Page 5 of Crowned for His Son

Was he…?

Did he…?

The visceral need to know propelled her towards him, when she should’ve been ending this absurd confrontation and retreating.

The Good Samaritan she’d tracked down weeks after waking from her coma—a man who’d found her with a life-threatening head injury, wandering along the road near a remote truck stop in Southern California—had known very little of what had happened to her. The police, when they’d eventually turned up at the hospital, had only been able to trace her last known whereabouts to a hostel in Vegas, leaving her with no clue as to how she’d ended up in California—save for the possibility that she’d been going to see her mom—or what had happened to rob her of several weeks of her life.

The only tenuous connection—discovered desperate weeks later, after almost driving herself ill to the point of re-hospitalisation—had been the memory of snippets of conversation with Nick, in the Vegas casino where she’d worked.

Nick—another silver-spoon-fed millionaire who had frequently visited the casino where she’d previously worked—had not taken her firm refusal to go on a date with him with good grace. He’d been relentless in his pursuit. Throwing offers of riches and luxury at her feet until he’d realised that she wouldn’t be moved by them. That, in fact, she was repulsed by his obscene display of power and wealth.

He’d changed tack then, and stopped tossing around trips to Paris and life-changing shopping experiences. Instead he’d bought her a hotdog that time he’d caught her on a break. Walked her to the bus stop instead of thinking he could sway her with a ride in his Lamborghini.

It had been during those two curiously well-timed meetings that she remembered him dangling the offer of a job…somewhere. A job lucrative enough that she’d been tempted. But she had no clue whether she’d taken the job, and with the authorities’ very tepid reaction to her half-clues she’d drawn a frustrating blank.

And with Nick dead, and her sole attempt at contacting his family having resulted in the immediate harsh threat of a lawsuit, she’d accepted that dead end.

Her heart leaping into her throat now, she opened her mouth to ask. Only to recall her doctor’s dire warning not to go probing.

Familiar frustration and the naked fear of living permanently with this hole in her memory clawed through her.

Shaking her head, she pushed both heavy sensations away. ‘Are we done here? I’d like to salvage what’s left of my shift, if that’s all right with you?’

* * *

She was lying. Playing games. She had to be.

And yet if she’d been an actress, Azar would’ve fully endorsed an award for that performance.

‘You may leave,’ he said eventually.

He watched her head for the door, her hip-sway admittedly less prominent than it had been the last time he’d watched her walk away, but still hypnotic. Still enough to warm and rouse his shaft. To make his fingers curl into a fist with the need to touch.

Absolutely not happening.

But…

One last test.

‘Eden?’

She glanced over her shoulder in the exact way she had that last time too, the defiant tilt of her chin at once challenging and enthralling. That night it had been enough for him to stalk over to her and demand one last kiss, unaware that she was leaving his bed and going straight into betraying him with his best friend.

She was watching him warily, her breath turning a touch agitated, bringing his attention to the seductive curve of her breasts. ‘Your Highness?’

He ignored her tart tone and delivered his message. ‘We will meet again.’

There was no disadvantage to forewarning her. Now he’d found her again she would need supernatural powers or the help of Houdini himself to slip through his grasp again.

Her silken throat moved, but stopped shy of a swallow. It was almost admirable, the way she fought not to show her alarm. But it didn’t matter. Whatever game she was playing, he would get to the bottom of it.

Then pay her back a hundredfold.

‘Not if I can help it,’ she parried.

Then she slipped through the door, slamming it behind her.

He waited all of ten seconds before he yanked the door open. Ramon and his men hovered outside the door, along with his half-brothers.

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