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‘Children are all right…at a distance,’ Sebasten pronounced, cool as ice.
Lizzie lost every scrap of her natural colour and caution might have warned her to keep quiet but she was quite incapable of listening to such promptings. ‘What sort of answer is that?’
‘They can look quite charming in paintings,’ Sebasten conceded, studying the traffic lights with brooding concentration. ‘But they’re noisy, demanding and an enormous responsibility. I’m much too selfish to want that kind of hassle in my life.’
‘I hope your future wife feels the same way,’ was all that Lizzie in her shattered state could think to mutter to cover herself in the hideous silence that stretched.
‘I’m not planning to acquire one of those either,’ Sebasten confessed in an aggressive tone. ‘If even my father couldn’t strike gold once in four marriages, what hope have I?’
‘None whatsoever, I should think, with your outlook,’ Lizzie answered in a tight, driven reply. ‘Of course, some women would marry you simply because you’re loaded—’
‘Surprise…surprise,’ Sebasten slotted in with satiric bite.
‘But personally speaking…’ Lizzie’s low-pitched response quivered with the force of her disturbed emotions and she was determined to have her own say on the subject…‘not all the money in the world would compensate me for being deprived of children. I also think there’s something very suspect about a man who dislikes children—’
‘Suspect? In what way?’ Sebasten demanded with wrathful incredulity, exploded from his already unsettled state of mind with a vengeance.
‘But then, as you said, you’re very selfish, but to my way of thinking…a truly masculine man would have a more mature outlook and he would appreciate that a life partner and the children they would share would be as rewarding as they were restricting.’
Sebasten was so incensed, he almost launched a volley of enraged Greek at her. Who was she calling immature? And when had he said that he disliked children? A truly masculine man? His lean brown hands flexed and tightened round the steering wheel as he sought to contain his ire at her daring to question what every Greek male considered the literal essence of being.
‘Your mind is narrow indeed,’ he gritted, shooting the Lamborghini down the motorway at above the speed limit.
‘You’re entitled to your opinion.’ Lizzie was wondering in a daze of shock how she could have been so offensive but not really caring, for what he had told her had appalled her. Dreams she had not even known she cherished had been hauled out into the unkind light of day and crucified. ‘But please watch your speed.’
Deprived of even that minor outlet for his rage, Sebasten slowed down, lean, bronzed features set like stone. ‘The minute my father, Andros, suffered a setback in business and her jetset lifestyle looked to be under threat, my mother demanded a divorce. She traded custody of me for a bigger settlement,’ he bit out rawly. ‘Although she had access rights, she never utilised them. I was only six years old.’
In an altogether new kind of shock, Lizzie focused her entire attention on his taut, hard profile. ‘You never saw her again?’
‘No, and she died a few years later. A truly feminine, maternal woman,’ Sebasten framed with vicious intent. ‘My first stepmother slept with the teenager who cleaned our swimming pool. She liked very young men.’
‘Oh…dear,’ Lizzie mumbled, bereft of a ready word of comfort to offer.
‘Andros divorced her. His next wife spent most of their marriage in a series of drug rehabilitation clinics but still contrived to die of an overdose. The fourth wife was much younger and livelier and she was addicted to sex but not with an ageing husband,’ Sebasten delivered with sizzling contempt. ‘The night that my father suffered the humiliation of overhearing her strenuous efforts to persuade me into bed, he had his first heart attack.’
After that daunting recitation of matrimonial disaster, Lizzie shook her head in sincere dismay. ‘Your poor father. Obviously he didn’t have any judgement at all when it came to women.’
Not having been faced with that less than tactful response before, Sebasten gritted his even white teeth harder until it crossed his mind that there was a most annoying amount of truth in that comment. Throughout those same years, Ingrid, who would have made an excellent wife, had hovered in the background, at first hopeful, then slowly losing heart when she was never once even considered as a suitable bridal candidate by the man who had been her lover on and off for years. Why not? She had been born poor, had had to work for a living and had made the very great strategic error of sharing his father’s bed between wives.
