She had gotten over Konstantin. Had learned to hate him, in fact. And then learned to let that hatred go. Emma had had no choice. She wasn’t living her life with the thorns of bitterness piercing her soul on a daily basis.
She did yoga. She meditated. She did not hate.
But right that minute? Seeing him so confident and unconcerned with his business cohorts, Emma was really having difficulty remembering patience, compassion and tolerance.
“Mom.”
Her son’s voice did what her own willpower had been unable to accomplish and broke her focus on the royal rat. Okay, tolerance wasn’t going to be her strong suit today.
Emma looked down and found a strained smile for the little boy. “Yes, pumpkin?”
“I’m not a pumpkin.” Her son’s face, so like his father’s, creased in a cranky frown. “I’m a boy.”
Mickey was going through a phase of not liking endearments. He was not a pumpkin. Not sweet. Not darling. He barely tolerated the nickname Mickey over Mikhail, the name she’d had him christened. As he kept reminding her, he was a big boy. Almost five.
Heaven help her when he hit his teens.
“Yes, you are a wonderful little boy.”
“I’m almost five!” he said loudly, clearly offended again. Being referred to as little was also on the banned list.
But she only grinned, despite the nervous tension thrumming through her at that sighting of his sperm donor. “You are four...and three-quarters,” she tacked on to appease. “And while you may be big for your age, you are still my little boy.”
“And mine too, I think.” Konstantin had crossed the vast lobby of the bank very quickly.
But why he had done so when he had taken out the restraining order that prevented her from getting within fifty feet of him, she had no idea. And then his words registered, and Emma wanted to hit him.
With her fist. Not her palm.
The unutterable rat!
Compassion was definitely out the window too.
Of course Mickey was his. She’d tried to tell Konstantin, but he’d kept her at a distance and his efforts to do so had made life for her and their son so much harder than it had to be.
She glared up at him. “Go away, Konstantin.” Her mouth clamped shut. Calling him by name felt way too personal now.
But she didn’t think referring to him as Prince Rat was going to go over well.
“I am going nowhere.” He pointed down to Mickey, who was watching them both in rapt fascination, the recognition in his eyes impossible to miss. “That is my son and you have withheld him from me, for years.”
Heat and cold washed over Emma in waves. She knew only one thing.
She was finally going to get her say, but she didn’t want to have it here. Not with a bevy of rich executives and bank customers looking on.
“It’s my daddy. That man is my daddy.” Mickey tugged urgently at Emma’s hand, his voice carrying in the cavernous lobby.
Gasps could be heard and whispers, but Emma ignored them all, including the man staring at her as if the ceiling had just fallen on his head, to look down at her son. “Does he look like the pictures?”
Mickey slid eyes the same chocolate brown as his father’s to the Prince and then back to meet his mother’s gaze. “He doesn’t look so mad in the pictures.” His voice wobbled just a little, his usual confidence clearly shaken by Konstantin’s attitude. “Doesn’t he like me?”
“Of course I like you. You are my son.” Konstantin’s tone was nothing like filled with its usual arrogance. In fact, he sounded sick. “You’ve shown him pictures of me?” he asked her.
She didn’t know if he was angry, relieved or entirely unimpacted by that fact.
Emma gave a short nod of agreement.
“But you did not tell me about him.”