Chapter Four
EDEN WAS GLAD she was sitting down when his hallucination-inducing words tunnelled into her brain. Her fingers dug into the plush velvet padding and she wondered whether she would pass out from the shock.
She concluded that would be impossible.
Because he couldn’t mean them.
‘I— What?’
Her babbled response fell in dizzying whispers. She blinked up at him, and part of her brain computed the ruthless determination on his face. The growing realisation that he was serious.
‘I— You’re crazy!’
Another flattening of his lips distracted her briefly, until he responded. ‘I assure you I am of perfectly sound mind.’
‘But… But I’m a w-waitress. With potholes in my memory. I can’t be your—your—’ She stopped. ‘Look, I think this has gone far enough!’ she snapped, her conviction that this was all some sort of elaborate game gaining momentum.
Her father had done enough of that, taunting both her and her mother from his lofty position. She would absolutely not take it from this man.
The lethal blaze growing in his eyes quickly abated when Max, deciding he needed to include others in his joy, pulled himself upright and started towards her, holding out a colourful storybook.
But a few steps from her he glanced up at Azar—his father—and changed direction.
Azar scooped him up, with a glint of pleased satisfaction in his eyes. She watched father and son, attempting not to feel slighted by Max’s innocent betrayal.
After a moment granting his son his attention, Azar shifted his gaze to her. ‘You think this is some sort of game?’ he asked, his voice deadly soft.
She shrugged. ‘You were pretty upset with me last night about something besides my not knowing who you were. Are you going to deny that?’
Shadows drifted across his face and his jaw clenched once. ‘This is neither the time nor the place—’
‘I think it’s exactly the time and place. Or do you often go around tossing out proposals to women you don’t like?’
And not just any proposal. One that guaranteed she would be queen . Which was just—absurd.
For a long stretch he studied her, almost dispassionately. ‘You’re the first to receive a proposal of marriage from me. But you’ll also recall that I have said this is entirely for the sake of my son’s destiny as heir to the throne.’
She noticed starkly that he didn’t address the subject of not liking her, and chose not to examine why it left a dark hollow in her belly.
‘ Our son. He’s not just yours—no matter how much you wish it so.’
A flare of colour stained his cheekbones at her speaking look at the way he clutched Max to his chest.
‘I’m not going to pretend I don’t feel possessive over the son I didn’t know existed until three hours ago,’ he bit out, redirecting his gaze to glide with open possession over Max.
That hollow in her stomach widened, intensifying that feeling of being left out in the cold that had been a far too familiar sensation since childhood. Because her father’s treatment of them hadn’t forged a bond between her and her mother. It had done the opposite, stripping her mother of every last ounce of self-esteem and sending her looking for love and affection in all the wrong places. The end result of which was that Eden had been abandoned to find her own way in life.
As much as she wanted to deny it, she knew wounds like those festered. Scarred. Left hearts and emotions intensely wary.
Striving to suppress the echoes of anguish, she opened her mouth, but he beat her to a response.
‘As for your profession…it’s nothing we can’t spin to suit the circumstances. It’s not common, but it’s not rare either.’
‘A prince plucking a downtrodden single mother from destitution into untold luxury and status?’
She’d meant it to sound caustic. Cynical in the extreme. But it emerged a touch breathless, wrapped in undeniable echoes of that dream of an unrealistic happily-ever-after that made her cringe.
‘Exactly so,’ he concurred, ignoring her abrasive tone. ‘Provided you play your cards right.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ She almost snorted as she said the words she seemed unable to stop parroting. ‘If you think I’m going to jump through hoops for—’
‘It means there’s a mountain of protocol and a strict code of behaviour you’ll need to adhere to as my wife and princess. You’ll need to be guided through it.’
The title was too nerve-shredding to contemplate just then, so she brushed it aside in favour of his other statement. ‘“Code of behaviour”? It’s almost as if—’ It was her turn to narrow her eyes as her insides shrivelled. ‘You don’t think very highly of me, do you?’ she murmured, then inhaled sharply. ‘Something happened three years ago, didn’t it? Something you’re judging me for?’
