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Pregnant By The Millionaire
Carole Mortimer
Carole Mortimer is one of Mills & Boon’s best loved Modern Romance authors. With nearly 200 books published and a career spanning 35 years, Mills & Boon are thrilled to present her complete works available to download for the very first time! Rediscover old favourites - and find new ones! - in this fabulous collection…One night…Hebe can't believe she's ended up in her handsome boss's bed! But it seems dashing Nick Cavendish just needed some comfort on the anniversary of his young son's death…One baby…Nick tries to dismiss Hebe, as he does all his women. But it's not so easy when delectable Hebe is his assistant and their one night had consequences!One marriage of convenience?Nick is delighted to have a second chance at fatherhood. But no child of his will be illegitimate. Now he’s determined to make Hebe his wife…!
Pregnant by the Millionaire
Carole Mortimer
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#uaa2f9dcb-c324-5afa-bc0a-4997fa273430)
Title Page (#ue654f399-5ef1-536f-94fe-4a8979ad7bab)
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u973dc111-b9aa-500a-ad24-486d2487f7b9)
NICK woke up alone.
Which was strange, because he was pretty sure he hadn’t been alone when he’d fallen into a satiated asleep several hours ago.
Something about a goddess…?
Ah, yes—Hebe, the goddess of youth.
Tall, slender, with a long, straight curtain of silver-blonde hair and eyes of so pale a brown they were gold. Strange magnetic eyes, that gleamed with a multitude of secrets.
Not that he was interested in learning those secrets. Hebe had merely been a distraction, a way of putting the past and all the pain and the significance of the day behind him. He had wanted to forget, be diverted, and the presence of Hebe Johnson had certainly provided that. For a few hours, at least.
So where was she? It was still dark outside, and the tangled sheets beside him were still warm, so she couldn’t have been gone long.
He frowned slightly at the thought of her having just disappeared into the night. That was usually his privilege! Wine, dine and bed a woman, but never ever become involved—least of all allow them into the inner privacy of his life.
Of course that was slightly more difficult when it was his bed they had shared!
Because she didn’t live alone, he remembered now. Something about a flatmate. So after dinner he had brought her back to his apartment over the gallery for a drink instead—and other things!—breaking his cardinal rule in the bargain.
Two rules, in fact, he acknowledged with a grimace as he remembered that Hebe actually worked for him, two floors down, in the Cavendish Gallery on the ground floor.
But desperate times called for desperate measures, and so he had brought Hebe back here, needing to lose himself in the lithe beauty of her perfect, long-limbed body. And he had. He’d found himself dazzled, bewitched—the fact that she wasn’t one of the sophisticated women who usually had a brief place in his life, adding to the excitement of the evening. To the point that his pain had been anaesthetised, if not completely erased.
Nick gave a groan as he remembered what yesterday signified, moving to sit up in the bed, needing to get away from the scene of that heated lovemaking now, and standing up to turn his back on those tumbled sheets before walking out of the bedroom.
Only to come to an abrupt halt as he saw he wasn’t alone after all.
Hebe, the goddess, was just switching the light off as she came out of the kitchen with a glass of water in her hand, her nakedness only shielded by the fine silver-blonde hair that reached almost to her waist.
Nick instantly felt a stirring of renewed arousal as he looked at that golden body—legs long and silky, hips and waist slenderly curvaceous, breasts firm and uptilting, the nipples rosily pouting.
As if begging to be kissed. Again.
He had noticed her at the gallery several months ago, her beauty such that it was impossible for her not to stand out. But he hadn’t so much as spoken to her until yesterday.
And now he wanted her. Again.
‘What are you doing?’ he prompted huskily as he padded softly across the room to join her, with only a small table-light for illumination.
Hebe’s breath caught in her throat just at the sight of him. She was still not quite sure how she had ended up in Nick Cavendish’s apartment. In his bed. In his arms.
She had been captivated by him since the moment she’d first seen him. In love, or more probably in lust, she acknowledged ruefully as she easily remembered each kiss and caress of the previous night, having been totally lost from the first moment Nick had held her in his arms and touched her.
Or perhaps she had been lost before that…
An American, the charismatic Nick Cavendish owned the London art gallery where she worked, as well as others in Paris and New York. His time was equally divided between the three, with apartments on the top floor of each building always ready for his use.
Hebe had been working at the gallery for several weeks before she’d first caught a glimpse of the elusive owner.
When he’d walked forcefully into the west room of the gallery four months ago, seemingly filled with boundless energy as he fired instructions one of the managers, Hebe had felt as if all the air had been knocked out of her lungs.
Over six feet tall, his body lithe and muscular, with overlong dark hair swept back from his olive-skinned face, and eyes a deep, deep blue, there was a wild ruggedness about him that spoke of the energy of a caged tiger. With the same threat of danger!
But she had never in her wildest dreams imagined he would notice her, a lowly junior employee. She had been leaving the gallery the evening before when she’d accidentally walked straight into him, but instead of getting a scornful look, as she had expected, they had both laughed and apologized. Still, she’d been totally stunned when he’d asked if she would join him for dinner, on the basis that she had worked at the gallery for some months now and it was time the two of them became acquainted.
Became acquainted!
They had become a lot more than that last night. Hebe was sure that not an inch of her body hadn’t known the intimate touch of his hands or lips.
Her cheeks were flushed now with the memory of that intimacy.
And at the naked perfection of his body now. A body, as she had discovered the previous evening, that had that olive tan all over, a light covering of dark hair on the muscular width of his chest, and down over powerful hips and thighs.
As she saw the renewed state of his arousal, she felt a liquid melting between her own thighs as heat coursed through her already languorous body.
‘I hope you don’t mind—I was thirsty,’ she answered him huskily, holding up the glass of water she had been drinking from.
Nick was thirsty too—but not for water. Taking the glass out of her hand, he placed it on a table, his eyes darkening as his head lowered to kiss one enticing nipple. He looked up into Hebe’s face as he stroked his tongue moistly over that sensitive tip, feeling the increasing hardness of his own body as she groaned low in her throat, eyes gleaming like molten gold as her body arched against him, dark lashes sweeping low over her flushed cheeks.
She was beautiful, this goddess of youth, and he wanted to lose himself in her once again. Not to blot out the painful memories of yesterday this time, but because he wanted her with a fierceness that told him he wouldn’t be gentle with her. That he couldn’t be. He needed to drive his body into hers, but knew she would meet that desire with a heat of her own. As she had before.
He straightened to swing her up into his arms, capturing her mouth with his, tongue plundering, as her arms moved up about his neck, her fingers becoming entangled in the darkness of his hair.
Hebe was trembling as he laid her down amidst the twisted sheets, his mouth deepening its possession of hers as one of his hands caressed the burning tip of her breast, the nipple already hard and aroused, sending sensations of heat and liquid fire through the rest of her body.
She restlessly caressed the broad width of his back, before trailing a path to the firmness of his thighs, touching him there, loving the feel of his hardness against her hand. The groan low in his throat assured her that he approved too.
Nick fell back against the pillows as Hebe began to kiss his chest, down to the hollow of his flat stomach, and even lower over the hardness of his thighs. His breath caught in his throat as he felt the sensuous flick of her tongue against his heated flesh, and at the same time he knew that he wouldn’t be able to take too much of this, that he wanted to be between the engulfing warmth of her thighs, inside her, stroking them both to that shuddering climax that he remembered so clearly—twice—from the night before.
He moved above her, looking down into her aroused face as he slowly entered her, her hips moving up to meet his, taking him deep inside her as she began to move slowly against him.
Hebe gasped minutes—hours?—later, as she felt the pleasure pulsing hotly through her, her body shuddering and quivering as that pleasure erupted out of control, taking her with it.
Taking Nick with it too, pulsating deep and deliciously inside her as he surrendered to the sensations of his body.
Hebe lay with her head resting against his chest in the aftermath, his arm about her waist, holding her loosely at his side.
She had never experienced anything like this. Their bodies seemed completely in tune, their lovemaking almost balletic in its intensity of emotion.
She smiled to herself as she realised how happy she felt, how totally relaxed and fulfilled. She really could so easily fall completely, mindlessly, in love with this man. If she wasn’t already!
Which, considering her uninhibited response to him, she had a feeling she just might be.
Whatever, she felt closer to him than she ever had to anyone before, and wondered what the future held for them. Would they spend the day together? It was Sunday, so neither of them had to be at work today. Maybe they would make breakfast together? Before making love. Then perhaps they would go for a walk in the nearby park. Before making love. And then they could…
Hebe, exhausted and happy, drifted off to sleep.
Nick lay sleepless beside her, his body filled with satiation but his mind suddenly crystal clear.
Hebe Johnson was beautiful and desirable, and responded to him in a completely uninhibited way that he found irresistable. But it was her lack of control that warned him he had to resist her. Not for him the silken shackles of any woman, the cosy togetherness that tightened those ties until no thought or action could be called his own. Never again. That way lay all the pain and despair he had tried so hard to blot out the night before.
And she was still his employee. Untouchable, in fact. Though he had already done a hell of a lot more than touch her!
Creating a situation he had always avoided in the past.
Since his divorce two years ago he had known lots of women, had wined and dined them, bedded them, and moved on without any regrets. None of those relationships had lasted long enough to forge any sort of bond, least of all an emotional one. But an employee, as he had always known and therefore avoided, was going to be a little more difficult to walk away from.
But he was going to do it anyway. Walk away and not look back.
Quite what he’d do about the fact that Hebe worked for him he wasn’t sure yet. The easiest way would be to dispense with her services at the gallery. But it didn’t seem quite fair that she should lose her job because she had gone to bed with him. In fact, most women would assume their job was more secure after going to bed with the boss!
He turned slightly to look at her as she slept in his arms. Was that the reason Hebe had come so willingly with him the night before? The reason she had come back here and made love with him?
If it was, she was in for a nasty surprise!
No one, and nothing, held Nick Cavendish any more—least of all a silver-haired siren with golden eyes.
Hebe felt almost shy as she came into the ultra-modern kitchen several hours later.
Having woken up alone in Nick Cavendish’s huge four-poster bed, with the disarray of the bedclothes a stark reminder of the heated lovemaking that had taken place there both last night and earlier this morning—as if she needed any reminder—she had collected up her scattered clothes and gone through to the luxury of the adjoining bathroom to shower and dress before going in search of Nick.
He was here, in the spacious kitchen, his back towards her as he made coffee, having pulled on faded denims and a black tee shirt over his nakedness.
Hebe looked at him, watching the muscles rippling in the broadness of his back as he moved, his shoulder-length dark hair brushed back to curl loosely against the nape of his neck.
Aged thirty-eight—twelve years older than her own twenty-six—he was without doubt the most gorgeous man she had ever seen. All over, she remembered with a pleasurable flush. Not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his body, and his hands—those hands that had caressed her so thoroughly—were long and tapered. And he made love with an artistry that spoke of an experience she came nowhere near matching.
Of course he had been married. For five years, according to Kate, another assistant at the gallery. Hebe had learnt this after Nick’s second whirlwind visit three months ago, when he had snapped and snarled at them all before disappearing again on his way to terrorise the staff at his Paris gallery.
Kate had explained that he could be like that sometimes—that there had been a son from the marriage, a little boy who had died when he was only four. His death had precipitated the break-up and divorce of his parents two years ago, and still sometimes sent Nick Cavendish spiralling into a inferno of dark emotions that seemed to find no outlet.
Not surprising, really. Hebe could imagine nothing more traumatic than the death of your young child. But these intriguing snatches of information about her employer had only increased her interest in this enigmatically charismatic man.
She had watched him covertly during his lightning visits to the gallery. She had seen him dark and brooding as on that second visit, and smiling occasionally, but once laughing outright, which had softened and smoothed the lines of experience from his face, making him look almost boyish. Except for the deep well of pain never far from those intense blue eyes.
So he swept sporadically into the gallery, bringing his life and vitality with him, inspiring the people around him with his intensity, fascinating and intriguing Hebe—before once again disappearing and taking all that vitality with him.
But never in Hebe’s wildest dreams had she ever imagined he would invite her out to dinner in the way that he had, that she would spend the night here with him in his apartment.
Nick sensed rather than heard Hebe’s entrance into the kitchen, and he was aware of her silence as she stood in the doorway behind him whilst he continued to prepare the coffee, to delay the moment when they would have to make conversation. Conversation, he found, served very little purpose after spending the night with a woman.
To him, the following morning had always been the worst part of the brief, unfocused relationships he had indulged in before and since his divorce. What were you supposed to talk about, for God’s sake? The weather? Who was going to win the tennis championship this year? The big U.S. golf tournament? Hardly post-lovemaking conversation topics, any of them!
But the alternative was discussing when they would see each other again—and that was just as unacceptable to Nick. Especially in this case. He knew now that he had made a terrible mistake in getting involved with Hebe Johnson, and certainly didn’t intend compounding the situation by pretending this relationship—one-night-stand?—had any future.
Oh, well—time to face the music, Nick decided impatiently, and he turned to face her. The quicker he got this over with, the sooner he would be able to get on with his life.
She was once again dressed in the black silk blouse and fitted black trousers she had worn the day before, her hair falling silkily about her shoulders, her make-up attempting, and not quite succeeding, to hide the slight redness to her chin, where his late-night stubble and the intensity of their kisses had scratched that delicate creamy skin.
