The Future King’s Love-Child (12 page)

She stirred beneath him, her eyes opening to meet his. ‘Seb?’

His smile was crooked. ‘It’s been a long time since you called me that.’

She touched his face with her fingertips, a feather-light caress that made his skin lift. ‘That’s because we can’t go back,’ she said with a hint of sadness in her voice. ‘We’re not Caz and Seb now. We’re Cassie the ex-criminal and Sebastian the Prince Regent of Aristo, and never the twain shall meet, as they say.’

‘It’s not enough, Cassie,’ he said, running his tongue across his lips as he looked deep into her eyes. ‘I want more.’

Cassie swallowed tightly, hope like a raising agent in her chest. ‘What do you mean?’

His expression was rueful as he tucked a strand of her hair back behind her ear. ‘I thought once we did this a couple of times it would be enough, but it’s not. I want you again.’

She stared at him, suspended between hope and
despair. ‘I’m not sure what to say…’ she took another small swallow and added ‘…or what you are saying…’

He pressed a soft kiss to her mouth, a brush-like touch that made her lips tingle. ‘I would like to have more time, Caz,’ he said, ‘a few more nights alone with you. That is all I am asking.’

‘Why?’ Cassie asked.

He raked a hand through his hair and let out a deep, uneven sigh. ‘Because for the first time since I met you six years ago I am starting to see a glimpse of who you really are. I want to see more.’

Cassie lowered her gaze from his, her heart aching and heavy in her chest. ‘There’s no future in this, you know that. There can never be anything but an affair between us.’
And a very
short and secret one at that
, she thought with another pang of despair.

He kissed her softly, lingeringly, before pushing up her chin to meet her eyes once more. ‘Let’s have what we can have for as long as we can have it,’ he said.

Cassie left it far too late to say no. For a few pulsing seconds she had her chance, but she said nothing. But as his mouth came back down to claim hers she knew exactly why she hadn’t.

She still loved him.

C
ASSIE
was helping Sam with his breakfast the next morning when Sebastian came in. She looked up, knowing her cheeks were glowing from all the intimacy they had shared during the night before she had slipped back to her own room in the early hours of the morning while he had been sleeping.

He met her gaze for a pulsing moment before turning to Sam. ‘Good morning, Sam,’ he said, taking the chair beside him. ‘Did you sleep well?’

Sam put his spoon down politely. ‘Yes. I could hear the sea. Mummy said I might be able to go to the beach and build a sandcastle.’

‘I think that would be a very good idea,’ Sebastian said. ‘But first I would like to talk to you about something very important.’

Sam’s big brown eyes instantly clouded with worry. He looked at his mother, his chin starting to tremble. ‘Have I d-done something wrong?’ he asked in a thin voice.

Sebastian felt his chest tighten and took both of Sam’s small hands in his, again marvelling at how tiny they were compared to his own. He looked into those deeply brown eyes so like his own and wondered if that haunted, terrified look was the outcome of his early years living in prison. How could he make his little boy feel secure? It would take months if not years and yet he had so little time at his disposal. ‘You have done nothing wrong, Sam,’ he said gently. Oh, God, where did he begin? How could he tell this small innocent child how he had let him and his mother down?

Five years.

He had missed it all. He hadn’t even seen a photograph of Sam as a baby. He hadn’t even thought to ask Cassie to show him one. Not that he had given her much of a chance to retrieve any. He had packed her and Sam away with barely enough time for Cassie to pack a few belongings together and tell her flatmate where she and Sam were going.

‘Sam…’ He cleared his throat and began again, ‘I have recently found out I am your father.’

Sam glanced at his mother. ‘But I don’t have a father, do I, Mummy?’

Sebastian saw Cassie’s throat move up and down. ‘Darling…I have never actually said you didn’t have a father…’

‘No, but Spiro said I didn’t have one,’ Sam said. ‘I heard him tell Kara.’

Cassie frowned. ‘What did he say?’

Sam bit his lip. ‘He said it was anyone’s guess who I belonged to…’

Sebastian met Cassie’s bleak gaze before turning back to Sam. ‘You belong to me, Sam,’ he said, giving the boy’s hands a gentle squeeze. ‘You will always belong to me, no matter what happens in the future.’

Cassie felt her stomach clench with dread. What was he implying? That any future of Sam’s would be with his father and not with her? What else could he mean? There was no way Sebastian could have it all. They both knew that. That was why last night had been so poignant to her. This next couple of weeks would be all they would ever have together, as a little family. It would all too soon be over.

‘So you and Mummy and me are going to always be together?’ Sam asked with hope shining in his eyes.

‘For the time being at least,’ Sebastian said after a slight pause.

Sam’s eyes began to water. ‘Is Mummy going to leave me here?’