The tightening of his face told her she’d hit the bullseye.
‘Tell me what I did,’ she demanded.
‘Even if I was inclined to rehash your past, your doctor was at pains to advise otherwise. I may be many things, but I’m not a monster who’d blithely risk your health for my own purposes,’ he bit out.
That confused her. Surely he wasn’t looking out for her? That would make him almost…considerate…
‘Mama!’
Max choosing that moment to demand her attention was both frustrating and mollifying. Azar handed him over, reluctantly, then crouched before her. She grew far too aware of the arms he rested on either side of her thighs. Hands that had touched her, caressed her when they made a child together…
‘What does he need?’ he enquired when Max continued to fret.
Switching into ‘mom mode’ took effort. ‘He’s tired,’ she said. ‘His morning has been overwhelming. A snack and some warm milk usually do the trick.’
Azar nodded, and she watched—with that punch of surprise she’d experienced a minute ago—as he rose and went to the phone. Minutes later, a butler wheeled in a sterling silver trolley with tiny bowls of everything a toddler might want to snack on, and a jug filled with warm milk on its own silver platter.
Under any other circumstances Eden would have joked at the sheer over-the-top-ness of it all. But she knew she was getting a tiny glimpse of what the future held for her son. Possibly for her.
A life surrounded by people who thought nothing of using their wealth and influence to buckle people to their will—like her father.
A life far removed from the simplistic one she’d secretly dreamed of.
Could she do it?
Even for Max’s sake?
Near silence reigned as Eden placed Max in the sleek-looking highchair that had appeared. It was only broken by his enthusiasm for his snacks.
But then, ‘What happened in the past doesn’t change a single thing about what needs to happen for our son’s sake now,’ Azar murmured as they both watched Max eat. ‘He’s the most important thing. Sí? ’
Turning her head, she met his implacable gaze, and in a split second a serrated white-hot memory pierced her brain, causing a gasp.
‘What is it?’ he enquired sharply.
She shook her head, her hand going to her midriff as her heart pounded. ‘It’s— Every now and then I get a…a twinge. A memory attempting to break free, the doctor says.’
‘Is it triggered by something specific?’
Sí. That word, spoken in lyrical Spanish with that almost seductive cadence.
Her face flamed as his eyes probed, awaiting her answer. ‘Sometimes,’ she prevaricated.
He stared for another handful of seconds, then exhaled. ‘I have meetings and calls to make. The butler will show you the guest suite when you’re ready. But, Eden…’
‘Yes?’
‘Be prepared to give me an answer when I return.’
‘Or what?’
A slow, heart-thumping smile curved his lips. ‘Don’t ask questions you won’t like the answers to, cara . Suffice it to say, I always get what I want. And trust me when I tell you that claiming the son I didn’t know I had, and ensuring I don’t miss a second of making up the time I’ve lost with him, is number one on my list of desires.’
Long after he’d brushed a kiss on Max’s head and left the room she was grappling with his grave words. Registering that while her father had done the opposite—ruthlessly cutting her off, then ensuring she would never be a threat to him by doing everything in his power to ensure she never thrived—Azar was using his power to claim his son. To name him his heir within hours of meeting him.
But surely she was simply dealing with the other side of the same coin.
Wasn’t she?
* * *
Telling his father of his first grandchild’s existence was easier than Azar had anticipated, with the wry reminder that similar circumstances were the reason Azar’s own twin half-brothers existed easing the knots in his gut as he relayed the news.
‘I would prefer my sons don’t make a habit of following too closely in my footsteps, though,’ King Alfonso said, with a grunt that dissolved alarmingly into a hacking cough.
Azar’s fist tightened around his phone, his insides churning as he waited for his father to catch his breath.
‘Not that I would give any of you up for the world,’ King Alfonso added. ‘You and your brothers are the manifestations of a dream I believed would never come true.’
Then why didn’t you fight to prevent the nightmares of our childhood?