He wasn’t even going to go there! No more thoughts of how wild and willing this woman had been in his arms. Otherwise he would just end up taking her back to bed again.
‘Ready to leave?’ he questioned dismissively as he took in her appearance. ‘Or would you like a cup of coffee before you go?’ He held up the coffeepot.
Hebe frowned at his abruptness. He couldn’t wait to get rid of her, could he? So much for her imaginings of them spending the day together, talking together, laughing together, making love again…!
‘I—don’t think so, thank you,’ she refused uncertainly, wondering if he really just expected her to leave now that the night was over.
An awkward silence followed.
What was she waiting for? Nick wondered impatiently. He had offered her coffee, she had refused, now it would be better for both of them if she just—
‘I—perhaps I had better be going.’ She spoke awkwardly as she seemed to sense his unspoken urging. Questioningly. As if she expected him to ask her to stay.
For what reason? They’d had dinner. They’d made love. They’d both enjoyed it. And now it was over. What else did she want from him? Because he had nothing else to give!
‘My flatmate will probably be wondering where I’ve got to,’ she added with a frown.
Nick hadn’t bothered to ask last night whether that flatmate was male or female. He had been too caught up in smothering, numbing, his own inner pain, to care.
But he felt curious now, and wondered if Hebe Johnson were engaged, or at least had a steady boyfriend. She didn’t come over as the sort of woman who indulged in extra-relationship affairs. But then, she hadn’t exactly come over as the sort of woman who would go to bed with him last night either—and look how wrong he had been about that!
This was extremely awkward, Hebe decided uncomfortably as she continued to stand in the doorway, having no idea how she was supposed to behave the-morning-after-the-night-before. Probably because it was a long time since there had been a morning-after-the-night-before for her!
Not that she was a complete innocent—she had been in a relationship years ago, when she was at university. But she had never stayed in a man’s apartment all night before, and as this man was Nick Cavendish, her employer for the last six months, it was doubly awkward.
He merely looked relieved at her suggestion that she leave. ‘If you’re sure you don’t want coffee?’ he prompted dismissively, as he poured some coffee into a mug for himself—black, with no sugar.
The repeat of the offer was made more out of politeness than anything else, Hebe realised with a sinking of her heart, as Nick sat down at the breakfast bar to take a sip of the steaming brew, no longer even looking at her.
She had been completely overwhelmed by the attention of this ruggedly handsome, gorgeously seductive man the night before, and hadn’t been able to believe her luck when he had seemed to return her interest. But it looked as if she might have plenty of time to repent at leisure if his distant behaviour now was anything to go by.
Her cue not to make this any more embarrassing than it already was…
‘I’ll go, then,’ she announced brightly. ‘I—thank you for dinner last night,’ she added awkwardly.
And everything else, she could have added, but didn’t. After the intimacies they had shared the night before, this really was too embarrassingly awful. Something she didn’t intend ever to repeat if this was what it felt like the following morning.
She looked a little bewildered by his abruptness, Nick acknowledged with a certain guilty irritation after glancing at her. Those amazing gold-coloured eyes were wide with wariness, and her cheeks had gone slightly pale at his obvious lack of enthusiasm.
What had she expected, for goodness’ sake? That he would make declarations of undying love for her this morning? Assure her he couldn’t live without her and invite her to come along with him to New York when he left later this morning?
Damn it, this was real life—not some fairy story. And they were adults, not romantic children!
They had both had a good time, but that was all it had been.
‘I’m going back to New York later on today,’ he told her dismissively. ‘But I’ll give you a call, okay?’ he added—knowing he had no intention of doing any such thing.
He should never have become personally involved with an employee in the first place, so he certainly didn’t intend to arrange to see Hebe Johnson on a social level again.
For one thing, he knew that if he met up with Hebe again, away from the gallery, then they would end up in bed together again too. Even now, looking at the soft pout of her mouth, that quicksilver hair, the willowy curves of her body in the silky blouse and fitted black trousers, he felt the stirring of desire for her—an ache he was absolutely determined to do nothing about.
She was definitely being given the brush-off, Hebe realised painfully. She wasn’t so naïve that she didn’t know that when a man said I’ll call you after spending the night, without so much as asking for your telephone number, it meant that he had no intention of ever contacting you again!
Of course Nick was slightly different, in that he could, if he wanted, get her telephone number from Personnel at the Cavendish Gallery. She just didn’t think, from his dismissive attitude this morning, that he was ever going to want to.
The excitement of having dinner with him last night, and the hours they had spent making love, and now being summararily dismissed this morning had ultimately to be the most humiliating experience of her entire life.
She couldn’t get out of here fast enough!
She looked as if she were going to make a mad dash out of here without so much as a goodbye, Nick realised. Well, that was what he wanted, wasn’t it? He frowned unwittingly, acknowledging that he didn’t enjoy being on the receiving end of a casual dismissal. He was always the one to bid farewell, not the other way round.
He stood up, smiling slightly as he crossed the kitchen to put his arms about Hebe’s waist and pull her into the hardness of his body. ‘Goodbye, Hebe!’ he murmured, his arousal undeniable.
She looked up at him, five or six inches shorter than his own six feet two inches in height, her eyes golden globes of uncertainty.
Hell, she had beautiful eyes, Nick thought with an inward groan. Beautiful everything, if his memory didn’t deceive him. And he knew that it didn’t.
Maybe they could meet again after all—
No! Don’t be an idiot, Nick, he rebuked himself impatiently. Much better to just leave it like this.
Leave it, and hope that with time they would both forget last night had ever happened…
He certainly intended doing exactly that!
CHAPTER TWO (#u973dc111-b9aa-500a-ad24-486d2487f7b9)
SIX weeks later Hebe was still waiting for the promised telephone call from Nick Cavendish.
She had been a fool ever to expect that he would phone, of course, and several conversations with Kate over the last few weeks had confirmed that Nick Cavendish did not get seriously involved with any of the women he went out with. The number of women he had been involved with since the end of his marriage, also according to Kate, had been legion, and none of them, Kate had told her wistfully—as if she’d guessed Hebe’s interest was more than casual—had ever been employees of the Cavendish Galleries.
Or if they had they very quickly hadn’t been, Hebe had decided.
In fact, she had lived most of the last six weeks half expecting to be told her employment at the Cavendish Gallery had been terminated. Of course it wasn’t as easy as that to get rid of people nowadays, but she didn’t doubt that if he wanted her out of here, Nick Cavendish would find a way.
The fact that he was—at last!—due back at the London gallery next week, in time for the opening of an exhibition they were giving was not conducive to helping Hebe concentrate on her work.
In fact, she felt decidedly clumsy today, and had been dropping things most of the morning, not seeming to be coordinated at all. Of course she knew the reason for her steadily increasing nervousness. Nick’s arrival next week was approaching with a speed that made her head spin.
Maybe she should have called in sick for a few days. She was certainly feeling more than a little green round the edges, and hadn’t even been able to eat at all today. Her anxiety at the prospect of seeing Nick again seemed to be increasing daily.
Although why she should be the one to feel so nervously on edge was beyond her. After all, Nick Cavendish had been the one to invite her out, not the other way round. And she hadn’t invited herself back to his apartment either. In fact—
‘Hebe?’ rasped an all too familiar voice after six weeks’ silence close to her ear.
She spun round sharply, at the same time dropping the name cards she had been preparing for next week’s exhibition.
‘Sorry!’ she muttered, and she bent to pick them up with shaking fingers, taking the few seconds to bring some composure back to her demeanour.
Nick wasn’t expected until next week!
‘What are you doing here?’ she prompted slowly as she straightened, eyes deeply golden in the paleness of her face.
He returned her gaze mockingly. ‘It may have escaped your memory, Hebe, but I happen to own this gallery and have an apartment on the top floor of the building; I can come here any time I damn well please!’
Well…yes…But if she had had prior notice of his earlier than expected arrival she might not have overreacted in the way she just had. As it was, she felt completely wrong-footed.
She had made her mind up, during Nick’s six weeks of silence, that she was going to be cool and composed when he did come back and would make no reference, if he didn’t, to the fact that they had spent the night together in his apartment on the top floor of the building…
‘Let’s go up to my office,’ Nick added with barely concealed impatience. ‘I want to talk to you.’
He looked just the same, she acknowledged achingly. His olive skin was just as healthily tanned, his blue eyes as sharply intelligent, and his dark hair, though looking as if it had been trimmed slightly, was still long enough to rest silkily on broad shoulders. Dressed formally in a dark grey suit and snowy white shirt, with a silver-grey silk tie knotted neatly at his throat, he looked like a man who was firmly in control.
He looked exactly what he was, in fact—the confident multimillionaire owner of three prestigious art galleries.
Looking at him now, Hebe wondered how she could ever have thought he was seriously interested in her!
‘Hebe!’ he prompted, frowning at her continued silence.
She was behaving like an idiot, she realised, just standing here staring at him, completely tongue-tied by his unexpected appearance in the gallery.
She drew in a deep breath, willing herself to behave naturally. Well, as naturally as it was possible to be when confronted by the man who had haunted her days and filled her dreams for last six weeks!
‘What can I do for you, Mr Cavendish?’ she prompted with calm efficiency.
‘You can come upstairs to my office with me,’ he repeated firmly. ‘Now!’ he added, not even waiting for her answer this time, but turning abruptly on his heel and striding forcefully out of the room.
Kate, who was working nearby, shot Hebe a questioning look as she trailed out of the gallery behind Nick, and Hebe gave her a how-should-I-know? shrug in reply.
Because she really didn’t know what this was about. They had had dinner together, spent a night together, but she hadn’t told anyone about either of those things, let alone tried to contact Nick himself. So what was his problem?
The more she thought about it, acknowledging his brooding silence as he lithely climbed the stairs ahead of her to his office on the second floor, the angrier she became.
Had he expected, on the basis that she had spent the night with the boss, that she would have left her job here before he returned? Was that the reason he was so angry? Because he hadn’t expected to see her still here at all?
Well, that was being more than a little unfair, wasn’t it?
She loved her job here, liked the people she worked with too. Besides, none of the awkwardness of this situation was her fault, damn it!
Nick eyed her irritably as he closed his office door behind them. Unless he was mistaken, from her flushed cheeks and glowing golden eyes, he would take a guess at her being one very indignant young lady.
He perched on the edge of his cool Italian marble desk, which more than one customer at the gallery had tried to buy from him. He had always refused to sell it, though, liking the way it complemented the rest of the room, which was wood-panelled and slightly austere, although it did have a huge picture window that looked out over the river.
‘So, what are you so angry about, Hebe?’ he drawled ruefully, dark brows raised over mocking blue eyes. ‘The fact that I was less than polite just now? Or the fact that I haven’t called you for two months?’ He met her gaze challengingly.
‘Six weeks,’ she came back sharply, her cheeks flushing with colour seconds later.
‘Whatever.’ He shrugged, knowing exactly how long it was since he had last seen her, but having no intention of letting Hebe know that he did.
He had been so sure that Hebe Johnson would be just like all the other women he had known over the last two years—taken and then forgotten. But for some inexplicable reason he hadn’t quite succeeded in doing that where she was concerned. Memories of those golden eyes, that lithe silken body, came flashing into his mind at the most inconvenient of times. Irritating him intensely.
The flash of anger now in the depths of her warm eyes, and the way the fullness of those sensuous lips had tightened slightly, told him his careless attitude had only succeeded in increasing her anger. Which didn’t particularly affect him.
Not on a business level, anyway.
On a personal level, he found both things sexy as hell!
She looked good today too, dressed in a cream blouse tucked into the tiny waistband of a knee-length fitted black skirt, her legs long and silky.
So much for his absence from the London gallery these last six weeks, his deliberate lack of the promised telephone call, his self-assurances that when he came back he would have forgotten all about Hebe Johnson!
Even before he’d seen the painting he had known he hadn’t managed to do that.
His own mouth tightened as he glanced over to where he had placed the painting, on a stand to one side of his wide office, with a cover over it to protect it. But also so that Hebe Johnson shouldn’t see it until he was ready for her to do so…
Hebe eyed Nick scathingly as he stood looking at her, and, even though inside was shaking, she gripped her hands tightly together to prevent Nick from seeing they were trembling.
‘I’m sorry—were you supposed to call me?’ she came back, with all the coolness she could muster.
Which was quite considerable, if the way his mouth thinned and his eyes narrowed to glittering blue slits was anything to go by!
‘Okay, Hebe, forget that for the moment,’ he dismissed briskly. ‘And tell me what you know about Andrew Southern?’
She frowned as she dredged her memory for the relevant facts about the artist, having no idea why Nick was asking the question—unless it was an effort on his part to prove that she didn’t know her job, so giving him an excuse to fire her?
She swallowed hard. ‘English. Born 1953. Started painting in his early twenties, mainly portraits, but later moved on to landscapes—more recently the Alaskan wilderness—’
‘I’m not asking for a bio on the guy, Hebe!’ Nick cut in tersely, standing up restlessly. ‘I asked what you know about him?’
‘Me?’ She blinked, stepping back slightly in the face of his leashed vitality. ‘I’ve just told you what I know about him—’
‘Don’t be so coy, Hebe,’ he cut her off again abruptly, blue eyes mocking. ‘I’m not asking for details, just a confirmation that you know him. And if you can contact him personally.’
