The Royal Baby Bargain

She’d turned being inconspicuous into an art form. Anyone who took a second glance saw a single mother with no clothes sense and no money, working hard to bring up her child, refusing dates, content to lurk on the edge of life. In a year’s time no one in Nukuroa would remember her.

If that thought stung, she had only to recall Michael’s laughing, open face when he came running towards her each evening in the child-care centre, the warmth of his hug and kiss when she tucked him into bed, his confidence and exuberant enjoyment of life.

Nothing and nobody was more important than Michael.

And if she was going to take him away tonight, she’d better get going!

Keys dangling from her fingers, she lifted the pack and set off for the front door, only to stop, heart hammering again, when her ears picked up the faint murmur of a car on the road. After a second’s hesitation, she dropped the pack and paced noiselessly across to the window. Slowly she drew back the curtain a fraction and peered into the darkness. Headlights flashed on and off like alarm beacons in the heavy darkness as the car moved past the line of trees separating the farm paddock from the road.

When the vehicle continued out of sight she let out a long, relieved breath. Her wide mouth sketched a curve at the familiar fusillade of barks from the dogs at the homestead next door, but the smile soon faded. Odd that a car should be on the road this late; in this farming district most people went to bed early.

Taut and wary, she stayed at the window for several more minutes, listening to the encompassing silence, her mind racing over her plans. First the long trip to Christchurch, where she’d sell the car for what little she could get. Tomorrow evening she and Michael would take flight to New Plymouth in the North Island—with tickets bought under a false name, of course.

And then a new safe haven, a different refuge—but the same life, she thought wearily, always checking over her shoulder, waiting for Caelan Bagaton—referred to by the media as Prince Caelan Bagaton, although he didn’t use the title—to track her down.

Yet it was a life she’d willingly accepted. Straightening her shoulders, she drew the scanty curtain across and went into the narrow, old-fashioned kitchen, where her gaze fell on the list of things to do. Oh, hell! She’d have to get rid of that before she left. Still listening alertly, she screwed up the sheet of paper and dropped it into the waste-paper bin.

Only to give a short, silent laugh at her stupidity, snatch it out and hurry back to the living room to toss it onto the dying embers. It didn’t catch immediately; some of the words stood out boldly as the paper curled and blackened, so she bent down and blew hard, and a brief spurt of flame reduced the list to dark flakes that settled anonymously onto the grate.

‘Nobody,’ she said on a note of steely satisfaction, ‘is going to learn anything from those ashes.’

She stood up and had taken one step across the room when she heard another unknown sound. Where?

Twanging nerves drove her to move swiftly, noiselessly, into the narrow hall and head for the door. Two steps away from it, she heard the snick of a key in the lock.

Fear kicked her in the stomach, locking every muscle. For a few, irretrievable seconds she couldn’t obey the mindless, adrenalin-charged instinct to snatch up Michael and race wildly out of the back door.

I must be dreaming, she thought desperately. Oh God, please let me be dreaming!

But the door flew back at the noiseless thrust of an impatient hand, and every nightmare that had haunted her sleep, every fear she’d repressed, coalesced into stark panic.

Every magnificent inch an avenging prince, Caelan Bagaton came into the house in a silent, powerful rush, closing the door behind him with a deliberation that dried her mouth and sent her blood racing through her veins. He looked like some dark phantom out of her worst nightmare—tall, broad-shouldered, his hard, handsome features clamped in a mask of arrogant authority. The weak light emphasised the ruthless angle of his jaw and the hard male beauty of his mouth, picked out an autocratic sweep of cheekbones and black lashes that contrasted shockingly with cold blue eyes.

Beneath the panic, a treacherous wildfire memory stirred. Horrified, Abby swallowed. Oh, she remembered that mouth—remembered the feel of it possessing hers…

‘You know you should always have a chain on the door,’ he said, voice cool with mockery, gaze narrowed and glinting as he scanned her white face.

Shaking but defiantly stubborn, she said, ‘Get out,’ only to realise that no sound came from her closed throat. She swallowed and repeated the words in a croaking monotone. ‘Get out of here.’

Even though she mightn’t be able to master her body’s primitive response to his vital potency, she’d stand her ground.

‘Did you really think you’d get away with stealing my nephew?’ Contempt blazed through every word. He advanced on her, the dominant framework of his face as implacable as the anger that beat against her.

The metallic taste of fear nauseated her; determined not to be intimidated, she fought it with every scrap of will-power. Although she knew it was futile, desperation forced her to try and sidetrack him.

‘How did you get the door key?’ she demanded, heart banging so noisily she was certain he could hear it.

