Housekeeper In The Headlines (Mills & Boon Modern)

by Chantelle Shaw

  ‘Then what are your objections? Every child needs a mother and a father.’ There was an odd note in Carlos’s voice that made Betsy curious. ‘It would be better for our son to grow up with both his parents.’

  ‘Would it?’ She sighed. ‘We don’t even like each other, so how could we create a happy family for Sebastian? What if it didn’t work out and we divorced? I won’t risk putting Sebastian through a vicious custody battle like my parents did to me.’

  Carlos gave her an intent look. ‘You said you were eight when your parents’ marriage ended. It sounds like it was a difficult time.’

  ‘It was. I loved my mum and dad equally, but their divorce was acrimonious and I was torn between them. My loyalties were divided. I lost who I was because I tried so hard to make each of them happy.’

  Betsy hated talking about her childhood. Even before her parents had split up there had been arguments and sulking, tears and tantrums on both sides. She had felt as if she was walking a tightrope. One wrong step and everything would come crashing down.

  ‘The truth is that I was just something else my parents fought over—like money and who got the dog,’ she told Carlos. ‘But as their fights got louder and more vicious, the quieter I became. Sometimes I even considered running away. I thought that if I wasn’t around they would stop arguing.’

  ‘Dios. You actually thought that?’

  ‘After the divorce I lived with my mother and I hoped that things would settle down...’ She hesitated, reluctant to reveal how dysfunctional her family had been. But she needed to make him understand why she was so against marriage. ‘It all blew up when my dad kidnapped me.’

  She could not bring herself to look at Carlos, but she sensed from his silence that she had shocked him.

  He swore softly. ‘No wonder you were terrified when you woke up and found Sebastian missing from his cot.’

  Had there been sympathy in his voice? She felt the press of tears behind her eyelids and quickly brushed her hand over her eyes. ‘I was scared you had taken my baby.’

  Carlos exhaled slowly. ‘Of course I don’t want to separate you and Sebastian.’ His tone hardened. ‘But he is my son and I won’t walk away from him. Marriage will allow us to both be part of his life.’

  ‘The idea of getting married fills me with dread,’ Betsy admitted in a low voice. ‘My parents were feted as a golden couple on both sides of the Atlantic. The beautiful actress and the brilliant writer. My mother kept newspaper clippings of their fairy-tale wedding. She told me that she and my father had been madly in love. I have a few early memories of the three of us being a happy family. But when things started to go wrong I believed that their rows were my fault.’

  She forced herself to meet Carlos’s gaze.

  ‘The point I’m trying to make is that my parents married because they were in love, but they ended up hating each other and their divorce destroyed my childhood. You and I barely know each other, and we are certainly not in love. If we married it would be a disaster—for us and more importantly for Sebastian.’

  ‘I disagree,’ he said coolly. ‘Our marriage will work precisely because it won’t be founded on a romantic ideal. Your parents fell out of love and you suffered as a consequence. What I am suggesting is an alliance built on the shared goal of giving our son the stable family life that you wish you’d had and I was lucky enough to experience until my mother died.’

  Carlos’s voice was still carefully controlled, but Betsy sensed pain behind his words.

  ‘Sebastian deserves to grow up feeling secure and loved by both his parents,’ he continued. ‘It is our responsibility to put his needs first.’

  Betsy tried not to let his words invade her heart. She needed to think calmly and rationally. But when he’d mentioned family she’d remembered how she had envied her schoolfriends, whose parents did not throw things at each other, or slash their partners’ clothes with a pair of scissors, as her mother had once done to her father’s suits.

  ‘It wouldn’t work,’ she muttered.

  ‘It will be up to us to make it work,’ Carlos said implacably. ‘What is the alternative? That we share custody of Sebastian but live separate lives and date other people? You’re single now, but you might meet someone in the future. I’ll admit that I hate the idea of another man being a stepfather to my son. And it could happen the other way around. How would you feel if I had a relationship with a woman who would be Sebastian’s stepmother?’

