Читать книгу Mother's Day Treats - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 19

SEBASTEN had had a hell of a night.

Most of their guests had travelled home. Some who had had to stay overnight at the villa at least retired early, but those who did not kept him up until almost dawn. For what remained of the night he paced the room next to Lizzie’s and fought the temptation to disturb her so that they could talk again. While Lizzie breakfasted in bed at his express instruction, he had to assume a cheerful-host act until the merciful moment that the last of their visitors had departed. However, by that stage it was time to embark on their return trip to London.

Lizzie came downstairs dressed in a dark green shift dress, her hair pulled back in a sophisticated style, all but her lush pink lips and the tip of her nose hidden behind a giant pair of sunglasses.

‘How do you feel?’ Sebasten asked, striving to suppress the recollection of finding her bedroom door locked when he had tried to make the same enquiry earlier in the day.

‘Marvellous…can’t wait to get home!’ Lizzie declared, heading for the helicopter outside at speed.

Behind the sunglasses her reddened eyes were dull with misery but Lizzie had her pride to sustain her. When they boarded the Contaxis jet at Athens, she struck up an animated conversation with the stewardesses, went into several determined fits of laughter at the movie she chose to watch and enjoyed a second dessert after eating a hearty late lunch. And she called him insensitive, Sebasten reflected in receipt of that concerted display of indifference.

‘I have to call into the office,’ Sebasten announced after she had climbed into the limousine waiting to collect them in London. ‘I’ll see you back at the house…we have to talk.’

But what was there to talk about? Lizzie asked herself wretchedly. He had already spelt out how he felt. She had no option but to go to his London home, for the town house he had purchased had yet to be furnished. So, couldn’t she buy some furniture? Surely camping out in bare rooms would be better than staying with Sebasten when her presence was no longer welcome?

How could he get bored with her between one moment and the next? Her throat ached and her rebellious memory served up a dozen images of intimacy that cut her like a knife when she could least bear it. Sebasten dragging her out of bed to breakfast at dawn and enjoy what he called ‘the best part of the day’ and her struggling to match his vibrant energy and conceal her yawns. Sebasten watching her try on clothes, a smouldering gleam of appreciation in his gaze letting her know exactly what to buy. Sebasten curving her into his arms last thing at night and making her feel so incredibly happy and secure.

No, camping out in bare rooms, she decided with a helpless shiver, would be more comfortable than the chilling prospect of sharing the same household even on a temporary basis, ever conscious of what they had had and then lost. Painful as it was, she knew that some men lost all interest in a woman once the excitement of the chase was over and that those same men could go from desire to uninterest almost overnight. Was that Sebasten’s true nature? And had he not already achieved what he had said was most important? Their child would be born a Contaxis. The sad fact was that his parents did not have to live together nor even remain married to meet that requirement.

Infuriated at the crisis that had demanded his presence at Contaxis International, Sebasten got back home just before seven that evening. By then, Lizzie had already cleared out. The dressing room off the master bedroom looked as though a whirlwind by the name of Lizzie had gone through it and his staff had tactfully left the evidence for him to find. She had left a note on the bed. Seeing it, he froze, not wanting to read it.

‘I borrowed some of your furniture but I’ll return it soon. It’s easier this way,’ she wrote in her note. ‘Stay in touch.’

Stay in touch? Sebasten crunched the note between his fingers. Easier for whom? He was in total shock. Nothing he had said the night before had made any impression on her. He had said ‘ I need you’ to a woman who could break down in floods of tears over a sad film, but she had still walked out. Let her go, his stubborn pride urged.

When Sebasten hit the bell on the front door, Lizzie mustered her courage and went to answer it.

Lean, bronzed features taut, he was sheathed in a formal dark business suit. She allowed her gaze to flick over him very fast. He looked sensational, but then he always did, she acknowledged painfully. Heart pounding like a road drill, she crossed the echoing hall and showed him into the only furnished room available.

‘Look at me…’ Sebasten urged in a roughened undertone.

She was shocked by the haunted strain in his dark gold gaze and the fierce tension stamped into every sculpted line of his hard bone-structure.

‘Come home…please,’ he breathed with fierce emphasis. ‘We have to talk.’

‘I think that all that needs to be said was said last night,’ Lizzie said unevenly.

‘No…I tried to give you space while we were in Greece. I went against my own nature.’ Sebasten shifted a lean, forceful hand to emphasise that point. ‘If I had that two weeks a second time, believe me, I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.’

‘But you went out of your way to hurt me last night.’ Lizzie’s mind was in angry, defensive turmoil, for she could no longer understand what he wanted from her.

Sebasten released a ragged laugh. ‘What did you expect from me after I had to listen to you telling me that you couldn’t wait to start renovating this house? How was I supposed to react? You were letting me know that nothing had changed, that you weren’t prepared to live with me or even give our marriage a fighting chance!’

