Her Royal Baby

planning to adopt Heir to Throne. There’s even a picture of him, looking for all the world as if he cares.’

‘And does he?’ A rush of pure pleasure surged through Tammy’s body and she felt herself grinning like a fool. Looking for all the world as if he cares…

‘Who the hell knows if he cares or not? That’s not the point. I’ve had journalists here trying to get a comment. A comment. From me! I tell you, Tammy, I want more than a damned comment. I rang a lawyer here and he says there’s nothing I can do, but there has to be something. I mean, if he wants the kid so much there should be a payment of some sort. Anyway, the lawyer says you’re his legal guardian. If he wants to adopt he’ll have to send you papers to sign. So you can…’

‘I can what?’

‘Demand your rights.’

Tammy thought about it, trying to see where her mother was coming from. And she knew. Of course she knew. ‘You mean money?’

‘Of course I mean money.’

‘There are other rights besides money,’ she said slowly, switching off her torch and settling back into the dark while she let her mother’s words sink in. ‘Yes, I have rights to Henry, but I gave them to Marc willingly. I don’t…I don’t want them back.’

There was an indrawn breath and then a long silence. Communication between mother and daughter had always been thus. Tammy knew exactly what her mother wanted, and by now Isobelle knew exactly what her daughter’s reply would be.

‘You’re a fool,’ Isobelle said at last, and Tammy nodded into the dark.

‘Maybe. It’s what you’ve always called me.’

‘If you’d played your cards right…’

‘I could have stayed at the palace in Broitenburg and done nothing at all for the rest of my life.’ While I loved Marc hopelessly from the sidelines, she added silently to herself. There was no way her mother would hear that. It was a comment for Tammy’s heart alone.

‘This is a waste of time. You deserve to die a spinster with your blasted trees,’ her mother hissed, and Tammy ended the conversation without saying another word.

But she couldn’t go back to sleep.

After a while she rose and climbed into her little truck and drove the half-hour into town to the all-night service station. There on the magazine rack was what she was searching for-the latest edition of the News of the World. She bought herself a coffee and took herself out to the cab of her truck to read it.

It was after midnight now. Apart from the gangly youth holding up the counter in the service station, no one was awake but her. The coffee was warm between her hands, but she found herself shivering as she turned the pages.

And there they were, splashed across page three. It was a lovely, lovely photograph of Marc holding a laughing Henry. The pair looked supremely happy with each other. They looked…at peace.

‘I’ve done the right thing by both of them. I have.’ But she found she was crying, tears slipping helplessly down her face while she stared sightlessly at the photograph and thought of what she’d thrown away.

But she hadn’t thrown it away. What she so desperately wanted had never been offered. What had been offered was a series of one-day access to Henry followed by one day of isolation. It would have been a disrupted upbringing for Henry-and Marc didn’t come into the equation at all.

Or complete isolation. Sole guardianship of Henry with Marc not coming close.

‘At least this way Henry’s safe. And Marc…he’s softened. He’ll love him to bits.’

Her coffee was growing cold but she stared on, thinking of the lonely little tent waiting for her back in the clearing. She’d made her choice. It was the right choice-but she’d never felt so lonely in all her life.

Marc…

Tammy was up a tree when royalty arrived.

It wasn’t the same tree as the last time Marc had arrived, but it might have been. She was thirty feet up a magnificent eucalypt, and she might as well have been alone in the world. There was Tammy and her tree and no one else.

Or that was what she thought. In reality Doug, the team foreman, was straight underneath her, pointing upward, and beside him were Marc and Henry.

‘Hey, Tam. You’ve got visitors,’ Doug called, and then grinned and took his departure. He suspected he might be losing his very favourite worker, but Tammy hadn’t been the same since she’d returned from her overseas jaunt. She usually sang as she worked, but she’d returned from Broitenburg pale-faced and silent. Doug had employed enough young men and women in his time to know there was probably a love affair behind this, and by the look on this particular man’s face as he’d asked for directions he might just be the cause.

So he had directed Marc to the clearing and then pointed upward. And left them to it.

‘Hi,’ Marc said as Tammy stared stupidly down. She was swinging in her harness but her world was spinning far, far faster.

‘H…hi,’ she said at last, and her voice cracked a little. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Looking for you.’

‘You’ve found me.’

‘So I have,’ Marc said carefully, and then he set Henry carefully on his feet. The clearing was covered with soft moss and undergrowth; it was a glorious place for a little boy to explore and Henry had been buckled into his baby seat for far too long. ‘I need to speak to your aunt,’ Marc told the little boy. ‘So if you’ll excuse me for a minute…?’

And he leapt up to catch a lower limb and started to climb.

Which left Tammy breathless with shock. ‘You haven’t got a harness,’ she managed, and Marc grinned.

‘Neither I have.’ Tammy’s voice had been a squeak of alarm but Marc’s was rock-steady.

‘You’ll fall.’

‘I’ve fallen.’

‘I don’t…’ She was breathing way, way too fast. It was such a shock-seeing him. This was a very different Marc from the one she’d seen first. He was wearing casual jeans and a faded sweater-gear more suitable for climbing trees than for being Prince Regent of Broitenburg-but he was still Marc for all that.

He was still capable of taking her breath away.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said at last. He was twenty feet up and climbing as surely as if he’d spent his life in trees. ‘You’ve fallen where?’

‘I’ve fallen for you.’

That was another breath-taker. She had some serious thinking to do here, but her thinking mechanisms seemed all upside down. Below them Henry was watching in wide-eyed wonder. His cousin climbing trees was something new.

‘You should be in Broitenburg,’ Tammy managed. ‘Aren’t you risking Henry’s ascendancy or something? Bringing him here?’

‘Henry’s ascendancy no longer matters.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she repeated. She succeeded in sounding cross this time and his grin widened, despite the problems he was having in the climbing department. She really was too far up for comfort. He was making this climbing business look easy, but he really should have a harness and he had to take care. He hadn’t come this far to break his neck.

At least not before he kissed her.

At least not before he claimed her.

‘I’m officially adopting Henry,’ he told her as he tried to focus on staying in the tree. ‘If you agree. I have the papers in the car. That means Henry gets to inherit regardless. If he stays out of the country for longer than specified then he loses out on being first in line to the throne, but if he’s officially my son then he gets to be second in line after I inherit.’

‘Which means he inherits if you fall on your head,’ she managed. ‘Marc, be careful. You need a harness to be safe.’