by Susan Meier
Confused, Lucy said, “I guess, but my father’s not going to let Owen live here forever and I don’t want to give Seth the wrong idea.”
“You won’t stay long enough to give Seth the wrong idea. Only long enough for his neighbors to teach you how to care for Owen.”
Lucy peered at Madelyn. “Seth’s neighbors?”
“The way I see this, you can’t let Seth know you can’t care for this baby or he’s going to get a nanny and then you probably won’t get the experience you’ll need to convince your dad you can care for Owen alone.”
Lucy nodded.
“But I can’t come here every day and help you. Seth would get suspicious.”
Lucy nodded again.
“But, every day while Seth is at Bryant Development, one of my mother’s friends could drop by under the guise of meeting the newest member of Seth’s family. And while she was here, she could give you baby lessons.”
Lucy pressed her hand to her chest. “It sounds perfect.”
“It’s close to perfect, but there is one potential glitch. To get the time you’ll need, you can’t have too much interaction with Seth or you’ll come to terms on visitation too quickly and the next thing you know you’ll be going home when you’re not ready.”
Lucy took a quick breath. “I can handle Seth.”
She’d stayed away for eight long months and she could most certainly keep her distance for a few days.
The second the kitchen door swung closed behind Madelyn and Lucy, Seth faced his older brother. “We have got to get a nanny. I don’t know a thing about caring for a baby.”
Ty shrugged. “I’ll send over my list.”
Seth shook his head. “It is not going to be that easy. Did you see the look on Lucy’s face when she said she didn’t want someone helping her care for Owen? She’ll fight tooth and nail before she’ll let me get a nanny, but I need a nanny if I’m going to get custody.”
“Custody? You’re going to try to wrestle custody from a king?”
“Not from a king. From Lucy. When I called Pete last night before I went to the hospital, I only wanted visitation. But this morning I called him again and told him I want out-and-out custody and he told me that meant I had to change the way I was looking at this. We can’t go at this from the perspective of Bryant Development against the monarchy. It’s just me and Lucy deciding what’s best for our son.”
“I don’t know, Seth…” Ty paused when there was a knock at Seth’s back door. “That’s probably Madelyn’s parents,” he said, grinning and shaking his head.
But when Seth pulled open the door, Pete Hauser stood on the threshold. Carrying about twenty extra pounds and going bald, Pete looked much older than his forty years.
“You have something already?” Seth asked, directing him into the kitchen.
“Not a precedent that gets you custody of your son,” Pete said. “But I had two legal assistants from the firm’s main office in Little Rock go online. They found virtually nothing on your princess or her country.”
“It’s a small island. I’m not surprised they found nothing—”
“I said virtually nothing.” He handed Seth some papers. “This is a printout of the interview with Princess Lucy of Xavier Island from Sophistication magazine’s Royal Issue. Did you know she didn’t like growing up as a princess?”
“No,” Seth said, slowly, embarrassed to admit in front of his older brother that he didn’t know much about his ex-wife.
“Read the article. She talks about being raised by nannies and missing things like close girlfriends because she was educated at the palace. She laughs about never getting sent to the principal’s office or having a chance to be a ‘bad girl,’ but if you read between the lines what she’s saying is that her childhood was hard. Maybe too hard. She may not want her son to live that life, and while she’s here you might be able to prove to her that with a ‘commoner’ for a father, Owen doesn’t have to.”
Seth glanced up sharply. “You think that if I play my cards right, she’ll give me custody?”
“Not forever, but maybe until Owen is fourteen or so. Her childhood was what she missed. She didn’t mind being royal once she got old enough to have a sense of responsibility.”
Seth snorted. “Oh, she has a sense of responsibilities, all right. King Dad snapped his fingers and she went running home.”
“That works in your favor, Seth,” Pete insisted. “She knows how committed Owen will have to be when he gets old enough to assume his royal duties. So you need to show her that you could give Owen the normal life she didn’t have in the only space of time in which he can have it. While he’s a child.”
Seth glanced over at Ty. “What do you think?”
“He may never join the family business, but at least we’ll keep him out of purple tights and a fur-trimmed velvet robe until he’s fourteen.”
