Read Online Royal's Wedding Secret by Sophia Lynn - Free Book Online

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