King's Unknown Baby Son: A Secret Baby Romance Read online

  King’s Unknown Baby Son

  A Secret Baby Romance

  Sophia Lynn

  Ella Brooke

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

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  Chapter 1

  Copyright © 2020 by Sophia Lynn & Ella Brooke

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This story is a work of fiction and any portrayal of any person living or dead is purely coincidental and not intended.

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  Chapter 1

  Esme

  Esme Lawrence had been awake for almost forty hours, her good silk blouse had a new coffee stain on it that she hoped was covered up by the sprig of baby's breath she had stolen from her room's floral arrangement, and she was radiantly happy.

  It's finally coming together, she thought, looking around at the crowded room. It's finally happening.

  The lobby of the Adhia University Graduate Library was filled with a mix of people that she knew very well. First there were those that she considered her people, the academics. No matter the continent, she could recognize the slightly abstracted gaze, the constant urge to double check their facts on their phones, the fashions that could be quite sharp but were usually a little off, whether out of date or slightly rumpled from a day in the library or the lab.

  Second, there was the press; mostly junior reporters who were sent out on the slower culture bits. They circulated the lobby with their eyes keen for anything that might spark a reader's interest, and more than one, Esme could see, had been neatly buttonholed by some academic who was only too eager to show them how important the Illan manuscripts were, how they had impacted history throughout the Middle East, and throughout the world.

  Third... well.

  Third were the patrons, the wealthy alumni and people of taste who made this all possible. There were rather more of them in attendance than Esme was used to, but there was a difference, she thought ruefully, between an event in the capital of one of the richest countries in the Middle East and one at the University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana, where she had received her doctorate.

  Back in Champaign, they might get the odd politician driving in from Springfield, maybe even a haughty couple or two from Chicago, but in Kampore, the capital of Adhia, it was quite different.

  Cutting through the press and the academics in glittering gowns and actual tuxedos, the elite of Kampore had come out to see the induction of the Illan manuscripts into the collection. Esme could only hope that they were not terribly bored by the event, since on a very real level, they were the ones paying for it.

  "Excuse me, Dr. Lawrence, but Dr. Talib will be presenting you in just five minutes."

  Esme smiled at the library director's assistant, patting her pocket to make sure her notes were where she had put them.

  "Of course, thank you."

  She had thought that when this moment came, she would be stressed and anxious, nervous about presenting her work in front of such important people, but a sense of peace and calm had settled over her. It was finally happening. She was right where she needed to be, doing the work she had always dreamed of. There had been a few detours along the way, some surprises – both pleasant and unpleasant – but she was finally here, and that was what mattered.

  Then she saw a familiar face in the crowd, and that calm shattered into a million pieces.

  The man had apparently arrived late, and the well-dressed elite of the crowd gravitated towards him like iron filings to a magnet. In any case, it would have been difficult to miss him. He was tall, with broad shoulders that were shown off to spectacular effect by his tuxedo, and he held himself with a kind of gravity and easy charisma that would turn heads anywhere he went.

  He was five years older than when she had known him, but his features were still broad and handsome, his eyes sparkling with wit, and his hair as dark as charcoal. It would be startlingly soft if she touched it, and Esme fisted her hands at her sides because, oh, she still wanted to.

  The next moment, she came back to herself, the spell broken, and she realized beyond a shadow of a doubt, she had to get out of there.

  "Excuse me, pardon me," she muttered, keeping her head down as she headed for the exit. She had seen that there was a loading dock through the west passage. She could ... she could head down the utility stairs to the loading dock, and then she could probably jimmy the garage doors up to make her escape. There was a drop of around five feet to the ground, but she could deal with that easily. At any rate, it would be easier than dealing with Samir Almasi.

  Much to her dismay, however, the crowd had gotten thicker while she wasn't looking, and weaving through the people here to see the induction of the Illan manuscripts was proving more difficult. She was briefly trapped against a table of exquisite date and honey canapes, and then she realized she had gotten turned around and escape was in the other direction.

  Dr. Talib started to speak just as she gained some clearance, and there was his determined assistant again, taking her arm to guide her up to the small stage set up at the head of the lobby.

  It's fine, Esme thought desperately. I've changed a lot. I was a lot different when he knew me. He won't recognize me at all. Heck, he probably forgot all about me the moment he ... he left.

  To her mortification, there was a sudden lump in the back of her throat, undissolved sorrow and anger that had somehow, even after five years, refused to fade. It was uncomfortable, but swallowing it down made her stand up straighter, lift her chin up and square her shoulders.

