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Jennifer’s eyes fluttered open to find Susie’s round face filling her vision.
‘Thank goodness! How do you feel?’
Jennifer moistened her dry lips, momentarily disorientated by the discovery that she was lying flat on the living room couch, with Susie kneeling on the floor beside her.
‘OK...I think,’ she wavered, remembering her awful anxiety dream. Had she been taking a nap? Was her guilt now going to pursue her even into sleep? ‘What happened?’
‘You fainted. Switched out like a light, apparently. Luckily your husband caught you before you fell face first into all that glass.’
‘Husband?’ she echoed feebly.
‘I guess you were too busy feeling rotten to really look at our visitor, huh?’ Susie suggested with a wry grin. ‘I felt horribly embarrassed when I found out who I was giving the bum’s rush to, but fortunately Rafe seems a forgiving kind of guy.’
‘My husband?’ Jennifer struggled up onto her elbows, her whirling head causing her to sink back against the padded arm of the couch. ‘Rafe?’
‘Yeah—he said not to worry about it, that he knew you weren’t expecting him. He wanted to surprise you, but I suppose it wasn’t such a hot idea when you were feeling so wonky...’
So it hadn’t been a dream!
‘He’s really here?’ Jennifer cast a hunted look around the room, her eyes skipping over the comfortable, well-used furniture. Everything was still fuzzy around the edges. She groped at her face.
‘My glasses—where are my glasses?’ She needed a barrier, however flimsy and transparent, to hide behind.
Susie picked them up off the coffee table and handed them to her to fumble on.
‘Now, don’t fret,’ she said, misunderstanding Jennifer’s panic. ‘He’ll be back in a moment. I got him to carry you out here because your clothes got splashed and I knew you wouldn’t want the Carters’ bedclothes all damp when you’d just made all the beds. He’s just in the kitchen getting you a drink. See, here he is back!’
Susie scrambled to her feet to allow the tall, whipcord-lean man to weave around the coffee table and perch sideways on the broad couch. He wedged his right hip against Jennifer’s side as he braced one arm on the cushioned back and leaned over to offer her a sip from the glass of water in his other hand, effectively caging in her body with his chest.
Satisfied that her employer was in good hands, Susie backed away. ‘I’m going to leave for home before this volcanic fog gets any worse, but don’t worry about that mess in the Carters’ room, Jen, I’ ll clean it up for you before I go. That way you two can just concentrate on each other...’
‘Thanks, Susie.’ Rafe’s deep, warm tone cut off Jennifer’s spluttering objection as he pressed the glass to her pale mouth. He threw a burnished smile over his shoulder. ‘You’re a sweetheart, but...’ He trailed off, raising silky brows.
Susie laughed, as if she had known him for years rather than merely minutes. ‘I know, I know—three’s a crowd. I guess I’ll see you later then...much later!’
Jennifer pushed at the glass which had been used to gag her as Susie scampered away. ‘Take it away! I don’t want a drink.’
Trust Jordan to have suborned her ally while she was unconscious. As a former male model, and former editor of a raunchy men’s magazine, he was no doubt used to women falling over themselves to be friendly.
There was no smile for her. Just a probing look. ‘Too bad. You need extra fluids to counteract shock—and don’t tell me you’re not shocked to see me. Drink!’
The glass clinked against her resistant teeth, forcing her head back against the arm of the couch, and, knowing his stubbornness, she took a single swallow, defiantly tiny.
‘Again,’ he insisted.
Another, even tinier sip. ‘Bully,’ she muttered, wondering if she dared spit it in his face.
‘Cheat. Gold-digger,’ he retaliated softly. ‘Thief.’
At the heavy significance placed on the last insult she almost choked on the small mouthful, the blood surging up into her face.
‘Good. You’ve got a little of your colour back,’ he said, studying her clinically. The simmering violence with which he had confronted her in the bedroom was gone, superceded by an implacable air of purpose that was even more threatening. He had taken advantage of her unconsciousness to firmly establish himself in her household, leaving her no option but to fight a rear-guard action.
