Jacqueline Baird - The Sabbides Secret Baby

He cut her off.

‘Come off it, Phoebe, don’t pretend you are that naïve. I got this apartment for you.’

‘I thought I was housesitting for your friend and Marty.’

‘You were—but he sold me the place three months after he left and said you could keep the cat. Apparently he has found a different kind of feline to snuggle up to—hopefully one less devious than you.’

‘Devious!’ she cried ‘How can you call me that after all we have shared?’

‘Quite easily. I gave you a car, jewels, clothes—whatever you wanted you could have. But a wedding ring was never on offer, and you knew that perfectly well from the start and agreed with me. If you think for one minute you can trap me with a child that was never on my agenda…think again.’

Phoebe sank down onto the bed, her mind in turmoil. He had said a child was not on his agenda. Typical business-speak, she realized, for what he really meant. He did not want their child and it was like a knife to her heart. She could not bear to look at Jed, and took a few deep, steadying breaths. Then finally the import of his disavowal of love as a concept registered in her mind, and in a flash of blinding clarity she saw she had been deluding herself from the very start of their relationship. While she had fallen in love and thought Jed was her boyfriend he had only considered her his mistress and treated her accordingly.

Now a lot of little niggling things over the past year made sense. No wonder he had never suggested she go to Greece with him and meet his family and friends, or go anywhere else with him on his travels. He had always had some excuse for not being around when her Aunt Jemma came up from Dorset to London to see her, and she had asked him often enough.

Jed had wined, dined and bedded her. He had even given her a car a week before Christmas. She had tried to refuse, saying he was too generous, but he had insisted she take the car, saying it would be useful for driving home for the holiday. He hadn’t been able to spend it with her because he always went to Greece for the festive season. Much in the same way he’d insisted when he gave her a jewelled clip six weeks after they met, then a diamond bracelet for her twenty-first last August, and insisted on taking her shopping for designer clothes and lingerie that were not really her.

She had learnt it was easier to accept gracefully than to object. But she had never met any of his friends other than the man who had originally owned this apartment, and Dr Marcus with whom he had gone to school. She was simply his mistress in London. The weekend in Paris had been the only time he had taken her abroad—what a cliché! Then another sickening thought hit her. If he considered her simply a mistress maybe she was not the only one. He probably had others in New York and Greece and heaven knew where else.

Her shoulders slumped and her head fell forward. She raised her hands to run them despairingly through her tangled hair, blinking away the tears that threatened. How could she have been so dumb, so mistaken about Jed, her first and only lover?

Liz had been right all along, and she had been too besotted to see the truth…

Jed looked at Phoebe’s downbent head saw the utter devastation she could not hide. The shock and anger that had overtaken him subsided a little. If she was pregnant of course he would take care of her. But first he needed Dr Marcus to confirm the pregnancy and, given he had been away for weeks at a time throughout their affair, he needed to be certain the child was his before he could even consider marrying her—though no child of his was going to be born out of wedlock. Lock being the operative word, he thought cynically…Marriage meant the end of his bachelor days.

He could not deal with Phoebe now. He needed time to think, and he had a breakfast meeting in an hour.

He walked around to where she sat, and laid a hand on her shoulder. He felt her jerk away from him, which angered him again.

‘I have not time for this now,’ he said curtly. ‘I have meetings lined up all day that I can’t miss, and I have to be in Greece by tomorrow evening for my father’s birthday party.’

More important to Jed was the fact his father was retiring. The lawyers had been summoned, and tomorrow night he would be officially installed as the head of the Sabbides Corporation—the firm he had been running unofficially along with his own for the past few years. Not that Phoebe needed to know. His business had nothing to do with her.

‘But don’t worry—I will speak to Marcus before I go. He is an excellent doctor, and discreet. He will take care of your pregnancy, and I will pay for everything, I can assure you.’

She slowly lifted her head and stared at him for a long moment. She wasn’t crying and her usually brilliant blue eyes were oddly blank.

‘I’m not worried—and I’m sure he will,’ she said quietly, and glanced back down at her clasped hands.

‘Good.’ Jed hesitated. He had never seen Phoebe look so subdued. Maybe he should say something. But he didn’t do emotions, and he was still in shock, so he said, ‘I need a shower,’ and strode into the bathroom.

Ten minutes later, after a cool shower, he’d had time to think. Maybe he had been a bit harsh on Phoebe. Either by accident or design it didn’t really matter—she was still a pregnant woman. He dressed swiftly and went looking for her. He found her sitting in the kitchen, with a cup of tea in one hand and stroking the cat curled up on her lap with the other. She loved the damn cat, which barely tolerated him, and for some reason that angered him further.

‘I must leave now. I’ll see you tonight and we can discuss the necessary arrangements.’ Obviously he would set her up with an allowance straight away. As for the rest—once paternity was proved, everything could be organised.

Phoebe put the cup down on the table and glanced at Jed. He was immaculately dressed in a charcoal-grey suit, perfectly tailored to fit his broad-shouldered, long and lean frame, and a white shirt and silk tie. How had she ever imagined he was her boyfriend? she thought, appalled at her own naivety. He’d reached thirty last month, and she had splashed out and bought him a nineteenth-century solid gold seal in the shape of a heart. She had spotted it in an antiques shop, and thought he would see the symbolism in her gift—that she was giving him her heart. How dumb was that? He had never looked past her body, and now he had decided it—she—had betrayed him. He was every inch the successful tycoon, and she had been living in cloud cuckoo land to believe otherwise.

She nodded her head, incapable of speaking to the ruthless, arrogant pig…He had ripped her heart to shreds with his brutally cynical reaction to her pregnancy, cold-bloodedly accusing her of being the worst kind of gold-digger, plotting and planning to get pregnant and get his money. That Jed—the man she loved—could actually think so badly of her told her he had never really known her at all. While she’d thought she had touched his heart, all she had ever been to him was a willing female in his bed. His mistress…

When he had casually told her his good friend the doctor would discreetly ‘take care’ of her pregnancy—as though her unborn child was less than nothing, a blip to be dispensed with in the smooth running of his life—she’d known it was over. Utterly finished.

Jed didn’t want a baby. It was not on his agenda…What kind of cold-hearted man was he that he could even equate a baby with a business agenda? But then business was his life and everything else was peripheral, she realised. A termination was what he was offering her—not the love and the support she had so stupidly expected. His solution was to pay his doctor friend to make the baby go away. Work, money, and the power that went with it were his obsession, and she had been the biggest idiot in the world to think anything different.