by Lynne Graham
Frozen on the staircase, Sarah strained her ears but couldn’t catch what Alex said next. It was too quiet. What the heck was Vivien doing interfering? No doubt in a well-meaning spirit, wanting all to be hunky-dory in her stepson’s marriage, but didn’t she realise how bitterly Alex would resent it?
Sarah went back upstairs without her book. What was Alex doing to humiliate her? Did she really want to know? Why should she care? It was none of her business what he got up to outside the château... But as sternly as she told herself that came the stark disagreement of her own feelings.
Alex had changed the rules of their marriage. Alex had made their relationship personal and intimate and whether she liked it or not Sarah could no longer think of him enjoying his much vaunted freedom without feeling her stomach cramp with nausea. Gone were the heady days when she’d gaily written off the idea of Alex’s sleeping around as being nothing to do with her. In fact, right now, it felt like a very big central issue in her life and common sense and practicality put no curb on that unwelcome reality.
Night after night, Alex came home and went straight back out again and Sarah didn’t know where he went or what he did when he got there. Nor would she have asked, after what he had hurled at her on the wedding night. Charming as Sarah had found Vivien, Vivien had evidently in the past carried on in such a way about her late husband’s infidelity that the whole family must have suffered greatly. Certainly Alex had. With derision he had enumerated all his personal hates in a women: getting possessive, keeping tabs on his every movement and throwing tantrums. Vivien must have been seriously guilty of all three sins and she had not had the sensitivity to wage her war with her erring husband behind closed doors.
Alex had mapped out his future with a bride he had calculated to be as different as she could possibly be from his stepmother. Unemotional, uninvolved. That had been Alex’s ideal marriage. The hatching of a dynasty and all the freedom he could want on the side. A detached relationship in which only the barest necessities would have to be shared. Sarah shuddered. Alex was capable of so much more...wasn’t he?
Her head now really was aching fit to burst. She lay down, feeling suddenly foolishly tearful. What was wrong with her? But she knew...didn’t she? She was involved, much more involved with Alex than she had ever planned to be and it was all his fault. If he had left her alone, the marriage would have been a total sham and she wouldn’t have minded then, would she?
Or would she have? How long could she have lived in Alex’s radius without becoming aware that she fancied him something rotten with all the lack of control of an adolescent suffering from a severe crush? Alex didn’t need to go out and bed-hop to humiliate her, she decided. She was being humiliated enough by the feelings he had awakened inside her, promptings that day by day were casting her into ever deeper turmoil.
About an hour later, a knock sounded on her door. Alex appeared. Sarah snatched the bedding all the way up to her throat. His sensual mouth tightened, sparks flaring gold in his dark eyes. He set a glass down beside her bed.
‘What’s that?’ she demanded, as if it might be rat poison.
If possible, Alex stiffened even more. ‘Something to take your headache away.’
Sarah surveyed him in helpless amazement. ‘You brought me something for my sore head?’
‘I fail to see why the fact should fill you with such rampant disbelief!’ Alex roared at her without warning, the syllables splintering with sudden temper. ‘I can be as considerate and sensitive as the next man...!’
Attila the Hun? Vivien, it seemed, had left her mark on a temperament that was volatile to say the least. Sarah stretched out a blind hand, lifted the glass, downed the contents and choked. Brandy, enough to knock out a bull elephant. Fire hurtled down her throat and into her stomach. Tears streaming from her eyes, she breathed again.
‘It’s good for period pain,’ Alex told her.
Sarah’s jaw dropped. Her skin flamed.
‘Don’t be such a prude,’ Alex muttered impatiently. ‘I know more about PMT than nine out of ten men. Vivien saw to that.’
‘I don’t get PMT,’ Sarah asserted shakily. ‘And I actually just had a headache.’
Alex shrugged a broad shoulder, his startlingly handsome features impassive, temper back under lock and key. He studied her for several unbearably tense seconds and then strode over the windows, tugging back a curtain and opening one. ‘It’s too stuffy in here,’ he complained.
The silence stretched.
‘I think we ought to have a party.’
