Free The Contaxis Baby by Lynne Graham Page B

he’s a real bastard with women…lifts them, lays them, then forgets about them. But then who could blame him? He’s a young, drop-dead gorgeous billionaire. Women are just arm candy to a guy like that and of course he’s happy to overdose on the treats.’
    Even as a chill of dismay ran over Lizzie that Sebasten’s reputation should be that bad with her sex, she angled up her chin. ‘So?’
    ‘When you get dumped, everyone will crow because you weren’t entitled to get him in the first place. He dates supermodels…and let’s face it, you’re hardly in that category. It’s my bet that, once he gets wind of all the nasty rumours there have been about you and Connor, you’ll never hear from him again!’
    ‘Thank you for the warning.’ In one move, Lizzie carted two cases out to the hall in her eagerness to vacate the blonde’s apartment. ‘But I wasn’t actually planning on dating Sebasten. I was just using him for a one-night stand.’
    Twenty minutes later, Lizzie climbed into her Mercedes four-wheel-drive and the startled look on Jen’s spiteful face travelled with her. It had been a cheap, tasteless response but it had made Lizzie feel just a little better. So where did she go now that she was truly homeless and friendless? Well, she had better try to sell her little horde of jewellery first to get some cash so that she could pay upfront for accommodation.
     
    One week later, Lizzie dealt her new home a somewhat shaken appraisal. Six nights in an overpriced bed and breakfast joint and then this…
    Her bedsit was a dump and, as far as she could see, a dump with no secret pretensions to be transformed into a miraculous palace. But then neither her car nor her jewellery had sold for anything like the amount that she had na?vely hoped, and until she had actually trudged round the rental agencies and checked the newspapers she had had no idea just how much it actually cost to rent an apartment. Any solo apartment, even the tiniest was way beyond her budget and, since she had been reluctant to share with total strangers, a bedsit had been her only immediate option.
    But on the bright side, she had an interview the next day. When she got a job she would make new friends and then possibly find somewhere more inspiring to live, and in the meantime life was what you made of it, Lizzie told herself sternly. She would buy herself a bucket of cheap paint and obliterate the dingy drabness of the walls rather than sit around drowning in self-pity!
    Sebasten had not called. Well, had she really expected him to? An aching wave of regret flooded Lizzie. It was so hard for her to forget the sense of connection that she had felt with him, that crazy feeling that something magical was in the air. Indeed she had slept with her mobile phone right beside her every night. However, the something magical had only been her own stupid fantasy, she conceded, angry that she still hadn’t managed to get him out of her mind. After all, if what Jen had said about Sebasten’s reputation was true, she had had a narrow escape from getting her heart broken and stomped on. In any case, how could she possibly have explained why she had lied and given him a false surname?
     
    Reading his security chief’s efficient daily bulletins on Lizzie’s fast-disintegrating life of ease and affluence had supplied the major part of Sebasten’s entertainment throughout the past week.
    Lizzie had been conned into flogging her six-month-old-low mileage Mercedes for half of its worth and then ripped off in much the same way when it came to parting with her diamonds. Having run a credit check on her, Sebasten had appreciated the necessity for such immediate financial retrenchments and could only admire her cunning refusal to snatch at his offer of an apartment. Evidently, Lizzie was set on impressing on him the belief that she was not a gold-digger or a free-loader. Now in possession of both her Merc and her jewellery and having paid very much more for