The Royal Baby Bargain

Robyn Donald

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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All about the author…
Robyn Donald

Greetings! I’m often asked what made me decide to be a writer of romances. Well, it wasn’t so much a decision as an inevitable conclusion. Growing up in a family of readers helped, and shortly after I started school I began whispering stories in the dark to my two sisters. Although most of those tales bore a remarkable resemblance to whatever book I was immersed in, there were times when a new idea would pop into my brain—my first experience of the joy of creativity.

Growing up in New Zealand, in the subtropical north, gave me a taste for romantic landscapes and exotic gardens. But it wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I read a Harlequin book and realized that the country I love came alive when populated by strong, tough men and spirited women.

By then I was married and a working mother, but into my busy life I crammed hours of writing; my family has always been hugely supportive. And when I finally plucked up enough courage to send off a manuscript, it was accepted. The only thing I can compare that excitement to is the delight of bearing a child.

Since then it’s been a roller-coaster ride of fun and hard work and wonderful letters from fans.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

ABBY stared at the list of things to do before leaving, and let out a long, slow breath, her brows drawing together as another feather of unease ghosted down her spine. Every item had a slash through it, so her unconscious wasn’t trying to warn her she’d forgotten something.

It had started—oh, a couple of months ago, at first just a light tug of tension, a sensation as though she’d lost the top layer of skin, that had slowly intensified into a genuinely worrying conviction that she was being watched.

Was this how Gemma’s premonitions had felt? Or had she herself finally succumbed to paranoia?

Whatever, she couldn’t take any risks.

Driven into action by the nameless fear, she’d resigned from her part-time job at the doctor’s surgery and made plans to disappear from the small town hard against New Zealand’s Southern Alps—the town that had been her and Michael’s refuge for the past three years.

The same creepy sensation tightened her already-taut nerves another notch. She put the list down on the scrubbed wooden table in the kitchen and prowled once more through the cottage, switching lights on and off as she examined each room.

Back in the inconvenient little living room, chilly now that the fire had collapsed into sullen embers, she stopped beside the bag on the sofa that held necessities for tomorrow’s journey. Everything else she and Michael owned—clothes, toys, books—was already stuffed into the boot of her elderly car. Not even a scrap of paper hinted at their three years’ residence.

Yet that persistent foreboding still nagged at her. All her life she’d loved to lie in bed and listen to the more-pork call, but tonight she shivered at the little owl’s haunting, plaintive cry from the patch of bush on the farm next door. And when she caught herself flinching at the soft wail of the wind under the eaves, she dragged in a deep breath and glanced at her watch.

‘Stop it right now!’ she said sturdily. ‘Nothing’s going to happen.’

But the crawling, baseless unease had kept her wired and wide-eyed three hours past her normal bedtime. At this rate she wouldn’t sleep a wink.

So why not leave now?

Although she’d planned to start early in the morning, Michael would sleep as well in his child seat as he did in bed. He probably wouldn’t even wake when she picked him up. No one would see them go, and at this time of night the roads were empty.

The decision made, she moved quickly to collect and pack her night attire and sponge bag and the clothes she’d put out for Michael in the morning. She picked up her handbag, opened it and groped for the car keys.

Only to freeze at a faint sound—the merest scrabble, the sort of sound a small animal might make as it scuttled across the gravel outside.

A typical night noise, nothing to worry about.

Yet she strained to hear, the keys cutting into her palm as her hand clenched around them. Unfortunately her heart thudded so heavily in her ears it blocked out everything but the bleating of a sheep from the next paddock. The maternal, familiar sound should have been reassuring; instead, it held a note of warning.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop being so melodramatic,’ she muttered, willing her pulse to settle back into a more even rhythm. ‘No one cares a bit that you’re leaving Nukuroa.’

Very few people would miss her, and if they knew that she’d been driven away from their remote village by a persistent, irrational foreboding they’d think she was going mad. After all, she’d scoffed at Gemma.

But if she was heading for a breakdown, who would look after Michael—?

‘No!’ she said firmly.

If she were losing her mind, she’d deal with it once she and Michael were safely away.

She yanked the car keys from her handbag, swearing under her breath when she accidentally dislodged an envelope onto the sofa. It gaped open, light from the centre bulb transforming the fine wavy strands of hair inside to a tawny-gold glory.

Abby’s lips tightened. She glanced at the dying fire, but before the thought had time to surface she’d pushed the envelope back into her bag and closed the catch on it.

Shivering, she took in three or four deep, grounding breaths. As soon as she got settled again she’d burn that lock of hair. It was a sentimental fetter to a past long dead; her future was devoted to Michael, which was why the miracle of modern hair colouring now dimmed her bright crown to a dull mouse-brown. A further disguise was the way she wore it, scraped back from her face in a pony-tail that straightened the naturally loose, casual waves.

She endured the change, just as she endured the cheap clothes in unflattering shades that concealed her slender body. She’d even bought spectacles of plain glass, tinted to mute her tilted, almond-shaped eyes and green-gold irises.

Nothing could hide her mouth, wide and full and far too obvious, even when she’d toned it down with lipstick just the wrong colour. In spite of that, and the cleft in her chin, the camouflage worked.

She’d turned being inconspicuous into an art form. Anyone who took a second glance saw a single mother with no clothes sense and no money, working hard to bring up her child, refusing dates, content to lurk on the edge of life. In a year’s time no one in Nukuroa would remember her.

