I Married A Prince

After he left and she discovered she was pregnant, she’d made the necessary decisions and preparations, and kept herself busy. She told herself if she could just get through that one year, she could handle anything life threw at her. She hadn’t bargained on ever again having to face the man who had done his best to destroy her life.

“I just want to do something nice for you,” he said stiffly.

Something told her he’d practiced that line. Suspicious, she squinted up at him. “The nicest thing you can do for me, Jay, is stay out of my life.”

“Uh-uh.” He shook his head; the breeze off the ocean caught the one stray black curl over his forehead and played with it. His shadowed eyes fixed steadily on hers.

She was terrified that their closeness was exciting him. She contemplated screaming for help, then dismissed the idea. Something about the little-boy glint in his eyes made her slightly more curious than afraid.

“Walk with me on the beach,” he said. “I have something to tell you. I guarantee you’ll like it.”

She sighed and cast him a rueful glance. “Is this the only way to get rid of you?”

“Only way.” He grinned.

“I must be out of my mind,” she mumbled. “All right. Ten minutes walking on the beach, then I’m out of here. And so are you.”

“I’ll let you decide about that after I’ve had my say,” he said, stepping back to let her move away from the car. “Hey, wait up!”

She was already sprinting across the road, toward the beach. He had to take enormous strides to keep up with her energetic pace. She was used to speed-walking for exercising, while pushing Cray’s stroller ahead of her. And now she felt the urge to move, fast.

The beach hugged Long Island Sound and formed a cupshaped cove along the coast, sheltering tidal pools of periwinkles, miniature crabs and silvery fish smaller than her little finger, among clumps of shiny green and brown kelp. Soaring gulls and sea terns pecked among glassy-smooth pebbles, wave-polished fragments of colored glass and chunks of artfully deformed driftwood. At this time of year, all the sunbathers had left.

Allison breathed in the air, thick with brine. The cries of the sea birds nearly drowned out the steady slosh and scrape of the waves on the stony beach. As always, the ocean had a calming effect on her, taking her temper down a notch and returning a portion of her sanity. I don’t have to let this jerk rattle me, she told herself. I can simply tell him the time we spent together was fun but I’m not interested in taking up where we left off.

Why give him the satisfaction of discovering how much he’d meant to her?

She could even be a little creative, claim she had a boyfriend. Or tell him she was married and had a baby...No, she couldn’t do that! She wouldn’t dare give him enough information to let him guess the truth.

Allison stopped halfway between the sidewalk and the ocean, her body trembling at the thought of how close she’d come to making a horrible mistake. It was dangerous to tell him anything of what had happened after he’d left. She stared down at the damp grains of sand, then braced her fists on her hips and looked out across the water, hoping he’d say what he’d come to say quickly. Two sailboats played among the white caps offshore. The marina, in the next cove, was full of pleasure boats, large and small. In another month, nearly all would have been pulled out for winter storage. Anchored a little apart from the other craft was a long, low white ship that must have been three times the size of the largest yacht in the marina. It floated majestically, barely moving on the water, as if unconcerned with waves or wind.

“Oh, my,” she let out, unintentionally.

He stopped behind her. “She’s something, isn’t she?”

Allison nodded. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that big in Nanticoke Cove.”

“She’s called the Queen Elise. She can cross the Atlantic a whole day faster than the QE2.”

Allison let her glance drift downward from the immense yacht to stare at the wavelets rippling closest to her feet. “You’re full of it, Jay.”

He laughed out loud this time. “What?”

“You heard me. You have no idea what the name of that ship is. You’re just experimenting with another pickup line.”

“I’m not, Alli. Honest.”

“Baloney!” She couldn’t help sounding spiteful now, couldn’t pretend to be callous and modern about relationships. “Two years ago, you told me you were a graduate student on summer break. You claimed you were studying for your master’s degree in political science at Yale.” New Haven was less than an hour’s drive to the east, along the coast of Connecticut, so his story had seemed reasonable to her.

“I was.”

“Don’t lie, Jay!” she shouted, spinning around to face him. Her rage nearly made it impossible for her to form words. “You never were a student at Yale,” she choked out. “I know because I checked.”

