A Tycoon to Be Reckoned With

Was he still caught there, on that mountain peak they’d reached together, stranded in the physical storm of their union? She searched his features, trying to understand, trying to still the tumult in her own breast, where her heart was only slowly climbing down from its hectic beating.

Confusion filled her—more than confusion. That same darkening, disquieting unease that had started as they’d driven back from Nice. She wanted him to say something—anything. Wanted him to wrap his arms about her, hold her as he always did after the throes of passion.

But he did no such thing. Abruptly he was pulling away from her, rising up off the bed and heading into the en-suite bathroom.

As the door closed behind him an aching, anxious feeling of bereavement filled her. Unease mixed with her confusion, with her mounting disquiet. She got out of bed, swaying a moment, her body still feeling the aftermath of what it had experienced. Her hair was still in its plait, but it was dishevelled from their passion. Absently she smoothed it with her hands. She found that they were trembling. With the same shaky motion she groped for her clothes, scattered on the floor, tangled up with his.

From the bathroom came the sound of the shower, but nothing else.

Dressed, she made her way into the kitchen. Took a drink of water from the fridge. Tried to recover her calm.

But she could not. Whatever had happened between them it was not good. How could it be?

He’s ending it.

Those were the words that tolled in her brain. The only words that could make sense of how he was being. He was ending it and looking to find a way of doing so. He would not wish to wound her, hurt her. He would find an...acceptable way to tell her. He would probably say something about having to go back to Athens. Maybe he had other commitments she knew nothing about. Maybe...

Her thoughts were jumping all over the place, as if on a hot plate. She tried to gather them together, to come to terms with them. Then a sound impinged—her phone, ringing from inside her bag, abandoned in the hallway when Bastiaan had swept her to him.

Absently she fished it out. Saw that it was Max. Saw it go to voicemail.

She stared blindly at the phone as she listened to his message. He sounded fraught, under pressure.

‘Sarah—I’m really sorry. I need you to be Sabine tonight. I can’t placate Raymond any longer. Can you make it? I’m really sorry—’ He rang off.

She didn’t phone back. Couldn’t. All she could do was start to press the keys with nerveless fingers, texting her reply. Brief, but sufficient.

OK.

But it wasn’t OK. It wasn’t at all.

She glanced around the kitchen, spotted a pad of paper by the phone on the wall. She crossed to it, tore off a piece and numbly wrote on it, then tucked it by the coffee machine that was spluttering coffee into the jug. She picked up her bag and went out into the hallway, looked into the bedroom. The tangled bedclothes, Bastiaan’s garments on the floor, were blatant testimony to what had happened there so short a while ago.

An eternity ago.

There was no sign of Bastiaan. The shower was still running.

She had to go. Right now. Because she could not bear to stay there and have Bastiaan tell her it was over.

Slowly, with a kind of pain netting around her, her mind numb, she turned and left the villa.

* * *

Bastiaan cut the shower, seizing a towel to wrap himself in. He had to go back into the bedroom. He could delay it no longer. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to see her again.

Wanted to wipe her from existence.

How could I have believed her to be innocent? How could I?

He knew the answer—knew it with shuddering emotion.

Because I wanted her to be innocent—I didn’t want her to have taken Philip’s money, didn’t want it to be true!

That was what was tearing through him, ripping at him with sharpest talons. Ripping his illusions from him.

Fool! Fool that he had been!

He closed his eyes in blind rage. In front of his very eyes she’d waltzed into that bank in Nice, paid in whatever it was she’d taken from Philip—or another man. It didn’t matter which. The same branch of that bank—the very same. A coincidence? How could it be?