She was totally bewildered now. This conversation didn’t appear to have anything to do with that night six weeks ago at all, nor with an effort to prove her incompetent, but everything, it seemed, to do with the artist Andrew Southern. Of whom she was an admirer, but had certainly never met him, let alone knew him personally.
She wasn’t going to acknowledge the relationship, Nick realized frustratedly. Well, the guy was old enough to be her father, so maybe that explained her reluctance to talk about him. Whatever, Nick had been trying to arrange a meeting with Andrew Southern for years. For once neither the name Nick Cavendish nor the Cavendish Galleries themselves had opened that particular door. And now it seemed that Hebe, of all people, might be the key to that meeting.
From deciding that he had to stay as far away from Hebe as possible in future, or else take her to his bed again, he had now discovered that if he wanted to get anywhere near Andrew Southern with the idea of an exhibition of his work, then Hebe was the person he had to talk to.
‘Look, Hebe, let’s start this conversation again, shall we?’ he reasoned pleasantly. ‘I accept that I overstepped the employer/employee line with you six weeks ago, but by the same token you have to accept that it wasn’t all one sided, huh?’
Hebe eyed him derisively. If that was his attempt at an apology for the night they had spent together, or for his non-existent telephone call since, then it was pretty lame. Besides which, an apology for the former was insulting, to say the least, just as an off-hand apology for the latter was totally inadequate.
She had been so miserable these last six weeks, wondering where she had gone wrong, what she had done to make Nick Cavendish not even want to call her again, let alone see her.
And now he had turned up unexpectedly, dismissing their night together as the satisfying of a brief, mutual attraction, before going on to talk about Andrew Southern—an artist of phenomenal reputation, and known as a complete recluse, who had been so for almost thirty years.
Making her realise just how little she understood Nick Cavendish.
She eyed him coolly now. ‘Is that all?’
‘No, of course—!’ He broke off to draw in a deeply controlling breath. ‘Are you deliberately trying to annoy me?’ He looked at her with narrowed eyes.
She gave a mocking lift of her eyebrows. ‘I seem to be doing that without trying!’
He relaxed slightly, an amused smile slightly curving those sculptured lips. ‘I see now why I found you so intriguing that night,’ he murmured softly.
It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Not here. Not now.
She had spent the first week after his departure back to New York in a frenzy of self-recrimination, with a deep-felt need for Nick to call her to nullify all those negative thoughts.
She was in love with him, totally physically enthralled with him—and this was the twenty-first century, for goodness’ sake, not the Dark Ages, where a woman’s wants and needs weren’t considered as important as a man’s, she had chided herself.
She had done nothing wrong by spending the night with a man she found so attractive and who had wanted her too!
But as the days and weeks had passed those assurances hadn’t meant a whole lot.
And now standing here looking at Nick, they meant absolutely nothing.
She grimaced. ‘I think it might be better if we both just forgot about that, don’t you?’
It was a statement rather than a question, and Nick found himself deeply irritated by her easy dismissal.
Okay, so he hadn’t been able to wait to get her out of his apartment that morning six weeks ago, and he hadn’t called her as he said he would, but it was a bit of knock to his ego to realise that she was willing to dismiss the memories of him as easily as he had tried to dismiss her.
Or was she…?
He took a step towards her, lids lowered as he looked down at her with dark blue eyes, trailing one caressing finger down the smooth curve of her cheek. ‘Am I so easy to forget, Hebe?’ he murmured seductively, knowing that this was probably another mistake, but finding her coolness infuriating as hell. ‘Was our lovemaking easy to forget too? Or has it kept you awake nights, thinking of all the ways we touched and aroused each other?’
She gave him a startled look even as the colour entered her cheeks, her lips parting slightly as her body swayed towards his.
‘I thought so…’ He murmured his satisfaction with her response, his wandering fingers parting her lips slightly, caressing that softness, before trailing the length of her throat down to the deep vee of her blouse and the creamy swell of her breasts. All the time his challenging gaze continued to hold hers.
How could this be happening? Hebe inwardly protested, even as she felt herself responding to his touch. The arousal of her breasts was instant, the nipples hard and sensitive, as she reached out instinctively to cling tightly to the broad width of his shoulders, her legs seeming in danger of melting beneath her.
But as suddenly as he had touched her she found herself thrust away from him, and Nick was stepping back, that devilishly handsome face now set in scathing dismissal.
‘You really are a sexy little thing, aren’t you?’ he mused as he leant back against his desk, his blue gaze considering now, as he looked at the firm thrust of her breasts against her cream blouse.
‘Mr Cavendish—’
‘Oh, come on, Hebe,’ he drawled tauntingly, shaking his head slightly, those blue eyes alight with mocking laughter. ‘You can hardly go back to calling me that after sharing your body with me,’ he reminded her, with a challenging rise of that square, uncompromising chin.
Hebe felt the colour warm her cheeks at his deliberate taunting. Why was he doing this to her? What perverse pleasure did he get out of humiliating her in this way?
She straightened defensively, glaring at him. ‘At the same time as you shared your body with me!’ she came back, with all the fury of her humiliation, uncaring now if this was just his way of trying to get her to resign from her job at the gallery.
Fine. Let him sack her. She was quickly reaching the point where she didn’t care.
His smile was derisive. ‘I’m flattered that amongst all your other lovers you’ve even remembered me.’
All her other—! What was he talking about? She had had one relationship before him, and that had been five years ago; ancient history rather than recent.
‘Let’s stop playing this game, shall we?’ Nick said impatiently as he stood up.
‘Gladly!’ she agreed tautly. ‘Can I go back to work now?’ If she didn’t get out of here soon she was very much afraid the humiliating tears that blurred her vision would escape and begin to fall hotly down her cheeks!
‘No, you damn well—’ Nick broke off abruptly, drawing in controlling breaths as he realised she had to be deliberately baiting him.
Because he knew of her relationship with Andrew Southern?
Probably, he accepted scathingly. Okay, so as an artist the man was a legend in his own lifetime, but he was still a man aged in his fifties, and Hebe was only in her mid-twenties. And Nick had wondered if he was too old for her!
‘Okay, Hebe,’ he began reasoningly. ‘I accept that your affair with Andrew Southern is none of my business—’
‘My what?’ she gasped incredulously, gold eyes wide with disbelief.
‘It’s past history, I realise that—’
‘Past—!’ Hebe gave a dazed shake of her head. ‘But I told you. I don’t even know Andrew Southern!’ she protested indignantly.
‘Evidence proves the contrary—’
‘Evidence?’ she repeated disgustedly. ‘Look, Nick, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ She shook her head, that amazing silver-blonde hair moving silkily against her creamy cheeks. ‘Maybe you have jet-lag, and it’s affecting your judgement. I don’t know, but—’
‘I came back from New York last week, Hebe,’ he told her softly, his gaze narrowing as she looked at him sharply. ‘I’d received information that there was a possibility of a hitherto unseen Andrew Southern coming up for sale in the north of England.’ His mouth twisted. ‘As you can imagine, I had no intention of letting anyone but Cavendish Galleries own that painting.’
‘For Cavendish Galleries read Nick Cavendish!’ she came back scathingly.
‘Exactly.’He smiled in acknowledgement of her derision. ‘Imagine my surprise when I saw the subject of the painting!’
Hebe gave a dazed shake of her head. She had no idea what this conversation was about, or where it could possibly be going. But Nick, it seemed, had been back in England a week already. A week during which he had neither telephoned her nor tried to see her again.
Until today. When he had done nothing but humiliate and embarrass her.
But he had taken her in his arms too…
To prove a point. Nothing else. And he had proved it too, hadn’t he? She responded to him even when she didn’t want to.
Sometimes she wasn’t sure if she didn’t hate him rather than love him!
‘The subject of the painting…?’she prompted frowningly.
‘Yes.’ Nick was looking at her with narrowed eyes now. ‘A portrait. A woman. A very beautiful woman, in fact.’ He shrugged his broad shoulders as if that point was indisputable.
‘It’s one of his earlier paintings then—?’
‘No,’ Nick cut in with certainty. ‘I can categorically say this work is recent. The last five years or so, I would say,’ he added consideringly.
‘But I thought he didn’t paint portraits any more—’
‘Obviously this woman inspired him to do so,’ Nick cut in dryly.
Hebe didn’t like the way he was looking at her now, as if critically dissecting every part of her body.
A body he had come to know intimately six weeks ago…
Except he hadn’t seemed to find anything to critisise about it then, had he?
She shrugged. ‘As far as I’m aware, Andrew Southern hasn’t painted a portrait for over twenty years.’
‘Are you doubting my expertise, Hebe?’ Nick snapped tautly.
No, she wasn’t doing that. Not in any way! She knew only too well what an masterful lover he was. And he hadn’t built up the prestigious worldwide reputation of the Cavendish Galleries by not being extremely knowledgable about art. He knew his subject equally as well as he knew how to be a lover!
Nick was growing tired of Hebe’s prevarication. He strode forcefully across his office to flick the covering from the painting displayed there, his piercing gaze never leaving Hebe’s face as he did so. He wanted to see her reaction to the portrait.
Her eyes widened as she stared blankly at the portrait, her body tensing rigidly.
Not surprising, really, Nick thought with hard amusement.
The painting was of her. Sitting sideways on a chair, wearing a clinging dress of midnight-blue, her hair a glorious curtain of silver down the long length of her spine.
And that was where the formality of the portrait began and ended!
Because her expression could only be called sultry, with a knowing smile curving those pouting, kissable lips, and her eyes, those wonderful golden eyes, half closed as if in arousal. Her breasts were thrust slightly forward beneath the blue dress, the material clinging so closely to those long silken limbs that it was impossible to believe she wore anything beneath it.
That Hebe wore anything beneath it.
Because the woman was most certainly her.
Nick had kissed those same lips six weeks ago. Seen that arousal in her eyes. Caressed the proud tilt of those breasts. Suckled on those rosy nipples. And those long silken limbs had been wrapped around him more than once that night too.
‘Who is she…?’
Nick turned sharply back to look at Hebe as she spoke in a whisper, his frown deepening as he saw how pale she was, her eyes like golden orbs in that pallor.
But they both knew her question was totally unnecessary. ‘Oh, come on, Hebe.’ He sighed his impatience as he moved to stand beside her. ‘It’s you, damn it!’ He would have reached out and shaken her, except that she looked as if she might disintegrate at the slightest touch.
No doubt she had never thought this portrait—a portrait painted by a man who had obviously put the love he felt for its subject into every brushstroke—would ever be seen by the general public. That was the reason for her obvious shock. In fact, it was pure luck that it hadn’t gone into a local auction with a lot of other things from a house cleared out by relatives after the death of its owner, consequently disappearing back into the realms of obscurity.
Luckily enough, the autioneer had been experienced enough to know the Andrew Southern signature—a swan with the single letter S beside it—and had called a friend of his in London to see if any of the big dealers were interested in coming to look at it. Nick most certainly had been, getting the man’s promise that he would let no one else view it until he had flown in from New York to see it.
One look at the painting, at the almost luminous style that marked it as Southern’s work and not some pale imitation, and Nick had known he had to have the painting. At any price.
It had taken some time and considerable skill to negotiate that price with the new owner and the auctioneer before bringing his prize back to London this morning, and his first priority had been to talk to Hebe Johnson.
Undoubtedly the woman in the portrait.
And, at the time of the painting, Andrew Southern’s lover.
Something she seemed to be denying most strongly!
Hebe moved forward as if in a dream, her hand moving up to touch the painting, her fingers stopping only centimetres away from the canvas, trembling slightly. Her breathing was shallow.
‘Who is she?’ she repeated emotionally.
Nick stepped forward. ‘For God’s sake, Hebe, it’s you—’
‘It isn’t me!’ She turned to look at him, able to feel the rapid beat of her pulse in her throat. ‘Look at it again, Nick,’ she told him shakily, pleadingly, turning to look at the painting, a gut-wrenching pain in her chest as she did so.
‘Of course it’s you—’
‘No,’ she cut in quietly again. ‘She has a birthmark, Nick. Look. There.’ She pointed to the rose-shaped birthmark on the swell of one creamy breast, visible above the low neckline of the deep blue dress. ‘And look here.’ She pulled aside the open neck of her cream blouse, revealing her own creamy breast.
Completely bare of that rose-shaped birthmark…
Whoever the woman in the portrait was it most certainly wasn’t Hebe.
She knew it wasn’t.
But if it wasn’t her, who—?
No, it couldn’t be!
Could it…?
And that was when everything went dark…
CHAPTER THREE (#u973dc111-b9aa-500a-ad24-486d2487f7b9)
NICK inwardly cursed as he leapt forward to catch Hebe before she hit the carpeted floor, swinging her up in his arms to carry her over to the leather sofa at the back of the room.
He had been expecting some sort of reaction to the portrait, but it certainly hadn’t been this!
Embarassment, perhaps—because it was obvious that Andrew Southern had been Hebe’s lover. And surprise that Nick actually had possession of the portrait had also been a possibility.
But he certainly hadn’t expected Hebe to faint as she denied she was the woman in the portrait!
That birthmark apart—a pretty rose-shaped mark—there was no one else it could be but her.
