The Contaxis Baby (7 page)

Dredging herself back from her disturbing recollections of that day, Lizzie was so uncomfortable that she could no longer stand to look at the other woman. ‘Dad will come round in his own good time. And with Connor gone, you have nothing to worry about.’

‘That’s a wicked thing to say…’ Felicity condemned tearfully.

But deserved, Lizzie reflected. It would be a very long time before she forgot the flash of relief that she had seen in the brunette’s face when she had first learnt that Connor had died in a car crash. But then what was the point of striving to awaken a conscience that Felicity did not have? The brunette had few deep emotions that did not relate to herself.

As soon as Felicity had gone, Lizzie got stuck into re-packing her luggage. Jen appeared in the bedroom doorway and remarked. ‘If it’s any consolation, we were all eaten alive with raging envy when you landed Sebasten Contaxis last night…’

Encountering the sizzling curiosity in the pert blonde’s gaze, Lizzie coloured and concentrated on gathering up the cosmetics she had left out on the dressing-table.

‘Mind you,’ Jen continued, ‘I hear he’s a real bastard with women…lifts them, lays them, then forgets about them. But then who could blame him? He’s a young, drop-dead gorgeous billionaire. Women are just arm candy to a guy like that and of course he’s happy to overdose on the treats.’

Even as a chill of dismay ran over Lizzie that Sebasten’s reputation should be that bad with her sex, she angled up her chin. ‘So?’

‘When you get dumped, everyone will crow because you weren’t entitled to get him in the first place. He dates supermodels…and let’s face it, you’re hardly in that category. It’s my bet that, once he gets wind of all the nasty rumours there have been about you and Connor, you’ll never hear from him again!’

‘Thank you for the warning.’ In one move, Lizzie carted two cases out to the hall in her eagerness to vacate the blonde’s apartment. ‘But I wasn’t actually planning on dating Sebasten. I was just using him for a one-night stand.’

Twenty minutes later, Lizzie climbed into her Mercedes four-wheel-drive and the startled look on Jen’s spiteful face travelled with her. It had been a cheap, tasteless response but it had made Lizzie feel just a little better. So where did she go now that she was truly homeless and friendless? Well, she had better try to sell her little horde of jewellery first to get some cash so that she could pay upfront for accommodation.

One week later, Lizzie dealt her new home a somewhat shaken appraisal. Six nights in an overpriced bed and breakfast joint and then this…

Her bedsit was a dump and, as far as she could see, a dump with no secret pretensions to be transformed into a miraculous palace. But then neither her car nor her jewellery had sold for anything like the amount that she had na?vely hoped, and until she had actually trudged round the rental agencies and checked the newspapers she had had no idea just how much it actually cost to rent an apartment. Any solo apartment, even the tiniest was way beyond her budget and, since she had been reluctant to share with total strangers, a bedsit had been her only immediate option.

But on the bright side, she had an interview the next day. When she got a job she would make new friends and then possibly find somewhere more inspiring to live, and in the meantime life was what you made of it, Lizzie told herself sternly. She would buy herself a bucket of cheap paint and obliterate the dingy drabness of the walls rather than sit around drowning in self-pity!

Sebasten had not called. Well, had she really expected him to? An aching wave of regret flooded Lizzie. It was so hard for her to forget the sense of connection that she had felt with him, that crazy feeling that something magical was in the air. Indeed she had slept with her mobile phone right beside her every night. However, the something magical had only been her own stupid fantasy, she conceded, angry that she still hadn’t managed to get him out of her mind. After all, if what Jen had said about Sebasten’s reputation was true, she had had a narrow escape from getting her heart broken and stomped on. In any case, how could she possibly have explained why she had lied and given him a false surname?

Reading his security chief’s efficient daily bulletins on Lizzie’s fast-disintegrating life of ease and affluence had supplied the major part of Sebasten’s entertainment throughout the past week.

