Her Prince's Secret Son (3 page)

Following Aleks’s lead, she approached the enormous, raised bed.

A handsome little boy rested against the pillows, his long eyelashes startling black against his pale cheeks. He was thin and his skin color was an odd gold-over-olive. The scent she’d noticed rose from the bed, the odor of fever.

“Is he sick?” she whispered.

A muscle jerked in Aleks’s cheek. “Very.”

“Poor little child. I’m so sorry.”

Aleks gave her a strange look. “As am I.”

They stood in silence, staring down at the sleeping child. Looking at the small boy was a powerful reminder and Sara ached both for him and for herself. Her child would have been near the age of this little boy. She prayed that wherever he was, her son was well and that no sickness ever befell him.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“A virus has attacked his liver.”

“Will he be all right?”

Aleks glared at her, his expression so bewildering and strange that she grew afraid.

“We will know soon.”

A sense of silent anticipation hovered in the room as if the people standing in the shadows held their collective breath.

“Who is he?” she whispered.

The mask of coldness seemed to slip for a moment, and Sara could have sworn he was hurting. “He is my son.”

“Your…son?” The words nearly choked her.

She placed a hand over her womb. She felt so empty. Aleks had moved on without a backward glance, marrying and producing a son. He had a child. She had nothing but an empty ache.

Did her little boy, wherever he was, look like this? Did he have Aleks’s black eyelashes and aristocratic nose?

Against the lump of regret and longing that clogged her throat, she said, “Your son is very beautiful. He deserves to be well.”

Aleks took both her elbows and turned her to face him. He stared at her long and hard and without mercy. She swallowed, the sound loud in a room where only the breath of a small boy and his incessant machinery broke the silence.

His fingers tightened. “So does yours.”

She frowned, puzzled. An erratic beat of something she couldn’t name started deep inside, shouting a warning that she did not comprehend.

“My son?” she asked, voice trembling with dread. “What do you mean?” And how did he know? How could he possibly know about her son? About their son?

Aleks’s black eyes held hers as if peering into her soul. Then slowly, slowly, they slid away to the sleeping child.

In a voice of ice and steel, he said, “Meet Nico, or as he is officially known, Crown Prince Domenico Emmanuel Lucian d’Gabriel…the child you abandoned.”

Every ounce of strength left Sara’s body. Her knees buckled. And the world went black.

P
RINCE
A
LEKSANDRE STOOD
beside Sara’s bed waiting for her to regain consciousness. The fainting spell had come as a surprise. One minute she’d been staring at him in horror and the next she’d crumpled like tissue paper.

He was still pondering the meaning of her reaction.

In an effort not to disturb Nico, he’d swept her into his arms and carried her here to the guest wing. Halfway to the suite, he’d been tempted to hand her off to one of the guards trailing them. Not because she was too heavy. She weighed nothing. But because the feel of her curves pressed against him stirred more than memories.

Now as he glared down at her, willing her to awaken, he couldn’t help noticing the way her red hair spilled over the white pillow like fire on snow. Nor could he miss the gentle curve of her mouth or the tiny scar above her lip that he’d once found particularly tasty.

She moaned softly. He steeled himself with a stern reminder than his attraction to this woman had already cost him enough.

She opened her eyes and looked around, her expression clouded. He waited, silent while she regained her bearings.

With a gasp of awareness, she sat up.

Aleks pressed her back. “Lie still. You’ve had a shock.”

She slapped at him. “Get your hands off me.”

In a flurry of movement the two bodyguards flanked him, hands on their weapons. He waved them off. “Leave us.”

“But Your Majesty—”

“Leave us. This woman poses no threat.” At least not physically.

Sara swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood. “That’s what you think.”

Had this been another woman or another time, Aleks would have laughed. Sara barely came to his chin and even with fists tight at her sides and eyes shooting sparks, she was no match for his size and strength.

The guards looked from Sara to Aleks, ever vigilant, but they followed his command and backed from the room. He knew very well they were both standing with ears pressed against the closed door, anxious because he was out of their sight with a fiery woman.

The moment they disappeared, Sara stormed toward him, long hair flying wildly around her shoulders. “Is Nico my son? Are you telling me the truth?”

“Nico is
my
son and mine alone. You gave him away.”

All of the fight went out of her. Her shoulders slumped. She pressed both hands to her stomach and bent forward so that Aleks wondered if she might faint again. He started to her but stopped when she groaned. “Oh, God, I did. I gave him away.”

This was the truth he’d dreaded hearing but the truth as he already knew it. Though he’d loved this woman, he’d never really known what she was capable of until she had abandoned their child.

“Did you hate me that much, Sara?”

He hadn’t intended to ask the question nor to sound quite as vulnerable as he feared he did.

