Bond of Hatred

The long fingers of one lean brown hand flexed. ‘Your insolence astounds me,’ he admitted in a roughened undertone.

Ironically, Sarah had merely been honest. For once she had not sought to offend deliberately. She had simply been truthful. ‘And what would happen when you married?’ she continued doggedly. ‘Nicky would get a stepmother who would very probably resent him and favour her own children over him.’

‘By what right do you dare to pass an opinion on my character?’ he demanded, springing upright with the restive energy of a prowling tiger.

Sarah tensed. One word of criticism and he was on the brink of explosion. ‘And then,’ she added helplessly, ‘there’s your temper—’

‘My temper?’ he repeated with a stark flash of grinding white teeth.

‘You appear to have little control over it,’ she murmured. ‘Children can be very trying. They can test your patience to the utmost.’

‘You know nothing of my temper!’ he intoned, incensed. ‘I am a very disciplined man.’

Sarah elevated a brow. ‘Oh, I expect you’re an absolute pussycat as long as everybody around you is bowing and scraping and you’re getting your own way.’ She rose to her feet, hoping he was on his way out. ‘What you cannot handle is opposition from a mere female...’

A pin-dropping silence stretched. Hooded dark eyes regarded her almost slumbrously. ‘I could handle you with one hand tied behind my back...but you wouldn’t like my methods.’

For so

me reason the full onslaught of that disturbingly intent dark stare made her breath catch in her throat. Something deep in the pit of her stomach tightened almost painfully. Her breasts felt curiously heavy. Time seemed to have slowed down. And then he turned his head away, tautening, and strode over to the door.

‘Nikos is crying,’ he informed her flatly, as though that in itself were an offence.

‘Nikos?’ Blinking in confusion, Sarah had to dredge herself out of the strange spell she had fallen under for a few dismaying seconds. Involuntarily she shook her head. It was tiredness, stress. Little wonder she was feeling odd.

With a stifled sound of raw impatience at the slowness of her response, Alex strode out of the room and up the stairs, but he hung back for a split-second to breathe in a tone of forbidding censure, ‘A baby should never be left to cry.’

CHAPTER THREE

ALEX had already lifted Nicky by the time Sarah reached the bedroom. Her nephew was howling at the top of his lungs, his adorable little face scarlet with misery. Sarah’s heart clenched at the mere sight of him. He looked so pathetic.

‘Let me take him,’ she said, reaching out instinctively for him, eager to proffer all the comfort that any baby could possibly require.

Alex cast her a coldly amused glance. ‘I do know what to do with a baby. How often do you leave him to cry?’

Fury coursed through her. ‘I never leave him to cry!’

‘In my home, he would have instant attention every hour of the day,’ he informed her.

Sarah’s teeth ground together. ‘If you put him down, I’ll go and heat his bottle.’

‘I will remain here with Nikos until you return.’

That totally bloody man! Sarah banged about the kitchen, furious that Alex Terzakis was actually holding Callie’s child in his arms! She refused to recognise the bond of blood between them. Neither brother had any right to such an acknowledgment, she told herself.

All of a sudden she was reliving the past again, hugging her bitterness to her like a warm blanket to ward off the freezing chill of Alex’s presence in the house.

Seven months ago, Damon had gone over to Greece on business. He had known then that Callie was pregnant, had, according to Callie, been absolutely delighted at the news. Callie had naturally suggested that surely it was time for Damon to introduce her to his brother. With that whopping engagement ring on her finger and Damon’s child on the way, hadn’t Callie had every excuse to have expectations of a quick marriage?

Damon had promised to speak to his brother while he was at home. He had returned, pale and hunted-looking, shorn of his usual insouciance. Alex was immovable, he had told Callie. Alex was not even prepared to meet her. Only then had Callie informed Sarah that she was pregnant. She had dragged Damon with her to make that announcement and Sarah had endured an evening of hideous embarrassment.

No doubt she had been terribly naïve but she had not realised before that evening that Callie and Damon were sleeping together. In the same way she had not known that Callie was actually living with Damon in the apartment he had taken in Oxford. Callie had concealed that fact from her, passing off her change of address and phone number as a move to a cheaper flat with other girls.

‘I am not in a position to marry Callie at this moment in time,’ Damon had informed her stiffly.

‘Alex is threatening to cut him off without a penny! Have you ever heard of such melodrama in this day and age?’ Callie had demanded hotly.

Damon had not been able to meet Sarah’s questioning gaze. Finally, when he could no longer bear the silence, he had said almost pleadingly, ‘I cannot defy my brother...at least, not at present.’