The Future King’s Love-Child (9 page)

‘Yes…you’ve made it very special for them and at such short notice. You must have very efficient staff.’

‘I hope it wasn’t too short for them,’ he said, turning to look back at Sam’s table with a small frown settling between his brows. ‘When I was a
little child it was often the anticipation of a special event that was the best part.’

The silence stretched for several heart-chugging seconds.

‘I want to see you again tonight, Cassie,’ Sebastian said, turning to face her.

Her eyes darted away from his. ‘Um…I can’t see you tonight…something’s come up. I’m sure you understand how—’

‘I understand one thing, Cassie, and that is I want to continue our association,’ he said with an intransigent look. ‘For the time being at least.’

She moistened her lips with the point of her tongue, her gaze flicking to where the children were seated, staring up at the magician as if he had cast a spell on them.

Sebastian took her arm and led her out of sight of the tables. ‘Listen to me, Cassie,’ he demanded softly but no less implacably. ‘This time I am the one who will say when our affair is over.’

She clawed at his hand around her wrist, her eyes shooting sparks of defiance at him. ‘It’s too dangerous,’ she said. ‘Can’t you see that? Last night was a mistake. We should not have been together. It’s over, Sebastian. It was over a long time ago.’

‘Mummy?’ A small child’s voice sounded from behind Sebastian.

A gnarled hand clutched at his insides.

Mummy?

Sebastian turned and looked down at the little dark-haired boy called Sam who was chewing on his lip as he looked up at Cassie.

‘Mummy, I need to go to the toilet but I don’t know where it is. Can you take me?’

Sebastian felt a cold sensation go down his spine, like slow-moving ice. He swung his gaze back to Cassie. ‘
You
are Sam’s mother?’ he asked in a voice that sounded nothing like his.

Her face was shell-white, her eyes darting about in nervousness. ‘I—I was going to tell you…’ she began.

He frowned at her darkly, his thoughts shooting all over the place. God, she’d had a child. Somehow that hurt more than it should have. How had she kept such a thing a secret? He had heard no mention of a child. Why had she told him the boy was her flatmate’s child? Why had she kept such a thing a…

He looked at the small boy again, his chest suddenly feeling as if something large and heavy had just backed over it and squeezed every scrap of air out of his lungs. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t speak. He stood frozen, every drop of blood in his body coming to a screaming, screeching halt.

Cassie had had a child while she was in prison, a child who looked just like Sebastian. Thick,
curly, black hair, dark brown eyes, olive skin and lean to the point of thin.

He had a son
.

He had a child who had been kept a secret from him until now. Five years had passed and he had been robbed of every minute of his son’s life. How many milestones had he missed? It tore at his insides to even think about them. When had he taken his first step? When had he said his first word? For God’s sake, he didn’t even know what day he had been born! Five birthdays had passed and he had not been there to celebrate any of them.

‘Sorry, M-mummy,’ Sam said with a wobble in his voice as he looked between them with eyes wide with worry. ‘I tried to hold on but I had two glasses of lemonade. Will I get in trouble?’

‘No…no, of course not, darling,’ Cassie said, enveloping the boy in a hug. ‘You’re not in trouble at all. You’re allowed to have all the lemonade you want.’

Sebastian watched as she slowly straightened, her eyes finally meeting his. He had thought he had hated her for what she had done to him before, but this was far worse. She had kept his son a secret, he could only assume deliberately. His mind began to reel at the thought of why she had left it this late. Had she planned to bring down the house of Karedes with a carefully timed press release?

He looked back down at Sam, the likeness hitting him over the head like a sledgehammer.

His son
.

His son
.

The words were running continuously in his head, like a recording stuck on one track.

He dragged his gaze back to Cassie’s. ‘We need to talk,’ he somehow managed to get out past the thick, tight feeling in his throat.

Her eyes fell away. ‘Not here…’ She held the child close against her protectively. ‘Not now.’

He clenched and unclenched his fists as he tried to keep control as she led Sam away. His insides were twisting as if a giant set of claws were attacking him. He felt a pain so intense he had to do everything in his power to keep a poker face in case anyone in the room picked up on his tension.

