Shock Heir For The King

‘You’re saying...’ He stared at her, trying to make sense of this, looking for an explanation and arriving at only one. ‘You didn’t have an abortion?’

‘Of course I didn’t.’

Matthias had a rapier-sharp mind, yet he struggled to process her words, to make sense of what she was saying. ‘You did not have an abortion?’

‘No.’

And something fired inside his mind, a memory, a small recollection that had been unimportant at the time. He spun away from her and stalked through the gallery, through the smaller display spaces that curved towards a larger central room. And he stared at the wall that had framed Frankie when he’d first walked in. He’d been so blindsided by the vision of her initially that he hadn’t properly understood the significance of what he was seeing. But now he looked at the paintings—ten of them in total, all of the same little boy—and his blood turned into lava in his veins.

He stared at the paintings and a primal sense of pride and possession firmed inside him. Something else too. Something that made his chest scream and his brow heat—something that made acid coat his insides, as he stared at the boy who was so familiar to him.

Spiro.

He was looking at a version not only of his younger self, but also of his brother. Eyes that had held his, pain and anguish filling them, as life ebbed from him. Eyes that had begged him to help. Eyes that had eventually clouded and died as Matthias watched, helpless, powerless.

For a moment he looked towards the ground, his chest heaving, his pulse like an avalanche, and he breathed in, waiting for the familiar panic to subside.

‘This is my son.’ More than his son—this was his kin, his blood, his.

He didn’t have to turn around to know she was right behind him.

‘He’s two and a half,’ Frankie murmured, the words husky. She cleared her throat audibly. ‘His name is Leo.’

Matthias’s eyes swept shut as he absorbed this information. Leo. Two and a half. Spiro had been nine when he’d died, the vestiges of his boyish face still in evidence. Cheeks that were rounded like this, and dimpled when he smiled, eyes that sparkled with all his secrets and amusements.

He pushed the memories away, refusing to give into them like this. Only in the middle of the night, when time seemed to slip past the veil of living, when ancient stars with their wisdom and experience whispered that they would listen, did he let his mind remember, did he let his heart hurt.

He turned his attention to the paintings, giving each one in turn the full power of his inspection. Several of the artworks depicted Leo—his son—in a state of play. Laughing as he tossed leaves overhead, his sense of joy and vitality communicated through the paint by Frankie’s talented hand. Other paintings were a study of portraiture.

It was the final picture that held him utterly in its thrall.

Leo was staring out of the canvas, his expression frozen in time, arresting a moment of query. One brow was lifted, his lips were turned into a half-smile. His eyes were grey, like Matthias’s—in fact, much of his face was a carbon copy of Matthias’s own bearing. But the freckles that ran haphazardly across the bridge of his nose were all Frankie’s, as was the defiant amusement that stirred in the boy’s features.

Emotions welled inside Matthias, for his own face was only borrowed—first from his father, King Stavros, and it had now been passed onto his own son. What other features and qualities were held by this boy, this small human who was of his own flesh and blood?

His own flesh and blood! An heir! An heir his country was desperate for, an heir he had been poised to marry in order to beget—an heir, already living! An heir, two years old, who he knew nothing about!

‘Where is he?’ The question was gravelled.

He felt her stiffen—he felt everything in that moment, as though the universe was a series of strings and fibres connected through his body to hers. He turned around, pinning her with a gaze that shimmered like liquid metal.

‘Where.’ The word was a slowly flying bullet. ‘Is.’ He took a step closer to her. ‘He?’

All the myths upon which he’d been raised, the beliefs of his people as to the power and strength that ran through his veins, a power that was now in his son’s veins, propelled him forward. But it was not purely a question of royal lineage and the discovery of an heir. This was an ancient, soul-deep need to meet his son—as a man, as a father.

Alarm resonated from Frankie and until that moment he’d never understood what the term ‘mother bear’ had been coined for. She was tiny and slight but she looked more than capable of murdering him with her bare hands if he did anything to threaten their child.

