‘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 very brief time but now he’s gone and it’s over. It’s history. I came back here because this is my home. This is where I want to live my life. I don’t care what you think you know about me, unlike you and your paranoid family of snobs, I don’t happen to enjoy living in a world where everyone is judged by how they dress and what they own rather than who they are and what they’ve achieved. I told you I won’t interfere with the estate, so why can’t you just go back to where you came from and leave me alone?’
His blond-tipped head had snapped to the side, his cheek scorched by the outline of her angry fingers, and now he slowly turned back, working his jaw cautiously to and fro in his hand.
At least he had stopped touching her. Jennifer pushed herself up on stiff arms, scooting backwards with her hips so that she was half sitting, no longer helplessly submissive to his will. She had never struck anyone in anger before, and was miserably conscious that this man was responsible for a number of unfortunate firsts in her life. An apology was edging forward on her tongue when she caught sight of the punishing expression in his eyes.
‘So, you’re saying that my father couldn’t even be honest with me on his deathbed? That the last words he ever said to me in this world were an ugly, pointless lie?’
Her blow had been a butterfly kiss in comparison. Jennifer felt as if she had been hit on the head with a brick.
‘Your father?’ she croaked, devastated by this latest betrayal. If she hadn’t been already sitting she would have keeled over again. ‘I—I don’t believe you... Sebastian told you those things?’
‘In hospital on the night he died. The night you did your moonlight flit.’
She winced at his clipped contempt, utterly incapable of defending herself. There was no denying the fact that when she had angrily fled the hospital that afternoon she had made herself deliberately inaccessible. And later, when she had phoned the hospital and learned that Sebastian had died...well, she had been extremely distressed, confused and frightened—because she had still felt so angry with him for abusing her trust. Running away from an untenable situation had seemed the best and safest option.
‘He deteriorated suddenly and became agitated and disorientated. He kept saying your name, but no one could find you or knew where you’d gone, and by the time I got to the hospital he was in a bad way
,’ said Rafe, making no attempt to spare her the brutal details. ‘He was pretty heavily sedated but he knew what was going to happen, and I guess he realised it was his last chance to clear his conscience—so it all spilled out, how you had leapt at his cash-for-a-kid deal.
‘He kept asking me to forgive him as he drifted in and out of consciousness, kept saying that he’d made a bad misjudgement about you, that he was worried about what you might do, what might happen to the baby if he wasn’t around to protect it, babbling about betrayal and blackmail...’
‘And you believed him?’ she forced herself to say steadily. ‘You didn’t think it might have just been the wanderings of a drugged mind?’
‘Yes. That’s why I checked to see whether you’d ever been treated at the clinic.’
Her heart clenched. ‘There’s no way you could have had legal access to that kind of information—’
His smile mocked her naïveté, ‘Who said my access was legal?’
‘You—’
‘Legal or not, I know to the exact minute how and when our baby was conceived.’
‘My baby—’
The cry was out before she realised it, never to be taken back. All her protests, all her stonewalling had been futile. He had known all along and he had enjoyed watching her twist and turn until she had tangled herself up in her web of lies and evasions and more lies. She felt sick, but also oddly liberated.
‘So, Jennifer...you and I are going to be parents in a little under six months.’ He stroked his faintly marked cheek, and then touched hers with a gentleness that was far more blood-curdling than his former aggression. ‘We’re practically strangers, we’ve hardly spoken and barely touched, let alone made love, but we’ve engaged in the most intimate act two human beings can share... the procreation of life.’
His knuckles touched her chin and then ran down the centre of her jumper between her breasts, dissolving away one or two faint pearls of vase-water still nestling amongst the strands of wool, gliding down to stop in the folds at her waist. This time she made no effort to stop him, so stunned was she by his lyrically soft words. It almost sounded as if...
She shivered. ‘We haven’t shared anything—’
‘I beg to differ. My seed is growing in your womb. I’d say that made us pretty damned intimate, wouldn’t you?’
She blushed. ‘That was a medical procedure. You had nothing to do with it.’
He laughed, and for once she couldn’t detect a single cynical note in his amusement. ‘I had everything to do with it—me and my little jar and my wicked stock of fantasies.’
Her blush deepened, her hands fisting on her thighs. ‘You know what I mean.’
He sobered. ‘Yes, I know exactly what you mean. And you’re wrong. I may not have been a partner in the highly questionable deal you and my father struck but I am involved. You’re a rich, pregnant widow because of me. If I’d thought about it at all I presumed that my sperm would go to help happily married infertile couples have the children they desperately wanted...not to a selfish, egotistical old man and a soon-to-be-widowed wife with extremely questionable values. As I see it, I have a responsibility here.’
‘Responsibility?’ Jennifer echoed, her eyes widening in horror.