Читать книгу Mother's Day Treats - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 13

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.

‘And this is Lizzie,’ he murmured with a skimming glance in her general direction, drawing her to the attention of his other guests in a very impersonal manner.

‘Do you work for Sebasten?’ a woman in her thirties asked Lizzie some minutes later, evidently having no suspicion that Lizzie might be present in any other capacity.

‘Yes.’ The way Sebasten was behaving, Lizzie was happy to make that confirmation but an angry, discomfited spark flared in her clear green eyes.

Another four people arrived and soon afterwards they crossed the hall to the dining room. Pride helped Lizzie to keep up her end of the general conversation but she did not look at Sebasten unless she was forced to do so. What she ate or even whether she did eat during that meal she was never later to recall. She started out angry but sank deeper into shock as the evening progressed. Had she really expected to act as his hostess? Certainly, she had not expected to be treated like someone merely invited to keep the numbers at the table even.

‘So…which luscious lady are you romancing right now?’ the older brunette, who had entertained them all with her sharp sense of humour, asked Sebasten in a coy tone over the coffee-cups.

Lizzie froze and watched Sebasten screen his dark eyes with his spiky black lashes before he murmured lazily. ‘I’m still looking.’

With a trembling hand, Lizzie reached for her glass of water. Feeling sick, betrayed and outraged, she backed out of her chair without any perceptible awareness of what she was about to do, walked down the length of the table and slung the contents of her glass in Sebasten’s face. ‘When I find a real man, I’ll let you know!’ she spelt out.

Sebasten vaulted upright and thrust driven fingers through his dripping hair.

The silence that had fallen had a depth that was claustrophobic.

And then, as Lizzie went into retreat at the shimmering incredulity in Sebasten’s stunned golden eyes, one of the guests laughed out loud and she spun to see who it was that could find humour in such a scene.

‘Bravo, Lizzie!’ Patsy Hewitt told her with an amused appreciation that bewildered Lizzie. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a more entertaining evening.’

‘I’m glad someone had a good time,’ Lizzie quipped before she walked out of the room and sped upstairs with tears of furious, shaken reaction blinding her.

Had that guy talking been the guy she thought she loved? The male whose baby she carried? Denying her very existence? He was ashamed of her. What else was she to believe but that he was ashamed to own up to being involved with Connor Morgan’s ex-girlfriend? He needn’t think she had not eventually read the significance of his having neglected to speak her surname even once or his determination not to distinguish her with one atom of personal attention. So why the heck had he invited her? And how did she ditch him when she was expecting his baby?

But such concerns for a future that seemed distant were beyond Lizzie at a moment when all that was on her mind was leaving Sebasten’s house just as fast as she could manage it. So it was unfortunate that while she had been downstairs dining her case had been unpacked.

She was in shock after the evening she had endured and the shattering discovery that Sebasten could turn into a male she really didn’t want to know. Why? Why had he suddenly changed towards her?

In a flash, she recalled his cool parting from her that morning at Contaxis International and stilled, comprehension finding a path through her bewilderment. Nothing had been right since then. He had been in a distant mood when he came to pick her up and then in the car she had asked that stupid question about whether or not he liked children and the atmosphere had gone from strained to freezing point. He wanted out. Why had she not seen that sooner?

With nerveless hands, she dragged out her case and plonked it down on the bed. She remembered the way he had made love to her earlier in the day and she shivered, almost torn in two by the agony that threatened to take hold of her.

When Sebasten strode in, she was gathering up the items she had left out on the dressing-table earlier and in the act of slinging them willy-nilly into her case.

‘What do you want?’ Lizzie asked, refusing to look higher than his snazzy dark blue silk tie.

‘Perhaps I don’t like having water thrown in my face in front of an audience,’ Sebasten heard himself bite out, although that had not been the tack he had planned to take. ‘And the audience didn’t much enjoy the fall-out either…it’s barely midnight and they’ve all gone home.’

‘If I had had anything bigger and heavier within reach, the damage would have been a lot worse!’ Lizzie’s soft mouth was sealed so tight it showed white round the edges.

‘Do you even realise who the woman who last spoke to you was?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care. There is just no excuse for the way you treated me tonight!’ Lizzie was fighting to retain a grip on her disturbed emotions and walk out on him with dignity. Deep down inside she knew that if she allowed herself to think about what she was doing or what was happening between then she might come apart at the seams in front of him.

‘Patsy Hewitt is the Sunday Globe’s gossip columnist. No prizes for guessing which couple will star in her next lead story!’

The journalist’s name had a vague familiarity for Lizzie but so intense was her emotional conflict that she could not grasp why he should waste his breath on something that struck her as an irrelevant detail.

‘I didn’t flaunt our relationship tonight because I wanted to protect you from that kind of unpleasant media exposure,’ Sebasten completed angrily.