  It's fine, she thought with more confidence. It's fine, he doesn't remember. What matters now is the manuscripts and the work we are doing here.

  "—and overseeing the preservation of the manuscripts and their entry into a new and digital world is Dr. Esme Lawrence."

  The applause was scattered but warm, and Esme walked onto the stage, drawing her cards out of her pocket. This was what she had been working for. This had been the second most important thing in her life for years.

  She looked out into the crowd, and she would have sworn that she hadn't intended to look for him. She was going to address a crowd of professionals who were as excited about her work as she was, she was going to share some of her pride and her joy with them, and that would be it.

  Instead, Esme's eyes went straight to him, and it was like no time had passed at all.

  Oh, hi, handsome, she thought, and as their eyes locked, and as recognition flooded his face, her heart started to beat harder and faster.

  There was no telling how long she might have stood there, lost in a spell that should have by all rights lost its power over her if the crowd hadn't started to mutter with concern and confusion.

  "Oh!" she said too loudly. "Oh, I'm sorry, folks, just a little trouble with my microphone. I'd like to thank Dr. Talib for that lovely introduction, and talk a little about why we're all here tonight…"

  Ten minutes ago, she would have been able to talk about the manuscripts without a single faltering word. Now though, as Samir drifted closer to her, as he watched her with those dark and hungry eyes, she was grateful for the notecards she had so carefully prepared. They guided her through her short speech, and she clutched them tightly in her hands, as if they were some kind of talisman that could protect her from the past and the future.

  Foolish, she thought in the back of her head. Nothing can protect you from what's coming. Nothing will protect you from the past.

  It felt as if she had spoken both forever and for no time at all when the applause from the crowd told her that it was over. Released from the spell, she made her way off stage and was immediately mobbed by people with questions, people who wanted to congratulate her, people who were hoping to get access to the manuscripts in question. The crowd was as thick as molasses – thicker – but if she couldn't make her way through it very quickly, then at least Samir couldn't either.

  "Thank you ... thank you ... Oh, I don't know, that really is up to Dr. Talib, you should talk to his assistant, she was right here... Please, contact me via email, and we can set up an interview whenever you like, I just..."

  She finally won her way free of the crowd, and a quick look around revealed Samir nowhere in sight. Esme breathed a sigh of relief.

  For a moment, she wondered if he had simply left, and whether it would perhaps be safe to stay a little while longer. Abruptly, she decided against it. There would be other opportunities to talk to the academics who had gathered here, and if she could miss the press, that would be wonderful.

  No, discretion was the better part of valor, and even though she felt more than a little as if she were running away, she made her way through the rear entrance and out of the building.

  The eveni
ng was warm and balmy, Adhia entering its mild summer season just after she had arrived in the country. The University of Adhia was one of the oldest on the continent, and the campus combined both old and new in a harmony that made her spirit sing. Moving into the small house provided to her by the university had been hectic, but in between, she had snatched the odd walk, exploring the halls and carefully tended-to and preserved gardens. It was a beautiful place, and she knew she would grow to love it in a very short amount of time.

  It was only a short walk to the small house that she had already started to think of as hers, but as she walked, her head was flooded with memories that she had tried very hard not to think about for a very long time. Even though they were beautiful memories, they hurt, and her heart ached over them.

  You're being a silly little girl again, she told herself savagely. You can be sure that he isn't raking himself over the coals for this. They’re just memories. Memories can't hurt you.

  She knew that wasn't true however, and if Esme were being completely honest with herself, she wasn't sure that she really was afraid of being hurt. No, the memories that seeing Samir had summoned were not about hurt at all, and she felt her face heat with some of the things she remembered.

  Esme was so lost in her own thoughts that she didn't realize there was a man waiting in the entrance to the courtyard of her house before she was nearly on top of him. She started to cry out in startlement, but then the man moved out of the shadows, the light striking his face and revealing Sheikh Samir Almasi, ruler of Adhia, her one-time lover and the man she had fallen heedlessly and recklessly in love with.

  "Samir!"

  A slight and dangerous smile crossed his face, and something in her twisted at that; longing and need and pure desire.

  "So you do remember me," he purred. "You kept looking at me as if you weren't sure."

  "I could never forget you," she said, more honest than she thought she would be, but Samir only laughed.

  "Perhaps after all this time, you need to be reminded..."

  With nothing more than that, he pulled her into his arms, his mouth slanting over hers, and with a soft moan, Esme clung to him, certain that this time, if he left, it might shatter her...

  Chapter 2

  Samir

  Samir hadn't been intending to go to the university that night at all. It was a fine cause, and the intellectual elite of the country would be there, but it hardly sounded like a good time.

