The tabloids revealed her shocking secret...
He’ll reignite their extraordinary desire!
Carlos Segarra: tennis legend, businessman...father! At least that’s what the headlines tell him. Now the steel-hearted Spaniard has no choice. He must find the unforgettable woman at the center of the story and demand answers!
Onetime housekeeper Betsy Miller chose to keep her son from Carlos. Their one night is scorched onto her heart...and so is the way Carlos dismissed their life-changing encounter. But his return leaves Betsy—and the world!—wondering what the next headline will read...
As he’d watched a flush of rose pink spread down her throat and across her décolletage, Carlos had wanted to reacquaint himself with her tantalizing contours.
He could not remember wanting anything so badly in his life.
When he had been tipped off about a story in the British tabloids that he had a secret child, he hadn’t believed it for a minute. He could have instructed his lawyers to investigate. But for two years he’d been unable to get Betsy out of his mind, and if he was honest, he’d seized the excuse to meet her again. He had felt confident that his inexplicable fascination with her would end once he saw her and realized that she was nothing out of the ordinary. And when he had proof from a paternity test that she was a liar, he would be able to dismiss her as a mistake from his past.
But she was the mother of his son. He had received the confirmation email from the DNA clinic an hour ago and it reinforced his determination that Sebastian would not be illegitimate. To claim his son, he must marry Betsy.
Chantelle Shaw lives on the Kent coast and thinks up her stories while walking on the beach. She has been married for over thirty years and has six children. Her love affair with reading and writing Harlequin stories began as a teenager, and her first book was published in 2006. She likes strong-willed, slightly unusual characters. Chantelle also loves gardening, walking and wine.
Books by Chantelle Shaw
Harlequin Presents
Reunited by a Shock Pregnancy
Wed for the Spaniard’s Redemption
Proof of Their Forbidden Night
Her Wedding Night Negotiation
Secret Heirs of Billionaires
Wed for His Secret Heir
Wedlocked!
Trapped by Vialli’s Vows
Bought by the Brazilian
Mistress of His Revenge
Master of Her Innocence
The Saunderson Legacy
The Secret He Must Claim
The Throne He Must Take
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
Chantelle Shaw
Housekeeper in the Headlines
For Rosie and Lucy, my amazing, adventurous and inspirational daughters who are true Harlequin Presents heroines. Love you. Mum xxx
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM ONE SCANDALOUS CHRISTMAS EVE BY SUSAN STEPHENS
CHAPTER ONE
‘IS IT TRUE?’
‘Of course it’s not true.’ Carlos Segarra scowled at the newspaper in his hands and swore. He looked at his father and recognised the expression of disappointment on Roderigo’s face. Dios, he had given his father plenty of reasons to be disappointed with him over the years, Carlos acknowledged grimly. But this was something else, and he was innocent of the claim that had been made against him.
‘I do not have a secret love child,’ he said grittily. ‘The story in the tabloids is a complete fabrication.’
Roderigo’s breath wheezed in his chest. He had been lucky to survive a stroke a year ago, and a bout of pneumonia had put him back in hospital for the past month. ‘So, you don’t know this woman, Betsy Miller, who is alleged to be the mother of your son?’
Carlos’s gut clenched as memories he should have forgotten after all this time surfaced. Pansy-brown eyes and hair a shade somewhere between caramel and golden honey that fell in silky curls around a pretty, passion-flushed face.
He remembered the moist softness of Betsy’s lips and her husky moans of pleasure when he’d made love to her. She had tested his self-control for weeks, and that night two years ago—the night after he had achieved his dream of winning the men’s singles title at the world-renown British International Tennis Championships—his control had shattered spectacularly.
‘I knew her briefly in London,’ he said stiffly. ‘But I am not the father of her child.’
Roderigo gave him a close look. ‘You are one hundred percent certain?’
‘Si.’ Carlos stared at the photo of Betsy on the front page of the newspaper. Even though she was wearing a shapeless raincoat and her hair was hidden beneath an unflattering woollen hat, he felt a sizzle of heat in his blood. The strength of his reaction was perplexing. He had never had a hang-up about any woman, ever. And he did not have one about an unsophisticated, English housekeeper, he assured himself.
‘There is virtually zero possibility that the child is mine,’ he insisted. The photo showed Betsy holding a child who looked to be a similar age to Carlos’s nephew. The toddler’s features were obscured by the hood of his coat.
If Betsy had fallen pregnant by him, why would she have waited until now to make it public? Carlos brooded. Why wouldn’t she have told him first? Surely, a more likely explanation was that she had lied to the newspapers and been paid for her story.
Carlos recalled that circumstances had meant he had left the house where he had been staying in south-west London without seeing Betsy again after they had spent the night together. But he’d been unable to forget her, and a few weeks after he had returned to Spain, he’d sent her a gift of a bracelet, as well as his phone number, and suggested that she could call him if she wanted to meet him again. She had not replied, and he hadn’t tried to contact her again. Carlos did not chase women, and usually he did not have to. But if Betsy had conceived his baby, he would have expected her to get in touch with him and at the very least ask for financial support for the child.
