Read The Future King’s Love-Child for Free Online

the hip crowd and the hangers-on they had associated with six years ago. She could almost guarantee she had been the only one to end up with a criminal record. The others were like Sebastian, out to have fun until family duty called. Not like she, who had beenlooking for something to take her mind off what she couldn’t quite face…
    ‘I see a few of them, of course, do business occasionally with them,’ Sebastian said, and then smiled. ‘I do not see so much of Odessa Tsoulis. Last I heard she had married a billionaire from Texas.’
    Cassie felt a small smile tug at her mouth. ‘She was rather intent on landing herself a rich husband, if I recall.’
    ‘Yes, indeed,’ Sebastian said with a small laugh. ‘She was good fun. I liked her. She was very no-nonsense if you know what I mean. What you saw was what you got.’
    ‘Unlike me.’ Cassie wasn’t sure why she had said it, much less how she was going to deal with it now it was said. She looked away from his suddenly penetrating gaze, and, picking up her fork with a tiny rattle against the plate, resumed eating, but with little appetite.
    ‘Tell me about it, Cassie,’ he pressed her gently. ‘Tell me what happened that night.’
    Cassie stared at one of the octopus curls on her plate and wished herself a thousand miles away. Why couldn’t he leave the past where it belonged? What good did it do to haul over the ice-cold coals of regret? She couldn’t change anything. That had been the problem in the first place.
    She couldn’t change anything.
    ‘I’d rather not talk about it,’ she said, and put her fork down with another little clatter against the edge of the plate.
    ‘Did you have an argument or something?’ he asked.
    ‘Or something,’ she said with a curl of her lip. ‘I said leave it, Sebastian. It’s done with. I don’t like being reminded of it.’
    ‘It must have been terrifying for you to be carted off to prison like that,’ he said, clearly determined to keep pressing her.
    Cassie gave him a resentful look. ‘I didn’t happen to see you in the crowd to offer me your support.’
    His expression darkened. ‘Would you have accepted my support if I had offered it?’ he asked. ‘You told me never to contact you again, remember? In any case I went abroad for several months after you ended our affair. I didn’t hear much about what was going on and no one in my family thought to tell me because they didn’t even know of our involvement. By the time I got back my father had already warned Lissa never to contact you and had packed her off to university in Paris before she could utter a single word of protest.’
    ‘So when you did get back you let me rot inprison because you didn’t want your father to find out we’d had an affair,’ she said bitterly.
    ‘Wrong!’ He was only a decibel or two away from shouting the word at her. ‘Cassie, why can’t you see this from my point of view?’
    Cassie got up from the table, pushing in her chair with such force it sent a shock wave through his wineglass, the alcohol spilling over the edges and onto the crisp white tablecloth. ‘Oh, I can see this from your point of view, all right,’ she snipped at him. ‘A few months ago I was just yet another nameless person locked away in prison. Someone from your past you didn’t dare speak about, much less step forward and defend. Now you find I am one of the key players at the orphanage you want to support, so you think it might be timely to pour oil over troubled waters to mollify me enough to maintain your reputation in case I spill all to the press about our little clandestine affair.’
    ‘I care nothing for my reputation,’ he ground out with a flintlike flash of his dark eyes. ‘It is my family I am concerned about. I owe it to the generations of Karedes who have gone before me to act in a manner fitting for a future king.’
    She rolled her eyes at him. ‘So I guess that’s why we aren’t having lunch where everyone can see us,