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

Blackmail

& Secrets

The Sandoval Baby

Kate Hewitt

The Count’s Secret Child

Jennie Lucas

Playboy’s Surprise Son

Lucy Gordon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author

KATE HEWITT discovered her first Mills & Boon® romance on a trip to England when she was thirteen, and she’s continued to read them ever since. She wrote her first story at the age of five, simply because her older brother had written one and she thought she could do it too. That story was one sentence long—fortunately they’ve become a bit more detailed as she’s grown older.

She has written plays, short stories, and magazine serials for many years, but writing romance remains her first love. Besides writing, she enjoys reading, travelling, and learning to knit.

After marrying the man of her dreams—her older brother’s childhood friend—she lived in England for six years, and now resides in Connecticut with her husband, her three young children, and the possibility of one day getting a dog.

Kate loves to hear from readers—you can contact her through her website: www.kate-hewitt.com

To Tiffany, Thank you for your friendship and

your honesty. Love, K.

CHAPTER ONE

RAFE SANDOVAL pulled his car to the kerb and stared at the seemingly innocuous terraced house he’d parked in front of. It was a bit shabby, on an ordinary little street, in a bland, faceless suburb of London. And his son—his son—was inside.

Rafe’s fingers curled around the steering wheel until his bones ached. He felt a tidal rush of emotions pour through him before he pushed it all down, forced himself to maintain an icy calm. He needed it now, when he was so close. Close to his son.

He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then turned off the ignition and slid from the car. The slam of the door echoed in the street and he surveyed the little house with its blank windows and unkempt garden. A single geranium in a cracked pot stood on the step, looking woefully bedraggled. A blue rubber ball had been left in the garden, lost in the weeds. Rafe curled his lip at the pathetic sight, yet he could not quite keep some small part of him from being touched by these signs of life. The life his son had lived for three years without any knowledge or awareness of his father.

Or Rafe’s awareness of his son.

He reached for the tarnished brass knocker and let it fall sharply three times. Then he waited, the tension coiling inside him, demanding release. After years of longing for a child, years of being lied to, he was finally so close. Only one woman stood in his way.

The door opened and Rafe gazed dispassionately at the figure standing there. She looked remarkably composed, without even a flicker of surprise at seeing the stranger on her doorstep. Of course his solicitor had informed her of the arrangements.

‘Señor Sandoval, hello. I’ve been expecting you. Won’t you come in?’ She stepped aside, and Rafe entered the cramped foyer, taking in the faded wallpaper, the worn carpet, the clutter of boots by the foot of the stairs. He could hardly believe his son—his heir—had been living like this.

‘You must be Miss Clark?’ he said, turning to face her. She had surprisingly striking features. Her pale face was heart-shaped, her eyes a cool grey, revealing nothing. Her hair, pulled back into a neat ponytail, was a deep red, almost magenta, yet he didn’t think she dyed it. Her eyebrows, arching over those clear, expressionless eyes, were the same colour. ‘Yes. Please call me Freya.’

Rafe inclined his head in acknowledgement, but did not reply. He had no intention of staying long enough to call her anything. He wanted his son. That was all.

Freya gestured to the little parlour off the hall. ‘Won’t you come in? Max is sleeping for the moment, but he should wake up soon.’

Max. Maximo. The name was both familiar and foreign. He wondered why Rosalia had chosen the name—if she’d chosen the name. How involved had she been in the life of their son? How much had this woman been involved, and how much did she know? He had so many questions, yet he did not intend to find answers from this stranger.

He did not want to sit and make pleasantries over a tepid cup of tea. Still, Rafe acknowledged, forcing his impatience and his anger back, this woman had cared for his son for most of his young life. Talking to her was necessary, perhaps invaluable. Undoubtedly there were things he needed to know. Nodding again, he followed her into the parlour, which was as shabby as the rest of the dismal little house.

‘I realise this is a strange situation,’ Freya said. She perched on the edge of a straight-backed chair, her legs crossed at the ankles. She looked. Rafe thought, as if she were interviewing for a position at finishing school.

He remained standing by the door. ‘Yes, it is strange,’ he agreed tersely, ‘although I do not blame you for that.’

Freya Clark raised her eyebrows. ‘Indeed, Señor Sandoval,’ she said coolly. ‘I did not know of your whereabouts until the solicitor informed me a few days ago and requested that I bring Max for a paternity test.’

She spoke with a hint of censure, but Rafe had no intention of explaining anything to her—certainly not how he’d craved reassurance that Max was truly his, how much reason he’d had to expect he was not.

