Bond of Hatred

by Lynne Graham

  ‘Sarah?’ Alex looked astonished.

  ‘I’m here for lunch... I mean, I’m here in place of...’ Stumbling in desperation, she fell silent, moving forward, thinking that if he found her sudden unannounced arrival that astonishing he was going to need resuscitation before she got much further.

  Slowly he rose to his feet. ‘What a charming idea,’ he breathed, his dark brows drawing together as he studied her hectically flushed face and air of decided purpose. Then he stole a fleeting glance down at the narrow gold watch on his wrist. He dealt her a distinctly tense smile. ‘Unfortunately, I’m afraid you’ve chosen—’

  ‘I just couldn’t wait until you got home,’ Sarah broke in feverishly, his glance at his watch not having been lost on her and serving merely to stoke her tension to new heights.

  His black lashes dipped lower over his intent, dark eyes, clear bemusement etched into his rigidity. ‘Wait for what?’ he asked with a dismal lack of comprehension.

  Sarah abandoned the idea of a slow, seductive wriggle and pitched off her coat to grab his attention. ‘I couldn’t wait for you,’ she said huskily, and embarked on the buttons of her black, narrowly cut coat-dress.

  Alex’s gaze had whipped over to the coat now lying in a heap and back to her fast. He seemed welded to the floor with shock. He certainly wasn’t making this any easier for her, she thought painfully, her fingers turning clumsy on the buttons. In fact, the exact moment the penny dropped would probably live with her forever. Alex went from shocked to shattered. Sarah collided with incandescent golden eyes. Her breath rattled in her throat. If he laughed, she would fall apart like shattered glass. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She could see that he was making a very conscious effort to accept that this was really happening to him, with her in the starring role.

  The dress gaped as she finally made it to the last button. Alex made it out from behind his desk but the damnable man was still staring at her, not doing anything.

  ‘Sarah...’ he murmured dazedly.

  Desperate green eyes held his fiercely as she threw back her shoulders and let the dress slide down her arms, baring all. ‘The door’s locked and...I’m all yours...’

  Alex’s golden gaze did a lightning-fast appraisal over her pouting, pink-tipped breasts, the suspender belt, the smooth skin of her slender thighs above the black stocking-tops. ‘Cristos...’ he groaned.

  ‘You see...I can be the sort of wife you want me to be. You won’t need anybody else,’ she completed with unconscious stress.

  ‘Never...not if you plan to enliven my working day like this,’ Alex confessed raggedly, suddenly reaching for her, letting one unsteady hand slide up over her taut ribcage and close round one tantalising breast before hauling her full length against him, his other hand splaying over her bottom, curving her into contact with his rampant arousal. ‘And, since no other woman has ever done what you do to my libido, I should think you’ve got me exclusively for the next fifty years...but...’

  But? Every bone in her body tensed.

  ‘...I have just one tiny phone call to make,’ Alex muttered half under his breath.

  ‘No!’ Elise could damned well be stood up, Sarah thought furiously. Spearing one hand up into Alex’s black hair, she drew his head down to hers. ‘I want you...and I can’t wait,’ she swore with positive violence.

  He paused for a split-second and then he succumbed, suddenly, roughly, like a dam breaking its walls. He grabbed her up to him with two bruising hands and took her mouth with electrifying hunger, his tongue plunging between her eagerly parted lips, demanding and taking fire from her readily offered response. Burning alive, Sarah gave up her last rational thought. Now he could take over.

  And take over he did with satisfying alacrity. By the time she had sucked in much needed oxygen, she was flat on her back on a sofa and Alex was standing over her, ripping off his clothes with nothing like his usual cool and finesse. Golden eyes were nailed to her with such fierce hunger, she stretched shamelessly beneath the heat and the vibrations he was putting out.

  ‘I was going to apologise for what I said last night,’ Alex admitted in a rush. ‘I was very rude and far too impatient and you had every reason to be shocked by what I said.’

  ‘I took the hint, Alex...didn’t I?’ Sarah was starting to enjoy herself.

  ‘I’ll be dropping hints all the time after this... Cristos, I am still in shock,’ Alex muttered, coming down on her, shuddering with excitement as he came into contact with her soft, welcoming female body, every inch of which was programmed to seduce with willingness and enthusiasm.

