Trophy Husband

by Lynne Graham

  She called Brian at work.

  'What do you want?' he snapped.

  A wry smile touched her strained mouth. Hardly the response of a man in love, she thought.

  'You've heard about Toni and me, haven't you?' he assumed peevishly.

  'Do you want to talk about it?'

  'Why should you care?' Brian demanded bitterly.

  'Once we were good friends. It might help if we talked.'

  'I don't see how... but why not?' he muttered in a self-pitying tone.

  She agreed to meet him after work at the house. Evidently her cousin had refused to live there and Brian had

  moved in alone. She was sitting in a traffic jame when,

  Alex phoned.

  'How did it go with your aunt?' he enquired straight off.

  Her stomach twisted with guilt when she thought of the lie she was about to tell. Shakily she breathed in. 'I'll be back late. I've actually just popped out for a few messages. My aunt's invited over some friends and I promised to stay for the evening,' she said stiltedly.

  There was a long pause.

  'No problems, then?'

  She bit her lower lip and tasted blood. 'Well, my aunt's a bit cool—'

  'The friends don't include Brian, do they?'

  Sara almost choked. 'Of course not!'

  'Just checking, bella mia. You sound upset. Why don't you develop a headache and bow out? I was planning to finish early tonight.'

  Her eyes burned. 'I'll be home as soon as I can.'

  'You stay under the speed limit. No racing,' Alex warned. 'I want you back all in one healthy piece, Rossini.'

  The constrictions in her throat ballooned. 'Yes... Sorry, the traffic's very heavy. I have to go now...'

  Damn Brian and Antonia, she reflected with sudden, desperate resentment. It was one thing to wish them well, quite another to get involved to the extent of being forced to lie to Alex. But then she should have told the truth and faced the music. She was a lousy liar. And Alex was so attuned to her emotions now that he picked up on her tensions. She had this awful feeling that she was going to have to tell him anyway. And that would cause trouble. Lying had only made it worse, she saw now, and writhed with guilt.

  Brian was waiting for her. Sara tried not to stare at the wallpaper half-ripped off the wall in the hall. 'Toni,' Brian said succinctly.

  'You can't blame her for not wanting to live here. In every way that matters, I made this my house.'

  'I blame her for everything.'

  'It takes two people to have an affair.'

  'But it only takes one liar to force an affair into a shotgun marriage!' Brian stabbed back bitterly. 'She told me she was pregnant.. .she's not! She was lying and I was the mug who believed her!'

  Sara sank down on a sofa in the small sitting room and suddenly understood a great deal. For the second time that day she was forced to listen to a catalogue of woes, this time from Brian's side of the fence. She had some sympathy for him but she didn't let it show. She let him vent the worst of his spleen, knowing that it would cool him down. 'Had it ever occurred to you that she must love you an awful lot?' she asked when he'd finally finished.

  'The only person Toni loves is herself.'

  'She deceived you and that was wrong but she must have been desperate for you to marry her.'

  'You would never have done anything like that.'

  'Brian... Antonia and I are chalk and cheese and always will be, but don't forget that it was Antonia you really wanted.'

  'That's not true...'

  'Be honest with yourself. She didn't suit you as well as I did but you never stopped being attracted to her. Reminding her of me isn't fair. Where is she now?'

  'Staying with a friend. I told her I wanted a divorce...'

  'But you don't want one, do you? You only want to punish her,' Sara guessed, and watched him redden. 'Don't you think you could give her another chance?'

  'Why should I?'

  'It's up to you. But Antonia won't wait forever and she won't crawl. She was very hurt when you didn't stand by her after I found the two of you together. That was the time when you should have admitted how you really felt about her. She was afraid that you and I would get back together again. I'm sure that's the only reason she lied and pretended to be pregnant.'

  Well over an hour later Sara climbed back into her car. She was exhausted and she had talked herself hoarse but only time would tell whether she had done any good. At least Brian had been a lot less bitter when she'd left him.

