Tally clashed with scorchingly angry golden eyes and her heartbeat accelerated.
‘You’re in the middle of a divorce!’ Robert pronounced witheringly. ‘You don’t own her any more.’
‘Nobody owns me,’ Tally pointed out drily, hoping to lend a note of common sense to the scene developing as she finally managed to pull her hands free and gave her business partner a look of reproach. ‘I belong to me.’
‘Walk away, Tally,’ Sander instructed between clenched teeth, inflamed by the reality that Tally had not disagreed with Miller when he stated that they were still in the middle of a divorce.
‘I’m not going anywhere if there’s going to be some stupid male confrontation,’ Tally announced, her chin tilting in warning. ‘I’ll see you next week, Robert—’
‘Come back to London with me now,’ Robert suggested. ‘You can’t want to stay here …’
Sander closed a lean brown hand like a manacle over Tally’s wrist. ‘She’s not leaving. She stays with me.’
Watching the two men square up to each other, Tally just wanted to scream in exasperation. She could feel the pent-up aggression in Sander in the taut clench of his long fingers and the poised readiness of his stance. He was a very physical man and in his current angry mood as unstable as gelignite. ‘It would be better if you just went home, Robert.’ She sighed.
‘Why? Are you not allowed visitors now either?’ Robert demanded, evidently happy to fan the flames.
In an abrupt movement, Tally tore her hand free of Sander’s and spun to stalk into the house, her rigid back expressing her frustration with all things male. If she was the source of the bad feeling, her removal from the scenario ought to calm matters down, she reasoned, turning in the hall to gaze out through a side window. She was just in time to see Robert punch Sander and shock froze her to the spot because she had assumed Sander was the more likely of the two to lose his temper. Sander, however, wasted no time in striking back and as Robert went down on one knee on the gravel Tally raced back outside again to intervene.
‘Stop it!’ she screamed furiously. ‘There’s nothing worth fighting over—’
Frowning, Sander rested stunning dark golden eyes on her. ‘You’re worth fighting for,’ he contradicted almost conversationally.
‘If you hit him again, I’m leaving you!’ Tally threatened him in desperation.
In the interim, Robert had lunged at Sander again and, taken by surprise, Sander went down heavily. That was when Tally recognised just how much she was still in love with her husband because she almost waded into the midst of the fight and was on the very brink of thumping Robert for taking unfair advantage.
‘Just go, Robert!’ Tally yelled shakily.
Wiping blood off his lip, her business partner shot her a rueful appraisal, her protective stance not having escaped his attention. ‘I’m wasting my time here.’
‘Yes, leave before I kill you,’ Sander advised rawly as he sprang upright again.
Breathing in shallow spurts, Tally watched while Robert drove off and then she turned to frown at Sander. ‘He did hit you first, didn’t he?’ she checked.
Sander gave her a considering look and then grimaced slowly as if he was picking his words with extreme care. ‘Not exactly—’
‘You mean, you started the fight?’ Tally flared, furious that she had n
ot grasped this salient fact sooner.
‘You’re my wife and he had stepped over the line,’ Sander reasoned without remorse.
‘If you’d stayed out of things, nothing would have happened!’ Tally launched back at him. ‘He was just trying to talk to me.’
Sander’s dark golden eyes hardened. ‘He was making a move on you.’
Stepping back indoors at a smart pace powered by annoyance, Tally slung him a look of condemnation. ‘Whether he was or not is none of your business!’
‘Tally …’
She spun back to him in the airy entrance hall.
Sander rested his brooding gaze to her. ‘I realise that this is a difficult situation for you but we are still married.’
Green eyes veiling, she nodded slowly, her temper too uncertain for her to trust herself to speak. She was not prepared to argue about Robert. It was one thing to allow Sander to wonder exactly what her relationship with the other man entailed but quite another to wilfully add to a heated misunderstanding.
Sander released his pent-up breath in a measured hiss. ‘Maybe what you need most right now is a break from me.’
Green eyes glinting, her head came up. ‘That’s very possible.’
‘I need to have a face-to-face meeting with a man I’m hoping to do business with in Athens. But that would mean leaving you here in charge of Lili and her new nanny for at least forty-eight hours,’ Sander advanced grimly.
‘I can handle that,’ Tally heard herself claim, sooner than admit that she had not yet worked up sufficient courage to enter the same room as Oleia’s child.
His ebony brows drew together, his surprise patent at that response. ‘You can?’
‘Why not? I’m not so perverse as to hold Lili’s parentage against her!’ Tally claimed with pride.