Housekeeper In The Headlines (Mills & Boon Modern)

by Chantelle Shaw

  Betsy had not met her father’s third wife. She’d been estranged from him since she’d fallen out with wife number two and Drake had told her it was best if she didn’t visit again. She’d phoned him when Sebastian was born, and he’d sent a congratulations card, but he had never met his grandson.

  ‘I don’t need money from Drake,’ she’d told her mother. ‘My pet portrait business is doing quite well, and I supplement what I earn from painting with my job at the village pub.’

  Now she doubted that she would be able to resume her job as barmaid. Her friend Sarah, who owned the pub, had said that it been badly damaged in the floods. And she would have to move out of the cottage, where she had a painting studio in the attic.

  Sebastian started to grizzle, and Betsy stroked his curls off his brow. ‘Not long now, poppet,’ she said, trying to soothe him. She glanced at Carlos. ‘How far is the hotel?’

  He spoke to the pilot over the intercom. ‘We’ll be there in a couple of minutes.’

  Carlos’s sunglasses hid his expression and Betsy had no idea what he was thinking. When he had held Sebastian at the cottage she’d hoped for something—a sign that he recognised his son. Seeing Sebastian with his father had emphasised their physical likeness, but perhaps Carlos couldn’t see it—or more likely he didn’t want to accept the baby was his.

  She wondered what his reaction would be when he had proof of paternity. His main concern seemed to be damage to his reputation, which might affect his business interests. But the news story would be forgotten in a few days.

  And she had no intention of asking Carlos for financial support. Sebastian was her responsibility. She wasn’t the first woman to have listened to her heart rather than her head and then had to cope with the consequences, Betsy thought ruefully.

  Her stomach muscles clenched as she inhaled the evocative spicy scent of Carlos’s cologne. Desire flared sweet and sharp inside her as her mind flew back to the night that she had spent with him.

  The velvet sofa had felt sensuous against her skin as Carlos had eased her down onto the cushions. She hadn’t been aware of him undressing her, or himself, until she’d felt the roughness of his chest hair on her breasts. His hands had been everywhere, working their magic on her breasts and skimming over her thighs as he’d parted her legs and tested her wet heat with his fingers.

  She remembered how big and hard his manhood had felt when she’d touched him, and the nervous flutter of her heart when he’d pressed forward and entered her. He had filled her, completed her. And now the dampness between her legs was shameful proof that she only had to look at him and her body turned to mush.

  She blushed when she realised that she was staring at him. She wished she could rip off his sunglasses to see if he was affected by the sexual chemistry that was almost tangible in the confines of the helicopter cabin.

  A nerve flickered in his cheek—but perhaps she had imagined it. Carlos had dated some of the world’s most beautiful women and he wouldn’t be interested in her, Betsy reminded herself. He was gorgeous and exotic and so sexy he should come with a health warning.

  ‘We’re about to land,’ he told her smoothly.

  Get a grip, she ordered herself a few minutes later as she followed him across the helipad in the grounds of his hotel. The impressive country house was the place to stay in Dorset. Betsy had changed out of her old leggings before leaving the cottage, but when she walked into the elegant foyer of the hotel she was conscious of the receptionist’s disapproving glance at her jeans and strap top.

  Carlos led her over to the lift, which whisked them up to the penthouse suite. There, a doctor was waiting to take cheek swabs from all three of them.

  After carrying out the simple procedure, the doctor left. Carlos’s phone rang and he went into the bedroom to take the call.

  Sebastian was due for a nap, but he wasn’t ready to give in and protested loudly while Betsy changed his nappy. She searched in the change bag for his favourite toy but couldn’t find it, and in desperation emptied the bag over the floor.

  Carlos walked back into the room as Sebastian’s screams reached a crescendo. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘He’s tired,’ Betsy said shortly. ‘And I must have left his cuddly toy rabbit at the cottage.’

