‘Maybe I am?’ he challenged, pushing the banana back towards her. ‘There is plenty that you don’t know about me, Freya MacFadden.’
The use of her name made her narrow her eyes as she looked at him. God, he was beautiful. Almond-shaped eyes, dark as ink, cheekbones a model would die for, and his lips...
Oh, goodness, I remember those...
Freya cleared her throat and tried to sound as if she was in control of this conversation. ‘Well, perhaps you’d care to enlighten me?’
Jamie checked around them, as if keen to make sure they were alone and no one was listening in.
‘I can’t tell you right now. You wouldn’t believe me. Perhaps if you agreed to meet me here?’
He pulled a card from his uniform pocket and slid it across to her. It was a glossy black card with the name of a hotel in silver.
Why did he want to meet her in a hotel? What kind of movie did Jamie think he was living in? He was deluded. This was normal life. People didn’t do that. There was no way she was going to meet a total stranger in a hotel!
‘Can’t you just tell me?’
‘You wouldn’t believe it. Please meet me there.’
It would be a public place. Safe. But it would be in daylight. When there were other people about. Not in his room. Nowhere they could be alone. But she would have to face other people’s stares.
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow? Before your shift? We do need to talk about this and we can’t do it here.’
She could maybe put on some sunglasses and wrap a thick scarf around her neck, then no one would stare at her. She could get there before everyone else was up and milling around for breakfast. She could listen to what he had to say, give him his five minutes, then slink out quietly.
‘Fine. About six? That gives us an hour before work.’
‘Thank you.’
She nodded, then picked up the banana, gave it back to him and said, ‘Now, take that away, please, before I throw up all over this desk.’
His mouth curled slightly at the corners. ‘Tomorrow I’ll bring you grapes.’
* * *
The Franklin Hotel sat atop a hill, so that as Freya drove towards it she had a sense of awe and magnificence as she approached the beautiful Georgian manor. Looking at it from a distance, she wondered how Jamie could afford to stay in such an opulent place.
I don’t have to go in. I don’t have to hear what he has to say.
But she knew she would. Because, no matter how terrified she felt, she knew that she owed her baby the chance to know something about its father. So she could look her child in the eye and tell him, or her, that she’d tried everything.
It looked welcoming and warm, with yellow lights gleaming out in the darkness of the early morning, the sky above a blue which was fading from inky navy to palest azure.
Parking her little hatchback next to rows of expensive cars with chauffeurs sitting in them made her feel a little uneasy. Why had Jamie asked her to meet him here? What was it that she was about to learn from him?
He was a midwife. A damned sexy one, if she was honest, with an accent to die for and eyes that looked right into her soul and grasped her by the heart. She’d never met anyone like him. The mystery was what could he tell her here that she would never have believed if he’d just told her at work?
Whether she liked it or not, whilst this baby nestled in her womb they would be tied to one another—and Jamie seemed determined to be in her life.
Adjusting her scarf and lowering her sunglasses, she strolled across the gravel driveway, her nerves jittery, her legs weak. In the hotel, gentle music playing from a piano met her ears. To her right was a reception desk, where exquisite and perfectly presented staff waited to attend to every guest’s needs.
‘May I help you, madam?’ asked a young man in a navy suit with enough gel in his hair to sink a ship.
No, it’s fine. I’m just leaving.
‘I’m supposed to be meeting a Mr Jamie Baker?’
‘Miss MacFadden? We’ve been expecting you.’ He smiled, revealing perfectly white teeth. ‘Please take the lift to my right and go up to the third floor.’
Take the lift? Go to the third floor? That wasn’t meeting in a public space. That meant going to his room. Where there was a bed.
‘Oh...um... What room number?’
‘Mr Baker has the entire third floor.’
Freya blinked. What? Who went to a hotel and took up an entire floor? That was the sort of thing celebrities did with their entourages, or royalty, or...
‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’
What was going on? It was all so confusing. He was just a guy, right? A normal guy.
Was he rich?
The night they’d met at the gala she’d known there was a member of royalty there. She’d heard the rumour but she’d never been introduced to anyone. There’d been no announcement. Everyone had hidden behind their masks and it had been exciting. You could talk to anyone and not know it!
Including royalty.
Have sex in a closet with them, if you so chose...
Freya swallowed hard, trying to control her rapidly weakening legs as she hesitantly went over to the lifts and pressed the button.
I could still go. I could run. Just get the hell out of here!
She stood there, fidgeting with the tassels on her scarf, as she waited for the lift to come down to the ground floor.
I owe it to our baby.
Was Jamie a member of some royal family? How could that be?
She thought about turning tail and running—changing her mind and hiding somewhere. Her parents’ beach house on Hayling Island, perhaps. It was the place she went when she needed to hide and think. She’d gone there when she’d first been released from hospital, months after the acid attack, and she’d had to wear that damned orthotic burns mask every day, marking her out as different.
She’d felt like a leper. As if there was a bright neon arrow over her head screaming that here was someone not normal.
The house on Hayling Island would soon be filling up with summer rentals, but hopefully no one was there right now. Jamie wouldn’t know where to find her. It would be good for her to take a break while the morning sickness was in full swing.
The lift pinged, signalling its arrival, and the doors slid open. On the back wall of the lift was an ornate mirror and she gazed at her reflection, wondering what the woman in the mirror should do. Run like hell? It was like staring into a prison.
All ye who enter here...
But Freya had seen more than enough women arrive on her ward to give birth alone, without a father involved, and she had felt sorry for all those children who would grow up without an interested father.
Jamie wanted to be involved. He’d said he would not shirk his responsibility. All she’d ever wanted was to be loved and to have a baby—something she’d thought would never happen after her acid attack—and here she was, pregnant and with a guy who said he wanted to be involved. She owed him a chance, the opportunity to show her what he could provide for their child.
With hesitation Freya stepped into the lift and pressed the button for the third floor, eyeing the reception area with longing as the lift doors closed her in.
As