‘A party?’
‘It’s time you were introduced to family and friends.’
Vivien had been busy. Sarah swallowed hard on her distaste at that fact. ‘I didn’t think you intended to—’
Alex swung back so fast, she was still speaking. ‘Intended to what?’
‘Introduce me to anybody,’ she muttered tightly. ‘And quite frankly I don’t think it’s a good idea. Much better just to go on as we are and people would soon get the message that I’m a bit like Mr Rochester’s crazy wife in the attic, never seen, never mentioned—’
‘Mr Rochester’s what?’ Alex demanded blankly.
‘Jane Eyre...maybe you haven’t read it.’
‘I did not put you in the attic,’ Alex breathed with sudden renewed ferocity.
‘No, but let’s not pretend that I’m the sort of wife you precisely want to show off.’ Sarah thrust her chin high to prove that she was unhurt by that reality.
‘I am not ashamed of you.’ Dull coins of colour lay over his cheekbones.
A lump lodged in her tight throat. Damn Vivien, she thought painfully. ‘Look, why can’t we be honest about this? I know that you are cringing at the thought of having to march me out for public display, Alex—’
‘Rubbish!’ He dealt her a smouldering look of anger. ‘That is complete and utter—!’ He spat out an expletive and Sarah stiffened, offended by his language. He drove a not quite steady hand through his black hair and then threw up both hands in a gesture of raw frustration. ‘I’m sorry,’ he finally vented. ‘But I have not given you cause to accuse me of that.’
Sarah released a jerky laugh. ‘We got married at the most unearthly hour of the day in the darkest, most unfashionable corner of London you could find. You walked through the airport three paces in front of me—’
‘Two weeks ago, I was still very angry. I wanted to be sure you would not enjoy our wedding-day.’
‘I didn’t.’ Sarah studied her tightly linked hands, sensing that she was at some kind of crossroads with Alex and not knowing how honest to be. ‘Look...I know the right knives and forks to use because I used to be a silver waitress in a hotel. I also used to scrub floors. In fact every job I’ve ever had was in some menial capacity. I’m really quite happy to stay in the attic, metaphorically speaking, as long as I have Nicky. I don’t want you gritting your teeth and trying not to wince every time I embarrass you...I would really hate that.’
‘You don’t embarrass me,’ Alex framed very quietly. ‘A woman as beautiful as you could never embarrass me.’
Sarah released a groan. ‘Alex, ditch the soft soap,’ she urged. ‘You and I both know that we come from different worlds and that if it weren’t for that baby upstairs we’d never have met—’
‘But we did meet and we did marry,’ Alex cut in with ruthless bite.
Sarah wrinkled her small nose. ‘You can have a divorce any time you want on any terms—’
‘And you’d bloody well like that, wouldn’t you?’ Alex ripped back at her with sudden raw hostility, smouldering anger igniting the atmosphere again.
Her head was starting to thump again and, dear lord, but she was tired. Flopping down, she turned over, drained of arguments. Talking to Alex wasn’t like talking to other people. It was like a mental assault course, spiced by ever bigger and more daunting obstacles and his incomprehensible bursts of temper.
‘A separation?’ she tried weakly. ‘I could live somewhere clos
e and you could see as much of Nicky as you liked—?’
‘No.’ It was thunderous, final, full of suppressed outrage that she could dare to suggest such a solution.
‘I don’t see why not,’ she admitted out loud. ‘We might as well be separated anyway, living in this great house.’
‘I intend to rectify that situation.’ Glittering golden eyes pounced on her, lingered, threatened in a blaze of stormy appraisal. ‘Perhaps when you have a child of your own you’ll feel a little less flighty.’
‘A child of my own?’ All of a sudden, Sarah felt considerably less sleepy, studying him with wide, disbelieving eyes.
‘Why not?’ Alex challenged with dark, lethal cool but a distinct aura of threat about his aggressive stance.
‘I can think of a hundred reasons why not!’ Sarah told him.
‘I can’t think of one. You’re so obsessed with Nicky, it’s unhealthy.’
‘Unhealthy?’