If that thought stung, she had only to recall Michael’s laughing, open face when he came running towards her each evening in the child-care centre, the warmth of his hug and kiss when she tucked him into bed, his confidence and exuberant enjoyment of life.

Nothing and nobody was more important than Michael.

And if she was going to take him away tonight, she’d better get going!

Keys dangling from her fingers, she lifted the pack and set off for the front door, only to stop, heart hammering again, when her ears picked up the faint murmur of a car on the road. After a second’s hesitation, she dropped the pack and paced noiselessly across to the window. Slowly she drew back the curtain a fraction and peered into the darkness. Headlights flashed on and off like alarm beacons in the heavy darkness as the car moved past the line of trees separating the farm paddock from the road.

When the vehicle continued out of sight she let out a long, relieved breath. Her wide mouth sketched a curve at the familiar fusillade of barks from the dogs at the homestead next door, but the smile soon faded. Odd that a car should be on the road this late; in this farming district most people went to bed early.

Taut and wary, she stayed at the window for several more minutes, listening to the encompassing silence, her mind racing over her plans. First the long trip to Christchurch, where she’d sell the car for what little she could get. Tomorrow evening she and Michael would take flight to New Plymouth in the North Island—with tickets bought under a false name, of course.

And then a new safe haven, a different refuge—but the same life, she thought wearily, always checking over her shoulder, waiting for Caelan Bagaton—referred to by the media as Prince Caelan Bagaton, although he didn’t use the title—to track her down.

Yet it was a life she’d willingly accepted. Straightening her shoulders, she drew the scanty curtain across and went into the narrow, old-fashioned kitchen, where her gaze fell on the list of things to do. Oh, hell! She’d have to get rid of that before she left. Still listening alertly, she screwed up the sheet of paper and dropped it into the waste-paper bin.

Only to give a short, silent laugh at her stupidity, snatch it out and hurry back to the living room to toss it onto the dying embers. It didn’t catch immediately; some of the words stood out boldly as the paper curled and blackened, so she bent down and blew hard, and a brief spurt of flame reduced the list to dark flakes that settled anonymously onto the grate.

‘Nobody,’ she said on a note of steely satisfaction, ‘is going to learn anything from those ashes.’

She stood up and had taken one step across the room when she heard another unknown sound. Where?

Twanging nerves drove her to move swiftly, noiselessly, into the narrow hall and head for the door. Two steps away from it, she heard the snick of a key in the lock.

Fear kicked her in the stomach, locking every muscle. For a few, irretrievable seconds she couldn’t obey the mindless, adrenalin-charged instinct to snatch up Michael and race wildly out of the back door.

I must be dreaming, she thought desperately. Oh God, please let me be dreaming!

But the door flew back at the noiseless thrust of an impatient hand, and every nightmare that had haunted her sleep, every fear she’d repressed, coalesced into stark panic.

Every magnificent inch an avenging prince, Caelan Bagaton came into the house in a silent, powerful rush, closing the door behind him with a deliberation that dried her mouth and sent her blood racing through her veins. He looked like some dark phantom out of her worst nightmare—tall, broad-shouldered, his hard, handsome features clamped in a mask of arrogant authority. The weak light emphasised the ruthless angle of his jaw and the hard male beauty of his mouth, picked out an autocratic sweep of cheekbones and black lashes that contrasted shockingly with cold blue eyes.

Beneath the panic, a treacherous wildfire memory stirred. Horrified, Abby swallowed. Oh, she remembered that mouth—remembered the feel of it possessing hers…

‘You know you should always have a chain on the door,’ he said, voice cool with mockery, gaze narrowed and glinting as he scanned her white face.

Shaking but defiantly stubborn, she said, ‘Get out,’ only to realise that no sound came from her closed throat. She swallowed and repeated the words in a croaking monotone. ‘Get out of here.’

Even though she mightn’t be able to master her body’s primitive response to his vital potency, she’d stand her ground.

‘Did you really think you’d get away with stealing my nephew?’ Contempt blazed through every word. He advanced on her, the dominant framework of his face as implacable as the anger that beat against her.

The metallic taste of fear nauseated her; determined not to be intimidated, she fought it with every scrap of will-power. Although she knew it was futile, desperation forced her to try and sidetrack him.

‘How did you get the door key?’ she demanded, heart banging so noisily she was certain he could hear it.

‘I’m the new tenant.’ He surveyed her pinched face in a survey as cold as the lethal sheen on a knife-blade. ‘And you are Abigail Moore, whose real name is Abigail Metcalfe, shortened by her friends and lovers—and my sister—to Abby.’ His tone converted the sentence to an insult. ‘Drab clothes and dyed hair are a pathetic attempt at disguise. You must have been desperate to be found.’

‘If so, I’d have kept both my hair colour and my name,’ she said through her teeth, temper flaring enough to hold the fear at bay.

His wide shoulders lifted in a dismissive shrug. ‘Why didn’t you move to Australia?’

‘Because I couldn’t afford the fare.’ The words snapped out before she realised she’d been goaded into losing control. Just after she’d returned to New Zealand she’d read an article about him; he’d said that anger and fear made fools of people, and now she was proving it.

Dragging in a shallow breath, she tried again to divert him away from the child sleeping in the back bedroom. ‘If you’re the new tenant, you’re not legally allowed in here until tomorrow. Get out before I call the police.’

He glanced ostentatiously at the sleek silver—no, probably platinum—watch on his lean wrist. ‘It is tomorrow, and we both know you won’t call the police. The local constable would laugh at you as he tossed you into the cells; kidnappers are despised, especially those who steal babies.’