That he should dare to be angry with her after the way he had behaved added salt to the wounds he had already inflicted. In the back of her mind, she discovered, had lurked a very different expectation: that he might grovel for embarrassing her in such a way, for denying her like a Judas before witnesses. And nothing short of grovelling apologies would have eased the colossal pain of angry, bewildered loss growing inside her.

‘Why the heck should a guy with your reputation care about media exposure?’ Lizzie demanded and looked at him for the first time since he had entered the room.

And it hurt, it hurt so much to study those lean, devastatingly attractive features, note the fierce tension etched in his fabulous bone-structure and recognise the hard condemnation in his scorching golden eyes.

‘And why the heck would I care anyway?’ she added in sudden haste, determined to get in first with what she knew was coming her way. ‘We’re finished and I want to go home. You can call a taxi for me!’

‘You can stay the night here. It would be crazy for you to leave this late at night.’ Instead of being relieved that the deed he had been in no hurry to do had been done for him, a jagged shot of instant igniting fury leapt through Sebasten.

‘The very idea of staying under the same roof as you is offensive to me. You’re an absolute toad and I hope Patsy whatever-her-name-is shows you up in print for what you are!’ Lizzie slung back not quite levelly, for a tiny secret part of her, a part that she despised, had hoped that he might argue with her announcement, might even this late in the day magically contrive to excuse his own behaviour and redress the damage he had done.

‘Perhaps had you considered telling me the truth about Connor this might not be happening,’ Sebasten heard himself declare, his jawline clenching hard. ‘Instead you lied your head off to me!’

‘I beg your pardon…?’ Settling perplexed green eyes on him, Lizzie stared back at him, her heart beginning to beat so fast at that startling reference to Connor that it felt as if it was thumping inside her very throat. Why was he dragging Connor in?

‘Connor’s mother, Ingrid, is a close family friend.’

Her gaze widened in astonishment at that unexpected revelation, pallor driving away the feverish flush in her cheeks, an eerie chill tingling down her spine. ‘You didn’t tell me that before…you said you hardly knew him—’

‘I knew Connor better as a child than as an adult.’ On surer ground now, Sebasten let true anger rise and never had he needed anger more than when he saw the shattered look of incomprehension stamped to Lizzie’s oval face. She was so pale that all seven freckles on her nose stood out in sharp relief. ‘You also said you didn’t know him well and then told repeated lies about your relationship with him.’

‘I didn’t lie,’ Lizzie countered in angry bewilderment, her tall, slender body rigid as she attempted to challenge the accusation that she was a liar while at the same time come to terms with the shocking reality that Sebasten had close ties that he cherished with the Morgan family but that he had not been prepared to reveal that fact to her. ‘I actually told you a truth that nobody other than myself, Connor and the woman involved knew!’

‘Theos mou…the truth?’ Sebasten slammed back with raw derision, infuriated that he had noticed her freckles in the middle of such a confrontation and outraged by the unfamiliar stress of having to fight to maintain his concentration. ‘Your most ingenious story of Connor’s secret affair with a married woman that would be impossible to disprove when you declined to name the lady involved. That nonsense was a base and inexcusable betrayal of Connor’s memory!’

‘You didn’t believe me,’ Lizzie registered in a belated surge of realisation and she shook her bright head in a numbed movement. ‘And yet you never said so, never even mentioned that Ingrid Morgan was a friend of yours. Why did you conceal those facts? If you believed I was lying, why didn’t you just confront me?’

‘Maybe I thought it was time that someone taught you a lesson.’ No sooner had Sebasten made that admission than he regretted it. ‘That was before I understood that what I was doing to you was as reprehensible as what you did to Connor.’

Lizzie only heard that first statement and her blood ran cold in her veins. Maybe I thought it was time that someone taught you a lesson. That confession rocked her already shaken world and threatened to blow it away altogether. He had gone after her, singled her out, and it had all been part of some desire to punish her for what she had supposedly done to Connor? She was shattered by that final revelation.

‘What sort of a man are you?’ Lizzie demanded in palpable disbelief.

Anger nowhere within reach, Sebasten lost colour beneath his bronzed skin and fought an insane urge to pull her into his arms and hold her tight. ‘The night I met you, the first night, I didn’t know who you were. I didn’t find out until the following morning when I saw your driving licence.’

Lizzie dismissed that plea without hesitation. ‘I don’t believe in coincidences like that…you went on the hunt for me.’

‘Had I known who you were I would never have gone to bed with you,’ Sebasten swore half under his breath.

A wave of dizziness assailed Lizzie. She could not bear to think of what he had just said. Blocking him from her mind and her view, she sank down on the foot of the bed and reached for her mobile phone. Desperate to leave his house, she punched out the number of a national cab firm to request a taxi.

