Читать книгу Mediterranean Tycoons: Wealthy & Wicked - Jacqueline Baird - Страница 13

PHOEBE considered herself lucky that five years ago she had failed to keep her appointment with Dr Marcus for the D&C procedure after all…But she didn’t feel lucky now as she walked out of Ben’s bedroom and closed the door quietly behind her. He was fast asleep, her beloved innocent child, but she knew she would get no sleep tonight, with Jed’s threat still ringing in her ears.

When they had arrived back at the cottage earlier Ben had thanked Jed for the ride in his car, then added, ‘It is a super car, but I like the colour of Uncle Julian’s better. His is bright red.’

Phoebe had had to smile at the look of masculine pique on Jed’s handsome face.

‘So, Ben, you like red and Uncle Julian, hmm?’

‘Yes—he is my friend and Mum’s, like you,’ Ben had replied happily as they’d walked up the path to the door.

‘I will remember that,’ Jed had offered as he’d said goodbye to Ben.

Phoebe’s smile had vanished when his dark head had bent towards her.

‘Uncle Julian be damned! I will be back later, and you’d better have some answers ready,’ he’d hissed with sibilant softness, before walking off.

Thinking about Jed’s threat was doing her no good at all, Phoebe decided as she entered her bedroom and removed her now damp clothes—bathing Ben was a lively operation at the best of times. She dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a blue shirt and, picking up a brush from the dresser, pulled out the few pins remaining in her once elegant topknot. She gave her a hair few vigorous strokes before flicking the long length behind her ears and fastening it with a simple band, then left the bedroom.

Quietly she descended the stairs and turned towards the kitchen at the back of the cottage. A soothing cup of tea that was what she needed. There was no point stressing over a knock on the door that might never happen, so she picked up the kettle, took it to the sink, filled it with water and switched it on. She opened one of the kitchen cupboards and took out a mug, a faint smile curving her mouth. It had been a present from Ben last Christmas, with the help of Aunt Jemma, and the inscription on the white porcelain proclaimed the owner to be the ‘Best Mum in the World’.

A timely reminder! Her position was clear, and if Jed Sabbides turned up again all she had to do was remember she was a great mum and tell him to take a hike…

Phoebe carried the mug of tea into the sitting room and sank down on the long, large soft-cushioned sofa that curved into an open end, in a modern take on a chaise longue, and faced the fireplace. Her aunt had insisted on buying the sofa, saying she had spent sixty years with old-fashioned furniture and wanted something different. Actually, it worked quite well—though Ben spent a lot of time perched on the open end because it was closest to the television…

She took a sip of her tea and thought of lighting the log fire, but it wasn’t worth it this late, she decided. Picking up the remote, she switched the television on, flicking through the channels, but there was nothing that captured her interest.

Sighing she glanced around the room. She loved this house—her home…It had originally been a nineteenth-century stone-built semi-detached farm labourer’s cottage, two up and two down, belonging to her aunt. When the cottage next door had come on to the market four years ago, with the help of a diamond necklace and some other unwanted jewellery Phoebe had bought it.

With Aunt Jemma’s agreement she had converted the two into one good-sized detached house. Consequently the entrance hall was surprisingly spacious, with a single new wide oak staircase. On one side was the sitting room, which stretched from front to back, and on the other side the original front room had been left to provide a dining room that doubled as a study. At the rear was a large L-shaped family kitchen, and upstairs there was a bathroom and three double bedrooms—her aunt’s with an en-suite bathroom—a family bathroom, her own room, and the third bedroom over the hall: Ben’s room…A gravel drive ran down one side of the house, and with a new garage built at the bottom of the garden the conversion was complete. And a great success Phoebe thought, glancing contentedly around.

