Prince Baby (Silhouette Romance) Page 12

  In asking Seth to become part of her world, she wasn’t simply asking him to step into a society totally different from any he’d ever encountered, she was also taking him out of a community that desperately needed him.

  Preoccupied with her thoughts, Lucy entered the grocery store and didn’t see Mildred until she almost bumped into her.

  “Well, hello, there Mr. Bryant,” Mildred said, pulling Owen out of the stroller to cuddle him before she reached out and hugged Lucy. “What are my two favorite people doing at the grocery store today?”

  “We’re going crazy sitting at home.”

  Mildred laughed. “I wondered how much longer you would be able to stand being stuck in the house!”

  Lucy grinned. “I never realized a baby could keep a person so busy you couldn’t get out.”

  “And you’re still feeling good?”

  “I have never felt better in my life, Mildred.”

  “That’s my girl.” She turned toward the soap aisle and hooked her free arm through Lucy’s. “What are we shopping for today?”

  “Fresh fruit. Vegetables. Nothing fancy.”

  “Not thinking of making a special dinner for Seth?”

  “No.”

  One of Mildred’s cosmetically arched brows rose. “Really? From what I heard from Penney yesterday, the two of you had a little discussion about the possibility that you and Seth might still be married.”

  Lucy gasped, grabbed Mildred’s forearm and glanced around to be sure no one was within hearing distance. “Don’t say that!”

  “So it’s true.”

  “Yes and no. The annulment order is still in place, but we can have it set aside.” She winced. “Actually, we have to officially have it set aside because it’s not valid. The barrister I spoke to yesterday has already started the process.”

  Mildred gave Lucy a confused look. “You want to put that in English?”

  “Once you sort through all the paper and come to the end of all the legal proceedings, we’re still married. But Seth doesn’t want to be, so we’re going to have to get a divorce.”

  “All right. This is just insane,” Mildred said, pulling Lucy a little closer to assure that no one overheard them. “Lucy, honey, you love Seth. He—at the very least—likes you. And you have a child. Finding out you are married should be a good thing.”

  Lucy smiled sadly. “I thought it was. But Seth reacted differently than what I expected. He talked about not fitting into my world, and how being involved with me didn’t work, and walking to the store today I saw his point.”

  Mildred gaped at her. “You are insane. You listen here, Mrs. Bryant,” she said, obviously deliberately using the name to bring home her point. “You go home and spend time with you husband and son and then seduce that man. Let everything else work itself out!”

  “But…”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “It’s just that…”

  “Lucy, do you love him?”

  Backed against a grocery shelf, with the woman she was coming to consider the closest thing to a mother she’d ever had demanding an answer, Lucy had to admit the truth. “Yes.”

  “Then get home and do what I told you.”

  “I can’t just seduce him!”

  Mildred sighed. “What? You want a setup? I’ll give you a setup. Tonight is the night of Porter’s annual Halloween Costume Party. Take him to the party, have a few drinks and voilà, nature will take care of itself.”

  When Lucy didn’t reply, Mildred enticingly offered, “I’ll babysit.”

  Lucy took a quick breath. “Okay, I’ll do it!”

  Chapter Nine

  Seth worried all day about the evening alone with Lucy. His power to resist her was clearly slim to none. Yet they were living together. When he opened the door to his home that evening and didn’t smell dinner cooking, he knew she was angry with him but decided that was good. He might have to go to the diner for takeout, but at least he didn’t have to worry about saying—or doing—something that would complicate a relationship that was already too complicated.

  “Lucy,” he called, yanking on his tie to loosen it.

  As if by magic, she appeared at the top of the stairs. “Hurry up, Seth. You’re going to be late.”

  Dressed in a red creation of some sort, Lucy was a vision. The abundant skirt of the dress puffed out from the waist and flowed to below her ankles. She always looked amazing in red, but in this particular dress she could stop traffic. He stood transfixed at the bottom of the steps, then he saw the tiara on her head and his heart stopped. She looked as if she were dressed to be going to a formal royal event; all he could think was that her dad was here.