‘This is simply another form of a kiss-and-tell story that the tabloids love to print,’ he told his father as he threw the newspaper down on the bed. ‘There are women who deliberately sleep with a well-known figure and then sell the story to the press.’
‘If you had not earned a reputation as a playboy, perhaps this woman would not have targeted you.’
The disapproval in Roderigo’s voice irritated Carlos. He thought of the annexe that he’d had built onto his house in Toledo to provide his father with private living accommodation. Carlos paid for Roderigo to receive round the clock care from a team of nurses instead of having to move into a nursing home. He had hoped that by offering his father a home, they might be able to re-establish their relationship which had once been close. He did not expect forgiveness. How could he, when he would never forgive himself for the part he had played in his mother’s death? But he had sensed a softening in Roderigo’s attitude towards him in recent months. Carlos had hoped for a rapprochement between them, but the story in the newspaper was damning, and his father’s lack of faith in him felt like a knife in his ribs.
He rose from the chair next to his father’s bed and paced rest
lessly around the hospital room. ‘What will you do?’ Roderigo asked.
‘My jet is being prepared to take me to England immediately after I leave here.’ It was sheer coincidence that Carlos had planned a business trip to the UK. Ironically, he had considered getting back in touch with Betsy, reasoning that if they had an affair, his fascination with her would undoubtedly fade. Now he was determined to track her down, and his first priority was to contact a DNA clinic to arrange a paternity test.
He wanted answers, and when he had proof that Betsy Miller was a liar, he would make her regret that she’d made a fool of him, Carlos vowed in silent fury.
* * *
The river had burst its banks during the night. June had been unseasonably wet, and a month’s worth of rain fell in twenty-four hours, turning the pretty stream that meandered through the Dorset village of Fraddlington into a raging torrent.
Betsy had piled sandbags around the front door of the cottage, but in the morning she discovered that the floors of the downstairs rooms were submerged beneath inches of filthy brown water—although fortunately the kitchen at the back of the house had been built on a slightly higher level and remained dry. The water had gradually drained away but it left behind a thick layer of black silt that stunk.
Sebastian stood behind the child gate that Betsy had fixed across the doorway between the kitchen and the sitting room. He was nearly fifteen months old and utterly adorable. His brown eyes were flecked with gold, just like his father’s eyes. But Betsy refused to think about Carlos.
‘I’m afraid you will have to stay there while I clear up this mess,’ she told her little son as she leaned down and kissed his dark brown curls.
Betsy rented the cottage and had no idea where she and Sebastian could go while the flood damage was repaired. The village had been on high alert to the possibility of the river bursting its banks for several days, and news crews had flocked to Fraddlington to report on the unfolding situation. When she dragged a sodden rug outside and dumped it in the front garden, she saw her neighbour talking to a man holding a microphone.
Betsy went back inside and shut the door, thinking about another journalist who had approached her a few days ago while she had been pushing Sebastian in his buggy. She had suddenly realised where she had seen the journalist before.
Two years ago, he had come to her aunt’s house in south-west London to interview Carlos Segarra, that year’s winner of the men’s singles title at the British International Tennis Championships, widely known as the BITC. Betsy had been working as the housekeeper there, and Carlos had leased the house for several weeks during the tournament while Aunt Alice had gone abroad.
After spending the night with Carlos, Betsy had woken late the next morning and, finding herself alone in his bed, had gone to look for him. She had ached in places she’d never ached before, and the lingering proof of Carlos’s intimate caresses had made her long for him to make love to her again.
Memories of that night pushed into her mind. What a naive fool she had been, she thought bitterly as she pushed the mop across the floor and wrung a stream of muddy water into a bucket.
Growing up in the war zone of her parents’ toxic marriage and their acrimonious divorce had made her sceptical about the idea of falling in love. She had been on a few dates with guys she’d met at university, but she’d never had a serious romantic relationship because she was fearful of lowering her barriers and risking being hurt. And yet deep down she had still cherished a hope of meeting her prince—and he had arrived in the form of a tall, bronzed and impossibly handsome tennis star.
For the only time in her life Betsy had let her guard down, with Carlos, believing that there was a special connection between them. But the truth was that she had been just another notch on his crowded bedpost. She had overheard him telling the journalist who had come to the house to interview him about his success that she was ‘a casual fling’.
Peeling off her rubber gloves, Betsy felt a surge of despair as she glanced around the cottage. She had enough to worry about without the sense of foreboding that had gripped her since she’d recognised that journalist in the village. She was sure that he remembered her from two years ago, and it made his curiosity about Sebastian unsettling.
A knock on the front door made her jump. It was probably someone from the emergency services, checking on the residents who had been affected by the floods, she told herself. She looked in the kitchen and saw Sebastian sitting on his playmat. There was another loud knock and she moved towards the front door. Through the frosted glass pane she could make out a tall figure, and inexplicably her heart started to thud.