A big armchair stood at one side of the fireplace, with a tall standard lamp behind it and a mahogany bureau against the wall. On the other side was the television. In the centre was a coffee table, and a Persian rug in shades of turquoise was spread in front of the fire, providing a nice contrast with the oak wood floor. Beneath the front window was an antique desk and chair of her aunt’s, and beneath the back window an old sailor’s trunk Phoebe had picked up at a car boot sale that was ideal for storing some of Ben’s toys. Maybe not the height of fashion, but in the soft glow of the standard lamp it was warm and welcoming—a real family room.

Unfortunately she had a sinking feeling that her happy home might be about to change, if Jed had his way. Draining her mug of tea, she rose to her feet and headed back to the kitchen.

She was worrying for nothing, she told herself deter-minedly. Jed could not take her child unless she let him, and she was not that dumb. She rinsed out the mug and put it back in the cupboard, and with a last look around the kitchen decided to mark papers for a while.

Ensconced in the study over an hour later, she was chuckling over an essay Elizabeth Smith—one of her sixteen-year-old students—had written. According to her, the French Resistance fighters in World War II had used the internet to publicise their cause!

Then she heard the knock on the door. She toyed with the idea of not answering, but she didn’t want Ben disturbed and reluctantly got to her feet. Moment of reckoning, she thought as she walked down the hall, rubbing her suddenly damp palms down her slender thighs. It could only be one man.

Taking a deep breath, she opened the door.

It was dark out, but the light from the hall illuminated the tall figure of Jed, his hand raised as if to knock again—but then patience had never been one of his virtues, she recalled. When he wanted something, be it a business deal or a woman, he went straight for his objective with all the skill and guile at his disposal. As far as she knew he had never failed. But there was always a first time, she told herself…

The dark eyes surveying her were inscrutable, but she sensed the tension in his broad shoulders. Phoebe straightened, keeping her spine rigid. He was wearing the same casual clothes, with the addition of a leather jacket, and now dark stubble shadowed his square jaw. If anything he looked more dangerous and more intimidating than before. Suddenly she was aware of how isolated the house was, situated at least a ten-minute walk from the village, and how alone she was with only a sleeping child for company. Her heart beat a little faster.

‘It is rather late to be calling. Anything you wish to say to me can wait until the morning. I want an early night.’ And, tightening her grip on the door handle, she began to close the door. But a strong hand closed like a vice around her wrist.

‘Who with? Uncle Julian?’ he drawled, his big body crowding her as he urged her back into the hall and closed the door behind him.

‘Don’t be disgusting—and I would like you to leave,’ she continued doggedly, determined to remain polite but firm. She tried to ignore the sudden leap in her pulse beneath his enfolding hand, and made herself look steadily up at him.

Big mistake…His dark eyes burned like living coals of fire into hers, and she could not tear her gaze away.

‘Why, damn you? Why?’ he demanded, taking her hand behind her back to pull her close against his tall frame. ‘You told me you were pregnant swiftly enough. What the hell did I do so wrong that a few months later you would deny me knowledge of my son?’

She saw the fury, the angry confusion in his eyes, and ignoring it flung back her head. ‘He is not your son,’ she declared defiantly. It was a desperate last-ditch attempt to get him to leave. She was aware of the tension in him, and also aware of the pressure of his hard body against her own. She had never known a man who could affect her physically as strongly as Jed did, and she trembled. He felt her telltale tremor, Phoebe knew, as his dark eyes narrowed with a more sinister light.

‘I know you for the liar you are, and I could strangle you for what you have done to me and mine.’ His free hand snaked around her neck, his long fingers grasping the thick swathe of her hair and twisting it around his wrist, pulling her head back. ‘But don’t worry. There are other ways to make you suffer.’

Held captive in his hold, she stared helplessly into his dark eyes and recognised the menacing sensuality in the darkening depths. ‘No,’ she choked, and splaying her hands defensively against his broad chest tried to break free. But he pushed her hand higher behind her back, forcing her harder against him as his dark head descended and he subdued her with a brutal kiss.

His hand at her nape held her head firm as he ravaged her mouth with a ruthless, domineering passion that Phoebe fought to resist. But, trapped against his broad chest, it was a useless exercise.

