LITMIR.BIZ

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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 green and gold; not now, though. Stripped of all emotion, enamelled and opaque, they blazed a clear, hard green, vivid in the dim light of the small, bare hall.

      ‘How much for what?’ she asked in a staccato sentence.

      He didn’t bother with subtlety. ‘For you to give up the child.’

      CHAPTER TWO

      NOT a muscle moved in the delicate ivory skin, but a shadow darkened Abby’s eyes. ‘You disgust me,’ she said woodenly. ‘Get out.’

      Time, Caelan decided, to use the blunt instrument; if appealing to greed wouldn’t do the trick, threats usually worked. ‘You’re in trouble, Abby. If I decide to play it heavy, you face a conviction for kidnapping the child and giving false information to the passport authorities.’

      That shocked her. She winced as though against a blow, but her soft mouth hardened. ‘His name is Michael,’ she stated fiercely, shaken by a gust of emotion he couldn’t define. ‘He’s not some entity you can define by the term child; he has a personality, a place in the world.’

      ‘A place in the world?’ Caelan looked around the shabby hall, his derision plain. ‘He deserves better than this.’

      ‘You might have grown up in the lap of luxury, secure in the fact that you’re a prince, but most children are perfectly happy with a more down-market set of relatives and much less money. He is loved and he loves. He has little friends—’

      ‘You’re taking him away from them,’ he interrupted in his turn, not trying to hide the contempt in his tone.

      She looked away. Whatever she’d been going to say died on her tongue; she shivered, and once more delicate colour flared along her high cheekbones. On a burst of fierce, angry triumph, Caelan knew that he wasn’t the only one feeling the violent pull of an old craving.

      ‘Let’s deal,’ he said, forcing himself to speak judicially. Clearly, she wasn’t going to be bought off, so he had no choice; she was the only mother Gemma’s son had known, and, until the child could manage without her, they were both stuck with her.

      Not that he was going to tell her that. No, he’d frighten her thoroughly first, and then drive as hard a bargain as he could.

      With cool deliberation, he went on, ‘I’m offering you a future. I want the—I want my sister’s child. However, because he thinks you’re his mother, I propose we bury the hatchet.’

      Torn by a tumult of conflicting thoughts, she stared at him. ‘How?’ she said at last, her voice stiff and defensive, waiting for his next words with painful apprehension.

      He said ironically, ‘It’s quite simple.’

      ‘Simple?’ Abby was so incensed she almost gobbled the word. ‘Nothing about this is simple.’

      ‘You should have thought of that before you decided to play with Michael’s life,’ the prince said grimly. ‘You removed him from his family, took him away from the only people who’d know how to protect him. Have you thought of the danger you could be exposing him to?’

      ‘Danger?’ Eyes widening, she stared at him. ‘What danger?’

      He said coldly, ‘He’s a Bagaton, which makes him prime kidnap material.’

      So shocked she almost fell for the trick, she had to bite back the words that trembled on her lips. Hoping he didn’t notice the momentary hesitation, she said haughtily, ‘He is not a Bagaton. His name is Michael Metcalfe. And we Metcalfes are noted for our long and happy marriages, not for being kidnapped.’

      A slashing jet brow rose in irony. ‘A writer is sniffing around Palaweyo, researching a book on Pacific tragedies.’ His hard, sensuous mouth curled. ‘Any woman you can label a princess is always useful when it comes to selling books, especially if she’s young and beautiful and dies in a monster cyclone after giving birth. Once the writer finds out that Michael is Gemma’s child—’

      Abby struggled to remain calm, but the

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