Infatuated Prince

by Tiffany Squires

  I shake my head. ‘No, Drake. It’s not like that at all. Last night was closure.’

  He barks out a conceited laugh. ‘Closure? It didn’t feel like closure to me.’ He jabs his finger into his chest. ‘I fell in love with you all over again, Ness. And now this? You lied to me. All the time you’ve lied to me?’

  ‘Love?’ I shoot to my feet and shove his shoulders. He steps backward, stunned by my sudden burst of anger. ‘You don’t know how to love. You’re no more mature than Tira. You couldn’t parent a child if your life depended on it.’

  He drops his eyes to the framed photo in his hand. ‘You don’t know that, Ness. If you’d have told me, I would have changed. You could have at least tried to tell me.’

  ‘I did,’ my blood suddenly cools and I wrap my arms around myself for warmth. ‘I asked you to meet me, in the gym. I told you it was important.’ More tears flow free as I speak of the humiliating memory. ‘You sent your brother. You asked him to pretend to be you so you could finish your fucking computer game.’

  I watch as he realises what night I’m referring to. The colour drains from his face and he once again casts his eyes over the picture of his baby girl. Our baby girl.

  ‘Do you have any idea how that made me feel, Drake? We were lovers. I thought I knew you more than anybody else. And I thought you loved me. You honestly thought I was that stupid? That I wouldn’t notice? I had to leave, Drake. That one small action confirmed everything I needed to know. That you were too young, and too stupid, to raise a family.’

  He places the photo back where it belongs and walks over. He’s about to pull me into an embrace but I can’t let him. Sex was one thing. Real-life affection is something different.

  I back away. ‘Please, Drake. Just leave. I need time to think.’

  He stands strong, as though he’s going nowhere, but I turn my face away.

  ‘Fine,’ he says, taking heavy strides towards the front door. ‘I’ll leave. For now. But Ness, I want to see my daughter.’

  As soon as the door clicks closed I crumple into a heap on the floor and wail like an abandoned puppy. I’m a fool. A bloody fool. I should never have met him last night. I should have walked away and kept Drake Henley where he belongs. In my past.

  Chapter Six

  Drake

  I didn’t waste a single minute before getting legal advice. To say I was totally and utterly pissed off with Vanessa would be an understatement.

  A child.

  My child.

  Vanessa had gotten pregnant and ran away.

  And now I’m cross.

  It turns out that I have every right for access. Hell, if I wanted to claim full custody of the child that wouldn’t be a problem either. I’m tempted. Really tempted. Vanessa has stolen everything from me. The pregnancy. The birth. The girls’ first precious years. All the time I’ve devoted to my nephews, watching them grow and marvelling in every one of their milestones, could have been time devoted to my very own daughter.

  Daughter.

  Hell's bells. I have a daughter.

  A daughter called Tira Dean.

  It’s a pretty name and I wish I’d brought something away from Vanessa’s house with me. A photo. The canvas on the wall. Anything. Pacing the palace corridors now, in the dead of night, trying desperately to burn off some of my restlessness it still feels as though she still doesn’t exist. I need something to look at. Something to hold.

  I check the time and contemplate calling Vanessa. It’s late, and she’s probably in bed. I almost don’t call. But then again she’s never considered me. Not once has she stopped to think about what I want. So, if I want to call her in the middle of the night and request that she send over images of my child, then I fucking well can.

  I dial the mobile number she gave me yesterday and half expect it to be not recognised. My heart stutters when it rings. Then pounds like a jackhammer when her sweet voice answers. The moment I hear her voice, I mellow.

  ‘Vanessa,’ I say pointedly. ‘It’s Drake. Did I wake you?’

  She takes a moment to answer and I wonder if she’s alone. Or is my baby girl cuddled up in bed beside her.

  ‘No, Drake.’ She sighs. ‘Sleep isn’t coming easy tonight.’

  I nod in agreement. The silence between us rings loud in my ear.

  ‘How are you?’ I ask.

  ‘How do you think I am Drake?’