Indifference was her only hope, but it was a futile hope as the demanding pressure of his firmly chiselled lips against her own and the thrusting of his tongue into the moist interior of her mouth, the achingly familiar taste of him, incredibly awakened a long-denied desire. She tried to force the physical memories back, but her traitorous body had a will of its own and it betrayed her. Her breath caught in suffocating excitement as a curl of heat ignited in her belly, sending her pulse rate rocketing and making her shudder in involuntary response.

Sensing her reaction, he gentled his mouth and trailed his lips to the long, slender arch of her neck, closing over the wildly beating pulse in her throat. She was scarcely aware when his arm eased around her waist and the hand holding her hair slipped down to cup her breast through the soft fabric of her shirt.

His thumb rubbed lightly across her burgeoning nipple, and it was only when the hot stab of arousal arrowed from her breast to her groin, tightening her wayward flesh, that she realised the very real danger she was in—almost too late…

‘Get your hands off me, you great brute.’ She twisted, dislodging his hand from her breast and breaking free from his restraining arm, and fell back a step.

Jed stared at her for a long moment, his dark eyes hard, and then he laughed—a cruel sound in the fraught silence. ‘You still want me, Phoebe. I felt your heart pounding, your body shaking,’ he mocked

‘With anger…’ she said, fighting down the shameful desire that pulsed through her body. ‘You repulse me,’ she lied, stunned by the ease with which Jed had almost seduced her again.

‘No, I don’t,’ he sneered. ‘But I don’t expect a deceitful little bitch like you to admit the truth.’

It was the cold, hard arrogance of his tone as much as the words that got to Phoebe, and without a second thought she swung at him, landing a hard slap on his handsome face as she yelled, ‘Get out of my house now or I will call the police!’

‘No.’ He caught her hand and almost dragged her into her own living room. ‘And keep your voice down—you will wake Ben.’

‘I don’t need you to tell me how to look after my son,’ she said defiantly, but knew Jed was right. She was angry with herself almost as much as him, and she had let her temper get the better of her. But the damn man was always right…It was another character trait she hated about him, along with his superior attitude and his arrogance.

‘Sit down.’ He pressed her backwards and she felt the sofa at the back of her knees.

Though she was loath to admit it, she was grateful to sit down. Her legs felt weak, and she had not yet got over the power of his kiss, nor her unwelcome response to him.

‘I forgive you the slap, because maybe I was a little harsh, but it was a choice between kissing you or wringing your beautiful neck. Lucky for you the former was my choice, but you should know by now there is nothing that more arouses a man’s passion’s than a challenging woman.’

‘I don’t believe you said that. A male chauvinist pig has nothing on you.’ Phoebe shook her head. ‘You belong in the Dark Ages.’

‘No, I belong with my son.’ He stared down at her, his expression cold. ‘That is why I am here and why we have to talk.’ He shrugged off his jacket and dropped it on the arm of the sofa before adding, ‘But first I could use a drink.’

The sight of Jed in a body-hugging sweater that outlined his muscular chest in every detail was not something she dared contemplate for long and, tearing her gaze away, she got to her feet.

Anything to put off the conversation he was angling for, Phoebe decided, had to be good.

‘Tea or coffee?’ she asked.

‘Have you anything stronger?’

‘Only wine.’ Not waiting for his response, she left the room, glad to escape his powerful presence for a few minutes and trying valiantly to get her thoughts into some kind of order.

Five minutes later she walked back into the living room with two glasses and a bottle of white wine in her hands.

Jed was standing by the bureau. He had picked up a silver-framed photograph of Ben and was studying it intently. Out of nowhere her heart squeezed at the look of wonderment she saw in his eyes, and as she watched she saw him trace with one finger what she knew was the outline of Ben’s smiling face.

‘Wine,’ she muttered, placing the glasses on the coffee table. ‘Not the vintage you are used to, and the bottle has a screw top,’ Phoebe said as she opened the wine. ‘But then the experts are now saying a cork is not necessarily better.’

