The Marriage Betrayal
Page 16
Next month, look out for:
BRIDE FOR REAL
Just when they thought their hasty marriage was finished, Tally and Sander are drawn back together and the passion between them is just as strong … But Sander has hidden reasons for wanting his wife in his bed again, and Tally also has a terrible secret … and neither are prepared for what this tempestuous reunion will bring …
Available in July and August—
can you wait to find out what happens?
Here’s a delicious taste of what you can expect …
PROLOGUE
BRILLIANT dark eyes grim, Sander studied the photo of his wife, looking small and sinuously sexy in a scarlet evening gown—and wrapped in another man’s arms.
He was disturbed to appreciate that he was in shock. The white heat of the rage that followed made him lightheaded and scoured him inside like a cleansing flame, leaving him feeling curiously hollow. Robert Miller, well, that wasn’t a surprise, was it? Sander had noted at the Westgrave Manor party two years earlier that Miller had wanted Tally the minute he’d laid eyes on her. Just as Sander had, once. But in spite of his simmering fury, Sander pushed the newspaper away with a careless hand. He glanced at his watching father to say lightly like a practised card player hiding his hand, ‘So?’
‘When will you be fully free of her?’ Petros Volakis demanded sourly, as if an estranged wife, whose new single life was being fully documented by the media, was an embarrassment to the family name.
‘I’m free now,’ Sander pointed out with a shrug, for, although divorce proceedings still had a way to go, an official separation was already in place.
As his attention roamed involuntarily back to the newspaper lying close by, he questioned the strength of his reaction to seeing Tally with someone else. They were getting a divorce. It should be no surprise that she was back on the social circuit. But, like a man forced to stand still while hot pitch was slowly dripped onto his skin, Sander was in torment. Why? Prior to their break-up Tally had brandished her indifference to Sander like a banner and he had assumed that no man could breach her barriers. The idea that another man might have succeeded where he had failed outraged and challenged him.
‘I don’t see you featuring in the gossip columns the way you did before you married,’ the older man remarked with more insight than Sander usually ascribed to him.
‘I’ve grown up,’ Sander countered drily. ‘I’m also more discreet.’
‘She was a mistake but we’ll say no more about it,’ Petros commented, noting the hardening of his son’s stubborn jaw line with a wary eye.
His lean, darkly handsome face uninformative, Sander had nothing to say, at least nothing worth saying. He marvelled that his parents, who had not even offered him sympathy on the death of his firstborn son, could think that any aspect of his marriage could be their business. But then, relations had long been chilly between Sander and his parents. His elder brother, Titos, the family favourite, had died in a tragic accident and, although it was only thanks to Sander that Volakis Shipping had since recovered from his brother’s disastrous management, Sander was still being made to feel a very poor second best in the son stakes. And now, all of a sudden, he was disturbingly conscious that his meteoric triumphs in business were in stark contrast to a frankly abysmal rating in his private life.
Tally, however, had moved on from their marriage at startling speed and was evidently enjoying considerable success: new business, new home, new man. That knowledge infuriated Sander, who remembered a much more innocent Tally, a glowing girl who had once been too excited to breathe when he kissed her. He could not stand to think of her in bed with Robert Miller and the awareness shocked him because he had never seen himself as a possessive man …
Don’t forget to come back
at the beginning of next month
to find out what happens to Tally and Sander!
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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First published in Great Britain 2011
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
© Lynne Graham 2011
ISBN: 978-1-408-92581-2
Table of Contents
Cover
Excerpt
Title Page
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Preview
Copyright