Close up, his lightly tanned face revealed the imprint of thirty-three years rich with experience, fine lines fanning out from the corners of his knowing eyes and cynical curves bracketing the corners of his sensual mouth. The slight stubble softening the hard line of his jaw sparkled like gold glitter on a Christmas card, and the short, spiky tufts of deep blonde hair, sun-bleached almost white at the tips, created an improbable halo above the narrow temples. However, apart from his name, any similarity to an angel was purely illusory—no angel possessed Raphael Jordan’s decadent past!
‘More?’
He tilted the glass, ignoring her sullen resistance, and a trickle of water repelled by the compressed seam of her lips skated down from the corner of her mouth.
To her intense shock Rafe bent his head and licked the droplets off her chin before they could drip into the cowl-neck of her angora jumper.
‘Stop it!’ she gasped, wiping the back of her hand over the spot where his moist tongue had lashed her tender skin with fire. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
She gulped as he lifted his head, just enough for her to see the sexual taunting in his emerald eyes.
‘Just my husbandly duty, Mrs Jordan...’
She hated the ease with which he could disrupt her senses. From the first time Sebastian had introduced her to his son she had been deeply aware of the dangerous undercurrents, and was secretly grateful for the strained relationship between the two men which had kept their association to a minimum.
‘You said you told Susie the truth,’ she said, her voice ragged with the effort of controlling her fear.
He placed the barely touched glass on the beechwood coffee table without releasing her from his tormenting gaze. ‘Actually, she didn’t give me the chance,’ he admitted with a cool lack of remorse for the fright he had given her. ‘I told her my name and before I could say that I was looking for my father’s wife—’
‘His widow!’ It was a distinction that was vital to Jennifer’s bruised sensibilities.
He inclined his head, his eyes glinting as if her fierce correction had accorded him some kind of important victory.
‘Whatever... As soon as I said I was Raphael Jordan, she began talking as if I was your husband. She seemed so certain that your husband’s name was Rafe, and so positive that you’d be over the moon to see me that I thought it best not to argue with her romantic delusions.’
Best? He meant most useful to his own purposes!
Jennifer clenched her hands at her sides, hating the helplessness of her position but knowing she would be no match for Rafe in a physical tussle. He clearly had no intention of letting her up until she was intimidated into giving him some answers.
She would have to rely on her wits to extricate herself and somehow persuade him to leave before he encountered loose-tongued Susie again, or—God forbid—her mother!
‘It seems funny that she should get so mixed up,’ he mused perilously, ‘because she seemed otherwise a fairly intelligent and switched-on young woman. Could it be, dear stepmama, that you’ve been purposely vague about the whereabouts of your husband? Haven’t you let on that he’s no longer in the land of the living? Been keeping your widow’s mite secret from your impecunious friends and relatives?’
Her stomach roiled at his clever guess. But not clever enough!
‘Don’t call me that! And how can you be so flippant about the death of your own father? I know you two didn’t get on, but you might at least have some respect for his memory—’
‘If you’d bothered to hang around for the funeral you would have seen me paying my respects,’ he ripped at her. ‘I even shed a few tears for the stiff-necked old bastard. But don’t expect me to elevate him to sainthood just because he’s dead. He was a good doctor and a brilliant businessman, but he was a poor husband and a rotten father; his ambitions always got in the way of his relationships and he never stopped trying to force me into his own mould. So don’t preach to me about my filial duty, Stepmama—’
Worms of horror squirmed across her skin. ‘Stop calling me that!’
‘Why, isn’t that what you became when you married my father?’
‘Because it’s—it’s...’
His eyes followed the inarticulate workings of her crooked mouth.
‘Ridiculous? Distasteful?’ A lethal pause before he leaned forward and added insinuatingly, ‘Obscene?’
He was close, too frighteningly close. She steadied herself and got her tongue to shape her choppy breath into a crisp, ‘Definitely ridiculous.’
‘But technically correct. And Sebastian was always big on getting the technicalities right, wasn’t he? That’s how he was able to create such a truly unique inheritance for us to share...’
She could feel the warmth of his breath swirling around her face, causing the blood to sing in her cheeks. Hadn’t she read somewhere about a predator which breathed on its trapped prey before tearing it to pieces? The animal version of a ritual act of gloating possession...
