Kitabı oku: «Mother's Day Treats», sayfa 7

CHAPTER SIX

SEBASTEN swore under his breath, swept up his jacket and dug his arms into it while Lizzie leapt off the table, smoothed down her mussed skirt and retrieved the one item of her clothing which Sebasten had removed with a face that burned hotter than any fire.

‘This is Sebasten Contaxis…the lock’s jammed and I’m stuck in here! Call Maintenance!” Sebasten called back, all ice-cool authority.

Five seconds later, high-heeled shoes were to be heard scurrying down the corridor. As soon as the racket of the woman’s retreat receded, Sebasten stepped back and aimed a powerful kick at the lock. The door sprang open all on its own but the lock now looked damaged enough to support his story. Lizzie was still paralysed to the spot, transfixed by his speed and inventiveness in reacting to what had threatened to be the most humiliating encounter of her entire life.

‘After you…’ Sebasten invited with the shimmering golden eyes of a male who enjoyed a healthy challenge and enjoyed even more turning in a gold-medal performance for the benefit of an impressed-to-death woman. ‘Grab a few files and lose yourself at the other end of the floor. I’ll pick you up at half-six. We’re entertaining tonight at Pomeroy Place, my country house, so pack a bag.’

‘Sounds great,’ she mumbled, revelling in the coupley togetherness of that ‘we’ he had employed.

‘I forgot about the blasted party,’ Sebasten admitted with a frown over that same slip of the tongue as he swung away.

‘Sebasten…?’ In a sudden surge of emotion that Lizzie could no more have restrained than she could have held back floodwater, she flung herself at him as he turned back with an enquiring ebony brow raised. Green eyes shining, she linked her arms round his neck and gave him a hug. ‘That’s for just b-being you,’ she told him, her voice faltering as he tensed in surprise.

‘Thanks.’ Sebasten set her back from him, his keen dark gaze veiling as he read the soft, vulnerable look in her expectant face. ‘I should get going,’ he pointed out.

Lizzie gathered up some loose papers and found another room in which to work. From there she could hear the rise and fall of speculative voices as maintenance staff attended to the damage door further down the corridor but she was incapable of listening. She pressed clammy hands to her pale, stricken face, unable to combat the deep inner chill spreading through her. Even after the incredible passion they had shared, even while her wretched body still ached from the penetration of his, her affectionate hug and declaration had been received like a step too far. He might have attempted to conceal that reality but his lack of any true response had spoken for him.

But why? For a split-second, Sebasten had looked down into her eyes and what had he seen there? Love? She felt humiliated, foolish and scared all at once. Whatever he had seen, he had not wanted to see. It was as though she had crossed some invisible boundary line and, instead of moving to meet her, he had turned his back. But then what had she been thinking of when she threw herself at him like that? The wildness of their lovemaking had shattered her and perhaps she had wanted reassurance…emotional reassurance.

At that awful moment of truth, Lizzie regretted her first night in Sebasten’s bed with an angry self-loathing of her own weakness that nothing could have quenched. She had been reckless and now she was paying the price for not resisting temptation until she knew him better. Even more did she suffer at the recollection of her own wanton response to him only thirty minutes earlier. What Sebasten wanted it seemed Sebasten got. He touched her and she demonstrated all the self-will of a clockwork toy. For the first time, she understood with painful clarity just how cruelly deceptive sexual intimacy could be. Was she at heart the slut he had called her? She winced, her throat aching, because she was just so much in love with him. But did Sebasten see her as anything more than a casual sexual affair?

In the mood Lizzie was in, the prospect of devoting her lunch hour to buying a pregnancy test had scant appeal. Where had the insane fear that she might have conceived come from in the first place? It wasn’t as though she had felt sick or even dizzy since she had come into work. She was just being silly, working herself up into a panic because she was involved in her very first intimate relationship. All the same, oughtn’t she to check just to be on the safe side?

She bought the test kit, buried it in her bag, tried to forget it was there and discovered she could not. Then that afternoon, when she sprang up in a sudden movement after leafing through a bottom file drawer, her head swam and she swayed. As soon as she got home she knew she would use the test because a creeping sense of apprehension was growing at a steady rate at the back of her mind.