‘I realise it all happened very quickly,’ he said coolly. Less than a week ago he’d been informed his ex-wife had died in a car crash. Then another, even more shocking call: he had a son.

A son he’d never known about. A son his wife had never told him about, even though she must have known she was pregnant when she’d left him. Even though he’d been paying her maintenance for the four years since their divorce. Glancing around the parlour, with its secondhand suite and faded curtains, Rafe knew where his money hadn’t been going.

‘And I did not know of my son’s whereabouts,’ he countered, ‘or even his existence.’ Not until his solicitor had rung him. Not until he’d had the results of the paternity test, confirming that Max really was his.

Something flickered in Freya Clark’s silver-grey eyes, like a ripple in water. Was it guilt? Had she participated in Rosalia’s deception? She looked as if she was hiding something with her carefully closed expression, those blank eyes, and Rafe had no intention of trusting her.

Still, it hardly mattered. He was taking Max back to Spain and he would hire a reliable governess there. He had no need of this woman, with her strange silver eyes and her remote composure. He did not want any vestige of his son’s—or his wife’s—former life cluttering up their future as a family.

‘I’m very glad the solicitor was able to locate you,’ Freya said, and again Rafe felt that flicker of suspicion. She did not sound very sincere—or was he simply being cynical? God knew he had enough reason to be cynical where women were concerned. Not one had deserved his trust or love.

He pushed the question aside, too impatient to deal with it, or the woman who had caused it. The sooner he—and Max—were gone from this awful place the better.

‘Yes, indeed,’ he agreed pleasantly, although he knew she heard the thread of steel in his voice. He’d had enough of pleasantries. ‘When Max wakes up you can pack his things. I intend to return to Spain tonight.’

Any faint hope that Rafe Sandoval might not be interested in his son crumbled to dust in light of his coldly delivered statement. And, Freya told herself fiercely, that was fine. That was good. Max needed to be with his father—the only family he had now. During the last week she’d told herself that again and again. Yet still the idea of losing him so quickly, so coldly, of him being ripped away from her just as—

Freya stopped that train of thought immediately and made herself smile at Rafe. ‘I can certainly understand your haste, Señor Sandoval—’

‘Can you, Miss Clark?’

His dark eyes flashed dangerously, and she knew he was mocking her. He was a beautiful man, with his high cheekbones and the dark slashes of his eyebrows a bold contrast to the sensual fullness of his lips. Although his hair was cut quite short, it looked silky and soft, and he couldn’t quite keep it from flopping over his forehead. She imagined that annoyed him. He’d raked his long, brown fingers through his unruly fringe three times since he’d come into the house. A tiny insecurity, but it made him seem more human. More approachable.

And this was the man Rosalia had never wanted to speak of. A man she’d had to escape because he was so hard and cold and even cruel. Freya knew better than to believe every accusation Rosalia had hissed out in her anger and fear, but Rafe Sandoval did have an intimidating presence. She could sense a leashed anger emanating from this powerful man; it vibrated in every taut line of his muscular body. His fingers clenched into a fist at his sides and then straightened out again. Twice.

‘I can,’ she replied steadily. ‘I know you must be eager to spend time with your son, and get to know him—’ Actually, she didn’t know that. From everything Rosalia had said, Rafe wasn’t interested in Max. Never had been. Then the solicitor had rung and told her Max’s father had been located, had never known about his son, and was coming to collect him as soon as possible. Freya’s safe little world had suddenly been rent apart—the truth she’d built it on that Max had no one but her now shown for a lie.

Yet she should have known it would happen at some point. She was Max’s nanny, not his mother. She was temporary, expendable, replaceable. She’d always known that, even if she’d managed to pretend otherwise while Rosalia had partied in London and she and Max had lived their separate, contented existence here. Even if she’d let herself love him, had been as good as a mother to him for over three years. She’d still known, and it was that knowledge that was breaking her heart now.

‘Indeed.’ Rafe’s tone was forbidding, the word clearly a close to the conversation. His dark gaze flicked towards the stairs.

Freya felt a rush of gratitude that Max had been so tired from his morning at playgroup that he’d fallen asleep. A small mercy, but a crucial one. She needed this time to convince Rafe Sandoval to take her to Spain with him.

And, from the ill-disguised impatience on his coldly handsome face, it wasn’t going to be an easy job.

‘Did the solicitor say anything to you about Max?’ she asked.