  It was a long drive back down to Ladymead. She thought about Alex all the way and hoped that he wouldn't lose his temper when she admitted that she had been with Brian.

  The manor house was all lit up. Alex's chauffeur was putting a case in the boot of the limousine. Sara frowned slightly. She found Alex in the spacious library which he used as an office. He was slinging files into a box. She paused on the threshold. 'What are you doing?'

  Alex lifted his dark head, ice-cold eyes landing on her in glancing assault. His strong features clenched cruelly hard, his mouth flattening. 'I'm leaving you,' he said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  DEVASTATED by the announcement, Sara stared back at him in wide-eyed disbelief.

  'In pursuit of points for being a supportive husband, I decided to join the surprise family gathering you mentioned,' Alex drawled with lethal effect.

  Sara turned white with shock.

  'Your uncle told me when you had left and while we were having a cosy little chat on the doorstep he also passed on the news that the other marriage in the family had broken up and that your aunt was upset. He hoped I would understand that he couldn't invite me indoors.'

  Sara was trembling, her family's rudeness to Alex only another thorn in her shrinking flesh. She licked her dry lips. 'Alex, I can explain—'

  'I know where you've been. You've been with him all evening,' Alex delivered with seething bite. 'The minute you found out that he was free again you betrayed yourself!'

  'It wasn't like that!' she protested shakily. 'My aunt asked me to—'

  'You lied to me.'

  'Yes... but-'

  'Did you actually make it into bed with him?' Alex demanded, a vicious edge to the sudden, slashing demand as his shimmering golden eyes cut into her. 'Dio did I transform you into a sexually confident woman for his benefit?'

  'Don't be disgusting!' Sara gasped.

  'I find it even more disgusting that you've most probably been sitting holding hands and mumbling sweet nothings! That turns my stomach!' Alex roared back at her full-blast. 'I could understand a sexual obsession even if I couldn't condone it... but this nauseating sentimental attachment of yours makes my flesh creep—especially when I think of what you were doing with me in bed last night!'

  Hectic pink brightened her pallor. 'You've got it all wrong!' She heard the pure panic fracturing her own voice. 'My aunt asked me to talk to Brian. I knew you wouldn't want me to and I didn't want to either but I didn't have the guts to say no when she put the pressure on. I don't feel anything for Brian any more... honestly I don't! Nothing happened, not a word was said which you could object to!'

  'You lied to me—'

  'I'm sorry but I was a coward. I thought I could see Brian without you ever knowing about it,' she admitted in a desperate rush. 'I just didn't want to spoil things. We've been so happy and I couldn't face another argument over him.'

  'You're wasting your breath, Sara.' Alex sent her a look of cold hatred and contempt which made her reel back from him in shock. 'I'm still leaving.'

  'Please listen to me...please, Alex! Brian means nothing to me—'

  'No, obviously all this means slightly more to you than he does.' Alex indicated the Gothic magnificence of the room, his hard mouth twisting with bitter scorn. 'Why else would you have lied to protect yourself?'

  'Because I love you!'

  Alex gave a harsh laugh of incredulity. 'You bitch,' he breathed rawly, sweeping up the box in one powerful hand and striding past
her.

  Sara chased after him in despair. 'I mean it. I do love you!" she shouted after him, the words echoing through the great hall and coming back to her with an eerie resonance.

  Alex swung back, his cheekbones fiercely prominent, the pallor beneath his sun-bronzed skin accentuating the cold austerity of his dark eyes. 'You don't know the first thing about love, cara. You never did,' he derided in a sudden savage undertone. He flung her a scorching look of violent threat. 'There's no way I'll agree to a divorce. I'll keep you tied to me for years and if you ever dare to bring him into this house I'll beat the hell out of the snivelling little jerk!'

  Late the next morning, Sara woke up from an uneasy doze, stiff and cold. She was lying face down on the bed, still fully dressed. She focused on the crumpled white shirt lying half beneath her. Alex's shirt, still redolent of him, retrieved from the laundry like some comforting but empty talisman. Her throat ached more than ever. She faced reality. It was all her own fault, she conceded wretchedly. How could she have been that stupid!