‘I didn’t expect Sebastian to leave me anything in his will—he told me he wouldn’t,’ she said, in the desperate hope that he was referring to the money. She silently cursed Sebastian for breaking his promise. His God complex at work again. Even from the grave he couldn’t resist trying to get his own way! If he had stuck to their original agreement there would have been no reason for anyone from the Jordan family to search her out.
‘I don’t want to cheat anyone in the family out of their inheritance,’ she told him, her light brown eyes owlishly earnest behind the little round spectacles. ‘When Sebastian’s lawyers wrote to tell me about the shares and bonds, I wrote back and said I didn’t want them, that I’d sign a waiver of claim so they could be returned to the estate—’
His crack of cynical laughter cut her off.
‘Sure, why bother with the petty change when you’ve already got your hot little hands on the main prize, right?’ he growled, abruptly dropping his arm from the back of the couch and planting his hands on the arm of the couch, on either side of her head.
‘I—I don’t know what you mean,’ she said warily, excruciatingly aware of his thumb-tips brushing the straining cords of her neck and the metal zip of his open jacket sawing at the soft wool over her breasts as the heavy sides enfolded her like black leather wings.
‘No? Apart from all the hard cash you gouged out of him while he was alive, under the terms of the Jordan family trust, as my father’s legal wife at the time of his death you’ve inherited his position as trustee of a multi-million-dollar investment fund! I notice you’re not of fering to waive that family privilege!’
She bit her pale lower lip. ‘That’s only a nominal title—the trust is still going to be run by the three professional trustees, exactly as it was when Sebastian was alive. And if you’re familiar with the deed then you must know that as a named trustee I have no legal access to any of that money.’
‘Not for yourself personally, I agree,’ he said silkily, ‘but any child conceived during your marriage to Sebastian would be a blank cheque in your hands...’
‘No...! Never!’
Her appalled cry of rejection was followed by a short, electric silence.
Jennifer felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck and a metallic taste flood her tongue. How could he have found out? she thought hysterically. Sebastian had assured her that his exclusive London clinic guaranteed total confidentiality and that his staff were well trained in protecting the anonymity of both donor and recipient. Ethics had obliged him to hand over her case to one of his senior colleagues, and Sebastian’s rapidly failing health had meant he rarely visited the clinic himself, but he had promised to sequester her case-notes amongst his own inactive files as an extra precaution.
Of course, those staunch ethics of his—which had been so vital to her trust—had in the end turned out to be tainted by self-interest. Maybe he had been unforgiveably lax in other ways, too... Or maybe Raphael was just making guesses based more on his cynical certainty that Jennifer was a greedy bimbo out for everything she could get than any real hard evidence.
Her hands instinctively crept to protect her flat abdomen.
Rafe’s eyes flickered down as he registered the movement and returned to hers, gleaming with yellow fire.
‘Scruples, Jennifer? From a woman who married a dying old man for his money?’
He was making it all sound so sordid, when in fact it had been an eminently practical arrangement on both sides.
‘It wasn’t like that—’
‘You’re not trying to claim it was love?’ The word was uttered with a deep contempt that seemed to sum up Raphael Jordan’s views on relationships in general, and Jennifer in particular.
She flushed and tried to cling to her fast-dwindling courage. She recognised his interrogation technique. He was harrying her in ever-decreasing circles, slipping under her defences to nip painfully at his target and then retreating to prowl around another topic before darting in for another bite.
Somewhere in the background she heard Susie carol out a goodbye, and the front door bang, and a little of her tension eased. At least now if there was a messy scene there would be no witnesses.
She would have liked to fling Raphael’s cynicism back in his teeth with a passionate declaration of emotion, but instead chose the dignity of the literal truth. ‘I liked Sebastian from the time I first met him. I had a lot of respect for him—’
She broke off, for that respect had taken a severe beating the day he died...
‘And I’ll bet you liked him a whole lot more when you discovered he had inoperable cancer, hmm?’ said Rafe crudely. ‘He told you about it, didn’t he? When he was staying here?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘So—out of pure altruism, of course—you instantly agreed to abandon your home and business and travel back to England with Sebastian as his—now how did he introduce you to the family?—ah, that’s right, his “nurse-companion”...the one with a murky past and no credentials!’
