Some time afterwards he raised himself up and looked at her. Her hair lay like a silver cloud over the pillow. Her face was flushed and damp from the ecstasy they had shared. Her eyelashes, though, were drawn down, as though she didn’t want to look at him—or couldn’t.
Marvelling at how beautiful she was, a warm pleasure curved his mouth from the way she had made him feel, as though he were the only man on earth—or, amazingly, the only one that mattered—and on a breath that seemed to shudder through him, he murmured, ‘Look at me, Grace.’
The eyes she raised reluctantly to his were dark and slumberous from the aftermath of their love-making, but as they tugged over his face something clouded their depths and in a barbed tone she said, ‘Why? So you can claim yet another victory for yourself?’
Her unexpected response surprisingly cut him like a whiplash.
Of course. She hadn’t been able to help herself, any more than he had. They were bound to wind up in bed together whether they liked each other or not. And it was clearly “or not” in her case, he realised, mocking that moment’s conceit when he had imagined otherwise.
So what had he been expecting? he challenged himself roughly. Declarations of undying love from her? His inward laughter was mirthless and cold. Of course not. He wouldn’t have welcomed that from her in any case. Or would he? The thought struck him suddenly. He had to admit that it would be a rather ironic turn up for the books.
‘If that’s the way you want to view it.’ Self-ridicule put a chill in his voice now. ‘Although for one supposedly beaten you sounded pretty triumphant at the end.’
Shame scorched Grace’s cheeks. How could she have let it happen? she remonstrated with herself, mortified that he had seen her so helpless and begging. But that was exactly what this whole seduction thing had been about, she realised hopelessly, wanting to bury her head under the pillow and never come up for air.
‘I take it there’s no chance of your getting pregnant?’ Seth’s question was curt, matter-of-fact.
Coldly reminded of all she had been through after the way she had behaved with him the first time, Grace pressed her eyelids closed, immensely relieved that at least she was protected by the Pill she had started taking shortly before her cancelled wedding.
Nevertheless, she couldn’t help biting out, ‘Isn’t it a bit late to ask me that now?’
It was, and he could have kicked himself for not giving it too much consideration beforehand, but then she had blown his mind with her abandoned response.
‘Well?’ It was a hard, emotionless demand.
‘Don’t worry.’ Rolling away from him, Grace leapt to her feet and self-consciously scrambled around for the robe that she’d left draped across the bottom of her bed that morning. ‘I won’t be coming after you with a paternity suit,’ she assured him caustically, finding the robe in a pool of pale satin on the carpet. ‘If that’s what you’re worrying about.’
‘Do I take it then that you’re on the Pill?’
Propped up on an elbow, he reclined there, watching her, totally unfazed by the fact that he was naked while she was struggling to bring both ends of her robe together, ridiculously embarrassed after what they had just done.
‘Take it any way you like!’ Finding it almost impossible to keep her eyes from those heavily muscled limbs and hard, lean torso, when he had just used that devastating masculinity of his to subdue her, she swung away from him towards the bathroom, not anticipating the speed at which he could come after her until he was pulling her round to face him before she was even halfway towards the door.
‘What are you trying to do?’ His fingers bit into her arm. ‘Deny that it happened?’
How could she? She still wanted to slide her hands over his magnificent body, surrender to its warm strength and thrusting power with a pleasure unequalled by anything else in the universe.
‘No,’ she uttered shakily, looking past him so she wouldn’t have to focus on the harsh sweep of his jaw and that hard, incisive mouth that had made her cry out with the screaming intimacy of its kisses. The musky scent of him that was filling her nostrils was a taunting reminder of how uninhibitedly their juices had fused. ‘Just trying to come to terms with being such a fool.’
‘Don’t let it get you down.’ He released her with almost careless indifference. ‘The feeling does wear off eventually.’ And on that scathing note he turned away, leaving her fleeing to the bathroom with the stinging reminder of how she had once made an equal fool of him.
Fortunately, Seth flew off the following morning to pursue some new accounts in the States, which gave Grace time to recover her composure and a little bit of dignity. She didn’t know how she would have faced him, particularly in front of the rest of the board, Simone and other members of staff, knowing that she had played right into his hands and handed him on a plate the conquest he had been planning.
As she took telephone calls, attended meetings and made appointments for the week ahead, she kept asking herself—as she had been doing constantly since before she had come out of her bathroom the previous night and found that Seth had already left—why she had let things get so out of hand between them.
He had shown her a soft side of himself yesterday that had lured her into a false sense of security, and like a prize idiot she had fallen for it when she knew how much he despised her and how little respect he had for her. Consequently, she only had herself to blame.
She groaned at her senseless behaviour, so unable to think of anything else that she cut off a caller who wanted to speak to the marketing manager and got through the rest of her work like an automaton. Her only consolation, she thought, racked by shame and self-reproach, was that she’d learned her lesson the first time and that at least this time there wouldn’t be any repercussions from their love-making.
Seth didn’t return at all that week. Having already put things in place to keep the company running smoothly while he was away, he telephoned some time during the following week to say that he expected to be out of the country for the rest of the month.
He didn’t speak to Grace personally, however, leaving the message with Simone. Hurting and angry, Grace decided that, having achieved everything he had set out to do—taking control of Culverwells, then securing her ultimate humiliation by taking her to bed—he was obviously now treating her with the contempt he thought she deserved.
Christmas came and went with still no word from him, and her wretchedness was only compounded by a heavy cold.
Having spent the holiday alone, being forced to miss a party at Beth’s, and with Corinne having flown off to Madeira on Christmas Eve, Grace returned to work on a wet January morning feeling as though she was the only person in London that Christmas had done a detour round, and with the knowledge that Seth wasn’t due to return for another week.
And, if that wasn’t enough to deal with, her period was overdue.
At first she put it down simply to stress. Stress could be responsible for a lot of things and over the past couple of months she had had a lot of things to be stressed about.
No way could she be pregnant, she assured herself resolutely. Fate couldn’t do that to her twice.
But, beneath her over-confident attempts to dismiss any possibility that she might be, lay the nagging truth that she was worried sick. She’d been protected, when she and Seth had made love, it was true, but she was only on a low-dosage Pill, and she had had a stomach upset a couple of days before. She hadn’t even thought of it at the time, but of course something like that could