But how the hell had he got on to such a very personal subject with Lizzie? What was it about her? When had he ever before dumped the embarrassing gritty details of his background on a woman? He was furious with himself.
Given plenty of food for thought, Lizzie blinked back tears at the mere idea of what Sebasten must have suffered after his greedy mother’s rejection was followed by the ordeal of three horribly inadequate stepmothers. Was it any wonder that he should be so anti-marriage and children? Her heart just went out to him and she was ashamed of her own face-saving condemnation of his views earlier. After all, what did she know about what his life must have been like? Only now, having been given the bare bones, she was just dying to flesh them out.
However, Sebasten’s monosyllabic responses soon squashed that aspiration flat and silence fell until the Lamborghini accelerated up a long, winding drive beneath a leafy tunnel of huge weeping lime trees. Pomeroy Place was a Georgian jewel of architectural elegance, set off to perfection by a beautiful setting.
Before the housekeeper could take Lizzie upstairs, Lizzie glanced back across the large, elegant hall and focused with anxious eyes on Sebasten’s grim profile before following the older woman up the superb marble staircase. Shown into a gorgeous guest room, she freshened up, a frown indenting her brow. In the mood Sebasten was in, he felt like an intimidating stranger. But then, it was evident that she had roused bad memories, but did he have to shut her out to such an extent? Could he not appreciate that she had feelings too?
Downstairs, receiving the first of his guests, Sebasten was discovering that a bad day could only get much worse when the vivacious gossip columnist Patsy Hewitt arrived on the arm of one of his recently divorced friends. Aware that Lizzie had been attacked by one of the tabloid newspapers for not attending Connor’s funeral, the very last person he wanted seated at his dining-table was a journalist with a legendary talent for venom against her own sex. He did not want his relationship with Lizzie exposed in print just when he was about to end it. In fact, he was determined to protect Lizzie from that final embarrassment.
Quite how he could hope to achieve that end he had no clear idea, and then even the option seemed to vanish when Lizzie walked into the drawing room. He watched Patsy look at Lizzie and then turn back to the other couple she had been chatting to and he realised with relief that the journalist had no idea who Lizzie was.
‘And this is Lizzie,’ he murmured with a skimming glance in her general direction, drawing her to the attention of his other guests in a very impersonal manner.
‘Do you work for Sebasten?’ a woman in her thirties asked Lizzie some minutes later, evidently having no suspicion that Lizzie might be present in any other capacity.
‘Yes.’ The way Sebasten was behaving, Lizzie was happy to make that confirmation but an angry, discomfited spark flared in her clear green eyes.
Another four people arrived and soon afterwards they crossed the hall to the dining room. Pride helped Lizzie to keep up her end of the general conversation but she did not look at Sebasten unless she was forced to do so. What she ate or even whether she did eat during that meal she was never later to recall. She started out angry but sank deeper into shock as the evening progressed. Had she really expected to act as his hostess? Certainly, she had not expected to be treated like someone merely invited to keep the numbers at the table even.
‘So…which luscious lady are you romancing right now?’ the older brunette, who had entertained them all with her sharp sense of humour, asked Sebasten in a coy tone over the coffee-cups.
Lizzie froze and watched Sebasten screen his dark eyes with his spiky black lashes before he murmured lazily. ‘I’m still looking.’
With a trembling hand, Lizzie reached for her glass of water. Feeling sick, betrayed and outraged, she backed out of her chair without any perceptible awareness of what she was about to do, walked down the length of the table and slung the contents of her glass in Sebasten’s face. ‘When I find a real man, I’ll let you know!’ she spelt out.
Sebasten vaulted upright and thrust driven fingers through his dripping hair.
The silence that had fallen had a depth that was claustrophobic.
And then, as Lizzie went into retreat at the shimmering incredulity in Sebasten’s stunned golden eyes, one of the guests laughed out loud and she spun to see who it was that could find humour in such a scene.
‘Bravo, Lizzie!’ Patsy Hewitt told her with an amused appreciation that bewildered Lizzie. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a more entertaining evening.’
‘I’m glad someone had a good time,’ Lizzie quipped before she walked out of the room and sped upstairs with tears of furious, shaken reaction blinding her.