Panic paralysed her mind until a will-power she hadn’t known she possessed forced it into action again; for Michael’s sake she had to keep a clear head. She said raggedly, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

In a drawl as insulting as it was menacing, he said, ‘You barely waited to bury Gemma after the cyclone before you stole her child and ran away.’

‘We were air-lifted out to New Zealand.’ She hid the panicky flutter in her stomach with a snap.

He ignored her feeble riposte with a contemptuous lift of one sable brow. ‘I imagine the poor devils on Palaweyo were so busy cleaning up that no one had time or inclination to check any information you gave.’ He paused, as though expecting an answer; when she remained stoically silent he finished, ‘It was clever—although dangerous—to say he was your child.’

Abby clamped her teeth over more tumbling, desperate words, only will-power keeping her gaze away from the door to Michael’s bedroom. Fear coalesced into a cold pool beneath her ribs.

What else did Gemma’s brother know?

Claiming Michael as her own might have been illegal, but it had secured his future. Once the prince discovered that his sister had died in one of the Pacific Ocean’s violent cyclones, he’d have flown to Palaweyo. And when he found that Gemma had given birth to a child, everything she’d feared—and made Abby promise to prevent—would have unfolded. He’d have taken Michael back to the life that Gemma dreaded—a life of privilege, bereft of love.

Abby’s lie had worked a minor miracle; nobody had queried it. Instead, the overworked and pressured island authorities had immediately found her a flight to New Zealand, and once back home the authorities had fast-tracked documentation for her and Michael as mother and child.

She said stonily, ‘He is mine.’

‘Prove it.’

The words slashed her composure into ribbons. ‘Check his birth certificate.’ Trying to conceal her fear with a show of defiance, she stared at him with hostile eyes, but her glare backfired into sabotage.

She’d met the prince a few times, usually when she’d called at his opulent mansion in one of Auckland’s exclusive marine suburbs to pick up Gemma for an evening out. And once, when she and Gemma were spending a weekend at the beach house on the island he owned in the exquisite Hauraki Gulf, he arrived unexpectedly.

It had been an odd, extremely tense two days; she’d been certain he disliked her, until the final night when he’d kissed her on the beach under the light of a full, voluptuous moon.

She’d gone up in flames, and it had been Caelan who’d pulled away, apologising in a cold, distant voice that had chilled her through to her bones.

Snob, she thought now, compulsively noting the subtle changes the years had made to his arrogant face—a few lines around his cold eyes, a stronger air of authority. His potent charisma still blazed forth, and beneath bronzed skin the splendid bone structure remained rock-hard and ruthless, as it would for the rest of his life.

That ruthlessness was stamped in his family tree. He looked every inch what he was—the descendant of Mediterranean princes who’d established their rule with tough, uncompromising pragmatism and enough hard tenacity to fight off pirates and corsairs and a horde of other invaders, all eager to occupy the rich little island nation of Dacia.

He could have used his social position and his astonishing good looks to lead the life of a playboy. Instead, he’d taken over his father’s business in his mid-twenties and used his formidable intellect and intimidating personality to build it into a huge, world-wide organisation.

Add to that power the fact that he kissed like a fallen angel and Abby knew she had every reason to be afraid of the impact he made on her. Praying he couldn’t see the mindless, bitter attraction stirring inside her, she wrenched her gaze away.

‘I haven’t changed as much as you,’ he observed silkily. ‘But then, I haven’t tried to.’

A potent dose of adrenalin pounded through her veins, and, shockingly, for the first time in years she felt alive again.

He noted the heat in her cheeks with a coldly cynical smile. ‘The child’s birth certificate is a pack of lies,’ he said with deadly precision, his hard, beautiful mouth curling.

Her heart contracted. She had to take a deep breath before she could ask, ‘Can you prove that?’

‘I’ve seen him.’

She stared at him, eyes huge and dark in her pale face. ‘So?’

‘He looks like Gemma,’ he said flatly. ‘I have a photograph of her at the same age, and, apart from the colouring, it looks like the same child.’

‘You call that proof?’ she asked, letting manufactured scorn ring through her voice. ‘You’ll need to do better than that to convince anyone.’

Caelan let the silence drag on, ratcheting up her tension until she had to stifle a small gasp when he finally drawled, ‘Are you prepared to have a DNA test done?’

It was a trap, of course, and her only chance was to carry it off with a high hand.

‘Of course not.’ She hoped her contempt matched his.

‘I could force you to.’

He meant it. Panic kicked ferociously in her stomach. ‘How?’

His mouth thinned into a hard line. ‘I have signed depositions from the villagers on Palaweyo—the one where you lived with Gemma—that the boy child was born to the girl with long black hair, not to the nurse who had hair like the sunrise in summer.’ He studied her drab hair for a moment of exquisite torture before drawling, ‘Any court would take that information as an indication that blood tests would be a good thing.’

The walls in the narrow hall pressed around Abby, robbing her of breath, clamping her heart in intolerable fear. Speared by anguish, she had to concentrate on keeping herself upright. Gemma, she thought numbly, oh Gemma, I’m so sorry…

She could still hear Gemma say, ‘And I won’t go and live with Caelan after the baby’s born, so it’s no use trying to make me.’

Abby had twisted in the hammock and stared at her very pregnant guest, sprawled out on the coarse white coral sand. ‘Don’t go all drama queen on me again! I’m not trying to make you do anything! All I said was that your brother seems the sort of man who’d be there for you!’

