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Jennifer’s struggles were momentarily eclipsed by a wickedly inappropriate desire to laugh. Sebastian’s telling had differed greatly from Rafe’s, and no wonder! Sebastian had regarded his work with an almost religious seriousness, and his son’s act of cheeky irreverence must have been a grave offence to his pride.
‘Funnily enough, he was furious at what I’d done,’ confirmed Rafe sardonically. ‘It turned out that mere genetic reproduction wasn’t his aim, it was the family connection that was the vital requirement—another legitimate Jordan heir to perpetuate the name along with the genes. Then his cancer was diagnosed and he suddenly seemed to lose interest in the idea.
‘I should have known better than to think he’d given up his pet obsession. He just went off on his annual world trip and did what he’d done so often in the past—he bought himself what he wanted. He bought himself a wife: a strong, fertile, healthy woman who would pander to his sick fantasies and allow him to father his own grandchild—’
‘No!’ Jennifer began to struggle again, kicking out helplessly with her legs as she squirmed in his hold.
‘He paid you to undergo artificial insemination at his clinic, in a new IVF procedure with a high rate of success: my sperm injected directly into your egg—’
‘No!’
‘—and re-implanted in your body. Of course, this all happened in the weeks before your wedding, because there was no point in him marrying you until you had been confirmed with a viable pregnancy.’
‘You’re mad!’ she panted. ‘I don’t know where you get your bizarre ideas from but you know what you can do with them. I’m not pregnant.’
He had to believe her. He had to!
‘No?’ He let go her captive hands, sliding his palm down to rest firmly on her lower belly.
‘No!’
She blinked defiantly back at him, confident that there wasn’t even the hint of a swell under her waistband. Against her silence he could prove nothing. Nothing!
He splayed his fingers and applied a light pressure, just enough to make her aware of the heat of his hand seeping through the damp-splashed woollen fabric.
‘Do you always faint like that—at the drop of a hat?’ he asked, his thumb discovering the front placket that concealed her zip.
‘It wasn’t a hat you dropped, it was a bombshell,’ she pointed out. ‘An ox would have fainted!’
He smiled, that full-lipped smile of bitter scepticism. ‘Aren’t you even going to ask me how I know all the gory details?’
‘Since there are no details to know, gory or otherwise, I’m not in the least interested in your speculations,’ she bluffed wildly, jerking her chin from his hand. ‘I think you’re the one who has been having the sick fantasies.’
For some reason he seemed to find that genuinely amusing. ‘You could be right.’
She pounced on the faint lightening of his mood. ‘So, would you mind letting me up? I can’t lie around here all day. I have work to do.’
His smile faded. ‘Actually, I do mind. I still haven’t finished my examination.’ His thumbnail tauntingly flipped the tiny metal tab of her zip and her hand slapped down over his.
‘Don’t you dare!’
It was the wrong thing to say to a man who lived life strictly on his own terms, and who, according to his disgruntled father, cared nothing for history or tradition or polite behaviour. A man who flaunted his vices before the world without the least consideration for the embarrassment he had caused his family.
He gave the tab a sharp little downward tug, and when Jennifer screeched and clutched at her gaping zip with both hands he swiftly transferred his attention to her heaving breasts, cupping and lifting them for his bold appraisal.
‘Is it just my imagination, or are these a bit more lush than they were three months ago?’ he baited her, fluffing the red angora with his swirling fingertips as he traced her generous contours. ‘Mmm, I certainly don’t remember them being a D-cup, and there are plenty of people who can testify that I’m an infallible judge of a woman’s breast size...’
He also was the most despicable man she had ever met!
Jennifer yanked up her zip with shaking fingers, hunching her shoulders to try and evade his provocative touch. ‘You, you—’
‘Oh, yes, definitely bigger,’ he decided, cuddling the firm mounds together so that they were plumped into even greater prominence. ‘I understand pregnancy makes them more sensitive, too...’ He rubbed his thumbs goadingly across the soft tips, and to her horror Jennifer felt them tingle and begin to push against the lace constriction of her bra. In a few moments he would be able to feel her treacherous response for himself.
Shame and fear exploded the last of her caution. She slapped his mocking face, hard, his gold whiskers rasping like sandpaper against her furious palm.
