Royal's Wedding Secret (7 page)

I didn't do it alone, not really. Cassie was there, and I've got a lot of friends who helped out. It was hard a few times, and more than once I thought I just would not be able to make it through, but hey, guess what, I'm still here and so's Victoria. After that, I figure that everything else is extra.

He laughed a little at her answer, but he could sense the loneliness behind it as well.

I think you're doing a great job. She's wonderful.

Thank you! I think she's pretty darned great too!

He paused. It felt good, amazing even, to be able to speak with Marnie. She had always had a kind of straight common sense that never allowed him to get too full of himself, to drift too far inward. During his life, he had had far too many people who accommodated him and who had told him exactly what he wanted to hear. With Marnie, he never had to worry about that. Even when they were at their most passionate and reckless, she had always been willing to throw on the brakes and talk things out.

What a queen she would make,
he thought idly, but then he drew away from the thought. There was no way his family would accept a novelist of no background as his wife, even if she was the one who had borne their grandchild.

Thank you again for an amazing day,
he typed to her.
I really mean that. I've never had another day like it.

There was a long pause, followed by the ellipses that told him that she was typing.

I would like more days like this too.

She had been typing for far longer than those words should have taken. Philip was suddenly intensely curious about what she had typed and then erased.

Philip lay back in bed and wondered what more days with Marnie and Victoria might be like.

CHAPTER FOUR

"Well, I certainly didn't expect it to go like this," Philip mused, looking down at the mess of paint that covered the newspaper.

"It usually doesn't go in any way that you might expect," said Marnie, who had an unaccountably adorable splotch of green paint high on her cheek. "The nice thing is that all of this washes out quite nicely."

Saturday had arrived cold and rainy, with Marnie tired from her publishing work and Victoria cranky from school. Instead of stepping out to see a museum as they had planned, they had opted for a day indoors instead, and of course the art supplies had come out.

If Philip were asked he would have said that there was a limited amount of mess that three people could make with just a few pots of paint and butcher paper. However, logic apparently had nothing on a determined five-year-old who was entirely preoccupied with the idea of involving her mother in every single mark and stroke.

It was a soothing thing to watch, but he hadn't realized that he was only watching until Victoria turned to him.

"You aren't drawing anything at all," she said accusingly.

He looked down at the relatively unmarked paper in front of him. "I suppose I'm not a very good artist," he began, but Victoria only looked stubborn.

"My mama and Cassie say that anyone can be artistic," she said with a pout. "You just need to try. Then you'll do the art that only you can make!"

Philip wasn't sure about that, but the look on Marnie's face was frankly mischievous.

"Oh, well, maybe Philip hasn't had the advantages that you've had, honey …"

Victoria frowned at that as Marnie continued.

"It looks to me like he needs someone to help him," she continued. "Why don't you go help him?"

Victoria brightened at that, and before Philip could figure out what was going on, she had crawled over to lean against his side. To his surprise, Victoria folded her small hand over his, smearing paint on it as she did so.

"Victoria, what are you—?"

He only stared in shock as she took his hand and led it decisively to one of the small pots of paint. He was simply too shocked to do anything but sit there as she dragged his now paint-covered fingers down to the paper in front of him.

"Look, see, now you can do it yourself," she said with all the gravitas of a master painter to a hapless student. "Now you shouldn't worry too much about whether you are good enough!"

"I suppose not," Philip mused. "Marnie, these paints wash out in water, don't they?"

"Sure, I wouldn't get anything for Victoria that was going to stain …"

The words were no sooner out of her mouth before Philip reached over and pressed his palm over her shoulder, leaving a thick blue hand print over the fabric there. As she squawked in outrage, he laughed.

"I call it mixed media," he said to Victoria gravely. "That's what you call it when you use lots of different materials. You see here, I used paint, the fabric from your mother's shirt, and of course, your mother."

Victoria crowed with laughter, and then Philip had to fend off two attacks. On one side was Victoria, gleefully smearing him with the watery paint. On the other side was Marnie, who was largely doing the same thing with an increasingly better degree of success.

As the rain pounded down outside, the three of them stayed warm and dry in the apartment, though certainly by the end, they would have been no more dirty if they had ended up going outside to splash in rain puddles.

When he got up to go get paper towels for cleanup, he paused to look himself in the mirror. He looked a wreck, covered in red, green, yellow, and blue stains. He looked like some kind of modern art project gone very, very wrong.

And he realized then that he had never been happier. When he looked at himself in the mirror, he saw a man who was exceedingly content to while away his Saturday with a woman and a little girl that he was coming to care for immensely.

Philip knew that he could get a dozen people together to view all of the New York parties, and if America couldn't throw an excellent party, he was prepared to go to the UAE and Navarra to find if they could do one better.

He shook his head, drying his hands. Philip didn't know what the future would bring, but he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was going to look back on this time and smile, no matter what came after it. Outside of the bathroom, he could hear Marnie and Victoria laughing quietly. It didn't occur to him to think that they sounded quite clear until it was far too late.

The door swung open, and revealed behind it were two grins, four hands full of paint, and a laughter that he thought that he would cherish forever.

As they bore him gently to the floor, he started to laugh, and it was one of the most healing moments of his life.

*

For a moment, Marnie wondered if they had gone too far. It was only belatedly that she remembered how very much money Philip's clothes cost, and how attached he was to them. Of course, she thought that right before her cannonball of a daughter struck Philip full force, her small hands pattering all over him to transfer as much color to Philip as she could.

To Marnie's relief, however, Philip only shouted with delight, falling back onto the ground and allowing Victoria to climb all over him.

Marnie wondered all over again what it was her daughter saw in this man. Perhaps she was picking up on the fact that he was someone who was kind and trustworthy, but Marnie didn't think that was it. Sometimes, late at night, she wondered if Victoria suspected that Philip was her father. There was no way that Victoria could know that at all.