Seth laughed, but Pete said, “And when he’s fourteen, we don’t have to give him up easily. We can still file for custody. The trick will be getting the time right now to convince the princess that Porter, Arkansas, is the best place for Owen to have a real childhood. And that means you can’t settle your visitation discussions until you’ve proved to Lucy that you will raise Owen in an absolutely normal environment.”
Seth snickered. “Right. I wouldn’t know a normal environment if it bit me in the butt. Once our parents died, Ty, Cooper and I lost our normal environment.”
Ty shrugged. “Compared to Lucy’s life, yours is normal.”
Pete said, “Ty’s right, Seth. Compared to her life, yours isn’t that odd. You might have money, and your house might be big, but it’s still in a quiet, safe small town where Princess Lucy’s son probably wouldn’t need a bodyguard.”
“She hates her bodyguards.”
“Exactly! So while she’s living here, all you have to do is show her Owen would have a very normal life if he lived with you.” He nodded toward the article in Seth’s hands. “And whatever you do, don’t even breathe the word nanny…”
“He already did,” Ty said, “and she shot him down.”
“Let the idea stay down, Seth. She talks in the article about not knowing her mother because she was raised by nannies, and I think that’s your key. She does not want this kid raised by a nanny. So you have to learn how to change a diaper, take your turn getting up with Owen at night, feed him when he cries. And when you’re not doing those things, make dinner, keep the house clean and do laundry.”
Seth’s eyes widened. “I have a maid…”
“Give her a paid leave.” Pete turned to the kitchen door. “Your assignment for the next few weeks is to pretend you are just an average guy in an average town, who will raise his son in an average home so he can be an average boy.”
“Great,” Seth said sarcastically. “Should be a piece of cake.”
Chapter Three
Five minutes after Madelyn and Lucy returned to the kitchen, Seth’s house began to fill with people eager to see the new baby. Seth was glad when Ty suggested they leave the noise and confusion and hide in the garage, but he was surprised when his older brother took Sabrina from Madelyn’s arms and also asked Madelyn’s dad to join them. It wasn’t until Ty returned from a side trip to his SUV with Sabrina’s diaper bag and spread a clean blanket on an empty worktable that everything came into focus for Seth.
“Penney might be the Gentry family strategist,” Ty explained, referring to his future mother-in-law. “But Ron was a sergeant and he knows all about boot camp and basic training. So he’s going to teach you how to care for a baby.”
Ron laughed. His once brown crew cut had grayed but he still had the muscular arms and chest of someone in the military. In under a half hour, using Sabrina as a model, he taught Seth enough baby-care basics that he could change a diaper, feed a bottle and burp with the best of them.
But Ron didn’t stop there. “If your objective is to demonstrate to Lucy that you can give your son a normal life,” Ron said, sounding as if he was briefing troops fo
r a battle, not preparing a new dad for an encounter with the mother of his son, “then you have to prove that parenting is a natural fit for you. That means you’ve got to be involved with Owen’s care right from the get-go. So I suggest you take the baby from Lucy as soon as your company leaves. That will give Lucy a break and also prove you can slide into the role of dad as if you were born to it.”
Seth agreed, but even though Penney and Ron, and Ty and Madelyn and most of the morning guests left just after noon, a steady stream of visitors—women from one end of Porter to the other who came bearing gifts—never stopped. Seth didn’t get two minutes alone with Lucy or his son. Forget about generously caring for Owen to give Lucy a break. There were so many women ogling Seth’s baby that even Lucy didn’t get to hold Owen. That evening, a small crowd actually gathered to get the baby ready for bed. Seth was lucky he got to kiss his son good-night before they hustled him out of the room.
But Seth didn’t panic. If he wanted Owen to play in Little League, have friends, walk the streets of a town without fear or paparazzi, then he had to prove to Lucy that he could take very good, very normal care of their son. So he sneaked into the laundry room with his cell phone and called Ron.
