Authors: Lynne Graham
‘Traumatising? I hope so, because you’re not getting a life without me in it.’
‘I love you the way I never thought I would love any woman.’ His possessive golden gaze pinned with appreciation to her, he framed her irreverent grin with gentle fingers. ‘I love everything about you, pethi mou…even the way you annoy the hell out of me sometimes. So stop teasing me.’
She could not have doubted the rough sincerity in his every spoken syllable and the direct and steady onslaught of an adoring scrutiny that made her face warm with colour. ‘I love you too…’
‘Still?’ Sebasten demanded. ‘I thought you’d got over me…you wouldn’t give an inch even when I practically begged you to come back to me!’
‘I can be stubborn. But I never stopped loving you.’
His brilliant smile flashed across his lean, devastating features and he hugged her close. ‘I feel a very uncool degree of happiness…say it again.’
She did.
And then he felt he had to match her with the same words. He felt wonderful. He felt ten feet tall. Lizzie was his, finally, absolutely his. His wedding ring on her finger, his baby on the way. Freeing her just when she was about to invite the kiss that every nerve in her body craved, Sebasten closed his hand over hers and walked her back out to the hall.
‘Where are we going?’ Lizzie muttered.
‘Home…to where it all began. Any chance of me reliving the highlights?’ Sebasten gave her a wicked look of all-male anticipation.
As he flipped shut the door in their wake and then tucked her into his car, Lizzie blushed and smiled. ‘I think that’s very possible.’
An hour and more later, Sebasten lay back in what now felt like a secure marital bed to him and held Lizzie close. He was in a very upbeat mood, checking out her freckles and discovering that, in spite of all his efforts to keep her under sunhats and in the shade, the Greek sun had blessed her with another half-dozen. He knew she wasn’t fond of her freckles, so he kept the news to himself. He splayed his fingers over her still non-existent tummy and grinned and secretly rejoiced in feelings of intense possessiveness.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Lizzie whispered, smiling up at him with complete contentment and trust.
‘That you’re the best investment I’ve ever made,’ Sebasten confided with quiet satisfaction. ‘When you have the baby, I’ll have two of you.’
‘We’ll be a family. You’ll be totally trapped because I’m not letting go of you ever,’ Lizzie teased.
‘You’d be amazed how good that sounds to me.’ Sebasten looked down at her with all the love he couldn’t hide and she knew he meant every word of that assurance. ‘As long as you don’t expect me to buy any more houses for your sole occupation.’
Lizzie grimaced. ‘I feel so bad about that.’
‘Don’t. Just remind yourself that we are the same two people who shared an incredible happy honeymoon and we talked about everything under the sun but…neither one of us had the guts to broach the sensitive subject of how we planned to live when we got home again,’ Sebasten pointed out with wry amusement.
‘I was waiting for you to try and persuade me to change my mind,’ Lizzie complained. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to rush out and buy a house overnight either!’
Sebasten burst out laughing at that and kissed her breathless, and it was another hour before they had dinner and he dropped the bait about it having just occurred to him that perhaps her father might like to consider moving into the surplus dwelling they had acquired.
‘That’s a fabulous idea!’ Lizzie exclaimed.
And Sebasten basked without conscience in her pleasure and admiration and knew that he would never own up to the truth that he had hoped for that conclusion all along.
A year and four months later, Sebasten and Lizzie threw a party to celebrate their baby daughter, Gemma’s, christening.
Ingrid Morgan attended and Lizzie and she talked at some length. They had made peace with each other months before: Ingrid had felt very guilty and had urged that meeting, but Lizzie had made the effort initially only for Sebasten’s sake. However, when she had got to know the older woman better she had begun to relax and like Ingrid for herself. Ingrid had worked through her grief and admitted that she had had no cause to accuse any woman of driving her son to suicide. She had come to terms with the reality that Connor’s death had just been an accident.
When all their guests had gone home, Lizzie changed Gemma into her cute bunny nightwear and laid her daughter with tender hands into her cot. She just adored the baby. Gemma had her father’s colouring but was already showing signs of her mother’s personality. She was a cheerful baby, who slept a lot and rarely cried. Elbows resting on the cot rail, Lizzie smiled down at Gemma, grateful that her baby girl had not inherited her freckles. It was all very well for Sebasten to have a positive thing about freckles but he had to appreciate that not everyone shared that outlook, Lizzie reflected with amusement.
It had been an eventful year for both her and her father. Maurice Denton was already divorced. Felicity had met another man and had been keen to speed up the legal proceedings. Her father’s spirits had been low for quite a time but moving house had helped and he very much liked living so close to his daughter and was a regular visitor. His own friends had rallied round him in a very supportive way, but her father had also developed a wonderfully friendly and relaxed relationship with Sebasten.
At times during her pregnancy that closeness between her parent and her husband had been just a little irritating for Lizzie. Both Sebasten and her father had been prone to trying to gang up on her and wrap her up in cotton wool. Stubborn to the last, Lizzie had worked until she was seven months pregnant before deciding to tender her resignation. The PR job had been a lot of fun but it had taken her away from Sebasten too many evenings and it had exhausted her.
Gemma had been born without any fuss or complications but Sebasten had lived on his nerves for the last weeks of Lizzie’s pregnancy, striving valiantly to conceal his terror that something might go wrong. But Lizzie herself had been an oasis of calm, secure in the knowledge that Sebasten was doing all her worrying for her. He had fallen instantly in love with Gemma and, if possible, Lizzie had fallen even more deeply in love with Sebasten just watching him with their daughter. The guy who had said he preferred children at a distance used every excuse that had ever been invented to lift his daughter and cuddle her.
‘Don’t you dare lift her,’ Lizzie warned, hearing and recognising the footsteps behind her. ‘She shouldn’t be disturbed when she’s ready to go to sleep.’
Sebasten strolled into view, and at one glimpse of his heartbreaking smile Lizzie’s pulses speeded up.
‘Just when did you get so bossy?’ he mocked, brilliant golden eyes roaming over the very tempting vision Lizzie made in her sleek blue skirt suit with her glorious hair tumbling round her shoulders in sexy disarray.
Lizzie grinned. ‘When I met you. Either I lay down and got walked on or I fought back.’
‘But you’re out of line on this occasion. I spent half the evening holding Gemma,’ Sebasten pointed out with amusement. ‘I’m in the nursery in search of you.’
Already well-aware of that just from the smouldering gleam in his vibrant gaze as he surveyed her, Lizzie eased forward in a sinuous move into the hard heat and muscularity of his lean, powerful frame and gave him the most welcoming look of invitation she could manage.
‘You’re an incredible flirt,’ Sebasten commented with satisfaction, surrendering at speed and scooping her up into his arms with an efficiency that spoke of regular practice.
‘You like that…’ Lizzie was used to being carried off to bed and ravished and she encouraged him in that shameless pursuit of pleasure every step of the way.
‘I do. And carrying you around does keep me in the peak of athletic condition,’ Sebasten teased as he settled her down on their bed.
Lizzie just laughed and kicked off her shoes. ‘Kiss me and prove it.’
Sebasten pitched his jacket aside, dropped his tie where he stood, demonstrating an untidy streak that had once been foreign to him, and came down on the bed to haul her back into his arms. ‘You’re a wanton hussy and I adore you…’
Lizzie battered her eyelashes but the glow of her own love was there in her softened eyes for his to see. Before she could even tell him she loved him like crazy too, he released an appreciative groan in response to that look and melded her lush mouth to his own.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-0335-2
THE CONTAXIS BABY
Copyright © 2002 by Lynne Graham
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.