The Contaxis Baby
LYNNE GRAHAM
In the gossip rags, socialite Lizzie Denton's situation looks pretty ugly–Lizzie meets boy, Lizzie dumps boy, brokenhearted boy dies in horrific car crash. Suddenly she's public enemy number one.And a disinherited heiress, to boot. No job, no home and only a designer wardrobe to keep her company. But the worst part is that the papers got it wrong, and Lizzie promised not to tell anyone the truth. Devastated by the death of his half brother, Greek tycoon Sebasten Contaxis decides to punish the woman responsible: Lizzie Denton. But when he discovers that the stunning woman he can't keep his hands off–an inexplicable case of lust at first sight–is the same woman he's been seeking, Sebasten alters his scheme. After all, one broken heart deserves another, right? And revenge is so much sweeter when it's served in bed–that is, until Lizzie has some surprising news for him….
is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and
bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant
success with readers worldwide. Since her first
book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.
In this special collection, we offer readers a
chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare
treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may
have missed. In every case, seduction and passion
with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!
LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon
reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.
The Contaxis Baby
Lynne Graham
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER ONE
WHEN Sebasten Contaxis strode to Ingrid Morgan’s side to offer his condolences on the death of her only son, she fell on his chest and just sobbed as though her heart had broken right through.
A ripple of curiosity ran through the remaining guests in the drawing room of the Brighton town house. The tall, powerfully built male, every angle of his bronzed features stamped with strength and authority, looked remarkably like…but surely not? After all, what could be the connection? Why would the Greek electronics tycoon come to pay his respects after Connor’s funeral? But keen eyes picked out the long, opulent limousine double-parked across the street and then judged the two large men waiting on the pavement as the bodyguards that they were. Heads turned, moved closer together and the whispers started.
Stunning dark eyes veiled, Sebasten waited until Ingrid had got a grip on that first outburst of grief before murmuring, ‘Is there anywhere that we can talk?’
‘Still looking after my good name?’ Ingrid lifted her blonde head and he tensed at the sight of the raw suffering etched in her once beautiful features. Then he knew that even her love for his late father had in the end been surpassed by her devotion to her son. ‘It doesn’t really matter now, does it? Connor’s gone where he can never be embarrassed by my past…’
She took him into an elegant little study and poured drinks for them both. Always slim, right now she looked emaciated and every day of her fifty-odd years. She had been his father’s mistress for a long time and some of the few happy childhood memories Sebasten had related to her and Connor, who had been five years his junior. For all too short a spell, Connor had been the kid brother he had never had, tagging after Sebasten on the beach, a little blond boy, cheerfully and totally fearless. As an adult, he had become a brilliant polo player, adored by women, in fact very popular with both sexes. Not the brightest spark on the block but a very likeable guy. Yet it had been well over a year since Sebasten had last seen the younger man.
‘It was murder, you know…’ Ingrid condemned half under her breath.
Sebasten’s winged dark brows drew together but he remained silent, for he had heard the rumour that Connor’s car crash had been no accident, indeed, a deliberate act of self-destruction, and he knew that there was no more painful way to lose a loved one. She needed to talk and he knew that listening was the kindest thing he could do for her.
‘I liked Lisa Denton…when I met that evil little shrew, I actually liked her!’ Ingrid proclaimed with bone-deep bitterness.
The silence lay before Ingrid continued in a tremulous tone. ‘I knew Connor was in love when he stopped confiding in me. That hurt but he was twenty-four…that’s why I didn’t pry.’
‘Lisa Denton?’ Sebasten was keen to deflect her from that unfortunate angle.
Her stricken blue eyes hardened. ‘A spoilt little rich brat. Gets her kicks out of encouraging men to make an ass of themselves over her! It’s only three months since Connor met her but I could tell he’d fallen like a ton of bricks.’ The older woman swallowed with visible difficulty. ‘Then without any warning, she got bored. She cut him dead at a party two weeks ago…made an exhibition of herself with another man, laughed in his face…his friends told me everything!’
Sebasten waited while Ingrid gathered her shredded composure back together again.
‘He begged but she wouldn’t even take a phone call from him. He’d done nothing. He couldn’t handle it,’ Ingrid sobbed brokenly. ‘He wasn’t sleeping, so he went for a drive in his car in the middle of the night and drove it into a wall!’
Sebasten curved an arm round her in a consoling embrace and seethed with angry distaste at the ugly picture she had drawn up. Connor would have been soft as butter in the hands of a manipulative little bitch like that.
‘You’re going to hate me for what I t-tell you now…’ Ingrid whispered shakily.
‘Nonsense,’ Sebasten soothed.
‘Connor was your half-brother…’
Sebasten released his breath in a sudden startled hiss and collided with Ingrid’s both defiant and guilty gaze.
‘No…that’s not possible,’ he breathed in total shock, not wanting it to be true when it was too late for him to do anything about it.
Ingrid sank down in a distraught heap and sobbed out a storm of self-justification while Sebasten stared at her as though he had never seen her before. She had never told his father, Andros, because she had known how ruthless Andros would be at protecting the good name of the Contaxis family from scandal.
‘If Andros had known, he would’ve bullied me into having a termination. So I left him, came back eighteen months later, confessed to a rebound relationship, grovelled…eventually he took me back!’ For a frozen instant in time, Ingrid’s face shone with the remembered triumph of having fooled her powerful lover and then her eyes, fell, the flash of energy draining away again.
‘How could you not tell me before this?’ Sebasten bit out in an electrifying undertone, lean, strong face rigid with the force of his appalled incredulity. In the space of seconds, Connor’s death had gone from a matter of sincere and sad regret to a tragedy which gutted Sebasten. But he knew why, knew all too well why she had kept quiet. Fear of the consequences would have kept her quiet throughout all the years she had loved his father without adequate return.
‘I’m only telling you now because I want you to make Lisa Denton sorry she was ever born…’ Ingrid confided with harsh clarity as his brilliant gaze locked to her set features and the hatred she could not hide. ‘You’re one of the richest men on this planet and I don’t care how you do it. There have got to be strings you could pull, pressure you could put on somewhere with someone to punish her for what she did to Connor…’
‘No,’ Sebasten murmured without inflection, a big, dark, powerful Greek male, over six feet four in height and with shimmering dark golden eyes as steady as rock. ‘I am a Contaxis and I have honour.’
Minutes later, Sebasten swept out of Ingrid’s home, impervious to the lingering mourners keen to get a second look at him. In the privacy of his limo, he sank a double whiskey. His lean, dark, handsome face was hard and taut and ashen pale. He had no doubt that Ingrid had told him the truth. Connor…the little brother he had only run into twice at polo matches in recent years. He might have protected him from his own weakness but he hadn’t been given the chance. Certainly, he could have taught him how to handle that kind of woman. Had Lisa Denton found out that, in spite of his popularity and his wealthy friends, Connor was essentially penniless but for his winnings on the polo field? Or had Connor’s puppy-dog adoration simply turned her off big time? His wide, sensual mouth curled. Was she a drop-dead babe who treated men like trophies?
He pitied Ingrid for the bitterness that consumed her. Yet even after all those years in Greece, she still hadn’t learned that one essential truth: a man never discussed family honour with a woman or involved her in certain personal matters…
Maurice Denton stared out of his library window and then turned round to face his daughter, his thin, handsome face set with rigid disapproval.
‘I can’t excuse anything you’ve done,’ he asserted.
Lizzie was so white that her reddish-blonde hair seemed to burn like a brand above her forehead. ‘I didn’t ask you to,’ she murmured unevenly. ‘I just said…we all make mistakes…and dating Connor was mine.’
‘There are standards of decent behaviour and you’ve broken them,’ the older man delivered as harshly as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘I’m ashamed of you.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice wobbled in spite of all her efforts to control it but that last assurance had burned deep. ‘I’m really…sorry.’
‘It’s too late, isn’t it? What I can’t forgive is the public embarrassment and distress that you’ve caused your stepmother. Last night, Felicity and I should have been dining with the Jurgens but it was cancelled with a flimsy excuse. As word gets around that your cruelty literally drove the Morgan boy to his death, we’re becoming as socially unacceptable as you have made yourself—’
‘Dad—’
‘Hannah Jurgen was very fond of Connor. A lot of people were. Felicity was extremely upset by that cancellation. Indeed, from the minute the details of this hideous business began leaking into the tabloids Felicity has scarcely slept a night through!’ Maurice condemned fiercely.
