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‘He is my son’s godfather,’ she amended. ‘And Julian is a very good one. His house is a mile up the road and they see a lot of each other. Ben really likes him.’ Not so subtly she was letting Jed know Ben did not need a billionaire Greek flitting in and out of his life when he had an excellent male role model virtually on the doorstep.
Jed made no reply, and Phoebe watched warily as he carefully placed the picture back on the bureau and strode over to sit in the armchair by the fire. Reaching for his glass, he took a deep swallow. Only then did he look at her, his scornful gaze skimming over her mutinous face.
‘Give it up, Phoebe. We have established Ben is mine—he virtually told me so himself in the car,’ he drawled sardonically. ‘I am not a fool, and your pathetic attempt to needle me over Julian Gladstone’s role in his life is never going to work.’
The cold hard certainty in his tone was enough to make Phoebe shrink lower in the sofa.
‘From the moment I met you and Gladstone at the embassy I knew you were hiding something from me, Phoebe, by the way you behaved. So I had a friend of mine who heads a security agency check what you had done since you left London.’
Her mouth fell open, and she stared at him in mounting horror as he continued in a brisk tone, as though he was delivering a report.
‘You returned to live with your aunt, and Ben was born seven months and one week after we parted. I had my suspicions, so I checked with Marcus earlier this week and he confirmed you had definitely had a miscarriage and lost the baby. I could not fathom how Ben could be my child until he told me he was a miracle baby. To make absolutely sure, when I left here earlier I called Marcus—who informed me it was perfectly possible, though very rare. Then I visited the cottage hospital where he was born. The receptionist there was most helpful. I asked if I could have a copy of Ben’s medical notes, because you and I were taking him to Greece and needed them as a precaution in case he had an accident while there.’
Phoebe, no longer shrinking, sat up straight and placed her glass back on the table with a shaking hand, her temper rising at the thought of the arrogant swine having her checked out simply because he hadn’t liked the way she behaved at a ball! Then to go to the hospital—the mind boggled! She stared at him in a bitter, hostile silence, her anger and resentment growing with every word he spoke.
‘The woman was a romantic at heart, and when I told her of our tragic separation and how you and I were now reunited and intended to marry she was more than helpful. She gave me a photocopy. I know Ben was born in January, by Caesarean section and that he was two weeks overdue. I know he was one of what would have been twins—though it was clever of you to forget the name of hospital where you had the miscarriage!’ He raised a mocking eyebrow. ‘I also know Ben broke his arm falling out of the pear tree in your garden.’
She had not been being clever. At the time she had been afraid that if she revealed the name of the hospital that had registered her on that day somehow Jed and Dr Marcus would find out. Not surprising, given that seven weeks earlier she had lost a baby, been betrayed and dumped by the man she loved.
But she was not afraid any more, and Phoebe had heard enough. ‘You had no right—the woman had no right!’ she exclaimed, outraged by his revelations.
She didn’t blame the receptionist. Jed was a sophisticated, strikingly handsome man who could charm the birds out of the trees if he wanted to—as she knew to her cost. She doubted there was a woman born who could resist him. That poor receptionist had never stood a chance.
‘Yes, I had every right. He is my son and you deliberately kept him from me. If anyone had no right to do what they have done it is you. I asked you earlier why, and now I want some answers.’
The gall, the bare-faced cheek of the man—checking her out, checking the hospital out, interfering in her well-ordered life just because he could. It was all too much 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 c
