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‘I owe you nothing!’ she flared back.
‘Do you seriously think you can pull a stunt like that and walk away? Think about it,’ he suggested, walking across to the window, where a butterfly was helplessly battering its fragile wings against the glass. He opened it, nudging the insect towards freedom with his finger before he turned back to Mari, whose eyes had followed every move he made. ‘Did someone put you up to this?’
The abrupt question made her blink. There was something hypnotic about the way he moved. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Oh, I get it, you’re one of those people who see a conspiracy around every corner.’ She flashed an understanding smile. ‘I believe they call it paranoia.’
‘You expect me to believe that after six...six years you decided to get your own back just because I spoilt your dirty weekend with your married lover?’ He grimaced remembering Adrian, now the ex-husband of the local doctor. ‘I can only hope that time and experience has improved your taste.’
She loosed a laugh, her chest swelling with indignation. Experience... One day she might meet a man who was willing to go at her pace, but that looked about as likely as winning the lottery at the moment.
‘Just!’ she yelled. ‘It’ll be your fault if I never...’ Appalled by what she had almost blurted out, she closed her eyes. Maybe a better form of revenge would have been sticking him with some bills for the therapy she so obviously badly needed.
I’m so screwed up, she thought grimly, that the only man I have even imagined myself in bed with in recent memory is him!
He arched a black brow. ‘Never...?’
She shook back her hair, struggling to force the words past the emotional lump in her throat. ‘Nothing. You started this, you acted like judge, jury and executioner when you took it on yourself to humiliate me in front of—’
‘Of a handful of people who didn’t know you, not several hundred who do know me. If this was a tit for tat it was overkill. You may not have liked what I said, but it was the truth.’
‘Your truth!’ she flared, her eyes flashing. Nothing had changed—he was still the same judgemental creep.
‘It’s really hard to play the truth-and-justice card, angel face, when you just stood up in front of everyone back there and lied your beautiful head off.’ His glance dropped to her flat stomach. ‘Are you actually pregnant?’
‘How dare you?’
‘Dare...?’ he echoed, loosing an incredulous laugh. ‘You just stood up and told several hundred people that I’m the father of your unborn child...so yes, pardon me for being crass, but I do bloody dare!
‘You do realise, I suppose, that a DNA test will prove definitively that I am not the father? If you suggest otherwise I have a team of very expensive lawyers who will sue you to hell and back and issue so many writs that no tabloid will print a word of the story, and I don’t respond well to blackmail.’
‘And I don’t respond well to threats,’ she countered contemptuously. ‘And I’m not pregnant! And if I was,’ she added on a horrified afterthought, ‘you would be the last man in the world I would want as the father!’
The insult appeared to pass over his head. ‘There is no baby?’ One less complication to be dealt with.
She responded without thinking. ‘I don’t want children.’
His impressive shoulders moved in the slightest suggestion of a shrug. ‘No maternal feelings?’
Mari knew very little about maternal feelings, but she did know there were a lot of children out there who needed homes, and few like her own foster parents who were willing to offer one. She had decided a long time ago that if she was ever in a position to offer a child a home, it would be one of those abandoned children.
‘You can’t help yourself, can you? You just love to judge.’
‘It wasn’t a judgement.’ At least she was honest, he mused, his expression hardening as he thought of Elise’s parting shot—You think you know everything, but I had no intention of having a baby and ruining my figure!
The combative silence stretched as blue eyes clashed with dark brown; it was approaching snapping point when there was a tap on the door.
Mari turned her head as the door swung inwards and the girl that Mark loved appeared. The photo on his phone had shown how pretty she was, but it hadn’t captured her sheer vitality or the suggestion of mischief in her big brown eyes.
‘Tea, two sugars, good for shock, and a sandwich, the best I could do.’
Seb resisted the temptation to mention he was the one who’d had the shock as he took the tray and balanced it on a deep slate windowsill.
‘Hi.’ She waved a hand in Mari’s direction. ‘How’s Mark these days?’
