LITMIR.BIZ

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of her lips skated down from the corner of her mouth.

      To her intense shock Rafe bent his head and licked the droplets off her chin before they could drip into the cowl-neck of her angora jumper.

      ‘Stop it!’ she gasped, wiping the back of her hand over the spot where his moist tongue had lashed her tender skin with fire. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

      She gulped as he lifted his head, just enough for her to see the sexual taunting in his emerald eyes.

      ‘Just my husbandly duty, Mrs Jordan...’

      She hated the ease with which he could disrupt her senses. From the first time Sebastian had introduced her to his son she had been deeply aware of the dangerous undercurrents, and was secretly grateful for the strained relationship between the two men which had kept their association to a minimum.

      ‘You said you told Susie the truth,’ she said, her voice ragged with the effort of controlling her fear.

      He placed the barely touched glass on the beechwood coffee table without releasing her from his tormenting gaze. ‘Actually, she didn’t give me the chance,’ he admitted with a cool lack of remorse for the fright he had given her. ‘I told her my name and before I could say that I was looking for my father’s wife—’

      ‘His widow!’ It was a distinction that was vital to Jennifer’s bruised sensibilities.

      He inclined his head, his eyes glinting as if her fierce correction had accorded him some kind of important victory.

      ‘Whatever... As soon as I said I was Raphael Jordan, she began talking as if I was your husband. She seemed so certain that your husband’s name was Rafe, and so positive that you’d be over the moon to see me that I thought it best not to argue with her romantic delusions.’

      Best? He meant most useful to his own purposes!

      Jennifer clenched her hands at her sides, hating the helplessness of her position but knowing she would be no match for Rafe in a physical tussle. He clearly had no intention of letting her up until she was intimidated into giving him some answers.

      She would have to rely on her wits to extricate herself and somehow persuade him to leave before he encountered loose-tongued Susie again, or—God forbid—her mother!

      ‘It seems funny that she should get so mixed up,’ he mused perilously, ‘because she seemed otherwise a fairly intelligent and switched-on young woman. Could it be, dear stepmama, that you’ve been purposely vague about the whereabouts of your husband? Haven’t you let on that he’s no longer in the land of the living? Been keeping your widow’s mite secret from your impecunious friends and relatives?’

      Her stomach roiled at his clever guess. But not clever enough!

      ‘Don’t call me that! And how can you be so flippant about the death of your own father? I know you two didn’t get on, but you might at least have some respect for his memory—’

      ‘If you’d bothered to hang around for the funeral you would have seen me paying my respects,’ he ripped at her. ‘I even shed a few tears for the stiff-necked old bastard. But don’t expect me to elevate him to sainthood just because he’s dead. He was a good doctor and a brilliant businessman, but he was a poor husband and a rotten father; his ambitions always got in the way of his relationships and he never stopped trying to force me into his own mould. So don’t preach to me about my filial duty, Stepmama—’

      Worms of horror squirmed across her skin. ‘Stop calling me that!’

      ‘Why, isn’t that what you became when you married my father?’

      ‘Because it’s—it’s...’

      His eyes followed the inarticulate workings of her crooked mouth.

      ‘Ridiculous? Distasteful?’ A lethal pause before he leaned forward and added insinuatingly, ‘Obscene?’

      He was close, too frighteningly close. She steadied herself and got her tongue to shape her choppy breath into a crisp, ‘Definitely ridiculous.’

      ‘But technically correct. And Sebastian was always big on getting the technicalities right, wasn’t he? That’s how he was able to create such a truly unique inheritance for us to share...’

      She could feel the warmth of his breath swirling around her face, causing the blood to sing in her cheeks. Hadn’t she read somewhere about a predator which breathed on its trapped prey before tearing it to pieces? The animal version of a ritual act of gloating possession...

      ‘I didn’t expect Sebastian to leave me anything in his will—he told me he wouldn’t,’ she said, in the desperate hope that he was referring to the money. She silently cursed Sebastian for breaking his promise. His God complex at work again. Even from the grave he couldn’t resist trying to get his own way! If he had stuck to their original agreement there would have been no reason for anyone from the Jordan family to search her out.

      ‘I don’t want to cheat anyone in the family out of their inheritance,’ she told him, her light brown eyes owlishly earnest behind the little round spectacles. ‘When Sebastian’s lawyers wrote to tell me about the shares and bonds, I wrote back and said I didn’t want them, that I’d sign a waiver of claim so they could be returned to the estate—’

      His crack of cynical laughter cut her off.

      ‘Sure, why bother with the petty change when you’ve already got your hot little hands on the main prize, right?’ he growled, abruptly dropping his arm from the back of the couch and planting his hands on the arm of the couch, on either side of her head.

      ‘I—I don’t know what you mean,’ she said warily, excruciatingly aware of his thumb-tips brushing the straining cords of her neck and the metal zip of his open jacket sawing at the soft wool over her breasts as the heavy sides enfolded her like black leather wings.

      ‘No? Apart from all the hard cash you gouged out of him while he was alive, under the terms of the Jordan family trust, as my father’s legal wife at the time of his death you’ve inherited his position as trustee of a multi-million-dollar investment fund! I notice you’re not of fering to waive that family privilege!’

      She bit her pale lower lip. ‘That’s only a nominal title—the trust is still going to be run by the three professional trustees, exactly as it was when Sebastian was alive. And if you’re familiar with the deed then you must know that as a named trustee I have no legal access to any of that money.’

      ‘Not for yourself personally, I agree,’ he said silkily, ‘but any child conceived during your marriage to Sebastian would be a blank cheque in your hands...’

      ‘No...! Never!’

      Her appalled cry of rejection was followed by a short, electric silence.

      Jennifer felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck and a metallic taste flood her tongue. How could he have found out? she thought hysterically. Sebastian had assured her that his exclusive London clinic guaranteed total confidentiality and that his staff were well trained in protecting the anonymity of both donor and recipient. Ethics had obliged him to hand over her case to one of his senior colleagues, and Sebastian’s rapidly failing health had meant he rarely visited the clinic himself, but he had promised to sequester her case-notes amongst his own inactive files as an extra precaution.

      Of course, those staunch ethics of his—which had been so vital to her trust—had in the end turned out to be tainted by self-interest. Maybe he had been unforgiveably lax in other ways, too... Or maybe Raphael was just making guesses based more on his cynical certainty that Jennifer was a greedy bimbo out for everything she could get than any real hard evidence.

      Her hands instinctively crept to protect her flat abdomen.

      Rafe’s eyes flickered down as he registered the movement and returned to hers, gleaming with yellow fire.

      ‘Scruples, Jennifer? From a woman who married a dying old man for his money?’

      He

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