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