Sebastian had to think and to think fast. The party was almost over. He had to get Cassie somewhere safe so they could thrash this out. Anger rushed through him at the way she had lied to him, time and time again. She had given herself to him last night while holding this secret. That made him more furious than anything else. She had agreed to an affair with him to ramp up the stakes for him, so that when she dropped her bombshell the person who would pay the biggest
price would be him. Damn it, he had already paid the biggest price. She had made sure of it by keeping him in ignorance of his own flesh and blood.

He pushed his anger to one side as he thought about that engaging little boy.
His son
. The words still felt unfamiliar on his tongue, he hadn’t expected to say them for many years to come. But there was no mistaking that boy was his. Could no one else see it?
Had
anyone else seen it? His guts turned to gravy just thinking about the fallout from this. He had thought the leak about the Stefani diamond would be devastating, but it didn’t even rate next to this.

Sam was a living, breathing image of himself. No wonder he had felt drawn to him. He had felt a connection that was almost visceral.

His stomach twisted again as he saw Cassie and Sam come back to where he was. The child was obviously picking up on the atmosphere; his little chin was trembling and tears began to shine in his eyes. How many times had Sebastian been exactly like that, clinging to his mother, tearful, fearful and unbearably shy?

‘Is my mummy in t-trouble?’ Sam asked, blinking up at Sebastian. ‘She’s not going to be taken away again, is she?’

Sebastian felt his heart tighten unbearably. He
crouched down and put his hand on the little boy’s shoulder, his hand seeming so big in comparison to the small thin bones beneath his palm. ‘No one is going to take your mummy away, Sam,’ he said, ‘but I do need to talk to her. How would you like to come with her to my special hideaway for a few days? Have you ever been on a holiday before?’

Sam shook his head solemnly. ‘No…’

Sebastian smiled and gently ruffled the black silk of his hair. ‘Then it is about time you did. I will see to it immediately.’

Cassie cleared her throat. ‘Excuse me, but I don’t want—’

He straightened and cut his eyes to hers, gritting out in an undertone so Sam wouldn’t hear, ‘Do not speak to me until we are alone. You have a lot of explaining to do and I hope to God you’ve polished your explanation by the time I hear it or I swear there will be consequences that will not sit well with you.’

Cassie shrank back from the blistering anger in his tone. Her stomach caved in, her knees knocking together as she tried to control her erratic breathing. In spite of his assurances to Sam he could so easily take him off her. It would be the sort of revenge that would appeal to him. He had been denied all knowledge of his son for the first five years of his life. What better way to hurt
her than to take Sam away from her indefinitely? She would end up just like Angelica, dragging herself through each day, her heart empty for the son she had lost and most likely would never see again.

Cassie watched in gut-wrenching despair as Sebastian strode over to Stefanos, his aide, exchanging a few words with him before coming back to where she and Sam were standing.

‘I have arranged for you and Sam to be transported immediately to Kionia,’ he said in a tone that warned her not to interrupt, much less contradict. ‘I will contact the orphanage and offer them some excuse as to why you and the boy will not be returning.’

Cassie’s eyes flared, but she kept her lips tightly clamped. She could feel the tremble of her son’s thin shoulders under her hands and didn’t want to cause him any more distress.

‘M-Mummy?’

‘It’s all right, Sam,’ she said, stroking his hair with an unsteady hand. ‘I’m not going to leave you.’

Sebastian’s glittering gaze challenged hers before he squatted down to speak to Sam. ‘I have arranged for my old nanny to be at my villa,’ he said. ‘She will look after you any time Mummy cannot. She is lovely, just like a grandmother.’

‘I don’t have a grandmother,’ Sam said, biting his lip.

Yes, you do
, Sebastian thought with a mental wince. His mother was going to take this news hard. She would love Sam, it was not in her nature to do anything else, but accepting Cassie Kyriakis was another thing entirely.

He straightened to his full height to address Cassie once more. ‘Stefanos will accompany you to your flat to pick up some essentials, but it is imperative that you speak to no one.’

‘But what about Angelica?’ she asked. ‘I can hardly walk out without some sort of explanation.’

His eyes bored into hers. ‘Does she know about this?’

She pressed her lips together, releasing them to whisper, ‘No. I’ve never told her.’

Sebastian felt his spine turn to ice again. ‘Does anyone know?’ he asked, trying to keep his voice low. ‘Anyone at the orphanage?’

She moistened her lips with the point of her tongue. ‘Everyone knows he is my son but they don’t know who the father is. I swear no one does.’

