by Lynne Graham
‘Stop that,’ Alex intoned in a growl of terrifying threat, a ferocious anger simmering in his intent gaze and hardened face.
‘Stop wh-what?’ Sarah stared down with horrified eyes at the beautifully shaped brown fingers winding, for some peculiar reason, into a whole hank of her tumbling mane of hair. He was imprisoning her. She absolutely couldn’t breathe and she was trembling, her body seeming to have found a movement of its own in response to the terrible tension that had come out of nowhere.
She didn’t know what he was doing! Was he a violent man? Was he planning to hit her or something? In a frantic attempt to distract him, she gasped, ‘I don’t want Nicky to have a nanny.’
Lush ebony lashes swept up. For a long and timeless instant, brilliant golden eyes probed hers in stark, incredulous frustration. ‘A nanny?’ he almost whispered, as though she had spoken in some strange foreign language.
Her taut mouth wobbled. ‘I’ll look after him.’
‘You will be far too busy looking after me,’ Alex countered in a black velvet purr.
‘You have servants to do that.’
‘No, I have a wife now to do that.’ Alex had shifted right across the back seat and she really was cornered now. His other hand came up and pushed up her chin, forcing the eye contact that she sought to avoid in her confusion.
Throwing him a look of infuriated bemusement, Sarah brought up both hands and planted them on his broad chest to hold him at bay. Suddenly he laughed with a raw spontaneity that shook her.
‘Get your hands off me...now!’ Sarah demanded imperiously, maddened by his inexplicable behaviour.
‘Make me,’ Alex Terzakis invited with devastating effect.
Shimmering green eyes met savage gold ones and the shock to her system was electrifying. An utterly merciless amusement had slashed his hard mouth into a vibrant smile. Her mouth ran dry. Beneath her now frantically spread hands she could feel the heat of his powerful body and the steady thump of his heartbeat. Her own heartbeat was racing like an express train, something akin to panic threatening to rip asunder her once icy composure. And more intimately still the scent of him was in her nostrils, all male laced with some faintly spicy cologne that was disturbingly erotic. Erotic? Dear lord, where had that thought come from?
Disorientatingly, he vented another soft laugh and slid gracefully back from her, his every movement fluid and smooth and confident. He was a male very much at home with his own physical presence. Hooded dark eyes surveyed her with unreadable cool and something else—something else she could not quite put a name to but which might have been satisfaction.
‘Thank you,’ she said in an arctic tone, skimming not quite steady hands down over her jacket as though he might have crumpled it by daring to come that close.
‘That ring on your finger is a wedding-ring,’ Alex intoned softly.
Sarah’s classically perfect nose wrinkled as she cast a throwaway glance at the item. ‘So?’ she said drily.
‘You are now my wife.’
Her emerald eyes glinted. His wife. Was she expected to cower in terror or preen herself with pride? The wedding had meant nothing to her. It had been an empty ceremony, as meaningless now that it was over as the platinum band on her finger. Their marriage had satisfied two needs: Sarah’s desire to have the right to oversee Nicky’s future and Sarah’s desire for revenge. She had made Alex Terzakis pay for destroying her sister’s happiness. She had forced him to marry her. But, now that that was achieved, the furious fire of her fevered bitterness had begun to ebb. He had paid the price that she’d demanded and she really had nothing more to say to Alex Terzakis. Ahead of her stretched a new life with the baby she loved. Alex Terzakis would merely stand on the sidelines of that life, his sole role being that of playing occasional father to the best of his ability. They had nothing to talk about, nothing in common, nothing to share beyond Nicky. So why the macho stress on the concept that she was his wife? The term was irrelevant.
‘You are so punch-drunk on your triumph that you have developed tunnel vision,’ Alex asserted smoothly.
In exasperation, Sarah tossed her hair back. The shining mass flowed down her back in a tumbling river of silver. Big hair, she thought, like someone out of a glitzy novel. She wished she had had it cut short. She didn’t like the way Alex’s eyes lingered on it. It seemed to attract his attention and she didn’t feel comfortable with that.
‘I do not like being ignored.’
