The Trophy Husband

'Let's get the talking over with,' she suggested brittlely.

A rueful smile curved his wide, sensual mouth.

'Sometimes you are very young, cam.'

'Just not used to this kind of treatment.' 'Very, very young,' Alex said wryly. 'And if you looked in the mirror without superimposing your cousin's standard of attractiveness you would see what I see. Perfect bone structure, eyes with the colour and depth of emeralds, translucent skin, a wonderfully sultry mouth and a figure that would tempt a saint from celibacy… and I am no saint, bellamia.'

Her mouth went dry, soft pink highlighting her cheekbones.

'When I look at you, I see a very lovely woman who walks, talks and behaves as if she's very plain and ordinary. That was what first drew my attention-that complete lack of self-awareness. You made me curious. I thought at first that it was an act, designed to actually attract attention…' As she stiffened he shifted a lithe hand, silencing her. 'Then I watched you look back at me and freeze and I knew that whatever you were you weren't indifferent.' 'If you're trying to say that I actually asked for-'

'If your wedding plans hadn't fallen through I would never have approached you,' Alex asserted softly. 'But no man who desires a woman ignores an opportunity when it comes his way. I didn't plan to take you to bed last night… it was too soon and, in the light of your inexperience, most ill judged, but I had no idea that I would be the first. Don't try to turn what we shared into a tawdry one-night stand. It wasn't, and what is more you know it wasn't.'

Sara dropped her head, forced against her volition to recall his lovemaking, a helpless curl of heat igniting in the pit of her stomach, making her pale and tauten in angry rejection of her body's weakness. 'But that doesn't change how I feel and think. We have different standards. What happened,' she framed tightly, 'shouldn't have happened.'

'But it did and there's no going back.'

'Maybe there wouldn't be if I fancied myself in love with you or something like that.' Her skin warmed, her generous mouth tightening. 'But I don't!'

'Love!' Alex repeated with audible exasperation.

'Obviously not something that comes into your affairs and probably never has done!' She had forced herself to be as honest as she could be. A sexual relationship without any deeper feelings was not for her. She might have leapt out of the frying-pan into the fire last night but she had enough strength of will to admit her own error and still stand her ground.:- Alex vented a curiously chilling laugh, his dark eyes as hard as gemstones as he gazed back at her. 'Oh, I've been in love, Sara… a lot more deeply in love than I suspect you have ever been. I was nineteen. She was ten years older. It lasted two fantastic years and then one morning I woke up and she wasn't there any more. I spent six months trying to find her and at the end of that six months I would still have given every penny I possessed to have her back… Now that is love.'

Sara was shaken by the confession. For a split second she found herself envisaging Alex as the adoring, very vulnerable satellite of an older woman, but her imagination could not hold that image for long. At thirty-four there was nothing of the boy left in Alex. He was an overwhelmingly self-assured adult male. 'Why did she leave?' she heard herself ask, unable to stifle a flare of natural curiosity.

'She convinced herself that she was wrong for me.' Alex shrugged a broad shoulder, his mobile mouth twisting. 'But she also helped me to free myself from any illusions about love. Take a degree of mutual respect and liking and add in sexual attraction and you have a far more secure basis than you'll ever find with love.'

'I don't believe that.'

'Yet you had your illusions smashed only yesterday,' Alex reminded her with velvet-smooth cruelty. 'You took him for granted. You instinctively trusted him not to betray you. You built a whole rack of unreal expectations on the basis of the belief that love conquers all. Now, if you hadn't been in love, you wouldn't have made such sweeping assumptions and you wouldn't have felt so safe that you were blind to the signs that his attention was straying.'

"There may be a certain amount of truth in that but I would still say that for most people the benefits of loving and being loved more than outweigh the risks.'

"The feel-good factor,' Alex slotted in with satire. 'But whether you like it or not we both felt very good last night… and love had nothing whatsoever to do with it.'

Sara reddened furiously, loathing and helplessly resenting the way he kept on backing her into corners and arguing with her. Brian and she had almost never argued. She had seen that as a symbol of the strength of their relationship, a sign that they were wonderfully well matched. No doubt another one of the illusions of love which Alex had so coolly delineated.

'Emotionally cold and detached,' Pete had said. For the first time she really saw that aspect of Alex, and it sent a cold tingle down her spine as she contrasted that cool intellect with the apparent warmth and undeniable physical passion that he had shown her yesterday. No, she wouldn't like to be the fool who fell in love with AlexRossini. The warmth could only have been an il-lusion, aimed to impress and reassure.

