was casting about for some suitable answer when he continued blandly, ‘What happened, Olivia?’
A meaningless smile pulled her lips tight. ‘My mother died.’
He displayed no emotion. All that could be said for him was that he was no hypocrite.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said distantly, the words a mere conventional expression of regret. ‘Why is Elizabeth Harley’s daughter, and Simon Brentshaw’s granddaughter, reduced to living like this?’
‘One of my grandfather’s pet hobbyhorses was his belief that it was extremely bad for young people to grow up knowing they had a cushion of money behind them. He thought it corrupted them. He told me right from the start that there wouldn’t be anything for me. I don’t know whether he left anything to my mother, but if he did none of it was handed on to me when she died,’ she said unemotionally.
He frowned. ‘I see. Well, it’s none of my business. Why did you write me that rather enigmatic letter?’
‘Simon was just over a year old when my mother died,’ she returned, leashing her anger and disillusion because she had to keep a cool head.
‘And who,’ he asked softly, ‘is Simon?’
She tamped down incipient hysteria. ‘Simon is your son.’
Astonishment glittered in the cold eyes before being banished so completely that she wondered whether she had seen aright. Oh, he was a brilliant actor! If she didn’t know better, she thought bitterly, she’d believe he hadn’t known of the child he’d fathered the year she was seventeen.
‘Ah,’ he said quietly. ‘No wonder you wanted me married! Not that it would have made any difference.’ His cold gaze wandered her body as he said scathingly, ‘I might have kissed you when you were seventeen, Olivia, and even done a little groping, but I never took you to bed. And nowadays, fortunately for me, I can prove that he’s no child of mine. If you persist with this farrago of lies I’ll have your bastard DNA-tested, and then I’ll prosecute you for attempted extortion.’
‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ she demanded, suddenly imbued with a strength she’d lacked during the past few months. ‘I wouldn’t have slept with you—’
‘You damned near did everything but sit up and beg for it! In the end I had to tell you that I wasn’t interested.’
She said in a quick, unsteady voice, ‘Simon is not my child! You know he’s my half-brother—and you’re his father!’
CHAPTER TWO
A TENSE silence enfolded them both. Stealing a glance at his face, Olivia could read nothing there except a chilly contempt.
‘And how do you know that?’ he asked in a lethal, silky tone.
‘Because my mother said so,’ she retorted, masking the rapid gut-punch of fear with scorn of her own. ‘She also told me that you knew about him, so it’s no use trying to pretend you had no idea of his existence.’
Olivia had been in love with Drake that long-ago summer when Simon was conceived, and even after his cruel rejection of an offer she hadn’t known she’d made she’d carried the memory of his kiss in some hidden, guarded place in her heart. Foolish and naive of her, but then at seventeen surely one was allowed to be foolish and naive about one’s first love?
It had taken the revelation of Simon’s parentage to destroy both. While she had been shyly, secretly falling in love with Drake, while he had been flirting with her, he had been sleeping with her mother.
Perhaps she could have forgiven him that, for Elizabeth had been radiantly beautiful, possessing a charm and sweetness that had drawn people to her all her life. But after that summer affair Drake had left them all to go to hell in their respective ways. His rejection of his son, his desertion of her mother, had set the seal on Olivia’s disillusion.
Even now he was refusing to admit that he had a child. Although his features were clamped into immobility, his eyes frozen beneath half-closed lids, she could feel his rejection like a palpable force in the room.
‘Start at the beginning,’ he said in a voice that made her jump, ‘and tell me exactly what she said.’
She hesitated, because that meant reopening scars she had hoped were healed. However, one glance told her that there was no disobeying the implacable command in his gaze. In a controlled, flat voice she said, ‘Simon was born about seven months after you left Springs Flat.’
‘I see. What makes you think he wasn’t your stepfather’s child? And don’t tell me he couldn’t have children. He had a daughter by his first wife. Ramona Harley left him and took her daughter back to America long before you came on the scene, but I remember her.’
Olivia looked down at her hands. ‘My mother said that she hadn’t slept with him for over a year,’ she said tonelessly.
‘She could have lied.’
Her head moved in sharp denial. ‘No. That’s what they were quarrelling about—he knew Simon wasn’t his.’
For all the interest he showed she might have been reciting her times tables. ‘How did your mother die?’
She turned her head away from those intimidating eyes. ‘She—she fell one night and hit her head on the corner of the table.’
‘So how did that lead to her daughter ending up in a place like this with her half-brother? Your stepfather is still alive, I believe.’
‘Yes.’ Shocked by the whispering feebleness of her reply, she stiffened her spine. Damn him, he had no right to interrogate her as though she were on the witness stand! ‘He—was unkind to Simon, so after my mother was—died—I took Simon away.’
His brows drew together. Astute eyes scanned her face in a merciless, unhurried survey. ‘And he let you go? Just like that? A seventeen—no, you’d have been eighteen—’
‘Does it matter?’ She glowered down at her hands, so tightly clasped that the knuckles were white. Her body language, she thought mordantly, couldn’t have been more explicit. Carefully she loosened her grip. He noticed, of course, those narrowed eyes following the betraying little movement.
Swiftly, defiantly, she said, ‘I was nineteen, actually. But however old I was, Simon is your son! As you’ll discover when you have him DNA-tested.’ She tried to hide the disdain in her tone, but feared she’d made a bad fist of it.
Although his eyes rested on her face with insulting indifference, she was sure that she could hear the smooth meshing of gears as his brain sorted out the information he needed. When he spoke she almost jumped again.
‘Tell me why you left your stepfather. And this time no rubbish about him not liking the child. I want the truth.’
Every muscle in her body tensed, but because she had rehearsed the answer the words came easily. ‘He resented Simon. I was afraid he’d hurt him.’
She held her breath, letting it out in a small huff of surprise when he demanded no further explanations. ‘All right,’ he said slowly. ‘Why have you waited until now