On the top floor of the CI building, Sebasten stared out at the city skyline with a brooding distance etched in his grim gaze. He was in a state of angry conflict that was foreign to him. What was he playing at with Lizzie Denton? When had his own motivations become as indistinct to him as a fog? Since the morning he learned her true identity, he had not once stopped to think through what he was doing in getting involved with her. That reality shook him at an instant when he was still striving without success to come up with an adequate explanation for what he had already labelled the ‘basement episode’. He felt out of control and he didn’t like it.

How could he keep on somehow neglecting to recall how cruelly Lizzie had treated his half-brother, Connor? Or the number of sweet studied lies that had tripped off her ready tongue on that same subject? What was he suffering from? Selective-memory syndrome? Did that glorious body of hers mean more to him than his own honour? Or even basic decency? From start to finish, his intimacy with her had defied every tenet he lived by.

He could no more easily explain why he had bought her diamonds and her car back for her. Did Lizzie deserve a reward for demonstrating that buckets of winsome pseudo-innocent charm could conceal a shallow nature? After all, most women made a special effort to impress and hide their worst side around a male of his wealth. Furthermore, he was very fond of Ingrid Morgan but he was bitterly aware that on the day of Connor’s funeral he had made the rare mistake of letting emotions cloud his judgement. It was past time he ended what should never have begun…

While Sebasten was coming to terms with what he saw as an inevitable event, Lizzie was seated on her bed in shock, just staring at the little wand that had turned a certain colour ten minutes earlier. She picked up the test kit instructions and read the section on false results for the third time. Maybe the kit had been old stock. She checked the sell-by date on the packaging but there was no comfort to be found there.

Although it seemed incredible to her, she was going to have a baby…Sebasten’s baby. If he reacted to a hug as if it were a marriage proposal, how would he react to a baby? She paled and shivered and wrapped her arms round herself. That first night she had told him that she was protected, had fully, confidently believed that she was, but hadn’t she also known that no form of contraception yet existed that was a hundred per-cent effective?

The concept of having a child in her life transfixed Lizzie. As yet none of her former friends had children and discussing babies had always been considered deeply uncool. Lizzie had always kept quiet about the fact that she adored babies, had had to restrain herself from commenting in public about how seriously attractive some of them were and how insidious was the appeal of the shops that sold tiny garments. She stood up and studied her stomach in the mirror, sucked what little of it there was in…was there just the very faintest hint of it not going in quite as far as it once had? Registering what she was doing, she frowned in dismay at her inability to think sensible thoughts.

She wasn’t married, she wasn’t solvent, she didn’t even have a proper job, and on being told the father of her baby would most probably demonstrate why he had such a bad reputation. He might try to deny that he was the father or he might assume that she would agree to a termination that would free him from the responsibility for her child. In fact, it would be extremely naïve of her to expect anything but a shocked and angry reaction from Sebasten. This was a guy who had told her that he never gave women the benefit of the doubt. In her situation that was not good news.

Here she was, living in a crummy bedsit, having come down in the world the exact same day she met a very rich man, and lo and behold…a few weeks later she would be telling him that she had fallen pregnant by him. Even to her that scenario did not look good. The least suspicious of men might have doubts about conception having been accidental in such circumstances, so the odds were that Sebasten would immediately think that he had been deliberately entrapped. An anguished groan escaped Lizzie.

She might really love Sebasten but she was getting acquainted with his flaws and her pride baulked at the prospect of putting herself in such a demeaning position. There was no good reason why she should make an immediate announcement though, was there? Wouldn’t it make more sense to wait until she had at least seen a doctor? Furthermore, that would give her more time to work out how best to broach the subject with Sebasten…

As Sebasten drove over to collect Lizzie, he cursed the necessity of their having to spend the night under the same roof at Pomeroy.