'Last night was last night-time out of time if you want to call it that,' Sara breathed. 'But I won't have an affair with you and I won't be your mistress either.'

'Why not?'Alex said lazily. Her control snapped. 'Because we have nothing in common. Because we live in different worlds with different values-'

'But not because you're not interested.'

Silently fuming, Sara settled back into the limousine. 'Will you allow me to work out my notice without harassment of any kind?' 'Breakfast… was harassment?'

She bit her lower lip and tasted blood. 'You know what I mean…"

'Is what people might think so important to you that you would allow it to rule your life?'

'That's not fair!'

Alex reached for her clenched fingers where they rested on the seat. Momentarily she attempted to draw back from the contact and then, for a reason she could not begin to comprehend, her fingers stayed where they were, curled within his larger hand. She trembled; she didn't know what was happening to her. She had a sudden, terrifying urge to throw herself on Alex and sob her heart out. In all her life she had never felt more confused. He drew her relentlessly closer. 'Alex… no…' she whispered pleadingly.

But Alex didn't listen. He twined lean fingers into her fall of hair, tugging her round to face him. Her eyes burned as she met his shimmering gold enquiry and every tiny muscle tensed. Her pulsebeat thumped at the foot of her throat, a terrible excitement rising inside her no matter how hard she fought to suppress it. 'No…' she said again, as much for her own benefit as for his.

But an aching, compulsive wanting held her still. In dazed silence she recognised the shocking strength of promptings entirely new to her experience. Alex lowered his dark head and took her mouth with hungry urgency. Fire in the hold, she thought wildly, madly, feeling the instantaneous charge of her own helpless response. She wanted to grip him, hold him, mesh with every hard, muscular angle of his lean, virile length. The scent of him, the touch of him inflamed her senses with a drowning passion that was utterly self-absorbed. Tiny little sounds escaped her throat. Hot, electrifying pleasure engulfed her with every thrust of his tongue.

Her fingers slid with shameless hunger beneath his silk shirt, skimming luxuriantly over skin as smooth as velvet, feeling the taut contraction of his sleek muscles as he jerked and groaned beneath her exploration. He swept her up and pulled her down on top of him, expert hands gliding up the quivering stretch of her thighs, hitching up her confining skirt and then bringing her down again, sealing her into raw contact with the hard, throbbing length straining against his zip.

Shuddering, Alex released her swollen mouth, eyes of smoul

dering gold blazing over her rapt face. 'Come home with me… lie in bed with me… forget everything else,' he breathed raggedly.

In that split second the passenger door beside him sprung open with a thick clunk. Sara focused dazedly on his chauffeur's mirror-shiny shoes standing on the pavement and then she leapt off Alex with an agility and speed that a mountain goat would have envied, almost falling out of the limousine in her desperate haste to vacate it. Alex grated out something, called her name, but Sara kept on walking, right on past the clutch of Rossini employees who were still staring open-mouthed and incredulous at what they had witnessed.

'Pete…' she said ten minutes later when she had tracked him down, 'I'm afraid I'm about to leave you in the lurch. I think it's time I went home.'

CHAPTER FOUR

'HEAVEN knows, Brian's entitled to an explanation. “You've behaved disgracefully!' JaniceDalton railed in angry condemnation. "The whole village is talking…and how do you think the Shorters feel about all this? They treated you like a daughter!'

'I'm sorry,' Sara whispered shakily.'

'You lied to me. You told me that you and Brian had decided that you couldn't get married; you didn't have the decency to tell me or him that there was another man involved!'

Say nothing, don't argue and the sooner it will blow over. But after three solid days of recriminations following the publication of that wretched photo of her with Alex that belief was beginning to wear more than a little thin. It had not occurred to Sara when she'd decided to leave London and come home that she might find herself cast as the guilty partner. Brian was playing the martyr, the innocent… letting her take all the flak.

'Give it a rest, Ma.' Antonia appeared in the kitchen doorway, wearing her sunniest and most generous smile. 'At least the wedding invitations weren't in the post.'

'I'll bring the washing in.' Sara headed for the back door with alacrity. When she hit the fresh air, she drank in deeply.

'Blood will out, it seems…' Her aunt's strained voice carried out through the window. 'But nobody could have been more careful than I was raising Sara…'