She was babbling, but seeing the awe and the tenderness on his face as he studied Ben’s picture had unsettled her.

She didn’t want to feel anything for Jed, and he certainly did not deserve her sympathy. Filling the two glasses, she sat back down on to the sofa. Reaching for a glass, she took a sip.

‘How old was Ben here?’ Jed held up the picture frame.

‘Two.’ She didn’t want to talk about Ben with Jed. She didn’t want the man anywhere near her son. But she had a horrible feeling she was not going to have much of a choice.

‘And here as a baby, with Julian Gladstone and the other person? I presume it is your Aunt Jemma?’

‘Yes, Julian is an old family friend, and as for Aunt Jemma, you never met her because you were always too busy, I seem to recall. The picture is Benjamin’s baptism photograph—they are his two godparents.’

‘Julian Gladstone is my son’s godfather?’ he queried, with such a look of outrage Phoebe almost smiled.

‘He is my son’s godfather,’ she amended. ‘And Julian is a very good one. His house is a mile up the road and they see a lot of each other. Ben really likes him.’ Not so subtly she was letting Jed know Ben did not need a billionaire Greek flitting in and out of his life when he had an excellent male role model virtually on the doorstep.

Jed made no reply, and Phoebe watched warily as he carefully placed the picture back on the bureau and strode over to sit in the armchair by the fire. Reaching for his glass, he took a deep swallow. Only then did he look at her, his scornful gaze skimming over her mutinous face.

‘Give it up, Phoebe. We have established Ben is mine—he virtually told me so himself in the car,’ he drawled sardonically. ‘I am not a fool, and your pathetic attempt to needle me over Julian Gladstone’s role in his life is never going to work.’

The cold hard certainty in his tone was enough to make Phoebe shrink lower in the sofa.

‘From the moment I met you and Gladstone at the embassy I knew you were hiding something from me, Phoebe, by the way you behaved. So I had a friend of mine who heads a security agency check what you had done since you left London.’

Her mouth fell open, and she stared at him in mounting horror as he continued in a brisk tone, as though he was delivering a report.

‘You returned to live with your aunt, and Ben was born seven months and one week after we parted. I had my suspicions, so I checked with Marcus earlier this week and he confirmed you had definitely had a miscarriage and lost the baby. I could not fathom how Ben could be my child until he told me he was a miracle baby. To make absolutely sure, when I left here earlier I called Marcus—who informed me it was perfectly possible, though very rare. Then I visited the cottage hospital where he was born. The receptionist there was most helpful. I asked if I could have a copy of Ben’s medical notes, because you and I were taking him to Greece and needed them as a precaution in case he had an accident while there.’

Phoebe, no longer shrinking, sat up straight and placed her glass back on the table with a shaking hand, her temper rising at the thought of the arrogant swine having her checked out simply because he hadn’t liked the way she behaved at a ball! Then to go to the hospital—the mind boggled! She stared at him in a bitter, hostile silence, her anger and resentment growing with every word he spoke.

‘The woman was a romantic at heart, and when I told her of our tragic separation and how you and I were now reunited and intended to marry she was more than helpful. She gave me a photocopy. I know Ben was born in January, by Caesarean section and that he was two weeks overdue. I know he was one of what would have been twins—though it was clever of you to forget the name of hospital where you had the miscarriage!’ He raised a mocking eyebrow. ‘I also know Ben broke his arm falling out of the pear tree in your garden.’

She had not been being clever. At the time she had been afraid that if she revealed the name of the hospital that had registered her on that day somehow Jed and Dr Marcus would find out. Not surprising, given that seven weeks earlier she had lost a baby, been betrayed and dumped by the man she loved.

But she was not afraid any more, and Phoebe had heard enough. ‘You had no right—the woman had no right!’ she exclaimed, outraged by his revelations.

She didn’t blame the receptionist. Jed was a sophisticated, strikingly handsome man who could charm the birds out of the trees if he wanted to—as she knew to her cost. She doubted there was a woman born who could resist him. That poor receptionist had never stood a chance.

