by Lynne Graham
The following days blurred one into another. The staff were very busy preparing for the big party Alex was determined to throw. When Sarah wasn’t putting on a brave show for Alex’s benefit, she was with Nicky, to whom she clung more than ever, taking comfort and strength from his unquestioning love and need for her. She went shopping because Alex told her to. She bought fabulous clothes without any real pleasure.
He took her out to dinner several times, but when they were photographed he froze and looked guilty as hell. She wore the diamonds he had given her and which she had never thanked him for and, when she attempted awkwardly to make good the oversight, he brushed her words away as if they embarrassed him and she fell silent. It was that night that she began to pick up on the edge of guilt that betrayed him.
‘I need you,’ he would admit with a flat lack of emotion that chilled her in the dark of their bed but, even though he gave her extraordinary pleasure, he still seemed to feel the urge to apologise for that same need. He never laid a finger on her otherwise. During the hours of daylight, it was as though she were ringed by a defensive force-field, but at night it was as though he couldn’t keep his hands off her and all restraint vanished. He exhausted her to such a degree that she took to sleeping in late in the mornings.
The beginning of the second week he started coming home with giant bunches of flowers and then the meaningful conversations started. He behaved as though everything about her was a source of endless fascination. He wanted to know about her childhood, her parents, every lousy job she had ever had, and her tension began to build to explosive proportions because she knew he couldn’t possibly be one-tenth as interested as he was trying to pretend.
‘Do you really have to try so hard to live with me?’ The desperate demand just flew from her lips at the end of the second week over dinner.
He tensed, his jawline squaring. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You don’t have to try so hard to make me feel wanted,’ she murmured tautly, her shadowed eyes resting on him. ‘I’d rather you were just yourself.’
Brown fingers beat a silent tattoo of tension on the polished table. His magnificent bone-structure tautened, a tinge of pallor showing beneath his sun-bronzed skin. ‘I can’t do anything right with you, can I?’ he breathed with a ragged edge to his deep voice, his accent thicker than she had ever heard it.
‘It’s not that.’ But how could she say to him that she found the spectacle of his obvious efforts to make their marriage work increasingly humiliating. It would go too close to the bone for both of them. An enormous lump formed in her throat. She wished she had kept her mouth shut. That much effort to give her what he believed would make her happy ought not to be condemned. She bent her head, decided she was an ungrateful bitch and fought the tears threatening.
‘You like flowers in the garden but not flowers I give you. You can chatter endlessly to my servants but you can hardly bear to tell me your favourite colour. The message isn’t subliminal, is it? The only place I feel even marginally welcome is our bed and why is that?’
Shaken by the storm she had ignited, the roughness of his strained intonation, she stared at him, devoured by pain.
‘Why?’ Alex repeated fiercely.
Because I love you...
‘And you’re all over Nicky at every hour of the day. He coughs and you can’t get there quick enough!’ Alex slung from between gritted teeth. ‘In spite of the fact that we have a nanny with several willing supporters, you install a baby alarm and you get out of my bed to go to him!’
Very much taken aback, Sarah surveyed him with shocked eyes. Evidently the baby alarm in their bedroom was viewed as some kind of ultimate insult. Did he think she was smothering Nicky? Was that what he was saying? That she was threatening to turn into one of those ghastly suffocating mothers one read about? She reminded herself that Alex had probably been raised more by nannies than parents and possibly he did consider the amount of time she spent with Nicky excessive.
‘I’m sorry if you think I’m taking my responsibilities too seriously.’
‘If you’re that obsessed with babies, why should we wait until next year to extend the family?’ Alex demanded with sardonic bite, his eloquent mouth twisting as he absorbed her consternation. ‘Now isn’t that a wonderful idea?’
‘I don’t think we’re ready for another child,’ she blustered, wondering what on earth was the matter with him.