  I contemplate her question. Since walking out of her house, I’ve been so preoccupied with my rage that I haven’t given her and her feelings a second thought. It suddenly hits me that she’s right. I am immature. A juvenile. Not yet mature enough to take care of a child. Let alone possess the love of a woman as amazing as Vanessa.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ness.’ I say.

  She doesn’t answer, but neither does she hang up.

  ‘How’s Tira?’

  ‘She’s good.’

  I nod. ‘Is she though?’ I ask. ‘Good. I mean. Is she a good little girl?’

  Vanessa giggles and my mind's eye conjures up a delectable picture her snuggled in bed. ‘Tira? Good? She’s a bloody monkey.’

  My lips turn upwards in a tight smile. ‘With you as a mother I’d have put money on that.’

  ‘Me? What about you? Having you as a dad, she never had a chance of winning any angelic child awards.’

  Vanessa’s words hang in the air like delicate little stars. They dance around my head and trickle across my nerve endings, making my entire body shiver. I’m a dad. A mother fucking dad!

  ‘Can I see her, Ness?’

  ‘I don’t know, Drake…’

  Panic seizes me. I know I can force her, but I don’t want to make this difficult. For anybody. Especially the mother of my child and the woman who doesn’t know it yet, but also holds the key to my heart.

  ‘Please, Ness. It can be on your terms. She doesn’t even need to know who I am. Not to begin with anyway. Not if you think it’ll be too much. I could just be your work friend. Please.’

  She exhales, and the moment she takes to answer feels like an eternity.

  ‘Fine.’ she says.

  It takes a second to register in my thick skull, but when I realise that she said yes I whoop with glee. She said yes. No fight. No drama. No excuses. Just yes.

  Then all at once, I feel sick. Oh, my God. I’m about to meet my daughter. If she’s half as beautiful as the photos I have seen and half as lively as her mother, I’m in for a real treat.

  I just hope I can be the man they need me to be.

  Vanessa

  Thank goodness it’s summer so the evenings are still warm. Drake had suggested that I take Tira to the palace so they could play together in the gardens. I couldn’t agree with that. It would be too much for Tira to get her head around. In her mind, Palaces equal Disney.

  We agreed to meet in the park near my home at seven pm. All the other mothers would be tucking their little ones in bed at that time, and the local teenagers wouldn’t yet be loitering on the park benches. Chances are it would just be Me, Tira, And Drake. The thought of being out together as a threesome curdled the contents of my stomach all day long.

  But now, sitting on the grass verge, watching Drake play with Tira on the zip wire, I’m kicking myself a hundred times over. The man is amazing with kids.

  It crosses my mind that the reason he plays so well is that he’s not much more advanced on the maturity scale himself. Then I kicked myself even harder for thinking such cruel thoughts. Drake could have thrown every dummy out of his pram and demanded access, or even worse custody, over what I did but he has bowed to my every suggestion and acted like a true gentleman.

  I watch as he scoops Tira clean from the floor and places her tiny body on his broad shoulders. He bounds in my direction with Tira shrieking gleefully. I sit bolt upright and adjust my clothes.

  ‘Tira says that she would like ice-cream,’ he says, lifting her from his shoulders. He cradles her in his arms and then sits on the floor with her on his knee.

 
The pair of them make a beautiful sight, so much so that I snap a quick picture on my phone before ruining her day.

  ‘We spoke about this, baby,’ I say to my pouting daughter. I returning her scowl with a bigger pout of my own to remind her who’s boss. ‘Not before bedtime.’

  ‘Ah come on, sourpuss.’ Drake pokes my thigh. ‘Just this once. It is a special occasion.’

  I fire him a look that says ‘do not undermine me’ and he backs down apologetically.

  ‘OK, kiddo. Mummy says no this time. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get one next time.’ He realises what he’s said and blinks at me with hope in his eyes. ‘That is, if there is a next time.’

  I feel like an ogre. I look at him with my daughter nestled lovingly in his crossed legs. Then look at my daughter. The girl who has lived a fatherless existence because I let my ego take over and ran away with her.

  ‘Of course there’ll be another time,’ I say. Before I know what’s happened, Drake is by my side hugging the pair of us tighter than I’ve ever been held before in my life.