‘He’s outside the city,’ she said evasively, her eyes shifting towards the door. Through it was the foyer, and somewhere there the man who ran this gallery. Her fear was evident, and it served little purpose. He was no threat to her, nor their son.

With the discipline he was famed for, Matthias brought his emotions tightly under control. They didn’t serve him in that moment. Just like his grief had needed to be contained when his family had been killed, so too did his feelings need to be now.

His whole world had shifted off its axis, and he had to find a way to fix that. To redefine the parameters of his being. An heir was driving his need for marriage and here, it turned out, an heir already existed! There was no option for Matthias but to bring that child home to Tolmirós.

His future shifted before his eyes, and this woman was in it, and their son. All the reasons he’d had for walking away from her still stood, except for this heir. It changed everything.

‘I had no idea you were pregnant.’

‘Of course you didn’t. How could you? You probably walked out as soon as I fell asleep.’

No, he’d waited longer than that. He’d watched her sleep for a while, and thought of his kingdom, the expectations that he would return to Tolmirós and take up his title and all the responsibilities that went with that. Frankie had been a diversion—a distraction. She’d been an indulgence when he’d known he was on the cusp of the life he’d been destined to lead.

Only she’d also been quicksand, and a fast escape had seemed the only solution. The longer he’d lingered, the deeper he’d risked sinking, until escape had no longer been guaranteed.

Besides, he’d comforted himself at the time, he’d made her no promises. He’d told her he was only in the States for the weekend. There were no expectations beyond that. He hadn’t broken his word.

‘If you’d left your number, I would have called. But you just vanished into thin air. Not even the detective I hired could find you.’

‘You hired a detective?’ The admission sent sparks through him—sparks of relief and gratitude. Because she hadn’t intentionally kept their son a secret. She’d wanted him to be a part of the boy’s life. And if he’d known of the child back then? If he’d discovered Frankie’s pregnancy?

He would have married her. Her lack of suitability as a royal bride would have been beside the point: his people cared most for the delivery of an heir.

And now he had one.

Every possibility and desire narrowed into one finite realisation. There was only one way forward and the sooner he could convince Frankie of that, the better.

‘Yes.’ She looked away from him and swallowed visibly, her throat chording before his eyes and his gut clenched as he remembered kissing her there, feeling the fluttering of her racing pulse beneath her fine, soft skin. ‘I felt you should know.’

‘Indeed.’ He dipped his head forward and then, appealing to the sense of justice he knew ran through her passionate veins, ‘Will you come for dinner with me?’

Her refusal was imminent but he shook his head to forestall her. ‘To discuss our son. You must see how important that is?’

She was tense, her face rigid, her eyes untrusting. But finally she nodded. A tight shift of her head and an even tighter grimace of those cherry-stained lips. ‘Fine. But just a quick meal. I told Becky I’d be home by nine.’

‘Becky?’

‘My downstairs neighbour. She helps out with Leo when I’m working.’

He filed this detail away, and the image it created, of the mother of his child, the mother of the heir to the throne of Tolmirós, a child worth billions of euros, being minded by some random woman in the suburbs of New York.

‘A quick meal, then,’ he said, giving no indication he was second-guessing her child-minding arrangements.

‘Well?’ The owner of the gallery appeared from behind the desk, his eyes travelling from Frankie to Matthias. ‘Isn’t she talented?’

‘Exceptionally,’ Matthias agreed, and he’d always known that to be the case. ‘I will take all of the artworks against that wall.’ He gestured through the doorway, to the display that housed the portraits of his son.

‘You’ll what?’ Frankie startled as she looked up at him, though he couldn’t tell if she was surprised or annoyed.

He removed a card from his wallet. ‘If you call the number on this card, my valet will arrange payment and delivery.’ He nodded curtly and then put a hand in the small of Frankie’s back, guiding her towards the front door.