Читать книгу By Request Collection Part 2 - Шантель Шоу, Natalie Anderson - Страница 42

THE phone she slammed down started ringing almost immediately, and even without checking the number on the display Grace knew it would be Seth.

When she didn’t pick it up, it continued to ring, a shrill insistence that cut through her tension, causing the embryo of a pain to start throbbing on either side of her temples. At last the ringing stopped.

Good; let him stew! she thought, gritting her teeth against her headache and her suffocating misery. But instantly the phone started ringing again.

When she didn’t respond this time, the merciful seconds’ silence that followed was immediately broken by her mobile phone ringing in her bag on the shelf behind her desk.

Grabbing the bag, she found the phone with fingers that shook, and with more than a degree of unusual force switched it off.

She couldn’t—wouldn’t—give him the satisfaction of venting his frustrations on her now. If she was going to have to suffer all over again for her stupidity in going to bed with him, then he was going to as well, she agonised with bitter tears stinging her eyes just as a call came through on her internal line.

‘What is it?’ She knew the answer even before she heard the receptionist’s harassed response.

‘It’s Mr Mason. He’s on line one. He’s having difficulty getting through to your office.’

‘Tell Mr Mason I’m not taking any calls.’

There was a brief hesitation. ‘I can’t do that.’ Grace could almost feel the girl’s horror at even being asked to contemplate contradicting their new chief executive.

‘Then tell him I’m out,’ Grace instructed, her mouth tightening at the sway Seth held over what had been her grandfather’s and then her staff.

‘I can’t do that either.’ The disembodied voice sounded even more diffident. ‘He already knows you aren’t.’

Feeling sorry for the girl and not wanting to put her in an awkward position, Grace grabbed her coat and, imparting a resolute, ‘Well, I am now!’ she made a hurried exit from the building.

It was wet and murky outside and cold needles of rain stung her face, as she’d left her umbrella in the office. The bare trees around the square she turned into looked like dark shadows of their former selves, and even the houses and shops looked dreary and left-over now that the festive season was gone.

She needed to get out, she told herself in an attempt to justify dropping everything and making her escape from the office, a thing which under normal circumstances she would never even have considered. But these weren’t normal circumstances, were they?

The fact of her pregnancy had still scarcely sunk in when Corinne’s call had come through, and the woman had made those very personal remarks about her—in front of Seth. Only Grace hadn’t known that Seth was with Corinne up until that point. Until then she had simply been wondering how she was going to tell him about her pregnancy.

Anger and jealousy tore at her as she thought about him with Corinne; imagined them lying on the sun deck of that yacht, limbs entwined, pale skin yielding to the sinewy strength of dark bronze.

What would it matter to him that she was carrying his child? She was a woman of the world—or so he thought. Women of the world could handle little set-backs in their lives like unwanted pregnancies, particularly if they weren’t in love with the child’s father. And she wasn’t in love with him, was she? she asked herself fiercely. How could she be with a man who could treat her so badly? Who was determined to make her pay for the way she had treated him when she’d been a spoilt teenager, no matter what the cost?

The blast of a van’s horn brought her up sharply as she made to cross the busy road, and she jumped back onto the pavement, berating herself for jeopardising not only her own life but her unborn baby’s too.

She wasn’t a woman of the world. She would have this baby and she would bear the consequences, she determined grittily. It was just that it was going to be so humiliating, facing Seth.

She hadn’t planned to shout it down the phone at him. But she had been so mortified when she’d realised he must have heard the things Corinne had been saying that she hadn’t been able to help herself, knowing he must surely think her a wimp—besotted with him! And, if he found out that she had conceived after her rash behaviour with him last time, he’d think her even more of a fool now.

Which she was, she reminded herself with unsparing criticism. Not only for being weak-willed enough to let him break down all her defences, which had led to her winding up in bed with him, but for not even considering that she might not be adequately protected when she had vowed all those years ago that she would never let any man affect her enough for anything like this to happen again. And now here she was, eight years on, older but certainly no wiser. Not only in the same situation, but with the same man!