‘I’m the new tenant.’ He surveyed her pinched face in a survey as cold as the lethal sheen on a knife-blade. ‘And you are Abigail Moore, whose real name is Abigail Metcalfe, shortened by her friends and lovers—and my sister—to Abby.’ His tone converted the sentence to an insult. ‘Drab clothes and dyed hair are a pathetic attempt at disguise. You must have been desperate to be found.’

‘If so, I’d have kept both my hair colour and my name,’ she said through her teeth, temper flaring enough to hold the fear at bay.

His wide shoulders lifted in a dismissive shrug. ‘Why didn’t you move to Australia?’

‘Because I couldn’t afford the fare.’ The words snapped out before she realised she’d been goaded into losing control. Just after she’d returned to New Zealand she’d read an article about him; he’d said that anger and fear made fools of people, and now she was proving it.

Dragging in a shallow breath, she tried again to divert him away from the child sleeping in the back bedroom. ‘If you’re the new tenant, you’re not legally allowed in here until tomorrow. Get out before I call the police.’

He glanced ostentatiously at the sleek silver—no, probably platinum—watch on his lean wrist. ‘It is tomorrow, and we both know you won’t call the police. The local constable would laugh at you as he tossed you into the cells; kidnappers are despised, especially those who steal babies.’

Panic paralysed her mind until a will-power she hadn’t known she possessed forced it into action again; for Michael’s sake she had to keep a clear head. She said raggedly, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

In a drawl as insulting as it was menacing, he said, ‘You barely waited to bury Gemma after the cyclone before you stole her child and ran away.’

‘We were air-lifted out to New Zealand.’ She hid the panicky flutter in her stomach with a snap.

He ignored her feeble riposte with a contemptuous lift of one sable brow. ‘I imagine the poor devils on Palaweyo were so busy cleaning up that no one had time or inclination to check any information you gave.’ He paused, as though expecting an answer; when she remained stoically silent he finished, ‘It was clever—although dangerous—to say he was your child.’

Abby clamped her teeth over more tumbling, desperate words, only will-power keeping her gaze away from the door to Michael’s bedroom. Fear coalesced into a cold pool beneath her ribs.

What else did Gemma’s brother know?

Claiming Michael as her own might have been illegal, but it had secured his future. Once the prince discovered that his sister had died in one of the Pacific Ocean’s violent cyclones, he’d have flown to Palaweyo. And when he found that Gemma had given birth to a child, everything she’d feared—and made Abby promise to prevent—would have unfolded. He’d have taken Michael back to the life that Gemma dreaded—a life of privilege, bereft of love.

Abby’s lie had worked a minor miracle; nobody had queried it. Instead, the overworked and pressured island authorities had immediately found her a flight to New Zealand, and once back home the authorities had fast-tracked documentation for her and Michael as mother and child.

She said stonily, ‘He is mine.’

‘Prove it.’

The words slashed her composure into ribbons. ‘Check his birth certificate.’ Trying to conceal her fear with a show of defiance, she stared at him with hostile eyes, but her glare backfired into sabotage.

She’d met the prince a few times, usually when she’d called at his opulent mansion in one of Auckland’s exclusive marine suburbs to pick up Gemma for an evening out. And once, when she and Gemma were spending a weekend at the beach house on the island he owned in the exquisite Hauraki Gulf, he arrived unexpectedly.

It had been an odd, extremely tense two days; she’d been certain he disliked her, until the final night when he’d kissed her on the beach under the light of a full, voluptuous moon.

She’d gone up in flames, and it had been Caelan who’d pulled away, apologising in a cold, distant voice that had chilled her through to her bones.

Snob, she thought now, compulsively noting the subtle changes the years had made to his arrogant face—a few lines around his cold eyes, a stronger air of authority. His potent charisma still blazed forth, and beneath bronzed skin the splendid bone structure remained rock-hard and ruthless, as it would for the rest of his life.

That ruthlessness was stamped in his family tree. He looked every inch what he was—the descendant of Mediterranean princes who’d established their rule with tough, uncompromising pragmatism and enough hard tenacity to fight off pirates and corsairs and a horde of other invaders, all eager to occupy the rich little island nation of Dacia.

He could have used his social position and his astonishing good looks to lead the life of a playboy. Instead, he’d taken over his father’s business in his mid-twenties and used his formidable intellect and intimidating personality to build it into a huge, world-wide organisation.

Add to that power the fact that he kissed like a fallen angel and Abby knew she had every reason to be afraid of the impact he made on her. Praying he couldn’t see the mindless, bitter attraction stirring inside her, she wrenched her gaze away.

‘I haven’t changed as much as you,’ he observed silkily. ‘But then, I haven’t tried to.’

A potent dose of adrenalin pounded through her veins, and, shockingly, for the first time in years she felt alive again.