  Until yesterday she had existed in a blissful glow of contentment. They had moved into Ladymead a fortnight ago in spite of the fact that work was still continuing in various corners. Alex had taken the inconvenience in his stride. He had begun to take a tentative interest in the improvements being made, occasionally making his own suggestions. He had twice accompanied her to Sotheby's to buy furniture. They had spent last weekend on the yacht and she had discovered that she liked sailing and didn't get sick. Indeed the only time she ever felt tense with Alex was when she found herself having to swallow back words of love.

  So what had she thought she would achieve by telling him that she loved him last night? Right at the beginning, Alex had made it clear that he didn't want her love...but after their wedding he had made it even more clear that he could not stand the idea of Brian having her love either. In fact, he couldn't even tolerate the mention of Brian's name without becoming aggressive, derisive or broodingly silent. Jealousy, she thought dazedly—rampant, murderous jealousy, not just arrogant male possessiveness, not just hostility to the idea that her loyalties might be divided. In Venice she should have had greater faith in her own suspicions. Had she understood, would she have been more honest last night?

  In lying she had dug her own grave with Alex. She had lied on impulse, choosing what had seemed an easy way out of a difficult situation. Her primary motivation had been the need not to cause trouble in her own marriage. But how on earth could she persuade Alex to trust her again after what she had done? How could she ever convince him that she loved and needed him, not his wealth or any other man? Well, certainly not by sitting feeling sorry for herself in yesterday's clothes with eyes as red as overripe tomatoes! came back the answer.

  When she went downstairs, she looked into the library, for the first time really taking in the devastation which Alex had wreaked the previous night. Filing drawers and cupboard doors hung open. Books and papers were tumbled across the desktop, with many more on the floor. Alex was a formidably tidy individual in any working environment. And yet last night he had torn this immaculately organised room apart and ended up only removing a single, half-empty box.

  Had she arrived home earlier than he had expected? Something told her that had she returned a couple of hours later Alex would by then have swept the boards of Ladymead so clean of his presence that she would have had trouble finding evidence that he had ever lived here with her. It was a chilling thought, emphasising the frightening speed with which Alex had decided to walk out on their marriage. An instantaneous decision, immediately acted upon.

  Instinctively she began to return the library carefully to order, and then slowly her hands fell still again. Alex wasn't coming back. Alex wasn't coming back unless she kidnapped him. She had given him the true story last night and he hadn't believed her. She had told him that she loved him and he hadn't believed that either. The best she could do now was to face him again and repeat exactly the same things. So why was she wasting time cleaning up? . . ,

  'Don't bother to ring ahead and warn him,' Sara told Gina, the receptionist, pleasantly on her way past. 'I want to surprise him.'

  'Hello, Sara...' Pete stopped dead on the threshold of his office. 'Is Alex expecting you?'

  'Do I need an appointment now, Pete?' Fevered tension made Sara sharp. She flushed. 'Sorry. Is anyone with him?'

  'No, but the helicopter's waiting to take him up north.'

  'I won't keep him long.'

  She walked into Alex's office on the power of one long, pent-up breath.

  He was standing by the windows. He spun lithely round and stilled, his strong features freezing into impassivity. Cold dark eyes settled on her without any perceptible emotion. That scared her, wiped out her prepared speech.

  'Now this I didn't expect,' Alex drawled reflectively. 'I assumed you would have too much pride to create a scene here.'

  'I'm not going to create any kind of scene...' Her heartbeat thundered in her ears as she stared back at him with a compulsive intensity that she couldn't control. Already she felt as though he had left her at least a month ago. An agonising sense of loss engulfed her without warning.

  'But you shouldn't be here. I made my wishes very clear last night. Go home. You can have nothing to say that I am prepared to listen to.'

  'But you have to listen,' Sara protested.

  'Why? I don't want you anywhere near me.'

