LITMIR.BIZ

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wouldn’t wish that on anyone,’ he replied, wondering how he would react in the other man’s position. He hoped to God he would never find out.

      She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Not even someone who doesn’t have the right...right...bloodline to marry your sister?’

      Seb’s dark brows drew together in an astonished straight line above his masterful nose as he looked down at her. ‘Back up...’

      If only she could have, Mari thought wistfully, she would have responded quite literally to this request. A few more feet to distance herself from his overpowering physical presence would have been welcome but there was nowhere to go.

       ‘Marry?’

      Her teeth clenched at this display of unconvincing innocence. ‘Don’t bother with the act—I know what you did.’

      Well, that makes one of us, he thought with a sardonic grimace. Every time she opened her mouth he felt as though he were being led deeper into a maze.

      He released a long, slow, hissing breath, controlling his temper and the desire to grab her—and the hell of it was that, whatever his intentions, the moment he laid his hands on her it would change what hovered unacknowledged between them, taunting him, the way her mouth taunted him.

      He had known it from the moment he saw her standing there in the church denouncing him to everyone who knew him. He wanted this woman, and if he touched her now that want would wipe out everything else.

      Wasn’t it supposed to be therapeutic to look into your heart? Not that his heart was the organ involved in this instance. Either way, he didn’t feel better—he felt frustrated self-disgust.

      ‘Work from the premise I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.’

      ‘They were in love.’ She paused, distracted by the muscle that was clenching and unclenching in his lean cheek. ‘Y...you,’ she stuttered, thinking he should come with a shipping warning to stop females drifting into his magnetic field. ‘You put an end to it because you’re an arrogant snob who passes judgement on people he doesn’t know. You have no heart!’

      As the quivering accusation left her lips her scornful gaze slid to his chest. The image of her placing her hand on his warm skin, feeling his heart beat under her fingers, came from nowhere. Severely shaken, she shook her head to dislodge it and the warm feeling it induced.

      His brows lifted. She was really rather glorious in full flow with that pouting mouth and those flashing eyes. ‘If they were...in love, surely that wouldn’t have been possible. Doesn’t love conquer all?’

      While he was innocent of the charge, Seb privately acknowledged that had there been any actual danger of Fleur marrying the rather insipid young man he had met he would have done his utmost to stop it, but he liked to think he would have been more subtle.

      The thought of Fleur’s reaction to an outright ban from him twitched the corners of his mouth upwards in the ghost of a wry smile.

      Seeing it, Mari felt her temper fizz up all over again. ‘This is just a joke to you, isn’t it?’ she accused, overflowing with a sense of righteous outrage. ‘You don’t even have the guts to admit what you did was because my brother doesn’t have the right school tie and has worked for what he has rather than it being handed to him on a golden platter, and don’t deny it,’ she added breathlessly.

      Nostrils flared, he gave a mirthless smile. ‘I wasn’t about to,’ he promised grimly. The idea of him explaining himself to this red-haired virago with a chip on her shoulder the size of a forest offended him on more levels than he could count.

      ‘Before she brought him home to meet you, everything was fine.’

      ‘Relationships end every day.’ He cut her off with an impatient gesture of his hand. ‘You have decided that I am responsible for your brother’s broken heart, I get that part of your delusion, but the rest? I’m a bit hazy where I fit in. He had an accident? What sort of accident?’

      ‘Mark came to see me after he and Fleur split up. He was distraught when he left—if he hadn’t been he’d never have been drinking.’

      ‘He drank?’

      Hearing the grim condemnation in his voice, she rushed to her twin’s defence.

      ‘He was only just over the limit.’

      He greeted this weak defence with a thin smile of disdain.

      ‘And there was fog...’ Her voice trailed away; she knew there was no excuse. ‘He never drinks and drives—normally—and he wouldn’t have been doing so that night if you hadn’t interfered. You’re the reason it happened.’

      And if you’d been more sympathetic? Mari closed her eyes and her ears to the voice of self-loathing in her head because she simply couldn’t bear it.

      He watched, fighting an unexpected flash of concern as she started to sway forward and back on her heels, her eyes closed. Concern he didn’t want to feel roughened his voice as he asked abruptly, ‘Are you all right?’

      Her blue eyes opened. They glittered with unshed tears and loathing. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not about to faint again.’ She sniffed and wiped a hand across her damp eyes.

      While Seb considered himself pretty immune to most female tears, the sniff made him feel... Uneasy was not the right word, but as he pushed away the suggestion that the prosaic action touched a tender spot he refused to acknowledge he settled for it.

      ‘Sit down,’ he urged, coating his concern in impatience, because actually giving a damn about a woman who had deliberately set out to cause chaos in his life would have been irrational, and he wasn’t.

      He just didn’t want her to faint at his feet.

      ‘I don’t need to sit down,’ she snapped back. ‘I’m going home.’ She took two steps before a voice said in her head, Running away?

      Teeth clenched, she swung back. This time she would be the one to have the last word. ‘Why should you carry on living your perfect life when because of you my brother’s life is ruined?’

       CHAPTER FOUR

      ‘WE’LL LEAVE THE perfection of my life out of this conversation and while I don’t doubt you need someone to blame for what has happened to your brother—’

      Mari stiffened defensively and cut in, yelling angrily, ‘You are to blame.’

      ‘What happened to your brother is tragic, but it is not the result of anything I did. He chose to drink, he chose to get behind the wheel of a car, his decision, his responsibility,’ he intoned with steely implacability. ‘It is pure luck that he didn’t injure an innocent.’

      Gnawing her lower lip, Mari lowered her gaze. He had said it; she had thought it. ‘He loved your sister.’

      ‘It was hardly the act of passion,’ Seb derided contemptuously. ‘It was the act of a weak man who didn’t think of the consequences of his actions. It seems to be a family failing.’

      ‘He’s lying in a hospital bed!’ she cried, wondering if the callous monster even had a heart.

      ‘Which is sad, but he is the architect of his own downfall and I am just glad he has not taken my sister down with him.’

      Mari wasn’t even aware that her arm had lifted, moving in a swishing arc towards his face until, a few inches short of making contact with his lean cheek, fingers like iron curled around her wrist, forcing it away and back down to her side.

      She didn’t even give him the chance to release her hand; she started fighting, pulling frantically to wrench her hand free. When he did so she lifted her head very slowly, her wild hair falling back to reveal eyes that were wide and

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