‘Perhaps you should try making normal conversation if you have to speak,’ Sarah returned, fed up with his mysterious remarks that seemed calculated to try and stir up her misgivings.
‘About the weather? That would be just about your level.’
‘The rain in Spain fell mainly on the plain,’ she enunciated sweetly.
‘What age are you?’
‘Why don’t you look at your marriage licence?’
‘Don’t be childish.’
‘In a month’s time, I will be twenty-five...I still have a year or two left before I hit thirty,’ Sarah could not resist stressing.
‘That hurt, did it?’
‘Nothing you could say or do could hurt me. Where you are concerned, I am inviolable,’ Sarah stated with conviction.
‘You are very confident.’
‘I have reason to be.’ Sarah had thought it all out.
What could he do to her? He could keep her short of money. It wouldn’t bother her. He could ignore her. It would please her. He could be rude. She would answer him back. He could disport himself in a different woman’s bed every night, flaunt his promiscuity to society at large...it wouldn’t disturb her, except in so far as he would not be setting much of an example for Nicky to follow in later years. And if he was violent she would divorce him...or she would divorce what was left of him by the time she had finished with him. One hint of physical abuse, she reflected fierily, and he was a male with a severely limited lifespan!
They boarded the jet which was to take them to Alex’s home in France. Sarah hovered, ignoring the proffered seat. As Nanny Brown climbed the steps, Sarah heard Nicky’s screams and raced forward, pale and stricken.
‘It’s quite all right, madam,’ the older woman forestalled her with a determined little smile. ‘Nikos and I do require some time to become acquainted. I’ve been looking after children for thirty years and he’ll soon get used to me.’
‘Perhaps in small doses. He’s scared of strangers.’ Sarah held out her arms.
‘Maybe he’s not well.’ Alex had moved forward. His dark, powerful face was troubled as he gazed down at his screeching nephew.
‘There’s nothing the matter with him but bad temper,’ Nanny asserted. ‘Babies have to accustom themselves to a routine.’
Tears smarting behind her worried eyes, Sarah couldn’t stand it any longer. She reached out and simply took Nicky, cuddling him close, muttering baby talk as she hurriedly moved back down the aisle. Nicky unglued swollen dark eyes and looked up at her, his mouth alarmingly enlarged on the brink of another howl. He thought better of it and nestled his damp head into her cradling hand.
Sarah took her seat with contentment. Alex studied them both with narrowed eyes. ‘He knows you...’
‘Of course he does...don’t you, my darling?’ Her small hand stroked the baby’s head in just the way he liked to be soothed and quieted. Glancing up, she found herself in receipt of an intense and frowning appraisal and she wondered why Alex should look at her like that, as if she were behaving strangely. Whether he liked it or not, she was fulfilling the role she was here for and unless the nanny he had arrogantly engaged without consultation betrayed a softer, more flexible attitude Sarah had no intention of leaving Nicky in her care.
She fed Nicky while Nanny glowered disapproval from the other end of the spacious cabin.
‘Are you trying to impress me at this late date?’ Alex enquired with crushing contempt.
Sarah blinked. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘All this
mock-maternal attention for Nikos?’ he derided. ‘Why do you think I engaged a nanny?’
‘There is nothing mock about my feelings for my nephew,’ Sarah countered with a disdain and a temper only controlled by the presence of the baby in her arms. She had no intention of fighting with Alex when Nicky was within hearing distance. A baby could be upset by raised, sharp voices and tension. ‘And I would sooner not comment on your acquisition of a nanny...although I could say that I’m not too impressed by what I’ve seen so far.’
‘She comes with the highest references.’
Sarah’s sultry mouth tautened. ‘I don’t want to be prematurely critical or unfair, but you did about as well as I would have expected, interfering in something about which you know nothing...something I imagine you do with monotonous regularity,’ she could not resist stabbing, ‘because you are one of those men who always think they know everything—’
His lower lip had briefly parted company with the upper. A splintering tension screamed from his stillness. He could not believe what he was hearing. A home truth or two and he was ready to explode. Certainly not a product of an upbringing by any Nanny Brown, she thought with sudden helpless amusement. This was a male so absolutely unaccustomed to even the smallest censure that his first response was anger and outrage. Probably spoilt rotten as a child. Born rich, clever, very good-looking. Ambitious, successful, workaholic and domineering, doubtless encouraged by an adoring family and grovelling employees and fawning, stupid women to believe himself the very zenith of perfection in every field. Medallion man with brains, no less.