Had that guy talking been the guy she thought she loved? The male whose baby she carried? Denying her very existence? He was ashamed of her. What else was she to believe but that he was ashamed to own up to being involved with Connor Morgan’s ex-girlfriend? He needn’t think she had not eventually read the significance of his having neglected to speak her surname even once or his determination not to distinguish her with one atom of personal attention. So why the heck had he invited her? And how did she ditch him when she was expecting his baby?
But such concerns for a future that seemed distant were beyond Lizzie at a moment when all that was on her mind was leaving Sebasten’s house just as fast as she could manage it. So it was unfortunate that while she had been downstairs dining her case had been unpacked.
She was in shock after the evening she had endured and the shattering discovery that Sebasten could turn into a male she really didn’t want to know. Why? Why had he suddenly changed towards her?
In a flash, she recalled his cool parting from her that morning at Contaxis International and stilled, comprehension finding a path through her bewilderment. Nothing had been right since then. He had been in a distant mood when he came to pick her up and then in the car she had asked that stupid question about whether or not he liked children and the atmosphere had gone from strained to freezing point. He wanted out. Why had she not seen that sooner?
With nerveless hands, she dragged out her case and plonked it down on the bed. She remembered the way he had made love to her earlier in the day and she shivered, almost torn in two by the agony that threatened to take hold of her.
When Sebasten strode in, she was gathering up the items she had left out on the dressing-table earlier and in the act of slinging them willy-nilly into her case.
‘What do you want?’ Lizzie asked, refusing to look higher than his snazzy dark blue silk tie.
‘Perhaps I don’t like having water thrown in my face in front of an audience,’ Sebasten heard himself bite out, although that had not been the tack he had planned to take. ‘And the audience didn’t much enjoy the fall-out either…it’s barely midnight and they’ve all gone home.’
‘If I had had anything bigger and heavier within reach, the damage would have been a lot worse!’ Lizzie’s soft mouth was sealed so tight it showed white round the edges.
‘Do you even realise who the woman who last spoke to you was?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care. There is just no excuse for the way you treated me tonight!’ Lizzie was fighting to retain a grip on her disturbed emotions and walk out on him with dignity. Deep down inside she knew that if she allowed herself to think about what she was doing or what was happening between then she might come apart at the seams in front of him.
‘Patsy Hewitt is the Sunday Globe’s gossip columnist. No prizes for guessing which couple will star in her next lead story!’
The journalist’s name had a vague familiarity for Lizzie but so intense was her emotional conflict that she could not grasp why he should waste his breath on something that struck her as an irrelevant detail.
‘I didn’t flaunt our relationship tonight because I wanted to protect you from that kind of unpleasant media exposure,’ Sebasten completed angrily.
That he should dare to be angry with her after the way he had behaved added salt to the wounds he had already inflicted. In the back of her mind, she discovered, had lurked a very different expectation: that he might grovel for embarrassing her in such a way, for denying her like a Judas before witnesses. And nothing short of grovelling apologies would have eased the colossal pain of angry, bewildered loss growing inside her.
‘Why the heck should a guy with your reputation care about media exposure?’ Lizzie demanded and looked at him for the first time since he had entered the room.
And it hurt, it hurt so much to study those lean, devastatingly attractive features, note the fierce tension etched in his fabulous bone-structure and recognise the hard condemnation in his scorching golden eyes.
‘And why the heck would I care anyway?’ she added in sudden haste, determined to get in first with what she knew was coming her way. ‘We’re finished and I want to go home. You can call a taxi for me!’
‘You can stay the night here. It would be crazy for you to leave this late at night.’ Instead of being relieved that the deed he had been in no hurry to do had been done for him, a jagged shot of instant igniting fury leapt through Sebasten.
‘The very idea of staying under the same roof as you is offensive to me. You’re an absolute toad and I hope Patsy whatever-her-name-is shows you up in print for what you are!’ Lizzie slung back not quite levelly, for a tiny secret part of her, a part that she despised, had hoped that he might argue with her announcement, might even this late in the day magically contrive to excuse his own behaviour and redress the damage he had done.