Rafe’s fingers clenched once more. ‘He told me that he was my son, and the paternity test verified that. Is there more I need to know?’ From the sardonic note in his voice Freya knew he was being sarcastic, and she felt a lick of anger, which she suppressed. Losing her temper would not help her in this situation.

‘Actually, there is. Max has just lost his mother—’

‘I’m well aware.’

‘And is in a fragile state,’ Freya continued, ignoring him. ‘He needs consistency, stability.’ He needs me. She barely kept from saying the words. ‘Rushing him off to a foreign country is not the best thing for him now.’

‘Being without his father for three years wasn’t the best thing either,’ Rafe returned, an edge to his voice.

‘True, but there is no point adding one hardship on top of another.’

Rafe stared at her, his gaze icily assessing. ‘What do you suggest, Miss Clark?’ he finally asked, his tone as cold as his look.

Freya took a deep breath. ‘I have been the one consistent element in Max’s life,’ she began evenly. I love him. She swallowed down the words, knowing they wouldn’t help. They might even hurt. They certainly wouldn’t sway a man like Rafe—a man who, according to his ex-wife, had no interest in love at all. A man who was staring at her with cold impatience. ‘I think I should stay with Max as he makes the transition—’

‘I intend finding a suitable carer in Spain,’ Rafe returned flatly.

‘There’s no need,’ Freya argued, her voice calm. She felt as if her heart were flinging itself against her chest, but she’d never let Rafe Sandoval see how much this meant to her—how much she’d come to love Max over the last three years. He was the only person she’d let into her heart in ten years. Since—

No. She would not think about that. She lifted her chin. ‘You have a suitable carer right here.’

Rafe let out a slow breath, studying her. Freya waited, knowing judgement could come swiftly, in seconds. ‘I would prefer,’ he said finally, ‘to have a completely fresh start.’

‘Understandable,’ Freya countered, knowing how acrimonious the Sandovals’ divorce must have been. ‘But fresh starts are not always good for children. Max was happy here.’

Rafe glanced around the little parlour, which Freya knew was a bit … worn. ‘Really?’

Scepticism dripped from his voice, and Freya stiffened. ‘You don’t need a mansion or a flashy car to make a child happy.’

‘How about a father?’

‘Yes, exactly. Someone to—’ Once again she swallowed down that dangerous L-word.

Rafe narrowed his eyes. ‘I will give you severance pay,’ he said, his look and tone both assessing. Suspicious. ‘A generous package. So if it’s money you’re concerned about—’

‘It’s not money,’ Freya replied sharply. Colour flashed into her face. ‘It’s Max.’

Rafe arched an eyebrow. ‘You care for him?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Enough to travel to a foreign country?’ ‘I’m familiar with Spain,’ Freya admitted, trying not to show how reluctant she was to reveal that fact. She didn’t want to think about the last time she’d been to Spain, or the mistakes she’d made. The loss she’d endured. She never thought about that. She met Rafe’s speculative gaze clearly, refusing to allow even the faintest flicker of emotion to cross her face.

‘I’d prefer,’ he said, ‘to have someone care for Max who speaks Spanish.’

Freya could not keep the triumph from her voice as she told him, ‘I’m fluent in Spanish.’

Rafe smiled faintly as he conceded the point in their power struggle. ‘You are full of surprises, Miss Clark.’

‘I don’t mean to be. But Ro—Max’s mother wanted me to speak both Spanish and English to Max.’

‘I’m glad,’ Rafe said, in a voice that was carefully, painfully bland, ‘that she did not keep Max from his Spanish heritage.’ His mouth hardened into a thin line. ‘Only his Spanish father.’

Freya said nothing. She’d had no great affection for Rosalia Sandoval, but she’d felt sorry for her. The woman had been clearly unhappy, and underneath the anger Freya had thought she’d seen hurt. At one point, Freya suspected, Rosalia had been deeply in love with her husband.

Rafe straightened, glancing around the little parlour with an expression of dismissal. Freya felt her heart lodge like a stone inside her. ‘I appreciate all you’ve done for Max,’ he said briskly, ‘but children adapt. And Max is going to have a completely new life—one in which he will not want for anything.’ His expression softened for only a second, those dark eyes shadowed with something like pity. ‘On occasion a fresh start is exactly what is needed.’

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.

CHAPTER TWO

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.

Unless, of course, it wasn’t him. It was simply the situation. The possibility of losing Max, and even of travelling to Spain, had brought too many painful memories to the fore. Memories she’d spent the last ten years trying to forget. And, even though they hurt, it was better than thinking Rafe affected her.