  Her colour receded. On the drive up to London she had not prepared herself for this level of cruelty. Had Alex still been seething with anger, she could have borne it better, but rejection couched in cold detachment was infinitely more final. 'Alex... haven't you ever done anything you're ashamed of "on the spur of the moment"?' she prompted in desperation.

  'Married you.'

  Sara flinched as if he had struck her. 'Don't do this to us. Once you said to me, "Nobody's perfect," and I know that you have a right to be angry—'

  'I am not angry.' But for an instant she saw a flash of stark, bitter pain in his narrowed gaze before he screened it. 'And you're embarrassing me,' he continued with cutting precision.

  In a numb motion, Sara shook her head, wondering if she had imagined that pain. 'Alex?'

  He shrugged back a white shirt-cuff to scrutinse his watch. 'I haven't got time for this—'

  'If you say one more word, I may well hate you for the rest of my life,' Sara told him strickenly.

  'Anything you feel you have to say, share it with your lawyer, not with me.' Alex strode past her to the door.

  'I thought you didn't want a divorce,' she muttered unsteadily.

  'I've changed my mind,' he imparted without turning round. 'I want you out of my life.'

  As the door closed Sara was in such a daze that she slid down on the nearest seat, her stomach cramping up. Oh, you really made him listen, didn't you? Oh, you were really convincing, weren't you? she derided herself. But it had been as though Alex had retreated somewhere where she couldn't reach him.

  'Sara?'

  She glanced up to find Marco standing several feet away. She hadn't even heard the door open.

  'What did you do to my brother?' he enquired with unhidden aggression.

  'Where did you come from?' she mumbled.

  'I was calling in to see how he was but I appear to have missed him. So what did you do?' he demanded again fiercely. 'He came round to my apartment last night and sat there like he'd been hit by a truck!'

  'Did he?' She realised how low she had sunk when she experienced a flicker of hope.

  'I could see he was hurting but not a blasted word could I get out of the stubborn bastard!' Marco complained. 'So what's going on?'

  'I told him a lie about something and he assumed the worst and walked out.'

  'And you're surprised?'

  She sighed. 'You couldn't say anything to me that would make me feel any worse than I already feel.. .OK?'

  ' 1 don't like seeing my brother upset like, that. It would be much more healthy i
f he got drunk and punched walls instead of walking about like the living dead!'

  Sara took a deep breath. 'Could you find out where he's gone?'

  Marco walked to the door and bawled, 'Pete!'

  'The Lake District,' Pete supplied cheerfully, walking in, obviously having been listening.

  'What the blazes is he doing there?' Marco enquired.

  'Visiting friends, I assume. He goes up there maybe twice a year. I've never gone along.'

  'So?' Marco pressed impatiently. 'Who are they?'

  'I spoke to the woman once. Her name's Elissa,' Pete informed them helpfully. 'I don't think I ever got her surname.'

  Marco looked stunned. 'Elissa?' he repeated. 'Are you sure?'

  The roof had fallen in round Sara's head. Shock was roaring through her in waves. Pete frowned in be-musement at them both as he walked back out again.

  'Did you know about this?' Marco asked her sharply. 'That Alex was in touch with her again... I mean that he even knew where she was?'

  'No.'

  'Elissa living in England,' he muttered, still struggling with his own incredulity. 'And he never said a word.'

  'I understood she was always too special to talk about.' Sara's voice quivered.

  'If you're thinking that Alex is keeping a mistress he only sees twice a year, your head's away!'

  'Is it?' She studied her feverishly linked hands through a blinding blur of tears.

  'Alex is nuts about you—'

  'He's never said so.'

  'So he's a bit tight with the words!' Marco conceded in frustration. 'But he married you. He's living in a freezing cold house with one bathroom for your benefit. He's doing weird things like buying furniture and taking off out of the office in the middle of the day... This is not Alex as we have known him for the past thirty-four years!'

  'No?''

  'Sara, he's so sickeningly happy with you that he throws your name into every other sentence. Pete can't keep him in the office after five. This is a guy who cannot wait to get home to his wife every night. I ask you, is it likely he's doing a line with some old doll from his past?'