  ‘Surely if Sebastian is tired he will fall asleep without the toy,’ Carlos said, in a dry tone that exacerbated Betsy’s frustration and the feeling that she was a useless mother.

  Her fierce awareness of Carlos did not help. He had changed out of his suit and muddy shoes into black jeans, a black polo shirt and a matching leather jacket. He quite simply took her breath away.

  ‘What do you know about childcare?’ she snapped, raising her voice above Sebastian’s yells.

  Exhaustion was catching up with her after a sleepless night spent listening to the river flooding into the cottage. It was sinking in that she was homeless, Sebastian was crying because he wanted the familiarity and security of falling asleep in his cot, and Betsy felt close to tears as she wondered what she was going to do.

  ‘Perhaps if you calmed down Sebastian would stop crying?’ Carlos murmured. ‘He is probably picking up on your tension.’

  ‘It’s your fault that I’m tense.’ Betsy glared at him. ‘I feel violated.’

  He frowned. ‘How so?’

  ‘I found it humiliating to have a stranger take samples from me and Sebastian for DNA testing,’ she said hotly. ‘You and I might have only spent one night together, but I was your housekeeper for six weeks and we got to know each other fairly well. I thought we had become friends.’ She bit her lip. ‘What makes you think I would lie about you being Sebastian’s father?’

  ‘Everything I believed I knew about you went up in smoke when I found your note saying that the only reason you’d had sex with me was because I was famous,’ Carlos said tersely.

  ‘I wrote that note after I overheard you telling the journalist who had come to interview you that I was a casual fling.’ Betsy grimaced. ‘Sebastian is the consequence of the night we spent together.’

  ‘So you say,’ Carlos drawled. ‘The truth will be confirmed in twenty-four hours. I intend to stay in London tonight. You and Sebastian can stay here as you can’t sleep at the cottage. There is a cot in the bedroom. I’ll be in touch tomorrow.’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ Betsy muttered sarcastically as she swept past Carlos and carried Sebastian into the bedroom.

  He had worn himself out with crying and was asleep almost as soon as she laid him in the cot.

  When she returned to the sitting room Carlos had gone, and she was angry with herself for feeling disappointed. He made her feel alive in a way that no other man had ever done, she acknowledged with a sigh. She dragged her thoughts from him, knowing that she needed to make long-term plans.

  Her landlord had called to say that he intended to sell the cottage, and a trawl on the internet of estate agents’ websites showed there was nothing suitable in the local area that Betsy could afford to rent. She would be lucky to find a place with enough room that she could set up a studio, she realised as she read the details of a poky basement flat.

  She thought of the picture that she had worked on recently. The portrait of a golden Labrador had been commissioned by a client as a birthday present for his wife. The painting was finished, and she needed to arrange for it to be delivered to the client. The money she would be paid for the painting was even more vital now, as it would be a while before she could accept any more commissions.

  Betsy switched on the television and watched a local news report that told her the floodwater around Fraddlington had receded and the main road was open again. Maybe she would be able to go back to the cottage to collect Sebastian’s cuddly toy and pack up the painting.

  ‘We’re going to go on a bus,’ she told him when he woke up from his nap.

  Although he didn’t understa
nd, he gave a grin that showed off his two new teeth and Betsy’s heart melted. But when she carried him out of the hotel, they were immediately surrounded by press photographers.

  A journalist thrust a microphone towards her. ‘Miss Miller. Is tennis legend Carlos Segarra really your son’s father?’

  ‘How long have you been in a relationship with Carlos?’

  ‘Is it true that you had sex with Segarra on a famous London tennis court?’

  ‘Of course it isn’t true,’ Betsy denied angrily.

  She clutched Sebastian tightly as the press pack swarmed closer. He was whimpering and pushing his face into her neck.

  ‘Please let me pass,’ she appealed to the photographers. She felt like a rabbit caught in a car’s headlights as camera flashbulbs went off all around her.

  ‘Miss Miller, if you would like to come with me?’

