Her Royal Baby by Marion Lennox Page B

sleep.
    Henry was the important one here, she thought, trying desperately to get her thoughts in some sort of order. Henry. Not some crazy foreign prince with an overblown idea of his own importance.
    â€˜Will you tell me what was in the letter?’ Marc asked, and Tammy whirled to face him again. She had so many emotions spinning in her head it was hard to know where to begin. His voice had calmed, but she was still a long way from anywhere approaching calm.
    He saw it. His hands came up in a gesture that said he wanted to placate, not inflame the situation further. ‘You must be hungry,’ he said softly. ‘I know I am.’ He picked up the Room Service menu and flicked it open. ‘Let me order dinner for both of us and we’ll eat and talk at the same time.’
    â€˜Here?’
    â€˜Of course here. You’ve made that plain.’ He managed a smile. ‘If I object your very efficient security officers will come and eject me. They’ll create an international incident and that will be that. So… I’m in your hands, Miss Dexter.’
    She backed off a pace and glared. ‘Why don’t I trust that smile?’
    â€˜You can trust me,’ he said, so softly that she hardly heard.
    But she did hear. She looked at him for a long moment. Their eyes locked and she found her colour mounting. This time it wasn’t from anger.
    You can trust me? Did she? What was it about this man?
    â€˜Fine,’ she stammered. ‘Order. Only not frogs’ legs.’
    â€˜Or kangaroo steak,’ he said gravely. ‘Agreed?’
    â€˜Agreed.’
    â€˜At last. We have consensus.’
    Â 
    They might have had a consensus on dinner, but they sat at either side of Tammy’s tiny table and eyed each other as if either could produce a loaded automatic at any minute.
    Marc poured wine, and Tammy eyed that, too, with distrust.
    â€˜No, Miss Dexter,’ he told her. ‘The wine doesn’t contain poison, and I’m not trying to get you drunk.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t put it past you.’
    Marc closed his eyes. When he opened them the humour had gone. There was bleak acceptance of where she was coming from.
    â€˜What was in the letter?’
    â€˜I’d imagine you know.’
    â€˜I know very little,’ he told her. ‘I had little to do with my cousin. Our families were not close.’
    â€˜How can you be Prince Regent if your families were not close?’
    â€˜I never expected to inherit the crown. Jean-Paul had an older brother, Franz, who was killed in a car racing accident five years ago. After Franz’s death Jean-Paul inherited the crown. With two cousins before me I’d never imagined it could come to me. And I don’t want it.’
    She frowned. ‘You don’t want it?’
    â€˜Believe it or not, no.’
    â€˜So why…?’
    â€˜There’s no one else,’ he said heavily. ‘Except Henry. Tell me what was in the letter.’
    Tammy bit her lip. She took a sip of the wine, which was gorgeous—Marc certainly knew how to order wine—and thought about it. The letter was intensely personal, but maybe the time for keeping secrets was past.
    She focused on the food for a bit: lobster and salad and fries. It was a combination that was just what she felt like. At some level she was very, very hungry.
    But overriding hunger was the sensation that maybe she needed to be honest with this man.
    There’d been enough secrets.
    â€˜My sister seemed…desperate,’ she told him. ‘Her letter sounds like she was way out of her depth. She apologised for not letting me know about her marriage and her pregnancy. She said our mother engineered her meeting with Jean-Paul and pushed them both into marriage. I can believe that.’
    â€˜I can believe it too,’ Marc said softly. ‘I hate to say it, but your sister seemed…well, she seemed a wimp. I only met her the once, at