‘Tough,’ Grace responded flatly from the filing cabinet, still determined not to speak to him. ‘I’ll talk to him when he gets back.’’
‘You’re damn right you will!’
Both women’s heads swivelled round to meet his implacable authority in the doorway. That uncompromising masculinity was only intensified by the white-hot anger in his face as he ordered, ‘Simone—out! Now!’
The PA didn’t stay to be told a second time. Distractedly it registered with Grace that the call that had come through from Reception must have been to warn her that the new CEO had just thundered in.
Her mood, though, matched his as, determined not to be intimidated by him, she snapped, ‘Don’t you ever come in here and speak to me or my PA like that again!’
‘And don’t you ever dare to deliver a blow like that closing remark you made this morning and then think you can just put the phone down on me!’
‘Why not? Did it cramp your style with Corinne?’ His face blanched with fury, but she was angry too. Very angry. ‘Well, I’m very sorry to have dragged you back from such adoring company!’
She was near to tears but strove to control them, realising that he could only have used the executive jet to get back here so fast. He’d probably flown it himself, she thought waspishly, remembering his PA telling her once that he was an experienced pilot in his own right.
He moved angrily past her, grabbing her raincoat from the coat stand.
‘Here. Take this. We’re leaving.’
She only obeyed because her head was throbbing too much to endure a shouting match with him in the office, and because an imperious hand at her elbow was already urging her towards the door.
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘Somewhere where we can be alone.’
Every cell in her body rebelled against it, although her heart was beating with a wild anticipation that left her despairing with herself.
She caught Simone’s discreet glance up at them as Seth marched her past her PA’s desk, but she was too keyed up to argue with him or to say anything to Simone.
With his jaw set in stone, Seth summoned the lift, saying nothing as he urged her out of the building to the waiting Mercedes.
‘Where are we going?’ she demanded to know, as Seth handed her into the back of the car and slid in beside her. ‘What makes you think you can just march into my office and start trying to take control of my life?’
The transparent screen closing in front of them obliterated any chance of their being heard by the man who was just pulling the car away.
‘I would have thought that was obvious. You’re having my child. Much as that must be the last thing that you, or either of us, wanted, I think that gives me some rights.’
He couldn’t have made it any plainer than that!
Although, she’d known her pregnancy would be the last thing he’d want or expect, hearing him say it cut as painfully as scaling a wall of broken glass, and she turned away from him to hide the anguish scoring her face.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, but coldly, tersely, noticing the pain of rejection in her tight, tense profile. ‘I really believed you were on the Pill. It was wrong of me to assume.’
‘Yes, it was,’ she bit back with her eyes fixed on the headrest in front of her. If he’d used protection too, then this would never have happened, would it? she reasoned bitterly.
‘And you weren’t involved?’ he challenged thickly before she could go on to explain that she wasn’t as irresponsible as he obviously thought she was. ‘You weren’t the one writhing and sobbing beneath me in that bed?’
With flame colour touching her cheeks, Grace darted a glance towards the thick neck of the man in front of the glass screen, immensely grateful that he couldn’t hear what was being said.
Seth’s graphic reminder of the way she had welcomed his love-making until she was begging for him to take her that night, though, shamed her into responding, ‘I don’t know what you’ve got to be so angry about. Anyway, I was on the Pill—or supposed to be.’
‘So what happened?’ His brows came together over eyes that were interrogative, darkly accusing. ‘Did you forget to take it or something?’
‘No, I didn’t! I’d had a bout of tummy trouble just before we—’ She couldn’t even bring herself to say it. And because his attitude and his insinuation that it was all her fault was only making her feel worse than she did already, she threw angrily back at him, ‘I’m not any happier about this than you are. And I’m sorry if it’s messed up whatever you had planned with Corinne, but you needn’t worry—I’ve got no plans to try and trap you!’
‘Will you shut up?’ It was a soft yet unmistakable command. ‘For heaven’s sake! Isn’t it possible for you to utter one civil word to me unless you’re being kissed?’
Turning her head sharply away from him, Grace stared sightlessly through the tinted glass at the surging bodies moving past the endless shops with their ‘sale’ signs splashed across the windows. She tried not to remember the ecstasy of that firm, male mouth covering hers, the mind-blowing pleasure as it had rediscovered her body like a familiar map, reading it with the deftness of a skilled explorer, recognising every secret curve and dip he had made his own.
‘I swore,’ she railed at herself. ‘I swore I’d never let myself get pregnant—’
Again, she nearly said, but stopped herself in time, cupping her hands over her face with an exasperated sigh.
‘It happens.’ His voice was low, clipped, matter-of-fact.
‘Not to me.’ Inhaling deeply, Grace leaned back against the plush cushion of the headrest, closing her eyes against the truth.
Because that was just it—it did happen to her. Twice. Twice in her life she had gone the whole way with a man, and only one man. And twice in her life she had conceived, as though something beyond herself was determined that she would be impregnated with his seed. As though her ultimate function in life was to be the mother of his child.
‘I expect every woman who finds herself in the same situation without wanting to be probably says the same thing.’
Yes, but they aren’t having a baby with a man who doesn’t even like them. Whose only reason for making love to them in the first place was just to exact some sort of revenge!
Noticing the increasing tension in the tight line of her jaw, Seth could see that this thing had come as an appalling shock to her, much as it had come as a complete shock to him. She looked now as she had looked the night they had made love and he had queried the possibility of her getting pregnant—like having his child was the last thing she could bear to contemplate. Which it probably was, he thought.
Because of her very high-profile affairs and the way she had treated him originally, he’d believed that to a girl like her men were just things to provide amusement, but in that, at least, he was beginning to realise he’d been wrong. The things Corinne had let slip about her had amazed him, even if he did suspect that they had been disclosed solely to reduce her step-granddaughter’s possible appeal to him and boost her own sexual appeal in his eyes.
But in fact it had had the opposite effect. The knowledge that he could turn the haughty little enchantress who dumped men for a pastime, and who was really as cold as a Siberian winter, into a mass of steaming, sultry passion when he got her between the sheets had given him a shameful, chauvinistic satisfaction. Just how pliable did that make her in his hands? he wondered with a rush of masculine hormones raising the level of his libido a few notches. Because there was no doubt that she did things to him that no other woman had ever done.
Just