Her Prince's Secret Son (6 page)

Five minutes later, she reached the medical floor. The dim
morning light battled with the pale night lamps illuminating the corridors. No security was posted at Nico’s door, a concession to his recovery and the time of day, she supposed, though definitely a change of protocol.

The elevator slid quietly closed behind her. As she started toward Nico’s room, a woman appeared from the staircase on the left. Something in her hurried, furtive movements gave Sara pause. She stepped back into the shadows.

Curious, Sara watched the woman glance around before quickly entering Nico’s room. In the dim light, Sara could not make out the woman’s face, but she was tall and moved with an almost haughty grace. Queen Irena? The nurse, Maria? She was tall, but so were many of the Carvainian women Sara had met. The secretive woman could be anyone.

The question was, why the secretive behavior?

Unease prickled Sara’s skin. She hurried down the corridor and pushed open Nico’s door.

Except for the sleeping child, the room was empty.

A
LEKS WAS BEWILDERED
by his own behavior. He should never have agreed to a boating picnic with Sara Presley along. Yet here he was, rowing lazily around the small, private cove a short distance from the castle proper while Sara listened to Nico’s enthusiastic chatter and tried to keep him still inside the boat.

Seeing Nico with this much energy thrilled him. The improved health also assuaged some of his guilt. Had he not taken Nico into the flood-ravaged areas of Carvainia last year, the boy would not have contracted the virus that destroyed his liver. In trying to teach his son compassion for those in need and the duty of a prince to care for his people, he’d nearly cost Nico his life. He wasn’t sure he could ever forgive himself for that crucial error in judgment, but he would be eternally grateful that his son had been spared.

His gaze went to Sara. He could thank
her
for that.

She looked up just then and smiled. Something stirred inside him and without thinking, he smiled back.

“I’ve seen this cove from my balcony,” she said, brushing back tiny wisps of dusky red hair from her temples. “It’s really beautiful here.”

Yes, he’d seen her standing on the railed balcony each morning, usually in that flowing white gown that haunted him. Today, long before dawn, she’d been dressed and drinking coffee. According to Antonia, an able spy when need be, Sara hadn’t changed that much since he’d known her. She still preferred coffee to tea and a hamburger to the finest steak.

He wondered if she still mumbled in her sleep.

“I always thought you would like it here.” The words appeared on their own, shaking him.

At her quizzical look he gave himself to the oars and pushed his arm muscles as hard as possible, hoping the burn would take control and keep him from saying anything else he might regret. His mother was more correct than she realized. Sara Presley was getting to him.

“Papa, if I stand up, will the boat tip over?”

“Possibly. Stay seated. We’ll dock in that small nook just there.” He hitched his chin toward a tiny clearing shrouded in brush and trees. The area was invisible from the castle and security would not be pleased with his breach, though they should know by now he could take care of himself.

Sara slipped an arm around Nico’s shoulder and snugged him close to her side. “Let’s sing a song. Do you know ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’?”

Nico looked doubtful. “No.”

“What?” She flicked a look of mock horror toward Aleks. “You’ve neglected this boy’s education.”

Aleks’s lips twitched. “Fire the tutor.”

“No, Papa! I like Mr. Benois.”

Sara laughed, a light, easy sound that he remembered too well. “Your father is teasing, Nico. Come on, now. I will sing a line and you repeat after me.”

In a sweet, clear soprano, she began to sing the familiar
song, pausing while Nico echoed each phrase in a childish, happy voice.

As he guided the boat onto land, Aleks heard his own baritone join in. Both Nico and Sara looked up in pleased surprise.

In that moment, he saw what he’d never seen before, what he’d never wanted to see.

A mother and son. And the son had Sara’s radiant, full-mouthed smile.

His belly sank like the anchor he’d tossed overboard.

“Papa is singing. Papa is singing.” Nico clapped his hands. Sara laughed.

And Prince Aleksandre sang a little louder just to watch them smile again.

Sara had stewed all morning about the mysterious woman who had entered Nico’s room and disappeared. The incident made no sense, and in the light of day, she questioned whether she’d seen anything at all.

“What did the chef pack for us?” Aleks asked, as he spread a blue blanket on the soft, flower-specked grass. A gold family crest centered the cloth.

“I didn’t look in the basket, but I’m sure it’s wonderful,” she said. “Everything here is.”

“Everything?”

“Well, practically.”