Lizzie stared back at him with wide, bewildered eyes. ‘But I wasn’t talking about this house…I was talking about your father’s villa on the island!’

Sebasten stilled in his pacing track across the room and frowned in equal bemusement. ‘You didn’t make that clear. The villa on Isvos?’

‘Yes.’ Lizzie took in a slow, steadying breath as she grasped that they had been talking at cross purposes the previous night. His aggression had been fired by a simple misconception: his belief that she was still hell-bent on setting up a separate household. ‘You picked me up wrong and leapt to the wrong conclusion.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Sebasten had a different viewpoint. ‘You’ve moved in here.’

‘Only because I thought that was what you wanted!’

‘Why would I want to live apart from my wife?’ The fierce glitter in his intent golden eyes challenged her, his jawline clenching hard. ‘I thought that I could accept that for a while if it meant that you married me but this feels more like the end of our marriage than the beginning. But I know that I can’t force you to feel what I feel.’

‘And what do you feel?’ Lizzie almost whispered, so great was her tension, for what he was telling her was exactly what she had needed to hear from him.

‘That maybe you haven’t quite got over Connor yet. That maybe this situation is what I asked for when I screwed up our relationship from start to finish…but I still love you and I’ll wait for as long as it takes,’ Sebasten breathed with fierce conviction.

Lizzie was still as a statue. Shock had made her pale. ‘You love me?’

Sebasten fixed level, strained golden eyes on her and nodded much as if he had just confessed to a terminal illness.

‘Since when?’ Lizzie could barely frame the question.

‘Probably the first night we met. I did things that night that I would never have done in a normal state of mind,’ Sebasten confessed with grim dark eyes, not appearing to register that she was fumbling her way down onto the edge of the sofa she had borrowed. ‘I did take huge advantage of you. You were very vulnerable that night but I just couldn’t let go of you. Love is supposed to make people kinder but at that stage it only made me more selfish and ruthless.’

‘Sebasten…’ Lizzie was wondering if she could dare to credit what she was hearing when what he was saying was her every dream come true.

‘No, I’m determined to tell it like it was, no stone left unturned,’ Sebasten asserted with a derision angled at himself. ‘After I sobered you up that night, I should’ve put you in a guest room. On the other hand, if I had done that you wouldn’t have got pregnant and I could never have persuaded you to marry me. So, I’m afraid I can’t even regret that we made love.’

Lizzie could not drag her mesmerised stare from his lean, strong face. ‘Yes, he was still very much the focused guy she had fallen in love with. But that he should be grateful that she had conceived because that development had ultimately made her let him back into her life again touched her to the heart.

‘And when I suspected that you were a virgin, did I feel guilty?’ Sebasten spread rueful hands in emphasis. ‘No, I didn’t feel guilty even then. That made you feel more like mine, and you’re right—where you’re concerned I’m very possessive and jealous and I was delighted that I was your first lover.’

‘You’re being so honest,’ Lizzie managed in a shaky voice. ‘I really like that.’

‘Then I saw your driver’s licence and realised you were Lisa Denton and it all just blew up in my face. From there on in, it only got worse,’ Sebasten continued heavily.

‘The night we met…you honestly didn’t know who I was?’ Lizzie gasped.

‘I told you I didn’t! I saw you on the dance floor and I couldn’t take my eyes off you. I had not the smallest suspicion that you were Connor’s ex.’

And she hadn’t believed him, Lizzie thought in dismay.

‘In fact I thought the little blonde I saw speaking to you was Lisa Denton and I had no intention whatsoever of approaching her.’

‘That was Jen,’ Lizzie whispered, fully convinced that he was telling her the truth.

‘Once I knew your true identity, I couldn’t acknowledge how I felt about you. I wrecked everything trying to stay loyal as I believed to Connor’s memory.’

‘Why, though? You admitted you hardly knew him as an adult.’

Sebasten grimaced. ‘The day of the funeral was also the day Ingrid told me that he was my half-brother.’

Lizzie absorbed that fact with a flash of anger in her expressive eyes. ‘Oh, that was wicked…to finally tell you that when Connor was dead!’

‘I wouldn’t say it was wicked, but with hindsight I can see that it was very manipulative timing,’ Sebasten conceded with wry regret. ‘But Ingrid was out of her head with grief. It sent me haywire though. I felt a great sense of loss. I felt guilty that I had not made more effort to maintain contact with Connor.’

Lizzie did not believe he would have found very much common ground with his half-brother but she was too kind to say so. Her memory of the younger man had softened but she knew that he had been arrogant and self-centred right to the last in allowing his friends to go on believing that she had broken his heart and driven him to the heavy drinking sessions that finally contributed to his death.

‘I’ve learnt more about Connor through what he did to you than I probably ever wanted to know,’ Sebasten confided with a grimace, as if he could read her mind. ‘What I hate most is that I came along and I hurt you even more.’

