by Lynne Graham
Alex strolled to the foot of the bed. ‘And by the way, you are wasting your time with the maternal routine and Nicky,’ he asserted drily. ‘I’m not impressed. Why don’t you just do what I expected you to do?’
Paper-pale, she whispered, ‘And what was that?’
‘Shop till you drop.’
Sarah bowed her head, feeling she deserved that. Dear God, how could she have abandoned every principle and spent his money even before she married him? Even Gina, not known for her scruples concerning money, had been shocked. That horrible contract and, yes, why didn’t she finally admit it? After all even Alex had seen right through her.
She had wanted so badly to look her best. She had wanted so badly not to see distaste or derision in his eyes. But she had not been aware of that pitiful subconscious motivation until now and she had not been trying to attract him...had never imagined that that could be within her power.
‘I shouldn’t have used your money before we were married,’ she mumbled with the innate honesty that was so much a part of her character.
‘That pittance? I expect you to buy maybe half one dress for that amount! And why do you think you were given those cards? I was praying you would go shopping and do something with yourself.’
Somehow that made it even more humiliating. In all her life, Sarah had never felt so agonisingly, rawly vulnerable. She couldn’t look at him. Her own tightly linked hands were blurring under her vision, hot, painful tears gathering in her eyes. All of a sudden she wished she were a real bitch. Maybe she could have coped better with Alex.
Alex plucked one of the flowers from the canopy above the bed and cast it on the bedspread. ‘I’ll be one hell of a lot easier to live with when you stop pretending to be something you’re not...’
The instant the door shut on him, the dam burst. She thrust her face violently into a pillow, terrified that he might hear the shuddering sobs tearing for an exit from her shivering body. She was just so angry with herself! She was just so appalled by the extent of her own weakness!
Almost twenty-five years old and she had behaved like a sex-starved adolescent when he’d touched her. All he had had to do was tell her that he wanted her and she had been so damned grateful and flattered, she had let him make love to her! A sixteen-year-old girl, very lacking in confidence, still existed inside her—a sixteen-year-old girl who had once been very badly hurt. And that teenager still inside her had ensured that tonight she was even more badly hurt. She had told herself that she was happy to live alone, that she didn’t need any man to make her life more meaningful, and she had begun to believe that, denying her own loneliness, denying that she had sexual feelings and needs like other women. She had felt safe that way. She hadn’t had to open herself up to the risk of being hurt again. She had convinced herself that she was single by choice, not single because no man who ever attracted her asked her out...but that was closer to reality.
Alex was gorgeous but she had blocked that awareness with the ease of long practice. It had not occurred to her that he could find her attractive and instinctively she had refused to admit or recognise that his devastating good looks and powerful physical presence were affecting her. But Alex had read her like an open book. Alex had known that she was his for the asking before he’d even laid a finger on her. Alex was highly sexed and very experienced, easily able to pick up on and interpret a woman’s response to him...even if that same woman was too naïve to know that she was putting out that response.
Now she had to live with the knowledge that Alex had invaded her bed purely because he saw that as his right. For some peculiar reason, best known to himself, Alex did find her physically attractive. But that was her only appeal and not something she could even feel marginally good about in the light of his subsequent behaviour. Alex was still seething over the fact that she had demanded that he marry her and only a very stupid woman would have let her guard drop to the extent she had.
Alex thought she had used an innocent baby to trap herself a very rich husband. He didn’t believe that she loved Nicky. He didn’t believe that his brother had told such outrageous lies...in fact, he didn’t much want to hear anything about what had motivated her before their marriage. He didn’t seem to believe a single thing she said. Indeed, he fondly imagined she was putting on some silly act to try and impress him and bring him round to the idea that their marriage might have a real future.
She couldn’t win against odds like that. She would be damned if she was a bitch and damned if she wasn’t. In anguish, she thought back painfully to her hideously mortifying response to his lovemaking. Even though her experience with men was severely limited, she had forgotten the one fact she did know. Men always wanted sex. Men were just programmed that way. And just because Alex was gorgeous and rich and spoilt for choice when it came to satisfying his sexual needs it didn’t mean Alex was one whit different from any of the other men who had tried to pounce on her.