Pale as milk, Lizzie turned her head away, her throat tight and aching. She might have told him that his young and beautiful wife, the woman who was the very centre of his universe, couldn’t sleep for fear of exposure. But what right did she have to play God with his marriage? She asked herself painfully. What right did she have to speak and destroy that marriage when the future security of her own little unborn brother or sister was also involved in the equation?
‘Do you think it’s healthy for a pregnant woman to live in this atmosphere and tolerate being cold-shouldered by those she counted as friends just because you’ve made yourself a pariah?’ her father demanded in driven continuance.
‘I broke off my relationship with Connor. I didn’t do anything else.’ Even as Lizzie struggled to maintain her brittle composure she was trembling, for she was not accustomed to hearing that cold, accusing tone from her father, and in her hurt and bewilderment she could not find the right words to try and defend her own actions. ‘I’m not to blame for his death,’ she swore in a feverish protest. ‘He had problems that had nothing to do with me!’
‘This morning, Felicity went down to the cottage to rest,’ the older man revealed with speaking condemnation. ‘I want my wife home by my side where she ought to be. Right now, she needs looking after and my first loyalty lies with her and our unborn child. For that reason, I’ve reached a decision, one I probably should have made a long time ago. I’m cutting off your allowance and I want you to move out.’
Shock shrilled through Lizzie, rocking what remained of her once protected world on its axis: she was to be thrown to the wolves for her stepmother’s benefit. She stared in sick disbelief at the father whom she had adored from childhood, the father whom she had fought to protect from pain and humiliation even while her own life disintegrated around her.
Maurice had always been a loving parent. But then the death of Lizzie’s mother when she was five and the fifteen years that had passed before the older man remarried had ensured that father and daughter had a specially close bond. But from the day he had met Felicity, brick by brick that loving closeness had been disassembled. Felicity had ensured that she received top billing in every corner of her husband’s life and his home.
‘Believe me, I don’t mean this as a punishment. I hope I’m not that foolish,’ the older man framed heavily. ‘But it’s obvious that I’ve indulged and spoilt you to a degree where you care nothing for the feelings of other people—’
‘That’s not true…’ Lizzie was devastated by that tough assessment.
‘I’m afraid it is. Making you go out into the world and stand on your own feet may well be the kindest thing I can do for you. There’ll be no more swanning about at charity functions in the latest fashions, kidding yourself on that that’s real work—’
‘But I—’
‘—and after the manner of Connor’s death, who is likely to invite you to talk about generosity towards those less fortunate?’ Maurice enquired with withering bite. ‘Your very presence at a charity event would make most right-thinking people feel nauseous!’
As the phone on the desk rang, Lizzie flinched. Her father reached for it and gave her a brusque nod of finality, spelling out the message that their meeting was at an end. The distaste he could barely hide from her, the angry shame in his gaze cut her to the bone. She stumbled out into the hall and made her way back to the sanctuary of her apartment, which lay behind the main house in what had once been the stable block.
For a while, Lizzie was just numb with shock. Over the past ten days, shock had piled on shock until it almost sent her screaming mad. Yet only a fortnight ago, she had been about to break the news of the fabulous surprise holiday in Bali she had booked for Connor’s birthday. She had not even managed to cancel that booking, she acknowledged dimly, must have lost every penny of its considerable cost. But then when had she ever had to worry about money? Or running up bills on her credit card because she had overrun her monthly allowance? Now, all those bills would have to be paid…
But what did that matter when she had lost the man she had loved to her own stepmother? Sweet, gushy little Felicity, who was so wet she made a pond look dry. Yet Felicity, it seemed, had also been the love of Connor’s life and, finally rejected by her, he had gone off the rails.
‘I didn’t mean it to happen…I couldn’t help myself!’ Connor had proclaimed, seemingly impervious to the consequences of the appalling betrayal he had inflicted on Lizzie. The guy she had believed was her best friend ever, maybe even her future husband, and all the time he’d just been using her as a convenient cover for his rampant affair with her stepmother—the whiny, weepy Felicity! A great, gulping sob racked Lizzie’s tall, slender frame and she clamped a hand to her wobbling mouth. She caught an unwelcome glimpse of herself in the mirror and her bright green eyes widened as she scanned her own physical flaws. Too tall, too thin with not a shadow of Felicity’s feminine, sexy curves. No wonder Connor had not once been tempted all those weeks…
And Connor? Her tummy twisted in sick response. What a ghastly price he had paid for his affair with a married woman! Connor…dead? How could she truly hate him when he was gone? And how could she still be so petty that she was feeling grateful that she had never got as far as offering her skinny body to Connor in some ludicrous romantic setting in Bali? He would have run a mile!
Mrs Baines, the housekeeper, appeared in the doorway looking the very picture of discomfiture. ‘I’m afraid that your father has asked me to pack for you.’
‘Oh…’ In the unkind mirror, Lizzie watched all her freckles stand out in stark contrast to her pallor before striving to pin an unconcerned expression to her face to lessen the older woman’s unease. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m all grown now and I’ll survive.’
‘But putting you out of your home is wrong,’ Mrs Baines stated with a sharp conviction that startled Lizzie, for, although the housekeeper had worked for the Dentons for years, she rarely engaged in conversation that did not relate to her work and had certainly never before criticised her employer.
‘This is just a family squabble.’ Lizzie gave an awkward shrug, touched to be in receipt of such unexpected support but embarrassed by it as well. ‘I…I’m going for a shower.’
Closeted in the bathroom, she frowned momentarily at the thought of that surprising exchange with Mrs Baines before she stabbed buttons on her mobile and called Jen, her closest remaining female friend. ‘Jen?’ she asked with forced brightness when the vivacious blonde answered. ‘Could you stand a lodger for a couple of days? Dad’s throwing me out!’
‘Are you jossing me?’
‘No, talking straight. Right at this very moment, our housekeeper is packing for me—’
‘With your wardrobe…I mean, you are the original shop-till-you-drop girl; she’ll still be packing at dawn!’ Jen giggled. ‘Come on over. We can go out and drown your sorrows together tonight.’
At that suggestion, Lizzie grimaced. ‘I’m not in a party mood—’
‘Take it from me, you need to party. Stick your nose in the air and face down the cameras and the pious types. There, but for the grace of God, go I!’ Jen exclaimed with warming heat only to spoil it by continuing with graphic tactlessness, ‘You ditched the guy…you were only with him a few months, like how does that make you responsible for him getting drunk and smashing himself up in his car?’
Lizzie flinched and reflected that Jen’s easy hospitality would come with a price tag attached. But then, where else could she go in the short term? People had stopped calling her once the supposed truth of Connor’s ‘accident’ had been leaked by his friends. She just needed a little space to sort out her life and, with the current state of her finances, checking into a hotel would not be a good idea. Maybe Jen, whose shallowness was legendary, would cheer her up. Maybe a night out on the town would lift her out of her growing sense of shellshocked despair.
‘Work?’ Jen said it as if it was a dirty word and surveyed Lizzie with rounded eyes of disbelief as she led the way into a bedroom mercifully large enough to hold seven suitcases and still leave space to walk around the bed. ‘You…work? What at? Stay with me until your father calms down. Just like me, you were raised to be useless and decorative and eventually become a wife, so let’s face it, it’s hardly your fault.’
‘I’m going to stand on my own feet…just as Dad said,’ Lizzie pronounced with a stubborn lift of her chin. ‘I want to prove that I’m not spoilt and indulged—’
‘But you are. You’ve never done a proper day’s work in your life!’ A small, voluptuous blonde, Jen was never seen with less than four layers of mascara enhancing her sherry-brown eyes. ‘If you take a job, when would you find the time to have your hair and nails done? Or meet up with your friends for three-hour lunches or even take off at a moment’s notice for a week on a tropical beach? I mean, it would be gruesome for you.’
Faced with those realities, it truly did sound a gruesome prospect to Lizzie too, although she was somewhat resentful of her companion’s assertion that she had never worked. She had done a lot of unpaid PR work for charities and had proved brilliant at parting the seriously wealthy from their bundles of cash with stories of suffering that touched the hardest hearts. She had sat on several committees to organise events and, well, sat there, the ultimate authority on how to make a campaign look cool for the benefit of those to whom such matters loomed large. But nine-to-five work hours, following orders given by other people for some pocket-change wage, no, she hadn’t ever done that. However, that didn’t mean that she couldn’t…
Four hours later, Lizzie was no longer feeling quite so feisty. Whisked off to the latest ‘in’ club, Lizzie found herself seated only two tables from a large party of former friends set on shooting her filthy looks. She was wearing an outfit that had been an impulse buy and a mistake and, in addition, Jen had been quite short with her when she had had only two alcoholic drinks before trying to order her usual orange juice. Reluctant to offend the blonde, who felt just then like her only friend in the world, Lizzie was now drinking more vodka.
