The Contaxis Baby (12 page)

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?