A Convenient Husband Read Online Free PDF Page A

response of his body to the soft, fragrant female frame plastered against it all the more of a betrayal!
    â€˜Lose who? Your vet…?’ he prompted. He took her by the shoulders and gave her an urgent little shake.
    â€˜You can’t lose what you never had and furthermore don’t want! Don’t you ever listen?’ she demanded hotly.
    â€˜Then who or what have you lost?’
    â€˜Lost my inhibitions—it must be the wine.’
    â€˜Stop laughing.’
    Fine! If he preferred tears, he could have them! ‘Lose Ben!’
    â€˜You’re not going to lose Ben,’ he soothed confidently.
    Rafe always did think he knew everything—well, not this time! Angrily she lifted her head; tears sparkled on the ends of her spiky dark eyelashes.
    â€˜I am. Chloe wants him!’ she wailed.
    Rafe looked at her blankly. She wasn’t making sense at all…maybe she had an even lower tolerance for alcohol than he’d thought.
    â€˜I know Chloe gets what she wants,’ he observed drily,
    â€˜but on this occasion I don’t think you’re obliged to say yes. You really shouldn’t drink, Tess…’
    â€˜You don’t understand!’
    Rafe shook his head and didn’t dispute her claim as haunted, anguish-filled emerald eyes fixed once more on his face.
    â€˜I’m not Ben’s mother, Chloe is…’ Sobbing pitifully, she collapsed once more against Rafe’s chest, leaving him to digest the incredible information she’d just hit him with.
    If it was true, and he couldn’t for the life of him think why she’d lie about something like that, it was a hell of a lot to take in.
    When Tess had taken leave of absence from her job as a high-powered commodities trader, he’d been as shocked as her other friends when she’d returned afterwards complete with a baby. Compared to that, the shock had been relatively mild when she’d walked away from the job she’d loved after a brief, unsuccessful attempt to combine motherhood with a demanding career and moved into the cottage she’d inherited from her grandmother.
    Now she was saying she wasn’t Ben’s mother! She wasn’t anyone’s mother!
    It was a good ten minutes before Tess was capable of continuing their discussion. Looking at her stubborn, closed-in expression as she sat with primly folded arms in the old rocking-chair, Rafe could see that talking to him was the last thing she wanted to do.
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜Morgan and Edward were out of the country, some jungle or other,’ Tess recalled dully, speaking of her elder sister and brother-in-law who were both brilliant, but unworldly palaeontologists of international renown. They might be the first people everybody thought of consulting when a prehistoric skull was unearthed, but when it came to a pregnant daughter they wouldn’t have been high on anybody’s list.
    â€˜Besides which they would have been worse than useless even if they had been around.’
    Tess chose to ignore this accurate summing-up. ‘Chloe was five months gone before she realised and absolutely distraught when she was told it was too late to…’ Tess paused and looked self-consciously uncomfortable.
    â€˜She wanted to be rid of it.’ Rafe shrugged. ‘That figures. She always was a selfish, spoilt brat.’
    Honesty prevented Tess disputing this cruel assessment. Her elder sister and her husband always had either indulged or ignored their only child, and the product of this upbringing had turned into a stunningly beautiful but extremely self-absorbed young woman.
    â€˜A scared spoilt brat back then,’ Tess snapped sharply.
    â€˜She didn’t want anyone to know about it; she made me promise. So I took her away.’
    â€˜Isn’t that a bit…I don’t know, Victorian melodrama…?’
    â€˜You’ve not the faintest idea of how weird she was acting.’ Tess had