He stared mutely at her.

She was close to tears now, as she remembered how desperate she had been to contact him. Even if he hadn’t wanted to come back to her, she’d wanted to tell him about the baby. She’d been so confused, so frightened and alone. But he hadn’t been there for her. In the end, all she’d wanted was to let him hear her decision—that she intended to keep their child. Maybe he had somehow guessed he’d impregnated her, and that was why he’d left. But on the more likely chance that he hadn’t known, her strong sense of fairness demanded she tell him that he was going to be a father. Then he could make his own decision about taking on the responsibility or not.

“Shut up!” Allison said when he started to open his mouth. “I’ll save you the trouble of asking. I called the college registrar’s office and argued with three different clerks, insisting there must be a Jay Thomas in the student body. But they said no one under that name was registered.”

He looked more amazed than angry. “You did that? You actually tried to track me down?”

She glared at him.

“Ouch,” he said, and looked out at the water.

“You deceived me, Jay. You used me. All you wanted was a summer fling. And I was too naive to guess that what we were doing could be that ordinary and simple.”

“I’m sorry,” he said tightly. “That’s one reason I came back...to apologize for the way I treated you. I want to make it up to you. Come out with me for dinner.”

She threw up her hands, veered away from him, and started marching down the beach. She was so angry she could have strangled him. Or better yet, put a blunt instrument to good use.

“Incredible,” she muttered to herself. The man steals your heart, relieves you of your virginity, and ditches you after getting you pregnant...then he wants to buy you a meal and make nice. She knew she couldn’t have said another word to him, she was so furious. The words would have vaporized like steam from her lips.

“Alli!” he shouted after her. “Listen to me!”

She ignored him, kept on walking, the sand sifting into her shoes, between her toes, making each step feel gritty and slow-motion awkward.

A hand roughly gripped her arm, taking her by surprise. She hadn’t heard him chasing her. She recovered and faced him, her shoulders ratcheted back, her eyes brittle with emotion, seething with hatred. But her chin trembled, giving her away. She blinked back hot tears.

“Listen...” he hissed at her, and started to say something more. But he changed his mind and quickly bent down to press his lips over hers.

The heat and intensity of his kiss shocked her. It was the last thing she’d expected from a runaway boyfriend who’d lied his way into her heart, then disappeared without a trace. Why was he doing this to her?

Allison was trembling from head to foot when his lips finally brushed away from hers. His grip on her wrist loosened, but he closed his muscular arms around her in a warm embrace. She thought for a brief moment how strange his body felt, wrapped around hers, as if he was holding himself up as much as he was restraining her from running away again.

He kept her there, pinned tightly against his chest, as he began talking in his perfect English with the almost indistinguishable hint of an accent that had intrigued her from their first meeting. “Please just let me explain and try to do this right, for a change.” He didn’t wait for her response. “Yes, I lied. But not about being a grad student at Yale. I was enrolled there...under a different name.”

“Your name isn’t Jay?”

“My American friends sometimes called me that. Occasionally, it suited other situations. My name’s Jacob.”

“Jacob,” she repeated, feeling the need to test out the sounds. The name suited him, although why, she couldn’t have said. “Jacob Thomas?”

“No.” He hesitated, and she sensed a growing tension in his neck and arms, as if he was having second thoughts about continuing. “Do you read the gossip columns in grocery store tabloids?” he asked.

She blinked up at him, wondering what one thing had to do with the other. “No, why do you—”

“What about newspapers?”

“The front page and local news, occasionally. I don’t have a lot of reading time with—” She stopped herself from adding, with a full-time job and an infant to raise.

He sighed and adjusted his hold on her, and she began to wonder if he actually feared she’d take a swing at him if he released her. “Promise you’ll let me finish.”

She felt like screaming. “Just say what’s on your mind, Jacob, or whoever the hell you are, and let me get on with my life!”

He took a deep breath that she could feel through her ribs, pressed against his.

“My real name, my entire legal name as it appears on my birth certificate is—His Royal Highness, Jacob Phillipe Mark von Austerand, Crown Prince of Elbia. That yacht out there is mine, and I want you to have dinner with me on it, tonight.”