No, she thought sickly, the only thing different about Alex was that he had succeeded where the others had failed. Succeeded effortlessly, too. Her swollen face burned hot. And then he got out of bed, the conquering hero, the gentleman that he wasn’t, and he tore her apart and he made her feel cheap and stupid and outstandingly naïve because she had actually believed that he had changed towards her in some way.
Nothing had ever hurt so much. Her pride, she told herself. He had ground it to dust. Well, he would never do it again, she swore to herself. She had married him to be a mother to Nicky and nothing he could do was going to prevent her from carrying out that role. She sniffed, scrabbled for another tissue. Alex was a cruel, heartless bastard and she would never ever forget what he had done to her tonight!
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘WHO is the most handsome boy in the world? Who has the most gorgeous brown eyes and silky black hair?’ Sarah whispered, lying on her stomach on the carpet, as smilingly intent on Nicky, who was kicking and waving his arms, as Nicky was intent on her. ‘And you’re not going to grow up and kiss the girls to make them cry, are you?’ she sighed. ‘I want you to be sensitive and loving and romantic. It takes a real man to be those things...don’t you ever listen to anybody telling you different—’
‘Is this a private indoctrination session or can anyone join in?’
Sarah froze, her head jerking up to focus in horror on Alex’s hand-stitched Italian leather shoes. Dear heaven, how could it be that time already? She always made sure she was well out of the way during Alex’s visits to the nursery. And as a rule she was very efficient in her timing. In the past two weeks, she had actually gone forty-eight hours twice without even laying eyes on Alex in the distance. With a little effort, it wasn’t difficult. Alex was a creature of habit and routine as regards his working day, and the hours he set aside for becoming acquainted with his nephew were equally regular.
Feeling dreadfully ill at ease, her face hotly flushed, Sarah lifted up on to all fours and then back on to her heels. Then she discovered that squinting up at Alex from that angle merely made him more intimidating and she hurriedly sprang upright, skimming taut hands down over her jean-clad hips, tugging at the T-shirt, still damp from Nicky’s bath, conscious that it was clinging to her braless breasts.
‘If you turn him into a sensitive, loving, romantic guy,’ Alex drawled with lashings of sarcasm, ‘he’ll be a pushover for every gold-digger in Europe.’
‘I don’t see why,’ she muttered helplessly, staring at his scarlet silk tie. ‘Those kind of p-personality traits do not exclude intelligence and caution—’
‘They do in my book.’ Alex released his breath in a sudden hiss. ‘Look at me...’
Sarah swallowed hard and did so. And that ghastly weak-at-the-knees sensation took over just as she had feared it would. She connected with dark golden eyes and the world started to spin and her mind went terrifyingly blank. Worse, every quivering skin cell went shamelessly on red alert. She had worked incredibly hard at willing these things to stop happening to her, but so far she
could not feel that success was within reach. It was gruesome...all her life to have rejoiced in supreme self-control and then to be presented with Armageddon in the shape of a mere male.
Every time she looked at Alex he got more gorgeous. She searched for a flaw and couldn’t find one. She reminded herself of how in every field he failed her standards for the mythical ideal man and still she was plunged into this appallingly adolescent state of sexual awareness every time he came within ten feet of her! She felt like an arsonist holding dry paper, desperate for the match to ignite her conflagration.
No...nobody had ever told her and she had never dreamt that her thoughts and her reactions could rove so violently out of her control. But somehow Alex had done this to her in one night... Dear heaven, if he was to approach her again, what devastation might he then leave in his wake? She reminded herself that Alex had had his revenge. He had made love to her. He had asserted his truly unforgivable conviction that she had no rights whatsoever over her own body. Why on earth should he want to do it again?
