- -
- 100%
- +
And more than anything else in the world she would have loved to have faith in that blazing confidence he wore like an aura and rise to that same challenge. But he didn’t love her, was only offering to marry her because she was pregnant and he had never wanted a child. Where would they be in a few months’ time when she was more in love and more dependent on him than she was even now and he discovered that good intentions were not enough? He wouldn’t find her so attractive once her slender figure vanished. He might even be downright repulsed by her fecund shape. He might get bored, he might even stray and she would be destroyed…absolutely, utterly destroyed by such a rejection.
‘I can’t do it,’ Lizzie whispered.
Sebasten linked strong arms round her and slowly turned her round. ‘Bridal nerves,’ he told her with a determined smile.
‘I can’t do it,’ Lizzie whispered again, white as milk. ‘I can’t marry you.’
Sebasten freed her and took a step back. He was making a real effort to control the stark anger threatening his control but he could not understand what was the matter with her. He had done every single thing he could think of to please her and she had not voiced one word of appreciation. She had not even appeared to register his enthusiasm for something he had never, ever thought he would do.
‘The baby must have the Contaxis name and my protection,’ he spelt out. Eyes dark as the night sky pinned to her taut, trouble face. ‘That’s not negotiable.’
‘Commands don’t cut it with me,’ Lizzie snapped, feeling the full onslaught of his powerful personality focused on her and rebelling.
‘Then tell me what does because I sure as hell have no idea!’ Sebasten raked back at her in sudden dark fury.
Trembling, Lizzie whirled away again. Although she loved him, she had a deep instinctive need to keep herself safe from further hurt and disillusionment. He had too much power over her, and how could she trust him when only his sense of responsibility had persuaded him to offer marriage? She saw the sense in his insistence that they marry to give their baby his name, for the law as it stood did not recognise less formal relationships. Yet to marry him and live with him as a wife felt like a giant step too far for her at that moment.
If only there was something in between, a halfway house that could answer her needs and the baby’s without trapping Sebasten into immediate domesticity and commitment before he could judge whether or not he could meet those demands in the long term. A halfway house, she thought in desperation, and then the solution came to her in a positive brainstorm.
‘I want an answer,’ Sebasten told her fiercely.
A flush on her cheeks, excitement in her eyes, for Lizzie was eager to come up with a blueprint that would allow her to marry him. ‘I have it. We don’t live together…you buy me a house of my own!’
‘Say that again…no, don’t.’ Sebasten warned, studying her with laser-like intensity, shimmering golden eyes locked to her in disbelief.
‘But don’t you see it? It would be perfect!’ Lizzie told him with an enthusiasm that could only inflame. ‘You could visit whenever you liked.’
‘Really?’ Sebasten’s bitten-out response was not quite level while he wondered if she was feeling all right, but he was reluctant to risk asking that question in case she took it as an insult.
‘We would each hold on to more of our own separate lives than married couples usually do. You’d have your business and I’d have my new PR job—’
‘What new PR job?’ Sebasten interrupted faster than the speed of light.
‘I’m starting tomorrow—’
‘But you’re pregnant—’
‘Pregnant women work in PR too—’
‘You were working for me, Sebasten remind her, taking a new tack as his raging frustration rose to almost ungovernable heights. He didn’t want her working any place and certainly not in some freewheeling PR firm where she would be engaged in constant interaction with other men and a frantic social life.
‘Not any more and it wasn’t a good idea, was it? Other people don’t feel comfortable working around a woman who may be involved with the boss. So, as I was saying…if we lived in separate houses we wouldn’t crowd each other.’
Dark colour now scored Sebasten’s rigid cheekbones. ‘Maybe I fancied being crowded.’
Lizzie breathed in deep. ‘And I think…the first couple of months anyway…you shouldn’t stay overnight.’
‘I can tell you right now upfront that I won’t buy a separate house and either you take me overnight or you take me not at all!’ Sebasten launched at her with savage incredulity.
Lizzie swallowed the thickness of tears clogging her throat. ‘You can’t blame me for trying to protect myself. I don’t want to be hurt again and it’s going to take time for me to be able to trust you.’
