Lucy Gordon: Blackmail & Secrets: The Sandoval Baby / The Count's Secret Child / Playboy's Surprise Son

His tone was so unbearably final that Freya could not keep herself from retorting sharply, ‘I doubt Social Services will agree.’

Rafe tensed with a predatory stillness, all traces of pity vanished. ‘I hope,’ he said in a dangerously soft voice, ‘you have not involved Social Services in the life of my son.’

Freya bit her lip. She’d just made a critical error—one that might cost her any possibility of staying with Max. Although, she acknowledged with a stab of pain, that possibility already seemed depressingly remote.

Rafe was still levelling her with a hard stare, compelling Freya to confession. ‘No,’ she admitted, ‘I haven’t.’ Rafe’s solicitor had been clear on that point.

This last week, the week after Rosalia’s death, had been a terrible blur. Hearing of Rosalia’s accident, arranging the funeral, seeing the solicitor, and all the while trying to comfort and reassure Max, whose world had collapsed without him even realising it. And then the sudden, startling news that Rafe Sandoval, the man Rosalia had seemed to hate, was coming to England to take custody of his son.

All Freya was meant to do, the solicitor had told her with unctuous urbanity, was bring Max for a blood test to confirm paternity, and then wait until he arrived. Rafe had been unreachable when Rosalia had died, which was why he’d missed the funeral. The solicitor had said something smarmy about a very important business deal in South America.

Freya had constructed a picture of Rafe Sandoval in her mind of a man too caught up with his own affairs to care about his ex-wife—or his son. A man who insisted on genetic testing before he so much as stirred himself to consider the child that had been left in his care. A man who would be more than willing to hand over such care to the nanny already in place.

And now, in the cold, hard light of reality—of Rafe —she knew it wasn’t going to happen like that at all.

Yet during the last endless week she’d come to the impossible, emotional realisation that she could not hand Max over to a stranger. For a while she’d been able to look at it with her usual remote composure, but now, when it came to packing his things, saying goodbye …

She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. She’d spent the last three years loving Max, and she wasn’t ready to give that up. She’d given up once before, and she couldn’t do it again. Doing it again would destroy her.

And so she’d convinced herself that Rafe Sandoval would not want such a thing for his son. He would surely see the sense and have the sensitivity of allowing his son to remain with the one person he’d bonded with.

Apparently not.

But then this was not a man known for his sensitivity. Internet searches had told Freya all she needed to know about Rafe Sandoval’s business practices: he waited until a company was struggling, desperate and in its death throes, and then he moved in and bought it, dismantling it for its valuable parts with ruthless efficiency. They even called him El Tiburón—the shark—and she could see how the name fitted. Could imagine him cruising hungrily through the business world, looking for his next prey to devour.

He was approaching his son with the same kind of cold-blooded logic. Here was a company to manage; she was an unnecessary part. How could she convince him otherwise?

‘Freya …’ Max’s sweetly childish voice drifted from upstairs.

Freya and Rafe both froze, staring at each other.

Max called again, more insistently. ‘Fre—ya!’

A muscle flickered in Rafe’s jaw and his fingers clenched again. Freya swallowed, her heart starting its fearful, frantic beat once more. Then simultaneously they both moved towards the stairs.

ALTHOUGH he wanted to take the stairs two at a time, Rafe held back. He had enough sense to know that barging into his sleepy son’s room was hardly the best introduction. He didn’t want to frighten the child.

He followed Freya down the narrow hallway to the back bedroom. Although all he wanted was to see his son, his gaze was momentarily diverted by the sight of Freya leaning over the bed. Her clothes were boring—a cheap black skirt and a white button-down shirt—but there was something so gracefully maternal about her movements as she sat on the edge of the bed, a smile softening those cool features. She looked as lovely and remote as a painting—distant, decorous, and yet also, he realized, desirable.

She brushed the silky hair away from his son’s forehead, and Rafe turned to look upon the child he’d never known he had.

The child he’d always wanted.

Max.

The little boy scrubbed his eyes with his fists, then blinked sleepily, smiling up at Freya. ‘I had a funny dream …’ He paused, the smile freezing on his face as he stared past Freya to Rafe. Max shrank into Freya’s side, his eyes rounding with uncertainty and perhaps even fear.

Rafe stood there, his throat working as he tried to think of the right words to say. He’d never been speechless before, yet now his mind was empty. The realisation of his own child was thudding through him, obliterating thought.

‘Max, this is a friend,’ Freya said, shifting over on the bed so Rafe could see his son.

Max buried his head in Freya’s lap and Rafe watched as she continued to stroke his hair with pale, slender fingers.

Her words caught up with him and his frozen brain finally thawed for thought. A friend? Freya glanced at him sharply, and he saw a warning in her eyes. Anger spiked through Rafe. He was not a friend. He would not begin this most precious relationship with a lie. Yet, even as he opened his mouth to deny her claim, he realised how difficult it would be to explain the truth to his son. The anger hardened inside him. Already Freya Clark had put him in an impossible position. Already she had tricked him, showing him that he was right not to trust her. Trust anyone.

He clenched his fists, then forced them flat again. He wanted to tell Max to get up, that they were going; he wanted to hug him. He knew both would terrify the child, so he clung to his last shred of patience and took his cue from Miss Clark.

‘Hello, Max,’ he said, and his son buried his face against Freya’s shoulder. ‘Yes, I am a friend. And I’m so very happy to meet you.’

Freya heard the raw note of emotion in Rafe’s voice, and it surprised her. Moved her, even. For, after everything Rosalia had said—’He never loved me. He doesn’t know how to love.’—she hadn’t really expected Rafe to feel anything for his son. He was cold, cynical, unable to love. That was what Rosalia had told her, what the tabloids and gossip magazines said. El Tiburón.

And she’d been counting on that, counting on the fact that Rafe was too busy with his professional life to deal with his son properly; she’d thought—hoped—he’d be glad for Freya to do it, despite her connection with Rosalia.

Yet hearing the rawness of Rafe’s voice, seeing how he looked almost hungrily at his child, made Freya realise uncomfortably, painfully, that nothing about this situation was what she’d thought. That maybe Rafe wasn’t what she’d thought.

Max peeked at Rafe from behind her shoulder, curious now, but still shy, and Freya stood up from the bed. ‘Why don’t we go downstairs and have a snack?’

Max slipped his little hand in hers, and Freya led him downstairs, Rafe following behind. She could feel the tension and even the anger emanating from the man; it rolled off him in waves. She felt her own body tense in response, her heart thudding despite her determination to remain calm. To feel calm.

Already this man was making her feel too much. She’d been carefully, comfortably numb for so long, and it was strange and unsettling how he’d managed to strip that away from her within minutes. Her mind and body’s basic response to him was alarming. Frightening, even.