Allison closed her eyes, feeling numb from head to toe. She said nothing, didn’t move an inch. After a minute Jacob dropped his arms and stepped back to observe her expression. She focused on the strong angles of his face, which seemed perfectly composed and serious. Pursing her lips, she folded her arms over her chest and smiled sweetly up at him.

He tentatively lifted one corner of his lips in response.

“And I am Queen Elizabeth,” she stated calmly. “Get a life, Jay.”

Before he could reply, she was jogging up over a sand dune, toward the road. The last she saw of him, he was staring after her, a stunned expression on his handsome face.

Two

Crown prince, indeed. “A college grad like you ought to be able to come up with a better line than that!” Allison huffed as she threw herself into her car and drove toward Diane’s house.

Maybe she’d hang around for an hour or two, help her sister with the day-care kids. She had been exhausted when she left the library, but her fury had energized her. If Cray was feeling better, she could give Diane a hand with the chores. Besides, delaying her return to the beach house might be wise. If Jay was feeling particularly pigheaded, he might try to intercept her again at her home. She didn’t think Jay...Jacob...whoever, would remember where her sister lived.

Allison pulled up in front of the tidy driftwood gray Cape Cod three blocks back of the water and halfway across town. She didn’t lock the car, but on second thought took the keys with her. Nanticoke was a small, peaceful town, but she didn’t believe in tempting fate or some teenager looking for a joyride. Just last week, two fifteen-year-olds too lazy to walk to school had “borrowed” her neighbor’s car. The police had found it parked in the high school parking lot. Dumb kids.

She let herself in through the kitchen door without knocking, plucked an apple from the red plastic bowl on the table and bounced down the cellar stairs to the finished rec room where Diane spent most of her days with her charges.

The children were clustered around her, sitting on a mat on the floor, while Diane read to them from a picture book with a comical bear on the cover. Allison crossed her ankles and lowered herself to the floor, munching on her apple, feeling her pulse slow to a calmer pace. Cray spotted her and pushed himself up from the floor. He toddled over, grinning and chattering unintelligibly, and trustingly dropped into her lap.

Allison wrapped her arms around her little boy and hugged him, rocking back and forth. “You make everything all right, you know that?” she whispered into the feathery tufts of dark hair above his ear.

He gurgled contentedly as she swept stray bangs off his forehead. His skin felt cool and the feverish glaze over his eyes was gone. She was relieved to see him looking better.

After the story was over, Diane deposited each child in a high chair. Allison helped her pour juice and pass out pretzels for a final snack of the day. She felt herself gear down another notch and chuckled softly. Times like this, she thought, a girl really has to keep her sense of humor.

“What’s so funny?” Diane asked.

“Hard to explain,” Allison replied, shaking her head. “You wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

“Try me.”

She drew a long breath. “I saw Cray’s father.”

Diane dropped the bag of pretzels. Crumbs scattered across the playroom floor. “Jay?” Her cheeks flushed red and her eyes narrowed dangerously. “That creep. The nerve of him crawling back now. What does he want?”

“I’m not sure,” Allison said, thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t trust him under the best of conditions. But he told me a weird story about his being a prince and living on a yacht.” She laughed out loud. “Prince of Elbia! You’d think he could come up with something more believable, if he wanted to impress a girl.”

Diane stooped to pick up the plastic bag that had split down one side. “Elbia? Isn’t that the postage-stamp-size country near Austria that’s been in the news lately?”

Allison shrugged. “Who knows. I don’t have time to keep up with international politics these days. Every spare moment I’ve either been cataloging the new books or taking care of Cray. Last Sunday, I even took him with me while I worked overtime.”

“Wait here,” Diane said. “Pass out another round of goodies, if there’s enough.” She shoved the bag into Allison’s hands.