Sebasten spread rigid hands and clenched them into tight, angry fists in silence. So it was payback time. Oh, yes, he understood that. She wanted to put him through hell to punish him and it would be a cold day in hell before he accepted humiliation from any woman!
‘You’re taking this the wrong way,’ Lizzie said anxiously.
‘I don’t like being taken for a ride—’
‘I just want us both to have the space and the freedom to see whether or not we want to live together—’
‘I know that now…what is the matter with you?’ Sebasten demanded rawly.
‘I won’t agree to any other arrangement before Saturday,’ Lizzie countered shakily, crossing two sets of fingers superstitiously behind her back and offering up a silent prayer.
A sexless, endless probation period during which she made him jump through hoops like a wild animal being trained? Sebasten could barely repress a shudder.
‘Forget it…’ he advised between clenched teeth, outraged, stormy dark eyes unyielding.
The silence lay thick and heavy and full of rampant undertones of aggression.
‘Is it…well, is it the lack of sex that makes this idea of mine so unacceptable?’ Lizzie finally prompted awkwardly.
‘Where would you get a weird idea like that?’
‘OK…sex is included,’ Lizzie conceded, reddening to her hairline at her own dreadful weakness in failing to stand firm.
So he would buy her a house which she would never, never live in, Sebasten reflected, sudden amusement racing through him at the speed with which she had removed the ban on intimacy.
‘I suppose it might be rather like keeping a mistress,’ Sebasten mused, watching her squirm at that lowering concept with immense satisfaction. ‘OK…it’s a deal. I’ll go for it.’
But when Sebasten climbed into his car minutes later, neither satisfaction nor amusement coloured his brooding thoughts. She didn’t love him. If she had ever loved him, he had killed that love. She would accept the security of marriage but she was set on having a separate life. Yet he had always been separated from other people, initially by wealth and being an only child, later by personal choice, when keeping his relationships at an undemanding superficial level had become a habit.
Yet somewhere deep down inside him Sebasten registered that he had had a dream of living a very different life with Lizzie, Lizzie and the baby. A life where everything was shared. He did not know when that had started or even how it had developed and that such a dream even existed shook and embarrassed him. Especially after his bride-to-be had spelt out her dream of two separate households, talked about space and freedom and only included her body as a last-resort sop to his apparent weak masculine inability to get by without sex.
Intellect told him that he would be insane to accept such terms.
Only a guy who was plain stupid would accept such terms.
Or a guy who was…desperate?
At supersonic speed, Sebasten reminded himself that their main objective was taking care of their future child’s needs and that it was better not to dwell on inconsequentials.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LIZZIE discovered the hard way that embarking on her first career job the same week she planned to get married was a very great challenge.
On the balance side, she thrived in a more informal working environment where a designer-clad appearance was a decided advantage and she was earning almost twice the salary she had earned at CI. She got on great with her new colleagues, was immediately given sole responsibility for organising a celebrity party for the opening of a new nightclub and spent the entire week wishing there were more hours in the day.
Having to slot in choosing her entire bridal trousseau in the space of one extended lunch hour, however, annoyed her. Spending two evenings drumming up interest in the new club by frantic socialising with acquaintances now all too keen to be seen in the company of the future wife of Sebasten Contaxis was even worse. Being pregnant also seemed to mean that she tired much more easily and she just paled when she thought of how difficult it would be to fit ante-natal appointments into such action-packed extended work hours.
She thought about Sebasten with a constant nagging anxiety that kept her awake at night when she most needed to sleep. He spent the first half of the week away on a business trip, and although he called her he seemed rather distant. She asked herself what more she had expected from him. What had seemed in the heat of the moment to be the perfect solution to her concerns about marrying him now seemed more and more like a mistake.
What real chance was she giving their marriage or Sebasten by insisting on separate accommodation? What true closeness could they hope to achieve if they lived apart? It was also much more likely that, shorn of any perceptible change in his life, Sebasten would continue to think of himself as single. That was hardly a conviction she wanted to encourage. And, in telling him upfront that she didn’t trust him and yammering about space and freedom, wasn’t she giving him the impression that he would be wasting his time even trying to adapt to the concept of a normal marriage?
