier than I’d planned for.

  But I was smiling as I buckled my seatbelt. Because at the end of that flight?

  Francisco. And, I hoped, at least a week spent in the same city.

  * * *

  When I arrived in Orlo, I was even more exhausted than I had been when I sat down in my seat. I hadn’t been able to sleep a wink on the flight, though everyone had told me that I should—as if it was the simplest thing in the entire world to just close my eyes and drift off to sleep while I was thousands of miles above the ground I usually walked on. Plus, I was also feeling incredibly nauseous again.

  Thank God my seat was right next to the bathroom. I felt like I’d spent about half of the flight in it, never quite getting sick but feeling like I might be at any given moment, and not trusting the walk back to my row.

  Come to think of it, that might have been the reason I didn’t get much sleep.

  When I walked off the plane and into the airport, though, I started to feel a bit better. It was a small airport—for a small nation, I assumed—but it was incredibly bright. The whole thing was painted in reds and yellows and greens, and there was festive music playing throughout the place. This must have been a popular destination in Europe, because as I walked through the crowds, I could hear people speaking not only Spanish (which I assumed they spoke here, given how close it was to that nation), but French, English, and German.

  I made my way to customs where the guy glanced at my passport, then lifted an eyebrow.

  “American?” he asked, in accented but very clear English.

  “Yes,” I said, relieved. “Sorry, I don’t speak any Spanish.”

  He gave me a mostly comforting smile. “You will be fine. Orlo is a hub of international import. Most people here speak English as well.”

  “Thank God,” I muttered, feeling some of the tension in my stomach ease.

  That was just the language tension, though. The finding-Francisco tension was definitely still there. As was the figuring-out-what-we’re-going-to-do-about-our-relationship-and-baby tension.

  * * *

  As it turned out, the whole finding-Francisco part was easier than I’d anticipated. All I did was jump into the first cab I found at the curb of the airport and thrust the tabloid at the driver, folded open to the picture of the house where Francisco lived.

  “Do you know this place?” I asked.

  The cabbie gave me a look that would have been, in Chicago, accompanied by a question about whether I was actually insane.

  “Sí, señora. That is the royal palace.”

  My mouth fell open. “What?”

  Another look from the cabbie, and those looks were getting more and more narrow in the eyes. “The royal palace. Where Francisco and Javier de la Laros live. Our prince and king. You… do know that we have a prince and a king here, correct?”

  Well, of course I did. I was having a kid with one of them. I just hadn’t thought that he actually lived at the royal palace.

  The truth was, though I’d had the picture right there in front of me, with an article below it, I hadn’t actually read it. I’d been in too much of a hurry, and too anxious by the time I was on the plane. So I’d come here under the assumption that Francisco had a house of his own, and it was really big and impressive.

  It had never occurred to me that he might still live in the royal residence. With his brother.

  “Yes, of course I know,” I said weakly. “Can you… Can you drive me there, please?”

  The driver nodded, cast one more suspicious look at me in the rearview mirror, and then took off, proving that no matter what country you were in, the cabbies drove the same way: Fast and reckless.

  Thankfully, it only took us about ten minutes of that sort of driving to reach what I assumed was our destination.

  “This is where I drop you off,” the cabbie said firmly.

  I looked out the window, surprised that we were already there, and saw that we weren’t actually there. Not at all. In reality, we were in front of some sort of ticket booth on the road. I glanced past it and could see the palace in the distance.

  “You can’t drive me all the way to the house?” I asked, knowing it was going to be hard for me to walk that far with how I was feeling.

  Another doubtful look from the driver. “It is the royal residence, señora. We do not exactly drive up the circle and drop tourists off at the front door.”

  Tourists. Of course. He had no way of knowing that I actually knew Francisco. And I definitely couldn’t waste the time it would take to explain it all to him. I’d just have to talk to the people at the ticket booth. Tell them who I was and get them to contact someone who could let me in.

  This was, I thought with a smile, what I got for falling in love with a prince. The difficulties of actually getting to his house without being branded as some loony fangirl.

  I paid the driver using my card (and thank God he let me do that, since I’d completely ignored the fact that I would need euros, not dollars, here), and got out with my bag in tow. Then I headed for the ticket booth, where I got in line and waited my turn.

  When I finally got to the window, though, it became apparent that my problem was going to be bigger than I had anticipated.

  “I know Prince Francisco,” I repeated for the fifth time. “No, he’s not expecting me, but if you’ll just call him, I’m sure he’ll tell you—”

  “We are not in the habit of calling the prince for every girl who says she knows him, miss,” the girl at the window said sharply. Again.

  And instead of letting me repeat myself one more time, asking for them to call Francisco and have me buzzed in, or whatever it was they did here, she closed the window on me.

  I could see her picking up her phone and calling someone—security, I assumed—while she watched me closely. She was talking, and then nodding, and looking as if she’d probably just told someone important that they had some crazy girl at the front window saying she knew the prince.

  I wasn’t fooling myself into believing she’d given in and called Francisco directly. She’d been very clear on the fact that she didn’t believe in doing that.

  And that meant she was probably calling someone who was going to get me into trouble. The last thing I needed right now. Francisco might have ended up in jail in my country, but he also had a royal family to get him back out. I had no such thing—and that meant I couldn’t afford to get thrown in jail.

  I was just ducking down to grab my bag, in preparation for hightailing it out of there, when a tall, muscly man in a black suit showed up next to me.

  When I looked up at him, I saw absolutely no expression his face. But to my surprise, he just held a hand out to me.

  “Miss, I have orders from the king to bring you to the palace,” he said in monotone.

  Wait, what?

  “Huh?” I asked. Hadn’t that girl just told me I couldn’t go? What had she told them that had me now traveling to the residence?

  Wait, was it so they could interrogate me or something?

  The girl in question opened the window and spoke clearly. “I called security, mis
s, and they spoke to the king. It seems that he has heard of you.”

  My mind went completely blank at that. Because the king had heard of me.

  Francisco had told his brother about me.

  And that meant, I guessed, that I at least got to go to the palace. Though whether I made it all the way to Francisco or not, I supposed, was still up for debate.

  Chapter 26

  Francisco

  I was just settling down with a book and a glass of whiskey, trying to give my brain something to think about other than my not-yet-successful plan to bring Erika here to Orlo, when I heard a knock at the door.

  And not just any door. The one that led to the outside world and looked, from the outside, like a door in any old house. The one that members of the household never used.

  I frowned and got up, immediately expecting the worst. If anyone was coming from within the palace, they would be using the door on the other side of my suite, which led to the courtyard at the center of all the different wings. That was by far the most direct way to get to me if someone had wanted me for palace business.

  The people who came to the front door from the outside—which bordered on the lawns, but also had quick and easy access to the street (something I’d insisted on having when I was given my choice of wings as a teenager)—were here on private business. And that almost always meant trouble.

  Though, I thought quickly, if they were here on secret private business, they wouldn’t be knocking on the door, for all the world to see them. And that, I supposed, was something.

  That didn’t leave many options for who might be there, though, and when you’re a prince who has made a career out of getting into trouble both at home and on the world stage, you learn to operate very carefully when it comes to situations where you don’t know exactly what’s going on. I didn’t like surprises, since in my life, they were almost never good ones.