  He cautiously asked, “What are you dressed for?”

  “There’s a costume ball at the fire hall tonight!”

  Filled with relief, but still a bit confused, he stared at her.

  “I’m going as a princess.”

  That made him laugh. “Are you kidding me?”

  She smiled and started down the steps and Seth’s heart began to drum. Not only was she about to be within reach of his itching hands, but also the princess comment had sunk in. She might think it funny to dress up as something she really was, but what she’d done was bring home the reality of their situation. She was a princess. He lived in a town small enough that the fire department sponsored the only event that could even remotely be considered a formal affair. For those people dressed as ghosts, various fruits and vegetables, and Fred Flintstone, it wasn’t even a formal affair. She couldn’t have more clearly demonstrated that she didn’t belong in his world if she’d drawn a picture or written an essay.

  But as she got closer, he couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she was. The minimal amount of makeup she wore enhanced her delicate features, making her brown eyes darkly mysterious. His gaze involuntarily slid to the enticing curve of her breasts as they peeked out of the juncture of the two sides of the halterlike top of her dress. She stopped in front of him and he smelled her cologne.

  “I know I can’t talk you into a costume, so throw on jeans and a sweatshirt.”

  “I can watch Owen in these,” he said, pointing down at the dress shirt and trousers he had worn to work that day, but his words were slow, his mind sluggish. This close to her when she was so beautiful, so regal, he felt hypnotized.

  “Mildred’s watching Owen!” she said with a bubbly laugh.

  She floated past him on her cloud of filmy red material and, mesmerized, he turned, his eyes following her as she walked down the hall toward the kitchen.

  “Come on! Go get dressed or we’ll be late.”

  That was enough to bring him out of his trance. “We’ll be late?” he asked, then laughed. He’d worried about being home with her all night, then, when he saw her, his defenses had crumbled as if they were made of sand. Thank God she’d finally said something that flipped the switch that activated his brain.

  “Princess, it’s been fifteen years since I’ve gone to the costume ball at the fire hall. And you won’t be seeing me there this year, either.”

  She sashayed back to him, pressed her hands to his chest and smiled up at him. “Please.”

  Her cologne floated around him. The skirt of her dress enfolded him. Her smile called to everything male in him.

  But he couldn’t have her. He didn’t need to go over all the reasons again. So he focused on the fact that she wanted him to do something he hadn’t ever done as an adult. If he succumbed and went to the costume party, it wouldn’t be because he wanted to. It would be because she really did have some kind of power over him. And didn’t that make him a wimp? At the very least, didn’t that weaken his ability to negotiate with her?

  Yes. It was time to take a stand. To refuse to be at the mercy of his sex drive.

  “I’m not going.”

  She wiggled a little closer. Her voice became as soft as a feather. “Please?”

  His chest tightened. An overwhelming desire to give her the worl
d trembled through him.

  He fought it. “No.”

  “Please?”

  This time he was smart enough to step away. “No, Lucy. Do you think I’m some kind of simpleton that you can flirt with and I’ll fall at your feet?”

  “I don’t think you’re a simpleton and I don’t expect you to fall at my feet,” Lucy said and smiled prettily. “I think you’re my friend and I need an escort. Is it so much to ask you to do that for me?”

  Oh, dear God, she’d brought out the big guns. Logic and friendship. Still, it wasn’t wise for them to get too close, and no matter how she sliced it, she was still coercing him to do something he didn’t want to do. And he was done being coerced. Especially by her. Once again, it was time to take a stand.

  “No.” He started up the steps, away from her. His days of being a manipulated man, at the mercy of his libido, were over. “Call Mildred and tell her I’m watching Owen. You go and have a good time.”