‘You’re not thinking clearly, pethi mou.’ Alex unleashed a wolfish smile on her. ‘Instead of lying there in stony silence, tolerating my regrettable sexual demands, you could maybe develop a little enthusiasm, say my name, touch me, shock me to death... After all, it would be for a higher purpose!’
Sarah was chalk-pale with mortification. ‘I didn’t realise...that you were dissatisfied,’ she practically whispered.
‘How could you? You’re probably too busy reciting the multiplication tables or anticipating the excitement of Nicky’s next feed!’
Without a further word, Alex vacated the table, his long stride carrying him from the room within seconds. The door thudded on his exit, and Sarah’s cup of coffee blurred out of focus. She looked down at his empty seat and swallowed hard. He had noticed the difference, the difference she had been too self-conscious even to admit inside her own mind. She felt different with Alex now, hadn’t realised in her naïveté that he would feel it too. No longer secure in the belief that Alex found her ravishingly seductive, she was more shy, more tense, more inclined to...just let him get on with it, the admission slunk in, and she reddened miserably.
She accused him of trying too hard and he accused her of not trying at all. ‘I can’t do anything right with you, can I?’ There had been very real pain and frustration in that statement. He believed that she was concentrating too much on Nicky, not enough on him and therefore not enough on their marriage. Was that true? It was certainly true that she had been cowardly, too busy saving face to risk her shattered pride by making any advances of her own, forcing Alex to make every move. No wonder he was fed up to the back teeth with her. She had been so afraid of him guessing that she was hopelessly in love with him, so sunk in self-pity, she had been selfish and unresponsive.
Tonight she would be different, she swore in desperation. Tonight she would forget all those silly, self-indulgent insecurities which she couldn’t afford to harbour if this very shaky marriage was not to fall apart at the seams. Then where would she be? she asked herself. She loved Alex. The prospect of life without Alex filled her with horror. It was incredible how fast her priorities rearranged themselves when she was faced with that threat.
She had a couple of glasses of wine to bolster her courage. By the time she had finished perfuming and preening herself in the bathroom, she was feeling wanton, daring, and the very last thing on her mind was Nicky’s next feed. She even disconnected the baby alarm. Then, slipping on the satin peignoir that matched her slinky nightgown, she went off to find Alex.
He was on the phone in the room he used as an office, his back to the door, and he was laughing, so he didn’t hear the door opening.
‘Yes, Elise. But...it would be a little awkward if you came here... Yes, I’m glad you understand the situation. The ice is very thin right now. Yes, I know it’s my own fault but do you really have to keep on reminding me?’ he groaned. ‘No, she still hasn’t mentioned it. Why not lunch tomorrow? No, not a restaurant, definitely not. We can use my apartment. No, of course it won’t make her suspicious...how could it? Sarah doesn’t even know I have an apartment in Paris...’
Her heart in her mouth, Sarah closed the door so quietly and so carefully that she felt as if she was moving in slow motion. She didn’t remember climbing the stairs again. The unfaithful husband...the devious bastard, attacking her when all the time he had another woman in his life. Of course, but what better form of defence than attack? It was pitifully obvious to her that Alex was planning a divorce, but only when he judged the time right. In the meantime, he was sneaking around with
In an agony of pain, Sarah threw herself on the bed. Nothing had ever hurt so badly. Shock was coasting through her in waves. Why had Alex continued to sleep with her? Or was it only tonight that he had made his decision that their marriage was a hopeless charade? Vivien would have suggested strategy. The only strategy that Sarah could envisage was killing Alex on the grounds that, if she couldn’t have him, Elise couldn’t have him either.
Yes, Alex had been right. The ice was very thin right now, just the merest skim of frosting on emotions that were frighteningly primitive.
CHAPTER TEN
‘DAMON and Androula will be coming to the party,’ Alex announced, watching her intently with veiled eyes.
‘Yes.’ Sarah had no reaction. She was convinced that she was really dead and that he was breakfasting with a corpse. He could have told her the sky was green and the grass was pink and she would have agreed. All she could think about was Alex’s lunchtime engagement, the knowledge that her husband was about to embark on an adulterous affair and that she was doing absolutely nothing about it.
