Maggie Cox - Red-Hot Seduction - The Sins of Sebastian Rey-Defoe / A Taste of Sin / Driving Her Crazy

‘Why him and not you?’

‘People want pretty babies. Mark had blond curls and dimples—he was adorable. I was not an attractive baby.’ It was a matter-of-fact statement with no self-pity he could detect, and all the more poignant because of it.

‘Aren’t all babies pretty?’

‘Not me. I was allergic to pretty much everything. I had asthma, that wasn’t so bad, but my skin was awful—eczema. It took hours every day putting on and washing off my treatments...and when it flared up...’ She gave a little shudder at the memory. ‘People do not want to push around a scabby baby, and not many want the responsibility of looking after a kid with a chronic skin condition.

‘Mark got left on the shelf with me, and when we did get fostered my red-headed temper—well, you’ve seen that—got us sent back both times. So, you see, without me Mark could have had a very different life.’

‘Is that how you think of yourself—left on the shelf...?’

‘Actually it was a doorstep.’ To abandon your own babies that way you had to be pretty desperate...but maybe if there had only been one...?

She heard him swear and then, anxious that he didn’t think she was playing for the sympathy vote, added quickly, ‘It wasn’t all doom and gloom, though, in our teens. We got fostered by Sukie and Jack, and they are the most inspirational couple you can imagine,’ she enthused, her voice filling with warmth.

‘Are you coming?’

He knew it was irrational of him to be angry with her for not being a person he could despise. It was a lot easier to take advantage of someone when you could say they were asking for it, they deserved it, than someone who literally didn’t ask for anything, and as far as he could see had never been given anything either! Mari had worked hard and...ah, hell, she was an adult. If she wanted to spend her life paying an imagined debt, that was her business, he told himself. The story changed nothing.

Mari began to follow and stopped. He didn’t even bother to turn around and see if she’d responded, just assumed she would.

And why wouldn’t he? She’d been responding like some meek little lamb from the moment she’d allowed herself to be bundled onto the private jet and, yes, there had been a certain amount of novelty value in the unaccustomed luxury, but it had worn off and now... What the hell are you doing, Mari?

Mari Rey-Defoe.

Mrs Rey-Defoe.

She pressed a hand to her lips but the giggle slipped past. She was married. She used both hands this time to muffle the hysteria that was locked in her throat.

From where he was standing, Seb, who had walked halfway across the gravel, heard it. There was irritation written in the lines of his lean face when he turned and saw her still standing near the car. All he could make out was the shadowy outline of her slim figure, then the moon came out from behind the heavy cloud cover.

He swore softly under his breath. Nothing, he thought savagely, was easy with this woman. She had set out to make his life as tough as possible, and when she couldn’t stage something large and dramatic she made do with little niggling details that added up to a massive and frustrating whole.

The logical thing to do would have been to put her out of his life and erect six walls to keep her out, and yet here he was dragging her in and effectively building walls to keep her there for eighteen long months. Eighteen excruciating months without sex, spent with a woman who could make a sneeze erotic.

At what point had this seemed like a logical next step?

It was a means to an end, he reminded himself. This was about saving several thousand jobs and a partnership that in the future could generate a lot more—a means to an end.

Sure it is , the voice in his head mocked, the end being your bed.

The illicit thought came with the accompanying image; he had undressed her in his head over the past few days so often that he felt he knew exactly what she would look like.

He ignored the voice and the desire that twisted inside him, and reminded himself this was a business deal. You let business get personal and it never ended well.

‘Come on.’ The idea of a shower and bed was appealing; the idea of a bed with Mari in it... He saw red hair spread out against the white sheet framing a face that... He clenched his jaw against the thought, but not before his body hardened. ‘It’s this way. Watch your step.’ He jerked his head towards the house.

Ignoring the gesture—did the man think she was some sort of puppy dog to be brought to heel?—Mari shook her head and struggled to maintain her defiant attitude as he crossed the gravel towards her, his long-legged stride bringing him there in seconds.

The resentful words exploded from her before the testosterone he was oozing made her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth, a situation she been experiencing all day.

‘You’ve been pushing me around all day.’

Not in the literal sense. It had almost seemed at times as though he had gone out of his way to avoid touching her. Even at the joke of a marriage ceremony when the registrar had said he could kiss the bride, Seb had barely even brushed his lips with hers, leaving her looking and feeling like a total fool.

The aggravating part of the situation was she had been letting him, and it was not a good precedent to set for the next eighteen months with a man as bossy and controlling as Seb.

She folded her arms across her chest. ‘I’ve had enough. You’re a control freak, and I’m not going another step until you tell me where we are.’

‘Don’t be childish. All you had to do was ask, but you were too busy playing the victim and giving me the stink eye.’

‘I’m amazed you noticed. You haven’t looked up from that damned tablet the whole way.’

‘Feeling neglected, were we?’

‘Not at all,’ she retorted haughtily. ‘It was an education to see what delightful manners years of inbreeding and the best school can achieve.’ It had gone pitch-black again, but his answering hiss made her decide to move on. She’d made her point, although she’d forgotten what it was as he’d taken a step towards her, not touching but awfully close...too close. ‘I’m asking now.’

Now that he was close to losing his temper she sounded maddeningly calm. She had accused him of bad manners, yet she had responded to any question with a mutter and barely said a word the entire way here; filthy looks and her ramrod-straight back—he doubted her shoulder blades had made contact with a chair back at any point—were all that had been given him.

‘Fine, but indoors.’ He glanced up as a cloud drifted like smoke across the moon. ‘There’s a storm coming.’

‘And you can tell that how?’

Before she could pour further scorn on his confident prediction there was a distant roll of thunder. So instead she flung him a disgruntled glare and directed her gaze at the sinister outline of the stone building they stood before. It rose out of the forest, making her think of a haunted mansion in a Gothic romance. Did that make her the spunky but vulnerable heroine...?

She almost laughed at the thought. She was none of the above!

‘I think I’d feel safer out here. There is no way that place is a hotel.’ The place looked very Gothic, and a little shiver slid a clammy path down her spine.

‘No,’ he agreed with infuriating placidity. ‘It’s not.’

‘It looks like the set of a vampire movie!’

Despite himself Seb’s lips twitched. ‘It was a monastery.’

Her voice rose to an indignant squeak. ‘You’ve brought me to a monastery?’

‘ Obviously it is no longer a monastery. It was for a short time, I believe, a school, and now it is my grandmother’s home. Her family came from this area of Spain originally and her twin sister still lives close by. After she was widowed she returned here.’