Sebastian wondered whether he could believe her. She had already told so many lies he was surprised she had been able to keep track of them all. It only demonstrated how adept she was at pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes.

‘I will see you this evening once you have settled Sam into bed,’ he said. ‘I have some other engagements now, but Stefanos is doing his utmost to clear my diary for the next few days.’

She gave him a mutinous look but he had already warned Stefanos she might try and escape with the child. He had instructed his aide to put her under lock and key until he returned. He wasn’t going to risk anything at this stage. With a few choice words to the press Cassie could have made herself a fortune and brought down his rulership in one fell swoop.

The only question that niggled at him was why hadn’t she done so already?

C
ASSIE
paced the floor of the study where Stefanos had instructed her to wait for Sebastian. Sam was in bed, exhausted, barely putting up a struggle when the elderly but totally competent nanny Eleni had told him she would be babysitting him while his mother was downstairs.

Cassie’s nerves felt as if they had been stretched beyond the limit. She was jumpy and agitated, the imposing walls of the luxury villa feeling like prison all over again. Her earlier distress had now turned to anger. As each minute dragged past she felt her rage escalating. Was he doing it deliberately? Making her wait for him like this, reminding her with chilling clarity he had all the power, all the control and all the cold-blooded ruthlessness to do what he wanted?

The door suddenly opened and she swung around. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing
locking me up in this place?’ she railed as Sebastian came in.

Cassie had thought she had the highest score on anger until she saw the white-tipped fury on his face. He was in control but barely. She had never seen him so blisteringly, blazingly angry. His whole body was rigid with it, his hands clenched into tight fists, a pulse beating like a jackhammer in his neck.

‘You cold-hearted, deceitful little bitch,’ he spat at her malevolently.

Cassie took a step backwards, her voice locking in her throat.

He came up close, so close she had to fight every instinct not to shrink away. ‘You lying little whore,’ he went on brutally. ‘I didn’t think even you could go as low as you have gone, using a small, innocent child to cover up each and every one of your despicable lies.’

She swallowed tightly as guilt washed over her in scorching waves.

‘It was all a game to you, wasn’t it?’ he said when she didn’t speak.

She closed her eyes to escape the fire of his fury.

‘Look at me, damn you!’

She flinched and opened her eyes again, her whole body beginning to shake. ‘It wasn’t like that…’

‘What was it like, then?’ he said with a curl of his lip. ‘“Here is a painting by a little orphan,”’ he mimicked her voice. ‘God, I could shake you until your teeth rattled for that alone.’

Cassie bit the inside of her mouth until she tasted blood.

‘You lied to my face time and time again. How could you use a small innocent child to cover your back like that?’

‘I know…’ she choked. ‘I’m sorry…’

His eyes narrowed to black slits. ‘You are
sorry?
Oh, so that makes it all OK, then, does it, Cassie? You are sorry you forgot to mention you had my son five years ago but everything’s rosy now it’s all sorted out.’ He raked a hand through his hair. ‘God, give me strength.’

‘I tried to tell you…I tried to but you didn’t respond to my letter.’

His glare turned to a frown. ‘Letter?’ he asked. ‘What letter?’

She swallowed tightly. ‘I wrote you a letter as soon as I found out I was pregnant. When you didn’t respond I assumed you weren’t interested in hearing what I had to tell you. I didn’t try again. It was too dangerous in any case. I could hardly write and tell you I was carrying your child—all my letters were screened.’

He gave her a cutting look. ‘You were not going
to tell me anything until you could do so for maximum effect, isn’t that right, Cassie? I am just a matter of weeks away from being crowned as King. You could not have chosen a more devastatingly effective time.’

‘No, that’s not right,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you at all… Sam and I are leaving as soon as my parole is up. I’ve…I’ve already got the tickets.’

A menacing silence tightened the air to snapping point.

‘So…let me get this right,’ he said, skewering her gaze with his. ‘You were going to take
my
child off the island never once telling me of his existence, is that correct?’

It sounded awful when he put it like that, Cassie thought. ‘I thought it would be for the best,’ she said. ‘You’re about to be King. I thought the last thing you would want to know about is a love-child.’

‘Is that what you call him—
a love-child?
’ he asked in scorn. ‘But there was no love, was there, Cassie?’