In the light of those unsettling second thoughts on the issue, Lizzie’s heart just sank when Sebasten phoned her forty-eight hours before their wedding to announce that he had found the perfect house for her requirements.
‘Gosh, that was quick!’ was all she could think to say in an effort to conceal her dismay at the news.
Lizzie had not seen Sebasten since the night they agreed to marry. Yet when he picked her up that evening to take her to view the house, he proved resistant to her every subtle indication that she was just dying to be grabbed and held and kissed senseless. After a week in which she had missed him every hour of every day, one glimpse of his lean, devastatingly handsome features and lithe, powerful frame and she was reduced to a positive pushover of melting appreciation.
‘I really love my ring,’ she told him encouragingly. ‘And the wedding planners you hired are just fantastic.’
‘I didn’t want you overdoing things when you were pregnant. How’s the PR world shaping up?’
‘It’s demanding but a lot of fun,’ she said with rather forced cheer, not adding that after only four days she had reached the conclusion that it was the perfect career for a single woman without either a husband or children.
‘You’ll be able to rest round the clock on our honeymoon,’ Sebasten informed her drily.
‘What honeymoon?’ Lizzie gasped. ‘A week into the job, I can’t ask for time off!’
‘Then it’s just as well I asked for you. Your boss was very accommodating—’
‘He was…?’
‘Naturally. You’re an enormous asset to the firm. As my wife, you will have unparalleled access to the cream of society and the kind of contacts most PR companies can only dream about. You could dictate your own working hours, even go part-time.’ Sebasten dropped that bait in the water and waited in hope of hearing it hooked.
‘Quite a turnaround from my working conditions at Contaxis International,’ Lizzie could not resist remarking while cringing with shame at the reality that she had almost leapt on that reference to part-time work. Wouldn’t he be impressed if she took that easy way out at such speed?
His strong profile tensed. ‘Blame me for that. I wanted the spoilt little rich girl to learn what it was like to have to work for a living. Yet I would never have been attracted to you had you been what I believed you were.’
The Georgian town house he took her to see was only round the corner from his own London home and Lizzie did not comment on that reality when he did not, but her heart swelled with hope at the proximity he seemed keen to embrace. It was a lovely house, modernised with style and in wonderful decorative order. His lawyers, he explained, had negotiated a compensation agreement with the current tenants, who were prepared to vacate the house immediately. In a similar way, the owner had made a very substantial profit from agreeing to sell quickly.
‘You always get what you want, don’t you?’ Lizzie muttered helplessly, struggling to admire the elegant, spacious rooms but increasingly chilled at the prospect of living there alone. She must have been crazy to demand such an eccentric lifestyle, she decided, close to panic. Feeling horribly guilty and confused by her own contrariness, she talked with gushing enthusiasm about how much she was looking forward to moving in.
Sebasten had been on keen watch for withdrawal pangs from the separate-house commitment. After all, the house would be a bit large perhaps but perfect in every other way for his future father-in-law, who had already mentioned a desire to sell the home he had shared with his estranged wife. As Lizzie complimented all that she saw, his hopes that she might never move into the house suffered a severe setback.
On her wedding day, Lizzie donned a gown fit for a fairy tale. The exquisite beaded, embroidered bodice bared her smooth shoulders and the flowing full skirt made the utmost of her tall, slender figure.
Surprise after wonderful surprise filled her day. A gorgeous sapphire and diamond necklace and earrings arrived from Sebasten as well as a blue velvet garter for good luck. Although she had never indicated any preference for certain flowers, her bouquet was a classic arrangement of her favourites. The equivalent of Cinderella’s coach drawn by white horses came to ferry her the short distance to the church. Seeing everywhere the evidence of Sebasten’s desire to make their wedding match her every possible fantasy, she was a radiant bride.
Her heart swelled when she walked down the aisle and Sebasten turned to watch her with a breathtaking smile on his lean dark features. Surely no guy marrying against his own will could manage a smile that brilliant? Hugging that belief to herself, she cherished every moment of the ceremony and sparkled with quicksilver energy in the photos taken afterwards.
‘You look stunning,’ Sebasten groaned in the limo that whisked them away from the church and, tugging her close, he ravished her soft raspberry-tinted mouth under his, awakening such a blaze of instant hunger in Lizzie that she clung to him.