Gemma said with false heartiness, ‘Oh, he is! Believe me, they don’t come any more protective or autocratic or masterful than Caelan. It’s in the genes—all the Bagaton men are tough and dominant. I’m not telling him about this baby because—’ She stopped and sifted sand through her fingers, her expression an odd mixture of defiance and shyness. After a swift upwards glance at Abby, she began again. ‘Because Caelan would step in and take us over, and for once I want to show him that I can manage.’

Doubtfully, Abby said, ‘Gemma, being a single mother isn’t easy.’ Even when you’re cushioned by money and an assured position in world society!

‘I can learn. Other women do it,’ Gemma said stubbornly.

‘Not princesses!’

Gemma grinned. ‘We don’t use the title—well, not anywhere else but Dacia, where they do it automatically.’ The smile faded. ‘And don’t try to persuade me to let my mother know either. She couldn’t care less what I do. As for a grandchild—she’d kill me sooner than own to one! She never loved me, not even as a child. In fact, just before I came to stay with you she told me that she blamed me entirely for the break-up of her marriage to my father!’

‘Oh, no, I’m sure she didn’t…’ But at Gemma’s hard little laugh, her voice trailed away.

‘Abby, you don’t know how much I envy you those parents who loved you, and your normal happy life. I grew up in a huge house that always seemed empty and cold, with parents who fought all the time. In a way it got better after my mother left my father and I was packed off to boarding school and ignored.’

‘Even by Caelan?’

Gemma shrugged, one hand stroking her thickening waistline. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘When he came home it was wonderful, but he was away most of the time, first at university and then overseas.’

‘I still can’t see why you don’t tell him you’re pregnant. I know he’s tough, and he’s obviously been a fairly difficult guardian, but even you admit he did his best for you.’

Gemma pouted. ‘Well, that’s part of the problem. Caelan has hugely high standards, standards I entirely failed to live up to.’

Talking to Gemma sometimes felt like trying to catch butterflies with your hands behind your back. Abby said gently, ‘What’s the other part of the problem?’

Gemma gave her a swift, upwards glance, then shrugged elaborately. ‘You’ll laugh.’

‘Try me.’

For once Gemma looked self-conscious. ‘Caelan says it’s all hokum, but I get—premonitions. I knew when—’ in a betraying gesture her hand spread out over her stomach ‘—when the baby’s father went up to rescue those wretched climbers on Mount Everest I knew I’d never see him again. I pleaded with him to stay away, but his damned sense of responsibility drove him there. He saved them, but he died on the mountain himself.’

Abby made a soft, sympathetic noise.

Gemma looked up with tear-drenched eyes and said with sudden, passionate energy, ‘OK, it sounds utterly stupid, but I think—I feel—I’m going to die soon after this baby is born.’ Ignoring Abby’s shocked exclamation, she hurried on, ‘If I do, he’ll go to live with Caelan and I couldn’t bear for him to grow up like me in some huge, formal, echoing house with no parents to love him, no one to hold him when he cries except a nanny who’s paid to look after him.’

‘Gemma—’

‘I know you don’t believe me—that’s all right. Only—if it happens, Abby, will you take Michael and love him and give him the sort of childhood you had?’ She gave a teasing smile, and added, ‘If you don’t, damn it, I’ll haunt you!’

Of course Abby hadn’t believed that her guest’s premonitions meant anything. She’d set herself to easing what she thought was maternal fear, and felt she’d managed it quite well, but Gemma had been right. Michael had only been two weeks old when one of the Pacific Ocean’s vicious cyclones had changed course and smashed into Palaweyo so swiftly there had been no time to evacuate the weather coast.

They’d taken refuge in the hospital, but a beam had fallen on Gemma, breaking her spine. And before she’d died, she’d extracted a promise from Abby—one she was determined to keep.

Whatever it took.

Abby dragged in a deep breath and stared at Caelan’s dark, impervious face. Attack, she thought bleakly; don’t go all defensive.

‘Whatever bribes you paid the villagers—and I hope they were good big ones because they need the money—he’s mine.’

‘I gave them a new hospital—cyclone-proof this time—and staff to run it.’ Caelan’s tone was dismissive, but there was nothing casual in his eyes. Icy, merciless, scathing, they raked her face. ‘I know the child is Gemma’s son.’ Watching her with the still intentness of a hunter the moment before he launched a weapon, he finished with charged menace, ‘Which makes me his uncle and you no relation at all.’

Abby’s head felt woolly and disconnected. Regulating her breath into a slow, steady rhythm, she fought for composure. If the prince knew for certain she was no relation to the child he’d get rid of her so fast that Michael would wake up tomorrow without the only mother he’d ever known.

She loved Michael more than she had ever loved anything else.

Ignoring the cold hollowness inside her, she swallowed to ease her dry throat and said tonelessly, ‘Michael is my son.’

Caelan hadn’t expected to feel anything beyond justified anger and contempt for her, but her dogged stubbornness elicited an unwilling admiration.

Not that she looked anything like the radiant, fey creature who’d met his eyes with a barely hidden challenge four years previously.

In spite of that, in spite of everything she’d done, he still wanted her. He had to clench his hands to stop them from reaching out to her—to shake her? Or kiss the lie from her lips? Both, probably.

The lust should have died the moment he’d discovered she’d stolen Gemma’s son.