Finally, when Victoria had been peeled off of Philip and sent back to her paper and paints, Marnie pulled Philip aside.

"I'm sorry about that," she said, and he only grinned, if a little ruefully.

"Well, about the only thing I'm sorry about is that I couldn't see such an obvious attack coming," he said. "Next time, maybe you'll be the one with red paint all over your shirt."

"Not likely," Marnie said with a smirk, but she continued. "Really though. It didn't even occur to me …"

"To treat me like an outsider?" Philip asked gently.

Marnie looked at him, startled. "What do you mean?"

He sighed, glancing down the hallway to where Victoria was still playing without a care in the world, before turning back to her.

"I love spending time with you and Victoria, I really do. Sometimes … sometimes it feels as if you are keeping me at arm’s length. You treat me as if I'm some kind of foreign dignitary …"

"Which, in all fairness you are," she pointed out, and Philip grinned a little, nodding.

"All right, you treat me as if I'm someone who's going to come and disapprove of everything that you do. From what I've seen? There's nothing to disapprove of. All that's here is a happy family that loves each other."

He paused for a moment, and when he spoke next, his words came out in a great rush, as if he was intent on getting it out all at once. "This is a family that I want to be a part of."

She stared at him, her mouth suddenly dry. "What do you mean?" she managed to get out.

He shrugged, and she didn't think that he had ever looked more helpless or more frustrated. "I don't know. All I know is that I care about you and that I care about Victoria. I want you both to have the best, and I want to be the one to give that to you."

"We're not lovers anymore," she said softly. "That's gone."

The look he gave her was suddenly full of fire. "No, it's not," he countered. "I don't believe that."

"It's been six years since I saw you last, more than that," she said. "I understand that you care about Victoria, but I think that you are letting your feelings about her get mixed up—"

Suddenly, she found herself pinned to the hallway wall, her mouth taken in a deep kiss that threatened to pull her heart from its moorings. She forgot about the fact that her daughter was playing not far away. She forgot about the fact that this man was one with whom she had a conflicted history. She forgot about everything except for the feel of his lips on hers.

Philip was the one who pulled away first. "Don't do that," he whispered, his voice tickling her ear.

She shivered at the sensation before she responded. "What? What shouldn't I do?"

"Don't tell me that my feelings are conflicted or confused. Don't tell me that I am not feeling what I know I am feeling." He paused. "You can always tell me what you're feeling. Tell me that you can't cope with how intense I am, or that I'm not a good influence on Victoria. Tell me that you don't want me or you don't even like me. I'm an adult, and I can take that. Never be afraid to tell me those things. But, Marnie, never tell me what I feel. I know what I feel for you, and it is real. Believe me."

She could have said any number of things here. She might have told him that a man who hadn't been in her life for six years couldn't tell her what to feel, or that he had known of his daughter for less than a month, and that feelings could change. Instead, when Marnie looked within her, she realized that she knew this man. She knew him better than she knew anyone else, and right now, she knew that he was telling her the truth.

"All right," she said softly. "I believe you."

She was rewarded by a wide smile that felt like the sun coming out after a cloudy day.

"Thank you," he said, dropping a kiss on her forehead.

She didn't know what to say just then. Instead, she only pulled back a little. "We should … go see what the little monster is up to," she said. "She's been quiet for too long, I don't trust her …"

Philip smiled. "All right," he said, and impulsively, she squeezed his hand as they walked down the hall.

This is what it's like to have a partner,
she thought.
Someone who can share the good times with you as well as the bad ones.

She glanced at Philip, who had gone to sit with Victoria again, this time cautioning her to keep her hands to herself.

But does this partner want to stay?

*

Something about that rainy day painting session had changed things. She didn't know quite what had altered things, whether it was their talk in the hallway, or Victoria growing more relaxed around Philip or even perhaps some magical quality about the paint itself, but they seemed to grow closer together.

Previously, she had been the one deciding what they were doing, and Philip had come along happily. Now he was proposing things just as often as she was, and more often than not, he paid their way and took care of everything. For a single mother who had always had to juggle her career and a baby, and then a toddler on her hip, having someone take over once in a while was an exotic, wonderful thing.

Philip stepped into the space they made for him with ease, and though she still called him Philip, Marnie could feel her intelligent daughter gearing up for the conversation of what Philip was to them. When that happened, Marnie was still unsure what she was going to say.

Her own feelings for Philip were as wild and untamed as they had been when she was still almost a girl. She couldn't think of him or look at him without wanting him. Sometimes, when he touched the small of her back or her shoulder, she felt a tingle, as if he had shocked her mildly. After what he had said in the hallway, he seemed content to leave the ball in her court. All she knew was that this beautiful man was driving her to distraction, and she didn't know how much longer she could take it.

Marnie still felt as if she had somehow slipped into another dimension. It had been just her and Victoria for so long that the image of Philip, carrying her little daughter into the small apartment, felt like something that was completely beyond her.

No matter how unbelievable it felt though, he was doing it. After his initial nervousness, he now carried Victoria as if he had done so every night of her life. The little girl was exhausted, her face pressed against his shoulder, her soft hand still somehow holding on to the little sloth stuffed animal that she had wanted at the zoo.

She murmured a sleepy protest as Philip put her down. She blinked around sleepily as if startled at how she had gotten home, and Marnie laughed.

"All right. Brush your teeth and pajamas, it's time for bed."

Victoria put up only a token protest, which Marnie considered a victory. She watched as her daughter dutifully brushed her teeth, and then got into her favorite yellow nightgown. It made her feel like a princess, she whispered, making Philip grin. When she lay down in bed, she kissed her mother good night, but then bit her lip.