He laid her down on the sofa, and Hebe started to groan slightly as she came back to consciousness, finally opening her eyes to look up at him as he bent over him.
And instantly closing them again, as if even the sight of him was too much for her.
‘Hey, come on, Hebe. I realise I’m no oil painting, but I’m not that bad either!’ he mocked as he moved back slightly.
The painting, Hebe remembered with a pained wince, trying to collect herself. But to come to terms with the enormity of what she had seen, and what she was thinking, was going to take longer than the few seconds she’d had so far.
She swallowed hard, not sure how she felt about any of this. If that portrait really was who she thought it was, then—
‘Here.’
She opened her eyes to find Nick holding out a glass of water.
She was freaking him out with this ‘dying swan’ routine, Nick decided impatiently as he put the rest of the bottle of water back in the fridge neatly disguised as an oak filing cabinet.
Who really fainted nowadays? People who were ill, hungry or had been hit over the head! He could rule out the former, because Hebe certainly wasn’t ill. Nor had she been hit over the head. Except maybe metaphorically. That just left hungry.
‘Have you had any lunch today?’ he prompted suspiciously.
‘Actually—’ she swung her legs to the floor to sit up and take a sip of the chilled water ‘—no.’
He gave a shake of his head as he moved back to the fridge. ‘Why haven’t you?’ he demanded as he took a chocolate bar out and handed it to her. ‘Eat it,’he instructed, when she just looked at it. ‘You’ll feel better if you do.’
Hebe somehow doubted that, but the chocolate certainly couldn’t do any harm. She had heard it was good for shock too. And she was certainly in shock.
She glanced at the portrait again as she slowly ate two squares of the chocolate.
The woman in the portrait was beautiful, much more so than her. Couldn’t Nick see that? And that woman had a sultry air about her, a sensuality, those golden eyes half closed with a secret that only she possessed.
Hebe felt herself begin to shake again as she took an educated guess at what that secret was.
She ate another two squares of chocolate before speaking huskily. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘I told you—the north of England.’ Nick moved restlessly about the confines of the office.
Hebe gave him an impatient glance. ‘Can’t you be more specific? Who did you buy it from? Where did they get it?’ It was suddenly imperative she knew these things.
Nick raised dark brows at her intensity. ‘I bought it from a young couple who had just inherited an old house from the guy’s great-uncle, or something like that. They had never seen the painting before he died, because the old man had the portrait hung in his bedroom, of all things,’ he revealed, with a certain amount of distaste.
He couldn’t say he felt exactly comfortable with some old man drooling over a portrait of a woman—Hebe!—who was certainly young enough to be his daughter, if not his granddaughter.
But the couple hadn’t known anything about the woman in the portrait—who she was or how the great-uncle had come to have her portrait. Nick had known who she was—he just didn’t have any idea what her portrait was doing in some old guy’s bedroom and not in the possession of the man who had painted it with such love.
Hebe didn’t look as if she were about to answer that question for him now, either!
She moistened dry lips. ‘What was the man’s name?’
‘Hell, Hebe, what difference does it make what his name was?’ Nick snapped his impatience. ‘He had your portrait, isn’t that enough?’
‘No.’ She shook her head slowly, turning to look at him with dark gold eyes. ‘Because, no matter what you might think to the contrary, Nick, the woman in the portrait isn’t me.’ She gave a humourless smile at his obvious scepticism. ‘No, Nick, it isn’t,’ she insisted. ‘Andrew Southern couldn’t possibly have painted my portrait because I’ve never met him! But it looks as if my mother may have done,’ she added, so softly Nick had trouble hearing her.
Her mother?
Hebe was trying to say the woman in the portrait was her mother?
How stupid did she think he was? Of course the portrait was of Hebe. It couldn’t be anyone else.
Could it…?
Nick gave her a dark frown. ‘You’re telling me that you look exactly like your mother did at that age?’
‘Ah.’ She gave a grimace. ‘Now, that is a very difficult question for me to answer—’
‘Why is it, damn it?’ he interrupted irritably. ‘How difficult can it be to know whether you do or do not look like your mother?’
Hebe eyed him ruefully, understanding his incredulity at the situation, sympathising with it, even, but at the same time knowing she didn’t have the answers that he wanted.
Except for one…
She raised silver-blonde brows. ‘How about if you’re adopted?’
Nick stopped pacing the room, looking down at her with disbelieving eyes. Was she seriously trying to tell him, expecting him to believe—?
But why not?
Hundreds of kids were adopted every year.
He moved to stand in front of the portrait, studying it closely. He had quickly seen the mirror-like similarities, but now he looked for the differences.
There was that birthmark, of course. But that didn’t prove anything. It was a pretty birthmark, and perhaps Andrew Southern had used a little poetic licence—a lover’s rose-coloured glasses—when he’d painted it there above the woman’s breast?
There was that air of sensuality, too, he supposed. But, God knew, he knew just how sensual and sexual Hebe was. He’d seen her look just like that the night they’d spent making love together. No, that proved nothing.
Neither did the lean length of her body, those thrusting breasts and delicately arched throat.
The ring!
There was an emerald and diamond ring on the third finger of the woman’s left hand. Nick assumed that it wasn’t Andrew Southern Hebe had been engaged to, but the now deceased owner of the painting. Why else would someone have kept a piece of art worth so much? Especially if keeping it had been to spite his future wife and her lover. Hebe didn’t wear a ring like that anymore. But if Hebe’s fiancé had realised that she was having an affair with Andrew Southern—and how could he not, with the evidence of the portrait in front of him?—then he would have had every right to break off the engagement; apart from the fact that she was wearing such a revealing dress, Hebe looked as if she had just come from her lover’s arms. And Nick, better than most, knew exactly how she looked at that moment!
No, there was nothing about this portrait that said Hebe was telling him the truth.
But what reason would she have to lie?
Because she had been found out?
Because, having already let two wealthy men slip through her grasp, she still hoped the two of them might have some sort of relationship?
His mouth twisted derisively as he turned back to her. ‘It’s an interesting idea, Hebe, but not very plausible, is it?’ he dismissed.
She straightened defensively. ‘Why isn’t it?’
Damn it, why couldn’t she just let it go? Admit she was the woman in the portrait and tell him where the hell he could find and speak to Andrew Southern?
He shook his head. ‘Because it’s too damned convenient, that’s why,’ he snapped.
‘For whom?’ she challenged shakily. Because it certainly wasn’t convenient for her.
Her parents had told her long ago that she was adopted, of course. They were such wonderful parents, and because of this, and the fact that she never, ever wanted to hurt them, she had never even attempted to find out who her real parents were.
What would have been the point? Obviously they hadn’t wanted her when she was born, so why should they want to know about her as an adult…?
‘Look, Hebe, I don’t give a damn if you’ve posed nude for the guy. I just want a way in to Andrew Southern, past his guard-dog of an agent!’Nick told her with brutal honesty.
Hebe flinched slightly at his callousness. ‘Well, when you find it,’ she said evenly, ‘please let me know—because after this I would like to talk to him too!’
Nick’s mouth twisted derisively. ‘You’re right; talking isn’t something you do too much of when you’re in bed, is it?’
‘Insults are going to get us nowhere, Nick,’ she told him shakily, the chocolate seeming to have done very little to allay her shock. In fact, she felt decidedly sick now.
But then, it wasn’t every day you were confronted with a painting possibly of the mother you had never known. A painting, moreover, that was everything Nick said it was.
Whoever the woman was, Andrew Southern had been in love with her when he’d painted her portrait. It was there in every brushstroke, every soft nuance of the woman’s sensual beauty.
Did that mean that the artist was Hebe’s father…?
Or had that been the man who had owned the portrait all these years and kept it hidden from view?
They were questions that Hebe certainly wanted answers to.
But for the moment she had to deal with Nick’s disbelief…
She drew in a deep breath. ‘You can think what you like about the portrait, Nick. Your opinion is really of little interest to me. I know that woman isn’t me, and that’s what’s important.’
He looked at her frustratedly for several seconds. ‘You’re seriously expecting me to believe, if that portrait is of your mother, that it’s—what?—twenty-six, twentyseven years old?’
She shrugged at his sceptisism. ‘That timescale would certainly fit in with the period when Andrew Southern was still painting portraits, yes. And for the record, Nick,’ she added ruefully, ‘I’m not expecting you to believe anything. I told you, it’s what I think that’s important.’
And what she thought was that she had to see Andrew Southern herself, and ask him about the woman in the portrait…
But if a man like Nick Cavendish, with all of the prestige of the Cavendish Galleries behind him, couldn’t get past the reclusive artist’s agent, then how did she expect to do so?
She would find a way.
She had to!
There was no way she could just leave here and pretend she had never seen that portrait. The portrait of the woman who surely had to be her mother…
She would need to speak to her parents too, of course. She couldn’t just go off in search of her real parents without telling them about it first. She owed them that, and they would understand, she was sure. They had brought her up with a sure sense of how important she was to them, of how much she was loved, but at the same time had taught her independence of spirit and mind. They couldn’t fail to support her in her search for the woman in the portrait.
‘Well, if that’s all, Nick, I think I’ll go now.’ Hebe put the glass of water down on the low table in front of her before standing up.
And instantly swayed dizzily again.
In fact, she felt as if she really were going to be sick!
‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ Nick stepped forward to grasp her arm, his expression dark and brooding.
She looked up at him with slightly unfocusing eyes. ‘I told you—I haven’t had any lunch today.’She tried to move away from him. Even that light touch on her arm was enough to send a thrill of awareness coursing through her veins.
So much for hating him!
Reasonably she might do so; he had been nothing but insulting today, with none of that exciting lover of six weeks ago about him. But emotionally her body still responded to his slightest touch.
‘You’re coming upstairs with me,’ he announced grimly.
‘Upstairs?’ She stared at him with startled eyes.
His mouth twisted derisively. ‘Don’t look so worried, Hebe; I’m not so filled with lust for you that I’m dragging you upstairs to have my wicked way with you!’
‘Again!’ she came back tartly, stung by his mockery.
‘Again,’ he acknowledged tauntingly, keeping a firm hold of her arm as he walked her over to the door. ‘You’re dizzy from not having eaten any lunch, and I have food upstairs in my apartment; the logical thing to do is take you up there and feed you,’ he explained dryly.
Logic? When had logic had anything to do with their relationship so far?
‘If you’re happy to let me go for the day, I can easily go home and get myself something to eat.’ She firmly stood her ground.
She did not want to go upstairs to his apartment. Today had been humiliating enough without returning to the scene of her naïve stupidity in thinking this man seriously liked her!
Nick’s mouth tightened. ‘No, I’m not happy to do that, Hebe. For one thing, you don’t look as if you could make it downstairs, let alone home,’ he derided. ‘And, for another, I haven’t finished talking to you yet.’
That sounded ominous…
‘I’ve told you—I don’t know anything about Andrew Southern,’ she insisted stubbornly. ‘Not where he is or how you might get to meet him. I wish I did!’
Nick eyed her frowningly. Did she seriously expect him to believe that?
Yes, he acknowledged impatiently after a glance at her guileless expression, that was exactly what she expected.
It was up to him to ensure that she knew she hadn’t succeeded in convincing him of anything. Not for a moment!
‘We’ll talk again after you’ve eaten,’ he told her firmly, taking her with him out into the carpeted hallway.
Hebe glared at him. ‘Do you never take no for an answer?’
Nick gave a wolfish grin. ‘You, of all people, should know that I don’t!’
That had certainly silenced her, he noted with satisfaction. That poutingly kissable mouth was set firmly as the two of them got into the private lift to go up one floor to his apartment.
Meaning that Hebe would enter his completely private domain for a second time!
‘Is an omelette okay with you?’ he rasped tersely, releasing her arm to stride through to the open-plan kitchen with its white and chrome fixtures.
Hebe took her time following him, obviously no more comfortable being back here than he was to have her here.
He would feed her the omelette, get some straight answers out of her, and then she could leave—
Where the hell was she?
He strode back out into the sitting room, coming to an abrupt halt as he saw her holding and looking at one of the photographs that usually stood on the coffee table in front of the window. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he bit out coldly, his face devoid of all expression.
Hebe almost dropped the photograph she had picked up to have a better look at, grasping it with both hands against her chest, knowing from the furious look on Nick’s face that his question didn’t require an answer—that he knew exactly what she had been doing.
The photograph was of a little boy about three or four years old. A gorgeous little boy grinning happily into the camera lens. A little boy, with Nick’s dark hair and blue eyes…
Nick moved forcefully across the room to snatch the photograph out of her hands, those blue eyes glacially cold as he glared at her through narrowed lids.
She swallowed hard. ‘I’m sorry. I—he’s very beautiful.’
A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw. ‘Yes, he was,’ he ground out harshly.
Was. It was his son, then.
Hebe felt a tightening of her chest at the thought of all that life and boyish happiness no longer existing.
How much worse was that realisation for Nick…!
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.
Nick put the photograph carefully back on the table before giving her a sharp glance. ‘You know who he is?’
‘I—yes,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘One of the other girls told me that you had a son.’
‘Luke,’ he bit out harshly. ‘His name was Luke.’
Luke…Four years old. His death simply too much for his parents to deal with together, driving them irrevocably apart.
