His dark, strong face hardened. ‘I have seen for myself that, whatever other flaws you may have, you love that child and will undoubtedly be a more loving mother to him than any other woman I might have married.’
The compliment with the scorpion’s sting in its tail. Her teeth gritted together, angry pink washing her cheeks. How dared he talk about his sacrifices and her flaws?
‘And for that reason I have decided to do everything within my power to make this marriage work,’ Alex concluded arrogantly.
‘You actually ate dinner at home last night,’ Sarah agreed sarcastically.
His savage cheekbones clenched, an arc of colour highlighting his shimmering eyes. ‘I expect you to make the same effort,’ he delivered, ignoring the ungenerous stab.
‘Not on your terms,’ Sarah returned, her injured pride simmering towards boiling-point.
‘On my terms or not at all.’
Sarah stared blindly back at him, knowing she could not survive those terms. He was finally telling her why she was now expected to share his bed on a permanent basis. Dear God, how could any mere woman live with such an honour? Alex Terzakis had made an unbelievably magnificent gesture, a sacrifice of immense magnitude: he was willing to accept Sarah as his wife. I really have arrived, she told herself sarcastically, but there was this terrible pain in among the anger and the wounded pride and she couldn’t understand the pain.
‘I can’t accept your terms,’ she whispered finally.
His terms would break her. Instinct told her that. To share his bed and rejoice in his passion without love or respect or even fidelity would demean her. Nor would having his children ease that humiliation. Her bitterness and resentment would inevitably triumph and there would be no happiness for either of them in such an arrangement.
‘If you don’t, I’ll divorce you...’
Shattered, Sarah looked back at him. Alex stared back, not a muscle moving on his darkly handsome face, his impassive dark eyes reading her sudden pallor.
‘And I will ensure that Nicky stays with me.’
Appalled, Sarah rose shakily upright. ‘You can’t do that!’
‘As you once said to me, money talks,’ Alex drawled with dark satire. ‘And, in the light of the pre-nuptial contract you signed, I’m sure you recall that if the marriage breaks down for whatever reason you’ll be lucky to get your train fare home!’
Her legs wouldn’t hold her up any longer. Slowly she sank down again, simply gaping at him in horror. She had never dreamt that Alex could be this cruel, was quite unprepared for such ruthless tactics being employed against her. He attacked on her weakest flank without remorse. He knew how much she loved Nicky. He was using a sledge-hammer on a nut. Surely her presence in his bed could not be this important to him? She remembered that he had said that he wanted children. Was that why? In a frantic surge of feverish mental activity, she saw a way out.
‘If you want children we could use IVF.’
Alex looked back at her blankly.
Hesitantly, the words tumbling out of her, she rushed to explain the marvels of technology and the complete lack of necessity for any actual physical contact.
Alex stood there, frozen to the spot, apparently thrown violently by the suggestion that he could father his future family without ever laying a hand on his wife.
Abruptly, a lean brown hand lifted to silence her. Narrowed dark eyes welded to hers, Alex breathed, ‘Are you trying to tell me that I must approach a laboratory to get you pregnant?’
Sarah reddened but pressed on, her sole ambition to show him that they need not participate in sexual intimacy simply to produce a child. She marvelled that Alex appeared so ignorant of such processes. ‘That way we could abide by the original terms of our marriage,’ she pointed out breathlessly.
All of a sudden she registered that it was not ignorance that had silenced Alex but a kind of unholy and incredulous fascination backed by rather daunting signs of gathering rage. A dark tide of blood had flushed his golden features, a tiny muscle tugging relentlessly at the corner of his eloquent mouth. ‘You have to be out of your mind to suggest such a thing to me!’ he told her rawly.
‘Alex...if we could for once move away from this macho conditioning of yours and talk about this sensibly, you might see that it is actually a very sane solution to the problem.’
Alex strode forward and pulled her up out of her seat with two powerful hands. ‘My children are not going to be conceived in a test tube and that has nothing to do with my “macho conditioning”,’ he spelt out ferociously. ‘When you first opened the subject, I thought you were joking, I could not credit that you could be serious.’
Sarah made no pointless attempt to escape. One lesson she had learnt. Alex was considerably stronger than she was. She stood there, icily composed on the surface, a teeming mass of growing agitation underneath. ‘I do not want to sleep with you,’ she stated. ‘That is a sacrifice I am not prepared to make—’
‘You bitch...’ After a startled moment, Alex let loose in Greek, his fluent English letting him down as he stared down at her in savage fury, as white beneath his dark tan as though she had struck him.
‘I don’t know why you should take that personally, Alex,’ she said tremulously. ‘It’s not as though we have feelings for each other like other married people—’
‘I have some very powerful feelings for you!’ One dark hand clenched round her forearm, Alex trailed her over to the door. The pilot of his helicopter was hovering in readiness. He broke into speech about the lateness of the hour.
‘I will catch a later flight,’ Alex bit out.