She brought up her chin. ‘I did love you.’
I do
love you
.

His bark of a laugh was a bitter, horrible sound that echoed ominously in the room. ‘Oh, yes, I remember now. You claimed to love me but you were opening your legs for anyone else who came along.’

‘It wasn’t like that…’ she said in a barely audible voice. ‘There was no one else.’

He came up even closer, so close she could see every dark fleck in his eyes and every spark of glittering hatred. ‘Is there no end to your falsehoods?’ he bit out. ‘Do you think I would fall for any more of your despicable lies?’

Cassie felt the cold hand of despair clutch at her insides. ‘I only told you that so I could end our relationship,’ she said. ‘I was afraid…’

‘Of what?’

‘Of…of how things were between us,’ she said, not able to hold his gaze.

‘I don’t believe you. I don’t believe a word that comes out of that perfidious mouth of yours,’ he said. ‘You are a liar just as your father always said you were. I was a fool to think otherwise. For years I have thought he was painting a worse picture of you to serve his own ends, but after this I realise everything he said about you was true. You have no conscience, no moral sense of what is right. Lying is second nature to you.’

‘Yes, well, he would have known,’ she shot back. ‘It takes one to know one, doesn’t it?’

He gave her a contemptuous look. ‘You can malign him all you like because he can’t defend himself. I know whose version I prefer to believe.’

Cassie felt her world start to crumble all over
again. She had been so close to telling him what her father had been like, had told him more than she had told anyone, and yet now there was no way he would believe her if she told him the rest. The pain she felt was much worse than she could ever have imagined. It was as if her life, all of her suffering and despair had been a fantasy she had made up to protect herself.

Wasn’t that always the way it had been? Everyone had always believed her father and they continued to do so even though he was dead. She’d had no one to defend her in the past and there would be no one in the future. Not even the one person she had wanted to understand her situation more than any other.

‘Did you know you were pregnant when you ended our relationship?’ he asked, still glaring at her furiously.

‘No…I only found out after I was in prison. I had a health check done and a pregnancy test was standard procedure. The results came back positive. I was shocked. I didn’t even know you could fall pregnant while on the pill.’

Sebastian heard the anguish behind the words and felt his anger loosen around the edges. She had been eighteen years old. Sure, she had acted like a streetwise slut, but finding herself pregnant and in prison must have thrown her for six.

‘That’s when I wrote to you,’ she said, her eyes glistening with moisture. ‘I asked to see you. I didn’t think it would be appropriate to tell you other than face to face.’

‘I received no such letter,’ he said, still wondering if he should believe her. She was so good at this, damn her. She could even tear up on cue. He could feel the effect on him and could only assume it was deliberate. What she hoped to achieve he wasn’t entirely sure. Perhaps a massive pay out to stop her from going to the press, but if he paid it how could he be sure she wouldn’t double-cross him? And besides, he wanted to freely acknowledge Sam as his own son. The child deserved so much better than he’d had so far in his short life.

Sebastian felt his anger simmering all over again at how his son had been born in a prison instead of the palace where he belonged. God only knew what things he had seen or heard in those first formative years of his life, the people he had been housed with, the toughened criminals, the down-and-outs and dregs of society knew his son better than he did.

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ she said, the line of her mouth bitter.

He hesitated for perhaps a fraction too long to be convincing. ‘I can only say if a letter was sent I did not see it. Someone must have intercepted it and destroyed it.’

‘Your father?’

Sebastian considered it for a moment. ‘I would not like to think him responsible for such an act, but I have no way of proving it either way.’

‘So you’d rather believe me capable of lying than sully your father’s name with suspicion.’

He swore under his breath. ‘Cassie, you have done nothing but lie to me from the moment we met,’ he said. ‘If I am having trouble believing you now, then you have only yourself to blame.’

Tears shone in her eyes. ‘Please don’t take Sam away from me,’ she begged. ‘He wouldn’t cope with it, I know he wouldn’t. Please…please don’t take him away…’

Sebastian tried to harden his heart but it was impossible. She clearly loved the child and had gone through hell and high water to keep him. ‘I am not going to take him away from you,’ he said in a gruff tone. ‘I can see he loves you as much as you love him. I just want some answers and I want you for once in your life to be honest with me. You surely owe me that?’