“I never hated you, Aleks. I loved you.” Disturbingly haunted eyes implored him. “I longed for you.”

He glanced away. “You will forgive me if I don’t believe that.”

“You promised to come back. I waited.”

His lips curled in distaste. “Not for long.”

“I was pregnant with your child, alone, scared out of my mind, with no means of support. What was I supposed to do?”

Not sell my son to the highest bidder
, he thought. If not for the queen’s intervention, someone else would have paid the price for the handsome male child with royal bloodlines, though another family would not have known the boy was a crown prince, and the prince of Carvainia would never have had a son and an heir. The fury of that near disaster raced through his blood with the sting of alcohol on an open wound.

Seething, he turned his back to stare blindly at a dressing table littered with feminine jars and a silver hand mirror. “The past does not matter to me.
You
do not matter to me.”

“Then why did you bring me here after all this time? To punish me? To let me know how much you despise me for putting our son up for adoption?”

“I never wanted you involved in his life. Let me make that clear.” Slowly, he pivoted, jaw tight enough to crack a bone. “You are here because I had no other choice.”

She didn’t need to know about the stir her presence had caused, both among the staff and within the royal family. As it was, the queen had taken to her bed with a migraine the moment Sara Presley entered the castle. He regretted that deeply.

Without his mother’s help and guidance during that terrible time five years ago, he wasn’t sure he could have survived. First, he’d lost his father. Then an old enemy, the greedy king
of Perseidia had perceived a weakness in the new Carvainian government and had invaded their northern borders. Like the warriors of old and as he’d been trained, he’d led his men into battle and had come out the victor. But at what price? Wounded, and heartsick at the loss of fine young men, he’d been further shattered by the news that his former love had given birth to his son and was offering the baby to the highest bidder.

Though the queen had expressed serious doubt, Aleks was convinced the child was his. Sara had been an innocent when they’d first come together, so shy and eager and loving. He could not imagine her with another man.

She’d likely had several men by now, but he refused to care.

“How did you learn about the baby?” she asked. “How did he get here?”

“Money and power have their advantages.”

“Why didn’t you contact me? Where were you?”

“At war, fighting for my country’s independence where I belonged.” He chopped the air in impatience. “None of this matters anymore, Sara.”

“It matters to me! I’ve missed four years of my baby’s life, four years of wondering if the wealthy family that adopted him loves him, wondering if he’s all right. Then suddenly I’m whisked away from America without explanation to discover he’s been here with you all along. Why have you contacted me now when you didn’t then?”

Aleks grabbed her arm and stared down into her face with all the will he had inside him.

“Let me explain as clearly as I know how.” He swallowed, hating the words to come. “Nico…is dying.”

“No!” Sara shrank away from him, a hand to her throat. “Please no.”

The stark despair in her expression would have shaken
him had he not been braced for it. She had ignored her child since birth. A pained cry and a few tears would not convince him that she cared.

“His only hope is a liver transplant.”

Sara slid onto a chair and buried her face in her hands. Once again, Aleks battled back an urge to go to her. He stood with rigid military discipline, reminding himself that this woman was the enemy. This woman had no scruples. This woman had tossed his child away like a stray dog.

When she lifted her tearstained face, his gut spasmed. She’d looked this way on the day he’d gotten news that his father was dying. She’d cried for him.

He’d been a fool then. He wouldn’t be again.

“Is he on a transplant list?” she asked. “I don’t know how things like that work here in your country. What can be done?”

“The best hope for Nico is a living donor. His body would then regenerate the donated segment into a full-sized body part while the donor’s body would also fully recover. But Carvainia is a country of genetically similar people. No one we can find shares his blood type.”

“AB negative,” she murmured.

“Yours, I assume.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Nor does anyone, including myself, my mother, nor any of the royal family share the specific blood markers that he requires.” Impatient, he chopped the air again. “I don’t pretend to understand the medical details. I only know that Nico is dying and his only hope is a living donor who matches him as exactly as possible.”

Perched on the edge of the chair, she bent forward, forearms against her thighs, hair falling over her shoulders as she looked up. “And that’s why I’m here, isn’t it? To be his donor.”

Aleks tensed. His heart galloped in his chest like one of his racehorses. If he was to gain Sara’s cooperation, he must proceed with extreme caution.

“You needn’t worry. I will pay you well.”

A soft gasp escaped her. “You’ll…pay me?”

Though she sounded less than eager, Aleks was confident she would agree once she understood the terms. Greed was a powerful incentive. A baby, a body part, it was all the same to a woman like Sara. “One million American dollars.”

Something hard shifted through her features. “No.”

Aleks blinked once, slowly, certain he had heard wrong. “No?”

Her lips tightened. “I said no.”

Sickness churned in his belly, and for the first time, he began to doubt his plan. What if he failed? What if Sara Presley was even more heartless than he’d expected?

