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‘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 compare
s 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.
She had always known he was heartless, but his scathing comment about the caravan and his arrogance and total lack of sensitivity still had the power to shock and hurt her.
She had vowed never to let him hurt her again, and the simmering anger and resentment she had felt for years erupted. This was her life and she didn’t have to justify her actions to any man—certainly not to Jed Sabbides, the egotistical male chauvinist before her.
She tilted back her head, her blue eyes blazing. ‘You happened to me. You wrecked my life once and I will not allow you to do the same again.’
A chilling smile formed on his lips. ‘What about Ben? Are you prepared to wreck his life because you are too much of a coward to face up to facts? You’re a loving mother, I grant you, but he needs a man in his life because you are too soft with him.’
She flinched as though she had been struck, because his words touched a nerve—her Aunt Jemma had said much the same.
‘Answer me this. Why did you allow me to take Ben out in the car on Friday night? Why did you allow me to spend not just the day but the whole weekend with you both?’
‘Because you were like a flaming juggernaut, flattening every objection I made,’ she flung at him, hating to think he might be right.
‘Flattered though I am to think I have that much influence over you, the truth is it is Ben who has that much influence over you. I have watched and listened, and you are so reluctant to upset the boy you allow him to get his own way—and he knows it, Phoebe. Trust me, I am his father—and I was the same with my mother until my father taught me different.’ He gave her a dry smile. ‘While it is not a problem now, it will be in the future without a strong male influence to guide him. You let him pressure you into telling him I was his father before you could get out of bed this morning, and yesterday you let him have two different wall coverings—which I could tell you didn’t want—rather than telling him to make a decision. Something he will have to learn to do if he is to succeed in life.’
Phoebe was badly shaken by his assessment of her parenting skills, because deep down she had a horrible feeling there was some truth in what he said. But she wasn’t about to let him see how she felt.
‘Who made you a child psychologist?’ she jeered. ‘For a man who never had a child on his agenda, and has known he was a father for all of three days, you have some nerve commenting on my parenting skills. If you think by manipulating Ben he will persuade me to go to Greece forget it…That is the worst type of parenting, but typical of a ruthless swine like you,’ she flashed back.
His smile vanished. He looked at her with a rage that made every nerve in her body jump. ‘You little—’ He began, and then broke off, his arm encircling her waist to pull her roughly against him.
There was a long fraught silence, and Phoebe was not quite sure what was going to happen next. She knew only that they were locked together, and she was helplessly aware of the hard planes and angles of his body against her much softer frame. When his other hand stroked over her shoulder to curve around the nape of her neck her whole body trembled.
Jed felt the tension in her, felt her tremble, and some of his rage faded. ‘Don’t flatter yourself. Persuading you to come to Greece is not my main objective, but the boy is,’ he told her bluntly. ‘We both know you fell into my arms the other night all ready and willing, and you would do the same again right now.’
Her eyes were enormous, the pupils darkening as he watched, and deliberately he tightened his hold, easing a leg between her thighs and stroking a hand down over the soft wool of her sweater, settling on the proud swell of her breast.
