Читать книгу The Royal Baby Bargain - Robyn Donald - Страница 6

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.’