  In the master bedroom, he grabbed Owen from his crib, checked his diaper and then hurried over to the guest room. He laid his son in the center of the bed and began to change into something more practical for caring for a baby.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt your mother,” he said and Owen smiled up at him from the sea of yellow flowers in the print of the bedspread. “But there are some things that a man doesn’t do and one of them is cave just because a woman flirts.” He shrugged out of his shirt and tossed it into the yellow bathroom.

  Owen cooed.

  “I’m glad you understand. And while we’re at it, I might as well tell you a few other things. Your mom and I seem like a good match on the surface, but we’re really not. She’s a princess, and though I’m not exactly a pauper,” he said, glancing around at the spare bedroom that had more amenities than most people’s master bedrooms, “I’m not a prince, either.”

  Owen said nothing, only watched Seth as he hopped around the room, getting out of his dress trousers and jumping into clean blue jeans.

  “You, on the other hand, are someday going to be a king. And though you probably think that’s great,” he added when Owen cooed loudly. “There are drawbacks. For one, I hear your granddad, the current king, is a real son of a…” Catching himself he quickly shifted gears. “Your granddad is a real bossy guy. I don’t take well to being bossed. In fact, that’s part of why I’m not going tonight.”

  He paused again because his last statement struck him as odd. No, it struck him as childish. He could see fighting his libido, not going to the fire hall because he needed to overcome the attraction that pulsed between him and Lucy. But to decide not to go because he didn’t want Lucy telling him what to do…well, that simply smacked of childishness.

  Fully dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans, he grabbed the baby and scrambled down the steps. He didn’t exactly want to talk to Lucy, but he did feel he should make it clear that he wasn’t being childish. He was protecting them from each other.

  He couldn’t decide if it was a good or a bad thing when he didn’t find Lucy after a quick search downstairs. Obviously she had gone to the fire hall without him—without too much of an argument, either, he realized, but then he told himself he was lucky. He really didn’t want to run into her again while she was dressed in that red thing. He could only imagine what the guys from Bryant Development’s leasing department would do when she walked into the fire hall wearing that dress. They might not hoot and holler, but they would stare. No, they would ogle! They would trip over their tongues trying to be the first to dance with her. And when they danced with her, their hands would roam…

  His lungs froze. He squeezed his eyes shut. He had to stop thinking about this because he couldn’t worry about anybody’s reaction to Lucy ever again. She was not his wife. Well, technically she was. But it didn’t matter. He shifted Owen to a more secure position on his shoulder. Owen mattered.

  He set his son in the baby seat that had been permanently installed in the kitchen and began to make himself a sandwich for supper. Before he had the bread on the table, a knock sounded on the back door. Mildred entered without being invited.

  “Hey, sweetie,” she said, removing her coat. “You, too, Owen,” she added through a cackle-filled laugh before she walked to the baby seat and unbuckled the strap securing Owen and pulled him out to hold him.

  “Put him back, Mildred. I’m not going tonight.”

  Mildred ignored his order about Owen. With the baby cuddled into her arm, she said, “Why not?”

  “Because it isn’t right for me and Lucy to be playing at being a couple.”

  Mildred glanced down at Owen. “It didn’t seem to bother you the last time around.”

  “That time around we were married.”

  “And you’re still married from what I hear.”

  “Yeah, but we shouldn’t be.”

  “And you’re being the big, strong tough guy here, proving that you don’t have to do what you don’t want to do?”

  “What I shouldn’t do, Mildred. There’s a big difference.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said, walking toward the swinging door that led to the hallway. “I’m going to watch some TV with Owen until it’s time for his bath.”

  Seth stared at the door as it closed behind her. Was there anyone who listened to him anymore?

  Actually, now that he thought about it, Lucy had listened. She told him to get dressed for the party. He said he didn’t want to go. And she didn’t argue. True, she had given flirting her best shot, but when it didn’t work, she didn’t pout. She left.

