Carole Mortimer - Mother's Day Treats

‘It was murder, you know…’ Ingrid condemned half under her breath.

Sebasten’s winged dark brows drew together but he remained silent, for he had heard the rumour that Connor’s car crash had been no accident, indeed, a deliberate act of self-destruction, and he knew that there was no more painful way to lose a loved one. She needed to talk and he knew that listening was the kindest thing he could do for her.

‘I liked Lisa Denton…when I met that evil little shrew, I actually liked her!’ Ingrid proclaimed with bone-deep bitterness.

The silence lay before Ingrid continued in a tremulous tone. ‘I knew Connor was in love when he stopped confiding in me. That hurt but he was twenty-four…that’s why I didn’t pry.’

‘Lisa Denton?’ Sebasten was keen to deflect her from that unfortunate angle.

Her stricken blue eyes hardened. ‘A spoilt little rich brat. Gets her kicks out of encouraging men to make an ass of themselves over her! It’s only three months since Connor met her but I could tell he’d fallen like a ton of bricks.’ The older woman swallowed with visible difficulty. ‘Then without any warning, she got bored. She cut him dead at a party two weeks ago…made an exhibition of herself with another man, laughed in his face…his friends told me everything!’

Sebasten waited while Ingrid gathered her shredded composure back together again.

‘He begged but she wouldn’t even take a phone call from him. He’d done nothing. He couldn’t handle it,’ Ingrid sobbed brokenly. ‘He wasn’t sleeping, so he went for a drive in his car in the middle of the night and drove it into a wall!’

Sebasten curved an arm round her in a consoling embrace and seethed with angry distaste at the ugly picture she had drawn up. Connor would have been soft as butter in the hands of a manipulative little bitch like that.

‘You’re going to hate me for what I t-tell you now…’ Ingrid whispered shakily.

‘Nonsense,’ Sebasten soothed.

‘Connor was your half-brother…’

Sebasten released his breath in a sudden startled hiss and collided with Ingrid’s both defiant and guilty gaze.

‘No…that’s not possible,’ he breathed in total shock, not wanting it to be true when it was too late for him to do anything about it.

Ingrid sank down in a distraught heap and sobbed out a storm of self-justification while Sebasten stared at her as though he had never seen her before. She had never told his father, Andros, because she had known how ruthless Andros would be at protecting the good name of the Contaxis family from scandal.

‘If Andros had known, he would’ve bullied me into having a termination. So I left him, came back eighteen months later, confessed to a rebound relationship, grovelled…eventually he took me back!’ For a frozen instant in time, Ingrid’s face shone with the remembered triumph of having fooled her powerful lover and then her eyes, fell, the flash of energy draining away again.

‘How could you not tell me before this?’ Sebasten bit out in an electrifying undertone, lean, strong face rigid with the force of his appalled incredulity. In the space of seconds, Connor’s death had gone from a matter of sincere and sad regret to a tragedy which gutted Sebasten. But he knew why, knew all too well why she had kept quiet. Fear of the consequences would have kept her quiet throughout all the years she had loved his father without adequate return.

‘I’m only telling you now because I want you to make Lisa Denton sorry she was ever born…’ Ingrid confided with harsh clarity as his brilliant gaze locked to her set features and the hatred she could not hide. ‘You’re one of the richest men on this planet and I don’t care how you do it. There have got to be strings you could pull, pressure you could put on somewhere with someone to punish her for what she did to Connor…’

‘No,’ Sebasten murmured without inflection, a big, dark, powerful Greek male, over six feet four in height and with shimmering dark golden eyes as steady as rock. ‘I am a Contaxis and I have honour.’

Minutes later, Sebasten swept out of Ingrid’s home, impervious to the lingering mourners keen to get a second look at him. In the privacy of his limo, he sank a double whiskey. His lean, dark, handsome face was hard and taut and ashen pale. He had no doubt that Ingrid had told him the truth. Connor…the little brother he had only run into twice at polo matches in recent years. He might have protected him from his own weakness but he hadn’t been given the chance. Certainly, he could have taught him how to handle that kind of woman. Had Lisa Denton found out that, in spite of his popularity and his wealthy friends, Connor was essentially penniless but for his winnings on the polo field? Or had Connor’s puppy-dog adoration simply turned her off big time? His wide, sensual mouth curled. Was she a drop-dead babe who treated men like trophies?

He pitied Ingrid for the bitterness that consumed her. Yet even after all those years in Greece, she still hadn’t learned that one essential truth: a man never discussed family honour with a woman or involved her in certain personal matters…

Maurice Denton stared out of his library window and then turned round to face his daughter, his thin, handsome face set with rigid disapproval.

‘I can’t excuse anything you’ve done,’ he asserted.

Lizzie was so white that her reddish-blonde hair seemed to burn like a brand above her forehead. ‘I didn’t ask you to,’ she murmured unevenly. ‘I just said…we all make mistakes…and dating Connor was mine.’

‘There are standards of decent behaviour and you’ve broken them,’ the older man delivered as harshly as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘I’m ashamed of you.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice wobbled in spite of all her efforts to control it but that last assurance had burned deep. ‘I’m really…sorry.’

‘It’s too late, isn’t it? What I can’t forgive is the public embarrassment and distress that you’ve caused your stepmother. Last night, Felicity and I should have been dining with the Jurgens but it was cancelled with a flimsy excuse. As word gets around that your cruelty literally drove the Morgan boy to his death, we’re becoming as socially unacceptable as you have made yourself—’

‘Dad—’

‘Hannah Jurgen was very fond of Connor. A lot of people were. Felicity was extremely upset by that cancellation. Indeed, from the minute the details of this hideous business began leaking into the tabloids Felicity has scarcely slept a night through!’ Maurice condemned fiercely.

Pale as milk, Lizzie turned her head away, her throat tight and aching. She might have told him that his young and beautiful wife, the woman who was the very centre of his universe, couldn’t sleep for fear of exposure. But what right did she have to play God with his marriage? She asked herself painfully. What right did she have to speak and destroy that marriage when the future security of her own little unborn brother or sister was also involved in the equation?

‘Do you think it’s healthy for a pregnant woman to live in this atmosphere and tolerate being cold-shouldered by those she counted as friends just because you’ve made yourself a pariah?’ her father demanded in driven continuance.

‘I broke off my relationship with Connor. I didn’t do anything else.’ Even as Lizzie struggled to maintain her brittle composure she was trembling, for she was not accustomed to hearing that cold, accusing tone from her father, and in her hurt and bewilderment she could not find the right words to try and defend her own actions. ‘I’m not to blame for his death,’ she swore in a feverish protest. ‘He had problems that had nothing to do with me!’

‘This morning, Felicity went down to the cottage to rest,’ the older man revealed with speaking condemnation. ‘I want my wife home by my side where she ought to be. Right now, she needs looking after and my first loyalty lies with her and our unborn child. For that reason, I’ve reached a decision, one I probably should have made a long time ago. I’m cutting off your allowance and I want you to move out.’