A minute later she was back downstairs with a broom in one hand, a full pitcher of juice in the other and the New York Times tucked under one arm. She set down the pitcher and broom, and spread the paper on the table. “I know I heard something about a meeting at the United Nations, an Eastern European coalition...something like that.” She frantically flipped pages while Allison looked over her shoulder, wondering if her sister had gone mad. “The president was going to meet with delegates. One was this young...” She stopped flipping and pointed triumphantly at a photograph in the middle of the right-hand page. “There. Crown Prince Jacob von Austerand. Gee, I would never have connected him with some grad student from Connecticut but...” She wrinkled her nose, considering. “Alli, he does look a lot like Jay...with a couple of years under his belt.”

Allison snatched up the newspaper section. She stared at the black-and-white UPI photo of three men in expensive business suits. The tall wide-shouldered one shaking hands with the President of the United States was Jay, no doubt about it.

Her eyes dropped quickly to the caption, and she read it out loud. “Prince Jacob von Austerand of Elbia congratulates the president after his speech before the Eastern Unity Conference on Tuesday.”

“The creep,” Diane muttered, picking up the broom to sweep violently at the tile floor. “Egotistical playboy. People with money make me sick. They think they can do anything they want...doesn’t matter who gets hurt.”

Allison frowned at her sister, trying to put together the pieces of a puzzle, for which she seemed to have only half the pieces. Now that she focused on the scraps of news she’d heard over the radio or glimpsed on TV, she remembered hearing things about a playboy prince. He’d been linked romantically with Hollywood actresses, wealthy socialites, even one female rock singer. Was that Jay...Jacob? If so, how had she fit in with all those glamorous women?

“I—I can’t believe he’s who he says he is,” she stammered, her voice rising in panic. “Diane? How could I not have known? The man’s a public figure...a celebrity!”

Diane stopped sweeping and patted her arm. “Why would you know? Even if someone recognized him, he could easily pretend he just looked like the prince. Apparently, he likes playing games with women. He has a pretty wild reputation, you know.”

“I know...of course, I know. He’s right up there with the Kennedys and the British royals.” Allison suddenly felt deflated, hollow inside. She shook her head. “So I was just another amusing affair for him....”

“Apparently,” Diane said, using a wet cloth to wipe crumbs from a toddler’s chubby cheeks. “Hey, consider yourself lucky. Now that you know the truth, it should be that much easier to put the jerk out of your mind.”

“He was out of my mind, until he showed up at the library today.”

“Was he? Out of your mind, that is.” Diane cast her a skeptical look. “It’s not like you’ve been dating anyone else in the two-plus years since he disappeared.”

“That’s not because I’m hung up on him,” Allison insisted. “I just have to be more careful who I see, now that Cray’s around.”

“Right.” Diane rolled her eyes. “So, are you going to see him? Jacob?”

“Are you crazy? Of course, I’m not going to see him. There’s nothing that could make me set foot on that yacht or anywhere else he happens to be.”

The doorbell rang at precisely 7:00 p.m. that evening. When Allison answered it, a man in a brown deliveryservice uniform was standing on her front step, holding a large box in front of his face.

“Yes?” she asked, certain there had been a mistake. She hadn’t ordered anything by mail recently.

“Miss Allison Collins?”

She frowned, for the first few seconds unable to place the voice. “Jacob?”

He lowered the box and rested his chin on it, to gaze at her with a wicked smile.

“What are you doing here?”

“Delivering a package,” he said simply. “It’s pretty heavy. I’d better bring it inside for you.”

He pushed past her into the living room, stopping to look around when he reached the middle of the room. “Cozy. I remember your colonial decor—not bad reproductions.”

Allison trailed after him, sputtering her exasperation. “Get out of here this minute! Take whatever’s in that box with you.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t want me to do that,” he responded and set the package down on her mother’s rock maple coffee table. “You wouldn’t have anything to wear to the party tomorrow night, if I took it away.”

She planted her feet at shoulders’ width, folded her arms across her chest, and glared at him. “What party?”

“The one I’m throwing on the Queen Elise tomorrow night. You’re invited.” He removed the stiff-brimmed uniform cap and combed his fingers through thick black waves. “Aren’t you going to open it?” He nudged his chin toward the box.

Allison lost her last strand of self-control. “No!” she shouted, rushing at him. “I want you out of my house...out of my life...out, out, out...now!”

He fell back a step, observing her as if she were a rare animal, recently captured but not yet identified...and certainly not tamed.