It occurred to her that Alex’s gaze had turned pure gold and in addition to his extraordinarily long silence his eyes were wandering over her slowly but with sizzling intensity. Alarm bells went off madly inside her head. Sarah dredged her eyes from his and dropped them, but that was a mistake... She noticed, absolutely could not help but notice that Alex was unmistakably in a state of sexual arousal.
Her face so hot it could have doubled for a frying-pan on fire, Sarah tore shocked but dismayingly fas-cinated eyes from the alarmingly tight fit of Alex’s superbly tailored trousers and, at speed, bent down, scooped up Nicky and hurriedly planted him back into his cot.
‘I decided to finish early...’
‘Oh,’ Sarah muttered.
‘We could have dinner together,’ Alex murmured lazily.
And guess what the after-dinner entertainment is? she thought with a staggering mix of reactions to the underwritten threat. A wave of blinding heat zapped through her, leaving her dizzy. Only then did the shame and self-loathing make itself felt. Just the very thought of Alex touching her again sent her emotions haywire but every haywire reaction could be traced right back to a burst of anticipation that was utterly wanton and without conscience.
‘I’ve already eaten.’ Since Alex hadn’t eaten dinner once in his own home in two weeks, Sarah had taken to having a tray in her room, finding the solitary splendour of the dining-room far too much to handle with at least two staff fighting to serve her and showing in a variety of little ways that, for some peculiar reason best known to themselves, they sympathised with so neglected a new bride.
In fact, staff relations, something which Sarah had worried about, were astonishingly good. She, who had never dealt with a servant in her life, was treated like royalty. Her favourite meals, her favourite flowers...anything she expressed the smallest desire or liking for magically appeared with beaming smiles. She was still wondering just why the cast of thousands Alex employed to maintain the château should be so incredibly nice to her.
‘You could keep me company,’ Alex drawled in the sizzling silence.
Those vibrations he had once mentioned were invisibly lancing through the atmosphere like lightning bolts. Sarah trembled, unnerved, wanting to run...wanting to stay, torn apart.
‘And if I was to say please...?’ Alex prompted thickly.
The no-good swine, she reflected abruptly, humiliation devouring her alive. For two weeks you’re the invisible woman. Then he feels like sex late one afternoon and all of a sudden you’re flavour of the day! Dear God, it was just so disgusting to be sexually turned on by a male like Alex Terzakis. It made her want to have a bath and scrub herself raw.
As every scrap of colour faded from her face, she raised an unsteady hand to her literally pounding temples and said, ‘I don’t feel well,’ with perfect truth. This amount of tension was bad for her. It gave her a headache.
Studying the carpet, she uttered a stifled screech as she was abruptly lifted off her feet. ‘What are you doing?’ she gasped.
‘You should lie down—’
‘No! When I’ve got a headache, I walk around... g-go outside, get some fresh air!’ Sarah stammered in a frantic tone.
A foot over the doorway of the nursery, Alex paused and looked down at her. It was lethal. One second she was rigid, the next she was melted honey on its way to boiling-point. The heat of him, his heartbeat, the feel of his arms around her and the unforgettable scent of his skin... ‘Please put me down,’ she mumbled, fighting a rearguard action to the effect of those astonishingly bright eyes of his.
‘You should have engaged another nanny as I instructed. You’ve been overworking.’
Nanny Brown had lasted precisely three days after the wedding, taking her leave in high dudgeon the morning she dared to tell Alex that he was interfering with her routine by showing up before breakfast-time in the nursery. Sarah hadn’t been present but Claudine, the young, pleasant girl hired to assist in Nicky’s care, had been and evidently Alex had blown a fuse and Nanny, mightily offended, had informed him that he didn’t need to sack her, she was leaving to take up employment with some titled couple, who had seemingly offered her the sun, the moon and the stars to come to them instead.
‘Nonsense...’ Lost in the depths of his eyes, Sarah stopped breathing.
