The Secret Baby Scandal

He looked startled, his brows snapping together, before regret shadowed his eyes and he shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realize…’ He let out a slow breath. ‘I never should have threatened you with some kind of custody battle—especially now that I know what you endured before. I was speaking out of anger and fear. I’m sorry.’

Freya felt as if her mind were spinning, as if her heart had been given wings, and yet hope still felt like a dangerous thing. ‘I thought—after I told you—’ She looked down, unable to continue, and stiffened in surprise when she felt Rafe’s arms close around her.

‘Oh, Freya,’ he murmured. ‘What you endured was terrible, but it showed me the person you are—the person you’ve become. Brave and strong and gentle and true. Do you think I am going to hold what happened ten years ago against you now? Against who you are now?’

She shook her head, her cheek pressed against his chest.

Rafe let out a little sigh. ‘I suppose you have good reason to think I would,’ he admitted quietly. ‘I held Rosalia’s deception against her for so long, yet last night I started to think about how I contributed to it. I wanted a child so much, too much perhaps, and for a lot of convoluted reasons.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘In part because my own childhood was so unhappy, and because I felt so rejected by my own father. I wanted to prove to him that I could have a family of my own, that I could have everything he’d denied me. And I think I thought having a child would somehow help to heal my own past. But it didn’t, of course, because I held on to my anger.’

‘How—how did your father reject you?’ Freya whispered. ‘Why?’

‘My mother never told me the truth about my father. She was pregnant by another man when she married him—that was why she married him. She didn’t tell him, but he found out eventually. I don’t know how.’ His arms tightened around her. ‘I don’t suppose it really matters. What mattered to me, as a child, was that he never loved me. Never even liked me. He treated me like a stranger inhabiting his house. I never understood it. And my mother never told me why. I can understand why she didn’t, yet still—she seemed ashamed of me. I think she was probably ashamed of herself. But as a child—’

His voice caught, and Freya pulled him closer.

‘My father finally told me,’ he said quietly. ‘When I was eighteen. He’d done his duty by me, or so he seemed to think, and he cut me off without a penny and of course with no inheritance. I made my own way, and I was glad—determined—to do so. But I still wanted my own family—maybe just to prove something to my father, or to myself. I don’t know.’ He let out another weary sigh, resting his chin on top of her head. ‘But obviously I married for the wrong reasons, and doomed my marriage to failure with my single-minded purpose.’

‘You can’t blame yourself completely.’

‘And neither can you. We can both accept our guilt and then move on. Forgiveness doesn’t come without that.’ He tilted her chin so she was gazing up at him again, and she saw his face soften with warmth, with acceptance, with love. ‘I love you and I want us to have a real marriage. A real family. Do you want that?’

Freya’s throat was tight with tears, so she could only nod. He brushed her damp cheek with his thumb. ‘You’re crying.’

‘I seem to be doing that a lot lately,’ she admitted with a shaky laugh. ‘And after not crying for so long. But these are good tears.’

‘When I first met you,’ Rafe said, ‘I thought you were so controlled, so cold. You didn’t seem to have any emotion at all. And there I was, boiling with rage and fear and desire.’

Freya laughed softly. ‘Desire?’

‘Yes—for you. From just about the first moment I saw you in that boring black skirt. You made it look very sexy.’

‘You’re right, though,’ Freya confessed quietly. ‘I’d almost fooled myself into thinking I didn’t feel anything at all. I didn’t want to feel because I knew it would hurt. And yet from just about the first moment I met you you made me feel. So much. And that was very scary.’

‘It still is a little bit, isn’t it?’ Rafe said soberly. ‘I was scared to tell you I loved you—that’s why I looked so grim this morning.’

‘And now?’ Freya asked with a tremulous smile.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘I’m a very happy man.’

Rafe tipped her chin up so their eyes met, and then their lips did, in a soft, sweet kiss that made every part of her ache.

The kiss was a promise, a balm, and it told Freya that the past really was finished. Forgiven. And the future lay before them—bright, shining and new.