  Betsy had no intention of handing Sebastian over to another woman. She did not have good memories of her first stepmother, who had been her father’s second wife. Her relationship with Drake had been strained after he had been released from prison. Betsy hadn’t wanted him to be sent to prison, even though she’d understood that he had committed a crime by abducting her. She had hoped for a reconciliation, but when she’d visited him in Canada she’d discovered that Drake had remarried. His new wife had made it plain that she resented having a prepubescent stepdaughter foisted on her.

  ‘I’m sure we can work out a way that will allow us to co-parent Sebastian without having to get married,’ she insisted.

  Carlos’s steely expression made her heart sink.

  ‘You might be willing for him to be teased by his classmates for being a bastard when he’s old enough to understand, but I am not,’ he said curtly.

  ‘No one cares about that sort of thing any more.’

  ‘My son will bear my name.’

  The quiet determination in Carlos’s voice exacerbated Betsy’s tension.

  Her shoulders slumped. ‘I wish you hadn’t found out about Sebastian.’ She had not meant to utter the words out loud, but they seemed to ricochet off the walls.

  ‘I’m not simply going to disappear out of the picture because it suits you,’ he said harshly.

  ‘I didn’t mean...’ But it had been a terrible thing to say and she felt ashamed.

  ‘I am a well-known figure and the paparazzi will continue to be interested in you and Sebastian. How could you ensure his protection?’

  ‘Protection from what?’

  ‘It’s not a secret that I became a multi-millionaire from my tennis career and sponsorship deals. My investment portfolio and my sports management agency are also highly lucrative. There are people who would try to snatch my son and demand a ransom for his safe return.’

  Carlos frowned when Betsy gave a low cry of distress.

  ‘I’m not trying to scare you. I’m simply stating facts. But you don’t need to worry. I will never allow any harm to come to Sebastian or to you. My security team are ex-marines and my house in Toledo was once a fortress.’

  She could feel her heart thudding painfully hard in her chest. Maybe Carlos hadn’t set out to frighten her, but he’d succeeded. She would never put her baby in danger.

  ‘Would you deny Sebastian everything that should be his by right of birth?’ Carlos pressed her. ‘My name, the privileges and the security I can give him? A family?’

  Betsy stood up and walked over to the window. The room overlooked the hotel’s driveway and she saw a group of photographers standing by the front gates with their cameras mounted on tripods. Everything had changed. She and Sebastian would never be able to go back to living in obscurity in a sleepy Dorset village. And Carlos had said he would not walk away from his son and she believed him.

  She turned away from the window and watched him lift Sebastian out of the highchair. Their physical likeness was startling, and Betsy felt a tug on her heart as she saw in Carlos the man her son would one day become. The prospect of marrying Carlos was terrifying, but her conscience would not allow her to deny him a relationship with Sebastian.

  ‘If we were to marry, you say it will be an alliance?’ She felt her way cautiously along a path that her instincts were screaming at her not to take.

  He nodded. ‘I want us to have an equal partnership in
which we will discuss everything concerning our son’s upbringing.’

  ‘What if we disagree about something?’ She remembered how, as a child, she would lie in bed and pull the duvet over her head to try and block out the sound of her parents rowing.

  ‘We’ll find a solution, make compromises...but Sebastian’s best interests will always be our objective.’

  A marriage proposal where love wasn’t mentioned might seem odd to most people, but Betsy felt reassured that Carlos wanted a partnership. And if deep in her heart she still yearned for romance, and the promise of everlasting love, she quashed the feeling. Although when Carlos set Sebastian down on the rug with his toys and walked towards her, she couldn’t control her racing pulse.

  He stopped in front of her and his eyes narrowed to gleaming gold slits. Jaguar’s eyes that gave no clue to his thoughts.

  ‘What is your answer, Betsy? Are you going to marry me for the sake of our son?’

  She had no choice. For Sebastian she would do anything, even marry the devil. Betsy tilted her chin and met Carlos’s hard gaze. ‘I’ll marry you on one condition.’

