The Secret Baby Scandal

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?’

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sp; 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.