  Betsy turned towards the calm voice amid the chaos and saw a smartly dressed man pushing through the crowd of paparazzi.

  ‘I’m Brian Waring, the manager of the hotel,’ he introduced himself as he slipped a hand beneath her arm and led her quickly back inside the hotel.

  To Betsy’s relief, the photographers did not follow.

  The manager escorted to the lift. ‘Might I suggest that you remain in the hotel and its grounds, where you will not be troubled by the press? Mr Segarra has asked me personally to ensure that you and your son have everything you need.’ He gave a kindly smile, perhaps realising that Betsy was still too shocked by what had happened to be able to speak. ‘I’ll arrange for lunch to be served in your suite.’

  She bit her lip. ‘I don’t know how the press found out I was here.’

  ‘The paparazzi are renowned for using underhand methods in their pursuit of a story,’ the manager murmured. ‘I believe that the tabloid newspapers are prepared to pay thousands of pounds for a picture of a celebrity or someone close to them, especially if there is a whiff of a scandal.’

  So her little son was a scandal!

  Perhaps she would wake up and find that this day from hell was simply a nightmare, Betsy thought when she and Sebastian were safely back inside the hotel suite. The incident with the photographers had left her badly shaken and had brought back memories of the intrusive media coverage of her father’s trial after he had been accused of abducting her.

  She shuddered at the thought that now her name was in the public domain the media might dig up the story of her parents’ famously acrimonious divorce. Neither her mother nor her father had seemed to care that their lives had become a soap opera, played out in regular instalments in the tabloids, but Betsy had hated the press attention on her family.

  Her phone rang, and she stared at it suspiciously before breathing a sigh of relief when she saw that it was her friend Sarah who was calling.

  ‘Betsy, I’ve just seen the headlines. We’ve been so busy clearing up the pub, and I hadn’t looked on social media, but Mike popped to the shop and bought a paper...’

  ‘It was the same for me,’ Betsy said ruefully. ‘The first I knew of the story was when Carlos arrived at the cottage and showed me a newspaper.’

  ‘Oh, my goodness! What did he say about Sebastian?’

  ‘He has demanded proof of paternity.’

  ‘The thing is...’ Sarah sounded strained. ‘I think it’s my fault that the story was published.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You know how for the past few days we’ve been putting up defences in the hope of stopping the pub from being flooded? To be honest, saving the business that Mike and I have worked so hard to establish was all I could think about. Well, a journalist came into the pub and said he was covering the story now that the river was likely to burst its banks. He seemed a nice guy, and he offered to help move the furniture and carpets upstairs.’

  Sarah sighed.

  ‘I feel such an idiot for believing him when he said he was a friend of yours from London and he already knew that Carlos Segarra was Sebastian’s father. If I’d been thinking straight I might have been more suspicious. Instead I said something along the lines that I thought it was about time Carlos accepted responsibility for his son. But when I saw today’s newspapers I remembered that you had said I was the only person you had confided in. I’m so sorry, Betsy. Are you all right?’

  ‘Not really.’ Betsy explained what had happened when she’d tried to leave the hotel.

  ‘The paparazzi are outside your cottage, too. Me and my big mouth,’ Sarah muttered. ‘But I’m sure that in a couple of days the press will forget the story and move on to something else,’ she said consolingly.

  But the damage had been done, Betsy thought heavily. Tomorrow Carlos would have proof that he was Sebastian’s father, but he had given no indication that he would welcome the news.

  The rest of the day dragged, as she tried to keep Sebastian entertained in the hotel suite that had become a prison. Luckily she’d packed spare clothes for him, as well as pouches of food and cartons of ready-made formula milk.

  After she’d settled him in the cot for the night, she ran a bath and tipped a liberal splash of gorgeously scented bubble bath into the water. After a long soak, she wrapped herself in one of the hotel’s fluffy robes and rinsed out her knickers in the bathwater.

