Restless Billionaire (21 page)

 
          
Aneesa
asked hesitantly, ‘Why does she think she’s pregnant?’

 
          
The
woman shrugged her shoulders and smiled sadly. ‘We don’t know for sure but it’s
obviously linked to when being pregnant was a happy time for her, so it’s as if
she’s stuck there—in the past.’

 
          
After
a few more minutes of polite conversation, the woman excused herself and Aneesa
went outside. She told the driver where she was going, and started to wander
back up to the main
house,
going in the opposite
direction to the one Sebastian had taken with his mother. Her mind was buzzing,
so many things falling into place.

 
          
It
was time for Aneesa to face facts. It was glaringly obvious now where Sebastian’s
antipathy to becoming a parent stemmed from. He’d had no role model to speak
of, and his brother, who had assumed both parental roles, had abandoned him at
a vulnerable age. Her instinct that he would be a good father would hardly be
enough to entice him to take on the role.

 
          
She
and Sebastian might share an explosive chemistry, but clearly he resented it.
Just as he resented the fact that she was seeing a side to him that
he kept well hidden from everyone else.
His cagey and secretive
behaviour this morning was because he’d had no intention of telling her about
his mother. But she, as usual, had lumbered in with two left feet and forced
the issue into the open.

 
          
She
recalled the tortured sound of his voice when he’d declared she was a thorn in
his side. It was becoming very clear to Aneesa that the longer she stayed with
him, the more resentful he would become.
Eventually despising
her for upsetting his life beyond recognition.
For
seeing more than he’d ever wanted anyone to see.
She didn’t doubt that
his desire for her would wane once she was gone, and he could get on with his
free and independent lifestyle.

 
          
The
logical thing would be to take him up on his suggestion of moving into
her own
place, but she couldn’t do that. London wasn’t her
home, and she couldn’t bear to see Sebastian get on with his life right under
her nose, checking up on her out of a sense of duty and because she happened to
be having his baby.

 
          
This
visit to his mother told her how deeply ingrained a sense of duty was to him and
she didn’t want to become his
duty
.

 
          
Aneesa
was sitting on a bench in the sunshine when Sebastian found her a while later.
She still felt a little numb inside at the decision she’d made. He sat down
beside her. She looked at him and saw the lines around his mouth and could only
imagine the untold pain of visiting a mother who didn’t even recognise who you
were.

 
          
‘I’m
sorry for assuming you were visiting a mistress, but I’m not sorry I met your
mother.’

 
          
‘She
liked you.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Very possibly because she thinks you both have a
lot in common, being pregnant.’

 
          
‘Why
does she think you’re Nathaniel?’

 
          
His
mouth tightened. ‘Because he’s the one she chose to take into the lake when she
tried to kill herself. He’s the one my father didn’t want.’ He looked at her
and she shivered at the bleak look in his eyes. ‘The fact that she recognised
him as little as
me
over the years was no consolation.
She was still obsessed by him. Do you know that for a long time I felt jealous
of Nathaniel—because she’d chosen to try and kill herself with him instead of
me?’

 
          
Aneesa
couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to touch Sebastian’s hand briefly. ‘I
think that sounds entirely normal. And I think on some level she knows exactly
who you are. You’re doing a wonderful thing not to challenge her beliefs.’

 
          
They
sat in silence for a few minutes and then Aneesa blurted out what she had to
say, afraid that if she didn’t say it now, she’d be too weak later.

 
          
‘I
need to go home, Sebastian. I want to be with my family.’ She couldn’t look at
him, too afraid of the relief she might see on his face. The thorn in his side
would finally be gone.

 
          
‘I’m
ready to go back, and be a mother on my own—I have no problem with that, but I
will need my family around me. I was going to return sooner or later, it might
as well be now.’

 
          
Sebastian
turned and, compelled, she glanced at him. She couldn’t read his enigmatic
expression.

 
          
When
Sebastian had woken that morning, and the previous day’s and night’s events had
come back to him—along with the intensity of what he’d shared with Aneesa both
physically and emotionally—he’d shut down.
Curled away
inside.
He’d gone into his default self-protection mode. But Aneesa hadn’t
allowed him to hide away. She’d come along for the ride,
again
.

 
          
Her
words impacted him now like a punch in the gut. She wanted to go home. Coming
on the back of just being with his mother, who didn’t even recognise him, he
felt flayed inside, but recovered quickly. Why should he care either way that
Aneesa wanted to go home? It had always been on the cards. He had to repress a
cynical smile. Why wouldn’t she want to run back to normalcy after witnessing
the freak show that was the Wolfe family saga?

 
          
And
yet … he knew plenty of women who would happily deal with such skeletons and
bask in the glory of unlimited wealth and status. Hadn’t his own mother done
that when she’d taken on William Wolfe and his brood of children? Aneesa was
pregnant with his child. She had him over a barrel, yet clearly wanted nothing
of his fortune, so by declaring she wanted to go home, nothing here was
attractive enough to hold her.
Including him
.

 
          
She
was proving once and for all that she was nothing like his mother and nothing
like any other woman he’d ever encountered.