He hadn’t come to bed last night. He had slept elsewhere. At least he had that much decency, but her lower lip wobbled alarmingly. Why on earth was he still holding this party tomorrow? Why not make some excuse to cancel it? Why go to such enormous trouble and expense to launch socially a wife he had already decided to dump?
The post was delivered on a silver tray. There was a letter for Sarah with a London postmark. It was from a solicitor’s firm and it related to...Callie’s will. Callie’s will? Her sister had had a will drawn up? It was news to Sarah. Why should Callie have had a will drawn up when she had no assets to leave? Sarah read on and began to pale.
Callie’s bank account currently held an amount of money exceeding a quarter of a million pounds and this amount was increasing as large monthly payments were still entering the account. As her sister had left everything to her, would she please get in touch concerning her wishes?
‘Something wrong?’ Alex murmured.
Sarah’s stomach had flipped. Numbly she slung the letter down the table at him and covered her face with unsteady hands. It had to be Damon’s money and he must have been paying from the start. Damon had not left Callie to sink or swim without financial support as Sarah had believed. Once more, Alex had been proved right and Callie had been proved a liar, at least by omission.
‘I would suggest the money be returned to source,’ Alex breathed coldly.
Whatever reaction Sarah had expected, it had not been that. ‘Source?’ she queried.
‘The legal proceedings by which we will become Nicky’s adoptive parents have already begun. I do not require my brother to support a child whom I intend to bring up as my own,’ Alex extended with flat emphasis.
‘I wasn’t thinking of that angle,’ Sarah muttered, surprised that he hadn’t picked up on the more basic point. ‘You too think that that money must be Damon’s but I didn’t even know it existed. Callie didn’t tell me and—’
‘Whose idea was it not to cash the cheque I had given her?’ Alex cut in.
‘Mine, but—’
‘Your sister had a little more financial wisdom than you, then,’ Alex responded ruefully. ‘She was thinking of the future. No doubt she thought you would object to her making use of the money, so she kept quiet about it.’
He was handling the evidence that his brother had done exactly what he had assumed he would have done with unexpected generosity. He wasn’t crowing. Somehow that was no comfort to Sarah.
‘The lies she told me...’ she whispered helplessly.
Alex sighed. ‘She lied because she loved you and cared about your opinion of her. But occasionally it can be a little trying to live with someone whose moral principles are set higher and more rigidly than your own...’
Sarah took that assurance very personally, relating it to their relationship rather than her dealings with her late sister. The blood drained from her cheeks. Did Alex find her hard to live with? Had Alex decided she was a narrow-minded prig, whose principles were set in unforgiving stone? Was that how Alex saw her and was that why Alex was turning back to Elise, convinced that there was no hope for their marriage?
‘As unyielding as a brick wall,’ he had called her. And hadn’t she been behaving that way? The way she treated Alex did stem from one basic inner conviction...that if he didn’t love her he shouldn’t be making love to her. In a marriage currently at its last gasp, she had been maintaining unsustainable and unrealistic standards. Was it any wonder that Alex was on the brink of straying?
On the brink—that meant it wasn’t too late. It wasn’t too late to prove that she could be everything he could want within marriage, was it? But to prove that point would mean ditching not only her personal insecurities but also her pride. Could she do it? Could she turn herself into the sort of woman Alex would desire and need to the exclusion of all others? With only hours in which to achieve that miracle, she understood that she would be struggling to fulfil a pretty tall order and that it was going to take a pretty hefty demonstration to convince Alex that she could change...
Hooded dark eyes were studying her, a faint frown-line formed between his winged brows. He had spoken and she hadn’t heard him. ‘I said,’ Alex drawled, and then, meeting her far-away eyes, his mouth suddenly tightened. He rose abruptly from behind the table. ‘Forget what I said. I’ll see you at dinner.’