‘Take your hands off me! How many times do I have to say it? I am not pregnant!’ she shrieked at him. ‘I’m nothing. Can’t you get that through your thick head? Yes, I was your father’s wife for a very brief time but now he’s gone and it’s over. It’s history. I came back here because this is my home. This is where I want to live my life. I don’t care what you think you know about me, unlike you and your paranoid family of snobs, I don’t happen to enjoy living in a world where everyone is judged by how they dress and what they own rather than who they are and what they’ve achieved. I told you I won’t interfere with the estate, so why can’t you just go back to where you came from and leave me alone?’
His blond-tipped head had snapped to the side, his cheek scorched by the outline of her angry fingers, and now he slowly turned back, working his jaw cautiously to and fro in his hand.
At least he had stopped touching her. Jennifer pushed herself up on stiff arms, scooting backwards with her hips so that she was half sitting, no longer helplessly submissive to his will. She had never struck anyone in anger before, and was miserably conscious that this man was responsible for a number of unfortunate firsts in her life. An apology was edging forward on her tongue when she caught sight of the punishing expression in his eyes.
‘So, you’re saying that my father couldn’t even be honest with me on his deathbed? That the last words he ever said to me in this world were an ugly, pointless lie?’
Her blow had been a butterfly kiss in comparison. Jennifer felt as if she had been hit on the head with a brick.
‘Your father?’ she croaked, devastated by this latest betrayal. If she hadn’t been already sitting she would have keeled over again. ‘I—I don’t believe you... Sebastian told you those things?’
‘In hospital on the night he died. The night you did your moonlight flit.’
She winced at his clipped contempt, utterly incapable of defending herself. There was no denying the fact that when she had angrily fled the hospital that afternoon she had made herself deliberately inaccessible. And later, when she had phoned the hospital and learned that Sebastian had died...well, she had been extremely distressed, confused and frightened—because she had still felt so angry with him for abusing her trust. Running away from an untenable situation had seemed the best and safest option.
‘He deteriorated suddenly and became agitated and disorientated. He kept saying your name, but no one could find you or knew where you’d gone, and by the time I got to the hospital he was in a bad way,’ said Rafe, making no attempt to spare her the brutal details. ‘He was pretty heavily sedated but he knew what was going to happen, and I guess he realised it was his last chance to clear his conscience—so it all spilled out, how you had leapt at his cash-for-a-kid deal.
‘He kept asking me to forgive him as he drifted in and out of consciousness, kept saying that he’d made a bad misjudgement about you, that he was worried about what you might do, what might happen to the baby if he wasn’t around to protect it, babbling about betrayal and blackmail...’
‘And you believed him?’ she forced herself to say steadily. ‘You didn’t think it might have just been the wanderings of a drugged mind?’
‘Yes. That’s why I checked to see whether you’d ever been treated at the clinic.’
Her heart clenched. ‘There’s no way you could have had legal access to that kind of information—’
His smile mocked her naïveté, ‘Who said my access was legal?’
‘You—’
‘Legal or not, I know to the exact minute how and when our baby was conceived.’
‘My baby—’
The cry was out before she realised it, never to be taken back. All her protests, all her stonewalling had been futile. He had known all along and he had enjoyed watching her twist and turn until she had tangled herself up in her web of lies and evasions and more lies. She felt sick, but also oddly liberated.
‘So, Jennifer...you and I are going to be parents in a little under six months.’ He stroked his faintly marked cheek, and then touched hers with a gentleness that was far more blood-curdling than his former aggression. ‘We’re practically strangers, we’ve hardly spoken and barely touched, let alone made love, but we’ve engaged in the most intimate act two human beings can share... the procreation of life.’
His knuckles touched her chin and then ran down the centre of her jumper between her breasts, dissolving away one or two faint pearls of vase-water still nestling amongst the strands of wool, gliding down to stop in the folds at her waist. This time she made no effort to stop him, so stunned was she by his lyrically soft words. It almost sounded as if...
She shivered. ‘We haven’t shared anything—’
‘I beg to differ. My seed is growing in your womb. I’d say that made us pretty damned intimate, wouldn’t you?’
She blushed. ‘That was a medical procedure. You had nothing to do with it.’
He laughed, and for once she couldn’t detect a single cynical note in his amusement. ‘I had everything to do with it—me and my little jar and my wicked stock of fantasies.’