Alex loosed a kind of strangled groan and took her mouth so hotly that she scorched in shock, unprepared for a frontal assault of such blatancy. His tongue drove between her lips, searching out the moist interior, and an electrifying excitement shot through her, leaving her weak with longing.
The world spun faster and faster. Coloured lights shot through the blackness behind her lowered eyelids. Her hand lifted and her fingers dug into his luxuriant black hair. At last she was alive again after two weeks hovering on the brink of inglorious extinction.
Abruptly, Alex tore his mouth from hers. A dark tide of blood accentuated his hard cheekbones. He looked shattered, frustrated, outraged. ‘What the hell are you doing to me?’ he growled without warning, dumping her down on the ground again so fast that she had to sag against the wall to stay upright.
‘Me?’ It was the most she could manage, planting shaking hands to the wall to steady herself, her temperature still rocketing tempestuously at fever point.
Alex was breathing rapidly. His gaze dropped below the level of her chin to the visible thrust of her nipples beneath the T-shirt. He swore fluently, violently, the brown hand that she could see suddenly sweeping up between them. He grabbed a handful of T-shirt to haul her closer, frightening her out of her wits.
‘You wear a bra outside the bedroom,’ he grated down at her. ‘And you swim in two pieces of bikini. And you sunbathe in the same two pieces. Is that clear?’
Soundlessly she nodded. You didn’t argue with a madman. It just didn’t seem the time to tell him that she couldn’t swim and hadn’t yet taken the time to sunbathe.
‘You don’t flaunt yourself like this!’ Alex derided. ‘Now go to bed. You have a headache, go to bed...’
Sarah backed away slow step by slow step, lest a sudden move might push him further over the edge of such illogical and utterly incomprehensible behaviour. Flaunt herself? What on earth was he talking about? Her cheeks burned. She wore the least possible clothing for Nicky’s bathtime. Not yet as polished as Claudine at bathing her nephew, Sarah invariably got pretty wet and it got so hot in the nursery bathroom with the heating going full blast lest Nicky contract a chill.
At the top of stairs, she glanced back. Alex had returned to the nursery. She wished she could spy on him the way he had spied on her. Did Alex talk baby-talk? Or was it more along the MCP line of ‘think of all the women out there, all the conquests, all the entertainment available’? Sarah pulled a face. It was to be hoped that Alex had more wit in his conversation with Nicky then he had with the toys that kept on appearing by the day. Did he really think Nicky would soon be playing with that incredible train set in the playroom next door t
o the nursery? And what about the bike? And the talking teddy with the maniacal laugh that made Nicky scream blue murder?
Sarah sagged down on her own bed, knowing she was being unjust. But the truth was she had not been prepared for Alex to take such an interest in Nicky. Instead she got this image of Alex haunting toyshops...Alex, patently ignorant of the stages of child development, purchasing anything and everything which took his fancy and bringing it home to Nicky. On some level she didn’t want to examine, something twisted inside her when she pictured Alex in a toyshop, too arrogant to ask advice but trying so hard all the same.
More and more, she was having to acknowledge that on yet another point she had misjudged Alex. He did fully intend to be a father to Nicky. He did genuinely seem to love his nephew. In short, Alex was in possession of a whole set of more appealing characteristics than he would ever trouble to show to his unwanted wife.
Sarah groaned, realising that she had left the book she was reading downstairs. Alex would still be with Nicky.
But Alex, she soon discovered, wasn’t with Nicky. She was descending the main staircase when she heard Vivien’s voice, shrill and furious, leaking through the ajar door of the library.
‘...none of my business when you have a wife and a child to consider? If you think that I am about to stand by while you humiliate that girl, Alex—’
‘You talk of something of which you know nothing,’ Alex responded with icicles freezing from every syllable.
‘Your father was always discreet...he never embarrassed me in public—’
‘Something more than can have been said for you where he was concerned,’ Alex whipped back.
‘I’m sorry...’ Vivien’s voice sounded choked. ‘I’m sorry that you can remember that.’