There were no calls for her when she returned to the office with her head throbbing, her emotions in turmoil. At least, none from Seth, she was surprised to discover.

Perhaps he had given up trying to get hold of her and had simply gone back to enjoying himself with Corinne, Grace thought bitterly, although it didn’t make her feel any better to imagine him stewing over what she had told him. If he had any conscience at all, he had to be! And privately, too, because she couldn’t imagine for one moment that he’d discuss it with Corinne.

Or perhaps he would.

Piercingly she remembered the things that he and Corinne had said to make her fling the news of her pregnancy down the phone at him. Perhaps they had continued to discuss her afterwards. Perhaps even now he was taking solace in Corinne’s arms.

As she moved around her office, trying to maintain her usual degree of efficiency and failing miserably, she was unable to imagine Corinne not taking exception to her stupendous lover sleeping with another woman. And, not just another woman, her late husband’s granddaughter! Although, knowing Corinne, if Seth did tell her he was fathering a child she might even congratulate him on his virility!

Would he make love to the model, put his inconvenient mistake with Grace out of his mind until he returned next week? she wondered torturously. Because wouldn’t this unplanned pregnancy be the ultimate revenge as far as he was concerned?

Angry tears stung her eyes as her head continued to pound and it was very late in the day when Simone, aware that her boss was feeling under the weather, came into the office to help Grace find a file that she had misplaced.

When the phone buzzed on the desk and Simone took the call, she said in a dumbfounded whisper to Grace, ‘It’s Seth. And he’s in a hell of a mood.’

‘Tough,’ Grace responded flatly from the filing cabinet, still determined not to speak to him. ‘I’ll talk to him when he gets back.’’

‘You’re damn right you will!’

Both women’s heads swivelled round to meet his implacable authority in the doorway. That uncompromising masculinity was only intensified by the white-hot anger in his face as he ordered, ‘Simone—out! Now!’

The PA didn’t stay to be told a second time. Distractedly it registered with Grace that the call that had come through from Reception must have been to warn her that the new CEO had just thundered in.

Her mood, though, matched his as, determined not to be intimidated by him, she snapped, ‘Don’t you ever come in here and speak to me or my PA like that again!’

‘And don’t you ever dare to deliver a blow like that closing remark you made this morning and then think you can just put the phone down on me!’

‘Why not? Did it cramp your style with Corinne?’ His face blanched with fury, but she was angry too. Very angry. ‘Well, I’m very sorry to have dragged you back from such adoring company!’

She was near to tears but strove to control them, realising that he could only have used the executive jet to get back here so fast. He’d probably flown it himself, she thought waspishly, remembering his PA telling her once that he was an experienced pilot in his own right.

He moved angrily past her, grabbing her raincoat from the coat stand.

‘Here. Take this. We’re leaving.’

She only obeyed because her head was throbbing too much to endure a shouting match with him in the office, and because an imperious hand at her elbow was already urging her towards the door.

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Somewhere where we can be alone.’

Every cell in her body rebelled against it, although her heart was beating with a wild anticipation that left her despairing with herself.

She caught Simone’s discreet glance up at them as Seth marched her past her PA’s desk, but she was too keyed up to argue with him or to say anything to Simone.

With his jaw set in stone, Seth summoned the lift, saying nothing as he urged her out of the building to the waiting Mercedes.

‘Where are we going?’ she demanded to know, as Seth handed her into the back of the car and slid in beside her. ‘What makes you think you can just march into my office and start trying to take control of my life?’

The transparent screen closing in front of them obliterated any chance of their being heard by the man who was just pulling the car away.

‘I would have thought that was obvious. You’re having my child. Much as that must be the last thing that you, or either of us, wanted, I think that gives me some rights.’

He couldn’t have made it any plainer than that!

Although, she’d known her pregnancy would be the last thing he’d want or expect, hearing him say it cut as painfully as scaling a wall of broken glass, and she turned away from him to hide the anguish scoring her face.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, but coldly, tersely, noticing the pain of rejection in her tight, tense profile. ‘I really believed you were on the Pill. It was wrong of me to assume.’

