The Contaxis Baby Read Free Page B

dance.
    Up on the overhanging wrought-iron gallery above, Sebasten was scanning the crowds below while the club manager gushed by his side, ‘I recognised the Denton girl when she arrived. She looks a right little goer…’
    Derisive distaste lit Sebasten’s brooding gaze. The very fact that Lisa Denton was out clubbing only forty-eight hours after the funeral told him all he needed to know about the woman who had trashed Connor’s life.
    ‘Although little wouldn’t be the operative word,’ the older man chuckled. ‘She’s a big girl…not even that pretty; wouldn’t be my style anyway.’
    His companion’s inappropriate tone of prurience gritted Sebasten’s even white teeth. Beyond the fact that he had a very definite need to put a face to the name, he had no other immediate motive for seeking out Lisa Denton. She would pay for what she had done to Connor but Sebasten never acted in reckless haste and invariably employed the most subtle means of retribution against those who injured him.
    At that point, his attention was ensnared by the slender woman spinning below the lights on the dance floor below, long hair the colour of marmalade splaying in a sea of amber luxuriance around her bare shoulders. She flung her head back with the kind of suggestive abandonment that fired a leap of pure adrenalin in Sebasten. Every muscle in his big, powerful length snapped taut when he saw her face: the exotic slant of her cheekbones below big, faraway eyes and a lush, full-lipped pink mouth. Her beauty was distinctive, unusual. Her white halter-neck top glittered above a sleek, smooth midriff and she sported a skirt the tantalising width of a belt above lithe, shapely legs that were at least three feet long. Bloody gorgeous, Sebasten decided, sticking out an expectant hand for the drink he had ordered and receiving it while contemplating that face and those legs and every visible inch that lay between with unashamed lust and wholly dishonourable intentions. Tonight, he would not be sleeping alone…
    ‘That’s her…the blonde…’
    Recalled to the thorny question of Lisa Denton by his companion’s pointing hand, Sebasten looked to one side of his racy lady with the marmalade hair and, seeing a small blonde with the apparent cleavage of the Grand Canyon, understood why the manager had referred to his quarry as a big girl. So that was the nasty little piece of work whom Connor had lost his head over. Sebasten was not impressed but then he hadn’t wanted or expected to be.
    On the dance floor below, Jen touched Lizzie’s shoulder to attract her attention. Only then did Sebasten appreciate that the two women knew each other and he frowned, for such a close connection could prove to be a complication. It was predictable that within the space of ten seconds Sebasten had worked out how that acquaintance might even benefit his purpose.
    Jen reached the table she had been seated at with Lizzie first and then turned with compressed lips. ‘I’ve been thinking that…well, perhaps it’s not such a good idea for you to stay with me…’
    Remembering the dialogue that she had overheard in the cloakroom, Lizzie felt her heart sink. ‘Has someone been getting at you?’
    ‘Let’s be cool about this,’ Jen urged with a brittle smile. ‘I have every sympathy for the situation you’re in right now but I have to think of myself too and I don’t want to—’
    ‘Get the same treatment?’ Lizzie slotted in.
    Jen nodded, grateful that Lizzie had grasped the point so fast. ‘You should just go to a hotel and keep your head down for a while. You can pick up your things tomorrow. By this time next week, everybody will have found something other than Connor to get wound up about.’
    And with that unlikely forecast, Jen walked without hesitation into the enemy camp two tables away and sat down with the crowd, who had been ignoring Lizzie all evening. For an awful instant, Lizzie was terrified that she was going to break down and sob