  ‘Thank you,’ he whispers into my ear. He kisses the top of my head and sparks flicker where his lips make contact. They bounce all the way down my spine and make my core clench violently. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’

  I stroke Tira’s blond hair and fondle with one of her curly tendrils. ‘It’s the absolute least I can do.’

  ‘Can I go on the slide now, Mummy?’ Tira asks and I nod. Drake and I could do with a minute by ourselves to talk anyway.

  Drake watches her charge away with awe written all over his face. ‘She’s amazing.’

  I shrug keeping my eyes on her as she clumsily clambers up the ladder. ‘Yeah, she’s definitely that.’

  ‘You’re pretty amazing yourself.’

  I slide my eyes across to Drake whose face is as serious as serious can be.

  ‘Ness. It’s not just Tira I want to see again.’

  My heart plops into the pit of my stomach. This was what I feared happening. I thought I’d be able to control myself in front of Tira. Maintain a respectable distance from Drake, but I can’t. Every single muscle in my body is twitching to mount him. Every single cell in my body is burning. And every crevice is aching for him to fill me once more.

  He leans closer and I know what’s coming. I should fight it. Stop it from happening. What if Tira sees? What if she witnesses me kissing this handsome man and jumps to the conclusion that she will finally be like every other little girl the childminder takes care of and have a real-life daddy?

  When his lips graze against mine it’s as though they plant the truth inside of me. If Tira jumps to that conclusion, she’ll be one hundred percent correct. She’ll finally have her daddy. A man she can look up to. I mean, so far Drake has done nothing but prove to me how he’s matured.

  I allow my mouth to fall open with the gentle tease of his tongue. He raises his hands and cups my face. His fingers find my ponytail and wrap themselves around the lengths while the fingers of his other hand fiddle with my earlobes, sending my arousal into overdrive. Every touch. Every caress. Every lap of his tongue against mine shows how very wrong I was to leave him.

  He’s my home. He’s Tira’s home. He’s where we need to be.

  ‘You bitch!’

  The shrill voice slices through the air and pierces Drake and me apart.

  ‘You fucking bitch. You’ve muscled in on my man. How the fuck dare you.’

  I crane my neck to see who’s towering over us but am blinded by the low hanging sun.

  ‘Opal!’ Drake gasps. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  And suddenly, just like that, everything slots into place.

  Chapter Seven

  Drake

  Vanessa’s eyes dart between me and Opal. For a moment, I think she’s about to put Opal in her place, but then she fixes her frigid stare onto me.

  ‘You fucking bastard,’ she hisses and scrambles to her feet.

  ‘No, no, no, no, no.’ I argue, rushing to stand myself. ‘It’s not what you think. At all.’

  Opal thrusts her arms across her artificially inflated chest. ‘I think you’ll find, Casanova. She already knows all about us.’

  I’m so confused my head hurts. ‘I don’t understand Opal. There isn’t an us.’

  Vanessa scoffs. ‘Come off it, Drake. You came to Longford House to visit your fiancé—’

  ‘Fiancé?’ I glare at Opal, her smug lips are pursed and her eyebrow is arched so high her botoxed forehead almost creases. ‘Tell her, Opal. Tell her we were just having fun. It was nothing serious.’

  Vanessa clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. ‘Give up, Drake.’

  She turns to walk away but I can’t let her. Not again. I reach out and grab her by the arm. ‘Ness, honey. I don’t know what she’s told you but she’s delusional. You’re correct. I came to Longford House to find her. But only to make sure she wasn’t getting carried away, that she understood what we were all about.’ I plead as hard as I can. I bust a gut to emit truthfulness into every syllable. I pray that my candidness is cutting through the anger visibly throbbing in every one of Vanessa’s pulse points.

  ‘Then I saw you,’ I continue. ‘I couldn’t believe it. It was you. And now we’re here. Together again.’

  Opal laughs, clapping her hands together slowly, one count at a time. ‘Well done Drake. You traded me in for a short-assed, piss-poor personal trainer.’ She’s eyeing Vanessa from head to toe as though she’s nothing more than dog muck on the bottom of one of her tacky shoes. ‘Doesn’t she come hand-in-hand with a snotty-nosed sprog as well?’