‘For you, the world outside that nursery does not exist,’ Alex drawled harshly.
‘But why should that bother you?’ she asked in genuine confusion.
Alex looked heavenwards like a male in torment. Then he breathed out and strode forward with a disturbing air of purpose. He flipped the bedding back off her.
‘Alex!’ she gasped.
A pair of powerful arms snatched her up off the mattress. ‘You can nurse your headache in my bed tonight...and every other night,’ he asserted fiercely.
‘Put me down!’ she shouted at him furiously. ‘Have you gone mad?’
Letting rip with something that she had no doubt was exceedingly rude in his own language, Alex wrenched open the door and carried her, kicking and fighting, down the corridor. Sarah went crazy. ‘You’re a maniac!’ she screeched at him at the top of her voice. ‘I offer you the divorce or the separation that you should be gasping for and you go ballistic!’
Crushing her to his broad chest to still her frantic struggles, Alex slung her a filthy look. ‘You noticed?’ he queried darkly, between clenched even white teeth. ‘Well, then, you’re learning. I am wildly encouraged by such astute observative powers.’
He kicked open a door, strode across a well-lit room and deposited her on a bed. Sarah was up like a deer and off that mattress before he had even straightened but Alex blocked her passage back to the door.
‘Get out of my way,’ Sarah told him unsteadily, hitching the sliding strap of her embarrassingly thin, slinky nightdress back on to one pale shoulder.
The movement was a mistake. Alex’s golden gaze flamed over her small, slight figure, every slender curve of which was blatantly revealed by the light behind her. He backed a step and turned the key in the lock.
She couldn’t believe her eyes. ‘How can you be so childish?’
‘I have no intention of chasing you round the château for the entertainment of our staff.’ Alex pocketed the key. ‘Why don’t you get into bed?’
‘Because I refuse to share a bed with you!’ Sarah drew herself up to her full height, pride, self-preservation and innate obstinacy evident in every inch of her bearing.
‘You sleep here from now on,’ Alex delivered flatly, tenaciously. ‘In my bed.’
Sarah squared her shoulders. Wanting him was one thing, condoning that weak shameful craving another. She had promised herself that she would never allow him to use her again and she intended to keep that promise. ‘I am not the kind of woman who just does what you tell her when you snap your fingers,’ she said witheringly..
His night-dark eyes slashed into her. ‘Then allow me to explain your position,’ Alex murmured, his voice frighteningly quiet and low in pitch. ‘If you don’t get into my bed, I’ll rip off that nightdress and do what I am burning to do...so thoroughly and so often, you won’t be fit to get back out of that bed for at least twenty-four hours.’
Sarah’s tongue shot out to wet her dry lips.
‘On the other hand, if you do get into bed, I’ll struggle manfully to respect your headache...’
Sarah shot into bed without another word. Meek as a lamb, she conceded furiously, but then heroism in the face of overwhelming odds would not have brought its own reward. It would have been another dose of humiliation, she reminded herself. Sex that was just sex was not a practice she had any desire to take up on a regular basis.
Alex reached for her several minutes later.
‘Don’t!’ she launched over her shoulder.
‘If you don’t shut up,’ Alex whispered silkily, forcing her close with hard, strong hands, ‘I’ll forget I ever made such a self-sacrificing concession as letting you lie here untouched...’
She stopped breathing. The heat of his body, the incredibly intimate feel of him against her trembling body warned her that Alex was not joking...he was very aroused. Reaching out, he turned off the light. Hot as hellfire, she lay there in the darkness.
‘And if you can’t stop moving about in that wonderfully encouraging way, you had better start praying...’
Hardly breathing and not moving, she lay there, fighting the flood of heat warming her and the wanton stab of excitement tugging low in the pit of her stomach. She just didn’t understand Alex Terzakis; she just didn’t understand him at all. And, for a female who liked to know exactly where she stood at all times, that was a terrifying admission.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘UP!’
The next morning, some horribly cruel character trailed the bedding off Sarah, letting in a cold draught.