‘When my girlfriends won’t drink with me, I feel like they’re acting superior,’ Jen confessed with a forgiving grin and then threw back a Tequila Sunrise much faster than it could have been poured.
When Jen went off to speak to someone, Lizzie went to the cloakroom. Standing at the mirrors, she regretted having allowed Jen to persuade her to wear the white halter top and short skirt. She felt too exposed yet she often bought daring outfits even though she never actually wore them. While she was wondering why that was so, she overheard the chatter of familiar female voices.
‘I just can’t believe Lizzie had the nerve to show herself here tonight!’
‘But it does prove what a heartless, self-centred little—’
‘Tom’s warning Jen that if she stays friendly with Lizzie, she’s likely to find herself out on her own with only Lizzie!’
‘How could she have treated Connor that way? He was so much fun, so kind…’
Lizzie fled with hot, prickling tears standing out in her shaken eyes. Returning to her table, she drained her glass without even tasting the contents. Those female voices had belonged to her friends. One of them had even gone to school with her. Ex-friends. All of a sudden everybody hated her, yet only weeks ago she had had so many invitations out she would have needed a clone of herself to attend every event. Now she wanted to bolt for the exit and go home. But she wasn’t welcome at home any more and Jen would be furious if she tried to end the evening early.
Yes, Connor had seemed kind. At least, she had thought so too until she went down to the Denton country cottage and found Connor in bed with Felicity. Her skin turned cold and clammy at that tormenting memory.
She had been thinking about inviting a bunch of friends to the cottage for the weekend. Believing that the property had been little used in recent times, she had decided to check out that there would be sufficient bedding. Connor must have come down from London in her stepmother’s car and it had been parked out of sight behind the garage, so Lizzie had had no warning that the cottage was occupied. She had been in a lovely, bubbly mood, picturing how amazed Connor would be when she told him that he would be spending his twenty-fifth birthday in Bali.
Lizzie had been on the stairs when she heard the funny noises: a sort of rustling and moaning that had sent a momentary chill down her spine. But even at that stage she had not, in her ignorance, suspected that what she was hearing was a man and a woman making love. Blithely assuming that it was only the wind getting in through a window that had been left open, she had gone right on up. From the landing, she had got a full Technicolor view of her boyfriend and her stepmother rolling about the pine four-poster bed in the main bedroom.
Felicity had been in the throes of what had looked more like agony than ecstasy. Connor had been gasping for breath in between telling Felicity how much he loved her and how he couldn’t bear to think that it would be another week before he could see her again. Throughout that exchange, Lizzie had been frozen to the spot like a paralysed peeping Tom. When Felicity had seen her, her aghast baby-blue eyes had flooded with tears, making her look more than ever like a victim in the guise of a fairytale princess.
But then crying was an art form and a way of life for her stepmother, Lizzie reflected, striving valiantly to suppress the wounding images she had allowed to surge up from her subconscious. Felicity wept if dinner was less than perfect… ‘It’s my fault…it’s my fault,’ she would fuss until Maurice Denton was on his knees and promising her a week in Paris to recover from the trauma of it. In much the same way and with just as much sincere feeling she had wept when Lizzie found her in bed with Connor Morgan. Tears had dripped from her like rain but her nose hadn’t turned red and her eyes hadn’t swelled up pink.
When Lizzie cried, it was noisy and messy and her skin turned blotchy. That afternoon, Connor and Felicity had enjoyed a full performance to that effect, before Lizzie’s pride came to the rescue and she told them to get out of the cottage. After they had departed, she had made a bonfire of their bedding in the back garden. Recalling that rather pointless exercise, she forced herself upright with an equally forced smile when Jen urged her up to dance.
Up on the overhanging wrought-iron gallery above, Sebasten was scanning the crowds below while the club manager gushed by his side, ‘I recognised the Denton girl when she arrived. She looks a right little goer…’
Derisive distaste lit Sebasten’s brooding gaze. The very fact that Lisa Denton was out clubbing only forty-eight hours after the funeral told him all he needed to know about the woman who had trashed Connor’s life.
‘Although little wouldn’t be the operative word,’ the older man chuckled. ‘She’s a big girl…not even that pretty; wouldn’t be my style anyway.’
His companion’s inappropriate tone of prurience gritted Sebasten’s even white teeth. Beyond the fact that he had a very definite need to put a face to the name, he had no other immediate motive for seeking out Lisa Denton. She would pay for what she had done to Connor but Sebasten never acted in reckless haste and invariably employed the most subtle means of retribution against those who injured him.
At that point, his attention was ensnared by the slender woman spinning below the lights on the dance floor below, long hair the colour of marmalade splaying in a sea of amber luxuriance around her bare shoulders. She flung her head back with the kind of suggestive abandonment that fired a leap of pure adrenalin in Sebasten. Every muscle in his big, powerful length snapped taut when he saw her face: the exotic slant of her cheekbones below big, faraway eyes and a lush, full-lipped pink mouth. Her beauty was distinctive, unusual. Her white halter-neck top glittered above a sleek, smooth midriff and she sported a skirt the tantalising width of a belt above lithe, shapely legs that were at least three feet long. Bloody gorgeous, Sebasten decided, sticking out an expectant hand for the drink he had ordered and receiving it while contemplating that face and those legs and every visible inch that lay between with unashamed lust and wholly dishonourable intentions. Tonight, he would not be sleeping alone…
‘That’s her…the blonde…’
Recalled to the thorny question of Lisa Denton by his companion’s pointing hand, Sebasten looked to one side of his racy lady with the marmalade hair and, seeing a small blonde with the apparent cleavage of the Grand Canyon, understood why the manager had referred to his quarry as a big girl. So that was the nasty little piece of work whom Connor had lost his head over. Sebasten was not impressed but then he hadn’t wanted or expected to be.
On the dance floor below, Jen touched Lizzie’s shoulder to attract her attention. Only then did Sebasten appreciate that the two women knew each other and he frowned, for such a close connection could prove to be a complication. It was predictable that within the space of ten seconds Sebasten had worked out how that acquaintance might even benefit his purpose.
Jen reached the table she had been seated at with Lizzie first and then turned with compressed lips. ‘I’ve been thinking that…well, perhaps it’s not such a good idea for you to stay with me…’
Remembering the dialogue that she had overheard in the cloakroom, Lizzie felt her heart sink. ‘Has someone been getting at you?’
‘Let’s be cool about this,’ Jen urged with a brittle smile. ‘I have every sympathy for the situation you’re in right now but I have to think of myself too and I don’t want to—’
‘Get the same treatment?’ Lizzie slotted in.
Jen nodded, grateful that Lizzie had grasped the point so fast. ‘You should just go to a hotel and keep your head down for a while. You can pick up your things tomorrow. By this time next week, everybody will have found something other than Connor to get wound up about.’
And with that unlikely forecast, Jen walked without hesitation into the enemy camp two tables away and sat down with the crowd, who had been ignoring Lizzie all evening. For an awful instant, Lizzie was terrified that she was going to break down and sob like a little baby in front of them all. Whirling round, she pushed her way back onto the crowded dance floor, where at least she was out of view.
It was an effort to think straight and then she stopped trying, just sank into the music and gave herself up to the pounding beat. Her troubled, tearful gaze strayed to the male poised on the wrought-iron stairs that led down from the upper gallery and for no reason that she could fathom she fell still again. He was tall, black-haired and possessed of so striking a degree of sleek, dark good looks that the unattached women near by were focusing their every provocative move on him and even the attached ones were stealing cunning glances past their partners and weighing their chances.
He looked like a child in a toy shop: spoilt for choice while he accepted all those admiring female stares as his due. He was also the kind of guy who never looked twice at Lizzie except to lech over her legs and then wince at her flat chest and her freckles when he finally dragged his Neanderthal, over-sexed gaze up that high. Story of my life, Lizzie conceded. An over-emotional sob tugged at her throat as self-pity demolished a momentarily entrancing fantasy of said guy making a beeline for her and thoroughly sickening Jen and her cohort of non-wellwishers.
