The Sheikh's Secret Son (16 page)

Instead, he kept looking at her, looking straight through her. His thrusts intensified, and that age-old rhythm reached a frenzy of blurred movement. Her climax took her and she opened herself to him entirely, without fear, without shame…without reservation.

Without a word of love from either of them…just this overwhelming physical need.

Or, Eden thought, maybe not….

 

Eden woke in her own bed, with only a vague memory of how she had gotten there. She could remember feeling lighter than air, safe in strong arms.

She sighed, stretched, and immediately winced.
Her muscles hadn't been this sore since she'd dug that new flower bed beside the garage last summer.

And then she remembered why she was so sore…

“Ben?” She squeaked his name, even as she ran her hand over the mattress, feeling for his body.

All she discovered was empty space.

Eden pushed herself up into a sitting position, tugging the sheet around her as she realized she was naked. She pushed a riot of unbound curls out of her eyes, blinked in the morning light, and looked around the room.

Nothing.

No Ben. No male clothing. No nothing.

Just that same yawning empty space in her heart that had appeared in Paris the last time she'd awakened to find Ben gone….

“C
ome on, Mom, come on…answer the phone. For God's sake, answer the— Mom! Mom, hi, it's Eden. Is Sawyer there? May I speak with him?”

There was a small silence on the other end of the phone before Mary Ellen said, “I just looked at my bedside clock, Eden. You do know it's only six in the morning, don't you? Sawyer's in bed sleeping, just like you and I should be.”

Eden paced, the cordless phone in one hand, her other hand raking through her tangled hair. Her heart was pounding like a trip-hammer, her mouth dry, her stomach tied in half a dozen knots. “Check on him, Mom. Would you do that? Please? I'll wait.”

“Eden—”

“Mom,
please!
”

She heard her mother sigh, heard the sound of the receiver being placed on the night table. And then she waited. Waited forever…

“Eden?” Mary Ellen said, picking up the phone once more. “I'm happy to report that my grandson is sound asleep, his thumb firmly in his mouth and
Fred curled up beside him. Now, suppose you tell me what's going on?”

Eden couldn't suppress a whimper of relief as she collapsed into a kitchen chair and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. “I—I don't know…I just…I just…oh, Mom, I'm a mess!”

“Yes, I'd begun to sense that. Stay where you are, darling—you are at home, aren't you? I'll wake Mrs. Betts, put her in charge, and be on your doorstep in a little over an hour, all right? Oh, and Eden? For heaven's sake, sweetheart, stop looking for bogeymen.”

 

“…And then I woke up in my own bed. Alone in my own bed. Mom, he has to hate me.”

Mary Ellen sipped on her second cup of coffee as she sat across the breakfast table from her daughter. “Hate you? So that's why he made love to you, Eden? To
punish
you?”

Eden nodded, still slightly embarrassed after telling her mother what she'd done, what terrible, hurtful things she'd said to Ben last night. “I accused him of coming to America already knowing about Sawyer, planning to romance me until he could get his hands on his son. That's pretty despicable of me. The moment I said the words, I knew they were crazy, that the whole idea was crazy. Ben's an hon
est man, even if he did lie to me in Paris. But I guess I'm still having trouble getting over that lie.”

Mary Ellen lowered her cup to the tabletop, smiled wanly. “Understandable, Eden. If he'd told you the truth about himself back then, you would have been able to go to him when you learned you were pregnant.”

Eden sighed, looked across the table at her mother. “Boy, you're smart, Mom. When am I ever going to learn that you know everything? No, you're right, I wouldn't have gone to him. He'd left me, without more than a quick, vague farewell note. For all I knew, he didn't want anything more from me than a Paris fling. But if he knew I was pregnant with possibly the next heir to the throne of Kharmistan? I would have had the same fears then as I do now, wouldn't I have, Mom?”

“I imagine so, darling, and I don't think I would have blamed you. But now I've met Ben, and I like him, Holden likes him, your Uncle Ryan likes him. He looks straight into your eyes when he speaks, and never flinches. I believe him when he says he loves his son, that he would never do anything to hurt him. And I believe that he loves you, Eden, even though you must be driving him mad at the moment.”

Eden smiled sadly, self-deprecatingly. “And to think I've always prided myself on being so sensi
ble, so levelheaded. Boy, when I fall off the sensible wagon, I sure do it in a big way, don't I?”

“You've hurt him, Eden,” Mary Ellen said gently, reaching out to take her daughter's hand in her own. “There's no denying that. You two didn't make love last night. You punished each other, trying to prove that all that's left between you is physical passion, nothing more.”

