The Secret Baby Scandal

And Rosalia’s lies—over and over again. ‘I don’t know why I can’t fall pregnant. I don’t want to see a doctor.’ And finally, before she’d left, ‘I never wanted your baby, Rafe.’ And she’d been pregnant at the time. What burning need for vengeance had driven her to deceive him so terribly, for so long?

And what of Freya? He thought of her pale, stricken face in the doctor’s office. Ten years ago she’d been no more than a teenager. What had happened? Had she loved the father? Jealousy twined around his heart, his lungs, stealing his breath. He had never felt it so fiercely before, for a man who was no longer in Freya’s life. The realisation was shaming. Yet that man had been the father of her unborn child.

He stood up suddenly, needing to move. The thought of Freya loving someone, losing him, losing her baby, filled him with an unreasonable fury. It had happened ten years ago, and yet the knowledge was fresh. It hurt him, and he did not like to think why. Her past actions surely shouldn’t affect his feelings now. Their marriage was to be a business arrangement, not a love-match. It had to be.

Freya sat hunched on one of the chairs in the waiting room, looking at no one, feeling nothing. Or trying to. When she’d come out of the exam room Rafe had been nowhere in sight. She’d realised she wasn’t even surprised. She wondered if he’d left her here for good, cut her out completely. Her unexpected news would not have been received well by a traditional, family-centred man like Rafe. And of course he would have expected her to tell him yesterday, when he’d demanded to know her secrets. Well, now he knew. The question was, what was he going to do about it?

She’d wait an hour, she decided. And then she’d take a taxi back to his villa. After that, she couldn’t think what she’d do. What Rafe would demand.

Things really didn’t change, she thought grimly. Ten years ago she’d been hunched in an office like this one, the knowledge of her pregnancy like a stone inside her, with nowhere to go, no hope at all.

‘We don’t want to see you again. Don’t attempt to contact us.’

She forced it back—all of it. At least she was older, wiser, and she was keeping this baby…if Rafe let her.

‘Are you all right?’

Freya looked up to see Rafe standing there, his hands shoved in his pockets, his face pale and grim. She nodded, then stood. She felt as fragile as glass, as insubstantial as a breath of wind, but she would not let him know. He held out his hand, and after a second’s hesitation Freya took it. The contact surprised her; she hadn’t expected Rafe to reach out to her at all. She hadn’t expected to take his hand. Yet the feel of it encasing hers was like being thrown an anchor in a drowning sea. She clung to it.

Silently they walked to the car. Rafe opened the passenger door and Freya slid in with murmured thanks; she sounded normal. She sounded fine. It amazed her, because she felt as if she were falling apart, as if she were nothing but fragments.

Rafe got in the driver’s side. He sat there for a moment, silent, unmoving, his hands resting lightly on the steering wheel. ‘The pregnancy?’ he finally asked. ‘Is everything…?’

‘Fine.’ Freya turned her face to the window. ‘Everything’s fine.’

They didn’t speak all the way back to the villa.

Freya went directly to Max as soon as they returned; Damita had been looking after him, but he threw himself happily into her arms and asked if they could go swimming.

‘Of course we can,’ Freya said, hugging him back, grateful for his easy joy and childish warmth. She needed that respite now.

‘And Rafe? Will he come too?’

She swallowed, her throat suddenly tight. ‘I think Rafe might be busy this afternoon, cariño.’

Max’s face fell for a moment, but then he shrugged and tugged on her hand. ‘Oh, well. He’ll come later. He always does.’

They spent most of the afternoon outside, and just as always Rafe appeared towards the end of the day. He wore swimming trunks, and Freya’s breath caught in her throat at the sight of his bare chest, at the broad golden expanse of his back tapering down to trim hips. He didn’t even look her way as he swam towards Max and began to play with him, tossing him up in the air much to the little boy’s delight.

Freya sat on the edge of the pool, her arms crossed in front of her breasts, trying to look relaxed and unconcerned, as if Rafe’s nearness didn’t cause an ache of longing to go through her. As if she wasn’t waiting for her world to implode when Rafe turned to her and said there would be no marriage. No family. He would retain custody of their child.

She feared the worst; of course she did. The worst had happened before.

She closed her eyes, swamped with sorrow. She’d kept herself apart for so long, buried herself in mathematics and the cool logic of numbers as a way to distance herself from any kind of relationship at all…until she’d seen that advert for a nanny for Max and hadn’t been able to resist the thought of finally caring for someone. For a child. Yet look where it had got her. Once again she’d succumbed to temptation. Once again she’d fallen into that old trap.

She would never find happiness or love—not with guilt eating away her insides, sorrow heavy inside her like a stone. ‘Freya?’

Her eyes flew open. Rafe stood in front of her, Max clinging to him like a monkey.

‘You look pale. Perhaps you should get out of the pool. I’ll get Max ready for dinner.’

He kept his voice neutral, but his eyes were dark…with coldness or with concern Freya couldn’t tell. She did not want to know.

She nodded, too weakened by her own misery even to attempt to pretend to pull herself together.

Back in her room she fell into a restless doze, waking to find the hour late. Dinner had passed and Max was most likely asleep. Freya slipped out to the garden, wandering the stone paths that wound through orange and olive trees, clumps of broom and prickly pear, softened by the climbing honeysuckle, its sweet scent drifting on the night breeze.

She ended up in an enclosed garden, with a magnificent mosaic-tiled fountain its centerpiece. The burbling sound of the water was soothing in the silence of the night.