Deriding himself, he examined her mercilessly, enjoying the colour that flared into her exquisite skin and the wariness shadowing her eyes. Even with bad hair colouring and depressing clothes, her riotous hair confined in brutal subjugation and her eyes hidden behind tinted spectacles, her sensuous allure reached out to him.

Golden as a faerie woman, as dangerous as she was treacherous, behind the almond-shaped eyes and voluptuous mouth hid a lying, scheming kidnapper.

The dossier said that the child seemed happy, but who knew what had happened to Gemma’s son?

And why had she done it? Was she one of those sick creatures who yearned so strongly for a child she stole one? One glance at her glittering eyes despatched that idea. She was as sane as he was. So had she thought that possession of Gemma’s child would lead to a direct line to Gemma’s money?

He changed tactics. ‘How much is it going to cost me?’

The last tinge of soft apricot along her astonishing cheekbones vanished, leaving her the colour of parchment. Arms swinging out to catch her, Caelan took an involuntary step forward, then let his hands fall to his sides when she didn’t stagger. Sardonically, he watched her eyes close, their long lashes casting fragile shadows on her tender skin.

Oh, she knew all the tricks! He took a deliberate step backwards, removing himself, he thought with cold disgust at his body’s betrayal, from danger.

Her lashes lifted and she transfixed him with eyes that usually blended green and gold; not now, though. Stripped of all emotion, enamelled and opaque, they blazed a clear, hard green, vivid in the dim light of the small, bare hall.

‘How much for what?’ she asked in a staccato sentence.

He didn’t bother with subtlety. ‘For you to give up the child.’

CHAPTER TWO

NOT a muscle moved in the delicate ivory skin, but a shadow darkened Abby’s eyes. ‘You disgust me,’ she said woodenly. ‘Get out.’

Time, Caelan decided, to use the blunt instrument; if appealing to greed wouldn’t do the trick, threats usually worked. ‘You’re in trouble, Abby. If I decide to play it heavy, you face a conviction for kidnapping the child and giving false information to the passport authorities.’

That shocked her. She winced as though against a blow, but her soft mouth hardened. ‘His name is Michael,’ she stated fiercely, shaken by a gust of emotion he couldn’t define. ‘He’s not some entity you can define by the term child; he has a personality, a place in the world.’

‘A place in the world?’ Caelan looked around the shabby hall, his derision plain. ‘He deserves better than this.’

‘You might have grown up in the lap of luxury, secure in the fact that you’re a prince, but most children are perfectly happy with a more down-market set of relatives and much less money. He is loved and he loves. He has little friends—’

‘You’re taking him away from them,’ he interrupted in his turn, not trying to hide the contempt in his tone.

She looked away. Whatever she’d been going to say died on her tongue; she shivered, and once more delicate colour flared along her high cheekbones. On a burst of fierce, angry triumph, Caelan knew that he wasn’t the only one feeling the violent pull of an old craving.

‘Let’s deal,’ he said, forcing himself to speak judicially. Clearly, she wasn’t going to be bought off, so he had no choice; she was the only mother Gemma’s son had known, and, until the child could manage without her, they were both stuck with her.

Not that he was going to tell her that. No, he’d frighten her thoroughly first, and then drive as hard a bargain as he could.

With cool deliberation, he went on, ‘I’m offering you a future. I want the—I want my sister’s child. However, because he thinks you’re his mother, I propose we bury the hatchet.’

Torn by a tumult of conflicting thoughts, she stared at him. ‘How?’ she said at last, her voice stiff and defensive, waiting for his next words with painful apprehension.

He said ironically, ‘It’s quite simple.’

‘Simple?’ Abby was so incensed she almost gobbled the word. ‘Nothing about this is simple.’

‘You should have thought of that before you decided to play with Michael’s life,’ the prince said grimly. ‘You removed him from his family, took him away from the only people who’d know how to protect him. Have you thought of the danger you could be exposing him to?’

‘Danger?’ Eyes widening, she stared at him. ‘What danger?’

He said coldly, ‘He’s a Bagaton, which makes him prime kidnap material.’

So shocked she almost fell for the trick, she had to bite back the words that trembled on her lips. Hoping he didn’t notice the momentary hesitation, she said haughtily, ‘He is not a Bagaton. His name is Michael Metcalfe. And we Metcalfes are noted for our long and happy marriages, not for being kidnapped.’

A slashing jet brow rose in irony. ‘A writer is sniffing around Palaweyo, researching a book on Pacific tragedies.’ His hard, sensuous mouth curled. ‘Any woman you can label a princess is always useful when it comes to selling books, especially if she’s young and beautiful and dies in a monster cyclone after giving birth. Once the writer finds out that Michael is Gemma’s child—’

Abby struggled to remain calm, but the panic beneath her ribs intensified so that she couldn’t control her racing thoughts. ‘I doubt whether any writer—however well his books sell!—can afford to dangle the bribe of a hospital in front of the villagers in return for the right lies,’ she flashed.

‘I knew that the child was Gemma’s before I decided to give the villagers their hospital,’ he told her casually. ‘They spoke quite freely about you and her—they have no reason not to tell anyone who asks. And no writer worth his salt is going to keep it quiet.’ His face hardened. ‘Inevitably you will be tracked down—’

‘How? It took you, with all your resources, three years to find us,’ she snapped, but he could see the fear in her eyes.

‘Writers have resources too.’ He waited while she absorbed the impact of that before adding forcefully, ‘Once he finds you, the resultant publicity will expose Michael’s existence—and his lack of protection—to anyone who wants a quick fortune. Didn’t you read about the de Courcy heiress?’