He was about to break off their relationship, so where had his wits been when he had made an inconvenient arrangement like that? But then he had since worked out exactly where his wits had been over the past three weeks: Lost in lust. Indeed, recalling his own extraordinary behaviour that same morning, his strong jawline took on an aggressive cast. Unbelievably, he had staged a clandestine sexual encounter at Contaxis International in the middle of his working day. All decent restraint had vanished the same instant he laid eyes on Lizzie’s lithe, leggy perfection: he had had that door shut and locked within seconds.

So, in common with most single males with a healthy sex drive, Sebasten reasoned, he had proved to be a pushover when it came to the lure of a forbidden thrill. But that angle was cold consolation to a Greek who prided himself on the strength of his own self-discipline. Yet in that file room he had behaved like a sex-starved teenager who took advantage of every opportunity, no matter how inappropriate it might be. That demeaning image rankled even more.

It just went to show that a guy should never, ever relax his guard round a woman, Sebasten conceded in grim conclusion. Lizzie was an absolute powder-keg of sexual dynamite. Why else could he not keep his hands off her? Why else had he dragged her home with him only hours after meeting her?

After all, he had never been into casual encounters. Had anyone ever told him that he would some day sink to the level of sobering up a drunk woman and then falling victim to her supposed charms afresh, he would have laughed out loud in derision. Only now he wasn’t laughing. After all, he had only got through the previous couple of weeks of self-denial by virtually staying out of the country and seeing her only in public places, he acknowledged with seething self-contempt.

When he picked up Lizzie he would be really cool with her and she would register that the end was nigh for herself. Exactly why, he asked himself then, was he agonising about something that had cost him only the most fleeting pang with other women?

Relationships broke up every day. She had ditched Connor without an ounce of concern, he reminded himself. But then how did he judge her for that when he had done pretty much the same thing himself? The rejected lover was hurt and what could anybody do about that? He recalled Lizzie’s shining, trusting green eyes clinging to him and something in his gut twisted. He didn’t want to hurt her.

Lizzie was still getting ready when Sebasten arrived.

‘Are you always this punctual?’ she groaned, hot, self-conscious colour burning her cheekbones as she evaded his gaze, for all she could think about at that instant was the pregnancy test that had come up positive.

‘Always,’ Sebasten confirmed, shrugging back a cuff to check his Rolex for good measure, determined to be difficult.

He looked grim, Lizzie registered, her heart skipping a beat as she noted the tautness of his fabulous bone-structure.

‘I’ll wait in the car,’ Sebasten said drily, striving not to notice the way her yellow silk wrap defined her slender, shapely figure. For a dangerous split-second he thought of her as a gaily-wrapped present he couldn’t wait to unwrap and the damage was done: his body reminded him with ferocious and infuriating immediacy that their stolen encounter earlier had only blunted the edge of his frustration.

‘Don’t be daft…I’ll only be a minute.’ Lizzie watched the faintest hint of dark colour score his chiselled cheekbones and wondered in dismay what on earth was the matter with him.

Desperate for any form of distraction that might lessen his awareness of the ache in his groin, Sebasten studied the open suitcase festooned with an enormous heap of garments as yet unpacked. He frowned. She was very disorganised and he was quite the opposite, so why was there something vaguely endearing about the harried, covert way she was now trying to squash everything into the case without regard for any form of folding whatsoever? He hated untidiness, he hated unpunctuality. Tell her it’s over now, his intelligence urged him just as Lizzie looked up at him.

‘You’ve had a lousy day, haven’t you?’ she guessed in a warm and sympathetic tone that snaked out and wrapped round Sebasten like a silken man-trap. ‘Why don’t you just sit down and chill out and I’ll make you a cup of coffee?’

Disconcerted, Sebasten parted his lips. ‘I—’

‘I bet the traffic was appalling too.’ Lizzie treated him to the kind of appreciative appraisal that implied he had crossed at least an ocean and a swamp just to reach her door and disappeared behind the battered wooden screen that semi-concealed the tiny kitchen area in one corner.

‘Lizzie…’ Sebasten felt like the biggest bastard in creation but what hit him with even more striking effect was the sudden acknowledgment that he did not want to dump Lizzie. Shattered by that belated moment of truth with himself, he snatched in a deep, shuddering breath.

