‘I didn’t think she’d actually dump you.’
‘Is that an apology?’
‘No, it’s...’ She stopped, her eyes widening fractionally as a possible explanation for the bride’s reaction struck her. ‘Have you done it before...but for real?’
His expression grew cold and contemptuous. ‘It must be the company you keep, but a lot of people don’t cheat.’
But do you? she wondered, watching as he responded to the imperative hum of a phone, which he slid from his pocket. He scanned the screen before punching something in and returning it to his pocket.
‘I haven’t got long.’ He was not fooled by the polite request; underneath the diplomatic language it was a royal command—he was being asked to defend brand Defoe.
‘Don’t let me keep you.’
The pert reply caused his attention, which had drifted away, to focus back in on her. ‘Was what you said about your brother true?’
She was outraged by the question. ‘Why would I lie about that?’
‘Why would you lie about me fathering your child?’ he countered.
‘I’ve told you.’
‘I know, spoil my day, wasn’t it?’ He tipped his head and gave a slow handclap. ‘Well, you succeeded in more ways than you can imagine.’ He dropped his hands and subjected her to a scrutiny of skin-peeling intensity. ‘What exactly happened to your brother?’ Something that had triggered today’s stunt?
‘He...he...’ Hearing the helpless wobble in her voice, she swallowed and blinked back the emotional tears that sprang to her eyes. ‘Mark could end up in a wheelchair permanently.’ A lot was still unknown, and Mari refused to think the worst. ‘Why are you asking? You don’t give a damn about him, do you?’ she charged, glaring up at him with angry contempt.
‘I 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