‘I really am sorry,’ Hebe repeated huskily. ‘I shouldn’t have—Please believe me when I tell you I never meant to—’
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Carole Mortimer
Carole Mortimer is one of Mills & Boon’s best loved Modern Romance authors. With nearly 200 books published and a career spanning 35 years, Mills & Boon are thrilled to present her complete works available to download for the very first time! Rediscover old favourites - and find new ones! - in this fabulous collection…One night…Hebe can't believe she's ended up in her handsome boss's bed! But it seems dashing Nick Cavendish just needed some comfort on the anniversary of his young son's death…One baby…Nick tries to dismiss Hebe, as he does all his women. But it's not so easy when delectable Hebe is his assistant and their one night had consequences!One marriage of convenience?Nick is delighted to have a second chance at fatherhood. But no child of his will be illegitimate. Now he’s determined to make Hebe his wife…!
Pregnant by the Millionaire
Carole Mortimer
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#uaa2f9dcb-c324-5afa-bc0a-4997fa273430)
Title Page (#ue654f399-5ef1-536f-94fe-4a8979ad7bab)
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u973dc111-b9aa-500a-ad24-486d2487f7b9)
NICK woke up alone.
Which was strange, because he was pretty sure he hadn’t been alone when he’d fallen into a satiated asleep several hours ago.
Something about a goddess…?
Ah, yes—Hebe, the goddess of youth.
Tall, slender, with a long, straight curtain of silver-blonde hair and eyes of so pale a brown they were gold. Strange magnetic eyes, that gleamed with a multitude of secrets.
Not that he was interested in learning those secrets. Hebe had merely been a distraction, a way of putting the past and all the pain and the significance of the day behind him. He had wanted to forget, be diverted, and the presence of Hebe Johnson had certainly provided that. For a few hours, at least.
So where was she? It was still dark outside, and the tangled sheets beside him were still warm, so she couldn’t have been gone long.
He frowned slightly at the thought of her having just disappeared into the night. That was usually his privilege! Wine, dine and bed a woman, but never ever become involved—least of all allow them into the inner privacy of his life.
Of course that was slightly more difficult when it was his bed they had shared!
Because she didn’t live alone, he remembered now. Something about a flatmate. So after dinner he had brought her back to his apartment over the gallery for a drink instead—and other things!—breaking his cardinal rule in the bargain.
Two rules, in fact, he acknowledged with a grimace as he remembered that Hebe actually worked for him, two floors down, in the Cavendish Gallery on the ground floor.
But desperate times called for desperate measures, and so he had brought Hebe back here, needing to lose himself in the lithe beauty of her perfect, long-limbed body. And he had. He’d found himself dazzled, bewitched—the fact that she wasn’t one of the sophisticated women who usually had a brief place in his life, adding to the excitement of the evening. To the point that his pain had been anaesthetised, if not completely erased.
Nick gave a groan as he remembered what yesterday signified, moving to sit up in the bed, needing to get away from the scene of that heated lovemaking now, and standing up to turn his back on those tumbled sheets before walking out of the bedroom.
Only to come to an abrupt halt as he saw he wasn’t alone after all.
Hebe, the goddess, was just switching the light off as she came out of the kitchen with a glass of water in her hand, her nakedness only shielded by the fine silver-blonde hair that reached almost to her waist.
Nick instantly felt a stirring of renewed arousal as he looked at that golden body—legs long and silky, hips and waist slenderly curvaceous, breasts firm and uptilting, the nipples rosily pouting.
As if begging to be kissed. Again.
He had noticed her at the gallery several months ago, her beauty such that it was impossible for her not to stand out. But he hadn’t so much as spoken to her until yesterday.
And now he wanted her. Again.
‘What are you doing?’ he prompted huskily as he padded softly across the room to join her, with only a small table-light for illumination.
Hebe’s breath caught in her throat just at the sight of him. She was still not quite sure how she had ended up in Nick Cavendish’s apartment. In his bed. In his arms.
She had been captivated by him since the moment she’d first seen him. In love, or more probably in lust, she acknowledged ruefully as she easily remembered each kiss and caress of the previous night, having been totally lost from the first moment Nick had held her in his arms and touched her.
Or perhaps she had been lost before that…
An American, the charismatic Nick Cavendish owned the London art gallery where she worked, as well as others in Paris and New York. His time was equally divided between the three, with apartments on the top floor of each building always ready for his use.
Hebe had been working at the gallery for several weeks before she’d first caught a glimpse of the elusive owner.
When he’d walked forcefully into the west room of the gallery four months ago, seemingly filled with boundless energy as he fired instructions one of the managers, Hebe had felt as if all the air had been knocked out of her lungs.
Over six feet tall, his body lithe and muscular, with overlong dark hair swept back from his olive-skinned face, and eyes a deep, deep blue, there was a wild ruggedness about him that spoke of the energy of a caged tiger. With the same threat of danger!
But she had never in her wildest dreams imagined he would notice her, a lowly junior employee. She had been leaving the gallery the evening before when she’d accidentally walked straight into him, but instead of getting a scornful look, as she had expected, they had both laughed and apologized. Still, she’d been totally stunned when he’d asked if she would join him for dinner, on the basis that she had worked at the gallery for some months now and it was time the two of them became acquainted.
Became acquainted!
They had become a lot more than that last night. Hebe was sure that not an inch of her body hadn’t known the intimate touch of his hands or lips.
Her cheeks were flushed now with the memory of that intimacy.
And at the naked perfection of his body now. A body, as she had discovered the previous evening, that had that olive tan all over, a light covering of dark hair on the muscular width of his chest, and down over powerful hips and thighs.
As she saw the renewed state of his arousal, she felt a liquid melting between her own thighs as heat coursed through her already languorous body.
‘I hope you don’t mind—I was thirsty,’ she answered him huskily, holding up the glass of water she had been drinking from.
Nick was thirsty too—but not for water. Taking the glass out of her hand, he placed it on a table, his eyes darkening as his head lowered to kiss one enticing nipple. He looked up into Hebe’s face as he stroked his tongue moistly over that sensitive tip, feeling the increasing hardness of his own body as she groaned low in her throat, eyes gleaming like molten gold as her body arched against him, dark lashes sweeping low over her flushed cheeks.
She was beautiful, this goddess of youth, and he wanted to lose himself in her once again. Not to blot out the painful memories of yesterday this time, but because he wanted her with a fierceness that told him he wouldn’t be gentle with her. That he couldn’t be. He needed to drive his body into hers, but knew she would meet that desire with a heat of her own. As she had before.
He straightened to swing her up into his arms, capturing her mouth with his, tongue plundering, as her arms moved up about his neck, her fingers becoming entangled in the darkness of his hair.
Hebe was trembling as he laid her down amidst the twisted sheets, his mouth deepening its possession of hers as one of his hands caressed the burning tip of her breast, the nipple already hard and aroused, sending sensations of heat and liquid fire through the rest of her body.
She restlessly caressed the broad width of his back, before trailing a path to the firmness of his thighs, touching him there, loving the feel of his hardness against her hand. The groan low in his throat assured her that he approved too.
Nick fell back against the pillows as Hebe began to kiss his chest, down to the hollow of his flat stomach, and even lower over the hardness of his thighs. His breath caught in his throat as he felt the sensuous flick of her tongue against his heated flesh, and at the same time he knew that he wouldn’t be able to take too much of this, that he wanted to be between the engulfing warmth of her thighs, inside her, stroking them both to that shuddering climax that he remembered so clearly—twice—from the night before.
He moved above her, looking down into her aroused face as he slowly entered her, her hips moving up to meet his, taking him deep inside her as she began to move slowly against him.
Hebe gasped minutes—hours?—later, as she felt the pleasure pulsing hotly through her, her body shuddering and quivering as that pleasure erupted out of control, taking her with it.
Taking Nick with it too, pulsating deep and deliciously inside her as he surrendered to the sensations of his body.
Hebe lay with her head resting against his chest in the aftermath, his arm about her waist, holding her loosely at his side.
She had never experienced anything like this. Their bodies seemed completely in tune, their lovemaking almost balletic in its intensity of emotion.
She smiled to herself as she realised how happy she felt, how totally relaxed and fulfilled. She really could so easily fall completely, mindlessly, in love with this man. If she wasn’t already!
Which, considering her uninhibited response to him, she had a feeling she just might be.
Whatever, she felt closer to him than she ever had to anyone before, and wondered what the future held for them. Would they spend the day together? It was Sunday, so neither of them had to be at work today. Maybe they would make breakfast together? Before making love. Then perhaps they would go for a walk in the nearby park. Before making love. And then they could…
Hebe, exhausted and happy, drifted off to sleep.
Nick lay sleepless beside her, his body filled with satiation but his mind suddenly crystal clear.
Hebe Johnson was beautiful and desirable, and responded to him in a completely uninhibited way that he found irresistable. But it was her lack of control that warned him he had to resist her. Not for him the silken shackles of any woman, the cosy togetherness that tightened those ties until no thought or action could be called his own. Never again. That way lay all the pain and despair he had tried so hard to blot out the night before.
And she was still his employee. Untouchable, in fact. Though he had already done a hell of a lot more than touch her!
Creating a situation he had always avoided in the past.
Since his divorce two years ago he had known lots of women, had wined and dined them, bedded them, and moved on without any regrets. None of those relationships had lasted long enough to forge any sort of bond, least of all an emotional one. But an employee, as he had always known and therefore avoided, was going to be a little more difficult to walk away from.
But he was going to do it anyway. Walk away and not look back.
Quite what he’d do about the fact that Hebe worked for him he wasn’t sure yet. The easiest way would be to dispense with her services at the gallery. But it didn’t seem quite fair that she should lose her job because she had gone to bed with him. In fact, most women would assume their job was more secure after going to bed with the boss!
He turned slightly to look at her as she slept in his arms. Was that the reason Hebe had come so willingly with him the night before? The reason she had come back here and made love with him?
If it was, she was in for a nasty surprise!
No one, and nothing, held Nick Cavendish any more—least of all a silver-haired siren with golden eyes.
Hebe felt almost shy as she came into the ultra-modern kitchen several hours later.
Having woken up alone in Nick Cavendish’s huge four-poster bed, with the disarray of the bedclothes a stark reminder of the heated lovemaking that had taken place there both last night and earlier this morning—as if she needed any reminder—she had collected up her scattered clothes and gone through to the luxury of the adjoining bathroom to shower and dress before going in search of Nick.
He was here, in the spacious kitchen, his back towards her as he made coffee, having pulled on faded denims and a black tee shirt over his nakedness.
Hebe looked at him, watching the muscles rippling in the broadness of his back as he moved, his shoulder-length dark hair brushed back to curl loosely against the nape of his neck.
Aged thirty-eight—twelve years older than her own twenty-six—he was without doubt the most gorgeous man she had ever seen. All over, she remembered with a pleasurable flush. Not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his body, and his hands—those hands that had caressed her so thoroughly—were long and tapered. And he made love with an artistry that spoke of an experience she came nowhere near matching.
Of course he had been married. For five years, according to Kate, another assistant at the gallery. Hebe had learnt this after Nick’s second whirlwind visit three months ago, when he had snapped and snarled at them all before disappearing again on his way to terrorise the staff at his Paris gallery.
Kate had explained that he could be like that sometimes—that there had been a son from the marriage, a little boy who had died when he was only four. His death had precipitated the break-up and divorce of his parents two years ago, and still sometimes sent Nick Cavendish spiralling into a inferno of dark emotions that seemed to find no outlet.
Not surprising, really. Hebe could imagine nothing more traumatic than the death of your young child. But these intriguing snatches of information about her employer had only increased her interest in this enigmatically charismatic man.
She had watched him covertly during his lightning visits to the gallery. She had seen him dark and brooding as on that second visit, and smiling occasionally, but once laughing outright, which had softened and smoothed the lines of experience from his face, making him look almost boyish. Except for the deep well of pain never far from those intense blue eyes.
So he swept sporadically into the gallery, bringing his life and vitality with him, inspiring the people around him with his intensity, fascinating and intriguing Hebe—before once again disappearing and taking all that vitality with him.
But never in Hebe’s wildest dreams had she ever imagined he would invite her out to dinner in the way that he had, that she would spend the night here with him in his apartment.
Nick sensed rather than heard Hebe’s entrance into the kitchen, and he was aware of her silence as she stood in the doorway behind him whilst he continued to prepare the coffee, to delay the moment when they would have to make conversation. Conversation, he found, served very little purpose after spending the night with a woman.
To him, the following morning had always been the worst part of the brief, unfocused relationships he had indulged in before and since his divorce. What were you supposed to talk about, for God’s sake? The weather? Who was going to win the tennis championship this year? The big U.S. golf tournament? Hardly post-lovemaking conversation topics, any of them!
But the alternative was discussing when they would see each other again—and that was just as unacceptable to Nick. Especially in this case. He knew now that he had made a terrible mistake in getting involved with Hebe Johnson, and certainly didn’t intend compounding the situation by pretending this relationship—one-night-stand?—had any future.
Oh, well—time to face the music, Nick decided impatiently, and he turned to face her. The quicker he got this over with, the sooner he would be able to get on with his life.
She was once again dressed in the black silk blouse and fitted black trousers she had worn the day before, her hair falling silkily about her shoulders, her make-up attempting, and not quite succeeding, to hide the slight redness to her chin, where his late-night stubble and the intensity of their kisses had scratched that delicate creamy skin.