Ashamed of her own emotional weakness, Lizzie headed for the bar, for want of anything better to do.
A hand suddenly closed over hers, startling her. ‘Let me…’ a dark, deep, sinfully rich drawl murmured in her ear.
Let him…what? Flipping round, Lizzie had the rare experience of having to tilt her head back to look up at a man. She encountered stunning dark golden eyes and stopped breathing, frozen in her tracks by shock. It was the guy from the stairs and close to he was even more spectacular than he had looked at a distance, not to mention being very much taller than she had imagined. Male too, very, very male, was the only other description she could come up with as she simply stared up at him.
Beneath her astonished scrutiny, he snapped long brown fingers, tilted his arrogant dark head back to address someone out of view and then began to walk her away from the crush at the bar again.
‘I’ve got freckles…’ Lizzie mumbled in case he hadn’t noticed.
‘I shall look forward to counting them.’ He flashed her the kind of smile that carried a thousand megawatts of sheer masculine charisma and her heart, her dead and battered heart, leapt in her chest as though she had been kicked by an electrical charge.
‘You like freckles?’
‘Ask me tomorrow,’ Sebasten purred with husky amusement.
CHAPTER TWO
AS SEBASTEN approached the table where Lizzie had been seated, his bodyguards, who Lizzie assumed were bouncers, shifted the people about to take it over with scant ceremony. Two waiters then appeared at speed to clear the empty glasses.
Watching that ruthless little display of power being played out before her, Lizzie blinked in surprise. Was he the manager or the owner of the club? Who else could he be? The bar was heaving with a crush of bodies but the bouncer types only had to signal to receive a tray of drinks while others less influential fumed.
Looking across the table as her companion folded down with athletic grace into a seat, Lizzie still found herself staring: he was just so breathtaking. His lean, bronzed features were framed with high cheekbones, a narrow-bridged classic nose and a stubborn jawline. He had the kind of striking bone structure that would impress even when he was old. Luxuriant black hair curled back from his forehead above strong, well-marked brows, his brilliant, deep-set dark eyes framed by thick black lashes. Her heart hammered when he smiled at her again but she could not shake the lowering sensation that his choice of her with her less obvious attractions was a startling and inexplicable event.
‘I’m Sebasten,’ Sebasten drawled, cool as glass. ‘Sebasten Contaxis.’
His name meant nothing to Lizzie but, as what she had already seen suggested that she ought to recognise the name, she nodded as if she had already recognised him and, having finally picked up on the sexy, rasping timbre of his accent, said, ‘I’m Lizzie…you’re not from London—er—originally, are you?’
Taking that as a case of stating the obvious with irony, Sebasten laughed. ‘Hardly, but I’m very fond of this city, Lizzie? Short for? The obvious?’
‘Yes, after my mother…it’s what my family and closest friends call me.’ As Lizzie met the concentrated effect of those spectacular dark golden eyes, a frisson of feverish tension not unlaced with alarm seized her: he was not the sort of straightforward, safe male she was usually drawn to. There was danger in the aura of arrogant expectation he emanated, in the tough strength of purpose etched in that lean, dark, handsome face. But perhaps the greatest threat of all lay in the undeniable sizzle of the sexual signals in that smouldering gaze of his.
‘I take it that you saw at one glance that we were likely to be close,’ he said in a teasing undertone that sent a potent little shiver down her taut spine.
Her breath snarled up in her throat. Caution urged her to slap him down but she didn’t want him to walk away, could not, at that instant, think of clever enough words with which to gracefully spell out the reality that she was not into casual intimacy on short acquaintance. But for the first time in her life, Lizzie realised that she was seriously tempted and that shook her.
In surprise, Sebasten watched the hot colour climb in her cheeks so that the freckles all merged, the sudden downward dip of her eyes as she tilted her head to one side in an evasive move that was more awkward than elegant. For a moment, in spite of her sophisticated, provocative appearance, she looked young, very young and vulnerable.
‘Smile…’ he commanded, suddenly wondering what age she was.
And her generous mouth curved up as if she couldn’t help herself in an entirely natural but rather embarrassed grin that had so much genuine appeal that Sebasten was entrapped by the surprise of it. ‘I’m not the best company tonight,’ she told him in a tone of earnest apology.
Sebasten rose in one fluid movement to his full height and extended a hand. ‘Let’s dance…’
As Lizzie got up she caught a glimpse of the staring faces at that table of ex-friends that she had been avoiding all evening and she threw her head back, squaring her taut bare shoulders. It felt good to be seen with a presentable male, rather than being alone and an object of scornful pity.
Just as it had once felt good to be with Connor? Lizzie snatched in a sharp gasp of air, painfully aware that Connor had smashed her confidence to pieces. She had thought that he was as straight and honest as she was herself. When he had made no attempt to go beyond the occasional kiss, she had believed his plea that he respected her and wanted to get to know her better. In retrospect that made her feel such an utter and naïve fool, for his restraint had encouraged her to make all sorts of foolish assumptions, not least the belief that he was really serious about her. When she was forced to face the awful truth that Connor had instead been sleeping with her much more beautiful stepmother, she had been devastated by her own trusting stupidity.
A strong arm curved round Lizzie and tugged her close in a smooth move that brought her into glancing collision with Sebasten’s lean, muscular length. A shockwave of heated response slivered through her quivering body.
‘What age are you?’ Sebasten demanded, an aggressive edge to his deep, dark drawl, for he had seen the distant look in her eyes and he was unaccustomed to a woman focusing on anything other than him.
Putting that tone down to the challenge of competing against the backdrop of the pounding music, Lizzie told him, ‘Twenty-two…’
‘Taken?’ Sebasten prompted, a primal possessiveness scything up through him at the sudden thought that she might well be involved with some other man and that that was the most likely explanation for her total lack of flirtatiousness.
He was holding her close on a floor packed with people all dancing apart but as Lizzie looked up into his burnished lion-gold eyes she was only aware of the mad racing of her own heartbeat and the quite unfamiliar curl of heat surging up inside her.
‘Taken?’ she queried, forced to curve her hands round his wide shoulders to rise on tiptoe so that he could hear her above the music.
Indifferent to the watchers around them, Sebasten linked his other arm round her slender, trembling length as well, fierce satisfaction firming his expressive mouth as he felt the tiny little responsive quivers of her body against his. ‘It doesn’t matter. You’re going to be mine…’
And with that far-reaching assurance, retaining an arm at the base of her spine, Sebasten turned her round and headed her up the wrought-iron staircase.
You’re going to be mine. Men didn’t as a rule address such comments to Lizzie and normally such an arrogant assumption would simply have made her giggle. She got on well with men but few seemed to see her as a likely object of desire and her male friends often treated her like a big sister. Perhaps it was because she towered over most of them, was usually more blunt than subtle and never coy and was invariably the first to offer a shoulder to cry on. Until Connor, her relationships had been low-key, more friendly than anything else, drifting to a halt without any great grief on either side. Until Connor, she had not known what it was to feel ripped apart with inadequacy, pain and humiliation. Sebasten—and she had already forgotten his surname—was just what her squashed ego needed most, Lizzie told herself fiercely.
He took her up to the VIP room, the privilege of only a chosen few, and her conviction that he owned the club increased as she spread a bemused glance over the opulence of the luxurious leather sofas, the soft, expensive carpet and the private bar in the corner.
‘We can hear ourselves think up here,’ Sebasten pointed out with perfect truth.
Lizzie stared at him, for the first time appreciating that his more formal mode of dress had picked him out as much as his looks and height. His superb grey suit had the subtle sheen of silk and the tailored perfection of designer-cut elegance.
‘Do you own this place?’ she asked.
‘No.’ Sebasten glanced at her in surprise.
‘Then who are you that you get so much attention here?’ Lizzie enquired helplessly.
‘You don’t know?’ Amusement slashed Sebasten’s lean, bronzed features, for not being recognised and known for who and what he was was a novel experience for him. ‘I’m a businessman.’
‘I don’t read the business sections of the newspapers,’ Lizzie confided with palpable discomfiture.
‘Why should you?’
Lizzie coloured. ‘I don’t want you thinking I’m an airhead.’
A tough, self-made man, her father had refused to let her take any interest in the family construction firm. As a teenager she had told him that she wanted to study for a business degree so that she could come and work for him and Maurice Denton had hurt her by laughing out loud at the idea. But then, that he had done well enough in the world to maintain his daughter as a lady of leisure had once been a source of considerable pride to him.