Her blush deepened, her hands fisting on her thighs. ‘You know what I mean.’
He sobered. ‘Yes, I know exactly what you mean. And you’re wrong. I may not have been a partner in the highly questionable deal you and my father struck but I am involved. You’re a rich, pregnant widow because of me. If I’d thought about it at all I presumed that my sperm would go to help happily married infertile couples have the children they desperately wanted...not to a selfish, egotistical old man and a soon-to-be-widowed wife with extremely questionable values. As I see it, I have a responsibility here.’
‘Responsibility?’ Jennifer echoed, her eyes widening in horror.
‘To my father—may God have taken pity on his manipulating soul—and to you.’
‘But you don’t have to feel responsible for me. I don’t want you to!’
‘And of course to my son or daughter,’ he said calmly, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘I suppose it’s too early to tell which?’
She nodded her head dumbly. ‘You can’t—you told your father that you never wanted brats of your own,’ she accused shrilly.
‘But you and Sebastian took that decision out of my hands. Instead of giving my gift of life to some anonymous couple, Sebastian took it for himself, and in asking me to forgive him for it—the first time I’ve ever heard him admit he was wrong about anything—he was trusting me to repair the harm he might have done. I’d be a despicable bastard if I turned my back and ignored his dying wish.’
‘But I want you to turn your back!’ she wailed. He was tormenting her again, that’s all, she told herself. He was just saying those things to wind her up. He just wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to try and hold the family to ransom over child support. ‘I told you, I don’t need anything. I’ll even sign a paper saying so, if that’s what you want!’
‘You’re very emotional, aren’t you? I never noticed that when you were in London. You always seemed very quiet and practical, very restrained...a colonial country mouse in the big city. So maybe all the extra hormones flooding your system are making you touchy.’
His hand had crept under the band of her jumper while he was talking, and found the silky skin of her belly.
She jumped. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I just want to see if I can feel my baby.’ He pushed up the band a little way, so they could both see his tanned hand contrasted against the white skin of her stomach.
His use of the word ‘my’ made her nervous. ‘Well, you can’t—even I can’t feel anything yet. Stop it. I don’t like you touching me.’ She wished it were true. The pads of his fingers were surprisingly soft, while his palm was faintly dry and abrasive. Just below the cuff of his jacket she could see silky threads of dark blond hair dusting the back of his wrist.
‘You’re very pale here,’ he murmured, his thick lashes masking the glitter of his curiosity. ‘Don’t you wear a bikini in the summer?’
‘No.’ He was running his finger around and around the rim of her navel, making her skin feel too tight for her body. ‘Do you mind? You’re making me queasy.’
He stilled the movement, but left his hand where it was. ‘Have you been having morning sickness?’ he asked, studying her flushed face.
‘No, I’ve been as healthy as a horse,’ she said. ‘Another reason why you’re not needed.’
‘Well, we’ll wait and see, shall we?’ He began to withdraw his hand, and whether by accident or design his middle finger slid into the indentation he had been lazily circling.
Jennifer sucked in her breath and his finger snugly rode the sudden movement of her diaphragm.
‘Perfect fit,’ he murmured wickedly, glancing down, then up again, catching the streak of sinful speculation in her startled gaze.
His lids drooped as he slowly withdrew his finger, and to Jennifer the whole world seemed to darken and shiver in awareness.
She knew then that the devil had green eyes and an English drawl. How else could he offer so much temptation with so little effort?
‘What did you mean. wait and see?’ she asked belatedly.
‘Why, you don’t think I came all this way just to turn around and go home again, do you?’ he said, pulling her jumper back down over the top of her trousers. ‘I think I need to know a great deal more about the mother of my baby before I make any decision about whether to trust her with the raising of our child. And what better place to plumb the depths of her character than in her own home?’
Her jaw dropped. ‘You can’t mean you intend to stay in New Zealand!’
‘Not just New Zealand. Here. In this house. With you. I’m sure you could put me up for a few days, or however long it takes. You could put me in the room my father had...’
However long it takes?
Just as Jennifer was about to shoot him down in flames she heard the sound of the front door opening and two female voices mingling with excited barking, one rising to a familiar contralto lilt.
‘Hello, Jenny darling, we’re home! What a nightmare, I hope you’ve got the kettle on...’