He wasn’t even going to go there! No more thoughts of how wild and willing this woman had been in his arms. Otherwise he would just end up taking her back to bed again.
‘Ready to leave?’ he questioned dismissively as he took in her appearance. ‘Or would you like a cup of coffee before you go?’ He held up the coffeepot.
Hebe frowned at his abruptness. He couldn’t wait to get rid of her, could he? So much for her imaginings of them spending the day together, talking together, laughing together, making love again…!
‘I—don’t think so, thank you,’ she refused uncertainly, wondering if he really just expected her to leave now that the night was over.
An awkward silence followed.
What was she waiting for? Nick wondered impatiently. He had offered her coffee, she had refused, now it would be better for both of them if she just—
‘I—perhaps I had better be going.’ She spoke awkwardly as she seemed to sense his unspoken urging. Questioningly. As if she expected him to ask her to stay.
For what reason? They’d had dinner. They’d made love. They’d both enjoyed it. And now it was over. What else did she want from him? Because he had nothing else to give!
‘My flatmate will probably be wondering where I’ve got to,’ she added with a frown.
Nick hadn’t bothered to ask last night whether that flatmate was male or female. He had been too caught up in smothering, numbing, his own inner pain, to care.
But he felt curious now, and wondered if Hebe Johnson were engaged, or at least had a steady boyfriend. She didn’t come over as the sort of woman who indulged in extra-relationship affairs. But then, she hadn’t exactly come over as the sort of woman who would go to bed with him last night either—and look how wrong he had been about that!
This was extremely awkward, Hebe decided uncomfortably as she continued to stand in the doorway, having no idea how she was supposed to behave the-morning-after-the-night-before. Probably because it was a long time since there had been a morning-after-the-night-before for her!
Not that she was a complete innocent—she had been in a relationship years ago, when she was at university. But she had never stayed in a man’s apartment all night before, and as this man was Nick Cavendish, her employer for the last six months, it was doubly awkward.
He merely looked relieved at her suggestion that she leave. ‘If you’re sure you don’t want coffee?’ he prompted dismissively, as he poured some coffee into a mug for himself—black, with no sugar.
The repeat of the offer was made more out of politeness than anything else, Hebe realised with a sinking of her heart, as Nick sat down at the breakfast bar to take a sip of the steaming brew, no longer even looking at her.
She had been completely overwhelmed by the attention of this ruggedly handsome, gorgeously seductive man the night before, and hadn’t been able to believe her luck when he had seemed to return her interest. But it looked as if she might have plenty of time to repent at leisure if his distant behaviour now was anything to go by.
Her cue not to make this any more embarrassing than it already was…
‘I’ll go, then,’ she announced brightly. ‘I—thank you for dinner last night,’ she added awkwardly.
And everything else, she could have added, but didn’t. After the intimacies they had shared the night before, this really was too embarrassingly awful. Something she didn’t intend ever to repeat if this was what it felt like the following morning.
She looked a little bewildered by his abruptness, Nick acknowledged with a certain guilty irritation after glancing at her. Those amazing gold-coloured eyes were wide with wariness, and her cheeks had gone slightly pale at his obvious lack of enthusiasm.
What had she expected, for goodness’ sake? That he would make declarations of undying love for her this morning? Assure her he couldn’t live without her and invite her to come along with him to New York when he left later this morning?
Damn it, this was real life—not some fairy story. And they were adults, not romantic children!
They had both had a good time, but that was all it had been.
‘I’m going back to New York later on today,’ he told her dismissively. ‘But I’ll give you a call, okay?’ he added—knowing he had no intention of doing any such thing.
He should never have become personally involved with an employee in the first place, so he certainly didn’t intend to arrange to see Hebe Johnson on a social level again.
For one thing, he knew that if he met up with Hebe again, away from the gallery, then they would end up in bed together again too. Even now, looking at the soft pout of her mouth, that quicksilver hair, the willowy curves of her body in the silky blouse and fitted black trousers, he felt the stirring of desire for her—an ache he was absolutely determined to do nothing about.
She was definitely being given the brush-off, Hebe realised painfully. She wasn’t so naïve that she didn’t know that when a man said I’ll call you after spending the night, without so much as asking for your telephone number, it meant that he had no intention of ever contacting you again!
Of course Nick was slightly different, in that he could, if he wanted, get her telephone number from Personnel at the Cavendish Gallery. She just didn’t think, from his dismissive attitude this morning, that he was ever going to want to.
The excitement of having dinner with him last night, and the hours they had spent making love, and now being summararily dismissed this morning had ultimately to be the most humiliating experience of her entire life.
She couldn’t get out of here fast enough!
She looked as if she were going to make a mad dash out of here without so much as a goodbye, Nick realised. Well, that was what he wanted, wasn’t it? He frowned unwittingly, acknowledging that he didn’t enjoy being on the receiving end of a casual dismissal. He was always the one to bid farewell, not the other way round.
He stood up, smiling slightly as he crossed the kitchen to put his arms about Hebe’s waist and pull her into the hardness of his body. ‘Goodbye, Hebe!’ he murmured, his arousal undeniable.
She looked up at him, five or six inches shorter than his own six feet two inches in height, her eyes golden globes of uncertainty.
Hell, she had beautiful eyes, Nick thought with an inward groan. Beautiful everything, if his memory didn’t deceive him. And he knew that it didn’t.
Maybe they could meet again after all—
No! Don’t be an idiot, Nick, he rebuked himself impatiently. Much better to just leave it like this.
Leave it, and hope that with time they would both forget last night had ever happened…
He certainly intended doing exactly that!
CHAPTER TWO (#u973dc111-b9aa-500a-ad24-486d2487f7b9)
SIX weeks later Hebe was still waiting for the promised telephone call from Nick Cavendish.
She had been a fool ever to expect that he would phone, of course, and several conversations with Kate over the last few weeks had confirmed that Nick Cavendish did not get seriously involved with any of the women he went out with. The number of women he had been involved with since the end of his marriage, also according to Kate, had been legion, and none of them, Kate had told her wistfully—as if she’d guessed Hebe’s interest was more than casual—had ever been employees of the Cavendish Galleries.
Or if they had they very quickly hadn’t been, Hebe had decided.
In fact, she had lived most of the last six weeks half expecting to be told her employment at the Cavendish Gallery had been terminated. Of course it wasn’t as easy as that to get rid of people nowadays, but she didn’t doubt that if he wanted her out of here, Nick Cavendish would find a way.
The fact that he was—at last!—due back at the London gallery next week, in time for the opening of an exhibition they were giving was not conducive to helping Hebe concentrate on her work.
In fact, she felt decidedly clumsy today, and had been dropping things most of the morning, not seeming to be coordinated at all. Of course she knew the reason for her steadily increasing nervousness. Nick’s arrival next week was approaching with a speed that made her head spin.
Maybe she should have called in sick for a few days. She was certainly feeling more than a little green round the edges, and hadn’t even been able to eat at all today. Her anxiety at the prospect of seeing Nick again seemed to be increasing daily.
Although why she should be the one to feel so nervously on edge was beyond her. After all, Nick Cavendish had been the one to invite her out, not the other way round. And she hadn’t invited herself back to his apartment either. In fact—
‘Hebe?’ rasped an all too familiar voice after six weeks’ silence close to her ear.
She spun round sharply, at the same time dropping the name cards she had been preparing for next week’s exhibition.
‘Sorry!’ she muttered, and she bent to pick them up with shaking fingers, taking the few seconds to bring some composure back to her demeanour.
Nick wasn’t expected until next week!
‘What are you doing here?’ she prompted slowly as she straightened, eyes deeply golden in the paleness of her face.
He returned her gaze mockingly. ‘It may have escaped your memory, Hebe, but I happen to own this gallery and have an apartment on the top floor of the building; I can come here any time I damn well please!’
Well…yes…But if she had had prior notice of his earlier than expected arrival she might not have overreacted in the way she just had. As it was, she felt completely wrong-footed.
She had made her mind up, during Nick’s six weeks of silence, that she was going to be cool and composed when he did come back and would make no reference, if he didn’t, to the fact that they had spent the night together in his apartment on the top floor of the building…
‘Let’s go up to my office,’ Nick added with barely concealed impatience. ‘I want to talk to you.’
He looked just the same, she acknowledged achingly. His olive skin was just as healthily tanned, his blue eyes as sharply intelligent, and his dark hair, though looking as if it had been trimmed slightly, was still long enough to rest silkily on broad shoulders. Dressed formally in a dark grey suit and snowy white shirt, with a silver-grey silk tie knotted neatly at his throat, he looked like a man who was firmly in control.
He looked exactly what he was, in fact—the confident multimillionaire owner of three prestigious art galleries.
Looking at him now, Hebe wondered how she could ever have thought he was seriously interested in her!
‘Hebe!’ he prompted, frowning at her continued silence.
She was behaving like an idiot, she realised, just standing here staring at him, completely tongue-tied by his unexpected appearance in the gallery.
She drew in a deep breath, willing herself to behave naturally. Well, as naturally as it was possible to be when confronted by the man who had haunted her days and filled her dreams for last six weeks!
‘What can I do for you, Mr Cavendish?’ she prompted with calm efficiency.
‘You can come upstairs to my office with me,’ he repeated firmly. ‘Now!’ he added, not even waiting for her answer this time, but turning abruptly on his heel and striding forcefully out of the room.
Kate, who was working nearby, shot Hebe a questioning look as she trailed out of the gallery behind Nick, and Hebe gave her a how-should-I-know? shrug in reply.
Because she really didn’t know what this was about. They had had dinner together, spent a night together, but she hadn’t told anyone about either of those things, let alone tried to contact Nick himself. So what was his problem?
The more she thought about it, acknowledging his brooding silence as he lithely climbed the stairs ahead of her to his office on the second floor, the angrier she became.
Had he expected, on the basis that she had spent the night with the boss, that she would have left her job here before he returned? Was that the reason he was so angry? Because he hadn’t expected to see her still here at all?
Well, that was being more than a little unfair, wasn’t it?
She loved her job here, liked the people she worked with too. Besides, none of the awkwardness of this situation was her fault, damn it!
Nick eyed her irritably as he closed his office door behind them. Unless he was mistaken, from her flushed cheeks and glowing golden eyes, he would take a guess at her being one very indignant young lady.
He perched on the edge of his cool Italian marble desk, which more than one customer at the gallery had tried to buy from him. He had always refused to sell it, though, liking the way it complemented the rest of the room, which was wood-panelled and slightly austere, although it did have a huge picture window that looked out over the river.
‘So, what are you so angry about, Hebe?’ he drawled ruefully, dark brows raised over mocking blue eyes. ‘The fact that I was less than polite just now? Or the fact that I haven’t called you for two months?’ He met her gaze challengingly.
‘Six weeks,’ she came back sharply, her cheeks flushing with colour seconds later.
‘Whatever.’ He shrugged, knowing exactly how long it was since he had last seen her, but having no intention of letting Hebe know that he did.
He had been so sure that Hebe Johnson would be just like all the other women he had known over the last two years—taken and then forgotten. But for some inexplicable reason he hadn’t quite succeeded in doing that where she was concerned. Memories of those golden eyes, that lithe silken body, came flashing into his mind at the most inconvenient of times. Irritating him intensely.
The flash of anger now in the depths of her warm eyes, and the way the fullness of those sensuous lips had tightened slightly, told him his careless attitude had only succeeded in increasing her anger. Which didn’t particularly affect him.
Not on a business level, anyway.
On a personal level, he found both things sexy as hell!
She looked good today too, dressed in a cream blouse tucked into the tiny waistband of a knee-length fitted black skirt, her legs long and silky.
So much for his absence from the London gallery these last six weeks, his deliberate lack of the promised telephone call, his self-assurances that when he came back he would have forgotten all about Hebe Johnson!
Even before he’d seen the painting he had known he hadn’t managed to do that.
His own mouth tightened as he glanced over to where he had placed the painting, on a stand to one side of his wide office, with a cover over it to protect it. But also so that Hebe Johnson shouldn’t see it until he was ready for her to do so…
Hebe eyed Nick scathingly as he stood looking at her, and, even though inside was shaking, she gripped her hands tightly together to prevent Nick from seeing they were trembling.
‘I’m sorry—were you supposed to call me?’ she came back, with all the coolness she could muster.
Which was quite considerable, if the way his mouth thinned and his eyes narrowed to glittering blue slits was anything to go by!
‘Okay, Hebe, forget that for the moment,’ he dismissed briskly. ‘And tell me what you know about Andrew Southern?’
She frowned as she dredged her memory for the relevant facts about the artist, having no idea why Nick was asking the question—unless it was an effort on his part to prove that she didn’t know her job, so giving him an excuse to fire her?
She swallowed hard. ‘English. Born 1953. Started painting in his early twenties, mainly portraits, but later moved on to landscapes—more recently the Alaskan wilderness—’
‘I’m not asking for a bio on the guy, Hebe!’ Nick cut in tersely, standing up restlessly. ‘I asked what you know about him?’
‘Me?’ She blinked, stepping back slightly in the face of his leashed vitality. ‘I’ve just told you what I know about him—’
‘Don’t be so coy, Hebe,’ he cut her off again abruptly, blue eyes mocking. ‘I’m not asking for details, just a confirmation that you know him. And if you can contact him personally.’