The unexpected question felt like a raw wound being jabbed with a knife.
‘About as well as you’d expect.’ A sound half between a sob and a laugh escaped Mari’s pale lips as she shivered from a chill that came from within before elaborating with a bitterness born of despair, ‘For someone who’s driven into a lamp post and been told he might never walk again.’
It was as though it happened in slow motion. The girl’s pretty, vivid little face crumpled, but before the tears that filled her big brown eyes could fall she was in the shelter of her brother’s protective arms and out of the room. Before he left he turned his head and the look he gave Mari was one that promised retribution and maybe, she thought, biting her own quivering lip, she might deserve it.
The heavy door was only partially closed. Mari could hear the sound of voices, but not what they were saying.
Tears threatened, lying in a heavy clogging lump in her throat as she looked around the room. The stark white walls were bare but for a couple of wall sconces holding half-burned candles. Other than the couch she sat on and a massive dark wood cupboard, the only other piece of furniture in the place was a spindle-backed chair.
She stiffened as the door opened then closed quietly. He did everything quietly, the closing of the door, the crossing the room with the sort of exaggerated care that someone who had had too much to drink uses, but it wasn’t the effects of alcohol his slow, measured movements disguised, it was the anger he was holding in...just. Nobody under the influence could move like that, she decided, thinking jungle cat as she watched him.
He stopped just in front of her and waited. The silence shredded her already frayed nerves, and Mari lasted about twenty seconds before she felt compelled to break it. The other option by that point was screaming.
‘I didn’t mean—’ she blurted, then stopped. She hadn’t come here to apologise again but it was true she hadn’t meant to hurt the girl. The only thing Fleur Defoe was guilty of was having a manipulative brother. ‘I didn’t mean to upset your sister.’ She bit the inside of her cheek and fought off a tide of guilt. ‘Is she all right?’
Seb struggled to tamp down his anger with only moderate success. How the hell could she pretend to give a damn? ‘Because you care so much? Look, have a go at me if you want to. I can take care of myself.’ He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a low menacing purr that decimated any nerve ending his physical proximity hadn’t already sent into shock. ‘But if you go after my sister, so help me, I’ll go after you.’
‘Am I meant to be scared?’ If so it was working. Only pride kept her retreating from the dark, cold menace in his deep-set eyes. ‘I didn’t want to hurt your sister. I wanted to hurt you!’
Possibly too much honesty at this point, Mari, she thought as she waited nervously for his reaction. The fact he didn’t react beyond elevating an eyebrow and looking thoughtful was baffling rather than comforting.
It was hard to retain dignity barefoot, especially in this dress, which had not been this tight across her hips the last time she’d worn it. It was the price you paid when your drug of choice was chocolate. Even in her heels she would have needed to tilt her head back to look him in the eyes; with nothing between the soles of her feet and the stone floor she felt... Well, Mari had once or twice wondered what it felt like to be petite and delicate. Now she had an idea, and she didn’t like it.
Ignoring her stomach fluttering and her curling toes, she thought, What’s the worst he can do? And wished she hadn’t because her vivid imagination responded to the invite and kicked in big time!
Seb, his temper cooling, felt an unwelcome stab of admiration. Her regal attitude was totally at odds with her gloriously mussed hair and bare feet but, by God, she carried it off. His eyes of their own accord dropped, following the soft, undulating curves of her body that the blue silk dress she wore lovingly hugged. She had come to play the victim, but looking the way she did she had to have been typecast as sinful seductress.
‘I didn’t think she’d actually dump you.’
‘Is that an apology?’
‘No, it’s...’ She stopped, her eyes widening fractionally as a possible explanation for the bride’s reaction struck her. ‘Have you done it before...but for real?’
His expression grew cold and contemptuous. ‘It must be the company you keep, but a lot of people don’t cheat.’
But do you? she wondered, watching as he responded to the imperative hum of a phone, which he slid from his pocket. He scanned the screen before punching something in and returning it to his pocket.