‘Yes, it was,’ she bit back with her eyes fixed on the headrest in front of her. If he’d used protection too, then this would never have happened, would it? she reasoned bitterly.

‘And you weren’t involved?’ he challenged thickly before she could go on to explain that she wasn’t as irresponsible as he obviously thought she was. ‘You weren’t the one writhing and sobbing beneath me in that bed?’

With flame colour touching her cheeks, Grace darted a glance towards the thick neck of the man in front of the glass screen, immensely grateful that he couldn’t hear what was being said.

Seth’s graphic reminder of the way she had welcomed his love-making until she was begging for him to take her that night, though, shamed her into responding, ‘I don’t know what you’ve got to be so angry about. Anyway, I was on the Pill—or supposed to be.’

‘So what happened?’ His brows came together over eyes that were interrogative, darkly accusing. ‘Did you forget to take it or something?’

‘No, I didn’t! I’d had a bout of tummy trouble just before we—’ She couldn’t even bring herself to say it. And because his attitude and his insinuation that it was all her fault was only making her feel worse than she did already, she threw angrily back at him, ‘I’m not any happier about this than you are. And I’m sorry if it’s messed up whatever you had planned with Corinne, but you needn’t worry—I’ve got no plans to try and trap you!’

‘Will you shut up?’ It was a soft yet unmistakable command. ‘For heaven’s sake! Isn’t it possible for you to utter one civil word to me unless you’re being kissed?’

Turning her head sharply away from him, Grace stared sightlessly through the tinted glass at the surging bodies moving past the endless shops with their ‘sale’ signs splashed across the windows. She tried not to remember the ecstasy of that firm, male mouth covering hers, the mind-blowing pleasure as it had rediscovered her body like a familiar map, reading it with the deftness of a skilled explorer, recognising every secret curve and dip he had made his own.

‘I swore,’ she railed at herself. ‘I swore I’d never let myself get pregnant—’

Again, she nearly said, but stopped herself in time, cupping her hands over her face with an exasperated sigh.

‘It happens.’ His voice was low, clipped, matter-of-fact.

‘Not to me.’ Inhaling deeply, Grace leaned back against the plush cushion of the headrest, closing her eyes against the truth.

Because that was just it—it did happen to her. Twice. Twice in her life she had gone the whole way with a man, and only one man. And twice in her life she had conceived, as though something beyond herself was determined that she would be impregnated with his seed. As though her ultimate function in life was to be the mother of his child.

‘I expect every woman who finds herself in the same situation without wanting to be probably says the same thing.’

Yes, but they aren’t having a baby with a man who doesn’t even like them. Whose only reason for making love to them in the first place was just to exact some sort of revenge!

Noticing the increasing tension in the tight line of her jaw, Seth could see that this thing had come as an appalling shock to her, much as it had come as a complete shock to him. She looked now as she had looked the night they had made love and he had queried the possibility of her getting pregnant—like having his child was the last thing she could bear to contemplate. Which it probably was, he thought.

Because of her very high-profile affairs and the way she had treated him originally, he’d believed that to a girl like her men were just things to provide amusement, but in that, at least, he was beginning to realise he’d been wrong. The things Corinne had let slip about her had amazed him, even if he did suspect that they had been disclosed solely to reduce her step-granddaughter’s possible appeal to him and boost her own sexual appeal in his eyes.

But in fact it had had the opposite effect. The knowledge that he could turn the haughty little enchantress who dumped men for a pastime, and who was really as cold as a Siberian winter, into a mass of steaming, sultry passion when he got her between the sheets had given him a shameful, chauvinistic satisfaction. Just how pliable did that make her in his hands? he wondered with a rush of masculine hormones raising the level of his libido a few notches. Because there was no doubt that she did things to him that no other woman had ever done.

Just thinking about how she responded to him in bed made him burn with the need to feel her nails digging into his back, to have her crying out his name—and only his—as they drove each other wild until they were sated. It didn’t cool his ardour much to tell himself that it was because of his raging hormones where she was concerned that they were in this situation now. But the simple fact was that she was pregnant…

‘Well, after what I heard Corinne saying on the phone…’ he began, with his voice thickened by desire, ‘I don’t think I need even question whether it’s mine, need I?’

