The Billionaire's Trophy(42)

‘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!’#p#分页标题#e#

‘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 life she had been second-best to Saffy.

‘It happens every time I look at you,’ Bastian imparted thickly, his dark deep drawl vibrating down her spine, his stunning dark golden eyes hotly pinned to her in a smouldering look that created an atmosphere of shocking intimacy. ‘Because while I know it’s just sex, it’s still the most freakin’ fantastic sex I’ve ever had with a woman!’