was actually the right.
The room he entered was larger and less sparsely furnished than the one he had just left.
His bride, her veil thrown back, was standing looking lovely in front of a stained-glass window. Her mother, a woman he had never warmed to, sat in a chair. She stopped speaking when he walked in, but the word lawyer hung in the air.
‘Sandra...’ He tipped his head in acknowledgement.
‘I have never been so humiliated in my life!’ she responded in a voice that never failed to jar on him.
Tell me about it, he thought, turning to his bride-to-be.
He watched her struggle to produce a brittle smile.
‘You’re a star,’ he said warmly. ‘First thing, none of what she said was true.’
The older woman snorted.
‘Mother, that is not being helpful.’ Elise held up a hand, a pained expression flickering across her face before the smile was back in place. ‘Please, Seb, there is really no need for explanations. I thought you realised that. I have total faith in your ability to make this...unpleasantness go away.’
‘Everyone has their price.’
His glance flickered towards the older woman. ‘Thank you for that contribution, Sandra.’ His sarcasm sailed right over the woman’s head. ‘I have done nothing to pay for.’
‘Mother, Sebastian is more than capable of dealing with this.’
‘He allowed it to happen.’
Seb ignored the shrill accusation from the older woman.
‘Do you believe me, Elise?’
Her eyes slid from his. ‘I think it’s totally irrelevant whether this woman’s accusations are true or false, Sebastian.’
‘You are taking the possibility I got another woman pregnant and deserted her remarkably well,’ he drawled.
‘Would you prefer I acted the hurt victim?’ A small confident smile curved her lips as she asked the question.
He looked at the hand she had laid on his arm, and after a moment she removed it. The flush on her cheeks penetrating her perfect make-up, she gave a tight smile.
‘Look, I know you share my dislike of...messy emotional scenes, but the way you’re acting anyone would think you wanted me to make a scene.’
Good question. Well, do you, Seb?
‘I could but where would that get either of us? I’m a realist—we both are. We need to get back in there, put a brave face on it and show the world that we’re a team.’
As locker-room motivational speeches went, it wasn’t bad.
‘This is about damage limitation, but these things happen. Mother’s right, just keep her quiet.’
Feeling like someone who was seeing something that had been there all along, he shook his head as though the action would clear his vision. It didn’t.
‘How do you expect me to do that?’
The serene mask slipped and she yelled, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be so dense! Throw some bloody money at her—you’ve got enough! This is my day, and I refuse...’ She took a deep breath and lowered her voice to a soft steely murmur as she clarified it. ‘I totally refuse to let anything or anyone ruin it, especially some little tramp you got pregnant!’
‘So let me get this straight—you will ignore my indiscretions and you expect I will return the favour?’
She blinked, her eyes widening in an attitude of exasperated surprise as she chided impatiently, ‘Well, obviously, Sebastian. I didn’t think that needed spelling out.’
His reflective smile was filled with self-mockery. ‘I think perhaps I did.’ He turned to the older woman. ‘Do you mind leaving us?’
‘I’m not—’
‘Get out.’ In a business setting the soft menace in his voice would not have surprised anyone—he was preceded by his reputation—but the women he addressed reacted with open-mouthed shock.
He waited for her to leave the room before he turned to his fiancée, searching her face. ‘You’re not in love with me?’
‘Are you saying that I don’t satisfy you in bed?’
‘I’m not referring to your competence in the bedroom. I’m talking about...’ He paused. It was a subject he was even less qualified than Elise to discuss. ‘It was not a criticism, just a fact, and I’m not in love with you either—that was never a problem—but it turns out I want more than you can give me.’ He did not want slavish devotion or mad, undying passion, but at the bare minimum he wanted a wife who gave a damn if she thought he was fooling around.
‘Something more... A threesome? Or...I’m very broad-minded, Sebastian.’
And I’m very rich, he thought, his lips curling into a grimace of self-disgust. ‘Just what would I have to do, Elise, to make you find me unacceptable as a husband?’
‘Why are you acting as though I’m the one who’s done something wrong?’
‘You’re right,’ he admitted heavily. He had been guilty of twisting the facts to fit. On the surface Elise had seemed to be the perfect wife and mother, and he hadn’t looked any deeper than the surface. ‘This is my fault. I really don’t think I’m the marrying kind.’
An ugly look of astonished fury contorted Elise’s face as she saw her gold-lined future vanishing. ‘Are you jilting me?’
‘Yes, I suppose I am.’
* * *
Seb had made any number of bad calls in his life but he might, he realised as he closed the door behind him a few painful minutes later, just have been saved making the worst one yet.
In theory a wife who didn’t give a damn what you did so long as you kept her in big houses, designer handbags and diamonds was a certain type of man’s perfect wife, and he had thought he was that man.
It turned out he wasn’t.
Logic told him he had no real right to feel distaste at having her priorities spelled out so starkly. He could accept many things in a marriage or the lack of them, but it turned out mutual respect was not one of them.
‘SEB!’ HER HEELS loud on the ancient stone of the narrow corridor, Fleur Defoe hurried to catch up with the tall figure of her brother.
As she got level with him he turned his head to growl an impatient, ‘Not now, Fleur.’
His