The muscles in his neck tightened to the breaking point. “Then name your price. Whatever you want is yours.”

Sara stared back at him with eyes that had turned the color of a stormy sea. They were eyes that had beguiled him when he was young and foolish. Eyes that had promised so much and then had forgotten him. Eyes that now defied him.

With a near-regal grace, she rose, fists clenched at her side, her chin thrust upward. “Then here’s the deal, Prince Charming. I want to spend time with my son and get to know him. I want to be his mother.”

She wanted to be Nico’s mother? Cold fear sliced through Aleks. “You should have thought about that a long time ago, Sara. Nico is mine and mine alone. You will have no part in his life. None ever.”

“A little late for that, don’t you think? You’ve brought me here. I’m involved.”

“As a hired body part. Nothing else.”

She blanched and rocked back, biting down on her bottom lip.

Aleks refused to be moved by her wounded reaction. He would do anything to protect Nico, particularly from the woman who had abandoned them both.

In clipped tones with barely suppressed anger, he said, “Presenting a sick child with a long-lost mother is not in his best interest. Have you no compassion whatsoever? Think of the questions he’d ask! Do you want him to know that he was given away at birth? Do you want him asking why he’s never known about you? His health is far too fragile for that kind of revelation.”

Sara made a tiny noise of dismay and began to move around the room. She twisted her fingers together, worrying a small gold ring on her pinky. The hem of the yellow sundress swished softly against her thighs as curvy hips swayed below a slender waist.

Aleks didn’t want to notice her lush body or to remember the silk of her thighs against his palms. With firm resolve, he focused on the coldness of her heart and on his plan.

Now, while Sara was still in a state of shock, he had to press his advantage. “I’m prepared to pay you a million if you are a match and another million after the surgery.”

He was prepared to pay her far more than that should she balk. Everyone had a price.

Like a wounded tigress, Sara whirled on him. “Get this through your pig head, Aleks. I don’t want your money. I want my child.”

“He is not yours to want.”

On a sharp inhale, she drew up to her full height, shoulders high and tight as she contemplated him.

While Aleks held his own breath, she exhaled in a rush of words. “Then I won’t cooperate. You’ll have to search elsewhere for your donor.” She marched to the door and yanked it open. “You’ll also have to excuse me,
Your Majesty
, I must pack. I’m leaving in the morning.”

Aleks was stunned by the woman’s audacity. She was showing him out?

When he didn’t move, she said, “I never had the chance to know my son. I don’t want your money. I want to spend time with Nico. That’s the deal, Aleks. Take it, or I’m going home.”

Aleks could scarcely believe this was happening. She was bargaining with Nico’s life. But why? He didn’t believe for one second that she would turn down a million dollars in the end. Why the pretense of belated maternal feelings? Did she despise him enough to hurt him through Nico?

Whatever the reason, Sara was worse than he’d dreamed.

“Close the door.”

He had no wish for this conversation to be carried by the servants to his mother’s ears. She was upset enough. She would be livid to learn of the bargain he was about to strike.

The door snapped shut. Sara stood with one hand on the pull, facing him as calmly as if they were trading automobiles. Only the quiver of pulse above her collarbone indicated distress. “Do we have a deal?”

What choice did he have? He wanted Nico alive and well, and Sara was his only chance.

“You may visit his rooms, but either I or the queen must be present at all times.”

She cocked her head. A silver earring glinted against the pale skin of her neck. “You don’t trust me.”

About as much as he trusted the king of Perseidia. “Not in the least.”

A small skirmish went on behind sea-blue eyes but finally she said, “Okay, agreed, as long as I can see him as often as I like.”

“Done.” He reached for the door handle and paused. “One thing, though, Sara, is not negotiable.”

She regarded him warily. “And that is?”

Calling upon four years of festered anger and bitterness, he said, “Nico is never to know you are the bitch that whelped him.”

The color, which had drained from her face, now surged forth, setting her delicate skin aflame. She raised a hand as if to strike him. He caught her wrist. “I think not.”

Long after Aleks left her alone, Sara sat at the window staring out at the magical country of Carvainia. Aleks’s country. Her baby’s country.

Emotional exhaustion made her limbs heavy so she could hardly lift her hands to swipe at the tears flowing down her cheeks.

Her baby was here. After the years of guilt and regret, she’d found him. All this time of worry and he’d been right here with his natural father. She was glad for that, though still astonished by the turn of events. Nothing Aleks said in explanation had made any sense. He claimed to have contacted her but she knew he hadn’t. And yet, how could he have known about the pregnancy? How could he have gotten custody of Nico?

Joy at finding her son intermingled with the loss of years and the fear that he was deathly ill. Now that she’d found him again, she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him.