‘Hell…I’ll take you back to London!’ Sebasten broke in.

Having made the call, Lizzie ignored him and breathed in slow and deep to ward off the swimming sensation in her head. The guy she had fallen in love with had embarked on their relationship with the sole and deliberate intent of hurting and humiliating her. She could not believe that he could have been so cruel, and why? Over the head of Connor, who had already cost her so much!

Sick to the heart, she stood up like an automaton and headed for the dressing room, where she assumed her clothes had been stowed away. She dragged garments from hangers and drawers, dimly amazed at the amount of stuff she had contrived to pack for a single night. But then she had been in love, hadn’t she been? Unable to make up her mind what she might need, what would look best, what he might admire most on her. A laugh that was no laugh at all bubbled and died again inside her. Her throat was raw and aching but, in the midst of what she believed to be the worst torture she would ever have to get through, her eyes were dry.

Sebasten hovered, lean, powerful hands clenching and unclenching. ‘I should never have slept with you,’ he admitted with suppressed savagery. ‘If I could go back and change that I would—’

‘Try staying out of basements too.’ Her tone one of ringing disgust, Lizzie quivered with a combustible mix of self-loathing and shame that he could have been so ruthless and wicked as to take advantage of her weakness. ‘There could never have been an excuse for what you’ve done. That you should have set out to cause me harm is unforgivable.’

‘Yes,’ Sebasten conceded in Greek, snatching in a deep-driven breath and switching back to English to state. ‘I do accept that two wrongs do not make a right, but in the heat of the moment when I was confronted with the depth of Ingrid’s despair my mind was not so clear. I was appalled that first morning when I discovered your true identity and what took place today was indefensible. But from the outset I was very much attracted to you.’

Heaping clothes into the case, Lizzie made herself look at him, hatred in her heart, hatred built on a hurt that went so deep it felt like a physical pain. ‘Is that supposed to make me feel better? I met you when my whole life had crashed around me. I was very unhappy and you must have seen that…yet you waded in and made it worse,’ she condemned. ‘How could you be such a bastard?’

‘I lost the plot…isn’t that obvious?’ Sebasten threw back at her with a savage edge to his accented drawl as he swept up the couple of garments she had dropped on her passage from the dressing room but held on to them because he did not want to hasten her departure. ‘I got in deeper than I ever dreamt and I’m paying a price for that now too.’

Lizzie thought in a daze of the child she carried and a spasm of bitter regret tightened her facial muscles. She was no longer listening to him. ‘Connor cheated on me and he didn’t spare my feelings a single thought. I lost my friends and my father’s respect. I paid way over the odds for being the fall guy in that affair. But this is something else again…I loved you…’ Her voice faltered to a halt and she blinked, shocked that she had admitted that and then, beyond caring, she snapped her case closed with trembling hands and swung it down off the bed.

‘I don’t want you to leave in this frame of mind…’ Sebasten declared as much to her as to himself.

‘I hate you. I will never forgive you…so stop saying really stupid things!’ Lizzie slung at him with a wildness that mushroomed up from within her without any warning and made her feel almost violent. ‘What did you expect from me? That I was going to shake hands and thank you for wrecking my life again!’

Sebasten had no answer, but then he had never thought that far ahead and just then cool, rational thought evaded him. ‘If you want to go back to London tonight, let me drive you,’ he urged, taking refuge in male practicality.

‘You’re wired to the moon,’ Lizzie accused shakily, hauling her case past him.

His hand came down over hers and forced her fingers into retreat from the handle. She just let him have the case. She walked to the door, threw it wide and started down the stairs while she willed the taxi to come faster than the speed of light.

Sebasten reached the hall only seconds in her wake. As a manservant hurried from the rear of the hall to relieve him of the case, only to be sent into retreat by the ferocious look of warning he received from his employer, Lizzie wrenched open the front door on her own.’

‘Give me my case!’ she demanded, fired up like an Amazon warrior.

With pronounced reluctance, Sebasten set the case down. ‘Lizzie…Connor was my half-brother…’

Lizzie spun back to him in astonishment and an image of Connor surged up in her mind’s eye: the very dark brown eyes that had been so unexpected with her ex-boyfriend’s blond hair, the classic bone-structure, his height and build. She did not question Sebasten’s ultimate revelation. Indeed, for her it was as though the whole appalling picture was finally complete.

‘Two of you…’ she muttered sickly as she turned away again to focus with relief on the car headlights approaching the front of the house. ‘And both of you arrogant, selfish, lying rats who use and abuse women! Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?’

Sebasten froze at that response. The cab driver got out to take her case. Within the space of a minute, Lizzie was gone. Sebasten looked down at the flimsy white bra and red silk shirt he was still grasping in one hand and he knew that he was about to get so drunk that he didn’t know what day it was.