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Authors: Jacqueline Baird
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burning inside him.
A month after graduating from university Phoebe Brown had been back home, living with her aunt in a small village in Dorset—where Jed had guessed she had gone when he’d found the apartment empty. It was no surprise. She had spent a further year qualifying as a teacher, and was now employed in that capacity at a private girls’ school in Dorset. She had bought a rundown cottage attached to her aunt’s, and between them they had converted the property into one detached cottage. There she led a quiet, uneventful life with her family and was a well-respected member of the community and liked by everyone who knew her.
But what was a surprise, and what had caused Jed’s unexpected flash of rage, was in the detail of that family…
Phoebe was a single mother of a boy of four years old. Not unusual in this day and age. But what he had instantlyrealized, and what was anathema to Jed, was that the baby had been born only seven months and one week after the miscarriage of their child, and there was no father listed on the registration of its birth.
He couldn’t believe it. Deep down he didn’t want to, but he had too. It was there on the copy of the birth certificate. The baby had been born at Bowesmartin Cottage Hospital in the county of Dorset. The baby must have been premature—that was the obvious conclusion.
Well, the sweet, innocent Phoebe he had thought he had known was nothing to him. She was the past, and he should have left it at that. For all her beauty, she was beneath contempt in his eyes.
For years he had carried a lingering sense of guilt over what had happened between them, but not any more…So much for her constant avowals of love. It simply reinforced what Jed had always believed: there was no such thing as love, and women always had an agenda…
Phoebe could not have taken more than a week before falling into bed with another man and getting pregnant again. Maybe she was type of women who wanted a child more than she wanted a man? But in his experience it was older career woman who fell into that category—biological clock ticking syndrome, which certainly had not applied to Phoebe at the time.
What did he care? His brief flight of fancy in considering resuming their affair was just that…a momentary blip in his razor-sharp brain. Their relationship had finished long ago. What Phoebe Brown did with her life was nothing to him…
Turning back to his desk, determined to dismiss her from his thoughts once and for all and get some work done, he reached for the folder to put it away and hesitated.
Something about Phoebe and her son did not add up…With his vast experience in business and finance he knew that after analysing all known facts and the people involved if the figures were too incredible to be believed they were invariably false.
He picked up the photograph and looked at it again more closely. It had obviously been taken from a distance—not that surprising, as taking unauthorised pictures of young school children was a risky business in this day and age—and there were other women and children in the background. The features of the mother and child in the foreground were clear enough, though the color of the eyes was indecipherable, but it was definitely Phoebe standing by the school gates, smiling down at the small, sturdy dark-haired child holding her hand.
As he studied the image on the paper he had a sense of recognition that built and built the longer he examined the photograph.
He got to his feet, a steely and pitiless light gleaming in his dark eyes. If his suspicions were correct, Phoebe Brown had to be the greatest actress and the most devious, contemptible woman he had ever had the misfortune to meet.
With a face like thunder he walked into his secretary’s office and told her to cancel all his appointments in Athens until further notice. He was going to visit the London office. She must order the company jet to take him to England as soon as possible.
A month after graduating from university Phoebe Brown had been back home, living with her aunt in a small village in Dorset—where Jed had guessed she had gone when he’d found the apartment empty. It was no surprise. She had spent a further year qualifying as a teacher, and was now employed in that capacity at a private girls’ school in Dorset. She had bought a rundown cottage attached to her aunt’s, and between them they had converted the property into one detached cottage. There she led a quiet, uneventful life with her family and was a well-respected member of the community and liked by everyone who knew her.
But what was a surprise, and what had caused Jed’s unexpected flash of rage, was in the detail of that family…
Phoebe was a single mother of a boy of four years old. Not unusual in this day and age. But what he had instantlyrealized, and what was anathema to Jed, was that the baby had been born only seven months and one week after the miscarriage of their child, and there was no father listed on the registration of its birth.
He couldn’t believe it. Deep down he didn’t want to, but he had too. It was there on the copy of the birth certificate. The baby had been born at Bowesmartin Cottage Hospital in the county of Dorset. The baby must have been premature—that was the obvious conclusion.
Well, the sweet, innocent Phoebe he had thought he had known was nothing to him. She was the past, and he should have left it at that. For all her beauty, she was beneath contempt in his eyes.
For years he had carried a lingering sense of guilt over what had happened between them, but not any more…So much for her constant avowals of love. It simply reinforced what Jed had always believed: there was no such thing as love, and women always had an agenda…
Phoebe could not have taken more than a week before falling into bed with another man and getting pregnant again. Maybe she was type of women who wanted a child more than she wanted a man? But in his experience it was older career woman who fell into that category—biological clock ticking syndrome, which certainly had not applied to Phoebe at the time.
What did he care? His brief flight of fancy in considering resuming their affair was just that…a momentary blip in his razor-sharp brain. Their relationship had finished long ago. What Phoebe Brown did with her life was nothing to him…
Turning back to his desk, determined to dismiss her from his thoughts once and for all and get some work done, he reached for the folder to put it away and hesitated.
Something about Phoebe and her son did not add up…With his vast experience in business and finance he knew that after analysing all known facts and the people involved if the figures were too incredible to be believed they were invariably false.
He picked up the photograph and looked at it again more closely. It had obviously been taken from a distance—not that surprising, as taking unauthorised pictures of young school children was a risky business in this day and age—and there were other women and children in the background. The features of the mother and child in the foreground were clear enough, though the color of the eyes was indecipherable, but it was definitely Phoebe standing by the school gates, smiling down at the small, sturdy dark-haired child holding her hand.
As he studied the image on the paper he had a sense of recognition that built and built the longer he examined the photograph.
He got to his feet, a steely and pitiless light gleaming in his dark eyes. If his suspicions were correct, Phoebe Brown had to be the greatest actress and the most devious, contemptible woman he had ever had the misfortune to meet.
With a face like thunder he walked into his secretary’s office and told her to cancel all his appointments in Athens until further notice. He was going to visit the London office. She must order the company jet to take him to England as soon as possible.
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