He occasioned a glance at Sara. The frosty glare was back. “We will go inside.”
Whoever resided inside that room held special meaning to the Prince of Carvainia. But what did this have to do with her?
“Who—” she started, but Aleks shot her a warning glance as if daring her to make a noise and wake the sleeper. Sara fell silent.
He pushed the door open. Sara’s pulse rate elevated with an inexplicable nervousness as they tiptoed inside.
Sara’s first impression was a smell. Though the overriding scent was antiseptic, another odor that she couldn’t quite place lingered, too. This was a medical ward, not a bedroom.
The large room was semidarkened with enough light to see and work by but not enough to disturb the sleeper. An array of medical equipment looked out of place next to a stunning iron bed canopied in blood-red draperies trimmed in gold and black. The quiet was broken only by the shoosh and burr of those machines.
At the sight of Aleks, the attendants hovering near the bed bowed and backed silently away, but not before their eyes flicked over Sara, all with the same identical and troubling expression. Sara’s nervousness increased. Her palms began to sweat.
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.
Chapter Three
PRINCE ALEKSANDRE 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.”
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