‘Yes, I had every right. He is my son and you deliberately kept him from me. If anyone had no right to do what they have done it is you. I asked you earlier why, and now I want some answers.’

The gall, the bare-faced cheek of the man—checking her out, checking the hospital out, interfering in her well-ordered life just because he could. It was all too much for Phoebe. She jumped to her feet to stare down at him, her blue eyes blazing with contempt for the heartless bastard.

‘I will give you answers.’ He could suck on the truth and she hoped it choked him. ‘Try your own words. “A man does not expect his mistress to get pregnant.” Does that ring any bells? “A child is not on my agenda,”’ she quoted scathingly, before summing up for him. ‘You never wanted a baby.’ And she watched as a dark tide of colour swept up over his high cheekbones.

‘So I panicked a little? I’m a single man, and we are programmed to believe the worst result of sex is pregnancy. I was shocked.’

‘I am not an idiot—even if I did almost let you make me one. You have never panicked in your life,’ Phoebe shot back. ‘And nothing shocks you, Mr Bloody Invincible.’ She swore—not something she often did, but she was fighting for her child. ‘You were your usual super cool controlled self and you meant every word. Then, as I recall, you had the gall to tell me not to worry and that your discreet, private Dr Marcus would take care of the pregnancy and you would pay for everything. A termination was what you offered me—but lucky for you I miscarried anyway. Hardly surprising in the circumstances, and it didn’t cost you a penny.’

Jed Sabbides—wealthy, powerful, confident of his place in the world, feared by some and respected by most—for once found he was speechless…

He could not believe what he was hearing. It had never entered his head when Phoebe had told him she was pregnant that she should have a termination. He had been trying to reassure her in declaring that Dr Marcus would take care of her in pregnancy. He had meant all the way through her pregnancy and beyond. But, thinking back, he realised it might not have sounded like that to Phoebe. Suddenly the comments she had made in the hospital about saving him shed-loads of money, and in the scheme of things the cost of a private doctor being nothing to him, which had puzzled him at the time made perfect sense if she believed what she did. How could they have got their wires so badly crossed? he wondered, appalled at her conclusion.

‘I never suggested a termination—ever,’ he murmured, but Phoebe wasn’t listening.

She was looking down at him as if he was something that had crawled out from under a rock, her blue eyes blazing with passion. And that passion was pure hatred, he realised with a sense of shock. Consumed by his anger at what he saw as her betrayal, he had never considered her take on the past might differ dramatically from his—never considered the situation from her misguided view.

Phoebe was on a roll and, oblivious to Jed’s stunned reaction, she felt all the fear and fury she had blanked out at the time come flooding back.

‘But hey, Jed,’ she quipped sarcastically, ‘lucky for me you didn’t turn up to take me to the clinic that next week, but instead let Christina, your PA, tell me you had discussed my miscarriage with her and inform me you weren’t coming back and advise me to leave. Otherwise Ben would have been scraped out of my womb by your oh, so discreet Dr Marcus. And now you have the brass nerve to ask me why I never told you about Ben. You make me sick, turning up here and throwing your weight around, conning the hospital receptionist into giving you information with a load of lies. As for telling her we were getting married—forget it. That is never going to happen. Much the same way as it never happened last time when you told me you had decided we were going to be a family after I had lost the baby,’ she added derisively. ‘A simple ploy to make yourself sound good when it no longer meant anything—and you are still the same selfish, egotistical devil now, who thinks only of himself and his own wants to the exclusion of everyone else. So forgive my skepticism, but I don’t believe for one minute your apparent interest in being a father, your sudden desire for a son. And I am telling you here and now. You are not getting mine…’

‘Have you quite finished tearing my character to shreds?’ Jed demanded, replacing the wine glass on the table and slowly rising to his feet.

