The Baby Bond

“You want me to look after…the baby?” she asked.

“Is it really such a bizarre request to make, then, Angel?” Rory queried softly. “Particularly to someone whose whole livelihood used to be caring for children?”

“But it isn’t just any baby we’re talking about here! Surely you can see that!”

“He’s my nephew—”

“And he’s the son of my ex-husband!” she added acidly. “The son he had with another woman!”

He’s a man of cool sophistication.

He’s got pride, power and wealth.

At the top of his corporate ladder, he’s a ruthless businessman, an expert lover—and he’s 100% committed to staying single.

He’s also responsible for a BABY!

HIS BABY

He’s sexy, he’s successful…and he’s facing up to fatherhood!

Dear Reader,

One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.

There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.

I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia to escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100th story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”

So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?

I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.

Love,

Sharon xxx

Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.

SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…

The Baby Bond

Sharon Kendrick

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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To Alan Stedman, who is not only the world’s most

brilliant doctor—he also has the irresistible smile of the

true romantic hero!

CONTENTS

Cover

Dear Reader

About the Author

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

THE telephone screamed like a banshee and Angel—her dark hair drifting like smoke around her shoulders—walked along the corridor to pick it up.

‘Fitzpatrick Hotel. Hello?’ she said softly.

‘Angel?’

Angel’s heart stilled as she heard her name, the single word spoken in a voice at once so strange and yet so shockingly familiar that it struck her like a blow. Disorientated, she gripped onto the receiver, the white knuckling of her fingers the only outward sign of her distress. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came.

There was a long pause, and then the low, masculine voice growled out the word again, so that it rang deeply in her ear. ‘Angel? Angel? Are you still there?’

‘Y-yes,’ she gasped, her lungs feeling oxygen-deprived, her legs like lead as her memory played tricks on her. ‘That—that isn’t you, is it, Chad?’

‘No. It isn’t Chad.’ The denial was emphatic, but something rather odd coloured the speaker’s reply. ‘It’s Rory.’

Angel swallowed. Of course. Didn’t they say that siblings’ voices always sounded remarkably similar on the telephone?

Rory Mandelson. Chad’s brother. And her brother-in-law. A man she had scarcely known, whose self-contained exterior she had never got close to penetrating, no matter how many times they had met. A man she had felt distinctly uncomfortable with, for reasons she had never quite got round to exploring—other than the fact that he had not approved of her marriage to his only brother. He had made that very plain.

And yet Rory had been the person she had turned to when she’d wanted to track down her missing husband—knowing that if anyone could find Chad then Rory could. She hadn’t wanted to involve the police, unwilling to have her life put under the microscopic scrutiny that a police investigation would entail. Though she was uncertain why she’d had such blind faith in her brother-in-law.

Instinct, perhaps. The older she got the more trust she placed in instinct. And, in her more lucid moments, Angel acknowledged that maybe Rory’s so-called arrogance—which Chad had complained about so often—had in fact been an unshakeable strength of character. Oh, yes—it had been all too easy to feel ambivalent about Rory Mandelson.

But that had been in another age, another life.

Now she needed to know one thing, and one thing only. Then she could go and live out the rest of her life in some kind of peace.

Cases like hers were well documented—her odd feeling of detachment nothing unusual. Why was it, Angel wondered, that those left behind by people who disappeared without trace always seemed to have a huge chunk of their life missing?

‘H-have you found him, Rory?’ she stumbled. ‘Have you found my husband?’

Another pause, but this time a silence so uncomfortable that Angel could almost feel the awkwardness fizzing its way down the telephone wires, and she felt herself swaying with awful premonition.

Rory’s voice was heavy. ‘Yes, I’ve found him—’

‘Where is he?’ she demanded quickly.

There was uncharacteristic hesitation, as though he was momentarily lost for words. ‘Angel, I need to see you, to talk to you—’

‘Tell me!’ she insisted. ‘In the name of God, Rory Mandelson—will you please tell me where my husband is?’

‘Angel—’

Something in the way he said her name this time forewarned her. It was a tone of voice she had heard used before, a tone which conveyed both compassion and condolence. And when someone spoke that way, it could mean only one thing….

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ she choked out in disbelief. ‘Chad is dead?’

‘Yes, he is,’ he told her, more gently than she had ever heard him speak. ‘I’m afraid that Chad was killed in a car crash eight days ago. I’m so very sorry, Angel.’

Dead?