She opened her eyes to see Alex, fully dressed and breathtakingly immaculate in a beautifully tailored navy suit. ‘Up?’ she whispered weakly. ‘What time is it?’
‘Seven. And, like a good little wife, you are going to get up and have breakfast with me...’ With absolute sadism, Alex lifted her and dumped her in a heap on the stool in front of the dressing-table. ‘You brush your hair, wash your face and come downstairs.’
Shivering with cold and the rudeness of her awakening, Sarah grimaced. She liked to wake up slowly and peacefully, rising in her own time.
‘You’re like a zombie at this hour, aren’t you?’ Alex thrust a brush in her hand.
‘I have no dressing-gown.’
‘Have mine.’ Determined not to be circumvented, Alex took it upon himself to thread her arms into the sleeves and fold it round her. Helpfully, he tied the sash and rolled up the cuffs.
‘I look ridiculous.’
‘Who cares?’
Thrust into the bathroom, she groaned. She had barely slept the previous night and now the torture had started with the dawn chorus. What was the matter with Alex? Did a vein of insanity run in the Terzakis genes? Hadn’t she given him what he said he wanted? Hadn’t she left him alone, stayed out of his path? Most unfaithful husbands would kill for that sort of freedom. So why was Alex suddenly and inexplicably demanding that she do wifely things like sharing the same bed and breakfast-table?
‘I won’t be home tonight...’ Alex informed her.
Sarah didn’t bat an eyelash. She wondered why he was bothering to tell her.
‘I will be in Geneva until tomorrow.’
A long, simmering silence stretched.
‘Do you have any interest in my movements?’ Alex enquired very, very quietly.
None. She wouldn’t allow herself to have an interest. She wanted to think of Alex as Nicky’s uncle, not as her husband. In fact, she flatly refused to think of him as her husband. Her clear emerald eyes gleamed. ‘Do you want me to take an interest?’
His strong jawline hardened. Golden eyes flashed. Thrusting back his chair, he tossed aside his napkin. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Sarah cleared her throat and asked a question that had been nibbling anxiously at the back of her mind for several days. ‘Alex...?’
He studied her with unhidden impatience.
‘When is Damon planning to come and see Nicky?’ she completed tautly.
Alex stilled, clearly taken by surprise. ‘He has had an open invitation since
the day of our wedding.’
Sarah took a deep breath. ‘Is it me? Is that why he hasn’t come?’
‘I really have no idea. Naturally it will not be an easy meeting for either of you,’ Alex acknowledged. ‘Although a little more honesty on your part might simplify matters.’
‘On my part?’
‘I’m prepared to concede that you were not aware that Damon was a married man. But I will not accept that he ever asked your sister to marry him—’
‘He did,’ Sarah said tightly.
‘Or,’ Alex continued, ‘that he left your sister without means of support.’
‘He did,’ she said again.
‘I won’t believe that,’ Alex asserted grimly. ‘Money would have been the easiest thing of all for him to give to salve his conscience. He knew that the cheque I gave was never cashed. When you decide to face the truth of that affair, maybe then I will think the time is right to encourage Damon more actively to visit us here.’
‘I am not lying.’ Furiously conscious that he did not believe her, Sarah stared back at him, taut with frustration. Without proof, she knew she had no hope of convincing Alex of her innocence. First and foremost he would choose to believe his brother, but it angered Sarah that Alex should continue to harbour this view of her as an outright liar. Angered and hurt, she registered. Did that mean Alex’s opinion mattered to her? She was shaken by the awareness that it did.
Alex sent her a glittering golden glance. ‘For Nicky’s sake, I am prepared to make certain sacrifices.’
‘Sacrifices?’ she questioned without understanding.
His dark, strong face hardened. ‘I have seen for myself that, whatever other flaws you may have, you love that child and will undoubtedly be a more loving mother to him than any other woman I might have married.’
The compliment with the scorpion’s sting in its tail. Her teeth gritted together, angry pink washing her cheeks. How dared he talk about his sacrifices and her flaws?
‘And for that reason I have decided to do everything within my power to make this marriage work,’ Alex concluded arrogantly.