Lizzie had been conned into flogging her six-month-old-low mileage Mercedes for half of its worth and then ripped off in much the same way when it came to parting with her diamonds. Having run a credit check on her, Sebasten had appreciated the necessity for such immediate financial retrenchments and could only admire her cunning refusal to snatch at his offer of an apartment. Evidently, Lizzie was set on impressing on him the belief that she was not a gold-digger or a free-loader. Now in possession of both her Merc and her jewellery and having paid very much more for both than she had received for either, Sebasten was ready to make his next move.

When her mobile phone sang out its musical call, Lizzie was standing on top of three suitcases, striving to get the paint roller to do what it was supposed to do as easily as it did in the diagram on the back of the pack. It had been so long since her phone rang that it took her a second or two to recognise the sound for what it was. With a strangled yelp, she made a sudden leap off the precarious mound of cases, the roller spattering daffodil-yellow paint in all directions as she snatched up her phone with all the desperation of a drowning woman.

‘Sebasten…’ Sebasten murmured.

Lizzie pulled a face, suddenly wishing she knew at least three Sebastens and could ask which he was. At the same time, she rolled her eyes heavenward, closed them and uttered a silent heartfelt prayer of thanks. He had called…he had called…he had called!

‘Hi…’ she answered, low-key, watching paint drip down from the ceiling, knowing that she had overloaded the roller and now wrecked her only set of sheets into the bargain and not caring, truly not caring. Her brain was in a blissful fog. She couldn’t think straight.

‘You’d better start by giving me your address,’ Sebasten told her before he could forget that he wasn’t supposed to know it already.

Lizzie rattled it off at speed.

‘Dinner tonight?’ Sebasten enquired.

Her brain peeped out from behind the romantic fog and winced at that last-minute invitation. Breathing in deep and slow, she dragged her pride out of the hiding place where it was eager to stay. ‘Sorry I can’t make it tonight.’

‘Try…’ Sebasten suggested, a wave of instant irritation gripping him. ‘I’ll be abroad next week.’

Lizzie paled at that additional information and then surveyed the devastation of the room which she had only begun to paint. ‘I really can’t. I’m in the middle of trying to decorate my bedsit—’

‘I’ve had some novel excuses in my time but—’

‘If I leave it now, I’ll never finish it…are you any good at decorating?’ Lizzie asked off the top of her head, so keen was she to break into that far from reassuring response of his.

‘Never wielded a paintbrush in my life and no ambition to either,’ Sebasten drawled in a derisive tone of incredulity, thinking that she was taking the I’m-so-poor façade way too far for good taste. Decorating? Him? She just had to be joking!

Wishing she had kept her mouth shut, Lizzie felt her cheeks burning. Of course, a male of his meteoric wealth wasn’t about to rush over and help out. But it was hardly her fault that she wasn’t available at such very short notice, and for all she knew he had only called because some other woman was otherwise engaged. ‘Oh, well, looks like I’m on my own. To be frank, it’s not a lot of fun. I’d better go…I’ve got paint dripping everywhere but where it should be. Maybe see you around…thanks for calling. Bye!’

Before she could weaken and betray her anguished regret, she finished the call. Maybe see you around? Lizzie flinched. Some chance! Her fashionable nights out on the town in the top clubs and restaurants were at an end.

In outraged disbelief, Sebasten registered that she had cut him off. Who the bloody hell did Lizzie Denton think she was? When the shock of that unfamiliar treatment had receded, a hard smile began to curve his wide, sensual mouth. She was trying to play hard to get to wind him up and increase his interest. He phoned his secretary and told her to find him a decorator willing to work that night.

By six that evening, Lizzie was whacked and on the brink of tears of frustration. Practically everything she possessed including herself was covered with paint and the first layer on the ceiling and two of the walls had dried all streaky and horrible. When a knock sounded on the door, she thrust paint-spattered fingers through her tumbled hair and tugged open the door.

Sebasten stood there like a glorious vision lifted straight from some glossy society-magazine page. His casual dark blue designer suit screamed class and expense and accentuated his height and well-built, muscular frame. A flock of butterflies broke loose in her tummy and her heartbeat hit the Richter scale while she hovered, staring at him in surprise.

