Page 7 of Crowned for His Son

Her brain insisted this was a mistake.

But…

No.

Seeing the news of Nick’s accident in Arizona, weeks after waking up from a coma with an awful three-month gap in her memory, she’d hoped it would shed light on his possible connection with her own mysterious trauma, but the police had been closed-lipped about giving details. She suspected they’d also been threatened by Nick’s family with the same lawsuit she had. Not even her shame-tinged confession that she was pregnant, and that Nick was the strongest contender as father of her child, had swayed them.

She’d returned home to Vegas pregnant, with no clue as to who the father of her baby was. Short of tracking down the hundreds of trust fund billionaires, socialites and royalty among the friends and acquaintances littering the late Nick Balas’s social media pages, she’d had to quickly resolve to embrace single motherhood. She’d decided to focus on caring for the baby growing in her womb—the baby she’d already been heads over heels in love with. That way she had also avoided exposing herself to the kind of appalling slut-shaming her father had subjected her mother to before callously disavowing Eden’s paternity.

Eden punched her pillow and flipped over, her thoughts peeling back those weeks when she’d attempted to contact Nick’s family and quickly been reminded that men like her heartless father still existed—that they remained as vile as her own parent had been, thinking nothing of viciously informing the child they’d so carelessly created that as far as they were concerned they’d never been born. That their existence meant less than nothing to them.

She’d also been reminded that men like that could shatter lives with a single call to their lawyers. The same way her father had devastated her mother, leaving her a shell of herself. Leaving Eden with a searing promise never to risk walking in her mother’s shoes.Ever.

Only to discover she might well have.

She’d heard the many horror stories of influential families wresting custody of a child from financially unstable mothers. Still, she’d given in to a sliver of granting them the benefit of doubt.

Only to receive a‘cease and desist’letter from Nick’s brother and father. Containing the labels she’d most dreaded.

Grasping whore… Heartless leech, preying on the memory of our dead family member.

Their vicious response had killed any desire to tell them that she might be pregnant with Nick’s son. That Nick, with his dark hair and faintly tanned colouring, might be her son’s father, even though Max’s eyes were more a silver-grey than Nick’s faint blue.

Nick. Who would have been thirty-six today…

As she rose from bed the next day at the crack of dawn, Eden wondered if it was wise to continue the ritual she’d started with Max last year, of laying flowers at Nick’s graveside.

While a part of her had questioned what she was doing, a greater part had been adamant about acknowledging the man who might have fathered her child. If—when—her memory returned, and she discovered differently, the worst that would’ve happened was her having paid respects to a man she’d known briefly.

That resolution didn’t stop her stomach from churning as she showered, dressed and went to wake Max.

The sunlight spilling through the curtains caught his dark curls, then his eyes and cheeks. Eden wasn’t sure why her heart dipped into her belly, then nosedived to her toes. Millions of men had clefts in their chin. This was merely a coincidence, she insisted, as she bundled Max into warm clothes.

At the park near her apartment they made a game of picking flowers, Max faithfully reciting the colours and excitedly clutching the bouquet as they walked the quarter-mile to the cemetery.

The churning in her belly intensified as she stood before Nick’s tombstone, suppressing her frustration and panic at the thought that she might never recover those three months she’d lost.

She urged Max forward. ‘Come on, baby. Put the flowers here.’

She smiled shakily at his faint protest at relinquishing his colourful bouquet. But glancing up at her, and perhaps sensing her mood, he stepped forward and dropped them onto the grey marble.

Crouching down to his level, she brushed a kiss on his cheek. ‘Good boy.’

She was basking in his smile when the tingling danced over the back of her neck. She glanced up. Several cars dotted the streets dissecting the cemetery, and two dark-tinted SUVs were parked a short distance away, but nothing stood out to her.

Shaking her head at herself, she silently wished Nick a happy birthday and caught her son’s plump hand in hers. She wasn’t going to dwell on her jumpy emotions. They were due at Mrs Tolson’s for pancakes in forty-five minutes, and the older woman—a former school principal—disliked tardiness, although she was a little more flexible when it came to Max.

Smiling fondly at the thought, Eden slowed her steps to match his tiny, tottering ones as they headed home.

They arrived home with five minutes to spare and stopped at her apartment to wash Max’s hands.

‘Are you looking forward to pancakes, baby?’

‘Pancakes!’

Laughing, she opened her front door.

Then squeaked at the tall, dark and deadly handsome figure filling her doorway. ‘Y-you—what are you doing here?’

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