‘Are you a lesbian?’
After a staggered pause, a rosy flush swept up the pale skin of her throat. Sarah stared back at him incredulously. And then abruptly, surprising herself, she laughed out loud. That ego of his... He just could not accept that she should be unimpressed and unattracted by him.
‘I thought not.’ Far from being ill at ease, Alex trained his night-dark gaze upon her with glittering intensity, a faint but definable smile of grim amusement curving his handsome mouth. ‘Then ask yourself why you feel such a powerful compulsion to try and put me down.’
Sarah opened her jewel-like eyes very wide with pretended naïveté. ‘Do I really? And you mean you actually noticed?’ she gasped.
In a silence of the utmost self-assurance, Alex surveyed her with the lazy indolence of a jungle predator, and, since she found that impregnable cool disturbing, she went on, ‘You see, I don’t like you, Alex—’
‘Liking isn’t required...but I will have respect.’
There was a sizzle in the atmosphere. Sarah revelled in it. ‘It’s good for a man to have a goal to work towards...even when the goal will remain eternally out of reach.’
‘You tread where even my most powerful enemies dare not tread.’
The assurance hung there and provoked an insidious chill down her rigid backbone. Under the drugging onslaught of icy dark eyes, she denied that weakness within her. ‘I am not afraid of you.’
Alex’s lushly framed gaze dropped to the slender hand unwittingly gripping the arm of her seat. ‘Your body language says otherwise. If I banished Nanny and the stewardess, you’d be out of here like a hare with the hounds on its trail.’
Paling, she breathed, ‘What an intriguing image that would be and it tells me so much about you. If you can’t reduce a woman to grovelling admiration, you’d settle for fear...in fact, you’d settle for just about anything sooner than deal with a woman on any other level—’
‘A woman like you...yes,’ Alex intoned with a low, vicious bite that slashed through her taught nerve-endings like a machete. ‘This is not how I foresaw my wedding-day.’
Sarah stiffened, an idea that had never before occurred to her occurring to her now. ‘How had you foreseen it?’
‘That I would share it with a bride worthy of my name.’
‘And you said you weren’t a snob...’
‘It is not your background which disturbs me but your lack of morality.’
‘My lack of morality?’
‘The woman whom I would have married has the very highest principles.’
And there it was, what she had never thought of, never dreamt of, never even considered for the smallest moment. ‘Are you saying that you were engaged to someone?’ she whispered tremulously, completely appalled by the idea.
‘I was contemplating matrimony.’
‘Did you love her?’ Sarah was trembling, plunged into genuine distress.
‘I have no intention of discussing my private life with you—’
‘Did she love you? Dear lord, why didn’t you tell me?’ Sarah demanded.
Alex stretched out long, powerful legs and tossed back a whisky in one driven gesture.
‘You have no right to lay this on me when you never even mentioned that there might be someone in your life...I mean someone apart from—’
‘The women I have to pay to share my bed?’ Alex slotted in dulcetly.
From pale Sarah turned crimson, unprepared to have that thrown up to her when she was in such turmoil. The very idea that she might have broken some poor woman’s heart by depriving her of the man she loved, even if it was Alex Terzakis, now sat on Sarah’s conscience like a giant boulder.
‘Elise never shared my bed.’
Not much of a passionate romance, then, Sarah decided.
‘Nor was marriage ever broached as a subject between us, but we would eventually have made a suitable alliance. In the Terzakis family, we marry for life. One does not enter such a serious commitment in a romantic haze of illusion.’
‘God forbid,’ Sarah mumbled, thinking how coldly calculating he was. Sex with his mistresses. Stability and suitability with his wife. Love just didn’t come into the equation. And why should she be surprised? Callie had been judged and rejected on those same terms. Sarah had no doubt that Damon’s bride Androula was rich, well-born and suitable in the extreme.