‘I think you’re beautiful…especially when you blush and all your freckles merge,’ Sebasten mocked.
‘Stop it…’ Lizzie groaned, covering her hot face with spread hands in reproach.
He lifted a glass from the bar counter and she lowered one hand to grasp it, green eyes wide with fascination on his lean, strong face. Did he really think she was beautiful? She so much wanted to believe he was sincere, for she was more used to being told she was great fun and a good sport. Her fingers tightened round the tumbler and she drank even though her head was already swimming.
‘Very beautiful and very quiet,’ Sebasten pronounced.
‘Guys like talking about themselves…I’m a good listener,’ Lizzie quipped. ‘So what was the most exciting event of your week?’
Sleek black lashes lowered to partially screen his shimmering dark eyes. ‘Something someone said to me after a funeral.’
Lizzie’s soft lips parted in surprise and then sealed again.
‘Connor Morgan’s funeral…’ Sebasten let the announcement hang there and watched her tense and lose her warm colour with quiet approval. He was no fan of cold-hearted women and her obvious sensitivity pleased him. ‘Did you know him?’
Lizzie’s tummy muscles were tight as a drum but she kept her head high and muttered unevenly. ‘I’m afraid that I never got to know him very well…’
It was true: she had barely scratched the surface of Connor’s true nature, had been content to accept the surface show of the younger man’s extrovert personality, had never once dreamt that he might lie to her and cheat on her without an ounce of remorse.
‘Neither did I…’ Sebasten’s dark, deep drawl sent an odd chill down her spine.
‘Let’s not talk about it…’ Taut with guilty anxiety over the near-lie she had told, Lizzie wondered if he was aware of the rumours and if he would have approached her had he known of her previous connection with Connor.
Aware he ought to be probing for some first-hand information on the voluptuous little blonde who had ditched his half-brother, Sebasten studied Lizzie’s taut profile. However, his attention roamed of its own seeming volition down over her long, elegant neck to the tiny pulse beating out her tension beneath her collarbone and from there to the delicate curve of her breasts. By that point, his concentration had been engulfed by more libidinous promptings. Below the fine fabric, her nipples were taut and prominent as ripe berries and the dull, heavy ache at Sebasten’s groin intensified with sudden savage force. Without hesitation, he swept the glass from her grasp and reached for her.
As she was sprung with a vengeance from her introspection, Lizzie’s bemused gaze clashed with his and the scorching heat of his appraisal. She trembled, her body racing without warning to a breathless high of tension. Excitement, naked excitement flared through her, filling her with surprise and confusion. Dry-mouthed, pulses jumping, knees shaking, she felt his hand slide from her spine to the fuller curve of her behind and splay there to pull her close. She shivered in contact with the lean, tight hardness of his muscular thighs, every inch of her own flesh suddenly so sensitive she was bewildered, embarrassed, shocked.
‘This feels good…’ Sebasten husked, revelling in the way she couldn’t hide her response to him. He could feel every little quiver assailing her, recognise the hoarseness of the breath she snatched in, read the bright luminosity of her dilated pupils and the full enticement of her parted lips.
‘I hardly know you.’ Lizzie was talking to herself more than she was talking to him. But that attempt to reinstate her usual caution didn’t work. Being that close to him felt like perching at the very top of a rollercoaster a nanosecond before the breathtaking thrill of sudden descent and she was incapable of denying herself the seductive promise of that experience.
‘I’ll teach you to know me…’ Sebasten framed with thickened emphasis, the smouldering glitter of his pagan golden eyes fixed to her with laser force. ‘I’ll teach you everything you need to know.’
‘I like to go slow…’
‘I like to go fast,’ Sebasten imparted without hesitation, letting a lean brown hand rise to stroke through a long silken strand of her amber-coloured hair before moving to trace the tremulous line of her mouth with a confident fingertip. ‘So fast I’ll leave you breathless and hungry for more.’
Mesmerised, her very lips tingling from his light touch, Lizzie couldn’t think straight. He might have been talking a foreign language, for right at that instant her leaping hormones were doing all of her thinking for her. She just wanted him to kiss her. In fact, she was so desperate to have that wide, sensual mouth on hers that she had to clench her hands to prevent herself from reaching for him first and, since she had never felt anything quite like that shameless craving before, it felt as unreal as a dream.
But when his mouth found hers, teased at her tender lips with a series of sensual little nips and tantalising expertise, no dream had ever lit such a powder-keg of response in Lizzie. Suddenly she was pushing forward into the hard, muscular contours of his powerful frame, hands flying up to link round his neck to steady her wobbling knees and from deep in her own throat a tiny moaning, pleading sound emerged as frustration at his teasing built to an unbearable degree.
He reacted then with a hungry, satisfying urgency that pierced her quivering length with the efficacy of a burning arrow thudding into a willing target. Suddenly he gave her exactly what she had wanted without even knowing it. As he drove her lips apart in a devastating assault of erotic intensity, her very skin-cell seemed to spontaneously combust in the whoosh of passion that shockwaved through her. Her own excitement was as intoxicating as a drug and all the more dangerous because raw excitement in a man’s arms was new to her.
‘Theos mou,’ Sebasten groaned as he lifted his arrogant dark head. ‘You’re blowing me away…’
Bereft of his mouth on hers, Lizzie blinked in confusion. Only then conscious of the urgent tightness of her nipples and the pulsing ache between her thighs, she was surprised by the painful effect of both sensations. Her body didn’t feel like her own any more. Her body was sending out frantic signals that the only place it was happy was up against him.
Sebasten flipped her round, curved her back to him again and let his hands glance over the pointed invitation of her sweet breasts, feeling her jerk and shiver and gasp as though she was in the eye of a storm. He eyed the nearest sofa. He didn’t want to wait. He wanted her here, now, fast and hard to ease the nagging throb of his aroused sex. Sleazy, his mind told him while his defiant and fertile imagination threw up various explicit scenarios that threatened that conviction. No, he preferred to take her home to his own bed, where he could take his time, and he already knew once wouldn’t be enough.
On fire from sensation, Lizzie broke free of him and dragged in a great gulp of oxygen. It was an effort to walk in a straight line to the table where he had set her drink. Lifting it with a shaking hand, she tipped it to her swollen lips, needing to occupy herself while she came to terms with the amazing feelings gripping her. She wanted to know everything about him from the minute he was born. She wanted to know him as nobody else had ever known him and a crazy singing happiness filled her when she looked back at him over the rim of her glass.
‘I’ve never felt like this before,’ she whispered with an edgy laugh that screened her discomfiture.
‘I don’t want to hear about how it felt with anyone else.’ Burning golden eyes slammed into hers and he extended a commanding hand. ‘Let’s go…’
Lizzie moved and let him engulf her fingers in his. ‘Are you always this bossy?’
‘Where did you get that idea?’ Sebasten purred like a very large and amused jungle cat because she had just leapt to do as he asked without even thinking about it. But then women always did. In his entire adult life, Sebasten had never met a woman who was not eager to please him.
He swept her back down the stairs, past a welter of curious eyes and on towards the exit. Her nerves were jumping like electrified beans. She relived the bold caress of his sure hands over her breasts and her cheeks flooded with hot self-conscious colour. Not the sort of familiarity she normally allowed. What was she doing with him? Where on earth was he taking her? He thought she was beautiful. He wanted to be with her, she reminded herself with feverish determination. Nobody else did, not her father, who had cut her out of his life, not a single one of her friends.
On the wet pavement outside, a uniformed chauffeur extended an umbrella for their protection and hurried to open the door of a long, opulent silver limousine. Lizzie was impressed and she got in, refused to think about what she was doing and turned to look at Sebasten again. The dizzy sense of rightness that had engulfed her only minutes earlier returned. ‘Where were you born?’ she heard herself ask.
In the act of tugging her close, Sebasten grinned at what struck him as an essentially feminine and pointless question. ‘On an island the size of a postage stamp in the Aegean Sea…and you?’
‘In Devon,’ she confided, heart skipping a beat over that incredible smile of his. ‘My parents moved to London when I was a baby.’
‘How fascinating,’ Sebasten teased, lacing his fingers into her hair and kissing her. She drowned in the scent and the taste of him, head falling back on her shoulders as his tongue darted in an erotic sweep between her lips and made her gasp with helpless pleasure.
