fire, but it wasn’t worth it this late, she decided. Picking up the remote, she switched the television on, flicking through the channels, but there was nothing that captured her interest.
Sighing she glanced around the room. She loved this house—her home…It had originally been a nineteenth-century stone-built semi-detached farm labourer’s cottage, two up and two down, belonging to her aunt. When the cottage next door had come on to the market four years ago, with the help of a diamond necklace and some other unwanted jewellery Phoebe had bought it.
With Aunt Jemma’s agreement she had converted the two into one good-sized detached house. Consequently the entrance hall was surprisingly spacious, with a single new wide oak staircase. On one side was the sitting room, which stretched from front to back, and on the other side the original front room had been left to provide a dining room that doubled as a study. At the rear was a large L-shaped family kitchen, and upstairs there was a bathroom and three double bedrooms—her aunt’s with an en-suite bathroom—a family bathroom, her own room, and the third bedroom over the hall: Ben’s room…A gravel drive ran down one side of the house, and with a new garage built at the bottom of the garden the conversion was complete. And a great success Phoebe thought, glancing contentedly around.
A big armchair stood at one side of the fireplace, with a tall standard lamp behind it and a mahogany bureau against the wall. On the other side was the television. In the centre was a coffee table, and a Persian rug in shades of turquoise was spread in front of the fire, providing a nice contrast with the oak wood floor. Beneath the front window was an antique desk and chair of her aunt’s, and beneath the back window an old sailor’s trunk Phoebe had picked up at a car boot sale that was ideal for storing some of Ben’s toys. Maybe not the height of fashion, but in the soft glow of the standard lamp it was warm and welcoming—a real family room.
Unfortunately she had a sinking feeling that her happy home might be about to change, if Jed had his way. Draining her mug of tea, she rose to her feet and headed back to the kitchen.
She was worrying for nothing, she told herself deter-minedly. Jed could not take her child unless she let him, and she was not that dumb. She rinsed out the mug and put it back in the cupboard, and with a last look around the kitchen decided to mark papers for a while.
Ensconced in the study over an hour later, she was chuckling over an essay Elizabeth Smith—one of her sixteen-year-old students—had written. According to her, the French Resistance fighters in World War II had used the internet to publicise their cause!
Then she heard the knock on the door. She toyed with the idea of not answering, but she didn’t want Ben disturbed and reluctantly got to her feet. Moment of reckoning, she thought as she walked down the hall, rubbing her suddenly damp palms down her slender thighs. It could only be one man.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the door.
It was dark out, but the light from the hall illuminated the tall figure of Jed, his hand raised as if to knock again—but then patience had never been one of his virtues, she recalled. When he wanted something, be it a business deal or a woman, he went straight for his objective with all the skill and guile at his disposal. As far as she knew he had never failed. But there was always a first time, she told herself…
The dark eyes surveying her were inscrutable, but she sensed the tension in his broad shoulders. Phoebe straightened, keeping her spine rigid. He was wearing the same casual clothes, with the addition of a leather jacket, and now dark stubble shadowed his square jaw. If anything he looked more dangerous and more intimidating than before. Suddenly she was aware of how isolated the house was, situated at least a ten-minute walk from the village, and how alone she was with only a sleeping child for company. Her heart beat a little faster.
‘It is rather late to be calling. Anything you wish to say to me can wait until the morning. I want an early night.’ And, tightening her grip on the door handle, she began to close the door. But a strong hand closed like a vice around her wrist.
‘Who with? Uncle Julian?’ he drawled, his big body crowding her as he urged her back into the hall and closed the door behind him.
‘Don’t be disgusting—and I would like you to leave,’ she continued doggedly, determined to remain polite but firm. She tried to ignore the sudden leap in her pulse beneath his enfolding hand, and made herself look steadily up at him.
Big mistake…His dark eyes burned like living coals of fire into hers, and she could not tear her gaze away.
‘Why, damn you? Why?’ he demanded, taking her hand behind her back to pull her close against his tall frame. ‘You told me you were pregnant swiftly enough. What the hell did I do so wrong that a few months later you would deny me knowledge of my son?’
She saw the fury, the angry confusion in his eyes, and ignoring it flung back her head. ‘He is not your son,’ she declared defiantly. It was a desperate last-ditch attempt to get him to leave. She was aware of the tension in him, and also aware of the pressure of his hard body against her own. She had never known a man who could affect her physically as strongly as Jed did, and she trembled. He felt her telltale tremor, Phoebe knew, as his dark eyes narrowed with a more sinister light.
‘I know you for the liar you are, and I could strangle you for what you have done to me and mine.’ His free hand snaked around her neck, his long fingers grasping the thick swathe of her hair and twisting it around his wrist, pulling her head back. ‘But don’t worry. There are other ways to make you suffer.’
Held captive in his hold, she stared helplessly into his dark eyes and recognised the menacing sensuality in the darkening depths. ‘No,’ she choked, and splaying her hands defensively against his broad chest tried to break free. But he pushed her hand higher behind her back, forcing her harder against him as his dark head descended and he subdued her with a brutal kiss.
His hand at her nape held her head firm as he ravaged her mouth with a ruthless, domineering passion that Phoebe fought to resist. But, trapped against his broad chest, it was a useless exercise.
Indifference was her only hope, but it was a futile hope as the demanding pressure of his firmly chiselled lips against her own and the thrusting of his tongue into the moist interior of her mouth, the achingly familiar taste of him, incredibly awakened a long-denied desire. She tried to force the physical memories back, but her traitorous body had a will of its own and it betrayed her. Her breath caught in suffocating excitement as a curl of heat ignited in her belly, sending her pulse rate rocketing and making her shudder in involuntary response.
Sensing her reaction, he gentled his mouth and trailed his lips to the long, slender arch of her neck, closing over the wildly beating pulse in her throat. She was scarcely aware when his arm eased around her waist and the hand holding her hair slipped down to cup her breast through the soft fabric of her shirt.
His thumb rubbed lightly across her burgeoning nipple, and it was only when the hot stab of arousal arrowed from her breast to her groin, tightening her wayward flesh, that she realised the very real danger she was in—almost too late…
‘Get your hands off me, you great brute.’ She twisted, dislodging his hand from her breast and breaking free from his restraining arm, and fell back a step.
Jed stared at her for a long moment, his dark eyes hard, and then he laughed—a cruel sound in the fraught silence. ‘You still want me, Phoebe. I felt your heart pounding, your body shaking,’ he mocked
‘With anger…’ she said, fighting down the shameful desire that pulsed through her body. ‘You repulse me,’ she lied, stunned by the ease with which Jed had almost seduced her again.
‘No,