  It was an hour before either of them spoke another word. A knock had sounded on the door once or twice but neither of them had heard it. Sarah was absolutely wiped out by the explosive passion that had erupted between them. It had scorched right out of control and now her face warmed a little as she remembered what she had done and what he had done and the shocking level of pleasure attained by those uninhibited diversions.

  The experience had also been rather informative. Alex went crazy when she touched him even though there was nothing practised about her technique. Surely no man could manufacture that much responsive excitement? Surely it couldn’t be the same for him with any other woman?

  ‘You’ve always wanted me...just the way you said, haven’t you?’ she whispered, knowing the answer that would kill all her insecurities even before it came.

  ‘Madly, compulsively...even more now,’ Alex confessed, both arms wound possessively round her. ‘Let’s go home.’

  ‘Home?’

  Alex lifted his dark head and smiled down at her with rueful amusement. ‘I really don’t think I’d be worth very much if I stayed. I don’t have any important appointments...’

  The exact instant when he recalled that Elise had been left at his apartment was obvious to Sarah. He tensed, suddenly falling silent. Tactfully she removed her attention from him. She had won. She might not be about to boast about her methods but the bottom line was winning.

  ‘We’ll use the car, not the helicopter,’ Alex said abruptly. ‘I have a call to make on the way home.’

  Generous in victory, Sarah asked no questions. Her marriage was intact. She had Alex and Alex was unlikely to have the energy even to consider straying in the future. They walked out of his office together. His secretary looked a little embarrassed for them both. Sarah blushed furiously. Alex couldn’t stop smiling. That he was in an extremely good mood was blatantly obvious to even the most disinterested observer.

  ‘We say hello to Nicky and then we go back to bed,’ Alex muttered thickly in her ear before they left the building. ‘Then we plan a honeymoon somewhere sunny and secluded where nobody will interrupt us.’

  The limo stopped in a street several blocks from the Terzakis building. Alex alighted onto the pavement. ‘I hope I won’t be too long.’

  I hope so too, Sarah thought, suddenly tense. She supposed it would have been too much to expect him just to ring Elise. She noted that he had no doubt that Elise would have waited for him even though he was over an hour late.

  He was ten minutes and he was smiling as he rejoined her. It occurred to Sarah as Alex spontaneously reached for her and demanded and took a long, deep drugging kiss that Elise du Pré had to be an extraordinarily good loser. Alex had evidently not been subjected to a storm of reproach. His emotional high was unabated. He flirted, he teased, he couldn’t keep his hands off her all the way back to the château. In fact he was a male transformed by...by happiness? Could her sexual response possibly be that important to him? Sarah wondered dazedly. But the more she looked at him, the more convinced she became that this was Alex as she had never before seen him. So happy that he couldn’t hide it. Seemingly she could look forward to dropping into his office and playing the sex bomb at least once a month. If that was what it took, and it seemed that it was, never let it be said that she shrank from her marital duty.

  Henri tried to say something as they came into the hall, wrapped round e
ach other. Alex said something in an aside, not paying any heed, and then the effort of having not connected with Sarah for an entire two minutes became too much and he swept her into his arms again, taking her mouth under his with a groan of earthy and unalloyed satisfaction.

  Somebody cleared his throat loudly. Neither one of them heard. Somebody coughed. Sarah and Alex continued to kiss as though they had been apart for at least six months.

  ‘Alex!’

  In Sarah’s arms, Alex froze. As he removed his mouth from hers, he muttered something abrasive in Greek and gritted in an undertone, ‘Why now?’

  Only when he drew back from her did Sarah see the young man and woman standing across the hall, both wearing similar expressions of disbelief.

  ‘Alex?’ The young woman moved forward with a tremulous smile. It was the woman in the photograph...Androula.

  ‘I did ask you to go to a hotel, Damon,’ Alex breathed abrasively.

  Sarah looked at him in shock. He sounded incredibly rude.

  ‘That isn’t Sarah, Andy!’ Damon hissed in visible embarrassment.

  Damon didn’t recognise her.

  ‘Of course it’s Sarah!’ Alex retorted with raw impatience.