“Out!” she screamed.

A piercing wail rose above her voice.

Oh, no, she thought. Not now, Cray. Why hadn’t she been more careful to keep her voice down?

Jacob turned toward the hallway, his eyebrows arched, questioning. “What’s that?”

Allison thought of a half dozen lies on the spot. It’s my sister’s child; I’m baby-sitting. That’s the neighbor’s baby. The TV is on in the bedroom. None of them worked.

“That’s my son,” she said finally. “Now, if you’ll leave, I’ll go and take care of him.”

Jacob scowled. “Why didn’t you tell me you were married?”

“I’m not.”

“I see.” He took a step back. Somewhere among the planes of his face, a hardness grew and solidified. “I should have known a pretty woman like you wouldn’t be alone for long.” His eyes wandered toward the hallway. “That doesn’t sound like an infant’s cry.”

“Cray is fifteen months old, if you must know,” she said without thinking. Immediately, she wished she hadn’t. The man wasn’t stupid.

“Fifteen months?”

She followed the tiny motions of his eyes, which grew faster by the second.

“I’d like you to leave now,” she said stiffly, desperate to get him out of the house, away from her son. She was having trouble breathing. “I have to get Cray settled down for the night. He hasn’t been feeling well.”

“Who is the father?” Jacob asked, his voice taut with emotion.

Allison leveled her sternest look at him. “That is none of your business. Go. Leave!”

The levels of emotion that crossed Jacob’s face were more frightening than any words he might have spoken. Instead of turning toward the door, he lurched forward, stopping inches from where she stood. His hands shot forward, vised her shoulders. He glared down at her, his eyes hot, bright chips of obsidian—blacker than black.

“I’ll leave after you tell me the name of the father.”

“Maybe I just don’t know.” She couldn’t help baiting him. He deserved it, didn’t he?

“I’m supposed to believe that around the time we were together, you were sleeping with a handful of other men, too?”

“Why not?” she challenged him. “I could have been.”

His hands tightened painfully on her shoulders. “You’re not that kind of woman.”

Cray was still crying from the back room, but no longer urgently.

“How would you know?” she said, her eyes falling away from his, despite her determination to give as good as she got. “You didn’t hang around long enough to get to know me.”

“I knew you well enough, Alli.” Jacob bent over her, capturing her eyes once more with his. “I knew you inside and out—every inch of your body, every corner of your sweet, generous soul.”

In one quick move, he released her shoulders but enclosed her in his arms. She could feel the heat of his body through their clothing. His lean, hard strength met her soft curves. He pressed her to him, and she could feel that he was aroused. Knowing that embarrassed her.

But not enough to make her struggle to be released. Some secret need or inner force kept her from fighting him. It had been so long, so very long since a man had held her. There had been a few dinners or group movie dates, arranged by Diane or one of her girlfriends. But she hadn’t encouraged a second meeting or allowed herself to be alone with a man. Now she realized how much she’d missed the intoxicating sensations that were rushing through her body.

Cray’s cries had turned to sleepy whimpers. She wished he’d let out a long, hearty scream to give her an excuse for breaking out of Jacob’s arms. She wished she had more willpower than she seemed to have at the moment. She wished...wished that Jacob would stop doing whatever it was he was doing.

His thumb stroked the side of her breast through her cotton sweater. Fiery tongues licked through her, making her knees feel weak. “Don’t do that,” she whispered.

“Tell me the name of the baby’s father?” Jacob said, his voice rumbling in his chest, vibrating against hers.

“I—I can’t.”

“You can’t. That’s different from you don’t know.”

Allison felt incapable of accomplishing anything more demanding than continuing to breathe in and out. And she wasn’t too sure she could keep that up for much longer. She was powerless to mold her thoughts into words.

“I can’t, Jay...Jacob...don’t make me...”

“Make you what?” His lips were less than an inch from hers. She could taste the spicy tang of his breath passing between them, smell subtle traces of male perspiration, feel a tension within his body that seemed to radiate through his skin and slip beneath hers.

She closed her eyes, steeling herself with a moment of darkness and silence, shutting herself off from him visually, although she felt him all around her.