She was totally bewildered now. This conversation didn’t appear to have anything to do with that night six weeks ago at all, nor with an effort to prove her incompetent, but everything, it seemed, to do with the artist Andrew Southern. Of whom she was an admirer, but had certainly never met him, let alone knew him personally.
She wasn’t going to acknowledge the relationship, Nick realized frustratedly. Well, the guy was old enough to be her father, so maybe that explained her reluctance to talk about him. Whatever, Nick had been trying to arrange a meeting with Andrew Southern for years. For once neither the name Nick Cavendish nor the Cavendish Galleries themselves had opened that particular door. And now it seemed that Hebe, of all people, might be the key to that meeting.
From deciding that he had to stay as far away from Hebe as possible in future, or else take her to his bed again, he had now discovered that if he wanted to get anywhere near Andrew Southern with the idea of an exhibition of his work, then Hebe was the person he had to talk to.
‘Look, Hebe, let’s start this conversation again, shall we?’ he reasoned pleasantly. ‘I accept that I overstepped the employer/employee line with you six weeks ago, but by the same token you have to accept that it wasn’t all one sided, huh?’
Hebe eyed him derisively. If that was his attempt at an apology for the night they had spent together, or for his non-existent telephone call since, then it was pretty lame. Besides which, an apology for the former was insulting, to say the least, just as an off-hand apology for the latter was totally inadequate.
She had been so miserable these last six weeks, wondering where she had gone wrong, what she had done to make Nick Cavendish not even want to call her again, let alone see her.
And now he had turned up unexpectedly, dismissing their night together as the satisfying of a brief, mutual attraction, before going on to talk about Andrew Southern—an artist of phenomenal reputation, and known as a complete recluse, who had been so for almost thirty years.
Making her realise just how little she understood Nick Cavendish.
She eyed him coolly now. ‘Is that all?’
‘No, of course—!’ He broke off to draw in a deeply controlling breath. ‘Are you deliberately trying to annoy me?’ He looked at her with narrowed eyes.
She gave a mocking lift of her eyebrows. ‘I seem to be doing that without trying!’
He relaxed slightly, an amused smile slightly curving those sculptured lips. ‘I see now why I found you so intriguing that night,’ he murmured softly.
It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Not here. Not now.
She had spent the first week after his departure back to New York in a frenzy of self-recrimination, with a deep-felt need for Nick to call her to nullify all those negative thoughts.
She was in love with him, totally physically enthralled with him—and this was the twenty-first century, for goodness’ sake, not the Dark Ages, where a woman’s wants and needs weren’t considered as important as a man’s, she had chided herself.
She had done nothing wrong by spending the night with a man she found so attractive and who had wanted her too!
But as the days and weeks had passed those assurances hadn’t meant a whole lot.
And now standing here looking at Nick, they meant absolutely nothing.
She grimaced. ‘I think it might be better if we both just forgot about that, don’t you?’
It was a statement rather than a question, and Nick found himself deeply irritated by her easy dismissal.
Okay, so he hadn’t been able to wait to get her out of his apartment that morning six weeks ago, and he hadn’t called her as he said he would, but it was a bit of knock to his ego to realise that she was willing to dismiss the memories of him as easily as he had tried to dismiss her.
Or was she…?
He took a step towards her, lids lowered as he looked down at her with dark blue eyes, trailing one caressing finger down the smooth curve of her cheek. ‘Am I so easy to forget, Hebe?’ he murmured seductively, knowing that this was probably another mistake, but finding her coolness infuriating as hell. ‘Was our lovemaking easy to forget too? Or has it kept you awake nights, thinking of all the ways we touched and aroused each other?’
She gave him a startled look even as the colour entered her cheeks, her lips parting slightly as her body swayed towards his.
‘I thought so…’ He murmured his satisfaction with her response, his wandering fingers parting her lips slightly, caressing that softness, before trailing the length of her throat down to the deep vee of her blouse and the creamy swell of her breasts. All the time his challenging gaze continued to hold hers.
How could this be happening? Hebe inwardly protested, even as she felt herself responding to his touch. The arousal of her breasts was instant, the nipples hard and sensitive, as she reached out instinctively to cling tightly to the broad width of his shoulders, her legs seeming in danger of melting beneath her.
But as suddenly as he had touched her she found herself thrust away from him, and Nick was stepping back, that devilishly handsome face now set in scathing dismissal.
‘You really are a sexy little thing, aren’t you?’ he mused as he leant back against his desk, his blue gaze considering now, as he looked at the firm thrust of her breasts against her cream blouse.
‘Mr Cavendish—’
‘Oh, come on, Hebe,’ he drawled tauntingly, shaking his head slightly, those blue eyes alight with mocking laughter. ‘You can hardly go back to calling me that after sharing your body with me,’ he reminded her, with a challenging rise of that square, uncompromising chin.
Hebe felt the colour warm her cheeks at his deliberate taunting. Why was he doing this to her? What perverse pleasure did he get out of humiliating her in this way?
She straightened defensively, glaring at him. ‘At the same time as you shared your body with me!’ she came back, with all the fury of her humiliation, uncaring now if this was just his way of trying to get her to resign from her job at the gallery.
Fine. Let him sack her. She was quickly reaching the point where she didn’t care.
His smile was derisive. ‘I’m flattered that amongst all your other lovers you’ve even remembered me.’
All her other—! What was he talking about? She had had one relationship before him, and that had been five years ago; ancient history rather than recent.
‘Let’s stop playing this game, shall we?’ Nick said impatiently as he stood up.
‘Gladly!’ she agreed tautly. ‘Can I go back to work now?’ If she didn’t get out of here soon she was very much afraid the humiliating tears that blurred her vision would escape and begin to fall hotly down her cheeks!
‘No, you damn well—’ Nick broke off abruptly, drawing in controlling breaths as he realised she had to be deliberately baiting him.
Because he knew of her relationship with Andrew Southern?
Probably, he accepted scathingly. Okay, so as an artist the man was a legend in his own lifetime, but he was still a man aged in his fifties, and Hebe was only in her mid-twenties. And Nick had wondered if he was too old for her!
‘Okay, Hebe,’ he began reasoningly. ‘I accept that your affair with Andrew Southern is none of my business—’
‘My what?’ she gasped incredulously, gold eyes wide with disbelief.
‘It’s past history, I realise that—’
‘Past—!’ Hebe gave a dazed shake of her head. ‘But I told you. I don’t even know Andrew Southern!’ she protested indignantly.
‘Evidence proves the contrary—’
‘Evidence?’ she repeated disgustedly. ‘Look, Nick, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ She shook her head, that amazing silver-blonde hair moving silkily against her creamy cheeks. ‘Maybe you have jet-lag, and it’s affecting your judgement. I don’t know, but—’
‘I came back from New York last week, Hebe,’ he told her softly, his gaze narrowing as she looked at him sharply. ‘I’d received information that there was a possibility of a hitherto unseen Andrew Southern coming up for sale in the north of England.’ His mouth twisted. ‘As you can imagine, I had no intention of letting anyone but Cavendish Galleries own that painting.’
‘For Cavendish Galleries read Nick Cavendish!’ she came back scathingly.
‘Exactly.’He smiled in acknowledgement of her derision. ‘Imagine my surprise when I saw the subject of the painting!’
Hebe gave a dazed shake of her head. She had no idea what this conversation was about, or where it could possibly be going. But Nick, it seemed, had been back in England a week already. A week during which he had neither telephoned her nor tried to see her again.
Until today. When he had done nothing but humiliate and embarrass her.
But he had taken her in his arms too…
To prove a point. Nothing else. And he had proved it too, hadn’t he? She responded to him even when she didn’t want to.
Sometimes she wasn’t sure if she didn’t hate him rather than love him!
‘The subject of the painting…?’she prompted frowningly.
‘Yes.’ Nick was looking at her with narrowed eyes now. ‘A portrait. A woman. A very beautiful woman, in fact.’ He shrugged his broad shoulders as if that point was indisputable.
‘It’s one of his earlier paintings then—?’
‘No,’ Nick cut in with certainty. ‘I can categorically say this work is recent. The last five years or so, I would say,’ he added consideringly.
‘But I thought he didn’t paint portraits any more—’
‘Obviously this woman inspired him to do so,’ Nick cut in dryly.
Hebe didn’t like the way he was looking at her now, as if critically dissecting every part of her body.
A body he had come to know intimately six weeks ago…
Except he hadn’t seemed to find anything to critisise about it then, had he?
She shrugged. ‘As far as I’m aware, Andrew Southern hasn’t painted a portrait for over twenty years.’
‘Are you doubting my expertise, Hebe?’ Nick snapped tautly.
No, she wasn’t doing that. Not in any way! She knew only too well what an masterful lover he was. And he hadn’t built up the prestigious worldwide reputation of the Cavendish Galleries by not being extremely knowledgable about art. He knew his subject equally as well as he knew how to be a lover!
Nick was growing tired of Hebe’s prevarication. He strode forcefully across his office to flick the covering from the painting displayed there, his piercing gaze never leaving Hebe’s face as he did so. He wanted to see her reaction to the portrait.
Her eyes widened as she stared blankly at the portrait, her body tensing rigidly.
Not surprising, really, Nick thought with hard amusement.
The painting was of her. Sitting sideways on a chair, wearing a clinging dress of midnight-blue, her hair a glorious curtain of silver down the long length of her spine.
And that was where the formality of the portrait began and ended!
Because her expression could only be called sultry, with a knowing smile curving those pouting, kissable lips, and her eyes, those wonderful golden eyes, half closed as if in arousal. Her breasts were thrust slightly forward beneath the blue dress, the material clinging so closely to those long silken limbs that it was impossible to believe she wore anything beneath it.
That Hebe wore anything beneath it.
Because the woman was most certainly her.
Nick had kissed those same lips six weeks ago. Seen that arousal in her eyes. Caressed the proud tilt of those breasts. Suckled on those rosy nipples. And those long silken limbs had been wrapped around him more than once that night too.
‘Who is she…?’
Nick turned sharply back to look at Hebe as she spoke in a whisper, his frown deepening as he saw how pale she was, her eyes like golden orbs in that pallor.
But they both knew her question was totally unnecessary. ‘Oh, come on, Hebe.’ He sighed his impatience as he moved to stand beside her. ‘It’s you, damn it!’ He would have reached out and shaken her, except that she looked as if she might disintegrate at the slightest touch.
No doubt she had never thought this portrait—a portrait painted by a man who had obviously put the love he felt for its subject into every brushstroke—would ever be seen by the general public. That was the reason for her obvious shock. In fact, it was pure luck that it hadn’t gone into a local auction with a lot of other things from a house cleared out by relatives after the death of its owner, consequently disappearing back into the realms of obscurity.
Luckily enough, the autioneer had been experienced enough to know the Andrew Southern signature—a swan with the single letter S beside it—and had called a friend of his in London to see if any of the big dealers were interested in coming to look at it. Nick most certainly had been, getting the man’s promise that he would let no one else view it until he had flown in from New York to see it.
One look at the painting, at the almost luminous style that marked it as Southern’s work and not some pale imitation, and Nick had known he had to have the painting. At any price.
It had taken some time and considerable skill to negotiate that price with the new owner and the auctioneer before bringing his prize back to London this morning, and his first priority had been to talk to Hebe Johnson.
Undoubtedly the woman in the portrait.
And, at the time of the painting, Andrew Southern’s lover.
Something she seemed to be denying most strongly!
Hebe moved forward as if in a dream, her hand moving up to touch the painting, her fingers stopping only centimetres away from the canvas, trembling slightly. Her breathing was shallow.
‘Who is she?’ she repeated emotionally.
Nick stepped forward. ‘For God’s sake, Hebe, it’s you—’
‘It isn’t me!’ She turned to look at him, able to feel the rapid beat of her pulse in her throat. ‘Look at it again, Nick,’ she told him shakily, pleadingly, turning to look at the painting, a gut-wrenching pain in her chest as she did so.
‘Of course it’s you—’
‘No,’ she cut in quietly again. ‘She has a birthmark, Nick. Look. There.’ She pointed to the rose-shaped birthmark on the swell of one creamy breast, visible above the low neckline of the deep blue dress. ‘And look here.’ She pulled aside the open neck of her cream blouse, revealing her own creamy breast.
Completely bare of that rose-shaped birthmark…
Whoever the woman in the portrait was it most certainly wasn’t Hebe.
She knew it wasn’t.
But if it wasn’t her, who—?
No, it couldn’t be!
Could it…?
And that was when everything went dark…
CHAPTER THREE (#u973dc111-b9aa-500a-ad24-486d2487f7b9)
NICK inwardly cursed as he leapt forward to catch Hebe before she hit the carpeted floor, swinging her up in his arms to carry her over to the leather sofa at the back of the room.
He had been expecting some sort of reaction to the portrait, but it certainly hadn’t been this!
Embarassment, perhaps—because it was obvious that Andrew Southern had been Hebe’s lover. And surprise that Nick actually had possession of the portrait had also been a possibility.
But he certainly hadn’t expected Hebe to faint as she denied she was the woman in the portrait!
That birthmark apart—a pretty rose-shaped mark—there was no one else it could be but her.