Azar grappled with the resurgence of bitterness as his father fell into the story he loved retelling, of how the palace doctors had pronounced him sterile after a bad case of mumps in his late teens. How he’d struggled through accepting that he would never father children and then, straight after finishing university, had gone on a months-long hedonism streak through Europe with a swathe of women. Only to discover after returning home that he’d got not one, but two women pregnant.
Azar’s right to the throne had only come about because he’d been the one born first—a fact he knew had always been and remained the subject that caused severe friction between his mother and his twin brothers’ mother.
Hell, it had been the reason why their respective mothers had spitefully connived to keep them apart until well into their early teens…a situation King Alfonso had been either laughably ineffectual at battling or blindly na?ve about until too much harm was done.
Now here he was, following directly in his father’s footsteps. Alfonso had married the woman who’d birthed his first born in a hastily arranged wedding that had surprisingly withstood the test of time, despite her senseless rivalry with the mother of Azar’s twin brothers. And despite the questionable machinations from his mother that had warped Azar’s childhood and left him certain that marriage was anathema to him.
Yes, he’d known from the moment he’d been able to make such deductions for himself that there would come a time when he’d have to marry, to further the Domene line. But despite the recent rumblings through the royal council, telling him that it was time, he’d managed to put it off. Had given himself the mental deadline of age forty before selecting one of the many ‘suitable’ women lined up to be his queen.
Between that, his father’s failing health and the earth-shaking news of his son’s existence, he was surprised he wasn’t knocking back several whiskies to numb the shock.
Blinking, he refocused as his father asked, ‘What’s his name?’
He pulled in a long, sustaining breath, his chest doing that curious squeezing thing when he thought of his son. The boy he would move heaven and earth to protect from the acrimony and indifference he’d suffered.
‘She named him Max.’
His father hummed in approval. ‘ Excelente. A good, strong name. Your great-grandfather was named Maximiliano, if you recall?’
He did, and when he’d first heard it he’d wondered if Eden had chosen the name deliberately, attempting to gain an advantage with that stroke of familial evocation. Her condition put that into doubt, though.
If it was true…
While the greater part of him believed her amnesia diagnosis, he couldn’t help but remember how effectively she’d pulled the wool over his eyes with her false innocent act three years ago. For weeks he’d bought that act, believing her to be a good woman caught in a bad situation, until the truth had slapped him in the face.
She’d cleverly played Nick and him against each other. Expressing interest in him before inexplicably switching to his friend, then back again. It had been the first time Azar had experienced raging jealousy, and he’d detested the turbulent emotion as much as he’d detested its instigator.
She should have been a run-of-the-mill hook-up—taken, pleasured and forgotten in the usual sequence of his liaisons.
Instead, he’d discovered that he’d bedded a virgin.
Then discovered that she’d selected him only because she’d seen him as the highest bidder.
While he’d felt a primal, borderline uncivilised satisfaction in claiming that prize, he’d been livid when she’d given herself to his best friend. When both she and Nick had taunted him with his expendability that last time before she’d slid into his car.
‘You’ve had your fun but give it up. She’s with me now.’
‘Yes, Azar. I’m with Nick now.’
Words that reminded him that even after all this time he wasn’t over the searing anathema of coming second best. Mommy issues , Teo had called it. He’d rolled his eyes yesterday. Mocked his brother. But the truth resided just there , in a sharp starburst of indelible pain, beneath the layers of muscle close to his heart. Was it any wonder that thus far the thought of reliving any of that by saddling himself with a wife was abhorrent?
And, yes, he’d hated his own friend for that too—a situation that had only compounded his guilt when Nick had perished before they could make amends.
Those weeks in Arizona they’d both discovered their weak spot. A stunning woman called Eden. And as the final betrayal she’d chosen his best friend, slid into his sports car after witnessing the lowest point of Azar’s life—fighting over a common woman—intending to sail into the sunset with Nick.
Only for his best friend to wrap his car around a tree and for Eden to fall off the face of the earth.
She’d done that to him. And it remained a spike stuck in his gut.
‘Azar?’