At some point, they left the limo, climbed steps, traversed a low-lit echoing hall, but true awareness only returned to Lizzie when she swayed giddily on the sweeping staircase she found herself on. His hands shot out to steady her. ‘Are you OK?’
‘These stupid shoes…’ Lizzie condemned in mortification and she kicked off her spike-heeled sandals where she stood as though her unsteady gait had been caused by them.
‘How much have you had to drink?’ Sebasten enquired with lethal timing, a dark frown-line forming between his ebony brows.
‘Hardly anything,’ Lizzie told him breathlessly while making a conscious effort not to slur her words. She was taut as a bowstring, suddenly terrified of receiving yet another rejection to add to the many she had already withstood.
As he received that assurance Sebasten’s tension evaporated and he swept her on into a massive, opulent room rejoicing in a very large and imposing bed. She was jolted by the sight of the bed and a rather belated stab of dismay made her question her own behaviour. She barely knew Sebasten and she was still a virgin. But then she had never been tempted until she met Connor and she had expected him to become her first lover. As the degrading memory of finding her boyfriend and her stepmother in bed together engulfed Lizzie afresh, she rebelled against her own moral conditioning. After all, hadn’t her old-fashioned principles let her down badly when it came to men? A more experienced woman would have been suspicious of Connor’s lack of lusty intent.
Eyes flaring like emerald-green stars on that bitter acknowledgement, Lizzie spun round and feasted her attention on Sebasten. He was gorgeous and tonight he was hers, all hers, absolutely nobody else’s. She had never met anyone like him before. He was so focused, so sure of himself that he drew her like a magnet and the heat of his appreciative appraisal warmed her like the sun after weeks of endless rain.
Lizzie tilted her head back, glossy marmalade hair tumbling back from her slanted cheekbones. ‘You can kiss me again,’ she informed him.
With an appreciative laugh, Sebasten claimed her parted lips in a long, drugging kiss that rocked her on her feet. Lifting her up into his arms with easy strength, he brought her down onto his bed. What was it about her that made her seem so different to other women? One minute she was quiet and mysterious, the next tossing an open challenge, glorious green eyes telegraphing pure invitation.
Lizzie surfaced from the mindless spell of her own response and stared up at him. ‘Are you as good at everything else as you are at kissing?’
Sebasten tossed his jacket on a chair, enjoying the wide, wondering look in her face as she watched him. ‘What do you think?’
That she could barely breathe when those shimmering dark golden eyes rested on her and her mouth ran dry as a bone when he unbuttoned his shirt. From his broad shoulders to his powerful, hair-roughened pectorals and flat, taut abdomen, he was all sleek, bronzed skin and rippling muscles.
‘That you’re very sexy,’ Lizzie confided helplessly.
‘We match…’ Sebasten strolled lithe as a hunting animal and barefoot towards the bed.
‘Do we?’ Her heart hammered behind her ribs. She felt like an infatuated teenager confronted without warning by her idol: butterflies in her tummy, brain empty, teeth almost chattering with nerves. Every lingering strand of caution was urging her to acknowledge her mistake and take flight but those prudent promptings fell into abeyance at the same instant as Sebasten rested shimmering dark golden eyes of appreciation on her.
‘Ne…’
‘No?’ Lizzie was confused.
‘Ne…is Greek for yes.’ Sebasten came down on the side of the bed with a smile that lit up his lean, strong face and melted her.
‘You’re Greek?’
‘Ten out of ten,’ Sebasten gathered her close and threaded lazy hands through her tumbling mane. ‘I love the colour of your hair…but I still don’t know your surname.’
In the expectant silence, Lizzie tensed. Fearful of his reaction were he to recognise the name of Denton, she heard herself quote her late mother’s maiden name. ‘Bewford.’
‘Now I can’t lose you again,’ Sebasten asserted.
‘Would it matter if you did?’ Heart racing so fast now that she could barely speak and keep her voice level, Lizzie curved an uncertain hand round his arm.
‘Absolutely, pethi mou.’ Sebasten reflected that he might even make it to the three-month mark with her, a milestone he had yet to share with any woman. Unsettled by that uninvited and odd thought, he kissed her again.
He made love to her mouth with devastating virtuosity, plundering the tender interior she opened to him. Lizzie pressed forward, unsteady hands linking round his neck, fingers uncoiling to rise and sink into the depths of his luxuriant black hair. It was sweeter and wilder and more intense than anything she had ever known. He bent her back over his arm so that her bright hair trailed across the pillows and let his lips seek out the tiny pulse going crazy beneath her collarbone.
Lizzie quivered in surprise and what little grip she had left on reality vanished. When he then located the tender pulse spot below her ear, her body thrummed into a burst of life so that not one part of her was capable of staying still. She was not even conscious of the deft unsnapping of the clasps on her halter top, only of the air grazing her distended nipples and cooling the swollen sensitivity of her flesh. He eased off her stretchy skirt to leave her clad in only a pair of white lace panties.
‘You’re perfect,’ Sebasten groaned, cupping the ivory-pale rose-tipped mounds he had unveiled with possessive hands, easing her back against the pillows to direct his attention to the tender tips straining for his attention.
Capturing a throbbing peak between his lips, he flicked it with his tongue and she moaned out loud at the surge of tormenting sensation that made her tense and tremble and jerk beneath his ministrations. Nothing before had ever felt so good that it almost hurt and she was lost in the shocking intensity of her own response. She was breathing in fast little pants, aware of her body as she had never been before, feeling the charged readiness of wild anticipation, the crazed race of her own pounding heartbeat, the damp heat pulsing between her thighs.
‘Talk to me…’ Sebasten urged.
‘I…can’t find…my voice,’ Lizzie tried to say after a bemused hesitation in which she had to struggle just to force her brain to think again. Even to her own ears, the words emerged sounding indistinguishable and slurred.
Sebasten stilled and, scanning her dismayed face, he removed his hands from her. ‘You’re drunk…’
As that harsh judgement came out of nowhere at her, Lizzie flinched. Bracing herself on one awkward hand, she sat up. His lean, powerful face was taut, stunning golden eyes betraying angry distaste.
‘I’m—’
‘Out of your skull on booze…not my style!’ Sebasten incised, springing upright to his full intimidating height.
Dragged with little warning from the breathtaking hold of unbelievable passion, Lizzie found herself in need of a ready tongue. But there was nothing ready about her tongue when her brain was in a haze of confusion. ‘Not your style?’ she echoed.
It was a terrible strain for her to try to enunciate each word with clarity. She reeled off the bed in an abrupt movement, suddenly feeling horribly naked and under attack.
As he watched her stagger as she attempted to stay vertical Sebasten’s wide, sensual mouth clenched even harder, his whole body in the fierce grip of painful frustration while he questioned how he could possibly have failed to register the state she was in. ‘The consent issue,’ he breathed with icy restraint. ‘No way would I even consider bedding a woman too inebriated to know what she is doing!’
Her toes catching in her discarded skirt where it lay, Lizzie tipped forward and only just managed to throw out her hands to break her own fall. As she went down with a crash, punctuated by a startled expletive from Sebasten, she just slumped on the soft, deep carpet.
With a mighty effort of will, Lizzie lifted her swimming head again and focused on Sebasten’s bare brown feet. Even his toes were beautiful, she thought dimly as she tried to come up with something to say in a situation that had already gone far beyond embarrassment. ‘Do you think…do you think you could sober me up before we continue?’ she muttered hopefully.
CHAPTER THREE
SEBASTEN surveyed Lizzie with thunderous incredulity and then he wondered what he was going to do with her.
After all, he was responsible for her, wasn’t he? He had pressed more alcohol on her when she must already have had enough and he had brought her into his home. In the condition she was in, he could hardly stuff her into a taxi or ask his chauffeur to cope with her and, since he too had had several drinks, he could not drive her anywhere.
In the tense silence which would have agonised Lizzie had she been sober, she surveyed his carpet fibres and then looked up. Sebasten was down on one knee, contemplating her with an expression of fierce frustration.
‘I could just sleep here on the floor,’ Lizzie proffered, striving to be helpful.
Sebasten collided with huge green eyes.
The beginnings of an irreverent grin pulled at her full, reddened mouth because she was suffering from a dreadful urge to succumb to uncontrollable giggles. ‘You see…I don’t think I can get up…can’t feel my legs.’
Sebasten experienced a sudden near-overwhelming desire to shake her until he could force some sense back into her head. Had she no idea how much at risk she could be in a stranger’s house? Or of how dangerous it was for a woman to drink so much that she could neither exercise caution nor defend herself? The very idea of her behaving in such a way with another man filled him with dark, deep anger.
