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.
He noted the heat in her cheeks with a coldly cynical smile. ‘The child’s birth certificate is a pack of lies,’ he said with deadly precision, his hard, beautiful mouth curling.
Her heart contracted. She had to take a deep breath before she could ask, ‘Can you prove that?’
‘I’ve seen him.’
She stared at him, eyes huge and dark in her pale face. ‘So?’
‘He looks like Gemma,’ he said flatly. ‘I have a photograph of her at the same age, and, apart from the colouring, it looks like the same child.’
‘You call that proof?’ she asked, letting manufactured scorn ring through her voice. ‘You’ll need to do better than that to convince anyone.’
Caelan let the silence drag on, ratcheting up her tension until she had to stifle a small gasp when he finally drawled, ‘Are you prepared to have a DNA test done?’
It was a trap, of course, and her only chance was to carry it off with a high hand.
‘Of course not.’ She hoped her contempt matched his.
‘I could force you to.’
He meant it. Panic kicked ferociously in her stomach. ‘How?’
His mouth thinned into a hard line. ‘I have signed depositions from the villagers on Palaweyo—the one where you lived with Gemma—that the boy child was born to the girl with long black hair, not to the nurse who had hair like the sunrise in summer.’ He studied her drab hair for a moment of exquisite torture before drawling, ‘Any court would take that information as an indication that blood tests would be a good thing.’
The walls in the narrow hall pressed around Abby, robbing her of breath, clamping her heart in intolerable fear. Speared by anguish, she had to concentrate on keeping herself upright. Gemma, she thought numbly, oh Gemma, I’m so sorry…
She could still hear Gemma say, ‘And I won’t go and live with Caelan after the baby’s born, so it’s no use trying to make me.’
Abby had twisted in the hammock and stared at her very pregnant guest, sprawled out on the coarse white coral sand. ‘Don’t go all drama queen on me again! I’m not trying to make you do anything! All I said was that your brother seems the sort of man who’d be there for you!’
Gemma said with false heartiness, ‘Oh, he is! Believe me, they don’t come any more protective or autocratic or masterful than Caelan. It’s in the genes—all the Bagaton men are tough and dominant. I’m not telling him about this baby because—’ She stopped and sifted sand through her fingers, her expression an odd mixture of defiance and shyness. After a swift upwards glance at Abby, she began again. ‘Because Caelan would step in and take us over, and for once I want to show him that I can manage.’
Doubtfully, 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—’