  He frowned. No, he left. She flirted with him. He rebuffed her. Then he walked up the stairs to Owen’s room where he grabbed his son and went to his own room. He didn’t know if Lucy had gone to the fire hall. He didn’t know if she was in her room crying.

  Damn! Why hadn’t he thought to make sure she’d left?

  With a sigh, he took his sandwich and headed for the master bedroom. Fully expecting to hear sobs when he reached the door, he was gratified when silence greeted him. He knocked twice, then called, “Lucy?”

  Nothing.

  He knocked again. “Lucy?”

  Nothing again.

  He cocked his head and opened the door a crack to check to be sure she really wasn’t in there. But the opening was too small for him to see very far into the room. So he decided to bite the bullet and go in. But when he stepped inside silence greeted him.

  And so did her cologne. It shimmied through him on a wave of white-hot desire that stopped him dead in his tracks.

  He had no clue what scent Princess Lucy wore, but whatever it was, it was powerful. Probably because it was expensive and made especially for her. Because she was a princess. She had more money than Seth would ever have. She had power. She was somebody and he was nobody.

  He sat on the bed, wondering if that was really what bothered him about their relationship and knew it wasn’t. In the real world, if Owen’s future wasn’t at stake, he would give Lucy a run for her money instead of running from her.

  He frowned. He wasn’t running from her…

  Sure he was. He could not control himself around her, so he ran out of the room, out of the house…hell, he’d gone the whole way to Idaho! She was probably at the fire hall laughing to herself about that right now.

  Damn! If he stayed with her, she drove him nuts. If he protected himself, it appeared as if he was running. There was just no way to win. But one thing was certain—she needed to understand that he wasn’t really running from her. Or if he was, he was running from the sex thing. Not because he was afraid of her, but because he had a job to do for Owen.

  He shoved the remainder of his sandwich into his mouth, left the bedroom and jogged down the stairs. “Mildred!” he yelled, rounding the stairway and heading down the hall to the family room. “I’m going out.”

  “Well, la-di-da,” she said, emerging from the family room with Owen on her arm. “That’s what I’m here for. To babysit while you go out.” She batted her hand in dismiss
al and headed back into the room again. “Have a good time.”

  “I’m not having a good time! I’m going to straighten out a few things with Lucy.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Mildred called from the family room as Seth headed for the front door.

  It didn’t matter what Mildred thought, he decided, walking down his sidewalk to the driveway. But it was such a beautiful end-of-October night that, rather than take his car, he walked past it to the street. The fire hall was a few blocks away. The fresh air would do him good.

  But the closer he got to the fire hall, the slower his steps became. First, though he didn’t think Lucy would end up married to another Porter, Arkansas, resident, he really didn’t have a right to barge in there and mess up her good time.

  Still, he had been stubborn. Actually, he’d been the one who was bossy. He’d always been bossy. Ty might be the mover and shaker. He might even be the planner. But when push came to shove, Seth gave a lot of the orders.

  And anybody who didn’t believe that could just ask his brother Cooper.

  Seth took a quick breath. Tonight was not the night to go there. He drew another breath. Tonight probably wasn’t the night to go into the fire hall, either. He’d spent the past eight months down in the dumps. Incredibly lonely. And now Lucy was here, and they were still married. But he couldn’t have her, so all kinds of emotions were bubbling up. He wished they would stay crammed down in the compartments he created for them, but they wouldn’t!

  Standing on the wide fire hall driveway, in front of the bay doors for the fire trucks, Seth stared at the building without really seeing it. There were no right moves in his life anymore. There were no easy decisions.

  In his peripheral vision, he noticed a movement and then heard Audrey say, “Hey, Seth! What are you doing standing out here?” She laughed. “You and Lucy have a fight?”

  Great. “No. I just wanted some fresh air.” Not a lie, since that was why he’d walked rather than driven. “Hey, Duke,” Seth said, nodding his acknowledgement of Audrey’s husband.