by Lynne Graham
‘AWOL,’ Sarah giggled helplessly and slithered slowly out of the car, feet first.
‘And you are paralytically drunk,’ Alex seethed with naked incredulity.
Surprisingly he caught her before she fell. ‘I can walk,’ she said.
He was dishevelled, his hair tousled, his jawline stubbled. And he was mad. He was so mad, he could hardly articulate. Detached from him by this wonderful wall of cotton wool, she felt no pain. The rat, the treacherous, double-dealing, hypocritical swine that he was...
She made it up the steps all on her own, and headed doggedly for the stairs. She kicked off her shoes, lifted the hem of her long dress, searched for something to hold on to and a second later was swept up into Alex’s arms. ‘You’re hurting!’ she moaned because he was crushing the air from her lungs.
‘If you ever do this again,’ Alex swore, little tremors interfering with the normally steady tenor of his deep, dark drawl, ‘I will take measures to restrain you.’
‘It’s the attic for me!’ Sarah sang off-key.
‘Where were you? Who were you with?’ Alex demanded, dropping her down on to a wonderfully comfortable bed.
‘Are you being possessive, Alex?’
‘If you’ve been anywhere near another man, I’ll kill you,’ he intoned, staring down at her with paint-stripping intensity. ‘You’re my wife.’
‘Yuck,’ Sarah responded sleepily, her heavy eyelids dipping as though weights were attached to them.
When she awakened, she was alone and little men were morris-dancing inside her thumping head. My first hangover, she registered miserably, sliding out of bed and weaving a far from straight passage to the bathroom. A shower would make her feel better. She was emerging from the cubicle, swathed in a towel, white as a ghost and suffering from a raging thirst, when she noticed Alex.
‘Oh, no,’ she mumbled. ‘Not now.’
Alex filled the doorway. She refused to look at him, concentrated on his feet.
‘Shouldn’t you be at the office or something?’ she whispered.
‘It’s Saturday.’
‘I thought you went every day.’ He certainly hadn’t spent any days at home. Her clouded gaze worked up his legs. He was wearing black jeans that hugged his long, lean thighs and narrow hips, and an Aran sweater which accentuated his dark golden skin tone and black hair. Gorgeous, so gorgeous, her knees turned weak. Accidently she clashed with hooded dark eyes and her stomach dipped violently. The pain came back in a debilitating surge.
‘Who is he?’ Alex displayed a newspaper, item one in the prosecution case.
Sarah peered at the photo. Stefan and herself, caught smiling and looking surprisingly intimate. What a joke, she thought bitterly, and edged fluidly past Alex’s incredible stillness. He could have doubled for Gina’s Greek statue, poised there with an inscrutably impassive face and an air of earthquake-proof self-command.
‘Sarah?’
She sank down on the edge of the bed. She wasn’t Vivien and she was still angry that the other woman had placed her in so invidious a position. She ran a hand through her tumbling hair, knowing she looked like death warmed up. It didn’t help.
‘He’s an escort Vivien hired and sprang on me,’ she murmured wearily. ‘She also tipped off the pho-tographer.’
‘Vivien?’ Alex breathed incredulously.
‘Look, I really don’t care whether you believe me or not.’ Sarah told him briefly what had happened, talking to his feet throughout. Direct visual contact hurt.
‘You didn’t have to tell me that he was an escort. You could have lied,’ Alex drawled flatly after a very long silence.
‘Why?’ Sarah glanced up, her emerald eyes pained, her soft mouth tight. ‘I don’t play those sort of games. What would be the point?’
He studied her, disturbingly tense, his eyes dark glimmers of light beneath black lashes. ‘Sometimes those sort of games work on men like me.’
‘That’s not my style,’ she admitted, dry-mouthed.
‘It was Vivien’s. Why did you tell me the truth?’ he demanded abruptly again.
How many lies and deceptions had Vivien practised on his father? How many had Alex witnessed? Vivien was fundamentally kind and caring and Alex was clearly fond of her, but it was equally clear that about the last thing Alex appeared to expect from a woman was the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He expected manipulation and manoeuvres, point-scoring and pretences, not honesty. He could not understand why Sarah should without pressure openly admit that Stefan had been an escort and the photo a rigged-up piece of farce.