‘Yes?’ She reappeared, her wide, friendly smile flashing out at him as she handed him a cup of coffee. ‘What’s your favourite colour?’

‘Turquoise,’ Sebasten muttered, struggling to come to terms with what he had refused to admit to himself all afternoon. It was as if she had put a spell on him the first night: he and his hormones had been haywire ever since. Yet there was no way on earth that he could add to Ingrid’s grief by keeping the woman she blamed for Connor’s death in his own life. And did he not owe more respect to his late brother’s memory? Lizzie’s only hold on him was sex, he reminded himself angrily. She was also an appalling liar and he ought to tell her that before they parted company.

Lizzie rustled through the wardrobe, grateful for the opportunity to occupy her trembling hands. She just had a bad feeling about the mood Sebasten was in. She could only equate his presence with having a big black thunder-cloud hanging overhead. Clutching a turquoise dress, she went behind the screen to change.

Never had the audible rustle and silky slither of feminine garments had such a provocative effect on Sebasten’s libido. Out of all patience with himself, infuriated by the threatening volcano of opposing thoughts, urges and emotions seething inside him, he paced the restricted confines of the room until she was ready and said little after they had driven off in the Lamborghini.

‘Do you like—children?’ Lizzie shot at him then right out of the blue.

Already on red alert, Sebasten’s defensive antenna lit up like the Greek sky at dawn. The most curious dark satisfaction assailed him as his very worst expectations were fulfilled. After just weeks, it seemed, she was dreaming of wedding bells. But that satisfaction was short-lived as it occurred to him that, possibly, he had given her grounds to believe she had him hooked like a fish on a line.

Hadn’t he made a huge prat of himself when he saw her hugging her father? And what about all those phone calls he had made to her when he was abroad? Why had he felt a need to phone her every damn day he was away from her? And sometimes more than once. Not to mention activities that were the total opposite of cool and sophistication in the CI basement. She might well believe that he was infatuated with her.

‘Children are all right…at a distance,’ Sebasten pronounced, cool as ice.

Lizzie lost every scrap of her natural colour and caution might have warned her to keep quiet but she was quite incapable of listening to such promptings. ‘What sort of answer is that?’

‘They can look quite charming in paintings,’ Sebasten conceded, studying the traffic lights with brooding concentration. ‘But they’re noisy, demanding and an enormous responsibility. I’m much too selfish to want that kind of hassle in my life.’

‘I hope your future wife feels the same way,’ was all that Lizzie in her shattered state could think to mutter to cover herself in the hideous silence that stretched.

‘I’m not planning to acquire one of those either,’ Sebasten confessed in an aggressive tone. ‘If even my father couldn’t strike gold once in four marriages, what hope have I?’

‘None whatsoever, I should think, with your outlook,’ Lizzie answered in a tight, driven reply. ‘Of course, some women would marry you simply because you’re loaded—’

‘Surprise…surprise,’ Sebasten slotted in with satiric bite.

‘But personally speaking…’ Lizzie’s low-pitched response quivered with the force of her disturbed emotions and she was determined to have her own say on the subject…‘not all the money in the world would compensate me for being deprived of children. I also think there’s something very suspect about a man who dislikes children—’

‘Suspect? In what way?’ Sebasten demanded with wrathful incredulity, exploded from his already unsettled state of mind with a vengeance.

‘But then, as you said, you’re very selfish, but to my way of thinking…a truly masculine man would have a more mature outlook and he would appreciate that a life partner and the children they would share would be as rewarding as they were restricting.’

Sebasten was so incensed, he almost launched a volley of enraged Greek at her. Who was she calling immature? And when had he said that he disliked children? A truly masculine man? His lean brown hands flexed and tightened round the steering wheel as he sought to contain his ire at her daring to question what every Greek male considered the literal essence of being.

‘Your mind is narrow indeed,’ he gritted, shooting the Lamborghini down the motorway at above the speed limit.