‘Perhaps had you considered telling me the truth about Connor this might not be happening,’ Sebasten heard himself declare, his jawline clenching hard. ‘Instead you lied your head off to me!’
‘I beg your pardon…?’ Settling perplexed green eyes on him, Lizzie stared back at him, her heart beginning to beat so fast at that startling reference to Connor that it felt as if it was thumping inside her very throat. Why was he dragging Connor in?
‘Connor’s mother, Ingrid, is a close family friend.’
Her gaze widened in astonishment at that unexpected revelation, pallor driving away the feverish flush in her cheeks, an eerie chill tingling down her spine. ‘You didn’t tell me that before…you said you hardly knew him—’
‘I knew Connor better as a child than as an adult.’ On surer ground now, Sebasten let true anger rise and never had he needed anger more than when he saw the shattered look of incomprehension stamped to Lizzie’s oval face. She was so pale that all seven freckles on her nose stood out in sharp relief. ‘You also said you didn’t know him well and then told repeated lies about your relationship with him.’
‘I didn’t lie,’ Lizzie countered in angry bewilderment, her tall, slender body rigid as she attempted to challenge the accusation that she was a liar while at the same time come to terms with the shocking reality that Sebasten had close ties that he cherished with the Morgan family but that he had not been prepared to reveal that fact to her. ‘I actually told you a truth that nobody other than myself, Connor and the woman involved knew!’
‘Theos mou…the truth?’ Sebasten slammed back with raw derision, infuriated that he had noticed her freckles in the middle of such a confrontation and outraged by the unfamiliar stress of having to fight to maintain his concentration. ‘Your most ingenious story of Connor’s secret affair with a married woman that would be impossible to disprove when you declined to name the lady involved. That nonsense was a base and inexcusable betrayal of Connor’s memory!’
‘You didn’t believe me,’ Lizzie registered in a belated surge of realisation and she shook her bright head in a numbed movement. ‘And yet you never said so, never even mentioned that Ingrid Morgan was a friend of yours. Why did you conceal those facts? If you believed I was lying, why didn’t you just confront me?’
‘Maybe I thought it was time that someone taught you a lesson.’ No sooner had Sebasten made that admission than he regretted it. ‘That was before I understood that what I was doing to you was as reprehensible as what you did to Connor.’
Lizzie only heard that first statement and her blood ran cold in her veins. Maybe I thought it was time that someone taught you a lesson. That confession rocked her already shaken world and threatened to blow it away altogether. He had gone after her, singled her out, and it had all been part of some desire to punish her for what she had supposedly done to Connor? She was shattered by that final revelation.
‘What sort of a man are you?’ Lizzie demanded in palpable disbelief.
Anger nowhere within reach, Sebasten lost colour beneath his bronzed skin and fought an insane urge to pull her into his arms and hold her tight. ‘The night I met you, the first night, I didn’t know who you were. I didn’t find out until the following morning when I saw your driving licence.’
Lizzie dismissed that plea without hesitation. ‘I don’t believe in coincidences like that…you went on the hunt for me.’
‘Had I known who you were I would never have gone to bed with you,’ Sebasten swore half under his breath.
A wave of dizziness assailed Lizzie. She could not bear to think of what he had just said. Blocking him from her mind and her view, she sank down on the foot of the bed and reached for her mobile phone. Desperate to leave his house, she punched out the number of a national cab firm to request a taxi.
‘Hell…I’ll take you back to London!’ Sebasten broke in.
Having made the call, Lizzie ignored him and breathed in slow and deep to ward off the swimming sensation in her head. The guy she had fallen in love with had embarked on their relationship with the sole and deliberate intent of hurting and humiliating her. She could not believe that he could have been so cruel, and why? Over the head of Connor, who had already cost her so much!
Sick to the heart, she stood up like an automaton and headed for the dressing room, where she assumed her clothes had been stowed away. She dragged garments from hangers and drawers, dimly amazed at the amount of stuff she had contrived to pack for a single night. But then she had been in love, hadn’t she been? Unable to make up her mind what she might need, what would look best, what he might admire most on her. A laugh that was no laugh at all bubbled and died again inside her. Her throat was raw and aching but, in the midst of what she believed to be the worst torture she would ever have to get through, her eyes were dry.