The vibrant, crazy Chad Mandelson, snuffed out like a candle?

Angel shook her head frantically from side to side, so that the thick black hair beat heavily against the slender column of her neck. ‘No,’ she whimpered, in shocked and dazed denial. ‘He can’t be dead!’

‘I’m so sorry, Angel,’ he said again.

The part of her which wasn’t frozen in disbelief wondered why Rory Mandelson of all people was offering her sympathy, when she was nothing more than an estranged wife. And a deserted wife to boot. A wife he had never approved of Chad taking in the first place.

She shook her head once more, as if trying to clear the fuzziness which seemed to have descended on her like a dank, oppressive blanket. Surely she should offer some words of kindness to him. His only brother. His last living relation. Shell-shocked, she forced her lips to utter conventionally, ‘I’m sorry, too, Rory.’

‘Yes.’ But he clipped the word out, as though he doubted the sincerity of her condolences.

Angel swallowed, forcing herself to ask the question she knew must be asked. ‘And when…when is the funeral?’

There was another pause. ‘I’ve just come back from the funeral,’ he told her, his words seeming to be drawn out of him reluctantly. ‘It took place earlier today.’

‘You’ve already had the funeral?’ she asked, still shocked and bewildered.

‘Yes.’

So. No time to pray for the repose of his soul. And no opportunity to say goodbye to her husband properly, either. For wouldn’t a funeral have provided the natural and complete cutting of ties, in view of everything that had happened between them?

‘I wasn’t invited, then,’ she observed dully.

‘I honestly didn’t think you would want to come, Angel. I can’t think of another woman in the same situation who would have.’

‘And shouldn’t I have been the one to decide that?’ she cried. ‘Couldn’t you at least have asked me?’

‘Yes, I could.’ His voice seemed to come from a long way away as he answered her accusation slowly. ‘Of course I could, Angel. And you’re right—I should have done. I just presumed that you would find it too—’

‘Too what?’

‘Too distressing. After everything that had happened between you.’

‘You mean that people would have been laughing at me?’

‘That isn’t what I meant at all!’ he growled. ‘I just thought that you had been through enough with Chad, and I couldn’t think of many estranged wives who would have wanted to be there—given the circumstances.’

Angel pressed her nails painfully into the palm of her hand, as if to reassure herself that she was still alive, because she felt as colourless and as transparent as a ghost. ‘What circumstances?’ she intoned. ‘Tell me, Rory!’

‘Not now!’

His words rang out powerfully, broaching no argument, and Angel remembered Chad’s words drifting back to her—that what Rory wanted, Rory usually got.

‘I’m coming over to see you,’ he continued inexorably.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ she answered stiffly. ‘I can see little point in that now! And it’s pointless your coming all the way to Ireland, when I can speak to you on the phone. Why don’t you just rejoice that my association with your family has come to an end, that your wish has finally been granted?’

‘I’m coming over to see you,’ he repeated, as if she hadn’t objected at all. ‘I need to talk to you, Angel.’

She opened her mouth to suggest that he said whatever it was he wanted to say right now, but she closed it almost immediately. Something about the way he spoke made her realise that to argue with him would be futile, but then hadn’t Chad always told her that Rory never took no for an answer. ‘When?’ she asked, wishing that she had the strength to put up a fight. And win.

‘On Monday. I’ll be with you on Monday.’

‘Monday?’ she whispered faintly. The day after tomorrow.

So soon?

Too soon, thought Angel as reality drove home with all the gritty force of a hailstorm. Too soon to take everything in.

But Rory had obviously misinterpreted her response. ‘I was going to try and make it tomorrow, but everything is in chaos here. I’ve been busy with…’ He hesitated. Angel thought she heard him swallow. ‘Formalities,’ he finished baldly.

She could imagine. The legal process of death. Angel swallowed too as she tried to take in the momentous news. It was unbelievable. Truly unbelievable.

She closed her eyes and remembered a long, hot summer. An Irish girl alone in London, working as a nanny in a sterile, unfriendly house. Angel had been like a fish out of water, yet unwilling to admit defeat, to return home, to her overworked mother and her six brothers who wouldn’t lift a finger to help themselves.

Then the devil-may-care Chad Mandelson had entered her life like a ray of sunshine. Chad hadn’t believed in problems; he’d shrugged each and every one off with that careless smile which captivated every woman around, Angel included. He’d been the kind of man who in Ireland would have been called a ‘chancer’, but in the hostile world of the big city Angel hadn’t cared. He’d been her rock and she had clung onto him.

