An Heir of Deception Read Online Free PDF Page A

whole. This was not how she’d imagined Nicholas’s introduction. She’d had a speech prepared and had run through it a hundred times in her mind. But like the only player on stage who’d lost their script and forgotten the directions, she fell silent as her mind raced, searching for the proper response. But search as she might, no words would come.
    “Mama.” Her son’s exclamation was accompanied by the sound of tiny booted feet charging across the floor until he reached her side in a fever of breathlessness, his face stained with dried tears.
    “Mama?” The same two-syllable word, yet her twin uttered it in an entirely different manner. “You have a son?”
    Alex strode toward her with staggering nonchalance given he hadn’t deigned to address her only minutes before. But his expression hadn’t lost its cold inscrutability. His gaze darted to Nicholas, before settling on her.
    Behind her, Katie sounded like an asthmatic trying to catch her breath but Charlotte could deal with only one calamity at a time. Alex had to come first.
    Alex had always come first , a voice inside her whispered.
    Settling her hands protectively on her son’s shoulders, she met Alex’s stare as air inched its way into her lungs.
    I can do this. I must do this.
    “When I heard him crying, I thought it best if I brought him inside,” he said, halting in front of her. She could hear the condemnation in his tone and feel it emanating from his pores.
    He spoke to her, yet still he did not greet her. Charlotte swallowed a lump of despair.
    I cannot do this.
    Nicholas tipped his head back and stared up at Alex, who at six-foot-two inches tall loomed above him like a dark angel.
    “You have a son?” This time her sister’s voice held more than a trace of pique and hurt. Briefly, Charlotte regarded Jillian, who appeared oblivious to the enfolding drama, her hazel eyes soaking in the grandeur of her surroundings with awe.
    Angling her head over her shoulder, Charlotte met her sister’s gaze. “Katie, I’m sorry.” Explanations—as much as she could offer—would have to wait.
    Truly, this was not how she had envisioned—had planned—the introduction of aunt to nephew.
    “He’s a handsome boy. I expect he looks like his father.”
    Turning back to him, Charlotte swallowed hard and felt the burn of a guilty blush suffuse her face, not exactly certain how she should respond to Alex’s remark. It was plainly spoken and lacking in artifice, some of which she might have expected given their history. But most people thought Nicholas resembled her with his dark blond locks and blue eyes. Most never bothered to look beyond those obvious similarities.
    Alex was unlike anyone she had ever met, a fact she would be wise to remember.
    “Yes, he does. Unfortunately, his father is no longer with us.” There, she’d done it, the first lie, the seedling of a multitude more. But then it wasn’t as if this was chaste, uncharted grounds. One would assume she’d be quite accomplished at it by now. She was unquestionably a connoisseur should lying be raised to an art form—if indeed it was not.
    While her sister’s indrawn breath scalded Charlotte’s ears, Alex continued to stare at her, his thickly fringed eyes devoid of emotion, his expression positively deadpan. “So you married?”
    Only the faintest inflection in his tone indicated it was a question, and nothing in his voice hinted that asking had caused his heart to contract in anguish, as hers had done. He sounded politely inquiring, expressing no great necessity to actually know.
    But to utter that particular lie aloud—to Alex—was more than her conscience or heart could bear. There did exist a limit to her duplicity. Charlotte inclined her head in a jerky nod, unable to hold his gaze. But if she thought he might challenge her; that somehow he’d seen through the veil of her deception, she couldn’t tell by his expression.
    Alex glanced down at Nicholas and only then did she see an