Colour drained from Abby’s face. The fourteen-year-old daughter of a billionaire had been snatched from her exclusive school, yet although her parents had paid the huge ransom, it had been too late. She’d been killed the day after she’d disappeared.

The cold, inflexible voice of the prince battered at her composure. ‘Whoever did that got away with five million euros, worth in New Zealand dollars about—’

‘I know how much it’s worth! You’re trying to frighten me,’ she said thinly, turning her head away from his intimidating gaze as though she could shut out the effect of his words.

‘Damn right I am! There are people out there who’d see Michael as a passport to easy money, a soft target. Are you willing to risk that?’

She went even paler and closed her eyes. He was manipulating her, but the thought of Michael in the clutches of some cold-hearted psychopath robbed her of speech and the ability to think.

A soft noise brought her head around sharply; Michael was stirring. And the prince was walking with long, noiseless strides towards the open door of the bedroom.

Panic hit her in a howling, destructive storm, propelling her after him into the tiny room. Caelan loomed over the bed. He didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge her presence at all, his whole attention bent on the child as though claiming him in some primal way.

Abby pushed desperately at his hard, lean body. She might as well have tried to move a granite pillar, except that his body heat reached out and blasted through the brittle shell of her self-control.

Her hands dropped, but she didn’t move. In a fierce voice pitched too low to disturb the restless child, she ordered, ‘Get out of here.’

Silently Caelan turned, but he waited at the doorway, a silent, threatening figure. After straightening the bed-clothes over Michael, Abby dragged in a juddering breath and left him.

‘We’ll go into the living room.’ She pushed open the door.

Once inside Caelan Bagaton said with cold distaste, ‘I don’t hurt children, Abby.’

‘All right, I overreacted,’ she returned shakily. ‘I don’t think you’d be cruel to him. I know you weren’t cruel to Gemma—she told me herself that she barely knew you because you were away so much. But can’t you see that the last thing she wanted was for her son to be banished to a nursery like an abandoned doll stuffed in a cupboard, cared for by nannies who come and go regularly?’

Caelan’s expression didn’t change at her inadvertent admission that the child was Gemma’s. His desire to see the boy had shattered Abby’s composure; she didn’t even realise she’d given herself away.

Instinct warned him to proceed with caution. He said neutrally, ‘Her mother wasn’t maternal, but she made sure Gemma had the best care available. And my father had duties he couldn’t avoid, as well as a corporation to run. He did his best for her.’

Hands clenching into fists at her side, Abby skewered him with an outraged glance and carried on in full, indignant fervour. ‘By sending her off to boarding school the minute she turned eight, where she was wretchedly, miserably unhappy? That was his best?’ With an elaborate dismissive shrug she finished scathingly, ‘In that case, I’m really, really glad to hear that he didn’t dislike her!’

‘That’s enough!’

Caelan’s harsh, deep voice drowned her in cold menace. Damn, she thought, mortified; don’t let emotion get the better of you! She could see contempt in his eyes, in the hard line of his mouth, the still tautness of his powerful body. No matter how angry he was, the prince remained in full control.

‘Admit that he’s Gemma’s child.’ At her obstinate silence, he said coolly, ‘You asked for proof that he’s not yours. Here it is.’

He drew a sheet of paper from the pocket of his casual, superbly cut jacket. When he offered it to her she took it and tried to read, but the words danced and blurred in front of her eyes. Blinking, she forced her brain to focus.

Couched in scientist’s prose, it was quite definite; there were enough points of similarity between tissue samples one and two for there to be a familial connection.

‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered, fighting off dark dread. The paper dropped from her nerveless fingers.

Watching her with unsparing eyes, the prince made no attempt to pick it up.

When she regained enough composure to be able to speak again, she said stiffly, ‘This could be anyone’s samples. There’s no way you could take a blood sample from Michael without my knowing, and I know you didn’t get one from me.’

His beautiful mouth relaxed into a sardonic smile. ‘Blood isn’t necessary for DNA testing—any tissue will serve.’ His inflexible tone warned her. Heart hammering, she listened as he went on. ‘And I didn’t need one from you. It was easy enough to send in a worker at the child-care centre; she stayed three weeks before deciding she didn’t like living in the backblocks, and she came away with saliva samples and blood from a grazed knee. The results prove that you’re not Michael’s mother—that you’re no relation to him.’

Blood roared through her head as outrage manhandled fear aside. She grabbed the back of the sofa and fought for control, finally grinding out, ‘How dare you? You had no right to—’

‘You had no right to steal my sister’s child,’ he cut in, his lethal tone quelling her anger as effectively as a douche of ice water. ‘Why did you do it? What satisfaction did it give you?’

‘Gemma asked me to take care of him.’

The strong bone structure of his face was very much in evidence. Dispassionately he said, ‘If she did, it was typically dramatic and thoughtless of her to demand that you put your life on hold for Michael, but that’s irrelevant now.’ He paused, his hooded eyes keen and watchful. ‘The next step is a court case, where the first thing any judge will do is order another DNA test. And we both know how that will turn out.’

An acceptance of defeat rose like bitter anguish inside Abby. She was going to lose Michael. But not, she thought grimly, until she’d made this arrogant prince fight to the last for his nephew.

Pride and disillusion gave her voice an acid edge when she said, ‘If all you’re planning for Michael is a lonely, loveless childhood like Gemma’s, why on earth do you want him?’

