Bond of Hatred

‘Well, what do you think?’ Ruefully conscious of Gina’s dropped jaw, Sarah cast aside her load of shopping-bags and pirouetted in the narrow hallway. ‘Does it suit me?’

‘Your hair...’ Gina whispered dazedly, taking in the silver-blonde mane now frothing over Sarah’s shoulders in a torrent of silky waves. ‘You’ve had it cut and styled...and that suit, those shoes...’ In frank astonishment, the older woman stared at the beautifully cut mauve jacket and skirt lovingly hugging Sarah’s slender figure. ‘You look like a million dollars. I could have walked past you in the street without recognising you!’

‘Good.’ Sarah started upstairs.

‘Do you really think you ought to be spending Alex’s money before you marry him?’ Gina murmured uneasily.

‘I love spending Alex’s money,’ Sarah confided truthfully. ‘He thinks I’m greedy and grasping. That contract made that clear enough. Twenty pages of insults. I think I ought to satisfy his expectations, don’t you?’

‘Has it occurred to you that you’ll still have to live with the man?’

‘I haven’t the slightest intention of living with him,’ Sarah asserted. ‘I dare say I’ll see him at the occasional mealtime...but, the way we feel about each other, I should imagine our meetings will be few and far between.’

‘Then why this staggering transformation?’

Sarah dealt her an outraged look and then laughed. ‘Gina, this isn’t for his benefit...it’s for Nicky’s.’

‘Nicky’s?’

‘I have to look the part to be his mother, don’t I? I have to fit,’ Sarah stressed with serious emphasis. ‘Otherwise, I’ll embarrass him in a few years’ time. Anyway, I’ve only done what Alex suggested. Put myself in the hands of the professionals so that I can look reasonably presentable...’

Gina swallowed hard. Sarah looked more than reasonably presentable, she looked luminously beautiful, and her small stature, no longer dwarfed by unflattering clothing, now revealed the fragile delicacy of her slender curves. But nobody knew better than Gina that any such assurance would be greeted by hurt rejection. Sarah had spent far too many years thinking of herself as plain to be easily convinced that she had in fact chosen to make herself look plain.

Not remotely like a prison wardress, Sarah reflected as she studied her appearance in the bedroom mirror. Money could buy the illusion of beauty. His money. After reading that grossly insulting pre-nuptial contract, Sarah had been furious. In the first place, it had initially been presented to her in Greek. She had had to demand an English translation before she’d finally condescended to sign the Greek version in several places. In reward for her apparent docility, she had then been handed several credit cards and informed that accounts had been opened in her name.

‘It’s not too late to change your mind, admit you had a brainstorm and that you really didn’t mean it,’ Gina sighed from the doorway.

Sarah groaned. Gina hadn’t once let up on the argument over the past week. ‘I haven’t had any second thoughts,’ she admitted. ‘I’m doing this for Nicky.’

‘But you’re not too unhappy that it demands a considerable sacrifice from Alex Terzakis?’

Emerald eyes fired. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think he isn’t a male I would like to cross. I think you’re crazy and, if anything, he’s even more crazy to have agreed...’

* * *

‘So tell me,’ Alex murmured tautly, ‘how did you do it?’

Do what? Sarah threw an uneasy glance at the male seated beside her in the limousine. She was as physically far away from him as she could get but somehow it still didn’t feel far enough. He was making her feel grossly uncomfortable. This was the first time Alex had actually spoken since the ceremony in the register office.

Mind you, he had more than made up for his silence by staring, she conceded irritably. If it had been any other man, she would have said that her improved appearance had literally struck him dumb but Sarah could not credit that some new clothes, a rather silly hairstyle and a few cosmetics could genuinely dredge such a staggered response from a male reputed to be a connoisseur of the world’s beautiful women. She suspected that he was attempting to send her up cruelly for her, no doubt in his eyes, pathetic efforts to measure up to her new status as Nicky’s mother.

‘Do what?’ Her arms felt empty without Nicky. Ignoring her new husband, Sarah cast a nakedly anxious glance back at the car following them. It contained Nicky...and a nanny. A real nanny in a uniform, and no Mary Poppins either in Sarah’s opinion.

When Nicky had screeched blue murder at being insensitively thrust by Alex into the strange woman’s arms, the nanny had tightened her mouth and said archly, ‘I can see you’re a spoiled little boy,’ and Sarah had rather suspected that Nanny Brown meant it. She wondered if this was the right moment to tell Alex that she did not want a nanny for Nicky and that she intended to devote herself personally to his full-time care.

‘How did you achieve this astonishing metamorphosis virtually overnight?’ Alex demanded in a low growl.

Sarah flushed, convinced that he was being hatefully sarcastic. She tilted her chin. ‘I hired an image consultant.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Alex sounded almost dazed.

‘When you don’t know how to do something, you consult a higher authority.’

‘And what didn’t you know how to do?’

Her ripe mouth, expertly enriched by lipstick the exact shade of her peach-coloured shoes, tightened and then she noticed that his dark gaze seemed to be positively welded to her lips and instinctively withdrew even further into her self-imposed corner. What on earth was the matter with him? Why was he asking such stupid questions? After all, it had been he who had given her the idea in the first place. ‘With concentrated effort and professional advice, you could be quite attractive...’ he had said, buttering her up, of course.