Melanie Milburne: The Unclaimed Baby

Have you ever had someone ask you to keep a secret? I get asked to do it from time to time and I find it really hard. Not that I would ever betray a friend or anything, but just the fact that someone had begged me, “Don’t tell anyone” makes me feel under enormous pressure. I have to check every word that comes out of my mouth when I’m talking to a mutual friend!

However, I love writing stories about secrets. And one theme that I have revisited a few times now is The Secret Baby Plot. But times have changed and so have readers. While in the past keeping a hero’s child a secret from him worked quite well, these days readers like to have a very good reason why the heroine would not or could not tell him of the existence of or expectation of a child.

In Unclaimed Baby (released in UK/ Australia as Scandal: Unclaimed Love Child) is a story about two secrets. One of course is the baby, but the other is the secret about Luca Sabbatini’s health. He is plagued by a condition that he has told no one about. Not even his family knows. And he has certainly not told Bronte Bennett, the beautiful ballet student he has been seeing.

 Facing the prospect of  do-or-die brain surgery, Luca comes to the decision he must end his relationship with Bronte. He gives her no explanation. He just cuts her from his life. He blocks all contact. He wants to have a clean break so she can move on with her life. He doesn’t want her to give up her life for him if he was to become an invalid. A heroic choice but sadly it backfires on him terribly.

Two years on from his surgery Luca steps back into Bronte’s life. Unlike Ashleigh in The Secret Baby Bargain who felt she couldn’t risk telling Jake she was pregnant, but just like Scarlet in The Marciano Love-Child, and Charlotte in Bought for Her Baby - (See? I told you I like this theme!) Bronte did everything she could to contact Luca to tell him he was to become a father, but finally gave up in frustration and anger.

When Luca makes it clear he wants to resume his affair with her she is furious. Where was he when she needed him most? Bronte wants to tell him about little Ella, and is working up the courage to do so when he finds out via someone else. What a shock to find he has a child!  

Luca is one of my favorite heroes because he really tried to do what he felt was the right thing by Bronte. He was terrified of becoming an invalid and thereby tying her to him. He knew her well enough to know she would never desert him.

This is the first book in my Sabbatini Brothers Trilogy and I wrote the other two books around the premise of this one because Luca, like his older and younger brother, needed to learn that love can truly conquer all.

Warmest wishes,

Melanie Milburne

p.s. Do you find it hard to keep a secret?!!