LITMIR.BIZ

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not trying to claim it was love?’ The word was uttered with a deep contempt that seemed to sum up Raphael Jordan’s views on relationships in general, and Jennifer in particular.

      She flushed and tried to cling to her fast-dwindling courage. She recognised his interrogation technique. He was harrying her in ever-decreasing circles, slipping under her defences to nip painfully at his target and then retreating to prowl around another topic before darting in for another bite.

      Somewhere in the background she heard Susie carol out a goodbye, and the front door bang, and a little of her tension eased. At least now if there was a messy scene there would be no witnesses.

      She would have liked to fling Raphael’s cynicism back in his teeth with a passionate declaration of emotion, but instead chose the dignity of the literal truth. ‘I liked Sebastian from the time I first met him. I had a lot of respect for him—’

      She broke off, for that respect had taken a severe beating the day he died...

      ‘And I’ll bet you liked him a whole lot more when you discovered he had inoperable cancer, hmm?’ said Rafe crudely. ‘He told you about it, didn’t he? When he was staying here?’

      ‘Yes, but—’

      ‘So—out of pure altruism, of course—you instantly agreed to abandon your home and business and travel back to England with Sebastian as his—now how did he introduce you to the family?—ah, that’s right, his “nurse-companion”...the one with a murky past and no credentials!’

      A sunburst of anger overrode Jennifer’s guilt. She still vividly remembered the humiliation she had suffered at the hands of three of Sebastian’s bickering ex-wives and his numerous, spoiled, grown-up stepchildren when they realised that an Antipodean nobody was threatening their future access to the Jordan gravy-train.

      Only Raphael, Sebastian’s eldest son and sole natural child, had remained aloof from the outpourings of spite which followed. Never having allowed his father to bankroll his lifestyle, he was immune to the bribes and rewards by which Sebastian had manipulated his greedy brood of dependents-by-marriage. Although Rafe had bluntly disapproved of his father’s precipitous marriage to a woman thirty-six years his junior, in keeping with his own history of rebellious independence he had not disputed Sebastian’s right to make a bloody fool of himself.

      ‘I did train as a nurse—I just never got to complete the practical part of the course for my formal qualification,’ she flared now.

      ‘Yes, well, you were obviously better qualified as a companion than a nurse, because lo and behold, only a month after you land in England you’re married to your patient—and three weeks after that your very wealthy new husband, whose heart was never a contributor to his health problems, has a heart attack in his own bed and is dead within days. And what does his doting bride do to mourn his passing? She skips out on the funeral, leaving only a post office box on the other side of the world as a forwarding address...’

      Jennifer gasped. ‘If you’re trying to imply that I had anything at all to do with Sebastian having heart failure—!’

      ‘Oh, no, I’ve read the autopsy report and spoken to his doctors...I have to absolve you of murder,’ he conceded, with what she thought was insulting reluctance.

      ‘Kind of you!’ she snapped recklessly.

      He raised silky eyebrows. ‘It does happen: energetic, lusty young wife entices her elderly, ailing husband to prove that he’s still a man...’

      Her tawny eyes flashed up at him, her fingers itching to slap his face, but before she could act out the impulse his eyelids drooped and he purred, ‘Only we both know how unlikely that scenario is...since my father’s cancer treatments had made him impotent well before he ever left on that round-the-world trip. Your marriage was never actually consummated, was it, Jennifer—?’

      Her fingers curled into her palms. ‘You have no right to—’

      ‘I saw his medical records after he died... I know that claim of paternity you got him to sign isn’t worth the paper it’s written on!’

      ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—’

      ‘I’m talking about the “bargain” you made with Sebastian, the one that you’re going to use to unlock the trust.’

      She clapped her hands over her ears. ‘I refuse to listen to—’

      His strong fingers wrapped around her wrists, wrenching them away from her head. He pinned them against the centre of his chest with one hand and used the other to cup her chin, forcing her to acknowledge what he was saying.

      ‘Oh, no, you’re not getting out of it that easily. If you won’t tell this story, then I will—and you’re going to listen to every single, solitary word!’

      While his eyes, feasting on her every reaction, were no doubt going to be her judge, jury and executioner! Jennifer tried to congeal her expressive features into a stony mask.

      ‘It’s one of life’s little ironies that my father the fertility specialist discovered not long after his divorce from my mother that he’d become sterile himself,’ Rafe said harshly. ‘But typically he never reconciled himself to it. Practically from the time I hit puberty he was nagging at me to find a steady girlfriend. As far as he was concerned my sole purpose in life was to become a doctor like him and marry early so that I could have lots of little Jordan brats. When I told him I didn’t intend to do any of those things—ever—he began taking wives with children of their own, and when that proved unsatisfactory he started throwing genetically desirable women in my path, offering bribes to the first one to get pregnant and to the altar.’

      His voice hummed with remembered fury, his pupils smouldering coals ringed with green fire. Ignoring the curiosity that was eating away at her outrage, Jennifer pushed ineffectually against his thick cabled sweater as she tried to twist her wrists out of his unyielding grasp. He responded by adjusting his grip on her chin, his long thumb sliding under the point of her jaw to dig into the soft flesh and find her furious pulse.

      ‘Finally, last year, I figured out the perfect way to get him off my back. I went to his clinic’s IVF sperm bank and made a generous donation to his fertility programme. Afterwards I told him that now he could populate the whole damned world with his precious genes—I was out of the loop!’

      Jennifer’s struggles were momentarily eclipsed by a wickedly inappropriate desire to laugh. Sebastian’s telling had differed greatly from Rafe’s, and no wonder! Sebastian had regarded his work with an almost religious seriousness, and his son’s act of cheeky irreverence must have been a grave offence to his pride.

      ‘Funnily enough, he was furious at what I’d done,’ confirmed Rafe sardonically. ‘It turned out that mere genetic reproduction wasn’t his aim, it was the family connection that was the vital requirement—another legitimate Jordan heir to perpetuate the name along with the genes. Then his cancer was diagnosed and he suddenly seemed to lose interest in the idea.

      ‘I should have known better than to think he’d given up his pet obsession. He just went off on his annual world trip and did what he’d done so often in the past—he bought himself what he wanted. He bought himself a wife: a strong, fertile, healthy woman who would pander to his sick fantasies and allow him to father his own grandchild—’

      ‘No!’ Jennifer began to struggle again, kicking out helplessly with her legs as she squirmed in his hold.

      ‘He paid you to undergo artificial insemination at his clinic, in a new IVF procedure with a high rate of success: my sperm injected directly into your egg—’

      ‘No!’

      ‘—and re-implanted in your body. Of course, this all happened in the weeks before your wedding, because there was no point in him marrying you until you had been confirmed with a viable pregnancy.’

      ‘You’re mad!’ she panted. ‘I don’t know where you get your bizarre ideas from but you know what

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