A sunburst of anger overrode Jennifer’s guilt. She still vividly remembered the humiliation she had suffered at the hands of three of Sebastian’s bickering ex-wives and his numerous, spoiled, grown-up stepchildren when they realised that an Antipodean nobody was threatening their future access to the Jordan gravy-train.
Only Raphael, Sebastian’s eldest son and sole natural child, had remained aloof from the outpourings of spite which followed. Never having allowed his father to bankroll his lifestyle, he was immune to the bribes and rewards by which Sebastian had manipulated his greedy brood of dependents-by-marriage. Although Rafe had bluntly disapproved of his father’s precipitous marriage to a woman thirty-six years his junior, in keeping with his own history of rebellious independence he had not disputed Sebastian’s right to make a bloody fool of himself.
‘I did train as a nurse—I just never got to complete the practical part of the course for my formal qualification,’ she flared now.
‘Yes, well, you were obviously better qualified as a companion than a nurse, because lo and behold, only a month after you land in England you’re married to your patient—and three weeks after that your very wealthy new husband, whose heart was never a contributor to his health problems, has a heart attack in his own bed and is dead within days. And what does his doting bride do to mourn his passing? She skips out on the funeral, leaving only a post office box on the other side of the world as a forwarding address...’
Jennifer gasped. ‘If you’re trying to imply that I had anything at all to do with Sebastian having heart failure—!’
‘Oh, no, I’ve read the autopsy report and spoken to his doctors...I have to absolve you of murder,’ he conceded, with what she thought was insulting reluctance.
‘Kind of you!’ she snapped recklessly.
He raised silky eyebrows. ‘It does happen: energetic, lusty young wife entices her elderly, ailing husband to prove that he’s still a man...’
Her tawny eyes flashed up at him, her fingers itching to slap his face, but before she could act out the impulse his eyelids drooped and he purred, ‘Only we both know how unlikely that scenario is...since my father’s cancer treatments had made him impotent well before he ever left on that round-the-world trip. Your marriage was never actually consummated, was it, Jennifer—?’
Her fingers curled into her palms. ‘You have no right to—’
‘I saw his medical records after he died... I know that claim of paternity you got him to sign isn’t worth the paper it’s written on!’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—’
‘I’m talking about the “bargain” you made with Sebastian, the one that you’re going to use to unlock the trust.’
She clapped her hands over her ears. ‘I refuse to listen to—’
His strong fingers wrapped around her wrists, wrenching them away from her head. He pinned them against the centre of his chest with one hand and used the other to cup her chin, forcing her to acknowledge what he was saying.
‘Oh, no, you’re not getting out of it that easily. If you won’t tell this story, then I will—and you’re going to listen to every single, solitary word!’
While his eyes, feasting on her every reaction, were no doubt going to be her judge, jury and executioner! Jennifer tried to congeal her expressive features into a stony mask.
‘It’s one of life’s little ironies that my father the fertility specialist discovered not long after his divorce from my mother that he’d become sterile himself,’ Rafe said harshly. ‘But typically he never reconciled himself to it. Practically from the time I hit puberty he was nagging at me to find a steady girlfriend. As far as he was concerned my sole purpose in life was to become a doctor like him and marry early so that I could have lots of little Jordan brats. When I told him I didn’t intend to do any of those things—ever—he began taking wives with children of their own, and when that proved unsatisfactory he started throwing genetically desirable women in my path, offering bribes to the first one to get pregnant and to the altar.’
His voice hummed with remembered fury, his pupils smouldering coals ringed with green fire. Ignoring the curiosity that was eating away at her outrage, Jennifer pushed ineffectually against his thick cabled sweater as she tried to twist her wrists out of his unyielding grasp. He responded by adjusting his grip on her chin, his long thumb sliding under the point of her jaw to dig into the soft flesh and find her furious pulse.
‘Finally, last year, I figured out the perfect way to get him off my back. I went to his clinic’s IVF sperm bank and made a generous donation to his fertility programme. Afterwards I told him that now he could populate the whole damned world with his precious genes—I was out of the loop!’