‘Do you make a habit of this kind of behaviour?’ he demanded rawly.
As she was assailed by that gritty tone, all desire to giggle was squashed at the source. ‘No…you’re the first…sorry,’ Lizzie slurred, sinking back to the carpet again.
Vaulting to his feet, Sebasten strode over to the phone by the bed and lifted it to order a large pot of black coffee and sandwiches to be brought upstairs. Then he contemplated his victim with brooding intensity and his long, powerful legs carried him over to the windows. Depressing the locks, he thrust the French windows back to let in the cold night air.
As that chilly breeze touched her slender bare back, Lizzie gave a convulsive shiver. Sebasten surveyed her without remorse. He would sober her up and then have her conveyed home. Wrenching the top sheet from the bed, he flung it over her prone body and gathered her up with determination to carry her into the adjoining bathroom.
‘Sleepy…’ Lizzie mumbled.
‘You need to wake up,’ Sebasten informed her, settling her with some difficulty onto the seat in the spacious shower cubicle and hitting the buttons to switch on the water. Only as the water cascaded down did he appreciate that he hadn’t removed the sheet. Then he no longer felt quite so comfortable with her semi-clad state.
As the water hit her, Lizzie opened bewildered and shaken eyes. ‘No…don’t want to be wet,’ she framed weakly.
‘Tough,’ Sebasten told her, barring the exit in case she made a sudden leap for freedom.
Far from making a dive for it, in slow motion and wearing an only vaguely surprised expression, Lizzie slithered off the seat like a boneless doll into a heap on the floor of the cubicle.
‘Up!’ Sebasten urged in exasperation.
Lizzie curled up and closed her eyes, soothed now by the warm flooding flow of water. ‘Sleepy,’ she mumbled again. ‘Night…night.’
Teeth gritted, Sebasten stepped into the shower to hit the controls and turn the water cold. She uttered a satisfying yelp of surprise as the water went from warm and soothing to icy and tingling. However, Sebasten got so wet in his efforts to haul Lizzie’s uncooperative body back up onto the seat, he ended up squatting down to hold her up and suffering beneath the same cold gush.
‘C-cold!’ Lizzie stammered.
‘I’m freezing too!’ Sebasten launched, shirt and trousers plastered to his big, powerful body as the same chill invaded him. He withstood the onslaught with masochistic acceptance. Served him bloody well right, he thought grimly. She was way too young and immature for him. What had got into him? Bringing her home had been a mistake and he had never sunk low enough to take advantage of a stupid woman.
‘Very…cold,’ Lizzie moaned.
‘And you said you weren’t an airhead,’ Sebasten recalled out loud with a deep sense of injustice, watching her wet hair trail in the water, looking down at her miserable face which was now—aside of the odd streak of mascara—innocent of all cosmetic enhancement. She still had perfect skin and amazing eyes, he noted. But he could not credit that he was trapped in his own shower with a drunk woman. He didn’t get into awkward situations like that.
‘Not,’ Lizzie pronounced with unexpected aggression, her chin tilting up.
A loud knock sounded on the door in the bedroom beyond. With a groan, Sebasten put her down but she slumped without his support. A vision of having to explain a drowned woman in his shower overtaking him, he switched off the water.
‘Don’t move…’ he instructed Lizzie as he strode back to the bedroom, dripping every step of the way.
A faint flush over his hard cheekbones as the member of staff presenting the laden tray of coffee and sandwiches stared in open stupefaction at his drenched appearance, Sebasten kicked the door shut again and set down the tray beside the bed.
When he returned to the bathroom, Lizzie was striving to crawl out of the shower on her hands and knees and being severely hampered by the trailing sopping sheet.
‘Feeling a little livelier?’ Sebasten quipped with dark satire.
‘Feel…a-awful!’ Lizzie stuttered through teeth chattering like castanets and she laid her head down and just sobbed in weakened rage. ‘Hate you!’
She looked pathetic. Sebasten snatched up a big bath towel, crouched down to disentangle her from the sheet and wrapped her with care into the towel. Hauled up into a standing position, she fell against him like a skater on ice for the first time and he lifted her up and carried her through to the bedroom to settle her back on the bed. Keeping a cautious eye on her in case she fell off the bed too, he backed away to strip off his own wet clothing and pitch the sodden garments onto the bathroom floor.
It was like babysitting, he decided, his even white teeth gritting. Not that he had ever done any babysitting, for Sebasten was not in the habit of putting himself out for other people. But the comparison between his own erotic expectations earlier in the evening and reality was galling to a male who was accustomed to a life than ran with the smooth, controlled efficiency of an oiled machine.
‘Close the windows…’ Lizzie begged, deciding there and then as cold dragged her mind from its former fog that she had fallen live into the hands of a complete sadist.
‘Yes, you’re definitely waking up now.’ Sheathed only in a pair of black designer jeans, Sebasten crossed the room to pull the French windows shut.
Lizzie blinked and then contrived to stare. The jeans fitted him as well as his own bronzed skin, accentuating his flat, muscular stomach, his narrow hips and long, hard thighs. Colouring, she looked away, sobered up enough already by the shock of that cold shower to cringe with mortification. Sebasten tugged her forward, tossed pillows behind her to prop her up and proceeded to pour the coffee.
‘Don’t feel like coffee—’
‘You’re drinking it,’ Sebasten told her and he laid the tray of sandwiches down beside her. ‘Eat.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ she dared in an undertone.
‘You need food to soak up the booze in your system,’ Sebasten delivered with cutting emphasis.
Squirming with shame and embarrassment, Lizzie reached for a sandwich. ‘I don’t get drunk…I’m not like that…I just had a hideous day—’
‘So you decided to give me a hideous evening,’ Sebasten slotted in with ungenerous bite. ‘Count your blessings—’
‘What blessings?’ Lizzie was fighting hard to hold back the surge of weak tears that that crack had spawned.
‘You’re safe and you’re still all in one piece. If you’d picked the wrong guy to spring this stunt on, you might not have been,’ Sebasten pointed out.
Chilled by what she recgonised as a fair assessment, Lizzie swallowed shakily and made herself bite into the sandwich. It was delicious. Indeed, she had not realised just how hungry she was until that moment. In silence, she sipped at the black coffee, wincing with every mouthful, for she liked milk in her coffee, and worked her way through the sandwiches.
Sebasten watched the sandwiches melt away and noted that for all her slenderness she had a very healthy appetite. ‘When did you last eat?’ he finally asked drily.
‘Breakfast,’ Lizzie worked out with a slight frown and that had just been a slice of toast. Lunch she hadn’t touched because just beforehand her father had phoned to say that he was coming home specially to talk to her and her appetite had vanished. As for supper, well, Jen hadn’t offered her anything but her first alcoholic drink of the evening.
‘No wonder you ended up flat on your face on my carpet,’ Sebasten delivered as he topped up the cup she had emptied.
Lizzie paled. ‘Not the world’s most forgiving person, are you?’
‘No.’ Sebasten made no bones about the fact. ‘What did your “hideous” day encompass?’
Lizzie looped unsteady fingers through her fast-drying hair to push it back from her brow and muttered tightly. ‘My father told me to move out and get a job. I was very upset—’
‘At twenty-two years of age, you were still living at home and dependent on your family?’ Sebasten demanded in surprise. ‘Are you a student?’
Lizzie reddened. ‘No. I left school at eighteen. My father didn’t want me to work. He said he wanted me to have a good time!’
Sebasten scanned the delicate diamond pendant and bracelet she wore, conceding that they might well be real rather than the imitations he had assumed. Yet she didn’t speak with those strangulated vowel sounds that he associated with the true English upper classes, which meant that she was most probably from a family with money but no social pedigree. He was wryly amused that Ingrid, who was obsessed by a need to pigeon-hole people by their birth and their bank balance, had taught him to distinguish the old moneyed élite from the nouveau riche in London society.
‘And, no…having a good time did not cover my behaviour tonight!’ Lizzie advanced in defensive completion. ‘That was a one-off!’
‘So you were very upset at the prospect of having to keep yourself,’ Sebasten recapped with soft derision and innate suspicion that her apparent ignorance of who he was had been an act calculated to bring his guard down. ‘Is that why you came home with me?’
