by Jennie Lucas
‘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 al low 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 stair
s.
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.
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.
Better than making the mistake—again—of falling for a man’s handsome face and then being crushed under his heel. No, she’d learned that lesson all too terribly well. She would not be affected by Rafe Sandoval at all.
Yet she could still feel his presence, even his heat, behind her as she went down the stairs.
The next quarter of an hour was spent dealing with Max, yet Freya knew she could put off another conversation with Rafe for only so long. He loomed like a shadow in the kitchen, watching as she prepared Max a cup of milk and some slices of apple, helping him into his chair while he watched the stranger with wide, solemn eyes.
‘Are you a friend of Mummy’s?’ he finally asked, and the very air seemed to freeze.
Freya was amazed Max had even thought to make such a connection; Rosalia’s visits had been infrequent enough to make him stop asking for her. Yet her death, of course, had brought his mother and her absence to the front of his mind, and Freya supposed it was natural for him to attempt to make sense of the recent disorder of his world.
‘I knew your mother,’ Rafe replied carefully, his voice controlled.
‘Were you friends?’
Another agonising pause. Freya watched emotions flicker across Rafe’s face: anger foremost, and then uncertainty, perhaps even sorrow. ‘Yes,’ he finally said, although to Freya the word sounded reluctant. ‘We were.’
Max nodded, apparently—and thankfully—satisfied, and while he sipped his milk Freya returned to the kitchen, mindlessly tidying up while she registered Rafe Sandoval’s presence near her, felt the force of it like a charismatic and inexorable tug on her body.
‘We leave tonight.’
She turned, her heart caught in her chest. ‘We?’
Rafe inclined his head. ‘I take your point, Miss Clark. Max needs the stability of a familiar care-giver until he settles into his new home.’
Until. The word was ominous. ‘Thank you,’ she said, her voice cool with dignity. ‘I’ll pack our bags.’
Rafe nodded, satisfied with her acquiescence. Freya knew better than to push for more time in England. She’d got what she wanted, and she intended to keep it by asking for no more. Still, the thought of returning to Spain sent a shiver of trepidation and even cold, raw fear through her. She suppressed it, determined to deal only in practicalities.
‘I don’t think Max has a passport—’
‘I can deal with that.’ Rafe slipped a mobile phone from his jacket pocket, already punching in numbers. ‘I have to make a few preparations for the trip. Be ready by five o’clock.’
Startled, Freya glanced at the clock on the cooker. That was in just over two hours. ‘So quick—’
‘Yes.’ Rafe looked up, and his dark gaze—his eyes were so black—pinned Freya in place. ‘I conceded to you in this one thing, Miss Clark. Don’t look for other concessions.’
Freya swallowed. This felt like a war, yet she could hardly blame Rafe Sandoval for feeling antagonistic. She had seen him as the opposition from the moment she’d heard his name in the solicitor’s office.
He’s the man who will take Max away from me.
‘Just making an observation,’ she stated coolly. ‘We’ll be ready.’
‘Good.’ Rafe snapped his mobile shut and returned to Max, who had finished his milk and apple slices and was now looking at the two adults in the room with wary expectation. ‘Max, how would you like to go on a trip?’ Rafe crouched down to Max’s eye-level, smiling and assured, while Freya watched on.
‘A trip?’ Max repeated, and glanced at Freya. She nodded her reassurance.
‘Yes, a little holiday, Max. Would you like that?’
<
br /> ‘Where are we going?’
‘To Spain.’ Rafe stood up. ‘I have a house there, right in the mountains. There’s a swimming pool too. Do you like to swim?’
Max smiled shyly. ‘Yes, I think so.’
‘He hasn’t been very much,’ Freya explained.
Rafe’s gaze flicked over her, and when he looked away it felt like a dismissal. ‘I’m sure there are many things Max hasn’t done,’ he said. ‘This will be a new experience for him.’
The hint of challenge in his voice made Freya realise how easily Rafe Sandoval was able to put her in her place. He had all the power, all the control.
She only had Max…and for how long?
‘We’ll both look forward to it,’ she said, and with the faintest flicker of a smile Rafe turned away from her to face his son once more.
‘I shall see you later, Max. We’ll take an aeroplane to Spain. You can even watch a film during the flight.’ Max didn’t reply, clearly unable to process all these changes in so short a space of time. Rafe gazed at his son, his eyes seeming to turn even blacker, and then slowly—hesitantly—he reached out one hand and very gently, as if Max were made of glass, tousled his hair.
Max flinched a little under the hesitant caress, and to her surprise Freya felt a pang of sympathy and perhaps something else, something deeper and more dangerous, for Rafe.
‘He’s a bit shy with strangers—aren’t you, Max?’
Rafe turned to her, his expression coolly challenging, his voice low enough so only Freya would hear. ‘Well, we shan’t be strangers for long, shall we?’ he said, and with one last smile for his son he left.
Rafe sat in the driver’s seat, knowing he needed to put the key in the ignition and drive away. He didn’t. Couldn’t. His hands were trembling too much.
He let out a slow, shuddery breath, adrenalin, anticipation, and anger racing through him in equal measures. He’d just seen his son. The child he’d always wanted and never thought to have.