‘I’m wrecking your lipstick…your hair,’ Sebasten sighed, setting her back from him with hands that he couldn’t keep quite steady.
Loving his passion, Lizzie awarded him a provocative look of appreciation. ‘It was worth it.’
There was an enormous number of guests at the reception. Introductions and polite conversations continually divided her and Sebasten and it was a relief for Lizzie to glide round the dance floor in the circle of his arms, safe from such interruptions.
‘I feel awful…I just can’t feel the same about friends who dropped me after Connor’s death because of those stupid rumours,’ Lizzie confided ruefully.
Sebasten stiffened, realising he disliked even the sound of his half-brother’s name on her lips and discomfited by the discovery. ‘Are there guests here who did that to you?’
‘Loads of them. A good half of them I’ve known since I was a kid, and Dad’s acquainted with their families too, so I didn’t feel I had the option of leaving them off the guest list.’
‘I wouldn’t have given one of them an invite!’ Shimmering dark golden eyes pinned to her in clear reproof. ‘You’re too soft. If someone crosses me once, they don’t get a second chance.’
Lizzie tensed. ‘Didn’t I cross you too?’
Sebasten wrapped her even closer to his big, powerful frame, infuriated by the knowledge that she had been snubbed and ignored by people she had considered to be her friends and then been so forgiving. ‘Continually…but then you inhabit a very special category, pethi mou.’
Lizzie looked up at him with her irreverent grin. ‘Remind yourself of that the next time I cross you…you know,’ she added impulsively, ‘if I look very hard I can see that you do bear a slight resemblance to Connor.’
Taken aback by that sudden assurance, Sebasten’s superb bone-structure tensed. ‘Why are you even looking for a resemblance?’
At the coolness of that demand, Lizzie coloured in surprise. ‘Only because you told me that you were half-brothers…and there is only a vague similarity. In your height and build, around the eyes, that’s all.’
Without the smallest warning, Sebasten found himself wondering whether she had been drawn to him in the first instance because he reminded her of his younger brother. Until that same moment, he had not actually thought through what he had finally learned about his half-brother’s relationship with Lizzie. Connor had cheated on her with another woman, Connor had essentially done the rejecting and wasn’t it possible that Lizzie had been left carrying a torch?
‘What’s wrong?’ Lizzie asked because Sebasten had fallen still in the middle of the dance.
‘I should’ve warned you that Connor’s true parentage is a secret. Ingrid had her own good reasons for successfully fooling my father into believing that Connor was another man’s child. Connor himself never knew the truth.’ His lean dark features were taut. ‘Nor does his mother want it known even now.’
‘I haven’t mentioned it to anyone,’ Lizzie swore, assuming that fear of her having already been indiscreet had roused his concern on Ingrid Morgan’s behalf. ‘To be frank, after what I had to put up with on his and Felicity’s behalf, he wouldn’t be my favourite conversational topic.’
Although Connor was most definitely not Sebasten’s favourite topic either, Sebasten discovered that his thoughts continued to circle back in that direction. He sacked his memory in an effort to recall every word that Lizzie had said the night he took her out to dinner and she told him her side of the story on Connor. But he hadn’t been listening, not the way he should have been listening, for at that point he had believed that her every word was a lie.
‘So you can finally tell me where we’re going for our honeymoon?’ Lizzie carolled with rather contrived sparkle when they boarded his private jet some hours later.
‘Greece.’ Sebasten reflected that there had to be some evil fate at work, for he was taking her to the one place in the world that held once fond memories of Ingrid and Connor.
Still striving gamely not to react to his brooding aura, Lizzie smiled so wide her jaw ached. ‘You’re taking me to your home there?’
‘A private island.’ Not the brightest spark of inspiration he had had this century, Sebasten decided with grim irony.
‘Whose island?’
‘Mine.’
‘You own your own island?’
‘Doesn’t every Greek tycoon?’ Sebasten shrugged.
‘So I’m being dead vulgar and I’m impressed!’ Lizzie quipped, a glint of annoyance flaring in her green eyes.