He had listened with growing anger and horror as he realised he could not actually refute Phoebe’s analysis of his behaviour in the past. He had called her a mistress and he had declared a child was not on his agenda—a child had not been at the time. Phoebe had dropped her pregnancy on him so casually it had been like an explosion in his head and he had been in a state of shock. But not for a second had he even thought of a termination. Later in the hospital, when he had said they would be a family, what he had meant was he would marry her—but he could see how that might have sounded hollow after the fact—and he had told Christina about the miscarriage.

Jed did not want to believe Phoebe’s story about Christina telling her to leave the apartment, though he could not dismiss it. He had dispensed with Christina’s services after she’d made it embarrassingly obvious she wanted a much more personal relationship with him. He had given Christina his cellphone that night in Greece, so it probably was true. There were certainly enough half-truths in everything else Phoebe had said to make him feel like the lowest of the low—a totally alien feeling for him, a man who prided himself on his honour and integrity.

But if the passion and the conviction in Phoebe’s voice was anything to go by she truly believed he was capable of terminating his unborn child, and considered him the scum of the earth. Whatever he said in his defence would fall on deaf ears…She would never believe him now…

He pulled his mind back from the past, a grim determination tightening his jaw. The mistakes of the past could not be changed, but that didn’t deter him from wanting his son. The only difference was he would have to change tactics.

He let his dark eyes roam over her. She was beautiful any time, but magnificent in her passionate anger. It reminded him of her other passion. He had lost count of the days, the weeks, the months he had ached for her after they parted. His gaze lingered on her heaving breasts beneath the soft cotton of her shirt and his body tightened in arousal. Suddenly he wanted her so badly he could taste it, and in that moment an alternative solution occurred to him—not very ethical, but with his intimate knowledge of Phoebe almost certainly effective…

‘You have no character,’ Phoebe snapped. ‘And I was finished with you years ago—or should I say you were finished with me,’ she amended. ‘It is too late now to change your mind for what ever nefarious reason—and knowing you there must be one.’

Lost in the bitter memories of the past, Phoebe had not noticed Jed had moved to within touching distance, and only now did she see the carefully controlled expression on his handsome face was not reflected in the predatory gleam in his dark eyes.

‘You know me so well, Phoebe, it seems,’ he drawled mockingly as his strong hands reached to curve around her shoulders.

She tensed at his touch, her heart skipping a beat and her hands curling into fists at her sides as she fought the impulse to push him away, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her feminine fear at his closeness. She was immune to him and had been for years, she reminded herself.

‘You are right, of course. There is a reason. I’m a very wealthy man and it has occurred to me I need a son and heir. A ready-made one seems much more preferable to a squealing baby. Thus I am confirming your low opinion of me?’ Jed said, and waited…watching…testing…

Why she was disappointed Phoebe could not fathom. Jed had proved her right. She looked up at him. His dark-lashed eyes were cool on hers, and yet for a second she thought she saw a flicker of vulnerability in the inky depths and had the incredible notion he wanted her to deny his conclusion. Then she noted a nerve beating steadily beneath one sharp cheekbone in his determination to retain his formidable control, and she realised she had imagined something that was never there. Jed would be vulnerable maybe on his dying day, but not before.

Nothing had changed…Jed hadn’t changed…He was an emotional bankrupt and he preferred life that way…

‘Yes,’ she finally responded. ‘And now you understand why I didn’t tell you about Ben you can leave us alone,’ she told him, pleased at the cool firmness in her tone. ‘Marry Sophia and make your own babies,’ she tagged on for good measure.

‘That might be difficult as we split up and she is not speaking to me.’

‘Wise woman,’ she quipped, and could not suppress a grin. Why it pleased her to learn Jed and Sophia had parted she didn’t question.

It was the grin that did it!

Jed had had enough. Talking was getting him nowhere, and Phoebe’s irrepressible grin had reminded him forcibly of what he had been missing all these years. What he had thought not very ethical a minute ago no longer seemed so.

In business he had no problem playing on a rival’s weakness to clinch a deal—it was accepted practice—so why not in his private life?