  His dark brows lifted. The unexpected gentleness in his face made her want to cry. She had assumed he would be triumphant in victory. Was she crazy to believe they could actually make this work?

  ‘I want us both to sign a prenuptial agreement, setting out how we will share caring for Sebastian if we divorce. I’ll marry you so that he is legitimate and he can take your name. But if we separate in the future I don’t want him to be the subject of a custody battle or feel that he has to choose between us.’

  Her voice thickened with tears. Memories of her childhood were intensely painful, but she was sure that neither of her parents had understood how lonely and scared she’d felt, caught in the midst of their hatred of each other.

  ‘And we will never argue in front of him. Whatever happens between us, Sebastian will only know love.’

  Carlos looked startled for a moment, before he nodded. ‘I’ll have my legal team work out the details. You will only sign the prenuptial agreement when you are happy with it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Some of Betsy’s tension drained away. Their marriage would not be made in heaven, but in a lawyer’s office. It was the best way to protect Sebastian.

  She could only hope that her heart would survive unscathed with her decision to marry her baby’s dangerously fascinating father.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘IT DOESN’T LOOK much like a fortress,’ Betsy commented as she followed Carlos into the modern open-plan living space of his penthouse apartment in a fashionable area of Madrid.

  He saw her catch her bottom lip between her teeth as she glanced around at the décor, pale grey sofas and white rugs on black marble floors. Perhaps she was thinking that the tinted glass cabinets lining one wall would be a magnet for an inquisitive toddler.

  ‘I was referring to my house in Toledo,’ he explained. ‘Fortaleza Aguila was originally a fortress when it was built in the sixteenth century. I keep this apartment for when I stay in Madrid. There are security cameras in the lobby, and no one can enter the building who shouldn’t,’ he assured her, aware that she was concerned for Sebastian’s safety.

  He watched his son, wriggling in Betsy’s arms.

  ‘Why don’t you put him down? He must want to stretch his legs after being confined in his child seat in the plane and then the car from the airport.’

  ‘I’m worried he’ll put sticky fingers on the cushions or slip over on the hard floor and bang his head. It’s not exactly a child-friendly environment.’

  She shifted Sebastian to her other hip. Carlos had the feeling that she was holding on to the baby because she felt unsure of herself now that they were in Spain.

  Before leaving England they’d gone back to Fraddlington. Photographers had been waiting outside the gates of the hotel and there had been more of them in front of Betsy’s cottage. She had directed the driver down a narrow alleyway at the rear of the property and they’d entered the cottage through the back door, without the paparazzi seeing them. Betsy had run upstairs and reappeared a short while later carrying just one suitcase.

  ‘I’ll arrange for the rest of your things to be packed up and sent out to Spain,’ he’d told her.

  She’d looked surprised. ‘I don’t own anything else. All my belongings and Sebastian’s are in this case. I rented the cottage fully furnished, and everything, even the cushions, belongs to the landlord.’

  Now the suitcase that held Betsy’s entire worldly possessions looked forlorn against the backdrop of his luxurious penthouse. Guilt swirled inside Carlos. He would have provided for her and Sebastian if she had turned to him for help. Instead she had made a meagre living, working behind the bar of the village pub.

  While they had been at the cottage she had changed into a black skirt and white blouse. Both items looked cheaply made, and her low-heeled black shoes were scuffed. The outfit was only marginally smarter than the ripped jeans and old trainers she’d worn the previous day.

  Carlos’s mouth tightened as it occurred to him that the skirt and blouse were probably her smartest clothes, and that she probably wore them when she worked as a barmaid. But the badly fitting clothes did not detract from her beauty. He could not explain why the curve of her cheek and the slight pout of her lips made his mouth run dry.

  She was a natural English rose, with porcelain skin and doe eyes that could darken with temper. But right now they were regarding him with a wariness that irritated him. Did she not realise that her life was going to improve vastly when she became his wife? He had plenty of money, several beautiful homes, and she would never have to work again. Many women would jump at the chance to marry him.