  Dinner was delivered to the room, but she felt too tense to eat. She had been jogging along nicely, but in the past twenty-four hours her life had imploded. She’d lost her home and her painting studio, and Carlos has stormed back on to the scene. But there was nothing she could do tonight, she thought wearily as she curled up on the sofa and tried to concentrate on a political thriller on the television.

  Betsy woke with a start and for a moment felt disorientated before she remembered that she was in the hotel suite. Something had disturbed her, and she sprang up from the sofa. The television was still on—perhaps she had been woken by a sound from it. But her skin prickled as she sensed that someone was in the bedroom where Sebastian was sleeping.

  Heart pounding, she ran into the bedroom and saw a figure leaning over the cot.

  ‘Carlos?’

  She let out a shaky breath and slumped against the door frame as he turned around and the soft light from the bedside lamp illuminated his handsome face.

  ‘You scared me. I thought a photographer had managed to get into the room.’

  Carlos frowned. ‘Have the paparazzi been here?’

  ‘There was a crowd of them outside the hotel earlier. I wanted to go back to the cottage, but they wouldn’t leave me alone and Sebastian was frightened.’ Betsy had spoken quietly, but Sebastian stirred. She held her breath and after a moment he settled again. ‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered to Carlos.

  He stared down into the cot before walking across the room. She followed him into the sitting room, pulling the door closed behind them.

  ‘I accept that Sebastian is my son.’

  Betsy’s heart lurched. ‘I thought you wouldn’t receive the result of the DNA test until tomorrow.’

  ‘I haven’t heard back from the clinic.’

  ‘Oh!’ She couldn’t hide her shock. She felt as if a weight had lifted from her. But her pleasure that Carlos seemed to trust her was quickly doused.

  ‘I cannot ignore the evidence. Sebastian bears a strong physical resemblance to me. I checked his birth certificate to verify his date of birth.’ He gave her a sardonic look. ‘You didn’t think I would simply take your word, did you? I realise that Sebastian must have been conceived at the time I was in England for the tournament.’ Carlos’s eyes glittered with fury. ‘I will never forgive you for keeping him from me. I had a right to know that I am his father.’

  His words tugged on emotions that Betsy did not want to feel. Deep in her heart she knew that she should have tried to contact Carlos when she’d discovered she was pregnant. But he had abandoned her after he’d slept
with her in London and she had felt foolish because she’d trusted him. He was no better than her father, who had seemed to want her but had abandoned her in favour of his second wife.

  ‘You publicly stated that you didn’t want children,’ she said to Carlos defensively. ‘I was suffering from awful morning sickness when I watched you being interviewed, and I was convinced that you wouldn’t want your baby.’

  He said something in Spanish that she guessed from his savage tone was not complimentary. ‘You should have told me instead of playing judge and jury. Sebastian has two parents, but you have deliberately deprived him of his father.’

  A voice from the past slid into Betsy’s mind and she recalled the words of the judge who had presided over her father’s trial when he’d been charged with abducting her.

  ‘You deliberately and cruelly deprived your daughter of her mother,’ the judge had told Drake.

  But the situation between her and Carlos wasn’t the same as her parents, she tried to reassure herself. Her father’s behaviour had been driven by a desire to hurt her mother. Betsy had kept Sebastian a secret from Carlos because... Had she subconsciously wanted to punish him for returning to Spain after he’d taken her virginity and crushed her heart?

  She swallowed hard, unable to face the uncomfortable thoughts swirling in her head and unwilling to meet Carlos’s hard gaze.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked huskily.

  ‘My son.’ His tone was grim and uncompromising. ‘Sebastian is a Segarra. You have stolen the first fifteen months of his life, but from now on his home will be with me in Spain.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘ARE YOU THREATENING to take Sebastian away from me? You have no rights to him.’

  Carlos heard fear in Betsy’s voice and saw her mouth tremble before she quickly firmed her lips. But the sign of her vulnerability did not lessen his anger. Dios—‘angry’ did not come anywhere near to describing the bitter betrayal he felt. He had a child, a son.