THE HEIR AND THE HIDDEN CHILD

Cassandra Cole was twenty and desperate. No job. No home. No money. No family support. One night, after being stranded, she ended up sharing a bed with a stranger in a hotel she stumbled into. The man was intoxicating sharp jaw, midnight eyes, authority dripping from him. She thought it would never happen again, so she let herself get lost for one night. But when she woke the next morning and saw 20 dollars left on the bedside table, she shattered. She believed he paid her. She believed she meant nothing. She took the money angry, humiliated, broken and walked out. She didn’t know she was pregnant. And she didn’t know the man was Eric Kingston, the heir to Kingston Enterprises, who thought she disappeared before he could even ask her name. The 20 dollars was a mistake: he meant to leave it for room service. But when he returned, she was gone, leaving only confusion and a scent he couldn’t forget. Cassandra left the city for a countryside town, raised her son alone, and built herself up from nothing. Four years later, needing bigger opportunities, she moved back to the city and landed a job at the biggest corporation in the country. Kingston Enterprises. She didn’t know the man she was about to work for was the same stranger from that night. And he didn’t remember her he only remembered flashes, the softness of her voice, the way she whispered her name, the heat, the innocence. But her face… he forgot after years of burying the memory. Cassandra lied and pretended they’d never met.