His answer was a twitched eyebrow and a few crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

He was different today. She couldn’t quite put her finger on the change. He hadn’t wanted this outing and yet he seemed to be enjoying himself…as was she, though her uncertain future nagged at the back of her brain like an itch she couldn’t scratch.

According to the physicians, she should rest and recover under their care for two months. Half of that was nearly gone.

A shudder stole through her. One more month before the doctors released her—and then what? Would Aleks agree to let her remain a part of Nico’s life? Or would she be forced back to the lonely life in a bookstore, forever without her son?

The longer she was here, the harder leaving would be. And Nico wasn’t the only reason. As confused and hurt and angry as Aleks could make her, her heart remembered a time of love.

Occasionally she caught glimpses of just plain, wonderful, loving Aleks beneath the princely facade, and hope would rise inside her as powerful as a volcano and just as dangerous. She couldn’t trust herself with this man who’d left her alone without a word at a crucial time. Even if he’d been to war, even if he’d been wounded, he was still a powerful man. If he had intended to return as he claimed, if he had truly cared for her, couldn’t he have sent word?

Sara sighed and opened the lid on the picnic basket. What was the point in rehashing the unchangeable past?

He was a prince. She was no one. Men of his position only played with commoners. They did not marry them.

The truth was as painful as a burn in her chest. Aleks had wanted her body for a while, and that was all. He’d never expected a child to come from their loving.

An insect buzzed her ear. She swatted at it, swatting away the sorrowful thoughts as she kept a watchful eye on Nico. As any small boy would, the little prince wandered around the pretty little meadow, poking at rocks and gathering flowers and weeds into a tight fist. Though he was still far too thin and tired easily, her heart jumped with happiness to see him doing well.

She stretched her arms above her head, feeling only the
slight tug of scar tissue at her side, and breathed in the fragrance of sea salt and lush, green meadow. A floral scent she didn’t recognize tickled her nose.

“What is that flower I smell?” she asked.

Aleks eased down onto the blanket and stretched his long legs before him. Sara battled a flash of memory. The two of them, a blanket by a lake, the hot summer night pulsing with the beat of two hearts and a hundred whispered promises.

Promises that had been broken.

Aleks sniffed the air. “Delicate and sweet with a hint of fruit?”

“You sound like a perfumer.”

He chuckled. “Wine connoisseur. The scent comes from the vineyards. Muscato grapes for spumante.”

Another reminder of why she didn’t fit in his world. She wouldn’t know a spumante from a bottle of beer.

“It smells great,” she said, and then felt stupid for the mundane comment.

She bit down on her bottom lip and began to unpack the basket, setting out a stunning array of silver and china and scrumptious foodstuffs. Royalty never skimped. Even something as simple as a picnic was a major production.

The prince said nothing, but he watched her from beneath those enviable black lashes with a pensive expression.

Wondering what went on behind those dark eyes and uncomfortable with the silent stare, Sara threw a napkin at him—a crested cloth napkin in royal blue. “Make yourself useful, Mr. Prince.”

The expression disappeared. He shifted closer. “You always were a demanding woman.”

His easy reference to their past caught her off guard. “Was I?”

“No.” He pulled a bottle of wine from the basket and studied the label. “Quite the contrary. Perhaps if you had been…”

Sara’s heart clattered in her chest like a marble in a tin can. What was he saying? That if she’d demanded more, she would have got it?

But that wasn’t her way. She believed love was a gift. If he had loved her enough, he would have gone on loving her, regardless of time and distance, the way she had gone on loving him.

The thought brought her up short. Was she still in love with Aleksandre d’Gabriel?

Her gaze flicked to his and then away to stare at an iridescent dragonfly flitting along the shore.

By all that was good, she hoped not. Her greatest fear was to become vulnerable to him again. He’d hurt her before, but this time, with Nico involved, he could destroy her. He was arrogant and curt and loathed her. How could she even consider loving a man such as that?

A little voice whispered inside her heart. She could love him because she’d known the man beneath the prince. And he was wonderful and brave and good. No other man had ever made her feel as precious and loved. He
had
loved her then, perhaps not in the way she’d thought, perhaps far more selfishly, but he had loved her.

And her traitorous heart could not forget.

“Papa, come quick.” Nico’s excited voice interrupted. “I found something.”

Sara’s hand went to her chest. “I hope it’s not a snake.”