‘Why?’ he repeated again. ‘When I phoned yesterday, you said—’
She flushed. ‘I talked a lot of tosh, the way you do when you’re angry.’
‘You put me through hell last night,’ Alex muttered half under his breath, the admission dragged from him. ‘I really thought you might—’
‘Go and make an idiot of myself to annoy you?’ Sarah sighed. ‘No. I’m too staid for that.’
‘You didn’t look staid on the back seat of the limo,’ Alex commented flatly.
‘I’ve never got drunk before. I don’t think I ever will again,’ she conceded, studying the exquisite Aubusson rug beneath her feet.
Alex expelled his breath and swung away from her. She lifted her head, noted the raw tension in the set of his wide shoulders.
‘I owe you an explanation for my behaviour,’ he intoned harshly.
No apology, just an explanation. Well what had she expected?
‘When I agreed to marry you, I did not intend to remain married for very long. That was...’ he hesitated ‘...dishonest of me. But I was very angry at being forced to marry you in return for sharing custody of Nicky. I was also very bitter. Please understand that I have grown to love him.’
‘Yes.’ She was too engulfed by guilt to say any-thing more.
Alex swung back to her, his darkly attractive features strikingly serious. ‘But he came into this world in circumstances which I personally would never have been guilty of allowing. Yet it was I who was called to pay for the offence.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Her eyes smarted painfully.
‘But what alternative was there? Your motives may not have been entirely pure but you had more awareness of Nicky’s needs than I had. I could not have brought him up on my own, and Elise,’ he delivered with a wry twist of his mouth, ‘would never have accepted him. I am very fond of children but I have to confess to not having had very much to do with the breed. What I am trying to say to you is that that child needs both of us and I accept that now. However, if the two of us had had access to slightly cooler tempers in the period after your sister’s death, we would not now be married...’
She knew it was the truth but it was still like a knife twisting through her heart.
‘But I was not prepared to leave you in charge of Nicky, thinking of you as I did then. We were so busy striking sparks off each other, neither one of us showed our true character,’ Alex spelt out. ‘I was determined that you would gain nothing from the marriage. I knew you were proud. I swore to break that pride.’
The colour drained from her fragile face. ‘Yes.’
He vented a soft imprecation, noting her pallor. ‘Hence my behaviour after the ceremony. I did not feel like a married man. I did not want to be a married man,’ he confessed with grim emphasis. ‘I saw marriage as something still quite far in the future, to be embraced at a time of my choosing. So I decided to marry you and get rid of you again by whatever means were within my power.’
Sarah bowed her head, her throat thickening. She had blown Alex’s no doubt smoothly organised existence apart. What right did she have to resent the backlash? Hadn’t she brought it on herself? How could she demand fidelity from a man who had never wanted to marry her in the first place?
‘You’re so quiet.’
It was easier to shout and scream in temper, tougher to verbalise really painful emotions which Alex could only be embarrassed by. His candour was slau
ghtering her, she acknowledged. She had managed by extraordinary means to fall in love with a man primed from the outset to humiliate and hurt her. What was worst of all was not being able to resent that reality.
‘Maybe I’m a little stunned that you’re talking to me like this.’ She strove for a fair approximation of an appreciative smile. It was a lost cause.
‘Maybe I would like to be stunned back,’ Alex murmured tautly.
He would be stunned if she told him how she really felt about him. Inside herself, she was dying. It was slowly sinking in on her that all that he had said about finding her sexually attractive must have been lies too! Dear God, he had run rings round her! Idiot, fool, sucker, she castigated herself fiercely. Her lack of sexual experience had been so pitifully obvious to Alex, he had made that his first target.
‘Sarah...I am attempting to clear the air.’ He crouched down on a level with her and reached for her tightly clenched hands. Tears were slowly trickling down her cheeks and she was in anguish that he should see them, hadn’t even realised the tears were there until she felt them overflow. ‘If I’ve hurt you, I’m sorry, but I will make it up to you.’