Eden bit her bottom lip, sniffled. “Ben must have proved that to himself, or he'd still be here,” she said sadly. “I've never felt so alone, Mom, as when I woke up this morning to see that he was gone. I didn't even feel that deserted in Paris, when I woke up to his note. I didn't fall out of love with Ben over the years, Mom—I think I'm more in love with him now than I've ever been. Waking to find him gone felt like someone had just cut off my right arm.”

“And Ben has to know that you really love him, Eden. He certainly would never have to fear that you're just some fortune hunter, out to make a match with a future king,” Mary Ellen said, smiling, squeezing Eden's hand.

Eden smiled slowly, the smile growing wider. “No, he wouldn't have to worry about that, would he?”

“That all said, darling—may I suggest you wear your favorite lovely butter-yellow sundress when you go to see Ben at his hotel this morning? Grov
eling is always easier to manage if you know you look your best.”

Eden's smile faded as she shook her head, sat back against the wooden kitchen chair. “No, I can't go to him. Not this morning, at least. I've got to go into the office, check on a few things, even though I'm supposed to be on vacation. That will give me some time, give Ben some time. I'll call later, from the office, and ask if he'll see me at his hotel, maybe in time for dinner.”

“Still having cold feet, Eden?” her mother asked as she gathered up their empty coffee cups, took them over to the counter.

“Yeah. Yeah, maybe I am,” Eden admitted, going to her mother, wrapping her arms around her, pressing her head against Mary Ellen's shoulders as the older woman stood in front of the sink. “But, mostly, I thought I should give Ben a little time to catch up on his sleep. It might have started off slowly, but ours was sort of a
long
night.”

“Eden Fortune!” Mary Ellen said, turning in her daughter's embrace, her expression one of deliberate shock and nearly schoolgirlish delight. “Shame on you!”

 

Ben fought with himself all morning. He'd gone to the phone a dozen times, planning to call Eden. To apologize. To grovel. To promise her anything
if she'd only forgive him for loving her, for leaving her, for showing up once more to complicate her life.

When he wasn't warning himself not to call Eden, he was fighting the impulse to drive out to the Double Crown, to see their son. Not that he seriously believed Eden would spirit him away, hide him from his father.

There was so much love between Eden and himself, Ben was sure of that. Enough love for a lifetime, for two lifetimes.

Why was there so little trust?

Ben only relaxed after he'd called Mary Ellen Fortune's house and spoke to Sawyer himself, listening to his son's story about how he had spent the morning baking apple pies with someone he called “Miz Betts.”

Not that he had truly believed Eden would hide their son from him…but it had been so good just to hear the boy's voice. He hadn't known it possible to love so quickly, so fiercely, not until the first moment he'd looked into Sawyer's eyes. Not since he'd first looked into Eden Fortune's eyes a lifetime ago in Paris.

Ben checked his watch for the thousandth time as he walked through the large entrance foyer of the Palace Lights Hotel, carrying an armful of packages
as he headed for the hallway that would take him to the elevator serving the penthouse.

As sheikh, he shouldn't be worried about Haskim, who had to be worried about him, but he knew he should apologize to the servant. The poor fellow had to be having kittens, as Ben's English tutor used to say. Luckily, he knew Haskim's weakness for Godiva chocolates, and he'd bought the man a five-pound box of his favorites.

Because Ben had been walking for more than three hours, having left the penthouse suite without Haskim seeing him, without a single bodyguard to accompany him. He'd walked the streets of San Antonio, smiling at the people, striking up conversations with salesclerks. He'd bought a beer for another patron at a small bar he'd wandered into, and exchanged views on the weather, sports, and the international scene.

He'd discovered a music store and gone inside, picking up a CD Walkman and three Garth Brooks CDs, then continued his walk with the earphones on, listening to
Friends In Low Places,
and his personal new favorite,
Ain't Going Down Til the Sun Comes Up.
His son had very good taste in music. What an infectious, happy sound!

He found himself wondering if Eden might possibly teach him something called “line-dancing,” and the Texas Two-Step, both dances having been
partially demonstrated for him by the barmaid in that same cozy little bar.

Texans certainly did know how to have fun, right now, right in the moment. Bigger, wider, higher. Big land, big smiles, big hearts. He had fallen in love with Texas, that was for certain.

Ben hadn't felt this free, this unencumbered by affairs of state, the rigors of protocol, since he'd been with Eden in Paris. Now he was without Eden, in her home state. And yet walking the streets, seeing the sights, meeting the people had all combined to make him feel closer to Eden, to Sawyer, to the life to be enjoyed in Texas.

