kitchen. She didn’t know this creature she was turning into because of Jed—sharp-tongued and jealous at seeing her son kiss him and call him Daddy, confused and afraid of the future. Putting a spoonful of instant coffee in her ‘Best Mum in the World’ mug and pouring in boiling water, she smiled ruefully. When had she become so insecure she needed the comfort of an inanimate mug?
‘I’ll have a coffee, please, Phoebe.’ Jed’s rich dark voice cut into her thoughts and she had her answer.
‘Okay,’ she said, and prepared another mug with the instant brew, before turning around with a mug in each hand. He was standing much too close, watching her, and it had a disastrous effect on her nerves.
‘Steady, Phoebe.’ He took one mug from her not so steady hand and smiled—a breathtaking grin that deepened the laughter lines around his sparkling eyes and took years off his age. ‘A very successful day—don’t spoil it by covering me in hot coffee,’ he joked, and, pulling out a chair, sat down at the kitchen table.
‘Sit and enjoy your coffee,’ he ordered. ‘We have a lot to talk over.’
Successful for him, but not for her. She wanted to ignore him and his talk…Jed was much too dangerous to her life, to her emotional wellbeing, but she didn’t really have a choice. Hear him out and see him out, she decided, and, stiff-backed, she pulled out a chair and sat opposite him at the kitchen table.
‘So discuss—but make it fast. It has been a long day,’ she said with heartfelt emphasis, ‘and I am tired.’
‘You look it,’ he said, his dark eyes resting on her slender form perched at the end of the seat. He stretched out a hand and flipped the end of her long hair over her shoulder, brushing her neck as he did so.
She knew she looked a sight, but a day that had started with the emotional trauma of revealing Jed as Ben’s father and continued with cleaning, packing and the rest of the time on a windswept beach would do that to any woman. Now the touch of his hand had made the hair on the back of her neck prickle and her body tingle—a state she had been in pretty much all weekend, much to her own self-disgust.
‘Excuse me for not reaching your high standard of elegant designer-clad painted ladies, but then I never aspired to,’ she said sarcastically.
Damn it to hell! Jed’s mouth tightened. A tender gesture and a concerned comment on his part and she was bristling with outrage again. Patience and playing it cool was getting him nowhere. It was time she accepted the reality of the situation.
‘Not for much longer,’ he said bluntly. ‘You soon will be the kind of elegantly clad lady you so abhor. Not for me—I could not give a damn what you wear, in fact naked works for me—But Ben deserves a mother who will blend easily into the society he will inevitably belong to, whether you like it or not. Tomorrow I have to be in London, but I will be back on Tuesday morning to pick you and Ben up. That gives you a day to pack. We should be at my home in Greece by the evening.’
Phoebe rose to her feet. She had listened in mounting resentment to his plan, and now she was furious at the stuck-up, arrogant devil trying to tell her what to do.
‘No.’ She gave him a filthy look. ‘I am not going to Greece, and neither is Ben, until I decide the time is right. You have got your own way so far. Ben knows you are his father and you will have to be content with that. Now, you’ve finished your coffee and it is time you left.’ Crossing the kitchen, she walked into the hall, shaking inside with anger.
Jed leapt to his feet and followed her. Grasping her elbow, he spun her around to face him. ‘No is not an answer I will accept. And your habit of running away is finished right now…understand?’
‘I am not running away, and Ben and I are not going anywhere with you on Tuesday or any time soon. You may order your minions around in your business life, but I will not let you do that with Ben and I. The answer is no…get over it.’
‘You are being totally unreasonable. You have a week’s holiday—there is nothing to stop you and Ben coming to Greece. You know he loves the seaside—I saw that this weekend—and even you have to admit spending every single holiday he has in a tiny caravan in Weymouth hardly compares to a holiday in Greece, with a much warmer climate, in a house overlooking the sea with every possible luxury,’ he drawled sardonically. ‘Ben would love it in Greece, and it is just your stubborn, pig-headed pride and distrust stopping him. Damn it, Phoebe, I can remember a time when you would have jumped at the chance. You had plans to travel and see the world. What the hell happened to you?’
For a long moment Phoebe stared at Jed, towering over her, conscious of his long fingers biting into her arm and the warmth of his great body. She could hear him breathing, he was that close, and she wished he would just go away and never come back. But fatalistically she knew it was not going to happen.
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