His hands engulfed hers with warmth. He looked really concerned. She had never dreamt that those dark golden eyes could soften to such a degree. But that her weakness should provoke his pity tormented her.
‘I can,’ Alex swore vehemently. ‘I can make this marriage work.’
Vehemently she shook her head, arching her slender throat, willing the tears back. ‘It just can’t work, Alex—’
‘But it has to for Nicky.’
‘I love Nicky very much...but I don’t w-want to stay married to you,’ she said. ‘This situation is unbearable for both of us. We have nothing in common.’
His lean hands had tightened as she spoke, crushing the blood supply from her fingers. ‘Nicky,’ he reminded her. ‘And there are many facets of your character which I admire.’
What remained of her pride trickled down through a mental grating, gone forever. Her damp lashes concealed the agony in her eyes. Character traits he could admire...was that the best he could come up with? This utterly gorgeous man whom she loved, who did not love her, who wanted to stay married to her for her maternal instincts. She withdrew her hands from his, despising herself for the craving to maintain even that slight contact.
‘Alex...I got us into this. Yesterday I was furious with you,’ she admitted with difficulty and some understatement. ‘But I shouldn’t have been and I see that now. If you want to run around with a lot of women, that’s your business, because we’re not really married, not in the strictest sense of the word.’ She paused, disturbed by the dull coins of colour rising over his taut cheekbones. ‘Neither one of us went through that ceremony meaning what we said.’
‘I did not make love to any of those women,’ Alex said harshly, and reached for her hands again with unhidden anger. ‘Have you ever heard of the concept of a second chance? Here I am practically on my knees begging for that chance and you sit there like a little stone Buddha being bloody forgiving but as unyielding as a brick wall!’
Shattered by the attack, Sarah watched him spring upright and stride across the room, aggression in every line of his long, lithe body. Was it true that he hadn’t made love to another woman since their marriage? None of those women, he had said. He might not have been to Athens but he was in Paris practically every damned day! His anger had astonished her. She realised that he was deadly serious about staying married for Nicky’s benefit and frustrated by her lack of response.
‘I can go and get laid anywhere I want, any time!’ Alex threw up two expressive hands, shooting her a look of such volatile fury that she paled. ‘Dios...my father would have killed to marry a woman like you! But if you tell me one more time that I can screw around, I’ll strangle you! Do you hear me? How can I feel married if you do not set standards for me to live up to?’
So much passion, so much fire. It fascinated her, lay at the very heart of his attraction for her. Until Alex had come into her life, she had never succumbed to any excess of emotion. She had been quiet and calm and always very, very sensible. Alex had knocked her sideways and then reached inside her to inspire an unholy passion quite beyond her control.
‘You told me your standards on our wedding night,’ she reminded him gently.
‘But you are not the woman I thought you were then. You confused me,’ Alex said with natural arrogance. ‘If this marriage is to have a hope of success, certain standards must naturally be observed. I know what I am talking about.’
‘Really?’
Alex’s sensual mouth compressed. ‘My father’s relationship with Vivien was a living hell for the first few years. Infidelity breeds distrust and insecurity. Even when he had abandoned his extra-marital forays, Vivien was suspicious. They loved each other very much but that bad beginning undermined their whole marriage. Because she did not trust him, she played games...’
Keeping him on his toes, Vivien had called it.
‘I could kill her for bringing those games into our marriage,’ Alex confessed abrasively and then, seeing Sarah’s alarm, he sighed. ‘She has to be told and it is my place to do it but I will try to be kind about it.’
‘She knows about Nicky...about Damon and Callie,’ Sarah dropped tautly, awaiting the storm.
Alex froze, frowned, then suddenly shrugged. ‘What the hell? Let Andy and Damon deal with the fallout.’
Sarah was amazed by his attitude.
‘Our marriage is more important and I suppose it was inevitable that Vivien would find out,’ he said dismissively.
Sarah knew she was staying now, knew she had been protesting the inevitable once Alex had made it clear that he wanted her to stay. So they would make another, more meaningful attempt at being married for Nicky’s sake. Could she live with that? Her world would revolve around Alex and Nicky but she would only be a tiny part of Alex’s world, she reflected painfully. The wife he would make the best of, not the wife he would have chosen, not the wife that he loved.