‘No,’ Cassie said stridently, glaring at Sebastian.

Sebastian put his hands on Sam’s shoulders. ‘Sam, I know this is hard for you to understand, but your mother and I are not married. But that does not mean we both don’t love you. We do, very much.’

Sam gulped back a little sob. ‘But I don’t want to be anywhere without my mummy,’ he said. ‘Can’t we stay with you? We won’t get in the way, will we, Mummy?’

Cassie bit the inside of her mouth to stop herself from crying. ‘Sweetie, it’s not that simple…’

Sam’s eyes were streaming now and his bottom lip trembling as he slipped off the chair and came over to her. ‘But why can’t you marry Daddy and then we can all live together?’ he asked. ‘I like it here. I can see boats from my bedroom window and there’s a big garden. Eleni said there’s even a pool.’

Cassie kept her eyes away from Sebastian’s as she bent down and hugged Sam. ‘Darling, your father is a very important man. It’s just not possible for him to live with us all the time. He has to travel all over the world sometimes. But I am sure we’ll sort something out, something that makes all of us happy.’

‘I don’t want to go back to the orphanage,’ Sam said, starting to cry. ‘I want to stay here with Daddy and you.’

Sebastian rubbed at his face, his throat tightening as he thought of how different things could have been if he had known six years ago what he knew now. He would have done anything to have avoided the pain he could see etched on his little boy’s face. What sort of father did Sam think he was that he hadn’t done a single thing so far to give him what he was entitled to?

Cassie was looking daggers at him, piercing him with silent blame for upsetting their child, and Sebastian could hardly blame her. He had handled things appallingly. Sam was far too young to understand the dynamics of the situation. He would need careful nurturing and protection until something could be sorted out.

For so long the search for the Stefani diamond and Sebastian’s future coronation as King had been his entire focus. He had thought of nothing else but how he could lead his people, and yet now he was faced with an agonising decision.

How could he take Sam away from his mother, even for an access visit? Sam was insecure and painfully shy. Besides, what little boy didn’t need their mother at that age?

And then there was Cassie. The young woman Sebastian had never been able to erase from his mind. The last two nights had brought it all back, the way she made him feel, the passion that flared
so hotly between them. He had been surprised at how disappointed he had felt when he had woken to find she had gone back to her room some time during the early hours of the morning. He had lain there in amongst the crumpled bedclothes, breathing in her scent, his body aching to possess her all over again.

The people of Aristo would never accept her as his bride. They were going to have enough trouble accepting her as the mother of his son. Cassie’s past was always going to be a stumbling block. But last night at the piano he had seen a side to her that was as far from the party-girl socialite as anyone could be. It made him wonder if he had been too hasty in his judgement of her, in fact if everyone had been too hasty. There was a haunting sadness about her, he had been noticing it more and more, especially when she thought he wasn’t watching.

Eleni came in at that moment and with a few cheery words with Sam led him away to play with some toys she had found in the nursery upstairs.

Cassie turned and glared at him. ‘Couldn’t you have waited until Sam was feeling a little more settled before dumping all that on him?’ she asked.

Sebastian raked his hand through his hair. ‘What was I supposed to do?’ he asked. ‘There is
no point lying to him. I am his father and I want him to know and accept that.’

‘You wanted to stake your claim on him, that’s what you wanted,’ she said, flashing her emerald gaze at him. ‘I won’t let you take him away from me, Sebastian.’

‘I am not going to do anything that will not be of benefit to my son,’ he said.

Her eyes flared. ‘Oh, and what is that supposed to mean? That it will be of much greater benefit to him to be away from his jailbird mother?’

‘I didn’t say that, Cassie.’

‘You didn’t have to,’ she said. ‘I can see it every time you look at me. You are thinking how the hell am I going to tell the world who the mother of my son is—isn’t that right, Sebastian?’

He set his jaw. ‘Look, Cassie, this is a difficult situation for both of us. I have so little time in which to get to know Sam before I have to announce his existence. I have missed out on so much and I need to do what I can to make up for it. Do you realise I haven’t even seen a photograph of him as a baby?’

Her stiff stance relaxed a little. ‘I brought some photographs with me,’ she said. ‘I grabbed them when Stefanos took us via the flat.’

Sebastian was surprised she had thought to do so, especially given the haste in which he had
insisted his orders be carried out. ‘I would like to see them,’ he said, trying to disguise the lump that had risen in his throat.

‘I’ll get them,’ she said. ‘They’re in my room.’

Sebastian’s mobile started to ring and he unhooked it from his belt and glanced at the screen. ‘I’ll have to get this, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Can you find your way to my study? I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.’