‘I’m not sure I can trust you,’ she said. ‘You’ve brought me here against my will and locked all the doors behind me. I can’t bear it.’

‘There is no other way,’ he said. ‘I can’t have this leaked out to the press.’

‘Is that all that matters to you?’ she asked. ‘What people will think?’

‘Damn it, Cassie, I don’t care what people think. I am trying to protect Sam. He is totally innocent in all of this. I have missed out on five years of his life. How can I ever make it up to him? Where the hell do I start?’

Cassie felt so ashamed she hadn’t factored in how Sebastian would be feeling right now. He had only just learned of Sam’s existence. He had been robbed of so much and it could never be made up to him. She had been robbed herself when Sam had been taken away for the last year of her sentence and look how devastated that had left her. How much worse must he be feeling having not even known he had fathered a child until now?

‘I haven’t told him you are his father,’ she said into the painful silence.

‘Were you planning to tell him at some stage?’

‘How could I?’ she said in a broken whisper.

Sebastian scored another pathway through his hair. His emotions were all over the place. Every bone in his body was aching with the knowledge Cassie had borne his child alone. What if someone
had
intercepted her sole attempt to contact him? How could he blame her for not trying again since her first attempt had yielded
nothing? Even her best friend, his sister Lissa, had deserted her at their father’s command.

And there was Sam, shy little Sam who looked as if any moment he expected someone to destroy his carefully constructed world. His mother was everything to him, his anchor, just as Sebastian’s mother had been to him. How could he swoop in and take control without considering the effect on that endearing little boy?

‘He needs to be told,’ he said heavily. ‘I would like to be the one to do so.’

Cassie looked at him with worry, a dark shadow in her green eyes. ‘You mean to acknowledge him as your own?’

He placed his closed fist against his heart. ‘He is
my son
, Cassie,’ he said. ‘Do you really think I would turn my back on him?’

‘No…it’s just I thought with the coronation and all…’

‘That is not important right now,’ he said. ‘I want to spend the next couple of weeks getting to know him. I have to come to some sort of decision over his future as well as my own.’

‘I’m not asking you to give up the throne,’ she said. ‘I would never ask that of you.’

He studied her for a lengthy pause. ‘Why did you agree to another affair with me?’ he asked. ‘You knew I was his father—why dance with danger by getting involved with me again?’

She bit her lip and lowered her gaze. ‘I knew it was dangerous but…’

‘But?’

She brought her eyes back to his. ‘I couldn’t help myself…’

Sebastian hoped it wasn’t another one of her lies. She looked exhausted, pale and fragile and nothing like the in-your-face Cassie of the past. She had been steadily shrinking from him from the moment he had stepped into the room, cowering almost, which made him wonder…

‘Do you mind if I go to bed?’ she asked, pinching at the bridge of her nose. ‘I have the most appalling headache. It’s been coming on all afternoon.’

‘I didn’t realise,’ he said, frowning in concern. ‘You should have said. I will get Stefanos to show you to your room. It is next door to Sam’s and close to mine if you need anything during the night.’

‘Thank you…’

‘Cassie?’

She turned and looked at him, her face bleak and her eyes nothing less than soulless. ‘Yes?’

‘Thank you for not getting rid of him,’ he said. ‘You would have had many reasons to do so, but you did not.’

‘I
could
not,’ she said almost fiercely. ‘Termination or adoption was never going to be an option for me. I had grown up without knowing
my mother. It’s been like a gaping hole in my life. I couldn’t bear for my child to suffer the same.’

Sebastian could sense the pain behind the quietly spoken words. How had he not seen this about her before? But then he reminded himself their clandestine meetings had always been about satisfying an urgent physical need, they had not been about discovering intimate details of each other’s lives.

He suddenly realised he had told her even less about his own life. He hadn’t shared his frustration over his father’s heavy handedness. He had told her nothing of the sense of duty that was at times burdensome. He had simply enjoyed a red
-
hot affair with her, not for a moment thinking she was anything but a good-time girl.

Sebastian could see how fragile she was now. She looked like a wraith with her too-slim body and long, blonde hair awry from dragging her fingers through it agitatedly. It awoke every protective instinct in his body to draw her close and offer what comfort he could.

‘Cassie.’ He reached out and touched her ever so gently on the arm, but she flinched away as if he had slapped her.