As the Mercedes took a sharp left-hand turn that tipped Grace nearly into his lap, shame and humiliation leaped like angry flames to scorch her pride.

‘You bastard!’ Automatically her hand flew up and was instantly dealt with by a stronger one before it could make contact with his cheek.

Deftly she found herself pressed back against the cream leather upholstery with that long, lean body angled across hers.

‘Believe it or not, it was meant as a compliment,’ he breathed with menacing softness.

‘Some compliment!’ It came out on a squeak as excitement ripped through her, her senses leaping into overdrive from the hard, arousing weight of his body. Trying to collect her thoughts, she guessed it would be a major boost to his ego to realise he was the only lover she had ever had. But if he knew that then she would be lost, she thought despairingly, his to do whatever he wanted with, because she would have no defence then against his devastating sexual magnetism.

‘Don’t believe all Corinne tells you,’ she got out tremulously, because he hadn’t moved. He was still holding her captive as if he didn’t trust her not to fly at him the instant he let her go. Or maybe he just liked being in control…

The need to assert command over her own actions had her wriggling against it.

He merely laughed at her ineffectual struggling. ‘I won’t, if you promise not to,’ he said, letting her go.

‘Promise not to what?’ she quavered, even though he was sitting back on his own side of the car again now.

‘Believe everything that Corinne Culverwell says.’

His tone was less than complimentary at the woman with whom he had supposedly shared a recent spell of unfettered passion. So what was he implying? Grace wondered with a leap of hope that made her despair at her own weakness in wanting to believe anything he might chance to tell her. That he really had gone to Madeira just to finalise a deal, as he had assured her he had on the phone that morning?

And if she believed that she would believe anything! she thought, realising that she was in very grave danger of trusting him—at least where his integrity was concerned.

The Mercedes pulled up at the kerbside and Seth handed her out onto the pavement. A young family passed them, a mother pushing a toddler in a buggy, a child of about four riding piggyback on the shoulders of the man beside her. They were all laughing, at ease with one another; happy.

Moments later Seth was guiding Grace through the foyer of one of London’s most exclusive apartment-blocks. Chandeliers glittered, silver shone from highly polished surfaces, catching the reflection of a massive floral-display in the centre of the main area, while Grace’s pumps sank into a carpet as soft as manicured grass.

This sort of luxury wasn’t new to her. She had been born to it and had been accustomed to it until Culverwells’ diminishing fortunes had meant everyone having to tighten their belts. But the young man with the motorbike who had had to drag himself out of virtual poverty had to have striven hard for this type of living—the cars, the plane, the power. Unbelievably so. She couldn’t help but be impressed and a little overawed by the drive and determination he must have had to bring it about.

Nevertheless, as he brought her up in a lift with mirrored walls and they stepped out into a luxurious suite of rooms on the top floor of the building, she murmured, ‘Trying to impress me, Seth? What are you trying to prove? That you’ve done well for yourself?’

His mouth pulling down on one side, he gestured for her to precede him into a huge room with deep pale sofas and panoramic views of their great city, which at this time of day was a glittering universe of twinkling lights. ‘I don’t think I need to do that. I leave proving to lawyers and those whose job it is to provide us with our daily bread. But, yes, I have done well.’

‘And you’re flaunting it for all you’re worth.’ His droll comment lent a curve to her mouth, though, and she realised that what she had just said wasn’t totally true. Though the sumptuous drawing room in which he was inviting her to sit down was well-appointed, it was also uncluttered and exuded an air of understated elegance that was both tasteful and refreshing.

‘What did you prefer, Grace—my being poor and totally at your mercy?’

Her eyelids pressed against the dark wells of her eyes as she sank down into the sofa’s cushioning softness. Would he flay her with that for ever? It didn’t make it any easier that her head felt as though it was splitting in two.

That rough edge to his voice, however, made her wonder if he meant at her mercy emotionally, until she realised how dangerous it was to think like that. Seth Mason was hard. He only meant at the mercy of the circumstances that getting involved with her had got him into.

