Page 62 of Redemption of a Prince

No one.

She made her way to a side door where, thankfully, no reporters waited. A few taps on her phone brought a Yfir to her location. Fortunately, the driver didn’t ask any questions about her tears.

They reached her building quickly. Nikki gave the man a big tip and hurried up the stairs. It took three tries to get the key in the lock and four more to actually get the door opened.

When it closed behind her, she locked it and slipped the chain in place.

The tears began to fall again, more earnestly this time.

Finding out Prince Ezekiel wasn’t the father of her baby shook Nikki, but not as much as the look on his face and the tone in his voice did.

She’d told him the truth. When she found out she was pregnant, it had never occurred to her that the other man could be the father, except ever-so-briefly in passing.

Collapsing in a heap on her bed, Nikki gave into the sobs.

It had been one time. She’d gone to a party. Had a couple of beers. The cutest guy, one about two years older than her, had been flirting with her the whole evening. He was shipping out with the military in a couple of days.

At some point, he kissed her. She wasn’t so tipsy that she was truly impaired, but her inhibitions definitely weren’t what they normally would have been.

Still smarting over Ezekiel and their break-up, she’d let things go much too far.

When the prince called her a few days later, she’d thanked God for the second chance. Forty-eight hours after the phone call, they’d been alone and, even as things happened between them, apparently, she’d already been pregnant.

The sobs eventually led to exhaustion, and she fell into a restless sleep.

In her dreams, she relived the moment when she told Ezekiel about the baby.

His immediate acceptance.

His embrace as she cried.

His refusal to let his parents carry out any DNA testing because of his unerring belief in her.

She woke up wondering what had changed. Had his parents done the testing anyway? They couldn’t have known for years, or they wouldn’t have continued to let Ezekiel believe he would never be king.

Would they?

The splitting headache demanded medicinal action. Nikki stumbled to the bathroom and took something for the pain. Back on her bed, she looked at her phone.

Had the crown prince - or was he the king? - tried to contact her? He wouldn’t have left the hospital. Not yet.

The clock told her she hadn’t slept long.

The news alert told her a press conference had been called by the palace, and was being held at the hospital. A quick check of social media showed her nothing had been leaked yet and many were curious what the news was. Concerned even, in light of the helicopter that had landed at the palace a few hours earlier.

Against her better judgment, she found the right spot on the palace social media and pulled up the live video.

Reporters sat in a room at the hospital, but no one stood at the podium yet.

A moment later, a side door opened. The doctors she’d seen talk with the family walked in accompanied by the royal physician.

And Ezekiel.

The carefully neutral look on his face didn’t give anything away to the casual observer, but Nikki could see the strain around his eyes.

“Good afternoon and thank you for joining us on such short notice.” The palace PR representative spoke first. “On behalf of the royal family, I will be reading a statement. We will take a few questions afterward, but of a limited nature.”

He looked down at the paper in front of him. “Several months ago, King Geoffrey’s physician informed him that he would need a kidney transplant.”

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