The Contaxis Baby. LYNNE GRAHAM

discarded skirt where it lay, Lizzie tipped forward and only just managed to throw out her hands to break her own fall. As she went down with a crash, punctuated by a startled expletive from Sebasten, she just slumped on the soft, deep carpet.

      With a mighty effort of will, Lizzie lifted her swimming head again and focused on Sebasten’s bare brown feet. Even his toes were beautiful, she thought dimly as she tried to come up with something to say in a situation that had already gone far beyond embarrassment. ‘Do you think…do you think you could sober me up before we continue?’ she muttered hopefully.

      CHAPTER THREE

      SEBASTEN surveyed Lizzie with thunderous incredulity and then he wondered what he was going to do with her.

      After all, he was responsible for her, wasn’t he? He had pressed more alcohol on her when she must already have had enough and he had brought her into his home. In the condition she was in, he could hardly stuff her into a taxi or ask his chauffeur to cope with her and, since he too had had several drinks, he could not drive her anywhere.

      In the tense silence which would have agonised Lizzie had she been sober, she surveyed his carpet fibres and then looked up. Sebasten was down on one knee, contemplating her with an expression of fierce frustration.

      ‘I could just sleep here on the floor,’ Lizzie proffered, striving to be helpful.

      Sebasten collided with huge green eyes.

      The beginnings of an irreverent grin pulled at her full, reddened mouth because she was suffering from a dreadful urge to succumb to uncontrollable giggles. ‘You see…I don’t think I can get up…can’t feel my legs.’

      Sebasten experienced a sudden near-overwhelming desire to shake her until he could force some sense back into her head. Had she no idea how much at risk she could be in a stranger’s house? Or of how dangerous it was for a woman to drink so much that she could neither exercise caution nor defend herself? The very idea of her behaving in such a way with another man filled him with dark, deep anger.

      ‘Do you make a habit of this kind of behaviour?’ he demanded rawly.

      As she was assailed by that gritty tone, all desire to giggle was squashed at the source. ‘No…you’re the first…sorry,’ Lizzie slurred, sinking back to the carpet again.

      Vaulting to his feet, Sebasten strode over to the phone by the bed and lifted it to order a large pot of black coffee and sandwiches to be brought upstairs. Then he contemplated his victim with brooding intensity and his long, powerful legs carried him over to the windows. Depressing the locks, he thrust the French windows back to let in the cold night air.

      As that chilly breeze touched her slender bare back, Lizzie gave a convulsive shiver. Sebasten surveyed her without remorse. He would sober her up and then have her conveyed home. Wrenching the top sheet from the bed, he flung it over her prone body and gathered her up with determination to carry her into the adjoining bathroom.

      ‘Sleepy…’ Lizzie mumbled.

      ‘You need to wake up,’ Sebasten informed her, settling her with some difficulty onto the seat in the spacious shower cubicle and hitting the buttons to switch on the water. Only as the water cascaded down did he appreciate that he hadn’t removed the sheet. Then he no longer felt quite so comfortable with her semi-clad state.

      As the water hit her, Lizzie opened bewildered and shaken eyes. ‘No…don’t want to be wet,’ she framed weakly.

      ‘Tough,’ Sebasten told her, barring the exit in case she made a sudden leap for freedom.

      Far from making a dive for it, in slow motion and wearing an only vaguely surprised expression, Lizzie slithered off the seat like a boneless doll into a heap on the floor of the cubicle.

      ‘Up!’ Sebasten urged in exasperation.

      Lizzie curled up and closed her eyes, soothed now by the warm flooding flow of water. ‘Sleepy,’ she mumbled again. ‘Night…night.’

      Teeth gritted, Sebasten stepped into the shower to hit the controls and turn the water cold. She uttered a satisfying yelp of surprise as the water went from warm and soothing to icy and tingling. However, Sebasten got so wet in his efforts to haul Lizzie’s uncooperative body back up onto the seat, he ended up squatting down to hold her up and suffering beneath the same cold gush.

      ‘C-cold!’ Lizzie stammered.

      ‘I’m freezing too!’ Sebasten launched, shirt and trousers plastered to his big, powerful body as the same chill invaded him. He withstood the onslaught with masochistic acceptance. Served him bloody well right, he thought grimly. She was way too young and immature for him. What had got into him? Bringing her home had been a mistake and he had never sunk low enough to take advantage of a stupid woman.

      ‘Very…cold,’ Lizzie moaned.

      ‘And you said you weren’t an airhead,’ Sebasten recalled out loud with a deep sense of injustice, watching her wet hair trail in the water, looking down at her miserable face which was now—aside of the odd streak of mascara—innocent of all cosmetic enhancement. She still had perfect skin and amazing eyes, he noted. But he could not credit that he was trapped in his own shower with a drunk woman. He didn’t get into awkward situations like that.

      ‘Not,’ Lizzie pronounced with unexpected aggression, her chin tilting up.

      A loud knock sounded on the door in the bedroom beyond. With a groan, Sebasten put her down but she slumped without his support. A vision of having to explain a drowned woman in his shower overtaking him, he switched off the water.

      ‘Don’t move…’ he instructed Lizzie as he strode back to the bedroom, dripping every step of the way.

      A faint flush over his hard cheekbones as the member of staff presenting the laden tray of coffee and sandwiches stared in open stupefaction at his drenched appearance, Sebasten kicked the door shut again and set down the tray beside the bed.

      When he returned to the bathroom, Lizzie was striving to crawl out of the shower on her hands and knees and being severely hampered by the trailing sopping sheet.

      ‘Feeling a little livelier?’ Sebasten quipped with dark satire.

      ‘Feel…a-awful!’ Lizzie stuttered through teeth chattering like castanets and she laid her head down and just sobbed in weakened rage. ‘Hate you!’

      She looked pathetic. Sebasten snatched up a big bath towel, crouched down to disentangle her from the sheet and wrapped her with care into the towel. Hauled up into a standing position, she fell against him like a skater on ice for the first time and he lifted her up and carried her through to the bedroom to settle her back on the bed. Keeping a cautious eye on her in case she fell off the bed too, he backed away to strip off his own wet clothing and pitch the sodden garments onto the bathroom floor.

      It was like babysitting, he decided, his even white teeth gritting. Not that he had ever done any babysitting, for Sebasten was not in the habit of putting himself out for other people. But the comparison between his own erotic expectations earlier in the evening and reality was galling to a male who was accustomed to a life than ran with the smooth, controlled efficiency of an oiled machine.

      ‘Close the windows…’ Lizzie begged, deciding there and then as cold dragged her mind from its former fog that she had fallen live into the hands of a complete sadist.

      ‘Yes, you’re definitely waking up now.’ Sheathed only in a pair of black designer jeans, Sebasten crossed the room to pull the French windows shut.

      Lizzie blinked and then contrived to stare. The jeans fitted him as well as his own bronzed skin, accentuating his flat, muscular stomach, his narrow hips and long, hard thighs. Colouring, she looked away, sobered up enough already by the shock of that cold shower to cringe with mortification. Sebasten tugged her forward, tossed pillows behind her to prop her up and proceeded to pour the coffee.

      ‘Don’t feel like coffee—’

      ‘You’re