She clapped her hands over her ears. ‘I refuse to listen to—’
His strong fingers wrapped around her wrists, wrenching them away from her head. He pinned them against the centre of his chest with one hand and used the other to cup her chin, forcing her to acknowledge what he was saying.
‘Oh, no, you’re not getting out of it that easily. If you won’t tell this story, then I will—and you’re going to listen to every single, solitary word!’
While his eyes, feasting on her every reaction, were no doubt going to be her judge, jury and executioner! Jennifer tried to congeal her expressive features into a stony mask.
‘It’s one of life’s little ironies that my father the fertility specialist discovered not long after his divorce from my mother that he’d become sterile himself,’ Rafe said harshly. ‘But typically he never reconciled himself to it. Practically from the time I hit puberty he was nagging at me to find a steady girlfriend. As far as he was concerned my sole purpose in life was to become a doctor like him and marry early so that I could have lots of little Jordan brats. When I told him I didn’t intend to do any of those things—ever—he began taking wives with children of their own, and when that proved unsatisfactory he started throwing genetically desirable women in my path, offering bribes to the first one to get pregnant and to the altar.’
His voice hummed with remembered fury, his pupils smouldering coals ringed with green fire. Ignoring the curiosity that was eating away at her outrage, Jennifer pushed ineffectually against his thick cabled sweater as she tried to twist her wrists out of his unyielding grasp. He responded by adjusting his grip on her chin, his long thumb sliding under the point of her jaw to dig into the soft flesh and find her furious pulse.
‘Finally, last year, I figured out the perfect way to get him off my back. I went to his clinic’s IVF sperm bank and made a generous donation to his fertility programme. Afterwards I told him that now he could populate the whole damned world with his precious genes—I was out of the loop!’
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