‘I haven’t got long.’ He was not fooled by the polite request; underneath the diplomatic language it was a royal command—he was being asked to defend brand Defoe.
‘Don’t let me keep you.’
The pert reply caused his attention, which had drifted away, to focus back in on her. ‘Was what you said about your brother true?’
She was outraged by the question. ‘Why would I lie about that?’
‘Why would you lie about me fathering your child?’ he countered.
‘I’ve told you.’
‘I know, spoil my day, wasn’t it?’ He tipped his head and gave a slow handclap. ‘Well, you succeeded in more ways than you can imagine.’ He dropped his hands and subjected her to a scrutiny of skin-peeling intensity. ‘What exactly happened to your brother?’ Something that had triggered today’s stunt?
‘He...he...’ Hearing the helpless wobble in her voice, she swallowed and blinked back the emotional tears that sprang to her eyes. ‘Mark could end up in a wheelchair permanently.’ A lot was still unknown, and Mari refused to think the worst. ‘Why are you asking? You don’t give a damn about him, do you?’ she charged, glaring up at him with angry contempt.
‘I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,’ he replied, wondering how he would react in the other man’s position. He hoped to God he would never find out.
She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Not even someone who doesn’t have the right...right...bloodline to marry your sister?’
Seb’s dark brows drew together in an astonished straight line above his masterful nose as he looked down at her. ‘Back up...’
If only she could have, Mari thought wistfully, she would have responded quite literally to this request. A few more feet to distance herself from his overpowering physical presence would have been welcome but there was nowhere to go.
‘Marry?’
Her teeth clenched at this display of unconvincing innocence. ‘Don’t bother with the act—I know what you did.’
Well, that makes one of us, he thought with a sardonic grimace. Every time she opened her mouth he felt as though he were being led deeper into a maze.
He released a long, slow, hissing breath, controlling his temper and the desire to grab her—and the hell of it was that, whatever his intentions, the moment he laid his hands on her it would change what hovered unacknowledged between them, taunting him, the way her mouth taunted him.
He had known it from the moment he saw her standing there in the church denouncing him to everyone who knew him. He wanted this woman, and if he touched her now that want would wipe out everything else.
Wasn’t it supposed to be therapeutic to look into your heart? Not that his heart was the organ involved in this instance. Either way, he didn’t feel better—he felt frustrated self-disgust.
‘Work from the premise I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.’
‘They were in love.’ She paused, distracted by the muscle that was clenching and unclenching in his lean cheek. ‘Y...you,’ she stuttered, thinking he should come with a shipping warning to stop females drifting into his magnetic field. ‘You put an end to it because you’re an arrogant snob who passes judgement on people he doesn’t know. You have no heart!’
As the quivering accusation left her lips her scornful gaze slid to his chest. The image of her placing her hand on his warm skin, feeling his heart beat under her fingers, came from nowhere. Severely shaken, she shook her head to dislodge it and the warm feeling it induced.
His brows lifted. She was really rather glorious in full flow with that pouting mouth and those flashing eyes. ‘If they were...in love, surely that wouldn’t have been possible. Doesn’t love conquer all?’
While he was innocent of the charge, Seb privately acknowledged that had there been any actual danger of Fleur marrying the rather insipid young man he had met he would have done his utmost to stop it, but he liked to think he would have been more subtle.
The thought of Fleur’s reaction to an outright ban from him twitched the corners of his mouth upwards in the ghost of a wry smile.
Seeing it, Mari felt her temper fizz up all over again. ‘This is just a joke to you, isn’t it?’ she accused, overflowing with a sense of righteous outrage. ‘You don’t even have the guts to admit what you did was because my brother doesn’t have the right school tie and has worked for what he has rather than it being handed to him on a golden platter, and don’t deny it,’ she added breathlessly.
Nostrils flared, he gave a mirthless smile. ‘I wasn’t about to,’ he promised grimly. The idea of him explaining himself to this red-haired virago with a chip on her shoulder the size of a forest offended him on more levels than he could count.
