The Sabbides Secret Baby

JACQUELINE BAIRD

Discarded for breaking his rules… Na?ve Phoebe Brown fell for Mediterranean magnate Jed Sabbides after he wined, dined and bedded her with a fervour that made her feel cherished. But when Phoebe happily announced she was pregnant Jed was appalled. Didn’t she understand – she was only a pleasing distraction?Sadly Phoebe lost the man she loved, and her baby…Claimed for having his child! So it is with disbelief that, years later, Jed discovers Phoebe has a little boy…who looks just like him!

Jed Sabbides…

She watched in stunned amazement as in a few lithe strides he was over the road and standing in front of her.

‘Phoebe, this is a surprise. I thought it was you, but the child threw me when I heard him call you Mum.’

His deeply-voiced greeting set every nerve in her body on edge, and she could do nothing about the sudden leap in her pulse. Steeling herself to remain calm, she glanced up at him and politely said, ‘Hello, Jed,’ conscious of her son at her side.

‘I wasn’t aware you had a child. Nobody told me.’ Jed’s piercing black gaze sliced through her like a knife, and she had never seen such rage—quickly controlled as he turned his attention to her son.

‘Hello, young man. I heard you telling your mum you liked my car.’ He smiled down at Ben. ‘Would you like to see inside? Or I have a better idea—let’s go for a drive.’

‘No,’ Phoebe snapped, tugging Ben closer to her side. ‘He knows he must never get into a stranger’s car.’ She wished he had not yelled ‘Mum!’ quite so loud—not that it would have made much difference.

Jed turned his head and stared down at her, and the look in his eyes made her blood freeze.

‘Admirable. But you and I are not strangers, Phoebe, so there is no harm in introducing me to your son—is there?’ he queried silkily.

The Sabbides Secret Baby

By

Jacqueline Baird

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

JACQUELINE BAIRD began writing as a hobby, when her family objected to the smell of her oil painting, and immediately became hooked on the romantic genre. She loves travelling and worked her way around the world from Europe to the Americas and Australia, returning to marry her teenage sweetheart. She lives in Ponteland, Northumbria, the county of her birth, and has two teenage sons. She enjoys playing badminton, and spends most weekends with husband Jim, sailing their Gp.14 around Derwent Reservoir.

Chapter One

JED SABBIDES shifted restlessly in his seat. The plane was beginning its descent, and not before time. A certain part of his anatomy was stirring at the thought of the delectable Phoebe waiting for him in London. He had planned to be in New York for three weeks, but had cut short his trip by a day and rearranged his schedule to work from the London office tomorrow to get back to her.

He had to be in Greece by Saturday evening for his father’s birthday, and with the level of frustration he was feeling he had decided after a business lunch that only one night with Phoebe was not going to be enough…A couple of telephone calls and the Sabbides company jet had been waiting for him at Kennedy Airport—the five-hour time difference between the two continents was for once a blessing.

A frown marred his broad brow. When had he ever changed his schedule for a woman? Never…The answer made him slightly uneasy, and his thoughts drifted back to the first time he had met Phoebe…

Exiting the elevator on the ground floor of the hotel he was staying at while he assessed the place with a view to purchase, Jed glanced at the girl walking across the foyer and paused for a moment, his dark eyes lingering in appreciation on her feminine form.

She was about five-eight, with pale blonde hair that fell in soft waves to her slender shoulders. Her profile was exquisite, and the sombre black skirt and white shirt she wore did nothing to distract from her shapely figure as she seemed to glide across the marble floor on a pair of legs that would make any red-blooded male’s imagination go into overdrive.

His arrested gaze followed her as she stepped beh