  Damon frowned at Sarah, searching her designer-clad form, she suddenly realised, for some likeness to the unattractive, dowdy woman he recalled and, on top of the tension, it was quite simply too much for her sense of humour. She burst out laughing.

  ‘She’s like another woman,’ Damon said weakly. ‘I wouldn’t have known her.’

  Androula smiled with an amusement similar to Sarah’s. ‘I think we shouldn’t have worried so much and we should have gone to the hotel. To think that Damon felt so guilty about you and Alex getting married!’ She laughed with clear relief and linked her hand in her husband’s saying, ‘Look at them, Damon... they’re lovers, not enemies!’

  ‘Yes...’ Damon still couldn’t stop staring. ‘She’s gorgeous, Alex.’

  Alex curved an arm round Sarah’s waist. ‘Yes,’ he agreed with an obvious attempt to be more welcoming. ‘I suppose you have come to talk. Well, I don’t want to be insensitive but, to be brutally frank, I don’t want a whole lot of stuff raked up that’s going to upset my wife!’

  ‘Alex!’ Sarah gasped.

  His cheekbones tautened, darkening in colour, and he looked down at her. ‘I’m sorry, but their problems have haunted us long enough,’ he muttered in an undertone. ‘I don’t want anything more coming between us.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to come between us. I promise,’ she whispered back, her heart turning over at his obvious concern and anxiety for their relationship.

  ‘Let’s get it over with, then,’ he sighed.

  The four of them entered the salon. Alex closed the door. Damon sat down, Androula beside him. He cleared his throat awkwardly. He couldn’t meet Sarah’s eyes. Androula squeezed her husband’s hand supportively. And finally Damon took a deep breath and spoke. ‘I’ve been pretty inventive with the truth, Alex...’

  ‘He has told many lies,’ Androula rephrased ruefully.

  Damon said something in Greek and suddenly Androula stood up. ‘I think it would be better if I waited outside,’ she said without resentment, and left the room.

  Sarah sighed. ‘I know you didn’t let Callie down as badly as I believed.’

  ‘I did,’ Damon muttered. ‘I told Alex she was a gold-digger and that there had been other men. Callie wasn’t like that and you must hate me for it.’

  She didn’t hate him any more, she discovered. He was very immature for his age. The boyishness was more than skin-deep. He was weak. Callie had been by far the stronger personality, she acknowledged.

  ‘You lied to me?’ Alex raked in raw intimidation at his brother across the breadth of the room.

  As Sarah saw Damon turn white and flinch, her patience with Alex cracked. ‘Oh, keep quiet, Alex, and let him speak!’

  ‘When Andy came over to Oxford with the children, our marriage was in a lot of trouble,’ Damon admitted. ‘I told her I wanted a divorce—’

  ‘You did what?’ Alex broke in.

  ‘Alex!’ Sarah reproved.

  Alex, his strong, dark features a mask of anger, compressed his lips again.

  ‘And Andy agreed,’ Damon completed tightly, ‘before she went back to Greece, before I got involved with Callie...’ He met Sarah’s gaze for the first time. ‘I’d never met anyone like her before. I just fell like a ton of bricks for her. You know, I asked her to marry me and at the time I did mean it.’

  ‘And I refused to believe you, pethi mou,’ Alex murmured heavily.

  ‘It doesn’t matter now.’ But she was very glad that Damon was finally telling the truth. Her love for her late sister demanded that truth.

  ‘Callie promised me that there was no risk of her getting pregnant,’ Damon continued tightly. ‘She knew I didn’t want that to happen and, when it did, I didn’t know how to handle it. There was no way I could get a divorce quickly enough. Callie and I had a major argument. Then I went back home to see the children and...and I...well, I realised—’

  ‘That you wanted to go back to your wife,’ Sarah put in, taking grudging pity on him.

  ‘Callie called me a useless wimp and I was in her eyes,’ Damon mumbled, studying the carpet. ‘I couldn’t face it all. I just wished I could put the clock back. She wouldn’t agree to a termination—’

  Alex made a vehement sound of disgust, surveying his kid brother with flaming golden eyes of contempt. ‘You asked her to marry you, you got cold feet and then you dumped her. An eighteen-year-old girl, who was in love with you! How the hell could you be so bloody selfish and irresponsible and then turn me loose on Sarah and her sister?’