‘Because he is a Bagaton,’ he said coldly.

‘Gemma was a Bagaton too, but it didn’t make her happy. She wanted me to look after him.’ When he raised his brows she cried, ‘I’ve got a letter to prove it.’

She stooped to her bag, holding her shoulders stiffly and her spine so rigid she thought it might splinter. With trembling fingers she unzipped an inner pocket in one suitcase and took out an envelope.

Thrusting it at the man who watched her with eyes as translucent and cold as polar ice, she said, ‘Here.’

He took it, but didn’t look at it. His startlingly good-looking face was set in lines of such formidable determination that she flinched, yet a melting heat in the pit of her stomach astonished and frightened her. It was one thing to acknowledge that he had a primitive physical power over her; it would be shameful to let her body’s treachery weaken her.

‘Read it,’ she said desperately. ‘It will make any judge think about his decision.’

Frowning, the prince examined the single sheet of notepaper.

Abby waited tensely, mentally going over the words she knew by heart.

Dearest Abby, If you’re reading this I’m dead. See, I told you I could foretell things! Take Michael to New Zealand, but make sure neither Caelan nor my mother find you—or him. I know you love my baby, and I know you’ll take care of him. And thanks for being my wise, sensible friend. Don’t grieve too much. Just keep on loving Michael, and look after him.

In a voice without the slightest trace of emotion, Caelan said, ‘It certainly looks as though Gemma wrote it—I recognise the aura of drama and doom.’ His long fingers tightened on the sheet of paper and he looked at her from half-closed eyes, his mouth twisting. ‘You’re too trusting, Abby. What’s to stop me tearing it to shreds and lying about seeing it?’

Oddly enough, it hadn’t occurred to her. His reputation for fair dealing matched the one for ruthlessness. Her mouth tightened. ‘It’s a copy; the real one is in a solicitor’s office,’ she said steadily.

The hard, uncompromising determination stamped on Caelan’s lean, bronze face was replaced by a gleam of humour.

Her susceptible heart missed a beat. Although Gemma had told her that he despised people who used their charm to dazzle others, he possessed an inordinate amount of it himself. His smile was a weapon, a dangerously disturbing challenge that had penetrated stronger defences than hers.

Lazily he said, ‘I’d have been disappointed if you hadn’t made sure of that. But this means nothing; I can produce evidence to show that Gemma was a fragile, emotionally unstable woman, incapable of knowing what was best for her child.’

Abby opened her mouth, but honesty stopped the fierce words that threatened to spill out. Yes, Gemma had been fragile, as well as funny and delightful, but she’d been absolutely determined Michael wouldn’t grow up without love and attention.

Caelan looked around the small room furnished with cheap, shabby cast-offs. The harsh central light turned Abby’s skin sallow and robbed her hair of highlights or any depth of colour. It was, he thought with cool cynicism, a sin to hide that glorious mane of red-gold hair.

And an even greater one to cover her slender body with a loose black T-shirt and pair of dust-coloured corduroy trousers.

He banished tantalising memories of the figure beneath the shapeless clothes, sleek and lithe and strong, her exquisite skin an instant temptation…

And her mouth, soft and hot and delicious beneath his, opening to him with an eagerness that still affected him.

Abby had strayed into his life, a glowing, sensuous girl who seemed unaware of her sexual power. Not that he believed in her innocence; Gemma chose friends who tended to be sophisticated and spoilt.

Already in a very satisfying relationship with another woman, he’d put Abby resolutely from his mind. Yet he hadn’t been able to prevent himself from kissing her—a kiss that had led directly to the termination of his affair. And when Gemma told him the fey, strangely tempting health worker had gone to some backwater Pacific island for a year on a volunteer basis, he’d been taken aback by an odd sense of loss.

Then all hell had broken loose in a far-flung part of the business; he’d spent months unravelling the mess while Gemma had stayed with her mother in Australia. Caelan didn’t like his stepmother, but he kept in touch with his sister, and when she’d written to say she was on Palaweyo spending time with Abby, he’d decided to call in and re-acquaint himself with the alabaster-skinned girl, discover if the provocation in her inviting mouth and tilted eyes was genuine or a cynical come-on.

But the cyclone had intervened, and by the time he’d got to Palaweyo, Gemma was dead and buried and Abby had vanished with her child.

Abby swung to face him, her movements graceful in spite of her tension. ‘Do you honestly believe Michael might be in danger?’

‘It’s always a possibility,’ he said, but she broke in, colour returning in a soft flood to her skin with the heat of her response.

‘I want the truth.’ She paused, searching for words, then forced herself to say unevenly, ‘I know that someone in your position might be seen as a target, but Michael has nothing.’

He said ironically, ‘He has a very rich uncle and a large trust fund.’

Stunned, she stared at him, realising the implications of this. No wonder he was suspicious—did he believe she had her eye on that rich trust fund? ‘I didn’t know,’ she said, knowing he wouldn’t believe her.

He gave her a look that should have frozen the words on her lips. ‘Come on, Abby! I’m sure Gemma spent a lot of time complaining about the cruel brother who kept such a tight grip on the purse strings, but you knew she didn’t have to work.’

‘I thought—I thought you made her an allowance.’

Looking down the arrogant blade of his nose, he said with forbidding restraint, ‘My father made sure she was provided for.’

If anything had been needed to point up the difference between them, his casual words did it. In the prince’s world children were set up with trust funds, whereas Abby had grown up on an orchard. Although her parents had worked hard, when they’d died they’d left little for her—just enough for her to pay her way for a year on Palaweyo to help the community with their health needs.

