A house, a country house; it had to be. Where his mistress lived. Feeling nauseous, Aneesa instructed the driver to stop in a lay-by where she was just out of sight of Sebastian's car. She paid him and got out and watched him drive away. Feeling utterly ridiculous now, on wobbly legs she walked around the corner of the hedge fully prepared to meet a locked gate when she walked slap-bang into a solid wall of muscle.

Hard hands held her, blue eyes as cold as ice blistered down into her shocked ones. ‘What the hell do you think you're playing at following me in that cab like some character in a bad movie?'


Too shocked to do anything but blurt out the truth, Aneesa just said, ‘I thought you were going to meet a mistress or a lover so I followed you.'

Aneesa could see the play of emotions cross his face and even a glint of humour. She could deal with his anger better than pity. ‘Don't laugh at me.'

Sebastian's face sobered and his hands became gentle on her arms. ‘And what exactly were you planning on doing when you caught me with this mystery woman? Because presumably you were going to wait until we were in flagrante


…?'

Aneesa shrugged but couldn't look away. The absurdity of it all hit her now too, and she said, ‘Claw her eyes out?'


Sebastian just shook his head and said with a touch of weariness, ‘Well, if you're so determined to meet this mistress of mine, then you'd better come with me.'

He took her bag, and Aneesa got into Sebastian's car and they swept through the gates and up a long drive. She was pretty sure there was no mistress now, but she had no idea what to expect, until they approached a huge stately home and she saw some people being pushed in wheelchairs by nurses in uniform.

They didn't stop there though; they kept going around the side of the house and down a nearby lane, shaded by the


branches of huge oak trees. Finally they drew up outside a pretty cottage and a matronly woman opened the front door to greet them.

Sebastian came around to help her out of the car, and took her hand to lead her up to the path. The woman waiting for them spoke with a broad Irish accent. ‘Sebastian! She's in good form today, looking forward to seeing you. She even got her hair done this morning.'

Aneesa followed Sebastian into a bright airy hallway and then into a sitting room where she saw a beautifully preserved woman looking out the window. She couldn't have been more than about mid-fifties, Aneesa guessed, and could have passed for even younger. The resemblance was striking even from her profile; it was clear where Sebastian got his patrician features from, and his blue eyes. His mother.

She turned as they came in, her whole face lighting up with joy. ‘Nathaniel, darling!'

Sebastian squeezed Aneesa's hand as if to say, Go along with it. He let her go then to greet his mother. After a couple of minutes he pulled Aneesa around to introduce her, and to Aneesa's utter shock his mother took in her small bump which was revealed by the tight-fitting top and declared, ‘You're pregnant! But how wonderful, my dear. Come and sit and tell me all about it. I do so love being pregnant too!'

Aneesa's head was reeling after a very bizarre conversation with Carrie where she'd constantly referred to Sebastian as Nathaniel, and seemed to believe she was pregnant as well. Eventually Sebastian said he'd take her out for a walk, and Aneesa took the hint and left them alone. The friendly Irish housekeeper came up to Aneesa and they watched Sebastian and his mother in the distance through the window.

The woman explained, ‘I'm actually a psychiatric nurse, but she thinks I'm a housekeeper. I don't know how Sebastian does it, but every two weeks like clockwork he comes, and not once has she ever recognised him. He and his brother bought this old Gate Lodge for her so that she would feel as if it were


her home. They thought it would be better for her than staying in the main psychiatric facility at the house. Also, here she's more protected, less chance of  staff  leaking  stories  to  the press. She has full-time round-the-clock care….'

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.'