  Sarah saw Damon’s shoulders quiver and knew he was fighting back tears. He covered his face with his trembling hands and just sat there, letting Alex’s chilling recriminations beat down on him, and then Alex switched to Greek.

  ‘That’s enough...that is enough, Alex!’ Sarah interrupted because she couldn’t stand it any more. ‘It’s finished with. It’s over. He’s not the only man in the world to let a woman down.’

  ‘Your sister died!’ Alex shot at her furiously.

  ‘Because she chose to become pregnant, not because Damon went back to his wife!’ As she registered Alex’s amazement, Sarah grimaced and shrugged. ‘Damon did what he could. He sent her money. He didn’t just abandon her.’

  ‘Yes,’ Damon confirmed, shooting her a painfully grateful look for her intercession on his behalf.

  Alex expelled his breath in a thwarted hiss. Sarah wondered if he made a habit of reducing his kid brother to a speechless basket case on the brink of tears, and no longer marvelled at the lies Damon had told to save his own skin at Callie’s expense. She herself had only one other question to ask Damon.

  ‘Why did you offer to take Nicky and bring him up?’

  Damon stiffened and the silence stretched. ‘It was the only thing I could do to make up for her dying,’ he finally conceded. ‘And Andy agreed.’

  ‘Did you really want him?’ Sarah murmured tautly, skimming a silencing glance at Alex, who was visibly outraged at the turn of the conversation. ‘I want to know, Damon. And I’d appreciate the truth. It’ll never go beyond these walls.’

  ‘No, I didn’t want him,’ Damon muttered. ‘I’m really grateful that you and Alex have taken responsibility for him. It wouldn’t have done much for my marriage...’

  ‘He’s done a hell of a lot for mine,’ Alex murmured drily, his anger draining away as he regarded his younger brother’s utterly defeated and cowed aspect. ‘Luckily for you.’

  ‘Well, you and Sarah seem to be getting on great,’ Damon said uncomfortably.

  ‘Like a house on fire,’ Sarah told him gently, her bitterness completely laid to rest. He was a little boy who had never grown up and probably never would.

  Damon stood up with speed, dashed a self-conscious hand across his damp eyes and headed for the door. ‘Do you s
till want us to come to the party?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Sarah said with determined cheer, since Alex was fuming at the speed of Damon’s exit.

  Androula was in the hall. She came straight across to Sarah with eyes that unflinchingly met hers. ‘I went up to see Nicky. He’s beautiful,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t mind. I really don’t mind, because I have Damon back, you see. Can you understand that?’

  Sarah could, and was relieved to see that Vivien’s daughter was not hostile towards her. She watched them leave, Andy slipping her hand comfortingly into Damon’s. Damon hadn’t gone to see Nicky, had expressed no such desire, probably would be far happier to regard Nicky as her and Alex’s son rather than as anything to do with him. It was the easy way out for him, Sarah registered ruefully, and Damon undoubtedly made a practice of taking the easy way out.

  ‘So much for the fond father,’ Alex derided, sharing her thought. ‘I still had a great deal to say to him. Why did you interfere?’

  ‘Because he couldn’t take it and because I didn’t want him to hate me forever because you humiliated him in front of me,’ Sarah murmured quietly. ‘He’s weak, Alex, but he’s not wicked and I think he’s suffered enough. Callie’s death must have been the most appalling shock to him.’

  Alex lifted his hands and rested them on her slight shoulders. ‘You’re a very generous and intelligent woman,’ he murmured tautly. ‘And I owe you a very big apology for some of the things I’ve said about—’

  ‘No apology required. Just as I believed Callie, you believed him.’ Sarah reached up to plant a kiss on his startled mouth. ‘Now make Henri feed us before I pass out,’ she teased.

  ‘I thought you were about to offer Nicky back to them,’ Alex confided darkly, over the meal that was swiftly provided for them.

  ‘I had to know how he really felt,’ Sarah explained. ‘Now I won’t ever have to feel that I deprived him of his son.’