‘You’re entitled to your opinion.’ Lizzie was wondering in a daze of shock how she could have been so offensive but not really caring, for what he had told her had appalled her. Dreams she had not even known she cherished had been hauled out into the unkind light of day and crucified. ‘But please watch your speed.’

Deprived of even that minor outlet for his rage, Sebasten slowed down, lean, bronzed features set like stone. ‘The minute my father, Andros, suffered a setback in business and her jetset lifestyle looked to be under threat, my mother demanded a divorce. She traded custody of me for a bigger settlement,’ he bit out rawly. ‘Although she had access rights, she never utilised them. I was only six years old.’

In an altogether new kind of shock, Lizzie focused her entire attention on his taut, hard profile. ‘You never saw her again?’

‘No, and she died a few years later. A truly feminine, maternal woman,’ Sebasten framed with vicious intent. ‘My first stepmother slept with the teenager who cleaned our swimming pool. She liked very young men.’

‘Oh…dear,’ Lizzie mumbled, bereft of a ready word of comfort to offer.

‘Andros divorced her. His next wife spent most of their marriage in a series of drug rehabilitation clinics but still contrived to die of an overdose. The fourth wife was much younger and livelier and she was addicted to sex but not with an ageing husband,’ Sebasten delivered with sizzling contempt. ‘The night that my father suffered the humiliation of overhearing her strenuous efforts to persuade me into bed, he had his first heart attack.’

After that daunting recitation of matrimonial disaster, Lizzie shook her head in sincere dismay. ‘Your poor father. Obviously he didn’t have any judgement at all when it came to women.’

Not having been faced with that less than tactful response before, Sebasten gritted his even white teeth harder until it crossed his mind that there was a most annoying amount of truth in that comment. Throughout those same years, Ingrid, who would have made an excellent wife, had hovered in the background, at first hopeful, then slowly losing heart when she was never once even considered as a suitable bridal candidate by the man who had been her lover on and off for years. Why not? She had been born poor, had had to work for a living and had made the very great strategic error of sharing his father’s bed between wives.

But how the hell had he got on to such a very personal subject with Lizzie? What was it about her? When had he ever before dumped the embarrassing gritty details of his background on a woman? He was furious with himself.

Given plenty of food for thought, Lizzie blinked back tears at the mere idea of what Sebasten must have suffered after his greedy mother’s rejection was followed by the ordeal of three horribly inadequate stepmothers. Was it any wonder that he should be so anti-marriage and children? Her heart just went out to him and she was ashamed of her own face-saving condemnation of his views earlier. After all, what did she know about what his life must have been like? Only now, having been given the bare bones, she was just dying to flesh them out.

However, Sebasten’s monosyllabic responses soon squashed that aspiration flat and silence fell until the Lamborghini accelerated up a long, winding drive beneath a leafy tunnel of huge weeping lime trees. Pomeroy Place was a Georgian jewel of architectural elegance, set off to perfection by a beautiful setting.

Before the housekeeper could take Lizzie upstairs, Lizzie glanced back across the large, elegant hall and focused with anxious eyes on Sebasten’s grim profile before following the older woman up the superb marble staircase. Shown into a gorgeous guest room, she freshened up, a frown indenting her brow. In the mood Sebasten was in, he felt like an intimidating stranger. But then, it was evident that she had roused bad memories, but did he have to shut her out to such an extent? Could he not appreciate that she had feelings too?

Downstairs, receiving the first of his guests, Sebasten was discovering that a bad day could only get much worse when the vivacious gossip columnist Patsy Hewitt arrived on the arm of one of his recently divorced friends. Aware that Lizzie had been attacked by one of the tabloid newspapers for not attending Connor’s funeral, the very last person he wanted seated at his dining-table was a journalist with a legendary talent for venom against her own sex. He did not want his relationship with Lizzie exposed in print just when he was about to end it. In fact, he was determined to protect Lizzie from that final embarrassment.

Quite how he could hope to achieve that end he had no clear idea, and then even the option seemed to vanish when Lizzie walked into the drawing room. He watched Patsy look at Lizzie and then turn back to the other couple she had been chatting to and he realised with relief that the journalist had no idea who Lizzie was.