‘Hi...’ Betsy’s voice faltered as she opened the door—and stared at Carlos.
Shock turned the blood in her veins to ice. It couldn’t be him. He did not know where she lived and there was no reason why he would be looking for her. No reason that he would be interested in anyway.
She had forgotten how gorgeous he was. Not that she’d been able to forget him at all. But Carlos Segarra in the flesh was a thousand times more devastatingly handsome than the man who regularly haunted her dreams.
Her eyes roamed his hard-boned features, taking in his masculine beauty; the razor-edged cheekbones above the hollow planes of his face, the square jaw shadowed with dark stubble, and the mouth that she knew could be sensual or cruel, but right now was drawn into a grim expression that made Betsy’s heart sink.
Carlos’s stunning looks and his fame as a superstar sporting legend, not to mention his reputation as a prolific playboy, meant that he often featured in celebrity magazines. Betsy hated herself every time she succumbed to her curiosity and bought a magazine that had a picture of Carlos, dubbed ‘Spain’s sexiest man’, on the front cover. But she had been irresistibly attracted to him the moment she’d set eyes on him two years ago, and now she was dismayed to discover that his impact on her had not lessened.
She felt a quiver in the pit of her stomach as her gaze locked with his sherry-gold eyes, gleaming beneath thick, dark lashes.
It wasn’t only his eyes that made her think of a jungle cat. She pictured the lean, muscular body, honed to physical perfection, that had made him a superb athlete. On the tennis circuit he had been nicknamed ‘The Jaguar’, because of his speed around the court and his unpredictability. You could never know what a jaguar was thinking, and the same went for Carlos Segarra.
Swallowing hard, Betsy ran her eyes over Carlos’s elegant grey suit. The bottom few inches of his trousers were damp and his brown leather shoes were caked in mud. ‘You should have worn boots.’ She bit her lip when she realised that that was an odd way to greet him after two years. ‘Why are you here?’
His heavy brows snapped together. ‘I have only just arrived in England and I was not aware of the floods that have affected this part of the country.’
His accented voice sent a shiver of response across Betsy’s skin. She could feel the pulse at the base of her throat hammering and lifted her hand to hide her traitorous body’s reaction to him.
Carlos’s hard gaze flicked over her shapeless tee shirt and faded sweatpants. She’d dressed in old clothes, knowing that she was bound to get filthy in the clean-up operation. He glanced down at her mud-spattered wellington boots and his mouth flattened. Betsy resisted the temptation to remove the scarf that she’d tied over her hair. She looked a mess, but she did not give a damn what Carlos thought of her, she assured herself.
‘The flooding has been a big story in the media. I’m surprised you haven’t read about it.’ She looked at the newspaper he was carrying under his arm. ‘If you had it might have saved your suit.’
‘To hell with my suit.’ Carlos’s tone was blistering. ‘Are you trying to be funny?’
She blinked. ‘What do you mean?’
He thrust the newspaper into her hand and stepped into the cottage without waiting for her to invite him in.
‘Dios...’ he muttered as he glanced around the sitting room. There was a brown tidemark halfway up the cream sofa, and an unpleasant smell permeated the room. ‘I’m guessing that this flood damage will be expensive to repair. Is that why you did it?’ he demanded.
‘Did what? I don’t understand.’ Betsy backed away from the lethal gleam in Carlos’s eyes. He was clearly furious. Once again she felt a sense of foreboding.
She looked at the front page of the newspaper. It was one of the more lurid tabloids and her heart slammed against her ribs as the headline leapt out at her.
Tennis Ace Segarra’s Secret Son!
There was a photo of Betsy, standing in front of the cottage holding Sebastian. The picture was rather grainy, and her son was wearing a rain suit with the hood up so that his face was mostly obscured.
She immediately thought of the journalist who had carried sandbags up the garden path and helped her pile them against the door.
‘You don’t mind if I take a photo, do you?’ he’d asked. ‘I’m writing a piece about the floods for the local rag and the editor likes to include pictures showing the human element of the story.’
Betsy had felt she couldn’t refuse, seeing as he had helped her. The journalist had then casually asked Sebastian’s age and commented on his olive complexion. But she was sure she hadn’t said anything which would have led him to guess that Carlos Segarra was her baby’s father.
‘I have no idea how this story got into the papers,’ she said shakily. ‘I’ve never told anyone that Sebastian is yours.’
Carlos snorted. ‘Of course you know. How much did you get paid for this garbage that has been printed which accuses me of abandoning my child?’
‘I didn’t—’ She broke off as Carlos slashed his hand through the air with an impatient gesture.
‘Last night I received a tip-off that the story that I had a secret love child was about to break in the British tabloids. I was too late to seek a legal injunction to prevent the story being published,’ he said tersely. ‘My informant said that the “scoop” had been uncovered by a scumbag journalist called Tom Vane, who believes he has a score to settle with me because he blames me after he was sacked from his job as a sports reporter. He wrote a load of lies about my reasons for retiring from playing competition tennis and I complained to the newspaper he worked for.’
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