She watched Alex emerge from the house again, couldn't even summon up the curiosity to wonder why he had gone back in. His black hair was ruffled by the breeze but so perfectly cut that it fell straight back into place. Dark eyes mirrored the sunlight-flashing gold against the hard symmetry of his masculine features. He looked quite extravagantly gorgeous in a pearl-grey suit that was very Italian in style. The overall effect was one of quite breathtaking elegance and sophistication. Who was she? she found herself wondering helplessly. Who was the woman who had walked away when Alex had laid his heart at her feet?
He swung in beside her. 'You have some preference about where you would like to go?'
'Anywhere…'
He laughed spontaneously. 'Dio, I timed my arrival well. I also have plans of my own…'
That was scarcely a revelation. Alex would always know exactly where he was going and what he was doing.; Unlike Brian…Brian, who she had once fondly believed to be strong, decisive and forthright, she reflected painfully. Right now Brian seemed lost in a turmoil of his own making, and he had been loyal to neither her nor Antonia. Had Brian come to her that day in her office and told her that he loved her cousin, she would have respected him more and understood him better.
'You've lost weight,' Alex remarked casually. * 'Scarlet women do.'
'You get much thinner and you'll slide through a grating. There wasn't a lot of you to begin with.'
Was she getting too thin? She glanced down anxiously at the slender curves filling out her pink cotton T-shirt and jeans, and for some reason also recalled that she had no makeup on. Her cheeks flushed. For goodness' sake! It wasn't as if she was out on a hot date! 'Why did you come down?' she asked.
'I missed you?'
'Try again.'
'I was a little worried about the effect of all the publicity?'
"The little-office-girl-makes-good bit… or the Alex-Rossini-goes-down-market bit?'
'If being with you is slumming, there's not an office girl in the City safe.' Alex casually tossed a newspaper onto her lap. 'Have you seen the latest?'
Sara stiffened. 'I thought I'd had my fifteen minutes of fame.'
With a sinking heart, she read the gossip column. TasminLaslo was reportedly furious to learn that she had been replaced by a woman she described as 'an impertinent little typist', and the actress had gone on to share the news that the same typist had called her employer 'a slick, womanising swine'.
'I said it,' Sara whispered sickly. 'I said it that day when she phoned… that she was well rid of you.'
'Honesty got the better of you?'
'You have every right to be angry with me,' Sara conceded tautly.
'It was a fair assessment of my character to date. I don't give a damn, but if I know Tasmin she'll find a way to make this story run and run.'
Yet even in receipt of that daunting assurance Sara could feel a sense of calm stealing over her for the first time in days. It was the most incredible relief to escape the hothouse pressure and angry tensions of the Dalton household.
'Antonia's pregnant.' It leapt straight out of her subconscious onto her tongue.
Alex burst out laughing. Sara dealt him a stunned look.
'Sorry, cara. That was not very kind of me… but it does cross one's mind that, whatever else she is, she's a remarkably determined young woman.'
'Brian doesn't know yet. Of course, when he does… he'll leave me alone.'
'Is that what you want?'
'Yes… absolutely,' Sara returned, fiercely defensive on that point.
'I suspect the heat is already off you,' Alex delivered smoothly. 'When I went back into the house, I told them.'
Her seat belt pulled tight as Sara's back jerked blade-straight. 'Told them what?'
'I only wanted to make myself known to your family. Under fire, you surely did not expect me to pose: alongside you as a martyred miscreant?'
Sara's jaw dropped as she gazed back at him wide-eyed. 'What did you tell them?'
'I merely pointed out that our relationship only began after you discovered that your fianc6 and your cousin had been seeing each other behind your back. I was far kinder to them than they were to you,' Alex imparted, quite untouched by her consternation. 'I did not refer to the fact that you found them between the sheets. I find it quite impossible to comprehend why you should have felt the need to protect them in the face of the kind of treatment you have obviously been receiving.':: 'It'll devastate my aunt and uncle-'
'Let them be devastated. She is their daughter and you are not her keeper.'
'You had no right to tell them!' Sara gasped.
'In the light of what I overheard before I entered the room, I enjoyed telling them. Your cousin staged a most unconvincing faint. Your ex put on a fetching impression of a trout on a hook. And then, as I was withdrawing to leave them all to it, the rather large blonde woman in the pearls made a decidedly offensive remark about your cousin's morals… something which rankled so severely that your cousin literally couldn't take it lying down.' Alex's accented drawl trembled with betraying amusement. 'She came up out of her faint like a vampire rising from the tomb and began screeching at the top pf her voice!'
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'Quite priceless entertainment, I gather?' But Sara's own voice had developed an involuntary wobble; She was genuinely shocked by Alex's sublime indifference to the feelings of everyone concerned but the picture that he had drawn was so vivid, so innately rich with black comedy that she couldn't help the ripple of amusement which briefly gripped her.
'You see, bellamia… you can laugh and smile again,' Alex murmured with satisfaction.
'Even when I hate myself for it? Even when I have no right to feel superior to Brian and Antonia?' she muttered feverishly. 'The same day… I slept with you.'
'But you would never have done that had you still considered yourself morally bound to him. You're too loyal. Nor can I believe that you would have practised such deceit as they did.'
'You could talk me right out of my conscience,' Sara whispered.
'It might be an improvement if you stopped behaving like a schoolgirl fresh out of a convent. Nobody's perfect,' Alex reminded her, taking some of the sting out of that initial statement.
'I owe Antonia's parents a great deal. If they hadn't given me a home when I was five, I would have gone into care. They took me in and brought me up just as if I was their own child.'
'Liar. I saw a dozen photos of her decorating the room, none whatsoever of you. They are comfortably off yet you left school at sixteen and made your own way in life.
''My choice. You couldn't have expected them to do more. My aunt didn't even particularly want to take me on. I'm illegitimate,' Sara pointed out stiffly. 'Not so uncommon these days.' 'My father was a Greek waiter.'
'Rich, warm Mediterranean blood… do I apologise for mine?' Alex elevated an ebony brow with decided hauteur.
Sara was betrayed into a rueful laugh. 'I wasn't apologising-'
'You were. How did your parents meet?'
'My mother was on holiday. She was only out there a week. She was twenty-one,' Sara told him. 'Nobody wanted her to keep me but she did. So they told her she could manage on her own… It's fair enough that they weren't exactly over the moon when I landed back on, their doorstep. My grandparents were too old to take me!on. Antonia was only a year older. My aunt and uncle stepped in. They didn't have to.'