Honeymoon Baby

Jennifer’s eyes fluttered open to find Susie’s round face filling her vision.

‘Thank goodness! How do you feel?’

Jennifer moistened her dry lips, momentarily disorientated by the discovery that she was lying flat on the living room couch, with Susie kneeling on the floor beside her.

‘OK...I think,’ she wavered, remembering her awful anxiety dream. Had she been taking a nap? Was her guilt now going to pursue her even into sleep? ‘What happened?’

‘You fainted. Switched out like a light, apparently. Luckily your husband caught you before you fell face first into all that glass.’

‘Husband?’ she echoed feebly.

‘I guess you were too busy feeling rotten to really look at our visitor, huh?’ Susie suggested with a wry grin. ‘I felt horribly embarrassed when I found out who I was giving the bum’s rush to, but fortunately Rafe seems a forgiving kind of guy.’

‘My husband?’ Jennifer struggled up onto her elbows, her whirling head causing her to sink back against the padded arm of the couch. ‘Rafe?’

‘Yeah—he said not to worry about it, that he knew you weren’t expecting him. He wanted to surprise you, but I suppose it wasn’t such a hot idea when you were feeling so wonky...’

So it hadn’t been a dream!

‘He’s really here?’ Jennifer cast a hunted look around the room, her eyes skipping over the comfortable, well-used furniture. Everything was still fuzzy around the edges. She groped at her face.

‘My glasses—where are my glasses?’ She needed a barrier, however flimsy and transparent, to hide behind.

Susie picked them up off the coffee table and handed them to her to fumble on.

‘Now, don’t fret,’ she said, misunderstanding Jennifer’s panic. ‘He’ll be back in a moment. I got him to carry you out here because your clothes got splashed and I knew you wouldn’t want the Carters’ bedclothes all damp when you’d just made all the beds. He’s just in the kitchen getting you a drink. See, here he is back!’

Susie scrambled to her feet to allow the tall, whipcord-lean man to weave around the coffee table and perch sideways on the broad couch. He wedged his right hip against Jennifer’s side as he braced one arm on the cushioned back and leaned over to offer her a sip from the glass of water in his other hand, effectively caging in her body with his chest.

Satisfied that her employer was in good hands, Susie backed away. ‘I’m going to leave for home before this volcanic fog gets any worse, but don’t worry about that mess in the Carters’ room, Jen, I’ ll clean it up for you before I go. That way you two can just concentrate on each other...’

‘Thanks, Susie.’ Rafe’s deep, warm tone cut off Jennifer’s spluttering objection as he pressed the glass to her pale mouth. He threw a burnished smile over his shoulder. ‘You’re a sweetheart, but...’ He trailed off, raising silky brows.

Susie laughed, as if she had known him for years rather than merely minutes. ‘I know, I know—three’s a crowd. I guess I’ll see you later then...much later!’

Jennifer pushed at the glass which had been used to gag her as Susie scampered away. ‘Take it away! I don’t want a drink.’

Trust Jordan to have suborned her ally while she was unconscious. As a former male model, and former editor of a raunchy men’s magazine, he was no doubt used to women falling over themselves to be friendly.

There was no smile for her. Just a probing look. ‘Too bad. You need extra fluids to counteract shock—and don’t tell me you’re not shocked to see me. Drink!’

The glass clinked against her resistant teeth, forcing her head back against the arm of the couch, and, knowing his stubbornness, she took a single swallow, defiantly tiny.

‘Again,’ he insisted.

Another, even tinier sip. ‘Bully,’ she muttered, wondering if she dared spit it in his face.

‘Cheat. Gold-digger,’ he retaliated softly. ‘Thief.’

At the heavy significance placed on the last insult she almost choked on the small mouthful, the blood surging up into her face.

‘Good. You’ve got a little of your colour back,’ he said, studying her clinically. The simmering violence with which he had confronted her in the bedroom was gone, superceded by an implacable air of purpose that was even more threatening. He had taken advantage of her unconsciousness to firmly establish himself in her household, leaving her no option but to fight a rear-guard action.

Close up, his lightly tanned face revealed the imprint of thirty-three years rich with experience, fine lines fanning out from the corners of his knowing eyes and cynical curves bracketing the corners of his sensual mouth. The slight stubble softening the hard line of his jaw sparkled like gold glitter on a Christmas card, and the short, spiky tufts of deep blonde hair, sun-bleached almost white at the tips, created an improbable halo above the narrow temples. However, apart from his name, any similarity to an angel was purely illusory—no angel possessed Raphael Jordan’s decadent past!

‘More?’

He tilted the glass, ignoring her sullen resistance, and a trickle of water repelled by the compressed seam of her lips skated down from the corner of her mouth.

To her intense shock Rafe bent his head and licked the droplets off her chin before they could drip into the cowl-neck of her angora jumper.

‘Stop it!’ she gasped, wiping the back of her hand over the spot where his moist tongue had lashed her tender skin with fire. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

She gulped as he lifted his head, just enough for her to see the sexual taunting in his emerald eyes.

‘Just my husbandly duty, Mrs Jordan...’

She hated the ease with which he could disrupt her senses. From the first time Sebastian had introduced her to his son she had been deeply aware of the dangerous undercurrents, and was secretly grateful for the strained relationship between the two men which had kept their association to a minimum.

‘You said you told Susie the truth,’ she said, her voice ragged with the effort of controlling her fear.

He placed the barely touched glass on the beechwood coffee table without releasing her from his tormenting gaze. ‘Actually, she didn’t give me the chance,’ he admitted with a cool lack of remorse for the fright he had given her. ‘I told her my name and before I could say that I was looking for my father’s wife—’

‘His widow!’ It was a distinction that was vital to Jennifer’s bruised sensibilities.

He inclined his head, his eyes glinting as if her fierce correction had accorded him some kind of important victory.

‘Whatever... As soon as I said I was Raphael Jordan, she began talking as if I was your husband. She seemed so certain that your husband’s name was Rafe, and so positive that you’d be over the moon to see me that I thought it best not to argue with her romantic delusions.’

Best? He meant most useful to his own purposes!

Jennifer clenched her hands at her sides, hating the helplessness of her position but knowing she would be no match for Rafe in a physical tussle. He clearly had no intention of letting her up until she was intimidated into giving him some answers.

She would have to rely on her wits to extricate herself and somehow persuade him to leave before he encountered loose-tongued Susie again, or—God forbid—her mother!

‘It seems funny that she should get so mixed up,’ he mused perilously, ‘because she seemed otherwise a fairly intelligent and switched-on young woman. Could it be, dear stepmama, that you’ve been purposely vague about the whereabouts of your husband? Haven’t you let on that he’s no longer in the land of the living? Been keeping your widow’s mite secret from your impecunious friends and relatives?’

Her stomach roiled at his clever guess. But not clever enough!

‘Don’t call me that! And how can you be so flippant about the death of your own father? I know you two didn’t get on, but you might at least have some respect for his memory—’

‘If you’d bothered to hang around for the funeral you would have seen me paying my respects,’ he ripped at her. ‘I even shed a few tears for the stiff-necked old bastard. But don’t expect me to elevate him to sainthood just because he’s dead. He was a good doctor and a brilliant businessman, but he was a poor husband and a rotten father; his ambitions always got in the way of his relationships and he never stopped trying to force me into his own mould. So don’t preach to me about my filial duty, Stepmama—’

Worms of horror squirmed across her skin. ‘Stop calling me that!’

‘Why, isn’t that what you became when you married my father?’

‘Because it’s—it’s...’