Yet Sarah was surprised by Alex’s matrimonial equation. Strive as he might to conceal the fact, Alex emanated emotional and passionate intensity in perceptible waves. His responses ran deep and strong and he was immensely protective of his family, whether she liked his methods or not. He had divided Damon from Callie because he’d believed that to be in his kid brother’s best interests and had doubtless married him off fast to ensure that there were no further unsuitable alliances.
‘Does Elise love you?’
Alex elevated a superior winged brow at the intimacy of the question.
Sarah flushed but refused to be silenced. ‘I would hate to think that I had been the cause of hurting her.’
‘I hurt her pride,’ Alex divulged grimly. ‘And since she and everyone else will believe that Nicky is my child and you are his mother...’
Sarah frowned. ‘Must they?’
‘Something else you didn’t consider?’ Alex derided. ‘Since Damon and Androula are not to have the right to raise Nicky as their child, his true parentage must remain a secret within the family circle. I will not have Androula humiliated...’
Sarah didn’t see how Androula could be humiliated by something that had occurred before her marriage to Damon...unless Androula had been on scene at the same time as Callie. That was possible, she supposed. Damon had betrayed his true character in his treatment of Callie. Androula could well have been the socially acceptable girl back home in Greece.
‘Naturally, as soon as Nicky is of an age to understand, he will be told that he is adopted and, later still, I believe that he should have every right to know the whole truth of his parentage—’
‘Your whole truth or mine?’
Alex dealt her a slashing look of sudden intimidation. ‘You are a malicious and very dangerous woman, but be warned...I will tolerate no interference on that count when the time comes. If you’re still around, of course.’
The soft conclusion made her tense. ‘Why wouldn’t I be around?’ she asked stiffly.
‘You will require remarkable staying power
and buckets of humility to stay the course,’ Alex drawled, his dark, strong face set in unyielding lines, a rather dauntingly amused smile playing round the edges of his hard mouth. ‘And frankly I do not think you are likely to make the grade.’
‘Thank you for the vote of confidence.’
But Sarah was suffering from increasing turmoil. He was threatening her but that alone would not have plunged her into her current slough of self-examination. What threatened her most of all was her very first acknowledgement of Alex as a male with feelings and possible frailties of his own.
He was very bitter. Three weeks ago, she hadn’t given two hoots for that, would have felt equal to holding off Alex with one hand and an army with the other. Grieving for Callie, distraught with bitterness and fiercely driven by her own need for revenge, Sarah had closed her eyes to one inescapably basic reality. Damon was the male who had lied to Callie, got her pregnant, abandoned her, neglected to support her and furthermore lied about her to his brother. Acting on information received, Alex had moved into action. Damon could have gone ahead and married Callie, defying his brother, if he had wanted to. But the simple truth was that Damon hadn’t wanted to marry Callie and indeed had scarpered, leaving Alex to extract him from an embarrassing situation.
So Damon was the real sinner but Alex was the one making the sacrifices. Dear God, how come that was only penetrating her confused brain now? Why had the entirety of her hatred focused solely on Alex Terzakis? He had been a far more worthy opponent on which to target her rage than his wimpy little brother, who had been assiduously careful to put in only the most fleeting appearance at Callie’s funeral. Yet she had forced Alex to make restitution on Damon’s behalf.
Sarah felt suddenly like someone emerging into the sunlight after a long period of being lost somewhere underground. ‘It’s not too late to change your mind, admit you had a brainstorm and that you really didn’t mean it,’ Gina had urged over and over again before the wedding. But Sarah had been deaf and blind to such persuasions. She had had a Terzakis male in her sights and she had taken aim and fired in the name of revenge.
And for Nicky, she reminded herself. And for Nicky. Unfortunately, it was only now registering that she had just about wrecked Alex’s life while Damon got off scot-free and that was not justice. From below her fluttering lashes, she appraised the husband she had acquired by force, collided electrifyingly with fierce golden eyes as hot as flames and hurriedly dropped her gaze again, a dismaying sinking sensation afflicting her stomach. Bloody hell, girl, she said to herself furiously, this is not the time to lose your bottle!
