Royal's Wedding Secret Read Online Free Page B

degree of authority over her, and he had no right to act as if he did.
    "Jesus, Marnie. Why the hell didn't you tell me?"
    "Because you abandoned me," she hissed, and in that single exclamation, there was all the vitriol that she had thought was put away and dealt with. He looked stunned, and she pressed her advantage.
    "Because you had just gotten done telling me that there was no place for me in your high and mighty life, and that you were going home to be the perfect prince in your own country. Excuse me if I thought that if there was no place for me, there would be no place for the baby, either!"
    Philip looked stung at her accusatory words, but he rallied. "A baby changes everything. You should still have contacted me …"
    "I tried," she said more quietly. "I … was so scared after I found out. I didn't want to, and I didn't even tell Cassie I was going to, but after I found out, I tried to call your number. It was disconnected, I suppose, because you had returned home. I racked my brain for a way to contact you, but everywhere I ran into palace protocols …"
    Philip now looked stricken. "Those are meant to keep the public from harassing us," he said. "There are layers of security that can only be breached by my family or me giving out certain codes, certain phone numbers …"
    "None of which you gave me," she said.
    They sat in silence for a moment, and without thinking about it, Marnie reached for the hot coffee that was steaming away untouched in front of Philip. It was an automatic gesture, a relic of their relationship together from before. He raised an eyebrow when she did it, but he didn't protest.
    "I didn't know what to do after that, but I realized that if I pushed it too hard, I was going to start setting off lots of rumors and unpleasantness. I didn't want to go through that, and at that point, I was beginning to think of myself as a mother. I didn't want to put my child through that, either."
    "Was I ever to know?" he asked quietly. He sounded subdued now, and she was grateful. She couldn't imagine being in his spot, realizing that he had a daughter more than half a decade after the fact.
    "I decided that I was going to play that one by ear," she said with a shrug."I can't tell the future. There might have been a place where I could have told you. Perhaps when Victoria was an adult and could make up her own mind about things, she would have wanted to seek you out."
    "And where does she think her father is?" Philip asked.
    Marnie sighed. "She's just a little girl right now. At this point, she knows that some families have two parents, and some families have one, and some people live with just one parent, and some people live with whole rooms full of extended families. It's good enough for her for now. She hasn't asked for more information."
    Philip nodded, but she wasn't sure whether he agreed with her statements or whether he could see where she was coming from.
    "She's my daughter," Philip said, and to Marnie, it was as if he were coming to terms with the idea. It was fair. His world had changed drastically over the course of the last few hours.
    "She is," Marnie agreed.
    "She has to come back to Navarra."
    In the space of half a second, Marnie went from feeling calm and even sympathetic for Philip to towering rage. "Excuse me?" she asked, deceptively quiet.
    "It's obvious. She must go to Navarra. She's a princess of the Demarier line, and—"
    "No," Marnie said cuttingly, and her tone was so sharp that it made Philip look up, startled.
    "Her last name is Drake. When she was born, the birth certificate lists just one parent, and that is me. She is a fine, healthy, happy girl, and she does not need to be yanked from everything that she knows to be taken across the sea to strangers."
    Philip started to protest, but she stood up, eyes alight with anger. "No. You had a hand in making her, and for that, I thank you. She is a wonderful girl, and every day, I am thankful that I am her mother. However, you are