“Here’s what you do,” Ron said after Seth explained why their original plan hadn’t worked. “Owen’s probably going to get up about ten times tonight. That doesn’t sound like good news except by then, all the company will be long gone and Lucy will be alone. So you’ll get your chance to prove yourself. You don’t want to look obvious by running into Lucy’s room the first time Owen cries, but I’ll bet she’ll be damn glad to see you at 2:00 a.m. Plus, taking your turn with the baby is a very gentlemanly thing to do. Not only will you give Lucy a break, but also you’ll show her that you intend to teach Owen to be a gentleman.”
Liking the two-birds-with-one-stone strategy, Seth stayed awake until Owen got up the first time, around midnight, to make sure he could hear the baby’s cries so he could take his turn. Confident Owen was loud enough to awaken him, Seth went to sleep. But in what seemed like only a matter of minutes, he felt the warmth of the sunlight streaming in between the slats of the lemon-yellow horizontal blinds on the windows of the spare bedroom he was using and he bounced out of bed.
It was morning! He’d slept through the night! He hadn’t heard Owen cry!
He scrubbed his hand down his face, then jumped into jeans and pulled on a T-shirt before he grabbed his cell phone to call Ron. He wasn’t a complete idiot, but with the exception of Sabrina, he’d never held a baby in his life. He’d also never dealt with a new mother. He could “guess” what his next move should be but he didn’t think he could afford the risk that he would say or do the wrong thing and alienate Lucy even before they’d spent twenty-four hours together. It was better to be safe than sorry.
When Ron answered, Seth simply said, “I never heard Owen cry.”
“Easy, there, big guy,” Ron said with a laugh. “Don’t panic. You still have plenty of opportunities to chip in and help out. Especially in the morning.”
“Yeah, right. The baby’s in Lucy’s bedroom. It’s one thing to go in in the middle of the night when the baby’s screaming and she’ll be glad to see me. It’s another to barge in in broad daylight.”
“That’s true, but you can turn the whole situation around if you bring her a cup of coffee. She’ll think you’re being a good host, but she can’t hold Owen and drink coffee, so you offer to take Owen and finish whatever she’s been doing, like feeding him or burping him or changing his diaper. And, voilà, you look like a natural at being a dad.”
Seth said, “Okay,” then disconnected the phone and scrambled down the hall. Unfortunately, even before he reached the middle of the back stairway that led to the kitchen, the scent of fresh coffee greeted him. Confused, he rushed down the remaining steps and found Lucy sitting at the table, holding Owen, as she flipped through the Sunday paper.
Perfectly perky, she glanced up and smiled at him. “I made coffee.”
“I see.”
She wore a pretty pink flannel robe with lighter pink pajamas beneath it. The color brought out the rosy hue of her complexion and complemented her shiny black hair, which, this morning, was sexily tousled as if she’d just gotten out of bed.
Seth’s mind jumped back to their time together and the thirty or so mornings he’d seen her hair just like that, and his blood began to percolate through his veins. His chest tightened. His breathing all but stopped. Though eight long months had passed since he had even seen Lucy, his body reacted as if it had missed the memo that their marriage was over and—more important—that Lucy didn’t want him anymore.
He ignored the surge of his hormones and the crackling of his nerves, and walked to the counter where he retrieved a mug. Pouring himself a cup of coffee, he said, “I had hoped to help with Owen last night, but I never heard him cry.” He turned from the counter and caught Lucy’s gaze. “I can’t believe he slept through the night.”
“He didn’t.” She smiled at Seth as if she knew some great secret, which unfortunately triggered about eight powerful memories of when she’d given him that same smile—all of them sexual—and more than Seth’s chest tightened this time.
Taking a sip of coffee, he tried to regroup, but he couldn’t seem to focus on anything but how absolutely gorgeous she was. Ron had insisted that the trick to convincing Lucy he would be a good dad was projecting an air of casual confidence, especially around the baby. But the one thing Pete, Ty and Ron hadn’t factored into all of their instructions was that in order to prove to Lucy that he could be a good dad, Seth had to be around Lucy. He hadn’t ever been around this woman for a full twenty-four hours without making love to her. Hell, they’d slept together the day they’d met.
How was it that everybody forgot that?
He winced into his coffee cup. Probably because he hadn’t actually admitted that to anyone.