With a half laugh, Aleks pushed to his feet. “We have no snakes in Carvainia. They were banished by proclamation.”

She looked up the tall length of him. “Is that true?”

Eyes dancing in a way that filled her with foolish, foolish yearning, he reached out a hand. “Come and see for yourself.”

She put her hand in his and he pulled her up. She expected him to release his hold, but he tugged her across the sweet-scented grass toward their son.

Her heart skittered in her chest.
Their
son. She couldn’t help wondering what life would have been like if Aleks had never left America, if they had married, if the three of them were a family.

But they weren’t. And regardless of her silly fantasies, Aleks was no longer the man she recalled any more than she was the same, gullible college girl. By Aleks’s own admission, he had played her for a fool even then—a rich, international playboy having his fling with a naive American. He’d no more expected the liaison to result in a child than she had.

He had known what she hadn’t. He was a royal, no doubt expected to marry royal. American college girls were only playmates.

An ache much greater than the pain of surgery stole her breath.

She tugged her hand from Aleks’s grip. He gave her a puzzled look, but they had reached Nico and his attention went to the little boy. Squatted beside a mound of rocks and weeds, hands on his thighs, Nico peered intently at the ground.

“What have you found, son?” Aleks asked, going to his haunches, too.

“That.” Without turning his head, Nico pointed a finger. “Will it bite me?”

Above the two dark heads, Sara bent low enough to see a small turtle. Aleks reached into the grass and picked it up. The animal promptly withdrew into its shell.

Nico gasped and turned huge black eyes on his father. “Papa, what did you do to him?”

From her vantage point, Sara could see the side of Aleks’s face. His cheeks creased in an indulgent smile.

“We frightened him.” Holding the turtle with a thumb and middle finger, he offered the animal to Nico. “He won’t bite unless you put your finger in his mouth.”

In total awe, Nico took the two-inch reptile in both his small hands. He lifted the shell to eye level and peeked inside. “Come out. I’m not a mean boy.”

Sara’s chest squeezed at the sweetness. How many of these moments had she missed? “Is this your first time to find a turtle?”

He nodded, but his focus remained on his father. “May I keep him?”

Aleks shook his head. “No. He would not be happy living in the castle.”

Nico seemed taken aback. “But we have the finest castle in the world.”

“A turtle is a wild animal. His castle, his home is here in the weeds and rocks.”

Nico’s face grew long and somber. “But I would be kind to him.”

To soften the refusal, Aleks placed a wide hand on the back of his son’s neck. With infinite patience he said, “Would you be happy if someone took you away from your home and family? Even if it was a nice place with kind people?”

Sara listened with a terrible intensity. Though afraid she could never gain custody of her child, hadn’t she considered attempting exactly that?

The little boy thought it over and then placed the turtle on the ground. “I would be sad to ever, ever leave you, Papa.”

And though the mother-wound in her heart bled, that was the moment Sara knew that she could never take Nico away from Carvainia, even if such a thing was possible. He belonged here, with his father and his people.

“My son, you have a strong and kind heart.” Aleks
tenderly pulled Nico into his arms. “You will make a wise ruler someday.”

Like father, like son.
The way it should be. And she, though mother by Nico’s birth, was an outsider.

The realization nearly brought her to her knees. Just as Aleks had indicated early on, she was nothing but a hired body part.

A short time later, the three of them, along with Nico’s turtle as temporary guest, gathered around the picnic basket. Sara bit into an elegant smoked salmon sandwich with cream cheese and nearly moaned from the experience. Though her heart was heavy, her stomach seemed determined to make the most of her dream “vacation.”

“Nico,” she said, holding out another. “You should try this. It’s quite delicious.”

He’d hardly eaten anything.

Nico shook his head as he placed one hand to his belly. “My stomach feels strange.”

Salmon forgotten in an instant, Sara was up on her knees with a hand to Nico’s forehead. She exchanged concerned glances with Aleks. “No fever.”

“Are you tired?” Aleks asked, laying aside his own sandwich. “Perhaps we should go back to the castle now.”

“I don’t want to go yet. I like it here.” Nico’s bottom lip poked out in an uncharacteristic pout. “I’m not hungry.”

Sara longed to take the boy onto her lap and soothe him, but before she could, Aleks said, “Then why don’t you play quietly with Mr. Turtle while Sara and I finish our meal. If your stomach bothers you further, you must tell us right away.”