  But Betsy had good reason to view marriage with trepidation, Carlos reminded himself. She had clearly been affected by her parents’ behaviour. Some of the newspapers had already raked up old reports of her parents’ public and very nasty divorce, and Betsy had been visibly upset when she’d seen them. Her vulnerability tugged on Carlos’s emotions, even though only a day ago he would have sworn that was impossible.

  His eyes were drawn to the swell of her breasts outlined beneath her thin cotton blouse and he acknowledged that he had thought about her more often than he’d liked in the past two years.

  ‘Do you have to look at me as if I’m a dog’s dinner?’ she muttered. ‘I realise that I’m not sophisticated and glamorous, like the women you are usually photographed with.’

  ‘There will have to be some changes to your wardrobe,’ Carlos told her bluntly. ‘With that in mind, I have arranged for you to meet a stylist who will take you shopping this afternoon.’ Before Betsy could argue, he continued, ‘We have come to Madrid to attend a charity fundraising ball for the Segarra Foundation. The paparazzi will be out in full to take pictures of the celebrity guests, and I intend to make a press statement announcing our forthcoming marriage.’

  She frowned. ‘What about Sebastian? His bedtime is seven o’clock and I’d like to keep him to his routine. I’m guessing the party will finish much later.’

  ‘We will leave him behind. Not on his own, obviously.’ Carlos forestalled the objection he sensed Betsy was about to make. ‘He will be with a nanny. Once we are married we’ll attend many social functions together, and it will be necessary to employ nursery staff to look after our son.’

  Betsy glared at him. ‘I can’t believe you’ve hired a nanny without discussing it with me first. You promised that our marriage would be a partnership and that we would jointly make decisions about Sebastian. Now you have steamrollered ahead without asking my opinion. That’s not an alliance, that’s bullying, and I won’t stand for it.’

  Her voice had risen during her angry tirade and Sebastian’s little face crumpled as he gave a whimper.

  Betsy made a choked sound. ‘Now we’re arguing in front of hi
m. I must have been mad to agree to marry you.’

  Her voice wobbled, and Carlos stiffened when he saw a tear slip down her cheek.

  ‘I haven’t hired anyone,’ he assured her, feeling guilty that he was the cause of Betsy’s distress—it was a reminder of why he never made attachments. He was no good at it, and he let people down. ‘My sister owns the apartment next door to this one and she has offered to have Sebastian for the night. He can sleep in the nursery with her son, and Miguel’s nanny will be on hand to help Graciela with both boys.’

  He’d hoped that his explanation would be enough to halt Betsy’s tears, but her shoulders shook harder. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘I’m just so scared that once we’re married you’ll try to take Sebastian away from me.’

  ‘I swear that I will never do that.’ Carlos wondered with a flash of anger if her parents had any idea how their behaviour had affected their daughter. ‘Betsy, let me hold Sebastian while you pull yourself together.’ He held out his hands and after a moment’s hesitation she allowed him to take the baby. ‘We’ll advertise for a nanny once we are in Toledo. We will interview the applicants together, but ultimately the decision of who we employ will be yours, okay?’

  ‘O-okay.’ She swallowed and gave him something approaching a smile. ‘Sebastian is my world and I love him more than anything.’

  He lifted his hand and brushed away a tear from Betsy’s cheek. Her skin felt like satin and her eyes were soft, her expression a little stunned. Carlos had the feeling she did not allow herself to cry very often. He had intended to comfort her, but he was conscious of the rapid thud of his pulse as he inhaled the lemony scent of her hair. Barely aware of what he was doing, he lowered his head towards her, drawn to the lush temptation of her mouth.

  He was abruptly brought to his senses when Sebastian chose that moment to voice his frustration at being held and gave a loud yell. Carlos stepped back from Betsy at the same time as she jerked away from him. And as he watched a pink stain run under her skin he realised that she felt the simmering sexual awareness between them as fiercely as he did.