for Phoebe. She jumped to her feet to stare down at him, her blue eyes blazing with contempt for the heartless bastard.
‘I will give you answers.’ He could suck on the truth and she hoped it choked him. ‘Try your own words. “A man does not expect his mistress to get pregnant.” Does that ring any bells? “A child is not on my agenda,”’ she quoted scathingly, before summing up for him. ‘You never wanted a baby.’ And she watched as a dark tide of colour swept up over his high cheekbones.
‘So I panicked a little? I’m a single man, and we are programmed to believe the worst result of sex is pregnancy. I was shocked.’
‘I am not an idiot—even if I did almost let you make me one. You have never panicked in your life,’ Phoebe shot back. ‘And nothing shocks you, Mr Bloody Invincible.’ She swore—not something she often did, but she was fighting for her child. ‘You were your usual super cool controlled self and you meant every word. Then, as I recall, you had the gall to tell me not to worry and that your discreet, private Dr Marcus would take care of the pregnancy and you would pay for everything. A termination was what you offered me—but lucky for you I miscarried anyway. Hardly surprising in the circumstances, and it didn’t cost you a penny.’
Jed Sabbides—wealthy, powerful, confident of his place in the world, feared by some and respected by most—for once found he was speechless…
He could not believe what he was hearing. It had never entered his head when Phoebe had told him she was pregnant that she should have a termination. He had been trying to reassure her in declaring that Dr Marcus would take care of her in pregnancy. He had meant all the way through her pregnancy and beyond. But, thinking back, he realised it might not have sounded like that to Phoebe. Suddenly the comments she had made in the hospital about saving him shed-loads of money, and in the scheme of things the cost of a private doctor being nothing to him, which had puzzled him at the time made perfect sense if she believed what she did. How could they have got their wires so badly crossed? he wondered, appalled at her conclusion.
‘I never suggested a termination—ever,’ he murmured, but Phoebe wasn’t listening.
She was looking down at him as if he was something that had crawled out from under a rock, her blue eyes blazing with passion. And that passion was pure hatred, he realised with a sense of shock. Consumed by his anger at what he saw as her betrayal, he had never considered her take on the past might differ dramatically from his—never considered the situation from her misguided view.
Phoebe was on a roll and, oblivious to Jed’s stunned reaction, she felt all the fear and fury she had blanked out at the time come flooding back.
‘But hey, Jed,’ she quipped sarcastically, ‘lucky for me you didn’t turn up to take me to the clinic that next week, but instead let Christina, your PA, tell me you had discussed my miscarriage with her and inform me you weren’t coming back and advise me to leave. Otherwise Ben would have been scraped out of my womb by your oh, so discreet Dr Marcus. And now you have the brass nerve to ask me why I never told you about Ben. You make me sick, turning up here and throwing your weight around, conning the hospital receptionist into giving you information with a load of lies. As for telling her we were getting married—forget it. That is never going to happen. Much the same way as it never happened last time when you told me you had decided we were going to be a family after I had lost the baby,’ she added derisively. ‘A simple ploy to make yourself sound good when it no longer meant anything—and you are still the same selfish, egotistical devil now, who thinks only of himself and his own wants to the exclusion of everyone else. So forgive my skepticism, but I don’t believe for one minute your apparent interest in being a father, your sudden desire for a son. And I am telling you here and now. You are not getting mine…’
‘Have you quite finished tearing my character to shreds?’ Jed demanded, replacing the wine glass on the table and slowly rising to his feet.
He had listened with growing anger and horror as he realised he could not actually refute Phoebe’s analysis of his behaviour in the past. He had called her a mistress and he had declared a child was not on his agenda—a child had not been at the time. Phoebe had dropped her pregnancy on him so casually it had been like an explosion in his head and he had been in a state of shock. But not for a second had he even thought of a termination. Later in the hospital, when he had said they would be a family, what he had meant was he would marry her—but he could see how that might have sounded hollow after the fact—and he had told Christina about the miscarriage.
Jed did not want to believe Phoebe’s story about Christina telling her to leave the apartment, though he could not dismiss it. He had dispensed with Christina’s services after she’d made it embarrassingly obvious she wanted a much more personal relationship with him. He had given Christina his cellphone that night in Greece, so it probably was true. There were certainly enough half-truths in everything else Phoebe had said to make him feel like the lowest of the low—a totally alien feeling for him, a man who prided himself on his honour and integrity.
But if the passion and the conviction in Phoebe’s voice was anything to go by she truly believed he was capable of terminating his unborn child, and considered him the scum of the earth. Whatever he said in his defence would fall on deaf ears…She would never believe him now…
He pulled his mind back from the past, a grim determination tightening his jaw. The mistakes of the past could not be changed, but that didn’t deter him from wanting his son. The only difference was he would have to change tactics.
He let his dark eyes roam over her. She was beautiful any time, but magnificent in her passionate anger. It reminded him of her other passion. He had lost count of the days, the weeks, the months he had ached for her after they parted. His gaze lingered on her heaving breasts beneath the soft cotton of her shirt and his body tightened in arousal. Suddenly he wanted her so badly he could taste it, and in that moment an alternative solution occurred to him—not very ethical, but with his intimate knowledge of Phoebe almost certainly effective…
‘You have no character,’ Phoebe snapped. ‘And I was finished with you years ago—or should I say you were finished with me,’ she amended. ‘It is too late now to change your mind for what ever nefarious reason—and knowing you there must be one.’
Lost in the bitter memories of the past, Phoebe had not noticed Jed had moved to within touching distance, and only now did she see the carefully controlled expression on his handsome face was not reflected in the predatory gleam in his dark eyes.
‘You know me so well, Phoebe, it seems,’ he drawled mockingly as his strong hands reached to curve around her shoulders.
She tensed at his touch, her heart skipping a beat and her hands curling into fists at her sides as she fought the impulse to push him away, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her feminine fear at his closeness. She was immune to him and had been for years, she reminded herself.
‘You are right, of course. There is a reason. I’m a very wealthy man and it has occurred to me I need a son and heir. A ready-made one seems much more preferable to a squealing baby. Thus I am confirming your low opinion of me?’ Jed said, and waited…watching…testing…
Why she was disappointed Phoebe could not fathom. Jed had proved her right. She looked up at him. His dark-lashed eyes were cool on hers, and yet for a second she thought she saw a flicker of vulnerability in the inky depths and had the incredible notion he wanted her to deny his conclusion. Then she noted a nerve beating steadily beneath one sharp cheekbone in his determination to retain his formidable control, and she realised she had imagined something that was never there. Jed would be vulnerable maybe on his dying day, but not before.
Nothing