  "It would be a good gesture," said Alim, his assistant. "You did after all donate a fair amount of money to the excavation of the Illan manuscripts, and you wrote a very good essay for the papers about the importance of the documents."

  "And one would think that would be enough to earn me a few nights on my own," Samir said with just a touch of mulishness, but in the end, he had to concede that Alim, as usual, was right.

  He had been sheikh for less than a decade, and while he knew it was impossible to judge a man until he was dead and gone, he thought that all things considered, he was doing all right. Heaven willing, he would not have to be a wartime leader like his grandfather had had to be, and he would certainly do better than his own parents, who were mostly known for their lavish lifestyle and their profligate spending.

  Instead, he had directed Adhia on a path of technological domination and progress, and while the results over the past five years had been good – very, very good, as a matter of fact – he had still had his detractors.

  They called him a Westernized foreigner, born while his parents were staying in Gstaad. They said that despite his love for his country, he would never understand their traditions or their way of life, and when word had come of a possible archaeological breakthrough in the Qabi hills, he had seized an opportunity that had paid off in one of best finds in the past dozen years.

  "Apparently the price of doing a good deed is that you are stuck with it," he said with some amusement, and Alim had been too diplomatic to agree or to disagree.

  He had only intended to stay at the university for a few soundbites and a few pictures with the manuscripts when they were unveiled, but then he had turned around and ...

  He had thought of her more often than he liked to think about in the past five years. He had hardly been living like a monk, but often, and with increasing frequency, in the quiet mornings, he had thought of a small woman, an armful of books clutched to her chest, her dark hair scraped back into a bun and a smile so bright that he thought it could burn away all the darkness he felt inside him.

  He was in Chicago learning about some family investments in the United States, and he had ended up getting dragged to a party in a town that seemed embedded in the middle of the cornfields and there he had met…

  Watching her on the podium, Samir was struck with a dual vision. One was of the girl he had known: artless, enthusiastic, dressed in second hand clothes and so passionate that she burned like a brand. Superimposed over her was a woman who looked as sharp as a razor; her dark hair pulled back to the point of severity, her lipstick as red as roses, and her dark-framed glasses giving her face a stern look, even as she smiled.

  She was studying Arabic art and 13th century manuscripts. Why did I never think she might become involved?

  He had never thought it because there was a part of him that knew it was too easy to think too much about her. If he gave that line of thought an inch, it would take a mile, and then who knew where he would be. In the early days, it had been too tempting to do as his parents had done; to take the easy way out into luxurious oblivion. He could have run away just as they did, and if he did, he had the strong suspicion that he would run straight back to the United States to find the young woman he had always called his favorite librarian.

  Instead he had stayed away, he had done his duty, and apparently now his reward was to be confronted with this gorgeous specter from the past, who met his eyes and looked as if she was suddenly drowning.

  He barely heard her talk; all he could do was stare at her, and every time her gaze slipped to him, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she remembered him, remembered them, and nothing else in the room mattered.

  Samir was so buried under his memories that he was shocked when she finished her speech and he could not simply take her hand and steal her away somewhere. Instead, amidst thunderous applause, she had stepped into a crowd of admirers, and Samir had to prevent himself from ploughing through them to get to her.

  It would be, he had to admit, more than boorish to crash through the crowd and demand her attention at an event like this, where she was being honored for her expertise. On the other hand, there was nothing in him that liked seeing Esme – his Esme! After all this time! – surrounded by people who felt entitled to her time and attention.

  Instead of lowering over her like a thunderstorm, he made his way back to the car entrance and picked up his phone.

  "Alim? Yes. I need you to look on the campus registries and find me an address."

  It was distressingly easy to figure out where Esme was staying, and even as he took advantage of it with only a single pang of guilt, he reminded himself to have a word with campus security about how very easy it was to find innocent foreign academics who were, after all, visiting and therefore their responsibility.

  The house they had given her seemed small but pleasant enough, he decided, with the tiny courtyard that even the smallest of Adhian houses enjoyed, and he could smell jacaranda and jasmine floating on the night air.

  She should live in beauty, only in beauty, he thought, and then he laughed at himself, because he had only laid eyes on Esme, and already he was sinking back into bad habits. Honestly. Poetry, and at his age?

  She arrived sooner than he expected, and Samir took a moment to savor the sight of her before she spotted him. Off the stage, the woman he knew was more evident. Her dark hair was falling out of her bun, and her glasses were slipping down her nose. She walked slowly as if she was lost in thoughts far above those most considered, but there was something graceful about her movements, something so sweetly smooth about the way she moved through the world.