The Sandoval Baby

‘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 realised, 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.