He’d been an ex-model and a failed actor, doted on by his ageing mother and so unlike his austere and severe older brother that it had been hard to take in that they were the same flesh and blood. When Angel had met him, he’d been recently bereaved and still grieving for his mother. Afterwards she’d wondered whether that was why he had clung to her, too. But she had answered a need in him, just as he had answered one in her.

And now he was dead.

Dead.

Angel tried to imagine the shocking reality. Dark, unwelcome thoughts began to flood into her shattered mind and she felt the telephone slip from between boneless fingers.

Hundreds of miles away in England, Rory was deafened by the sound of the receiver as it clattered onto the hard, cold slabs of the flagstoned floor.

CHAPTER TWO

THERE was a tap on the door of the old-fashioned parlour, and Mrs Fitzpatrick, the matriarch of the Fitzpatrick Hotel, peered in to see Angel sitting motionless on the sofa.

‘Angel?’

Angel looked up from the photo she had been studying and tried to compose herself, though it wasn’t easy. She had been feeling so emotional since hearing of Chad’s death that her face kept crumpling up with disbelief, and tears were never very far from the surface. She cleared her throat. ‘Yes, Mrs Fitzpatrick?’

Mrs Fitzpatrick was looking more agitated than Angel could ever remember seeing her—even more flustered than the time that the goose had flown into the parlour, minutes before the parish priest had arrived to take tea! Her thick Irish accent was very pronounced, the result of never having ventured further afield than twenty miles from the place where she had been born.

‘The gentleman you’re waiting on; he’s here to see you now. He’s just turned up in a fancy-looking motor car!’ she finished, on a note of excitement which she couldn’t quite hide, despite her obvious concern for Angel.

Angel swallowed nervously, and nodded. So Rory had finally arrived, had he? That would explain why Mrs Fitzpatrick was looking so rattled—for how often did tall barristers with heartbreakingly stern faces wander into the Fitzpatrick Hotel? No, men like Rory Mandelson certainly didn’t grow on trees in any part of the world—least of all in this part of Ireland!

‘Would you like me to show him in?’ prompted Mrs Fitzpatrick.

Angel shifted stiffly on the sofa. She hadn’t known when to expect him, so she had risen at six, just to be sure. Still in shock, she had sat as inert as a statue all morning waiting for him, dressed all in black, as was still the local custom. Her thick, dark hair she had scraped back severely with combs, but now she wondered why she had bothered. It was a style she wore every day whilst working, but this morning her fingers had felt useless—had shaken so much while she struggled to put the combs in place that already rogue curls were beginning to unfurl around her neck.

‘Thank you, Molly,’ she answered quietly. ‘Would you mind awfully?’

‘Not at all!’ The older woman narrowed her eyes shrewdly. ‘And how about a drop of brandy for you, Angelica? Bring a bit of colour back into your cheeks?’

But Angel shook her head, suppressing a shudder. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, and she didn’t want Rory Mandelson walking in and finding her with a glass raised to her lips. He had never wanted her to marry his brother in the first place, but she had no desire to sink any further in his estimation.

Since his phone call she had barely slept. She had lain awake at night, wondering why he was even bothering to come to see her at all—until she’d remembered that he was a barrister, and that there was a need for him to create some kind of order in his life, a sense of doing the right thing—and the right thing in Rory’s mind was undoubtedly to pay his respects to the widow of his brother. But brandy? No way! Imagine his face! ‘No, I won’t, thanks, Molly.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘Not just at the moment.’

‘Then I’ll bring him along now, shall I?’

‘Would you? Thanks.’

After Molly had bustled out, Angel put the photo back down on the side-table and clasped her hands together, feeling more nervous than she could ever remember feeling in her life. Though why she should be so nervous of coming face to face with Rory after more than eighteen months, she didn’t know.

Grief, probably.

Grief made you do all kinds of things, didn’t it? Made you feel vulnerable and alone, for a start. Made you question what life was all about and wonder what you were doing with that life. And it made you study an old wedding photo with amazement, as if the handsome, laughing green-eyed girl in it was a total stranger, instead of herself.

And, yes, her husband might have fallen out of love with her, and left her without a word of explanation, but that did not stop her heart aching for him and the terrible waste of a young life.

The oval mirror which hung on the plain wall opposite offered her a glimpse of her reflection if she moved her head very slightly.