‘What are you wearing?’ Sebasten enquired, brilliant golden eyes raking over what looked very like a leotard but his true concentration absorbed by the lithe perfection of the female body delineated by the thin, tight fabric. Instantaneous lust ripped through him and smouldering fury at his lack of control over his own libido followed in its wake.

‘Exercise gear…I didn’t have anything else suitable.’ She was unsurprised that he was staring: she knew she had to look a total fright with no make-up on. ‘I’d have been better doing it naked!’ she quipped tautly, her mind a total blank while she tried to work out what he was doing on her doorstep.

Naked; now there was an idea…Sebasten stopped that forbidden thought dead in its tracks but lust had a more tenacious hold still on his taut length.

‘I’ve brought a decorating crew…and we’re going out to dinner,’ he informed her, scanning the chaos of the room and the horrendous state of the walls with elevated brows of wonderment, certain that should he have taken the notion he could have done a far more efficient job. ‘Grab some clothes. We’ll stop off at my place and you can get changed there, leaving the crew to get stuck in.’

‘You’ve brought…decorators?’ Lizzie was still staring at him with very wide green eyes, striving to absorb his announcement that he had drummed up decorators to finish her room for her. She was stunned but even more stunned by the manner in which he just dropped that astonishing announcement on her. As if it was the most natural thing in the world that he should hire decorators so that she could be free to join him for dinner. This, she registered, was a male who never took no for an answer, who put his own wishes first, who was willing to move proverbial mountains if it got him what he wanted.

‘Why not?’ Sebasten turned his devastating smile on her and, in spite of her discomfiture at what he had done and what it revealed about his character, her heart sat up and begged and sang at that smile. ‘You did say painting wasn’t a lot of fun.’

‘And I’m not exactly brilliant at it,’ Lizzie muttered, head in a whirl while she reminded herself that it was also a compliment that he should go to such extravagant lengths just to spend time with her. He might not be willing to wield a paintbrush for her benefit but he was certainly no sleeper in the practicality stakes.

‘So?’

Aware of his impatience and even while telling herself that she ought not to let herself react to that or be influenced by his macho methods into giving instant agreement, Lizzie found herself digging into the wardrobe and drawing out a raincoat to pull on over her leotard. ‘I’m a complete mess,’ she pointed out anxiously, grabbing up a bag and banging back into the wardrobe and several drawers to remove garments.

‘You’ll clean up to perfection,’ Sebasten asserted, planting a lean hand to her spine to hustle her out of the room.

‘Are you always this ruthless about getting your own way?’ Lizzie asked breathlessly after she had passed her keys over to the businesslike-looking decorators waiting by their van on the street below and had warned them that she had bought rubbish paint.

‘Always,’ Sebasten confirmed without hesitation, lean, powerful face serious. ‘I work hard. I play hard. And I didn’t want to wait another week before I saw you again, pethi mou.’

Clutching her raincoat round her, Lizzie tried to keep her feet mentally on the ground but her imagination was already soaring to dizzy heights. Presumably he had been really, really busy all week but couldn’t he at least have called to chat even if he hadn’t had the time to see her sooner? Squashing that unwelcome reflection, she discovered that she couldn’t wait to tell him about the highlight of her week.

‘I’ve got an interview for a job tomorrow afternoon,’ she told him with considerable pride.

‘Where?’

‘CI…it’s a big City Company,’ Lizzie advanced with a grin.

Sebasten veiled his amused gaze with dense black lashes. Select Recruitment had come up trumps on his request and even faster than they had promised, for the agency had not yet come back to him to confirm that she had paid them a visit. CI was his company and the fact that she hadn’t even registered yet that CI stood for Contaxis International did not say a lot about the amount of homework she had done in advance of the interview. Or was she just pretending and did she know darned well that it was his company?

‘Of course, it’s only a temporary position where I fill in for other people on holiday and stuff but I gather that if I do OK it could become permanent,’ Lizzie continued.