He laid her down on the sofa, and Hebe started to groan slightly as she came back to consciousness, finally opening her eyes to look up at him as he bent over him.
And instantly closing them again, as if even the sight of him was too much for her.
‘Hey, come on, Hebe. I realise I’m no oil painting, but I’m not that bad either!’ he mocked as he moved back slightly.
The painting, Hebe remembered with a pained wince, trying to collect herself. But to come to terms with the enormity of what she had seen, and what she was thinking, was going to take longer than the few seconds she’d had so far.
She swallowed hard, not sure how she felt about any of this. If that portrait really was who she thought it was, then—
‘Here.’
She opened her eyes to find Nick holding out a glass of water.
She was freaking him out with this ‘dying swan’ routine, Nick decided impatiently as he put the rest of the bottle of water back in the fridge neatly disguised as an oak filing cabinet.
Who really fainted nowadays? People who were ill, hungry or had been hit over the head! He could rule out the former, because Hebe certainly wasn’t ill. Nor had she been hit over the head. Except maybe metaphorically. That just left hungry.
‘Have you had any lunch today?’ he prompted suspiciously.
‘Actually—’ she swung her legs to the floor to sit up and take a sip of the chilled water ‘—no.’
He gave a shake of his head as he moved back to the fridge. ‘Why haven’t you?’ he demanded as he took a chocolate bar out and handed it to her. ‘Eat it,’he instructed, when she just looked at it. ‘You’ll feel better if you do.’
Hebe somehow doubted that, but the chocolate certainly couldn’t do any harm. She had heard it was good for shock too. And she was certainly in shock.
She glanced at the portrait again as she slowly ate two squares of the chocolate.
The woman in the portrait was beautiful, much more so than her. Couldn’t Nick see that? And that woman had a sultry air about her, a sensuality, those golden eyes half closed with a secret that only she possessed.
Hebe felt herself begin to shake again as she took an educated guess at what that secret was.
She ate another two squares of chocolate before speaking huskily. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘I told you—the north of England.’ Nick moved restlessly about the confines of the office.
Hebe gave him an impatient glance. ‘Can’t you be more specific? Who did you buy it from? Where did they get it?’ It was suddenly imperative she knew these things.
Nick raised dark brows at her intensity. ‘I bought it from a young couple who had just inherited an old house from the guy’s great-uncle, or something like that. They had never seen the painting before he died, because the old man had the portrait hung in his bedroom, of all things,’ he revealed, with a certain amount of distaste.
He couldn’t say he felt exactly comfortable with some old man drooling over a portrait of a woman—Hebe!—who was certainly young enough to be his daughter, if not his granddaughter.
But the couple hadn’t known anything about the woman in the portrait—who she was or how the great-uncle had come to have her portrait. Nick had known who she was—he just didn’t have any idea what her portrait was doing in some old guy’s bedroom and not in the possession of the man who had painted it with such love.
Hebe didn’t look as if she were about to answer that question for him now, either!
She moistened dry lips. ‘What was the man’s name?’
‘Hell, Hebe, what difference does it make what his name was?’ Nick snapped his impatience. ‘He had your portrait, isn’t that enough?’
‘No.’ She shook her head slowly, turning to look at him with dark gold eyes. ‘Because, no matter what you might think to the contrary, Nick, the woman in the portrait isn’t me.’ She gave a humourless smile at his obvious scepticism. ‘No, Nick, it isn’t,’ she insisted. ‘Andrew Southern couldn’t possibly have painted my portrait because I’ve never met him! But it looks as if my mother may have done,’ she added, so softly Nick had trouble hearing her.
Her mother?
Hebe was trying to say the woman in the portrait was her mother?
How stupid did she think he was? Of course the portrait was of Hebe. It couldn’t be anyone else.
Could it…?
Nick gave her a dark frown. ‘You’re telling me that you look exactly like your mother did at that age?’
‘Ah.’ She gave a grimace. ‘Now, that is a very difficult question for me to answer—’
‘Why is it, damn it?’ he interrupted irritably. ‘How difficult can it be to know whether you do or do not look like your mother?’
Hebe eyed him ruefully, understanding his incredulity at the situation, sympathising with it, even, but at the same time knowing she didn’t have the answers that he wanted.
Except for one…
She raised silver-blonde brows. ‘How about if you’re adopted?’
Nick stopped pacing the room, looking down at her with disbelieving eyes. Was she seriously trying to tell him, expecting him to believe—?
But why not?
Hundreds of kids were adopted every year.
He moved to stand in front of the portrait, studying it closely. He had quickly seen the mirror-like similarities, but now he looked for the differences.
There was that birthmark, of course. But that didn’t prove anything. It was a pretty birthmark, and perhaps Andrew Southern had used a little poetic licence—a lover’s rose-coloured glasses—when he’d painted it there above the woman’s breast?
There was that air of sensuality, too, he supposed. But, God knew, he knew just how sensual and sexual Hebe was. He’d seen her look just like that the night they’d spent making love together. No, that proved nothing.
Neither did the lean length of her body, those thrusting breasts and delicately arched throat.
The ring!
There was an emerald and diamond ring on the third finger of the woman’s left hand. Nick assumed that it wasn’t Andrew Southern Hebe had been engaged to, but the now deceased owner of the painting. Why else would someone have kept a piece of art worth so much? Especially if keeping it had been to spite his future wife and her lover. Hebe didn’t wear a ring like that anymore. But if Hebe’s fiancé had realised that she was having an affair with Andrew Southern—and how could he not, with the evidence of the portrait in front of him?—then he would have had every right to break off the engagement; apart from the fact that she was wearing such a revealing dress, Hebe looked as if she had just come from her lover’s arms. And Nick, better than most, knew exactly how she looked at that moment!
No, there was nothing about this portrait that said Hebe was telling him the truth.
But what reason would she have to lie?
Because she had been found out?
Because, having already let two wealthy men slip through her grasp, she still hoped the two of them might have some sort of relationship?
His mouth twisted derisively as he turned back to her. ‘It’s an interesting idea, Hebe, but not very plausible, is it?’ he dismissed.
She straightened defensively. ‘Why isn’t it?’
Damn it, why couldn’t she just let it go? Admit she was the woman in the portrait and tell him where the hell he could find and speak to Andrew Southern?
He shook his head. ‘Because it’s too damned convenient, that’s why,’ he snapped.
‘For whom?’ she challenged shakily. Because it certainly wasn’t convenient for her.
Her parents had told her long ago that she was adopted, of course. They were such wonderful parents, and because of this, and the fact that she never, ever wanted to hurt them, she had never even attempted to find out who her real parents were.
What would have been the point? Obviously they hadn’t wanted her when she was born, so why should they want to know about her as an adult…?
‘Look, Hebe, I don’t give a damn if you’ve posed nude for the guy. I just want a way in to Andrew Southern, past his guard-dog of an agent!’Nick told her with brutal honesty.
Hebe flinched slightly at his callousness. ‘Well, when you find it,’ she said evenly, ‘please let me know—because after this I would like to talk to him too!’
Nick’s mouth twisted derisively. ‘You’re right; talking isn’t something you do too much of when you’re in bed, is it?’
‘Insults are going to get us nowhere, Nick,’ she told him shakily, the chocolate seeming to have done very little to allay her shock. In fact, she felt decidedly sick now.
But then, it wasn’t every day you were confronted with a painting possibly of the mother you had never known. A painting, moreover, that was everything Nick said it was.
Whoever the woman was, Andrew Southern had been in love with her when he’d painted her portrait. It was there in every brushstroke, every soft nuance of the woman’s sensual beauty.
Did that mean that the artist was Hebe’s father…?
Or had that been the man who had owned the portrait all these years and kept it hidden from view?
They were questions that Hebe certainly wanted answers to.
But for the moment she had to deal with Nick’s disbelief…
She drew in a deep breath. ‘You can think what you like about the portrait, Nick. Your opinion is really of little interest to me. I know that woman isn’t me, and that’s what’s important.’
He looked at her frustratedly for several seconds. ‘You’re seriously expecting me to believe, if that portrait is of your mother, that it’s—what?—twenty-six, twentyseven years old?’
She shrugged at his sceptisism. ‘That timescale would certainly fit in with the period when Andrew Southern was still painting portraits, yes. And for the record, Nick,’ she added ruefully, ‘I’m not expecting you to believe anything. I told you, it’s what I think that’s important.’
And what she thought was that she had to see Andrew Southern herself, and ask him about the woman in the portrait…
But if a man like Nick Cavendish, with all of the prestige of the Cavendish Galleries behind him, couldn’t get past the reclusive artist’s agent, then how did she expect to do so?
She would find a way.
She had to!
There was no way she could just leave here and pretend she had never seen that portrait. The portrait of the woman who surely had to be her mother…
She would need to speak to her parents too, of course. She couldn’t just go off in search of her real parents without telling them about it first. She owed them that, and they would understand, she was sure. They had brought her up with a sure sense of how important she was to them, of how much she was loved, but at the same time had taught her independence of spirit and mind. They couldn’t fail to support her in her search for the woman in the portrait.
‘Well, if that’s all, Nick, I think I’ll go now.’ Hebe put the glass of water down on the low table in front of her before standing up.
And instantly swayed dizzily again.
In fact, she felt as if she really were going to be sick!
‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ Nick stepped forward to grasp her arm, his expression dark and brooding.
She looked up at him with slightly unfocusing eyes. ‘I told you—I haven’t had any lunch today.’She tried to move away from him. Even that light touch on her arm was enough to send a thrill of awareness coursing through her veins.
So much for hating him!
Reasonably she might do so; he had been nothing but insulting today, with none of that exciting lover of six weeks ago about him. But emotionally her body still responded to his slightest touch.
‘You’re coming upstairs with me,’ he announced grimly.
‘Upstairs?’ She stared at him with startled eyes.
His mouth twisted derisively. ‘Don’t look so worried, Hebe; I’m not so filled with lust for you that I’m dragging you upstairs to have my wicked way with you!’
‘Again!’ she came back tartly, stung by his mockery.
‘Again,’ he acknowledged tauntingly, keeping a firm hold of her arm as he walked her over to the door. ‘You’re dizzy from not having eaten any lunch, and I have food upstairs in my apartment; the logical thing to do is take you up there and feed you,’ he explained dryly.
Logic? When had logic had anything to do with their relationship so far?
‘If you’re happy to let me go for the day, I can easily go home and get myself something to eat.’ She firmly stood her ground.
She did not want to go upstairs to his apartment. Today had been humiliating enough without returning to the scene of her naïve stupidity in thinking this man seriously liked her!
Nick’s mouth tightened. ‘No, I’m not happy to do that, Hebe. For one thing, you don’t look as if you could make it downstairs, let alone home,’ he derided. ‘And, for another, I haven’t finished talking to you yet.’
That sounded ominous…
‘I’ve told you—I don’t know anything about Andrew Southern,’ she insisted stubbornly. ‘Not where he is or how you might get to meet him. I wish I did!’
Nick eyed her frowningly. Did she seriously expect him to believe that?
Yes, he acknowledged impatiently after a glance at her guileless expression, that was exactly what she expected.
It was up to him to ensure that she knew she hadn’t succeeded in convincing him of anything. Not for a moment!
‘We’ll talk again after you’ve eaten,’ he told her firmly, taking her with him out into the carpeted hallway.
Hebe glared at him. ‘Do you never take no for an answer?’
Nick gave a wolfish grin. ‘You, of all people, should know that I don’t!’
That had certainly silenced her, he noted with satisfaction. That poutingly kissable mouth was set firmly as the two of them got into the private lift to go up one floor to his apartment.
Meaning that Hebe would enter his completely private domain for a second time!
‘Is an omelette okay with you?’ he rasped tersely, releasing her arm to stride through to the open-plan kitchen with its white and chrome fixtures.
Hebe took her time following him, obviously no more comfortable being back here than he was to have her here.
He would feed her the omelette, get some straight answers out of her, and then she could leave—
Where the hell was she?
He strode back out into the sitting room, coming to an abrupt halt as he saw her holding and looking at one of the photographs that usually stood on the coffee table in front of the window. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he bit out coldly, his face devoid of all expression.
Hebe almost dropped the photograph she had picked up to have a better look at, grasping it with both hands against her chest, knowing from the furious look on Nick’s face that his question didn’t require an answer—that he knew exactly what she had been doing.
The photograph was of a little boy about three or four years old. A gorgeous little boy grinning happily into the camera lens. A little boy, with Nick’s dark hair and blue eyes…
Nick moved forcefully across the room to snatch the photograph out of her hands, those blue eyes glacially cold as he glared at her through narrowed lids.
She swallowed hard. ‘I’m sorry. I—he’s very beautiful.’
A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw. ‘Yes, he was,’ he ground out harshly.
Was. It was his son, then.
Hebe felt a tightening of her chest at the thought of all that life and boyish happiness no longer existing.
How much worse was that realisation for Nick…!
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.
Nick put the photograph carefully back on the table before giving her a sharp glance. ‘You know who he is?’
‘I—yes,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘One of the other girls told me that you had a son.’
‘Luke,’ he bit out harshly. ‘His name was Luke.’
Luke…Four years old. His death simply too much for his parents to deal with together, driving them irrevocably apart.
‘I really am sorry,’ Hebe repeated huskily. ‘I shouldn’t have—Please believe me when I tell you I never meant to—’
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