Angel grimaced. The slim-fitting black dress she wore only emphasised the washed-out pallor of her cheeks, and her eyes were shadowed from a lack of sleep. She looked a mess.

Hardly realising that she was doing it, she patted her dark hair fussily as the door swung open, and there stood Rory, his face darkening as he saw the pose she struck, and her hand fell to her side.

Now why had she been caught looking as though she was preening herself—something she never normally did? Why, he probably thought that all she was concerned about was feminine vanity—even at a dreadful time like this.

She blinked as she looked at him.

Angel had quite forgotten how he could simply seem to fill a room with his presence. She wondered, had he been born with that indefinable something which immediately drew the eye and the interest without any effort on his part? Some characteristic which planted itself so indelibly on your memory that he seemed to still be in the room minutes after he had left it.

Or had he learnt that from his job? As an advocate, he dominated courtrooms with his presence and his eloquence, representing the rights of the underdog. She remembered Chad’s derisive expression, unable to understand why his big brother would pass up the opportunity to earn riches beyond most people’s dreams. Instead, he fought cases for the poor and underprivileged—those who would normally be unable to afford a lawyer of his undoubted calibre.

And in that he could not have been more different from his brother, for Chad had chased every money-making prospect which came his way.

Rory Mandelson was a big man, and a tall man, too—with the same kind of dark, rugged good looks as his younger brother. And yet he had none of Chad’s wildness. Or his unpredictability—you could tell that simply by looking at him. Rory emanated strength and stability, thought Angel, like a great oak tree rooted deeply into the earth.

He stared very hard at her, his mouth flattening into an implacable line, which was understandable, given the circumstances of his visit. But it gave absolutely no hint as to how he might be feeling inside.

There was something very disciplined about Rory Mandelson, Angel realised suddenly. You wouldn’t really have a clue what was going on behind those deep blue eyes of his, with the lush black lashes which curled around them so sinfully.

His black jeans were his only concession to mourning, otherwise—with a sweater as green as the Wicklow Mountains, which rose in verdant splendour outside the window—he looked just as casual as any other tourist. Not that there had been many tourists just lately, Angel acknowledged. It had been an unusually cruel and bleak January in this part of Ireland, with no signs of a change in sight.

‘Hello, Angel,’ he said softly. His navy eyes searched her face, and for the briefest second Angel had the oddest sensation of that blue gaze searing through all her defences, able to read her soul itself.

‘H-hello, Rory,’ she replied shakily. She got up from the sofa slowly, with the exaggerated care of an old woman, and crossed the room until she was standing right in front of him. And only then could she sense the immense sadness which surrounded him like an aura, his grief almost tangible in the brittle silence. His deep blue eyes were dulled with the pain, his features strained with the effort of keeping his face rigidly controlled.

Angel acted on instinct.

Rising up on tiptoe, she put her arms tightly around him in the traditional gesture of condolence, and let her head fall helplessly to his shoulder, expecting him to enfold her in his arms in an answering gesture of comfort.

She would have done the same whoever it had been—man, woman or child. It was an intuitive action, and one prompted by the haunted expression in his blue eyes, but Angel felt his muscular frame stiffen and shift rejectingly beneath her fingertips, and she immediately dropped her hands to her sides, where they hung awkwardly, as if they were not part of her body but someone else’s.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said woodenly as she glimpsed his shuttered expression. He was English, after all. Perhaps the widow of his brother should not have been flinging her arms around his neck with so much familiarity. Perhaps it was not the ‘done thing’.

‘Yes, I know,’ he responded flatly. ‘Everyone is sorry. He was too young—much too young to die.’

Had he deliberately misunderstood her? Angel wondered. Been unwilling to dwell on her action because he was embarrassed by it? Or appalled by it?

Vowing to make amends, and to act as appropriately as the circumstances demanded, she gestured to a chair. ‘Would you like to sit down, Rory?’ she asked him formally. ‘You’ve had a long journey.’

He looked at the chair she had indicated, as if doubtful that it would accommodate his long-legged frame, and shook his head. ‘No. I’ll stand, if you don’t mind. I’ve been sitting in the car for hours.’

‘A drink, then?’

‘No. Not yet.’

Their eyes met.

‘Then are you going to tell me why you’re here?’ asked Angel quietly. ‘Why you came?’

His dark head shook emphatically. ‘Not yet,’ he said again, and Angel decided that she had never met a man who could carry off evasiveness with so much aplomb.