She took a deep breath. ‘I’ll stay if you want me to.’
‘At least until Nicky is eighteen,’ Alex told her smoothly.
The qualification so casually stated turned her stomach over sickly. Careless words that bit and hurt because they underlined Alex’s emotional detachment. ‘I’d like to get dressed.’ Standing up, she gave him a small, tight smile.
‘Why don’t we take Nicky out somewhere together...like a real family?’ Alex suggested abruptly.
* * *
It had been a gorgeous day. He had taken them to the town of Chinon and they’d played tourist, wandering the medieval streets in the sunlight, lunching in a superb restaurant and talking as they had never talked before. It had been curiously like being on a first date, Sarah reflected sleepily in the car on the way home. Alex had been very restrained, excruciatingly polite and considerate, and Nicky had risen magnificently to the occasion of his first family outing by dutifully eating, napping and bestowing fat smiles on them both.
Sarah went to bed at ten. Alex had disappeared into the library after a phone call. She was half asleep when he slid into bed beside her. She stole a glance at him, her heart leaping wildly behind her breastbone. He reached for her simultaneously, incandescent golden eyes literally defying her to object.
She didn’t want him to touch her and he knew it. Shivering, she closed her eyes, hiding her pain and disillusionment, and knew that this was the price, this was the bottom line if she wanted to hang on to him. Alex needed sex the way she needed air to breathe. Fidelity meant that he now had to satisfy those needs in the marital bed.
She was just a body, and if anything had been required to prove that point his silence did so. In this new brave relationship, lies were no longer permissible, so Alex was not about to tell her how ravishingly irresistible she was. She was fanciable enough to arouse him but that was the height of her pulling power and, with a male as physical as Alex, maybe it didn’
t even take that much...maybe he just fantasised about somebody else. A choked sob escaped her.
He thrust her away from him with positive violence. Her eyes flew open as he threw back the sheet and sprang out of bed.
‘Alex...you misunderstood!’
He spun back, dealing her an incredulous glance.
‘I was thinking about something else... It wasn’t—I mean...’ she stumbled in desperation, knowing that the whole future he had offered her was in the balance. The tip of her tongue stole out and darted along her taut lower lip. ‘I want you,’ she whispered finally.
Dark golden eyes held hers in the throbbing silence and then a vibrantly amused smile curved his expressive mouth. He strolled back to the bed, closed his hands over her shoulders and took her mouth with a searing hunger that sent the blood drumming through her veins. He pressed her back and came down on her in one smooth movement.
‘Prove it,’ he muttered thickly, settling his hips between her parted thighs, one hand summarily dealing with the tangled silk of her nightdress, wrenching it out of his path.
She trembled, learning the heat of his arousal, filled by an intense excitement she could not deny. He kissed her again then, forcefully, almost roughly, and she tangled her hands breathlessly in his hair, kissing him back with a kind of crazy desperation, gripped by an urgency that burned.
He took her in a storm of passion, wringing every last drop of response from her quivering body. No smooth seduction this time, nothing but the raw driving ferocity of male possession. Afterwards, she was shattered by the extent of her own enjoyment. The suspicion that Alex had been out of control as well had wildly excited her. She lay in a damp tangle of limbs, her arms tightly wrapped around him.
‘I’m sorry.’ Alex pulled away, threw himself back against the pillows and stared up at the ceiling, a dull flush of colour darkening his hard cheekbones. ‘I need a shower.’
She turned over, wondering what was wrong, afraid to ask in case he told her. Ten minutes later, he left the room and she lay sleepless in the darkness. He came back to her with the taste of brandy on his lips at some timeless stage of the night and made love to her all over again, slowly, gently, and with immense restraint. She told herself that it didn’t matter that he was careful not to encroach on her side of the bed afterwards. She told herself that if she couldn’t have love she would settle for sex and that she wasn’t going to let herself be over-sensitive in her expectations. But long after Alex was safely asleep she cried for what she couldn’t have.