‘Before she brought him home to meet you, everything was fine.’
‘Relationships end every day.’ He cut her off with an impatient gesture of his hand. ‘You have decided that I am responsible for your brother’s broken heart, I get that part of your delusion, but the rest? I’m a bit hazy where I fit in. He had an accident? What sort of accident?’
‘Mark came to see me after he and Fleur split up. He was distraught when he left—if he hadn’t been he’d never have been drinking.’
‘He drank?’
Hearing the grim condemnation in his voice, she rushed to her twin’s defence.
‘He was only just over the limit.’
He greeted this weak defence with a thin smile of disdain.
‘And there was fog...’ Her voice trailed away; she knew there was no excuse. ‘He never drinks and drives—normally—and he wouldn’t have been doing so that night if you hadn’t interfered. You’re the reason it happened.’
And if you’d been more sympathetic? Mari closed her eyes and her ears to the voice of self-loathing in her head because she simply couldn’t bear it.
He watched, fighting an unexpected flash of concern as she started to sway forward and back on her heels, her eyes closed. Concern he didn’t want to feel roughened his voice as he asked abruptly, ‘Are you all right?’
Her blue eyes opened. They glittered with unshed tears and loathing. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not about to faint again.’ She sniffed and wiped a hand across her damp eyes.
While Seb considered himself pretty immune to most female tears, the sniff made him feel... Uneasy was not the right word, but as he pushed away the suggestion that the prosaic action touched a tender spot he refused to acknowledge he settled for it.
‘Sit down,’ he urged, coating his concern in impatience, because actually giving a damn about a woman who had deliberately set out to cause chaos in his life would have been irrational, and he wasn’t.
He just didn’t want her to faint at his feet.
‘I don’t need to sit down,’ she snapped back. ‘I’m going home.’ She took two steps before a voice said in her head, Running away?
Teeth clenched, she swung back. This time she would be the one to have the last word. ‘Why should you carry on living your perfect life when because of you my brother’s life is ruined?’
CHAPTER FOUR (#u44e78751-169f-5476-9236-732847501399)
‘WE’LL LEAVE THE perfection of my life out of this conversation and while I don’t doubt you need someone to blame for what has happened to your brother—’
Mari stiffened defensively and cut in, yelling angrily, ‘You are to blame.’
‘What happened to your brother is tragic, but it is not the result of anything I did. He chose to drink, he chose to get behind the wheel of a car, his decision, his responsibility,’ he intoned with steely implacability. ‘It is pure luck that he didn’t injure an innocent.’
Gnawing her lower lip, Mari lowered her gaze. He had said it; she had thought it. ‘He loved your sister.’
‘It was hardly the act of passion,’ Seb derided contemptuously. ‘It was the act of a weak man who didn’t think of the consequences of his actions. It seems to be a family failing.’
‘He’s lying in a hospital bed!’ she cried, wondering if the callous monster even had a heart.
‘Which is sad, but he is the architect of his own downfall and I am just glad he has not taken my sister down with him.’
Mari wasn’t even aware that her arm had lifted, moving in a swishing arc towards his face until, a few inches short of making contact with his lean cheek, fingers like iron curled around her wrist, forcing it away and back down to her side.
She didn’t even give him the chance to release her hand; she started fighting, pulling frantically to wrench her hand free. When he did so she lifted her head very slowly, her wild hair falling back to reveal eyes that were wide and filled with hate, her skin flushed rosy, her lips parted as she panted for breath as though they’d just gone several rounds—everything was out of proportion with her and so, he realised, were the reactions she evoked in him.
He moved in a step, bringing their bodies closer. She didn’t move, if anything she swayed towards him as though responding to some invisible cord that connected them. He watched, fascinated, as the blue of her eyes was almost swallowed up by the dramatic dilation of her pupils.
She had the most glorious mouth he had ever seen, the sort of mouth that made a man want to taste. Quite suddenly, despite the deafening peal of warning bells in his ears, Seb couldn’t think of a single reason why he shouldn’t taste her.