 
          
Her
big eyes were looking at him now, making something inarticulate rise up within
him. He smiled. ‘Of course you want to go home.’

 
          
Her
eyes narrowed. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

 
          
He
looked away and shrugged, cursing himself for showing that it bothered him on
any level. ‘You always said you would want to go home.’

 
          
He
could feel her penetrating look and tensed. She sighed. ‘Yes, I did. And I
think the time to go is before I turn into a total caricature of some kind of
jealous lover.’

 
          
Her
honesty surprised him. He was so used to women being vague, indirect.

 
          
Before
he could dwell on the significance of that, she stood and said breezily, ‘You
made it very clear what would happen here. What you wanted. So I really don’t
see the point in prolonging my stay. Things should have died down at home, and
I need to get prepared for the baby coming.

 
          
‘That
is—’ her voice suddenly became more hesitant ‘—unless things have changed for
you …?’

 
          
Sebastian
looked up at her. The sun was behind her and all he could see was her narrow framed
silhouette. She had to be referring to the fact that he seemed to turn into a
walking human emotional confessional around her. Was she asking him if he
wanted her to stay because he might
need
her? Did she feel pity for him? Was she feeling a sense of responsibility to
stay because he might have come to depend on her? Everything within him
rejected that.

 
          
He
stood, too, in an abrupt move and said curtly, ‘No. Why would anything have
changed?’ He flipped out his mobile phone and called his car around.

 
          
When
they were in the car, Aneesa tried not to let Sebastian see how she was
trembling. It had cost her a lot to ask him if things had changed. She’d held
her breath, hoping against hope that the past few days and all their
revelations might have opened up a new intimacy. She hadn’t wanted to admit to
being jealous, but obviously he just saw it as sexual
jealousy,
and not the corrosive emotional kind when you loved someone.

 
          
He
looked at her and she prayed her eyes weren’t giving her away when she felt like
crying. She steeled herself.

 
          
‘I’ll
come with you to India, of course. I need to meet your family. And attend to
business in the hotel.’

 
          
Aneesa
somehow got out, ‘Please don’t feel like you should. They’d be perfectly happy
to meet you when the baby is born. Believe me, they’ve gone beyond shock and
despair at this stage.’

 
          
‘Nonetheless,
I’ll come.’

 
          
Aneesa
bit her lip so hard she could feel blood. This was it. The line had been drawn.
The affair was over. And she knew by going to India now that would be the end.
Because he would return to Europe and she wouldn’t.
Because
she would have no reason to.

 
          
The
following day Sebastian sat in his office. He had any number of things
clamouring for his attention, a veritable pile of paperwork that needed to be
signed. But he was distracted. Last night, he hadn’t slept with Aneesa. She’d
been all but monosyllabic on their return from the Grange and had bid him
goodnight with definite hands-off signals.

 
          
And
yet what had he expected? She was going home. He was going to be getting on
with his life. It wouldn’t be fair to keep sleeping with her, when patently she
didn’t want it.

 
          
He’d
just got off the phone to Jacob, who had been telling him some of his plans for
Wolfe Manor, and curiously Sebastian felt a measure of peace. Which he’d never
expected. It was as if a huge weight had been taken off his shoulders, and his
chest. He’d always felt weighed down when he’d thought about his family,
especially Jacob, but seeing them at the wedding, he’d realised that they, too,
had their preoccupations, their demons. They really weren’t as disparate as he’d
always imagined.

 
          
He
thought of the wedding …. It had been such a relief to go upstairs and find
Aneesa in his bed … even just knowing that she’d been there—Sebastian stood so
quickly in reaction to that unbidden thought his chair went back onto the
floor. He heard his assistant ask hesitantly through the phone intercom, ‘Is
everything all right, Mr Wolfe?’

 
          
He
smiled grimly. ‘Fine, Meredith.
Just fine.’
He righted
the chair and his hand shook slightly.

 
          
Everything
wasn’t just fine. Panic clutched at his gut; everything within him rejected the
direction his thoughts had been going in. The last person he’d depended on had
been Jacob, and when Jacob had disappeared a fundamental part of Sebastian had
been annihilated. And a large part of his trust and faith in mankind had died
too.

 
          
Depending
on anyone was anathema to him and yet somehow Aneesa had infiltrated into that
deep secret part of him that he’d vowed would always be invulnerable.

 
          
And
it still was
,
he assured himself.

 
          
He
was losing perspective. He would go to India with Aneesa, meet her family and
walk away. She knew the score; at least she and the baby would be provided for.

 
          
He
told himself that he would be glad,
relieved
,
to see the back of her, at least for a while. She’d witnessed him at his most
vulnerable too many times for him to even contemplate now. He didn’t need that,
he’d never asked for that. And he didn’t like it. It was why he’d always kept
his relationships so impersonal, but from day one Aneesa had come at him like
an emotional bulldozer … and just kept coming.

 
          
He
suddenly felt the urge to go to India that day, and not tomorrow, and had to
curb the slightly panicked impulse. He told himself he’d stay at the Mumbai
Grand Wolfe Hotel, and limit his time with her family as much as possible. And
then get out, and get on with his life….