Blackmail & Secrets: The Sandoval Baby / The Count's Secret Child / Playboy's Surprise Son
the heat she wore just a tee shirt and shorts, and he could see the curve of her shoulder, the thin fabric pulling taut over the bone. Even that simple sight caused desire to tug deep inside his belly. Was he imagining that her curves were looking lusher and fuller?
He’d spent the last three weeks trying not to notice her, trying to ignore the lust that fired his body and something different and deeper that touched his heart. Although he pretended not to notice, he couldn’t quite keep his gaze from her as she played with Max, or read him a story, her lovely features softened and suffused with love. He’d fully intended packing Freya back off to England by now, yet when he saw the bond she shared with his son he knew he could not—and not just for Max’s sake. Not even for Freya’s.
For his own.
Despite the distance they’d silently agreed to maintain, he was not ready for Freya to leave. It was unreasonable—idiotic, even—yet it was there all the same: a deep and desperate need for a woman he knew was completely off-limits. And who might be pregnant with his child.
‘Come along, Max,’ he said, his voice coming out a little rougher than he’d intended. The thought that Freya might be pregnant, might know she was pregnant, made fury pulse through him. Lied to. Again.
He didn’t talk to Freya until that evening, when Max was settled in bed. He waited outside the doorway until she’d said goodnight and clicked off the light. ‘I need to talk to you.’
Freya gasped aloud, one hand flying to her chest. ‘Oh! You startled me.’
He watched colour flare in her face, her grey eyes wide, and realised he hardly ever saw her discomfited or surprised or anything but coolly rational. Perhaps that was why her response in his arms had been so unsettling and explosive. It had not been at all expected.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Do you have a moment?’ He’d adopted that cool, polite voice, and Freya took it as her cue to match it.
‘Yes, of course.’ She followed him downstairs into the living room. The room was huge and formal and Rafe hardly ever used it.
He paced to the window, conscious of her standing in the doorway, slight and uncertain.
‘Is something wrong?’ she finally asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Rafe said. He’d wanted to sound calm, measured, but he heard coldness and even anger creeping in. You tricked me. Betrayed me. The accusations clamoured in his throat. Would he ever know a woman who was honest? Yet even now, as he turned to face her, saw her eyes widen and her face pale, he wanted to trust her. Stupidly, perhaps, but he could not deny that basic craving.
He saw Freya swallow, lift her chin. ‘Is there something you want to say?’ she asked evenly, and despite her level tone he knew she was frightened—saw the pulse flutter in her throat.
What was she afraid of? What was she hiding? If she knew she was pregnant, surely she would tell him, trap him? Keeping it from him—just as Rosalia had—made no sense. Rosalia had acted out of spite and hurt, but surely Freya did not harbour such motives? For a moment Rosalia’s last words to him rang through his head, obliterating all rational thought:
‘I never intended to fall pregnant. I’ve been on the Pill, Rafe, since our honeymoon. I don’t want your baby.’
‘Rafe?’ Freya spoke quietly, her forehead furrowing in concern.
Rafe let out a slow breath, forced the memories to recede. Freya was not Rosalia. He still didn’t trust her, didn’t know what secrets she hid, but she was not his ex-wife. She was not, please God, deceiving him the way his ex-wife had. She might not even be pregnant. A little nausea could be explained away, surely? He was simply being overly alert. Paranoid. Hopeful.
The word caught him on the raw. Did he want another child? The child of this near-stranger? The thought made no sense, yet he could not keep that tiny tendril of hope—or something close to it—from unfurling inside him. He’d wanted a family for so long—had dreamed of the day he would have a child, a wife. And now he found he could picture Freya as a mother all too easily, her slender arms cradling a baby—their baby. With a jolt he realised he did not want just the child, the way he had with Rosalia. He wanted the woman too.
Freya.
What was it about this woman that called out to him, made him want in a way he never had before? Made him feel in a way he never had before? Was it the glimpse of passion underneath that cool exterior? Or the gentleness and kindness she showed to Max? Or was it simply the whole person—beautiful, alluring, kind, secretive?
He still didn’t know what secrets she hid.
Freya simply stared at him, her face pale and beautiful, her eyes wide. She looked heartrendingly beautiful.
‘Freya,’ he said, and when she blinked in surprise he realised it was the first time he’d used her Christian name. ‘Have you considered that you might be pregnant?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘PREGNANT?’ Freya repeated numbly, for of course the possibility had never once—not even remotely—crossed her mind. She shook her head, suppressing the sudden, bizarre blaze of hope Rafe’s words had caused to streak through her. ‘No.’
Impatience flashed across his features. ‘Why not?’
‘It’s impossible,’ Freya told him flatly. It hurt to say it.
Rafe shook his head, nonplussed. ‘I’m infertile,’ she elaborated. His expression did not change.
‘Are you certain?’
Anger spiked through her, firing her words. ‘Am I certain?’ she repeated, her voice rising, giving way to the ocean of emotion underneath. She strove to temper it, to keep herself as calm and remote as always. She could not give in to the emotions and memories now. If she did, she might drown in them. ‘Of course I am.’
Rafe shrugged. ‘It is perhaps possible, though?’
‘No, it isn’t,’ Freya said coldly. She hated that he was pressing her, giving her hope. She’d lived with her infertility for ten years. Had accepted it … almost.
Perhaps this is your punishment. A girl like you …
‘It is not possible. And I’m surprised you’d even think of it, based on such little evidence. A little nausea—’
His mouth compressed into a thin line. ‘I looked for pregnancy symptoms in my wife for five years. I know the signs.’
His admission caused shock to slice through her. Five years? ‘And she never fell pregnant?’
‘No,’ Rafe told her flatly. ‘Because she was on the Pill the entire time and didn’t tell me. She never wanted children, even though I—’ He stopped, his lips pressed firmly together, his body taut with suppressed emotion.
‘But then she did become pregnant, and kept it from you?’ Freya filled in slowly.
‘Exactly.’ Rafe turned back to her with a grim smile. ‘By accident, I must suppose. She deceived me twice—first by taking birth control when she knew how much I wanted a child, and then by keeping her pregnancy secret from me.’
‘I suppose I can understand why you wanted a paternity test,’ Freya said quietly, and Rafe’s features twisted.
‘I did not realise she hated me so much.’ He raked a hand through his hair, then let it fall. ‘I think you should take a pregnancy test. Just in case.’
‘It’s not—’
‘I know,’ he cut across her. ‘But at least it will rule out the possibility.’
This was what Rosalia lived with for five years, Freya supposed. The pressure, the tension, and then of course his disappointment. By the time Freya had met her Rosalia had surely hated