He started, realised he’d lost himself down another bitter memory lane and forgotten his father. ‘Sí, Papá?’
‘I asked when you were returning home with my grandson. That is your intention, yes?’
It was couched in a question, but it was an order. And, while his father might have grown frail far too quickly over the past year, King Alfonso still commanded with an iron fist. It was a shame that iron fist had never succeeded in stamping out the acrimonious battlefield that had been Azar’s childhood…
‘Yes. I… We’ll be home in a day or two. Three at most.’
No matter what feeble protests the cheaply dressed siren next door threw up.
He was still in combat mode when he left his office two hours later. Gaspar had advised him that his son was taking his afternoon nap. Which made it the perfect time to finalise his discussion with Eden.
He found her on the terrace, with a glass of what looked like mineral water in one hand and the other hand gliding through the rich, dark butterscotch abundance of her hair. She’d discarded her coat, revealing skinny leggings that moulded her shapely legs and rounded behind. The snug hem of her beige top was bordering on threadbare, emphasising her trim waist. While she’d possessed curves in all the right places the last time he saw her, he realised again that her hips had thickened slightly.
Mouth-wateringly.
He paused in the French doorway to compose himself, unwelcome heat rising as memory struck again—this time of sinking his fingers into that heavy silk mass, gripping it tight in a sensual direction that had made her scream and turn him inside out with a scorching pleasure it had taken an infuriatingly long time for him to forget.
Long after he’d left Arizona he’d considered whether that response too had been manufactured.
His jaw clenched now as he dismissed the memory and stepped onto the terrace.
‘Eden.’
She whirled around, her eyes going wide. Her curvy bust jiggled with her motion and Azar stifled a curse when his temperature rose several more notches. This was merely residual effects of that unwanted trip down memory lane. Nothing more.
‘Um… Max is taking a nap.’
‘I’m aware. Have you had lunch?’ He recalled she hadn’t eaten the pancakes this morning.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t have much of an appetite.’
Whether or not that was a dig at him, he chose not to contemplate. ‘Nevertheless, I’d prefer you eat something.’
‘Because you think whatever you’re about to throw at me requires I have sustenance?’
He allowed himself a grim smile. ‘I don’t just think, cara . I know.’
Her nostrils quivered. ‘I don’t know if that’s a joke or a veiled threat, Your Highness . But I’m not amused.’
Azar stiffened slightly, wondering if she remembered she’d used that same prim little voice to say his title three years ago. At first it had been to pretend she wasn’t interested in his advances. Then it had been because he’d demanded it while she was on her knees, driving him to heaven and back.
Now it was meant as a dig, and it would’ve been amusing had there not been so much awful stagnant water beneath that particular bridge.
He sensed Gaspar hovering behind him and turned to give the nod for their lunch to be brought out. Striding to the set table, he pulled out her chair and waited beside it.
Her gaze took in the set places, then rose to his. ‘Did you hear what I just said?’
‘I’m not deaf, Eden. Come…sit.’
He knew his even tone confused her. It had been carefully cultivated, purely for his mother, by the time he was seven years old and had come to realise that answering her shrill machinations with tantrums only made her act out more. That treating the Queen with sometimes impersonal kid gloves, like his father did, was the only way to defuse her volatile moods.
That lesson had served him well in his sexual liaisons in adulthood, effectively dismantling any foolish aspirations.
In the aftermath of Arizona, Azar had realised—to his bafflement and too late—that he was the one who’d lost control of his emotions. And that he had played expertly into Eden’s hands. She’d used his unfettered passions to manipulate him, much as his mother had before he’d gained the upper hand.
But Eden Moss would learn that very little threw him off course these days. That his passions were very much tethered. Granted, the day’s events had made this a unique day, as had those weeks they’d spent together in the desert…
No. He wasn’t about to wonder why most of the distinctive events of his adult life involved this woman.
‘I don’t have an answer for you,’ she pre-empted, defiance edging her husky voice.
One corner of his mouth twitched. ‘You will. Today or tomorrow. Either way, things are now set in motion that cannot and will not be undone.’