  My ears are bleeding with the vitriol that falls from Opal’s spoilt face about Vanessa. But before I can open my mouth to defend my woman, she defends herself in the most spectacular fashion.

  Before my eye can register what it’s seeing, Vanessa has thwacked Opal on the cheek with a right hook which would make Claressa Shields envious. Opal drops to the floor like a sack of potatoes and I laugh. I know I shouldn’t because violence against a woman is wrong. But still. My Vanessa has always been a force to be reckoned with and she’s just proven that she still fights for causes she deems worthy. Our relationship being the cause of the moment.

  ‘I don’t know what you think is so funny,’ she hisses. The menace in her voice halts my laugh mid- breath. ‘You haven’t changed in the slightest.’

  Shit. She’s backing away. She’s leaving. ‘Ness, listen. I don’t know what she told you—’

  ‘Opal’s full of shit, nobody ever listens to a word she has to say.’

  Good. That’s good. It means she believes me. ‘Great, then you’ll know that I’m nowhere near engaged to her. Or even in a proper relationship. We just—’

  ‘Fuck,’ Vanessa finishes my sentence. ‘You just fuck, all the time, and if you can’t see her in person you fuck over the computer.’ Vanessa runs her bruising hand through her hair. ‘I had to listen to it for an entire hour, Drake. Every detail about her mystery man. About how he can’t get enough of her. About how he pleasures her all the time. About how she and he are going to make beautiful babies when they get married.’

  I step forward with my palms open. ‘Honestly Ness, she means nothing to me. Nothing. You are my everything. You and Tira.’

  Vanessa looks to where Opal’s still rolling around on the floor, moaning and groaning in agony. Then she shakes her head and looks up at me. Tears pool in her eyes and her skin is mottling with suppressed heartache.

  ‘I don’t care anymore. I really, really don’t.’ She sniffs back her upset and calls out for Tira. ‘I thought the other night was closure. But I was wrong. This is closure.’

  Tira charges over and wraps her dinky arms around her mother’s leg. ‘Yes, Mummy?’

  Ness swallows down her disappointment and flashes her daughter a magnificent smile. ‘Mummy’s changed her mind.’ She hoists Tira off the ground and positions her perfectly on her hip. ‘If you want an ice cream, we’ll hav
e ice cream.’

  Tira throws her chubby arms in the air and cheers. ‘Yey, is your friend coming too?’

  Ness’s smile doesn’t fade, nor does she remove her eyes from the identical ones belonging to her child. ‘No, darling. My friend can’t come. He has other things to do.’

  ‘Ness, please.’ I beg.

  She doesn’t look at me though. Instead, she shifts Tira onto her other hip, scoops to pick up her bag, and walks away.

  ‘Say goodbye, Tira.’ Vanessa says and Tira dutifully waves me a cheerful goodbye as they round the corner into oblivion.

  Vanessa

  Remaining strong for the sake of my daughter has become second nature to me. I’ve been her rock since the day she was born. It’s been her and me. Together. Forever. Since the day she was born. Our fleeting dalliance with Drake won’t change that.

  For days following her brief meeting with Drake, Tira went on and on and on about it. I smiled lovingly at her enthusiasm. I nodded in agreement at how amazing he was. I fudged answers to questions about when we’re likely to see him again. It was almost as though, in her amazing little brain, she knew how important Drake Henley is to her.

  Then, just as she stopped talking about him all around the clock, the letter came.

  A handwritten letter from Drake asking for access to Tira.

  I wasn’t surprised to receive it, but I was surprised it had taken as long as it had.

  In the letter, he promised to leave me alone. He stated that unless I wanted him to be involved in my life in any capacity other than ‘just’ Tira’s father he will be here. But in the interim, he wanted to develop a relationship with his daughter. He clarified that he knew it was a big change for everybody and that he wouldn’t rush me or take legal action. He explained that as far as he was concerned it was a matter of the heart and did not belong in a courthouse. He said he would behave like “the man he should always have been”.

  And I believed him.

  We came to a mutual agreement that he could see Tira every other weekend. Only for an hour initially. Then in time as the bond between them grew, we’d lengthen the duration of the visits.