He would never take his son away from this free, open, easy life. Sawyer and Eden would always be a part of Texas, and Texas would always be a part of them. Only a fool wouldn't understand this.

Ben hefted the packages into his left arm as he turned a corner in the hallway that was open on one side, with several pathways leading into a four-story-high atrium garden. He was almost at the elevator when the sound of raised voices reached him and he stopped, listened, instantly alert to tones of anger coming from the midst of the near rain forest of tall plants, coming from a man, from a woman.

“I said I want my money
now,
you bitch! I got to get off the ranch and get out of town,” Ben heard the man say.

“And I told you—you'll see it when I see it,” the woman countered. “Dammit, you don't have a brain in your head, do you, Clint? How am I supposed to give you what I haven't got? I'm living on credit cards myself.”

“Yeah, right. You're still living as high and rich as you always did. I never should have listened to you, Sophia. All your big plans, your schemes. ‘We'll be rich, Clint,' that's what you said. Do I look rich? Do I look like I could last more than a couple of months on what you've paid me so far? I want that money. I
deserve
that money, especially since I don't seem to be getting the other part of what I wanted from this whole scheme. I'm tired of doing your dirty work for you! Maybe what you need is a dose of your own blackmail.”

As Ben drew closer, concerned at the escalating rage in the man's voice, the threat of menace, the woman all but purred, “You've always been happy enough to take it out in trade before, Clint baby, haven't you? Now, why don't we just go upstairs to my rooms and—”

Ben's packages hit the floor at the sound of flesh hitting flesh, within a heartbeat of hearing the woman's yelp of shock and pain. Ben ran inside the atrium garden, and within another heartbeat his left hand was holding tight onto the collar of the man's shirt as he lifted him clear off the ground, put his
face an inch away from the startled bully's now bulging eyes. “Only the lowest of curs would think to strike a woman,” Ben growled at him.

“What the—” the man whom the woman had addressed as Clint stammered, then pulled back his right arm, obviously intending to smash his fist into Ben's jaw.

Well, Ben supposed that was what the man had intended. He decided not to find out if he was right or wrong. Instead, he dropped the man to the ground, pulled back his own right arm and delivered a short, sharp blow with the edge of his hand, aiming just below Clint's left ear.

The man went down with the abruptness of night falling on the desert.

Everything had happened so quickly. Ben had reacted, instinctively defended himself, before sparing so much as a glance for the woman now standing behind him, laughing in genuine amusement. He turned around, looked at her, frowned. What did she find so amusing?

“Oh, that was gorgeous!
You're
gorgeous, now that I've had a moment to check you out,” the woman said, rubbing at her cheek, her rather avid gaze running over Ben, sizing him up, looking pleased with what she saw.

She was, he noticed, a beautiful woman, if he had liked his women fully perfumed and painted, which
he did not. He also didn't like her cold, assessing blue eyes, or the way she deliberately smiled and pouted with her shiny pink-stained mouth.

She was beautiful, yes, but he instinctively knew she was something else. A predator.

The woman closed the space between them, taking hold of Ben's suit lapels with her long, pink-tipped nails, insinuated herself against him. “How will I ever repay you for saving me, my sweet knight in shining Armani?” she asked, her once hard, shrill voice now lowered to a sensual purr.

Ben gently but firmly removed her hands from his lapels, then said, “If you would like me to summon a policeman?”

The hard blue eyes blinked, reopened to show him a brief moment of very real panic. “No, darling, I think not,” she then purred, recovering quickly. “But don't you have the most adorable accent, so nearly British, and quite wonderfully formal. I'll bet you have all the girls in your hometown just
drooling
over you, don't you?”

Clint began to groan as he lay sprawled on the brick pathway, and Ben turned, looked down on the man. “Perhaps you would wish for me to escort you through the lobby, so that the doorman can summon a taxicab. Your friend seemed rather angry, and you might not wish to be in the vicinity when he rouses.”

“Clint?” The woman shook her head, her strawberry-blond curls bouncing, looking unnervingly childish when compared to the craftiness of those big blue eyes, the sarcastic set of those full, pouty lips. “He wouldn't dare hurt me. He's thickheaded, and dumb, but even Clint Lockhart isn't brick dumb enough to kill the golden goose. But you're right, Boy Scout. One of us ought to be hightailing out of here, and I think that'd be you. Don't worry, I can handle him.”