‘Such as…?’
She moved from the railing, approaching with a graceful glide that drew his eyes to her swaying hips. His fingers tapped the back of the chair, and after another charged second she sniffed and took the seat.
Azar took his own seat before responding. ‘Such as my father, the King, having been informed that he is a grandfather and insisting on meeting Max at the earliest opportunity. Which means presenting my son in Cartana by Friday at the latest. Such as the private doctors at the palace waiting to provide the DNA and other tests—’
‘I didn’t agree to that,’ she protested.
Her fingers tightened around her knife and for a moment he wondered whether she would use it, much as his mother had attempted to attack him when he was twelve and he hadn’t answered one of her manic questions quickly enough.
The memory dampened his already downturned mood.
‘Unfortunately, that forms part of the protocol I mentioned…’ He hesitated a moment before deciding to divulge the rest of the news. After all, she’d discover the reality before the weekend. ‘With my father being unwell, anyone admitted to his presence needs to be medically approved. And before all of that happens we need to make a stop in Milan or Paris.’
‘Why?’
His gaze drifted over her, lingering on the faintly frayed neckline of her top. On the creaminess of the skin those cheap clothes caressed.
Focus.
‘The Royal Family of Cartana requires adherence to certain immutable high standards. Where we stop depends on which of Teo’s boutiques is ready to accommodate a complete wardrobe fitting at such short notice.’
‘Teo?’ she echoed. ‘He has a fashion house, right?’
Azar tightened his gut against the needles of disgruntlement triggered by the awe in her voice. It was far too reminiscent of the jealousy he’d felt three years ago. But he couldn’t curb the grating sensation when he responded. ‘The House of Domene fashion brand, yes. Does that sway you into agreement?’ he bit out, before he could stop the betraying query.
Her face immediately tightened. ‘You think a bunch of designer clothes and accessories are all it takes to swing a life-changing decision in your favour?’ she hissed, with more venom than he’d anticipated.
He shrugged, demolishing that tiny hollow inside, made by her disappointment in him. ‘Is it? Either way, your life is going to change. If this smooths the way, then what does it hurt?’
Her eyes flashed with more venom before she pursed her lips. ‘You realise all you’re doing is confirming that you don’t like me very much? And I know you don’t think it matters, but it matters to me.’
‘Noted.’
Her lashes descended, then she flicked a glance at him. Azar noted her cheeks were lightly flushed, her chest rising and falling in a higher rhythm.
Her tongue slicked across her plump lower lip. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘You may ask, but I don’t guarantee an answer.’
‘I get the feeling you’re hiding behind Dr Ramsey’s advice, but—’ Her flush deepened and the stirring in his own groin intensified. ‘Did we—? Was it a one-night stand—between us?’
‘You’re asking if I took you more than once?’
Her expression remained veiled. ‘Y-yes.’
He shifted in his seat, the combination of her innocence and his need to know what she was thinking stirring further restlessness through him.
‘Without going into memory-endangering details, the answer is yes.’
So many days. So many positions. So many capricious emotions he’d thought left behind in his teenage years. If he hadn’t witnessed the perils of drugs and alcoholism at a young age, and vowed not to indulge in the former and severely limit his intake of the later, he might have thought he was under the influence of both during that heady time in the Arizona desert.
But every intoxicating, emotionally turbulent moment had come from this woman alone.
A combination of relief and unease flitted across her face, triggering his keener interest.
Basta!
Reaching for the nearest cloche, he lifted it to reveal the lobster bisque his memory had reminded him that she loved. Sneaking a glance from the corner of his eye, he watched her eyes widen slightly before she licked her lips in blatant hunger. He spooned two ladles full into bowls and exhaled in satisfaction when she picked up her spoon to sample the exquisite meal.
In silence, they ate, then moved to the next course.
Calm. Unruffled resolution.
That was the way forward with this woman some cosmic entity had deemed fit to bear his child and therefore wear his crown.
Tempestuous emotions from the recent and distant past would not be given a place in their union.
He simply wouldn’t allow it.
* * *