They had enjoyed the most fabulous wedding. Sebasten had seemed to be in the best of humour and nothing had gone wrong that she knew of. So what was the matter with him? Was it only now sinking in on him that he was a married man? Was being married to her that depressing? Tears prickled at the backs of her eyes but her expressive mouth tightened and she lifted a magazine, enjoyed the superb meal she was served and said not another word.
Late evening, they arrived on the island of Isvos. The helicopter set them down within yards of a long, low, rambling house built of natural stone. Sebasten carried her over the threshold. ‘Bet you’re glad there isn’t a flight of steps!’ Lizzie giggled.
His brilliant gaze centred on her lovely laughing face and suddenly he smiled.
The interior enchanted Lizzie: polished terracotta floors, stone walls and rough-hewn support pillars of wood contrasted with glorious sheer draperies and pale contemporary furniture. In every main room, doors opened direct on to the beach and the whispering, soothing sound of the surf seemed to flow through the whole house.
‘I love it,’ Lizzie murmured with an appreciative smile. ‘It’s so peaceful.’
‘Ingrid Morgan helped to design it.’
Lizzie glanced at him in surprise. ‘I thought she used to be a very superior PA.’
‘She was but she was also my father’s mistress.’
Lizzie blinked and then her lush mouth rounded into a soft silent ‘oh’ of belated comprehension.
‘She ended it before Connor got old enough to suspect the truth and moved back to England.’
‘Has she ever come back here?’ Lizzie asked.
‘No. Ingrid’s not into reliving the past.’ His jacket cast on the chest at the foot of the handsome beech bed, Sebasten lounged back against the pale wood door frame, six feet four inches of glorious leashed male power and virility. ‘Neither am I as a rule. But, as I’m sure you’ll recognise, Connor is a subject we’ve never really discussed in any depth.’
‘Connor…?’ Lizzie repeated after a startled pause. ‘You want me to talk about Connor…in depth?’
Lean, powerful face taut with determination, Sebasten shifted a broad shoulder in a fluid movement. ‘We should get it out of the way.’
‘Well, excuse me…’ Green eyes wide with annoyance and discomfiture, Lizzie tilted her chin. ‘I wasn’t aware there was anything to get out of the way!’
‘I know next to nothing about your relationship with him,’ Sebasten countered with immovable cool.
‘This is our wedding night and you want me to rehash unpleasant memories of another man…is that right?’ Lizzie demanded, snatching in a sustaining breath in an effort to control the incredulous resentment splintering through her but failing. ‘Go take a hike, Sebasten!’
Sebasten straightened, beautiful dark eyes flaring stormy gold. ‘I might just do that.’
At that threat, fear touched Lizzie deep and that very fear that he might walk out only increased her fury. ‘Wasn’t it bad enough that you spent most of the trip here hardly speaking to me? I put up with that but I can’t stand moody people. You never know where you are with them—’
‘I am not moody,’ Sebasten grated in an electrifying undertone. ‘But when you admitted that you saw a likeness between me and Connor, yes, it did give me pause for thought. It made me wonder just what you first saw in me…’
Understanding came to Lizzie and she studied him with angry, hurt condemnation, for she could not change the reality that she had met his brother first. ‘You have to be the most possessive guy I’ve ever met—’
Sebasten shot her a fulminating look. ‘I’m not and I have never been possessive—’
‘Volatile…possessive…jealous. Pick any one of them and they every one fit! If I’d just popped out of a little locked box somewhere the first night we met, you’d have loved it! How could you ask about Connor tonight of all nights? Do you honestly think I want to talk about how I found him and my stepmother in bed together?’ Lizzie slung at him in furious reproach. ‘You haven’t got a romantic, sensitive bone in your body!’
The bathroom door slammed and locked on Lizzie’s impassioned exit. Sebasten strode out onto the beach, angry with her, angry with himself, angrier still with Connor, now that he finally knew how brutal an awakening she had had to that affair. But he was not volatile. Nobody had ever accused him of that before. He was a very self-controlled guy. As for being possessive, what was wrong with that? Theo mou…she was his wife! A certain amount of possessiveness was a natural male instinct. As for that other tag, he wouldn’t even dignify that suggestion with consideration.