Hoping to get his mind back to the project at hand, he glanced at Owen, but the sweet way Lucy held their son sent a god-awful tender feeling straight to Seth’s heart. Needing every ounce of his discipline to keep his hormones in line, he didn’t have any control left to manage his intense, almost incomprehensible gratitude to Lucy for bearing his son. The plan might be for him to show Lucy that he could provide a normal life for Owen, but with his body bubbling with need and his emotions zigzagging from appreciation to awe, it suddenly seemed wiser to leave the room. And maybe call Ron, or Ty, or Pete…or anybody who had a deep, masculine voice, who wasn’t wearing silky-looking pink pajamas.
“So, you won’t care if I go to the den and take a look at a proposal for a bridge?”
She dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “Of course not. We’re fine.” She peeked down at his son. “Right, Owen?”
The sleeping baby never moved a muscle, but even if Owen had begun spouting the Gettysburg Address, Seth couldn’t hang around. “Okay, then, I’ll be going.”
He strode out of the room and Lucy breathed a sigh of relief. Not only did Seth look cuter than she’d ever seen him in his T-shirt and jeans, but also it was nine-forty-five. Penney had arrived at five o’clock that morning to give Lucy the opportunity to grab a nap, but since Penney had gone two hours ago, the only way Lucy could quiet Owen was to rock him. She adored this sweet child. She loved cuddling and nuzzling him. But reality wasn’t merely creeping up on her; it had invited itself into her world and planned to stay. Her arm was asleep and she desperately needed a break.
Luckily, thanks to a schedule created by Penney Gentry, any minute now Mildred Jenkins would be arriving.
Right on time, a sixtysomething woman in capri jeans and a navy sweatshirt appeared at the back door.
“Hi, Mildred.”
Mildred stretched forward and kissed Lucy’s cheek. “How ya doing, sweetie?”
“I need a shower and my arm is numb.”
Mildred laughed. “For the first week or so, you’re more or less stuck holding the baby because he’s
too young to let him cry himself to sleep, so your arm’s gonna be numb a lot.” She glanced around. “Where’s Seth?”
“In the den.”
“Great,” Mildred said as she took Owen from Lucy’s arms, careful not to wake him. Then she sniffed the air. “Go shower.”
Lucy laughed. “Okay, Mildred, I get the hint.”
“Oh, sweetie, I’m not commenting on your smell. I’m trying to see if you have a certain cologne or something that you use consistently.”
“I have shampoo especially made.”
“That’s right! I keep forgetting you’re a princess.”
“That doesn’t win me any favors with Owen.”
Mildred laughed throatily. “I hear ya. But I know a trick to give new moms a break. I got it from my mom. Tomorrow, when Seth’s at work, we’ll wash some of Owen’s blankets with a drop of your shampoo. Just enough that he’ll faintly smell you in his crib. That might solve some of this problem.”
Lucy’s lips lifted into a smile. “That’ll work?”
Mildred laughed. “Sure. Nothing helped with my kids better than the remedies my grandma passed down to my mom. Now go. Owen and I will be fine while you’re gone.”
Lucy did as she was told. She showered, making sure she used enough of her shampoo that Owen would smell it on her, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Seth. Something about him that morning gave her the oddest feeling. She tried to convince herself it had been nothing but attraction, lust, something easy to dismiss, but the response had been too intense and profound to be plain old passion. She had had four wonderful weeks of exposure to passion. That particular sensation had been burned into her brain and she knew that this whirlwind singing through her veins was different.
Still, when she tried to figure out what she was feeling, she drew a complete blank.
She emerged from the bathroom and rummaged through the clothes she’d packed for the few days she had expected to be a quick visit to tell Seth he was about to be a dad. She longed to wear something pretty, but she didn’t have anything pretty. She only had maternity clothes. In a way, that was good. Her tummy was still swollen and she had to be realistic about the extra few pounds she had put on while pregnant. And, after seeing Seth that morning, looking so unbelievably perfect in his jeans and T-shirt, Lucy was glad she wasn’t up to par physically. With her attraction to Seth constantly surging to life, and the new unnamed sensation that had overwhelmed her that morning, it was a good thing to feel completely unattractive. This way, there was absolutely no possibility that she would forget herself and give in to the urge to flirt with him.