He said forcefully, ‘I didn’t approve of the way Gemma was relegated to the outer perimeter of her mother’s life. It won’t happen with her son.’ His tone edged each word with satire. ‘I don’t intend sending Michael to boarding school until he reaches secondary school. Not even then, if he doesn’t want it.’ He directed an ice-laden glance around the bleak room. ‘He’ll be much better off with me than with a woman who’s both a kidnapper and a liar, and who lives from hand to mouth in a rural slum.’

Abby forced back the bubble of hysteria that threatened to block her throat and her thought processes. ‘At least I love him!’

Dark brows lifted in taunting disbelief. ‘It’s an odd love that confines a child to a life in places like this. And this isn’t about you or me—this is about Michael, whose rights should be paramount. After all, it’s his future that’s on the line.’

‘He has all the security he needs,’ she retorted, trying hard to sound sensible and confident—and failing. The thought of Michael’s life at the hands of this flinty, uncompromising tyrant edged her tone with desperation. ‘What can you offer him? I’m sure that chasing yet another million to add to the pile you’ve already accumulated will take precedence over spending time with a little boy.’

His white teeth snapped together. After a taut few seconds he returned caustically, ‘At least he won’t have to worry where his next meal is coming from.’

‘He’s never gone hungry.’ Occasionally she had, but not Michael. ‘What do you know about children? He’s noisy and grubby and demanding, and he needs attention and love and the knowledge that he’s hugely important to at least one person in this world. Even more, he needs to know that that person will be there whenever he wants her, not just for an hour after work. All your money and royal links and social position mean nothing compared to that.’

‘So why did you send him to a child-care centre with constantly changing workers, most of them almost untrained?’

Goaded, she retorted, ‘I needed the money, and it was only for half of each day.’

He shrugged dismissively, the swift movement reminding her of his Latin heritage. ‘A nanny would provide more stability, and I can certainly make sure he never has to worry about feeling cold in winter.’

Abby stared at him, defiance crumbling under guilt and fear. She took refuge in sarcasm. ‘Of course, you know so much about small boys.’

‘I was one once.’

She snorted. ‘I don’t believe that. You were born six feet four tall and breathing fire.’

Amazingly, his hard mouth quirked. ‘If so, my mother never told me.’ The momentary amusement disappeared instantly, replaced by chilling hauteur. ‘Stop fencing. I asked you before—how much do you want to get out of his life?’

‘And I told you that I won’t sell him,’ she retorted furiously.

A faint stain of colour along his high, magnificent cheekbones told her she’d hit a nerve. The raw note in his voice hardened into intimidating confidence. ‘I’m not buying the child—I’m buying you off.’

His narrowed gaze sent shivers of sensation along every nerve in her body. Her breath stopped in her throat, and something stark and merciless and fierce linked them for a charged moment, until she saw the glint of satisfaction in his cold eyes.

He knew, she thought in wretched embarrassment. Of course he did—he’d been chased by women since his teens; what he knew about them would probably fill an encyclopaedia. He certainly realised her treacherous body had its own agenda, and it amused him to see her struggle against it.

Abby took an involuntary step backwards—a mistake, she realised instantly, and tried to cover it with a swift, proud retort. ‘You don’t have enough money—no one in the whole wide world has enough money—to buy Michael from me, so forget about it right now.’

His broad shoulders moved in a slight shrug that told her just how much this meant to him: nothing. ‘Judging by all accounts you have done a good job with the boy. I’m offering some recompense.’

She stated, ‘I’m not going to abandon him to a loveless life.’ And wished she’d put it some other way because it sounded so prissy.

‘I intend to love him.’ His tone was glacial, as though she’d forced some shameful secret from him.

She said urgently, ‘You can’t fake emotion. It doesn’t work like that. You, of all people, should know. Gemma said that you and she had been taught in a hard school that love is a weakness.’

‘Trust Gemma to pile on the melodrama. Yes, my father was notoriously besotted with his second wife, and losing her to another man shattered him. That doesn’t mean that I don’t know how to love a child.’

Abby made a swift, rapidly controlled gesture, then froze as the quiet hum of an expensive engine broke into the tense silence.

The prince said crisply, ‘It’s a hire car. I’m going to the airport in Queenstown and my nephew is coming with me. Try to stop me, and I’ll call the police.’

His tone—level, impervious, relentless—echoed in the silent room. The car drew up outside the house and the driver switched off the engine, although Abby could see the round circles of the headlights through the curtains.

Bitter pain stopped any words from escaping her lips. Wringing her hands together in futile agony, she could only look pleadingly at Caelan’s inflexible face.

He glanced down at the sheet of paper in his hands and appeared to come to some decision. ‘All right. I believe that it would be exceedingly bad to put him through the trauma of waking up and finding you gone.’ He lifted his head to pin her with cool detachment. ‘You can come with us, but on my terms.’

Elusive, defiant hope flickered like a candle in a draught. Tautly she demanded, ‘Which are?’

‘That you accept I’ve got a right to know my nephew.’

Too afraid to be cautious, she accepted bitter defeat. ‘I—yes.’ Indeed, it had always worried her that Michael was being deprived of what was left of his family.

Caelan nodded. ‘We can negotiate everything else when you’re a little less emotional,’ he said, his mouth compressing into a straight line. When she didn’t answer or move he said, ‘Make up your mind, Abby. Are you coming with me, or staying here?’

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