Before Sarah could retrieve her wits and her tongue, Alex was gone. Suddenly galvanised into motion by panic, she pelted after him, but he wasn’t on his own. He was striding out of the door with his pilot on his heels. Desperate as Sarah was, she could not quite bring herself to proposition her husband sexually in front of an audience.
And then he really was gone, the door thudding shut on her hopes and her dreams and her marriage, she reflected melodramatically. Alex was off to put in a few hours at the office before succumbing to Elise’s wiles. Olive Oil, she had called her! Talk about seriously underestimating the opposition! Elise might not have slept with Alex before he’d got married but evidently, in her eagerness to extract him from his marriage, she was prepared to get her hair mussed now.
Well, she wasn’t the only one, Sarah decided in sudden fury. She intended to put a spoke in Elise’s wheels. She was going to get in first. Cheeks hotly flushed, Sarah tracked down Henri and asked him what time Alex took lunch.
Henri blinked. ‘It varies...’
‘I need to know what time he’s taking it today and I want a car to Paris to get me there on time,’ Sarah told him. ‘I want to surprise him.’
Henri smiled with sudden cunning. ‘I’ll find out, madame.’
Sarah went upstairs into the dressing-room and began to trawl frantically through the wardrobes for something suitable to wear, something seductive, something that would come off again with the minimum of effort. She couldn’t afford to give Alex ten seconds to recall the lunch date he was about to break. If Alex could use sex as a weapon, as he had on their wedding night, couldn’t she?
She was ready to tear her hair out and scream when she realised that the most basic weapon in any sensual woman’s wardrobe was missing from hers! Downstairs she went again in a rush, straight into the kitchen to find François, her chauffeur, with his feet up, reading a newspaper. ‘I have to go into Tours!’ she announced breathlessly. ‘Now!’
François could take a hint. They made it to Tours in record time. The lingerie shop she finally located offered up a wealth of choice. It took her only ten minutes to grab up those most essential missing items and then it was back home, at the same speed, to go racing up to the bathroom to commence her transformation.
By the time she made it back into the car for the drive to Paris, she was badly in need of a stiff drink to aid her recovery. It had taken so long to do her hair that big way on her own. Of course she hadn’t been bothering since they married. She had just been washing and wearing it, not making any effort at all, hardly even bothering with make-up... As she counted up her sins, she grew increasingly appalled by such thoughtless inattention to the need to hold a man’s interest. Alex was accustomed to such beautiful women. If she succeeded today, she would be spending every spare hour in the beauty salon, concealing nature’s deficiencies. But it would be worth it, if it meant she kept Alex.
Every head turned as she crossed the foyer on the ground floor of Alex’s office block. Sarah endeavoured not to appear self-conscious. After all, she had a coat on. The fact that she was not wearing anything very much at all underneath it did not show but she could feel that lack, feel her own shocking nakedness in the most extraordinary way.
Alex’s secretary on the top floor was not, she was relieved to note, the kind of sex siren most likely to end up on her employer’s lap in a weak moment. From the top of her greying hair to the toes of her flat, sensible shoes, she was efficiency personified. But she looked rather dismayed when Sarah announced her intention to lunch with her husband.
So Elise was pencilled into his diary, was she? Prepared for that eventuality, Sarah waved a supposed to be arrogant but actually rather desperate hand and said, ‘Cancel any other arrangements Alex has made...and hold all calls. I don’t want any interruptions.’
‘But Mr Terzakis never has his calls held while he’s still in the—’
‘He will today!’ Sarah interrupted in a rush and, lest any other arguments were coming, she hastened through the door being guarded.
Alex was on the phone behind his immaculately tidy desk. His dark head swivelled round. Sarah leant back against the door, striving to look exciting, sexually a tigress, but the amount of effort it took to fumble in search of the lock, work out its type and shoot it home without looking round or down rather spoilt the effect, she felt.
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