She gave a nod and slipped out of the room while Sebastian took the call, keeping his voice low as he spoke to Stefanos. There was still no news about the Stefani diamond but neither had there been anything leaked to the press about Sam. There were some photographs in the paper of the party and a short piece about Sebastian’s role as royal patron, but thankfully nothing else, so far.

Cassie took the scrapbooks she had made and after a few wrong turns made her way to Sebastian’s study. She stood outside for a moment, holding the books against her chest, trying to prepare herself for yet another emotional journey through time. Every time she looked at the photos documenting Sam’s life she felt such an aching sadness that she hadn’t been able to give him a normal start to life. Everything had
been against her from the very start. Sam had opened his eyes inside the walls of a bleak prison, not in the richly furnished palace where by blood he belonged. There had been no one with her when she had given birth after twenty agonising hours of labour, no one but a gruff midwife and a particularly unsympathetic prison guard who had stood and watched every intimate detail with a sneering expression on her face.

Cassie had longed for Sebastian to suddenly burst through the door and come to her. She’d had to bite down on her lip until it was bleeding to stop from crying out for him as every contraction had rippled through her abdomen.

She had never missed her mother more than at that point when Sam had finally been handed to her. She had never even held a baby before, never knew how tiny they were, how vulnerable and precious and totally innocent. Had her mother lived long enough to hold her? she wondered. No one had ever told her. Had her mother looked down at her as she had looked down at Sam at that moment, and sworn to love and protect her baby no matter what?

The door of the study suddenly opened in front of her. ‘How long have you been standing there?’ Sebastian asked with narrowed eyes.

Cassie clutched the scrapbooks against her
chest, her mouth going dry at the hardened look in his eyes. ‘Not long… I got lost a couple of times on the way down…’

He held her gaze for an infinitesimal moment, before indicating for her to go inside. He raked a hand through his hair in that edgy way of his. ‘I have a lot on my mind right now.’

‘I can come back later if you would prefer,’ she said, glancing back at the door.

‘No.’ He dropped his hand from where it had been to rub the back of his neck, the smile he gave her a little forced. ‘Take a seat on the sofa. Would you like coffee or tea? I suddenly realised I interrupted your breakfast.’

‘No, I’m fine…thank you…’ Cassie sat on the sofa and held her breath as he took the seat beside her, his thigh brushing against hers.

‘Show me,’ he said, his voice sounding rough.

Cassie opened the first scrapbook, realising then how tawdry it looked compared to the gold-encrusted ones he most probably had of his childhood. She had never been able to afford anything more than these cheap books, although she had promised herself once she was off the island and had some money to spare she was going to buy some proper albums.

‘This is just after he was born,’ she said, the rustle of the page turning over the only sound in the room.

Sebastian looked at the photo of his baby son lying on Cassie’s chest, his tiny body still streaked with blood and the waxy protective covering of vernix from the womb. He hadn’t cried since he was a small child but tears came to his eyes now and he had trouble seeing through them. The photograph blurred and he swallowed deeply.

‘And this is when he was about two weeks old.’ Cassie had turned another page, thankfully without looking up at him.

He looked at the prison-issue blanket covering his son and felt another blade of guilt slice him. Photo after photo had the same devastating effect on him. Pictures of Sam playing within the barbed-wire-enclosed prison, inmates all around, some of them looking less desirable than others.

Cassie reached for another scrapbook and showed him some clippings of Sam’s hair and even the minuscule crescents of his fingernails. Sebastian reached out and touched the hair with his fingers; the dark curls could have been his when he was the same age. Emotion clogged his throat and he had to swallow again to clear it.

‘I don’t have many photos of when he was four,’ Cassie said, still looking at the open book resting on Sebastian’s thighs.

‘Why not?’ he asked.

She looked at him then. ‘Because that was the
year he was taken away from me,’ she said with an embittered set to her mouth. ‘The foster parents didn’t think to take photographs for me. Why would they? I was just a prisoner.’

Sebastian began to understand then some of what she had gone through. He had missed out on five years of Sam’s life but she, too, had missed out. She had lost six years of her young life, and a whole year of her son’s with not even a photograph to comfort her. No wonder Sam was as shy as he was and so frightened of being separated from his mother. In each of the photos up until he turned three Sam was a happy, smiling little baby and toddler. It was only when Cassie showed him the remaining photos, including the ones up to date, that Sebastian could see what that year without his mother had done to Sam.

‘Can I keep these for a few days?’ he asked after a moment. ‘I want to get some copies made.’

Cassie wasn’t sure, but she thought she could see a hint of moisture in the darkness of his gaze. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘But please be careful with them. I’ve already lost a photo or two where the glue has come unstuck.’

‘I will make sure they are handled with the utmost care,’ he promised. ‘Thank you for showing them to me. I cannot tell you what it has meant to me.’