‘And you think,’ she said feebly, looking painfully up at him, ‘That by getting me pregnant you’ve got me at yours?’

His soft leather shoes made only a light sound over the varnished floor. ‘You aren’t at my mercy, Grace. Just at the mercy of your inability to resist whatever this thing is between us. Just as I am.’ The curl of his mouth was self-mocking. ‘And right now, yes, you are carrying my child. But don’t worry. The situation can be easily remedied.’

She jumped up, and wished she hadn’t when her head felt as though it had just exploded. Even so, that didn’t stop her tossing back, ‘That’s about the sort of reasoning I’d expect from you! If you think I’m going to simply take the easy way out just because you can’t bear to think of your enemy presenting you with a baby—wasn’t that what you said we were the day you took over the company? Enemies?—you’ve got another thing coming! I don’t want anything from you beyond a little recognition that you’re its father. You can play around with whoever you want to, just so long as you acknowledge that. It makes no difference to me.’

‘On the contrary.’ His slow stride over the immaculate floor was measured, predatory. ‘I find your being pregnant with my child rather satisfying.’

Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t that.

‘Why?’ she asked guardedly. ‘Because you think it would be one in the eye for the Culverwells to have to acknowledge your offspring as one of theirs?’

She meant because of the desire he’d been nursing all these years to avenge his family for the way they had suffered. Too late, though, she realised how it had sounded, as if he’d be tainting the pedigree blood of her family with the questionable origins of his.

For a moment his eyes blazed, but then his lashes came down and something like self-satisfaction shaped that hard mouth as he said, ‘If it pulls you down off that class-conscious cloud you’re obviously still clinging to, then, yes, I can’t deny that it’s a rather ironic twist of fate—don’t you think?’

Because he hated snobbery, Grace knew, as much as she did now, although she knew she could never convince him of that in a million years.

‘And you will have something from me, Grace. I’m not asking you to take the easy way out. In fact, I strictly forbid you to do anything that would harm our child. No, we’re going to assume responsibility for this little one’s life—together. And that means a marriage licence.’

‘A marriage licence?’ She was staring at him, wide-eyed with shock, her heart seeming to stand still. ‘You can’t be serious?’

There was no humour in his face as he advised, ‘Believe me, I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life. There’s no way any child of mine will grow up without the close presence of a father in its life.’

‘As you did.’

‘And as you did, I believe. After what Corinne told me about your own father deserting you, I’m surprised you’d even consider denying your own child that right.’

She had never talked about her father to Corinne, so the woman had obviously gleaned that information from Lance Culverwell.

‘Well, you certainly had a good chin-wag about me, the pair of you, didn’t you?’ she accused in a wounded voice.

Seth’s grimace said it all. Her grandfather’s widow was garrulous enough without any help from him.

Amazingly, in spite of everything, some deep-boned intuition told Grace that Seth Mason would never be a party to idle gossip, and once again she found herself coming to believe that his dealings with Corinne were purely professional.

‘The fact remains,’ he said, ‘that you were abandoned by your father, and through whatever circumstances he scarcely figured in your life. Don’t let that happen to your own baby.’

Her head was banging so much she was beginning to feel sick; she didn’t feel up to having this conversation with him.

Still trying to come to terms with the fact that he had actually proposed, unable to quite believe it, she said quickly, ‘A lot of women manage perfectly well as single parents today.’

A shoulder moved beneath the superb tailoring of his jacket. ‘It’s up to you, but I’d like to think that you wouldn’t be that selfish.’

When he was prepared to marry a woman he didn’t love for the protection and well-being of his child.

‘You make me feel I have no choice,’ she uttered, feeling the strands of a silken web being slowly but insidiously woven around her.

‘You do have a choice. I’m just asking you to make the right one.’ A few lithe steps brought him within heart-stopping distance of her. ‘Oh, come on, Grace.’ His voice was soft, sultry, deep, like a jungle cat purring. ‘It won’t be so bad.’ The fingers suddenly lifting her chin up, compelling her to look at him, were excruciatingly tender. ‘Maybe I’m not the lawyer-doctor-accountant type you’ve always dreamed you’d be marrying.’ As if! she thought almost hysterically. ‘But we’ve got something that will ensure that any union between us will never be dull.’

