not remember ever thinking that with a woman before and it really spooked him.
Springing out of bed, Sebasten lifted the phone and ordered breakfast and might well have made it into the bathroom to join her in the shower had he not stood on her tiny handbag where it had been abandoned on the floor the night before.
With a muttered curse as he wondered whether he had broken anything inside it, he swept it up and the contents fell out because the zipper hadn’t been closed. Reaching for the items, he thrust them back into the bag and in that rather impatient handling her driver’s licence slipped out of her purse. He studied her photograph with a smile and was in the act of putting it back when he saw the name.
Liza Denton.
What the hell was Lizzie doing with another woman’s driving licence in her possession? Sebasten stilled with a dark frown until he looked back at the photograph and the truth exploded on him with all the efficacy of an earthquake beneath his feet. Lizzie was usually short for Elizabeth but mightn’t it also be a diminutive for Liza? In thunderous disbelief, he recalled the club manager pointing out the small blonde on the dance floor the night before. It dawned on him then that the man might well have been pointing at Lizzie instead, for the two women had been standing together.
In a rare state of shock, Sebasten stared back down at the photo. Lizzie was Liza Denton, the vindictive, man-hungry tramp who had driven his own kid brother to self-destruction. Sebasten shuddered. Not only had Lizzie pretended to have only the most tenuous acquaintance with Connor, but she had also outright lied by giving him a false surname! Her awareness of the notoriety of her own name and her deliberate concealment of her true identity was, in his opinion, absolute proof of her guilt.
Lizzie Denton was a class act too, Sebasten acknowledged as he threw on clothes at speed, ferocious rage rising in direct proportion to the raw distaste now slicing through him. That he should have slept with the woman whom poor Connor had loved to distraction! That he himself should then have been taken in to the extent of believing her to be a virgin! Sebasten snatched in a harsh breath.
On top of that first shattering discovery the conviction that the judgement and intelligence that he prided himself on should have fallen victim to a clever act was even more galling. Of course, it had been an act calculated to impress! So calculating a woman would be well aware that, for a male as cynical and bone-deep Greek as he was, a pretence of sexual innocence had immense pulling power. For he had liked that idea, hadn’t he? The idea that he was the first to make her feel like that? The first to stamp that look of shellshocked admiration on her lovely face?
And why had she done it? Well, hadn’t she told him that herself? And very prettily too with tears glistening in her big green eyes. Her adoring daddy had pulled the plug on her credit line and she had to be desperate to find a rich and generous boyfriend to keep her in the style to which she was accustomed, sooner than accept the hard grind of the daily employment that others less fortunate took for granted as their lot in life. Then Lizzie Denton had not bargained on dealing with Connor’s big brother, had she?
In the fiery space of a moment, Sebasten knew exactly what he was about to do and little of his usual caution was in evidence. He would play her silly games until she was wholly in his power and then when she least expected it he would dump her as publicly as she had dumped Connor. He would repay lies with lies, hurt with hurt and pain with pain. It might not be the towering revenge he had quite envisaged but then why should her entire family suffer for her sins when it was evident that her father had already repudiated his daughter in disgust? It would be a much more personal act of vengeance…
With a chilling smile hardening his handsome mouth, Sebasten knocked on the
Springing out of bed, Sebasten lifted the phone and ordered breakfast and might well have made it into the bathroom to join her in the shower had he not stood on her tiny handbag where it had been abandoned on the floor the night before.
With a muttered curse as he wondered whether he had broken anything inside it, he swept it up and the contents fell out because the zipper hadn’t been closed. Reaching for the items, he thrust them back into the bag and in that rather impatient handling her driver’s licence slipped out of her purse. He studied her photograph with a smile and was in the act of putting it back when he saw the name.
Liza Denton.
What the hell was Lizzie doing with another woman’s driving licence in her possession? Sebasten stilled with a dark frown until he looked back at the photograph and the truth exploded on him with all the efficacy of an earthquake beneath his feet. Lizzie was usually short for Elizabeth but mightn’t it also be a diminutive for Liza? In thunderous disbelief, he recalled the club manager pointing out the small blonde on the dance floor the night before. It dawned on him then that the man might well have been pointing at Lizzie instead, for the two women had been standing together.
In a rare state of shock, Sebasten stared back down at the photo. Lizzie was Liza Denton, the vindictive, man-hungry tramp who had driven his own kid brother to self-destruction. Sebasten shuddered. Not only had Lizzie pretended to have only the most tenuous acquaintance with Connor, but she had also outright lied by giving him a false surname! Her awareness of the notoriety of her own name and her deliberate concealment of her true identity was, in his opinion, absolute proof of her guilt.
Lizzie Denton was a class act too, Sebasten acknowledged as he threw on clothes at speed, ferocious rage rising in direct proportion to the raw distaste now slicing through him. That he should have slept with the woman whom poor Connor had loved to distraction! That he himself should then have been taken in to the extent of believing her to be a virgin! Sebasten snatched in a harsh breath.
On top of that first shattering discovery the conviction that the judgement and intelligence that he prided himself on should have fallen victim to a clever act was even more galling. Of course, it had been an act calculated to impress! So calculating a woman would be well aware that, for a male as cynical and bone-deep Greek as he was, a pretence of sexual innocence had immense pulling power. For he had liked that idea, hadn’t he? The idea that he was the first to make her feel like that? The first to stamp that look of shellshocked admiration on her lovely face?
And why had she done it? Well, hadn’t she told him that herself? And very prettily too with tears glistening in her big green eyes. Her adoring daddy had pulled the plug on her credit line and she had to be desperate to find a rich and generous boyfriend to keep her in the style to which she was accustomed, sooner than accept the hard grind of the daily employment that others less fortunate took for granted as their lot in life. Then Lizzie Denton had not bargained on dealing with Connor’s big brother, had she?
In the fiery space of a moment, Sebasten knew exactly what he was about to do and little of his usual caution was in evidence. He would play her silly games until she was wholly in his power and then when she least expected it he would dump her as publicly as she had dumped Connor. He would repay lies with lies, hurt with hurt and pain with pain. It might not be the towering revenge he had quite envisaged but then why should her entire family suffer for her sins when it was evident that her father had already repudiated his daughter in disgust? It would be a much more personal act of vengeance…
With a chilling smile hardening his handsome mouth, Sebasten knocked on the
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