Startled by that offensive question, Lizzie sucked in a sudden sharp breath. As the fog of alcohol released her brain, she had already absorbed enough of her surroundings to recognise that she was in the home of a male who inhabited a very much wealthier and more rarefied world than her own. She lifted her chin. ‘No, to tell you the truth, now that I’m recovering my wits, I haven’t the foggiest idea why I came home with you because I don’t like you one little bit.’
A disconcerting smile flashed across Sebasten’s dark, brooding features. Angry green eyes the colour of precious emeralds were hurling defiance at him and her spine was as rigid as that of a queen in a medieval portrait. Unfortunately for her, though, her tangled hair and the bath towel supplied a ridiculous frame for that attempt to put him in his place.
The instant that incredible smile lit up his lean, strong features, Lizzie’s heartbeat went haywire and her mouth ran dry and she knew exactly why she had come home with him. If he kept his smart mouth closed, he was just about irresistible.
‘You’re angry that you made a fool of yourself,’ Sebasten retaliated without hesitation. ‘But I may have done you a big favour—’
Hot colour burned in Lizzie’s cheeks. ‘You call throwing the windows wide and torturing me in a cold shower doing me a favour?’
‘Yes…if the memory of that treatment stops you drinking that much again in the wrong company.’
Unused to a woman fighting with him, Sebasten savoured the sheer frustrated rage in her expressive face and his body hardened again in sudden urgent response. He wanted to flatten her back onto his bed and remind her of how irrelevant liking or anything else was when he touched her. His own reawakened desire startled him. Then her tangled torrent of hair was drying to gleam with rich gold and copper lights and that exotic and passionate face of hers still kept drawing him back. The intimate recollection of her lush little breasts and that lithe, slender body of hers shaking with hunger beneath his own was all the additional stimuli required to increase Sebasten’s level of arousal to one of supreme discomfort.
In the midst of swallowing the sting of that further comment destined to humble her, Lizzie felt the burn of Sebasten’s stunning dark golden eyes on her and what she had been about to say in an effort to save face died on her tongue. Stiffening, she shifted forward onto the edge of the bed. Suddenly aware of the high-voltage tension that had entered the atmosphere, she felt too jittery to handle her discomfiture and she settled her feet down onto the carpet.
‘It’s time I went home,’ she announced but she hesitated, afraid that the awful dizziness might return the instant she tried to stand up.
‘Where is home?’
‘No place right now,’ Lizzie admitted after a dismayed pause to appreciate the threatening reality. ‘I still have to find somewhere to live. Right now my luggage is parked at a friend’s place but I can’t stay there.’
Sebasten watched her stand up like a newborn baby animal afraid to test her long slim legs and then breathe in slow and deep. She plotted a passage to the bathroom and vanished from view. Closing the door, she caught her own reflection in a mirror and groaned out loud, lifting a trembling hand to her messy hair. Any pretence towards presentability was long gone, she reflected painfully. It was little wonder Sebasten had been sprawled in an armchair at a distance, talking down to her as if he were a very superior being.
And she guessed he was, she conceded, snatching up a comb from the counter of a built-in unit to begin disentangling her hair. He could have thrown her back out on the street. He could have taken advantage of her…well, not really, she decided, reckoning that Sebasten would prefer a live, moving woman to one showing all the animation of a corpse. And he had prevented her from making a very big mistake! Why didn’t she just admit that to herself? Her life was in a terrible mess and she shouldn’t even have been looking at Sebasten, never mind behaving like a tramp and coming home with him. She ought to be really grateful that nothing much had happened between them…
Only she wasn’t. Tears stung the back of Lizzie’s eyes and she blinked them back with stubborn determination. The ghastly truth was that she still found Sebasten incredibly attractive and she had blown it. Really blown her chances with him. There was nothing fanciable or appealing about a woman who had to be dumped in a shower to be brought out of a drunken collapse, naturally he was disgusted with her. But she was much angrier with herself than he could possibly have been. She had never been so attracted to any guy and she was convinced that alcohol had had very little to do with her extraordinary reaction to him. Why had she had to meet the most gorgeous guy of her life on the one night that she made a total, inexcusable ass of herself?
Wishing that she had thought to reclaim her clothing before she entered the bathroom and embarrassed to death as stray memories of her wanton behaviour broke free of her subconscious to torment her, Lizzie crept back into the bedroom.
Dawn was beginning to finger light through the heavy curtains. She had hoped that Sebasten would have fallen asleep or taken himself tactfully off somewhere else to allow her a fast and silent exit but no such luck was hers.
Sebasten was watching the television business news but the instant the door opened he vaulted upright and studied her. Still wrapped in the towel, hair brushed back from her scrubbed-clean face, she looked even more beautiful to Sebasten than she had looked earlier. Even pale, she had a fresh, natural appeal that pulled him against his own volition.
‘You might as well sleep in one of my guest rooms for what’s left of the night,’ Sebasten surprised himself by suggesting.
‘Thanks…but I’d better be going.’ Strained eyes centred on him in a look so brief he would have missed it had he not been watching her like a hawk. ‘I’ve taken up enough of your time.’
His mouth quirked. She sounded like a little girl who had attended a very bad party but was determined to leave saying all that was polite. He watched her stoop in harried movements to snatch up her clothes and shoes, mortification merging her freckles with a hot pink overlay of colour. Her inability to conceal her embarrassment was oddly touching.
‘How sober are you?’ Sebasten prompted lazily, eyes flaring to smouldering gold as her lush mouth opened and the tip of her tongue snaked out in a nervous flicker to moisten her full lower lip. Hunger, fierce and primitive as a knife at his groin, burned through him.
‘Totally wised up…’ Lizzie tried hard to smile, acknowledging her own foolishness.
‘Then stay with me…’ Sebasten murmured thickly.
Thrown by that renewed invitation, Lizzie gazed across the room, green eyes full of surprise and confusion. ‘But—’
‘Of course there are conditions,’ Sebasten warned, smooth as silk. ‘With your eyes closed, you have to be able to touch the tip of your nose with one finger and you only get one chance.’
An involuntary laugh escaped Lizzie as she looked back at him. Still clad only in the jeans, he was drop-dead gorgeous: all sleek, bronzed, hair-roughened skin, lean muscle and masculinity. Even the five o’clock shadow now roughening his strong jawline only added to his sheer impact. Feeling just then that it would be more sensible to close her eyes and deny herself the pleasure of staring at him as though he had just dropped down from heaven for a visit, Lizzie strove to play the game and performed the exercise even though at that point she had every intention of leaving.
‘Then you have to open your eyes again and walk in a straight line to the door,’ Sebasten instructed.
Growing amusement gripping her, Lizzie set out for the door.
‘Full marks,’ Sebasten quipped.
Lizzie spun round. ‘You’ve got to do it too.’
Disconcerted, Sebasten raised a brow in scornful dismissal of that challenge.
‘You take yourself very seriously.’ Lizzie watched him with keen intensity because it was one of the most important things she had learnt about him. ‘You don’t even like me to suggest that you might be anything less than totally in control.’
‘I’m a man. That’s normal,’ Sebasten drawled.
Not to Lizzie, it wasn’t. She was used to younger men who were more relaxed about their image and the differences between the sexes but she could see that Sebasten inhabited another category altogether. The strong, brooding, macho type unlikely to spill his guts no matter how tough the going got. Not her type at all, she told herself in urgent consolation.
Sebasten strode in a direct line to the door but only because where she was was where he wanted to be at that instant. ‘Satisfied?’
‘Yes…we are two sober people…and I need to go and get dressed.’ Breathless at finding herself that close to him again, Lizzie coloured, heartbeat thumping at what felt like the base of her throat.
‘I’ll only take it all off again,’ Sebasten threatened in a dark, deep undertone of warning that sent a tingle of delicious threat down her taut spine.
‘Walking in a straight line to the door when you asked was just my effort to lighten the atmosphere,’ Lizzie shared awkwardly.
‘While every lingering look you give me tells me how much you still want me,’ Sebasten delivered without an instant of hesitation.
‘You’ve got some ego!’ Lizzie condemned in disconcertion.
‘Earned…like my reputation,’ Sebasten slotted in, closing his lean, sure hands to her slender waist to tilt her forward. ‘We’ll conduct an experiment—’
‘No…no experiments,’ Lizzie cut in on a higher pitch of nervous stress. ‘I don’t do stuff like this, Sebasten. I don’t have one-night stands. I don’t sleep with guys I’ve only just met…in fact, I haven’t got much experience at all and you’d probably find the business news more riveting—’
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