The Mistresses Collection. Оливия Гейтс

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СКАЧАТЬ ago,’ Emmie confirmed, turning back to face him again with open reluctance, blonde hair tumbling round her flushed cheeks.

      ‘And yet you didn’t think to get in touch with me and tell me that?’ Bastian fired back at her furiously. ‘Didn’t it occur to you that I’d be worried about you? When I last saw you, you were far from well!’

      ‘I thought with you it would be a case of out of sight, out of mind,’ Emmie admitted truthfully, straightening her slender shoulders and standing her ground in the kitchen doorway lest he get the idea that she was intimidated by him.

      ‘Those babies are half mine!’ Bastian launched back at her wrathfully. ‘When did I ever give you the impression that I was so irresponsible?’

      Emmie pretended to think deeply. ‘Oh, maybe it was when you warned me not to get worked up about having sex with you…I didn’t, by the way.’

      A feverish veil of colour highlighted his spectacular cheekbones and his dark golden eyes blazed like the heart of a hot fire. ‘Maybe I was playing safe.’

      ‘Playing safe?’ Emmie queried, all at sea.

      His beautiful wilful mouth hardened. ‘Ne…yes, you blow hot, you blow cold, and you run away. That’s twice you’ve done that to me now.’

      Emmie took an angry step forward. ‘I do not blow hot and cold and I do not run away!’

      ‘You do,’ Bastian contradicted with maddening assurance. ‘I offended you the night before Nessa’s wedding and you went from hotter than hot to cold as charity and ran away from the attraction between us. You may be an adult but you suffer from the same emotional overreactions as a teenager!’

      ‘How dare you?’ Emmie snapped, fit to be tied at that slur being cast on her maturity.

      ‘I dare because I’m honest and I have always been honest with you,’ Bastian declared with impressive emphasis. ‘We had a disastrous misunderstanding the very first night we were together—I apologised—you refused to accept my apology. But at least I was willing to admit that I had made a mistake but was still attracted to you. We would never have been apart had you had the courage to be equally honest with me…’

      ‘It’s not about honesty, it’s about sensitivity, and you are the guy who told me that what we had was just sex!’ Emmie slammed back at him emotively.

      ‘At the end of the day, sex is only sex and I stand by that statement!’ Bastian growled back at her unapologetically. ‘But in every way that mattered I demonstrated that I cared about what happened to you and I cared about the welfare of those babies you carry.’

      Emmie struggled to be fair while her deep sense of having been insulted still rankled. ‘Yes, you did,’ she allowed, tight-mouthed at having to concede that point.

      ‘I didn’t deserve that you walked out on me and didn’t tell me where you were going.’

      ‘I would have got in touch with you after the birth,’ Emmie protested.

      ‘I want to be a lot more involved than that,’ Bastian informed her with unconcealed hostility.

      Emmie lifted her chin, refusing to back down. ‘Well, I’m sorry if you don’t like it but perhaps I didn’t feel that you being more involved in my pregnancy was appropriate in the circumstances.’

      ‘If that’s how you felt you should have discussed it with me,’ Bastian argued fiercely. ‘Walking out and vanishing the minute I was safely out of the country was childish and cowardly!’

      ‘I wanted to avoid a big confrontation like this!’ Emmie pointed out.

      ‘How are you doing with that ambition?’ Bastian derided, making her teeth grind together in frustration.

      ‘I am not childish and I am not cowardly,’ Emmie returned resentfully to his determination to blame her for walking away from a difficult relationship.

      ‘No? Well, at the very least you have some strange hang-ups,’ Bastian condemned, interrupting her without hesitation as he dug a magazine out of his pocket and slapped it down aggressively on the hall table. ‘She’s your sister, your twin, and presumably the reason you go around dressed in a frumpy disguise most of the time! But did you think to mention her existence to me even once?’

      Emmie froze in consternation as she found herself gazing down at a magazine photo of Saffy and Zahir’s wedding day. Laughing and smiling with happiness, Saffy looked fantastic and Emmie’s heart constricted at the sight, regret belatedly stabbing her that she had avoided playing a role at her sister’s nuptials. ‘How did you find out?’

      ‘Nessa saw it and put it in front of me. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,’ Bastian admitted with angry dark eyes. ‘At first I thought it was you marrying royalty and then I saw her name…she’s Sapphire, you’re Emerald, so it was obviously no coincidental likeness. I did some research and that’s when I realised how much you had been hiding from me.’

      ‘There was no need for you to know.’

      ‘I couldn’t believe she was your sister.’

      Emmie lost colour at that admission. ‘I understand that. We may be identical twins but she still looks very different from me.’

      ‘Yes, even though it was only photos I was merely fooled into thinking it was you for about five seconds,’ Bastian spelt out.

      Unsurprised by the assertion but dreading the comparison he had to be making between her and her gorgeous sister, Emmie lowered her head, her face shadowing. ‘Yes—’

      ‘You have a beauty spot on one cheekbone and your eyes are a lighter blue,’ Bastian contended, sharply disconcerting her for few people were that observant. ‘I also suspect that you’re smaller—’

      ‘By at least an inch. Even after the surgery on my leg I never quite caught up with Saffy in height,’ Emmie conceded. ‘I don’t wear a disguise though—you don’t understand…I just don’t like being mistaken for Saffy and, believe me, it happens a lot if I dress up and go out and about in London. She’s a celebrity, after all. I’ve also found it’s just easier not to mention that she’s my sister to the people I meet.’

      ‘I can imagine that but you’re not the same—you’re not carbon copies of each other.’

      ‘You don’t think so?’

      ‘I don’t quite understand it but when I look at her, she does as much for my libido as a blank canvas on the wall, but when I look at you I have an instant reaction,’ Bastian confessed in a husky undertone.

      Emmie wasn’t quite sure she could believe that, for she was much more accustomed to thinking of her sister as a vastly superior, more sophisticated and sexier version of herself—in every way a supermodel-perfect creature. But then Saffy had always been the prettier, livelier, more talented twin, Emmie the sickly, shy one, who was boringly academic, not that she had had much choice on that score when her disability had meant she couldn’t go out and about like her twin. She glanced up at Bastian, her lovely face pink with self-consciousness, wondering if it could possibly be true that he found her more sexually appealing than her sister. After all, all her СКАЧАТЬ