Answering it, she murmured, ‘Yes?’
‘I wish to speak to Miss Frederica Sutton,’ stated a dark masculine voice with an unmistakable foreign accent.
‘I’m Miss Sutton, but which—?’ Miss Sutton are you asking for, she meant to add.
‘Please make yourself available at ten tomorrow morning for my visit. I wish to discuss Benedict’s future. I warn you that if any other party is present in the apartment prior to my arrival, the visit will not take place.’
‘I beg your p-pardon?’ Freddy stammered in her astonishment at those instructions, but even as she spoke the caller concluded the call.
Frowning, she began to put together what she had been told. Had she just spoken to Ben’s father? Who else would wish to discuss Ben’s future with her? But how had he found out that Erica had died? For goodness’ sake, he might even be in regular contact with some friend of Erica’s! Or possibly her letter to that Swiss bank had discreetly been passed on even though the institution had officially refused to help. Anyway, what did it matter?
By the sound of it, it very likely was Ben’s father who was coming to speak to her tomorrow. Who else would be so concerned that there should be nobody else present during their meeting? Who else would demand and require such discretion? Although if that arrogant-sounding character who shot out demands without hesitation was a ‘scared’ married man, she would not have liked to meet a confident one!
Freddy went to bed that evening in a state of growing anxiety as she tried to imagine what plans the man might have for his secret son. She tossed and turned and wondered whether she ought to wear her nanny uniform and parade her excellent credentials in childcare in the hope of making the best possible impression. But in the end she discarded that idea for she wanted to make known her own blood tie with Ben, slender though it was. And with a rich domineering male, there was too much of a risk that her uniform would encourage him to look on her as a mere employee who could have no possible opinion worth hearing.
So she would put on her only suit and be suitably humble while listening, rather than attempting to impose any of her own views. She lay frantically trying to plunder her brain for what little Erica had said about the man who had got her pregnant. ‘The kindest man I ever met.’ Had her cousin been talking about Ben’s father or the Argentinian millionaire who had followed him? Or had the Argentinian preceded Ben’s conception?
In the darkness, Freddy blushed for her cousin’s many affairs. Erica had been very lovely though, and no doubt it had been hard for her to choose one man, especially when they had nearly always seemed to have a wife in the background. Freddy winced, recalling the times when she had tried to preach moral restraint to Erica and Erica would give her a sad look that had just torn at Freddy’s heart and say, ‘All I want is someone who will really love me.’And then spoil the effect by adding, ‘So what if he belongs to some other woman? Do you think she’d think twice in my shoes? It’s a hard world out there!’
By nine the following morning, Freddy was ready for her visitor. The apartment shone because she had got up at six to ensure that not a sliver of dust lurked in any corner. Garbed in a navy suit, white blouse and flat court shoes and with her thick curly blonde hair scraped back into an old-fashioned bun, which she felt gave her a much-needed look of greater maturity, Freddy surveyed her reflection with a critical frown. Then, remembering the spectacles she had once worn for eye strain while studying, she went and dug them out and perched them on her nose. Yes, indeed, she thought with satisfaction, she could easily pass for a sensible young woman of thirty, not that she would lie if questioned, but most probably she would not be asked.
‘The kindest man I have ever met,’ she kept on repeating to herself to ease her nervous tension. If she could just get the opening, she had lots of arguments to make in her own favour. Ben’s father would not need to maintain such a hugely expensive apartment for their benefit, nor would her own living expenses with Ben run to a hundredth of Erica’s. If he would only agree to her becoming Ben’s legal guardian, she would save him an absolute fortune in all sorts of ways! Please, please, please, she prayed, fingers knotted together as she paced up and down.
And then it finally occurred to her to wonder how Ben’s father had been able to say that he would not show up if there was anyone else in the apartment. A shiver of belated dismay ran down Freddy’s taut spine. The only way he could have uttered that warning would have been in the knowledge that he was having the apartment watched in advance of his own arrival and that was a seriously scary thought! Aware that she had disliked the handful of Erica’s male friends whom she had actually met, Freddy suddenly felt quite sick with worry. Ben was adorable but his father could well be a creep or a criminal or both!
The bell buzzed. Sucking in a shaky breath, Freddy went to answer the door. As she stood back, three dark-skinned men dressed in suits and built like human tanks strode into the hall. Completely ignoring her, they proceeded to march into every room of the apartment, evidently checking out whether or not she and Ben were on their own. Surging like a frantic mother hen into the lounge where Ben lay asleep on a sofa, Freddy stood over him, muttering, ‘Please go away…please don’t wake him up…he’ll be scared…I’m scared!’
One of the men spoke into a mobile phone and the trio regrouped together out in the hall while still behaving as if she were invisible. Trembling like a leaf, Freddy folded her arms and listened to the lift arrive with a ping on the landing outside the still-open front door: it was that quiet. She heard footsteps, a low exchange of masculine voices and then a tall dark male appeared in the lounge doorway.
He did not look like the kindest man she was ever likely to meet, but she kept on staring like an idiot because he was so incredibly good-looking she was knocked for six. She did not know quite what expectations she had had, but certainly she had assumed he would be a much older man. Not a guy who looked as if he wrestled with sharks for fun before breakfast, ran a couple of marathons before lunch, ruled some vast business empire throughout the afternoon and finished off the day by taking some very lucky woman to bed and exhausting her. Caught up in dismay by that last far too intimate thought, Freddy reddened to the roots of her hair.
‘You are Miss Frederica Sutton?’ he demanded, scanning her with brilliant dark deepset eyes that set her heart racing as if she had just heard a fire alarm.
Freddy nodded in slow motion, her entrapped attention running over his luxuriant blue-black hair, his fabulous bone structure, the delicious hue of bronze to his complexion, his arrogant nose, his sinfully beautiful mouth. He was an absolute pin-up, he was totally fantastic, and Erica must have fallen madly in love with him. Just about any woman would, Freddy reflected dizzily, until she recalled that he was a married man and strove in shame to rise above all such inappropriate and personal reflections.
‘Speak,’ he commanded.
It really was a command too, Freddy noted, still searching for her lost vocal cords. He spoke like a male who took it for granted that instant obedience to his every wish would follow. ‘I’m Frederica Sutton, just like—’my late cousin, the mother of your child, she had been about to say.
‘If I wish to enter a conversation with you, I will inform you,’her visitor drawled, running bold and derisive eyes over her taut figure, his highly expressive mouth curling at the corners. ‘I am Jaspar al-Husayn, Crown Prince of Quamar, and I stand here in my brother’s place as next closest of kin and uncle to your son, Benedict.’
Freddy’s hearing and comprehension seized up and slowed to a snail’s pace the very instant he mentioned that he was a prince, a Crown Prince moreover. Erica had not been telling entertaining fibs? Ben’s father was a royal prince? Silenced by sincere shock at that revelation, Freddy stared, eyes