‘It’s my mother! Oh, God—’ Jennifer clutched at Rafe’s jacket.
‘Good. I’m looking forward to meeting her.’
‘You can’t!’ She looked around, wondering frantically where to hide him. He was too big to stuff under the furniture. ‘You can’t let her see you.’
‘I think it’s too late for that,’ said Rafe, rising politely to his feet as a stocky grey-haired woman in a baggy beige suit marched into the room, followed by a slender, bird-like woman in a wheelchair, whose thin face lit up at the sight of the hovering man.
‘Rafe! How wonderful that you could come! Oh, Jenny darling, why didn’t you tell me—or did he surprise you, too?’ Paula Scott didn’t seem to notice Rafe’s dazed expression as she coasted forward to hold out her delicate hands. ‘Oh, come down here, you wonderful man, and give me a kiss. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to meet my daughter’s husband at long last—I was beginning to think you didn’t exist!’
CHAPTER THREE
JENNIFER sat tensely upright on the soft couch, balancing her cup of tea on her lap while Raphael sprawled comfortably beside her, his jacket discarded, his long legs tucked under the coffee table and his arm extended along the back of the couch so that his fingers could idly play amongst the tousled waves at the nape of her stiff neck.
‘Yes, I flew into Auckland yesterday, shortly before they closed the airport because of the spreading volcanic smog,’ he was telling her mother. ‘I had been going to catch a connecting flight here, but when the airline said it had no idea when any of the local airports might be reopened I decided to hire a car and drive down. And I’m glad I did—it gave me a chance to see something of your wonderful countryside.’
He was certainly turning on the friendly charm, thought Jennifer sourly, brushing at the faint damp patches which still lingered on her trousers.
After being briefly disconcerted by Paula Scott’s words of welcome, Rafe had quickly summed up the situation and deftly turned the scenario to his advantage. And her mother had fallen for him like a ton of bricks, leaning forward in her wheelchair, her blue eyes sparkling with animation, as Rafe described his drive and his dramatic first view of the rumbling mountain with its ash column rising thousands of feet in the air, casually comparing it with some of the world’s other active volcanoes which he had witnessed in action.
Even Aunty Dot, an eccentric elderly spinster who generally treated all males with brusque impatience—being of the opinion that there were no ‘real men’ left in the world—was looking at him with grudging interest. An amateur naturalist and inveterate shoestring traveller, Dot was a semi-permanent resident of Beech House, living there between her long trips abroad, and anyone who brought news of fresh vistas for her to explore would be welcome grist to her mill.
‘Well, thank goodness you came when you did! That was what I wanted to tell you when I came in, Jenny,’ said Paula excitedly. ‘We just heard on the car radio that they’ve upgraded the volcano alert level to three. That’s on a scale of five, and it means they’re classing it as a hazardous local eruption,’ she explained in an aside to Rafe, before switching her attention back to her daughter.
‘They’ve closed the mountain completely, and with the ash cloud blowing this way they’re issuing a general warning for residents not to go outside without masks and to stay off the roads unless absolutely essential. Driving conditions are awful on the main road already, aren’t they, Dot? We had to crawl along and the headlights didn’t seem to help at all. Did you feel that earth tremor just as we arrived? That must have been another massive ash blast going up!’
Earth tremor? Taking a sip of her untasted tea, Jennifer instinctively glanced at Raphael and found him looking back, a knowing quirk at the corner of his mouth. He knew that neither of them had been aware of any external shocks. She remembered that moment of shattering temptation. A volcano had been erupting outside her window and she had still assumed it was Rafe who had made her world shudder!
Her cup rattled in her saucer as she replaced it with a trembling hand.
‘Careful, darling,’ said Rafe, leaning over to still the teetering crockery. He had already drunk half of his own tea, and eaten two of her mother’s feather-light scones while inveigling his way into her good graces.
Jennifer’s eyes told him she would like to dump the contents of her cup over his head. She wasn’t fooled by his amiable air of relaxation. He knew now why Susie had made her apparently inexplicable mistake and had accepted his assigned role as her husband purely for some nefarious purpose of his own as smoothly as if he had planned it for himself.
He was relishing seeing her hoist by her own petard, knowing that he now had her precisely where he wanted her—totally at his mercy. One word and the whole elaborate charade she had created to protect her sweet, unworldly mother would come tumbling down.
