Prince's Love-Child

‘I am not concerned about you,’ she stood up, deciding to try a different tack; if he didn’t care about himself, then perhaps he would care on Dee’s behalf. ‘It’s Dee I’m worried about.’ She glared down at him.

Rik returned her gaze with cool blue eyes, his thoughts now unreadable behind a cold mask.

‘Are you telling me,’ he finally spoke carefully, ‘that Jerome is likely to become violent towards Dee if—?’

‘No, of course I’m not,’ Sapphie denied exasperatedly; she just seemed to be making this situation worse, not better. And she had thought it couldn’t get any worse! ‘For all that she’s emotionally immature, Dee really does love Jerome. Being older than her, he gives her the stability she felt she had lost when her father died—’

‘You presume to know an awful lot about the emotions of the woman who married the man with whom you yourself were in love,’ Rik rasped harshly.

Perhaps she was getting through to him after all.. he certainly didn’t seem amused any more!

‘I don’t presume to know anything—’

‘I think that you do.’ Rik stood up in one fluid movement. ‘And in the circumstances, I find your so-called concern for Dee a little—suspect, shall we say?’

He was very overbearing, towering over her like this, but Sapphie refused to back down now, finally feeling as if she was getting through to him. If she succeeded in getting him to back out of Dee’s life—and consequently her own!—then she didn’t care how intimidating he appeared!

‘No, we will not say,’ she replied tartly. ‘As Dee’s sister, of course I—’

‘As her what?’

Sapphie instinctively took a step backwards at the vehemence in his tone, her eyes widening now as she took in the look of complete shock that he was too disturbed to even attempt to hide.

He hadn’t known, she realised belatedly.

Incredibly, somehow, with everything else that had happened between them that night five years ago, she must have forgotten to mention that Dee was her little sister!

* * *

Sapphie was Dee’s sister? The same stepsister who, along with her mother, had pressured Dee five years ago into going through with her marriage to Jerome Powers?

But wasn’t that what she was doing now, too? Warning him, and every other man by the sound of it, from going anywhere near Dee’s marriage to Jerome.

‘Your name is Benedict, not McCall,’ he finally bit out forcefully. Stupidly. Dee was an actress; McCall probably wasn’t even her real name. But it seemed so impossible that these two women, so totally physically different, could possibly be related in any way, let alone be sisters!

‘We’re half-sisters,’ Sapphie told him dismissively. ‘I was two years old when my mother married Fergus McCall. Dee was born a year later.’

Rik turned away to walk over to the window, staring sightlessly out into the Parisian night.

Damn it, he had been congratulating himself earlier on the fact that he was over whatever he had felt for Dee, that, without him even being aware of it, his emotions had moved on.

And now this!

He hadn’t asked Sapphie five years ago what she was doing at Dee and Jerome’s wedding, whether her connection was to either the bride or groom. In fact, they hadn’t talked much at all, he realised now.

But, thinking back to that time, remembering the things Dee had told him about her stepmother and stepsister, of how they were pressurising her into marrying the rich and powerful Jerome Powers, he couldn’t help but wonder if his meeting with Sapphie that night had been quite as by chance as it had appeared at the time…

‘Let me guess.’ Sapphie spoke behind him. ‘If Dee spoke of her family at all, it was to regale you with the stepmother and stepsister story?’ She grimaced as he turned sharply back to face her. ‘My stepfather died when Dee was thirteen.’ She gave a sad shake of her head. ‘His death hit her very hard, and the only way she could deal with it at the time was to think of herself as the beautiful swan left in the nest of the ugly ducklings! It seemed harmless enough at the time, if a little hurtful to our mother.’

The picture she was painting of Dee wasn’t a pretty one. Rik remembered Dee as a beautiful butterfly desperately trying to fly away from the two women who were trying to run her life for her.

This woman and her mother!

But her mother and half-sister, not stepmother and stepsister…

He gave a dismissive shake of his head; if he once started to doubt Dee’s integrity five years ago, then he really was in trouble!

Sapphie gave a humourless smile. ‘I can see that you don’t believe me.’

It wasn’t a question of believing or not believing her; he was newly coming to terms with the fact that he was no longer in love with Dee, and also with hearing Sapphie telling him that the woman he had thought himself in love with all those years ago had never really existed either—it was just too much to take in!

‘Why the hell should I?’ he came back harshly. ‘You and your mother got your way five years ago, let’s just leave it at that, shall we?’

Sapphie looked perplexed now. ‘My mother? What does she have to do with any of this?’

‘Oh, please!’ he grated.

And to think he had actually been starting to like Sapphie, to admire the cool way she’d dealt with what had happened between them five years ago. Hell, he was no longer even sure that it had just happened between them all those years ago; in fact, the more he thought about the way they had met, their lack of conversation, that shared passion in his hotel suite, the more he began to wonder if it hadn’t all been planned to keep him well and truly occupied while Dee married someone else.

Although this presupposed that Dee’s mother and sister had been aware that there was someone else in Dee’s life besides Jerome…

Damn it, he had to get out of here—before he let those thoughts take him where he didn’t want to go and he actually resorted to strangling Sapphie Benedict for what he now suspected her motives might have been towards him all those years ago!

‘It’s time to go,’ he instructed after a glance at his wrist-watch. ‘Dee and Jerome will be wondering where we are.’

Sapphie looked up at him uncertainly. ‘Rik, what—?’

‘I said it’s time to go!’ he commanded, grasping hold of her arm and manoeuvring her towards the door, allowing no respite when she stumbled slightly trying to pick up her evening bag.

He was too angry at this moment, needed to be where there were other people. Because strangling was probably too good for this woman.

But kissing her, at the same time showing his contempt for her, certainly wasn’t!

He came to an abrupt halt as he reached the door, turning Sapphie Benedict in his arms to lower his head and take possession of her lips with his.

It was a kiss that wasn’t meant to be enjoyed, by either of them. And as Rik felt Sapphie tremble in his arms he knew that she certainly wasn’t deriving any pleasure from it, that if anything she was wary of him, of where his anger might take them. Well, let her be wary. She deserved to be wary. He wanted her to be wary. He wanted to take her…

His deeper, inner, decent self took control at that moment, filling him with self-disgust for the way he was behaving. He had never treated a woman like this in his life before, but as he felt the shuddering sobs that shook Sapphie’s slender body he knew that he was both hurting and humiliating her. Not that she didn’t deserve that—and worse—for what she and her mother had done five years ago; he just didn’t intend lowering himself to her level.

He wrenched his mouth away from hers, taking hold of her upper arms to push her away from him, emotion blazing in his eyes as he saw the wretchedness of her expression, her eyes glittering with unshed tears, her lips puffy and obviously kissed.

An act. It was all an act, he assured himself determinedly; this woman, as much as Jerome Powers, had robbed him of Dee, of the love they had once shared—and he would never forgive her for it.

He drew in a harsh breath. ‘If you’re expecting an apology—’

‘I’m not!’ She wrenched out of his grasp, stepping away from him, the colour returning to her cheeks. ‘I don’t expect anything from you. I never have,’ she added bleakly.

Rik’s eyes narrowed. ‘And what the hell is that supposed to mean?’