‘That’s behind us now,’ Lizzie assured him.

‘Time and time again, I told myself that the secret of your incredible attraction was just sex,’ Sebasten groaned. ‘The minute I realised that you were Lisa Denton, I swore to myself that I wouldn’t ever sleep with you again…but I did and more than once.’

‘I know.’ Lizzie was trying hard not to smile.

‘That episode in the basement just…’ Sebasten threw up both hands in a speaking gesture of rare discomfiture. ‘It was crass, crazy. I’m really sorry about that. Afterwards, I couldn’t believe I’d lost control to that extent…I mean, I was fighting what I felt for you with everything I had! But I was a pushover every time.’

‘That’s when you realised how keen I was on you, wasn’t it?’ Lizzie prompted gently.

Dark colour scored his superb cheekbones. ‘I felt like a total bastard and I didn’t want to hurt you. So, I decided that I had to dump you because the entire situation had become more than I could handle.’

‘You poor love…’ Lizzie swallowed hard on the unexpected giggle that bubbled in her throat. ‘You’ve had a really tough time.’

‘You dumped me,’ Sebasten reminded her. ‘I couldn’t even do that right!’

Lizzie got up and wrapped her arms round him.

‘I thought you were angry with me. Why are you hugging me?’ Sebasten asked, his Greek accent very thick.

‘For making me feel as irresistible as Cleopatra…for letting me see that loving me has made you suffer a lot too…so now I can forgive you for having made me suffer,’ Lizzie confided, locking both arms round his neck.

‘You can forgive me?’ Some of the raw tension in his big, powerful frame eased and he closed his own arms tightly round her. ‘Give me a chance to make everything right from now on?’

‘Loads of chances,’ she promised, conscious of the anxiety still visible in his dark golden eyes. ‘When did you realise you’d fallen in love with me?’

Sebasten tensed. ‘I sort of suspected it in Greece but I didn’t take those thoughts out and examine them because I didn’t know what was going to happen when we came back to London. But when you collapsed last night I panicked and faced how much you meant to me. I had this nightmare vision of my life without you in it—’

‘Traumatising? I hope so, because you’re not getting a life without me in it.’

‘I love you the way I never thought I would love any woman.’ His possessive golden gaze pinned with appreciation to her, he framed her irreverent grin with gentle fingers. ‘I love everything about you, pethi mou…even the way you annoy the hell out of me sometimes. So stop teasing me.’

She could not have doubted the rough sincerity in his every spoken syllable and the direct and steady onslaught of an adoring scrutiny that made her face warm with colour. ‘I love you too…’

‘Still?’ Sebasten demanded. ‘I thought you’d got over me…you wouldn’t give an inch even when I practically begged you to come back to me!’

‘I can be stubborn. But I never stopped loving you.’

His brilliant smile flashed across his lean, devastating features and he hugged her close. ‘I feel a very uncool degree of happiness…say it again.’

She did.

And then he felt he had to match her with the same words. He felt wonderful. He felt ten feet tall. Lizzie was his, finally, absolutely his. His wedding ring on her finger, his baby on the way. Freeing her just when she was about to invite the kiss that every nerve in her body craved, Sebasten closed his hand over hers and walked her back out to the hall.

‘Where are we going?’ Lizzie muttered.

‘Home…to where it all began. Any chance of me reliving the highlights?’ Sebasten gave her a wicked look of all-male anticipation.

As he flipped shut the door in their wake and then tucked her into his car, Lizzie blushed and smiled. ‘I think that’s very possible.’

An hour and more later, Sebasten lay back in what now felt like a secure marital bed to him and held Lizzie close. He was in a very upbeat mood, checking out her freckles and discovering that, in spite of all his efforts to keep her under sunhats and in the shade, the Greek sun had blessed her with another half-dozen. He knew she wasn’t fond of her freckles, so he kept the news to himself. He splayed his fingers over her still non-existent tummy and grinned and secretly rejoiced in feelings of intense possessiveness.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Lizzie whispered, smiling up at him with complete contentment and trust.

‘That you’re the best investment I’ve ever made,’ Sebasten confided with quiet satisfaction. ‘When you have the baby, I’ll have two of you.’

‘We’ll be a family. You’ll be totally trapped because I’m not letting go of you ever,’ Lizzie teased.

‘You’d be amazed how good that sounds to me.’ Sebasten looked down at her with all the love he couldn’t hide and she knew he meant every word of that assurance. ‘As long as you don’t expect me to buy any more houses for your sole occupation.’

Lizzie grimaced. ‘I feel so bad about that.’

‘Don’t. Just remind yourself that we are the same two people who shared an incredible happy honeymoon and we talked about everything under the sun but…neither one of us had the guts to broach the sensitive subject of how we planned to live when we got home again,’ Sebasten pointed out with wry amusement.

