‘Dinner,’ Alex reminded her drily from the door.
‘I’m not hungry any more... I think I’ll go to bed,’ she mumbled.
‘Alone...on our wedding night?’
Sarah’s dazed eyes connected involuntarily with smouldering gold and it was as though he had jerked a string and she was a puppet. Every muscle jerked tight, every nerve-ending quivered with suicidal energy. I’m not feeling well, she thought; that’s why I feel peculiar.
‘I’ll be up later,’ Alex murmured very softly, and swung on his heel. ‘I just can’t wait for you to lie back and think of the greater glory of Greece.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
But she was talking to an empty room.
CHAPTER SIX
SARAH lay back in the vast bed, her eyes trained rigidly on the door. He’d been joking—of course he had been joking, most probably trying to deprive her of a good night’s sleep. A man had to be sexually attracted to a woman to want to make love to her. Alex was not attracted to her. That compartment in Alex’s life was already filled to overflowing with willing and no doubt beautiful women. He had a lousy sense of humour. It was not as though she was his wife...not his real wife.
Callie... Her mind gave way to another upsetting surge of thoughts. Sarah had never been so confused, could not yet credit that this woman being torn in two by indecision and uncertainty and guilt was actually herself. Sarah had always known where she was going, always been quietly very sure of her own judgement and direction...until now, that was.
Before tonight, before Alex’s revelations, Sarah had been convinced that Callie had been used and abused and brutally abandoned. But now the picture had blurred and shifted and she was no longer sure of anything. Callie had deliberately concealed the truth of her relationship with Damon and, the night she had brought Damon to meet Sarah, Callie and Damon had been united in that deception. Callie had knowingly become involved with a married man and then moved in with him while his wife was abroad. Clearly, Damon had promised to get a divorce and then, probably when the heat of the affair ebbed on his side, he had changed his mind. Had her sister at that point allowed herself to become pregnant in an attempt to force the issue to the conclusion she desired?
Sarah attempted to envisage her sister without rose-tinted glasses. Callie had been very strong-willed, arrogant from an early age, when she’d discovered that beauty was a source of power over the male sex. Callie would have found rejection almost impossible to accept. Callie had always been the one to do the rejecting. And she had genuinely loved Damon. Had he ever loved Callie? Did it really matter now? She would destroy those letters unread. She knew enough, had no need or desire to know any more.
All of a sudden she was far more concerned by her own behaviour. In retrospect, she perfectly understood Alex’s cruelty when she had gone to his office that day with Callie. It would have been effrontery indeed had Sarah known that Damon was another woman’s husband and the father of two young children. Small wonder that Alex had reacted incredulously to the idea that his very much married brother had given her sister an engagement ring! Nevertheless, that was what had happened.
It was that day that Sarah had learnt to hate Alex, falsely seeing him as the barrier that stood between her sister and the man she loved. But, without even suspecting it, Alex and Sarah had been talking at cross-purposes and now she knew why Alex had repeatedly condemned her own moral principles. Naturally he had believed she was encouraging Callie in her pursuit of his brother.
Losing the very foundations of hatred was a chastening experience, Sarah discovered. All that had happened since Callie’s death could now be seen in a different light. Alex had wanted to protect his sister-in-law from the humiliation of that affair being exposed by the media...quite understandably. Androula had already suffered enough. And what had Sarah done? She had threatened him and his family with tabloid exposure. Sarah winced, deeply ashamed, and yet how could she have guessed the truth when Alex assumed she already knew the truth?
No wonder he had called her a malicious shrew, no wonder he seethed with rage around her. Yet he had attended Callie’s funeral and had probably enforced Damon’s presence. And right from the outset his most overriding concern had been for Nicky. Judging Sarah to be an unacceptable guardian, Alex had been equally determined that Nicky should not suffer for the sins of his parents. In an impossible situation, Alex had tried his damnedest to remove Nicky from her care. It would have been much easier for him to offer her financial assistance towards Nicky’s support and simply forget their existence. But Alex had cared too much about his nephew to be satisfied with such a conclusion.
‘I am a man of my word...a man of honour.’ Oh, dear lord, if that was true, where did that leave this crazy marriage she had demanded? They would have to talk, straighten out all these stupid misunderstandings, and then she would offer him an annulment. What else could she decently do?
That decision reached, Sarah felt more at peace with herself. She was reaching out to put out the light when the door opened. Her suddenly weak hand dropped back on the pillow with a dulled thud, her soft mouth opening on a soundless exclamation of disbelief.
Did Alex pause for effect in the doorway or was that her imagination? Paralysed, Sarah surveyed him from beneath her lashes. He was fully clothed... Her racing heartbeat steadied a little. He wanted to talk to her, had probably noticed her light was still on...that was all. Really, Sarah, a little voice piped up very drily, what else did you think he might be doing in your bedroom?
Alex braced two lean hands on the footboard of the bed and studied her, exactly as he had studied her that day in the hall at Gina’s. Her heartbeat thumped against her breastbone in protest. I am lord of all I survey. That belief was etched unashamedly in those smouldering dark golden eyes wandering over her with a hot, earthy sensuality that was so blatant, it took her breath away.
In the fathoms-deep silence, she watched long fingers slowly travel up to his bow-tie and jerk it free, and he did not remove his intense appraisal from her expressively incredulous face for a split-second.
‘No,’ Sarah said breathlessly.
He cast aside the tie, shrugged wide shoulders fluidly out of his dinner-jacket and continued to watch her. A slashing smile of primal purpose curved his hard-edged mouth, the innate savagery that lay at the very heart of Alex’s volatile temperament freely visible, confidently displayed. He was, she noted dazedly, very much in his element in a woman’s bedroom. He unbuttoned his shirt, exposing a broad, muscular chest, golden-brown in colour and liberally sprinkled with curling black hair.
Sarah’s fingers clenched tightly into the bedspread below her hand. She would stare him down if it killed her, because he just could not be serious. She rested her head to one side, striving for an appearance of cool amusement, but she could feel a blush slowly colouring up her pale skin, starting at her dry throat and moving up in an unstoppable tide.
‘If you have a desire to expose yourself in a centrefold, you don’t need to audition for my benefit,’ Sarah commented, struggling for a tone of irony.
‘You’d buy the magazine and hide it under the bed,’ Alex asserted with grim amusement. ‘I warned you many weeks ago that I could handle you with one hand tied behind my back...but that you wouldn’t like my methods. Why didn’t you listen?’ Alex breathed in a velvety purr, strolling gracefully across the room to drop his
shirt and his jacket across a chair.
‘Your sexual machismo leaves me cold, Alex.’ Sarah despised the tremor running through her voice.
‘The first time we met, I noticed what beautiful eyes you had. The second time, I remember thinking, What a truly sensational pair of legs. And the third time, you let me see that glorious hair.’ His accent thickened tellingly as she stared back at him, patently stunned by this wholly unexpected confession. ‘You revealed yourself to me piece by exciting piece and the chemistry between us was explosive—’
‘What ch-chemistry?’ she stammered jerkily.