Much later, lying in a wonderful tangle of peaceful satiation, Sara rubbed her cheek lovingly against a smooth brown shoulder and thought about the chaotic, insecure childhood Alex must have had. 'You're really close to your brother and sisters, aren't you?'
'It astonishes me when I think of what a whiny little brat Marco was, always throwing tantrums and telling tales,' he mused lazily. 'Donatella, now…she was very quiet and serious. She used to follow me everywhere. The twins… they were born shortly before I opted out of my father's tangled love life. Their mother was convinced I had to be pathologically jealous of them. Dio… she panicked if I went near them!'
'Bitch,' Sara said feelingly.
Alex vented a wry laugh. 'She's not like that now. She hasn't remarried and she hates Francine, so if there's a problem with Cara or Lucilla it lands in my lap.'
'Why not their father's?'
'Sandro will use any excuse not to get involved, and his excuse is generally Francine. She rules him with a rod of iron. She's very conscious that she's survived longer than any of her predecessors. She's hard as nails but occasionally I feel a little sorry for her. She's thirty-seven and I strongly suspect she would like a child but she's convinced that a baby would land her in the divorce court, and, going on previous form, she's very probably right,' Alex conceded. 'Like me, Francine worked out a long time ago that Sandro finds a wife who is also a mother a decided turn-off.'
Sara had tensed. 'But you're not like that.'
'I'd be very stupid to tell you if I was,' Alex mocked.
'Alex… be serious.'
'Why? Any prospect of us having a child is a very long way off,' he returned flatly.
Sarafrowned, astonished that he could think that she had no right to the smallest input on the subject. 'How long… is very long?'
Alex exhaled on an impatient hiss. 'Let me put it this way, cara-I have no plans to compete with your former fiance in the fertility stakes!'
'I beg your pardon?' Sara gasped, thoroughly disconcerted by that response as she lifted herself up to look at him.
'Nor have I any intention of changing my mind in the near future.' Alex surveyed her with hard dark eyes. 'It's not a topic open to debate. Why do you think I take responsibility for birth control? I saw this threat clouding my horizon weeks ago!'
Threat? Her cheeks flamed. 'Did you indeed?'
'Si…the same second you told me that your cousin was pregnant,' Alex drawled softly. 'You are not in competition with her.'
'What on earth are you talking about? I asked a simple question,' Sara gritted defensively.
'And I gave you a simple answer. No,' Alex said emphatically. 'Sublimate your maternal urges in cats and dogs.'
Sara shifted across the bed as if she had been bitten by a rattlesnake. 'I have no idea why you had to drag Antonia into this!' Her voice shook with angry incomprehension and hurt.
Alex dimmed the lights. 'Go to sleep.'
'Don't treat me like a child!' she protested incredulously.
'I refuse to argue with you about this.'
'You're like your father, aren't you?' she condemned wildly.
'Madredi Dio…it I'd been like Sandra, cara, you would have been dumped before the ink was dry on the marriage licence!'
In the darkness Sara went rigid with shocked disbelief. He played really dirty in a fight… And you're surprised! an inner voice carolled drily. 'So why didn't you just do that?' she demanded.
'Don't ask me in the mood I'm in.'
'I want to know!'
'It's like there's a piece of elastic which keeps on hauling me back… but at this moment, bellamia, it's stretched very taut!' And the fact that he didn't like the feeling at all lanced clear as a bell through every splintering syllable.
'Help yourself to a pair of scissors!' Sara suggested painfully, sick and tired of the frequency with which Alex implied that their marriage might not have a future. Every time she stood up to him, he unleashed that threat.
Alex bit out a raw, exasperated imprecation in Italian. Sara pinned her tremulous mouth shut with enormous effort. There was a volcano of injustice boiling up inside her. One little question, casually asked, innocently meant-for, believe it or not, she was not gasping to become pregnant right at this moment-and she wouldn't have minded if Alex had merely said he would prefer to wait a year or two. Yes, she wanted Alex's baby but only when she felt secure in their relationship and only when he felt the same way. So what on earth did Antonia have to do with it? Did he really think that she would try to keep up with her cousin in such an utterly stupid way?
Or was Alex being almost too clever for his own good? she wondered painfully. Throwing up a red herring to conceal the fact that he didn't want children and certainly wouldn't risk an accidental pregnancy when he couldn't see their marriage lasting very long… was that what he had been doing? And she remembered, with bitter clarity, thinking that a woman in love with a man who did not love her might well become insecure, oversensitive and anxious. And now she knew it to be the case, Sara reflected with stricken insight.
CHAPTER NINE
'I’M SORRY,' the polite female voice responded when Sara reached for the phone at almost the same moment that she woke up in bed alone. 'MrRossini is in conference.'
'I'm sorry,' the same infuriatingly detached tone told her an hour later. 'MrRossini is not presently available.
'I am so sorry,' Sara was informed shortly before lunchtime and this time the voice sounded reprovingly weary. 'MrRossini is airborne.'
Airborne? Staving off a ludicrous image of Alex in free flight round the office, Sara cast aside the phone. It had finally dawned on her that he hadn't put his wife's name on the shortlist of approved callers allowed instant access to him…surely a deliberate oversight? How much enough was enough?.A slow, steady anger was escalating inside Sara. She had done nothing to deserve such treatment.
He phoned from Paris at eight that evening. 'Things are hotting up here. I won't be back tonight,' he imparted. 'Everything OK?'
'Great,' Sara said in a stifled tone, for her anger had turned cold and heavy inside her.
'It might take me a couple of days to tie the loose ends up.'
'I understand.'
'I need a copy of a document on my desk in the library. Could you fax it to me?' He passed on the details in exactly the same tone that he had always utilised when she had been a humble employee. And she made a discovery there and then. Alex fell back behind that detachment instinctively when anything was wrong between them. He held her at a distance, forestalling argument or indeed any form of intimacy. No longer did she wonder why she had felt so damnably awkward with Alex on the phone before their marriage. That chill, silent disapproval could come down the line like a blast of polar snow.
Early the next morning Sara reached a very tough decision. No, Alex wasn't going to do this to her-blowing hot, blowing cold, making her feel that the smallest disagreement or displeasure might lead to the breakdown of their marriage. It was like being forced to live on a knife-edge. The more she took of it, the worse it would get. She packed a case with casual clothing. It would mean roughing it but she intended to stay at Ladymead. All she really needed for tonight was food… and a bed. So she would go shopping on the way down.
She faxed a message to Alex before she climbed into the limousine.
'Dear Alex,' it ran, 'waiting to be abandoned is bad for my nerves, so I've taken care of the problem for you. I am abandoning you.'
The builders' foreman greeted her at the door of the manor house. "The phone has been ringing off the hook for you for the past two hours, MrsRossini. Somebody called Pete.'
'So, you are there,' Pete muttered frantically when she answered the next time the phone rang. 'What the heck was in that fax? Alex went through the roof and he was in a bad enough mood even before it arrived!'
'Did he tell you to track me down?'
'Obviously. This bid is at a crucial stage. He's very busy with the French negotiators,' Pete stressed with audible in
credulity, that she should require such an explanation. 'Have you had bad news or something? Can't you handle it on your own? You know Alex doesn't like to be disturbed when he's-'