He meant in bed.

A wave of excitement curled along her veins, a silent betrayal by her body of all it wanted—no, needed—from him, no matter how strongly her brain tried to deny the fact.

The shock and emotion were too much for her in her present state. As the room seemed to go wavy before her eyes, she dropped her head into her hands with an involuntary little groan, trying to stave off the threatening nausea.

She heard the low invective Seth uttered and could do nothing to resist the arms that were sweeping her effortlessly off her feet. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t feeling well?’ he scolded softly.

Caught against his hard, warm strength, her mind and body reeling with myriad sensations, somehow Grace managed a pained little smile. ‘You only seemed concerned with what was going to happen to your baby.’

Those masculine lips curled in self-derision. ‘Believe it or not, I do have a vested interest in its mother, too.’

He carried her through into the quiet luxury of the master bedroom. Compared to hers it was a sanctum of modern living, from the sinking carpet that bore his silent, effortless steps, to the monstrous bed with its very masculine but state-of-the-art cushions and covers that he dragged aside before setting her down on the dark-burgundy sheet covering the mattress.

Helping her out of her coat and jacket and then stooping to remove her shoes, he pressed her gently back on the pillow and pulled the duvet up around her.

‘If you want anything,’ he told her quietly, ‘I’ll be in the next room.’ The degree of solicitude behind that simple statement brought a painful lump to her throat.

‘A vested interest’, he had said, but only because she was having his baby. He didn’t care about her for herself. So why was she letting herself imagine such depth of emotion in his voice?

Nevertheless, no matter how much he had wanted to hurt her and her family, she thought, there was no doubt that he would accept his paternal responsibilities. The hardship and the poverty he had endured as a child and then, thanks to her, as a young man desperate to support the family who had taken him in, had obviously contributed to his determination not to let any child of his suffer in the same way. Although, even without that, there was no question in Grace’s mind that he would still have held the same view about being a seriously hands-on parent. But was she prepared to let him help her bring up her child? Marry him? Apprehension coupled with excitement didn’t do much to ease the painful banging in her head.

If she didn’t, she reflected, and she decided to go it alone, there was no way that her child would go without seeing its father at regular intervals; Seth would demand that, of course, and she wouldn’t try and stop him seeing his child—no matter how much it might hurt her to have to face him on a personal level from time to time, because she didn’t think she would be able to carry on working with him after this. Her child would never want for anything financially. But was that enough?

She remembered how it had felt growing up. Her grandparents had been wonderful, had given her everything she could have wanted. But, guiltily, sometimes she had missed the fun and activities that her school friends seemed to have with their parents—particularly their fathers—younger, more energetic adults who could get involved in a game of tennis with them, or chase after them before scooping them high into the air shrieking with laughter, as fathers always seemed to be able to do. Fathers who were always there and didn’t disappear for months, or even years, on end. She had missed having a birth mother, of course, but she had missed her father more than she could ever put into words, because she had known he was around somewhere. Just not with her. And that had hurt more than she had ever dared to let herself accept.

She thought of the little family she had noticed on the way up here. Two children. Two parents. A happy balance. She owed her child that much, didn’t she? And if—fingers crossed—this little one growing inside her went to its full term, was born safely…

Fear threatened to rise like a dark spectre, but she fought it back. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—let herself think about that now, for the same reason she hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Seth what had happened before. It was a part of her life that she wasn’t particularly proud of and she had paid for it dearly—then pressed it so far to the back of her mind that it was as though that girl she had been and everything that had happened to her had happened to someone else. It wouldn’t help her or him in any way, she reasoned with a kind of muddled logic, to dig it all up now.

So with the muted tones of Seth’s voice conducting business over the phone in the other room, and the elusive scent of him surrounding her in his personal bedding, she made her decision, safe in the knowledge that whatever his feelings towards her he would always be there to love and support his child. And that was all that mattered, she told herself resolutely. Wasn’t it?