‘I was waiting for you to try and persuade me to change my mind,’ Lizzie complained. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to rush out and buy a house overnight either!’

Sebasten burst out laughing at that and kissed her breathless, and it was another hour before they had dinner and he dropped the bait about it having just occurred to him that perhaps her father might like to consider moving into the surplus dwelling they had acquired.

‘That’s a fabulous idea!’ Lizzie exclaimed.

And Sebasten basked without conscience in her pleasure and admiration and knew that he would never own up to the truth that he had hoped for that conclusion all along.

A year and four months later, Sebasten and Lizzie threw a party to celebrate their baby daughter, Gemma’s, christening.

Ingrid Morgan attended and Lizzie and she talked at some length. They had made peace with each other months before: Ingrid had felt very guilty and had urged that meeting, but Lizzie had made the effort initially only for Sebasten’s sake. However, when she had got to know the older woman better she had begun to relax and like Ingrid for herself. Ingrid had worked through her grief and admitted that she had had no cause to accuse any woman of driving her son to suicide. She had come to terms with the reality that Connor’s death had just been an accident.

When all their guests had gone home, Lizzie changed Gemma into her cute bunny nightwear and laid her daughter with tender hands into her cot. She just adored the baby. Gemma had her father’s colouring but was already showing signs of her mother’s personality. She was a cheerful baby, who slept a lot and rarely cried. Elbows resting on the cot rail, Lizzie smiled down at Gemma, grateful that her baby girl had not inherited her freckles. It was all very well for Sebasten to have a positive thing about freckles but he had to appreciate that not everyone shared that outlook, Lizzie reflected with amusement.

It had been an eventful year for both her and her father. Maurice Denton was already divorced. Felicity had met another man and had been keen to speed up the legal proceedings. Her father’s spirits had been low for quite a time but moving house had helped and he very much liked living so close to his daughter and was a regular visitor. His own friends had rallied round him in a very supportive way, but her father had also developed a wonderfully friendly and relaxed relationship with Sebasten.

At times during her pregnancy that closeness between her parent and her husband had been just a little irritating for Lizzie. Both Sebasten and her father had been prone to trying to gang up on her and wrap her up in cotton wool. Stubborn to the last, Lizzie had worked until she was seven months pregnant before deciding to tender her resignation. The PR job had been a lot of fun but it had taken her away from Sebasten too many evenings and it had exhausted her.

Gemma had been born without any fuss or complications but Sebasten had lived on his nerves for the last weeks of Lizzie’s pregnancy, striving valiantly to conceal his terror that something might go wrong. But Lizzie herself had been an oasis of calm, secure in the knowledge that Sebasten was doing all her worrying for her. He had fallen instantly in love with Gemma and, if possible, Lizzie had fallen even more deeply in love with Sebasten just watching him with their daughter. The guy who had said he preferred children at a distance used every excuse that had ever been invented to lift his daughter and cuddle her.

‘Don’t you dare lift her,’ Lizzie warned, hearing and recognising the footsteps behind her. ‘She shouldn’t be disturbed when she’s ready to go to sleep.’

Sebasten strolled into view, and at one glimpse of his heartbreaking smile Lizzie’s pulses speeded up.

‘Just when did you get so bossy?’ he mocked, brilliant golden eyes roaming over the very tempting vision Lizzie made in her sleek blue skirt suit with her glorious hair tumbling round her shoulders in sexy disarray.

Lizzie grinned. ‘When I met you. Either I lay down and got walked on or I fought back.’

‘But you’re out of line on this occasion. I spent half the evening holding Gemma,’ Sebasten pointed out with amusement. ‘I’m in the nursery in search of you.’

Already well-aware of that just from the smouldering gleam in his vibrant gaze as he surveyed her, Lizzie eased forward in a sinuous move into the hard heat and muscularity of his lean, powerful frame and gave him the most welcoming look of invitation she could manage.

‘You’re an incredible flirt,’ Sebasten commented with satisfaction, surrendering at speed and scooping her up into his arms with an efficiency that spoke of regular practice.

‘You like that…’ Lizzie was used to being carried off to bed and ravished and she encouraged him in that shameless pursuit of pleasure every step of the way.

‘I do. And carrying you around does keep me in the peak of athletic condition,’ Sebasten teased as he settled her down on their bed.

Lizzie just laughed and kicked off her shoes. ‘Kiss me and prove it.’

Sebasten pitched his jacket aside, dropped his tie where he stood, demonstrating an untidy streak that had once been foreign to him, and came down on the bed to haul her back into his arms. ‘You’re a wanton hussy and I adore you…’

Lizzie battered her eyelashes but the glow of her own love was there in her softened eyes for his to see. Before she could even tell him she loved him like crazy too, he released an appreciative groan in response to that look and melded her lush mouth to his own.