Sebasten hovered, lean, powerful hands clenching and unclenching. ‘I should never have slept with you,’ he admitted with suppressed savagery. ‘If I could go back and change that I would—’
‘Try staying out of basements too.’ Her tone one of ringing disgust, Lizzie quivered with a combustible mix of self-loathing and shame that he could have been so ruthless and wicked as to take advantage of her weakness. ‘There could never have been an excuse for what you’ve done. That you should have set out to cause me harm is unforgivable.’
‘Yes,’ Sebasten conceded in Greek, snatching in a deep-driven breath and switching back to English to state. ‘I do accept that two wrongs do not make a right, but in the heat of the moment when I was confronted with the depth of Ingrid’s despair my mind was not so clear. I was appalled that first morning when I discovered your true identity and what took place today was indefensible. But from the outset I was very much attracted to you.’
Heaping clothes into the case, Lizzie made herself look at him, hatred in her heart, hatred built on a hurt that went so deep it felt like a physical pain. ‘Is that supposed to make me feel better? I met you when my whole life had crashed around me. I was very unhappy and you must have seen that…yet you waded in and made it worse,’ she condemned. ‘How could you be such a bastard?’
‘I lost the plot…isn’t that obvious?’ Sebasten threw back at her with a savage edge to his accented drawl as he swept up the couple of garments she had dropped on her passage from the dressing room but held on to them because he did not want to hasten her departure. ‘I got in deeper than I ever dreamt and I’m paying a price for that now too.’
Lizzie thought in a daze of the child she carried and a spasm of bitter regret tightened her facial muscles. She was no longer listening to him. ‘Connor cheated on me and he didn’t spare my feelings a single thought. I lost my friends and my father’s respect. I paid way over the odds for being the fall guy in that affair. But this is something else again…I loved you…’ Her voice faltered to a halt and she blinked, shocked that she had admitted that and then, beyond caring, she snapped her case closed with trembling hands and swung it down off the bed.
‘I don’t want you to leave in this frame of mind…’ Sebasten declared as much to her as to himself.
‘I hate you. I will never forgive you…so stop saying really stupid things!’ Lizzie slung at him with a wildness that mushroomed up from within her without any warning and made her feel almost violent. ‘What did you expect from me? That I was going to shake hands and thank you for wrecking my life again!’
Sebasten had no answer, but then he had never thought that far ahead and just then cool, rational thought evaded him. ‘If you want to go back to London tonight, let me drive you,’ he urged, taking refuge in male practicality.
‘You’re wired to the moon,’ Lizzie accused shakily, hauling her case past him.
His hand came down over hers and forced her fingers into retreat from the handle. She just let him have the case. She walked to the door, threw it wide and started down the stairs while she willed the taxi to come faster than the speed of light.
Sebasten reached the hall only seconds in her wake. As a manservant hurried from the rear of the hall to relieve him of the case, only to be sent into retreat by the ferocious look of warning he received from his employer, Lizzie wrenched open the front door on her own.’
‘Give me my case!’ she demanded, fired up like an Amazon warrior.
With pronounced reluctance, Sebasten set the case down. ‘Lizzie…Connor was my half-brother…’
Lizzie spun back to him in astonishment and an image of Connor surged up in her mind’s eye: the very dark brown eyes that had been so unexpected with her ex-boyfriend’s blond hair, the classic bone-structure, his height and build. She did not question Sebasten’s ultimate revelation. Indeed, for her it was as though the whole appalling picture was finally complete.
‘Two of you…’ she muttered sickly as she turned away again to focus with relief on the car headlights approaching the front of the house. ‘And both of you arrogant, selfish, lying rats who use and abuse women! Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?’
Sebasten froze at that response. The cab driver got out to take her case. Within the space of a minute, Lizzie was gone. Sebasten looked down at the flimsy white bra and red silk shirt he was still grasping in one hand and he knew that he was about to get so drunk that he didn’t know what day it was.