Trophy Husband

by Lynne Graham

  The surge of pain caught her on the crest of tortured anticipation. She gasped in shock, eyes flying wide to meet similar shock in his startled gaze. 'Cristo cara...' he said in hoarse disbelief, but the momentary frown etched between his ebony brows was swiftly wiped away and the dark eyes glittered more golden than ever.

  And then he moved again lithely, powerfully deepening his penetration, and a truly stunning wave of breathtaking sensation swept her back into that wild oblivion where only the demands of her own hungry body held sway. With every driving thrust he took her with him, made the fire burning inside her flame ever higher, ever more unbearably, until her teeth clenched and her heartbeat thundered and her nails raked fiercely down his damp back because the wild, hot pleasure that went on and on only made her more desperate. The explosive burst of her own climax was electrifying. It blew her apart, left her trembling in devastated aftershock from a sheer overload of pleasure.

  'I feel better in my bed.' Alex was sweeping her up, letting his mouth caress hers again tenderly, then there was movement. That was all her punch-drunk senses could recognise. She felt the faint chill of colder air and then a cool sheet against her back before the heat and muscularity of Alex connected with her again.

  'Don't go to sleep,' he instructed her, his dark drawl impossibly vibrant and wide awake as he wrapped his arms around her possessively and vented a deeply satisfied sigh of slumberous relaxation.

  Not waves on shores so much as a golden sun of glory around which she had revolved, she conceded sleepily. So much effort to think... so much easier simply to feel, and she felt wonderfully at peace.

  'We spend the weekend on the yacht. I'm in Paris on Monday... you'll love Paris, car a. What do you think?' he probed.

  What did she think? Sara struggled valiantly to think. She thought that he sounded as if he had closed a tremendously difficult and lucrative business deal which had lost some poor fool a fortune and made him another mountain of money that he didn't need: immensely, shamelessly self-satisfied. At that point her brain switched off and she shifted with positive contentment into the warm, comforting solidarity of him.

  Her nose twitched on the heady scent of flowers. She lifted heavy eyelids slowly, focused on a giant, berib-boned basket of flowers and then another basket... and then another. Her mouth went dry. She woke up in a hurry, jerking upright in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar bedroom and gaped at all the flowers surrounding her. Her attention lodged on a man's silk tie lying in a tiny splash of crimson on top of a dense, creamy carpet and her heart plunged as if she had gone down at supersonic speed in a lift.

  She nearly fell out of the bed in her haste to vacate it. Memory took her back and then forward. She turned as white as a sheet and suddenly knew without any prompting what being sober really felt like. A case she recognised as her own was sitting by the window. With a pained groan of disbelief, she stared at it. He had somehow got her clothes out of the flat? Oh, dear Lord, what had she done? What had she done?

  With frantic hands she tore into the case. Taped to the inner lid was a big piece of paper, slashed with Antonia's untidy scrawl. 'What the hell is going on?' it said.

  Sara grabbed up a handful of clothes and dived into the en suite bathroom. She studied herself in the mirror— red, swollen mouth, shadowed eyes, wildly tousled black hair. Trollop, tart, she castigated herself with tears of rage and shame burning her eyes. How could she have behaved like that with Alex Rossini? She wanted to sink into a great black hole—no, she wanted to put him into a great black hole and pour tons of concrete over him so that he could never escape and she would never have to meet his eyes again!

  Thankfully he had already left for the office... Oh, dear heaven, the office!. It was already after nine. She would say that she had missed the bus. Nobody would think anything of that; nobody need ever know... but if she had had any choice she wouldn't have walked into Rossini Industries ever again. However, there would certainly be talk if she suddenly disappeared and failed to work out the last ten days of her notice—much better to grit her teeth and finish her time there. In any case, she conceded bitterly, she badly needed her month's salary because her bank account was almost empty.

  Fumbling, with little of her usual dexterity, she contrived to confine her hair into a murderously tight bun at the nape of her neck.

  She crept out of the bedroom, her arm nearly falling off from the weight of the case she was hauling with her. Tight-mouthed, she dragged it along to the landing at the top of the stairs. With every movement, she was more and more aware of the complaint of newly discovered muscles in unmentionable places and the undeniable ache in the least mentionable place of all, and her rage thundered higher with very step.

  'Buon giorno, cara...'

  Her throat thickened. Slowly she straightened, stricken eyes flying to the tall, devastatingly attractive male standing at the head of the staircase.

  'I was coming up to see if you wanted to join me for breakfast.. .but we can do without the luggage,' Alex assured her very softly, measuring dark eyes speeding over her furiously flushed face and lingering with incipi- j ent shrewdness. 'Don't do it—don't say what's brimming | on your lips... Don't disappoint me, cam.'

  She wanted to kick him down the stairs. A temper that she had never had any trouble controlling until now was suddenly threatening to explode. She sucked in air, freezing her facial muscles. 'I happen to be late for work, Rossini.' Ice dripped from every syllable.

  She hit her lowest ebb as she watched his sensual mouth twist and then compress. She didn't need to be told how ridiculous she had sounded. Then his strong dark face tautened. Brilliant dark eyes rested on her 'Sara... I want you to count to ten and think about last night without prejudice. Is that possible for you?'

  'No,' she said woodenly, honestly, dragging her mor-tified gaze from his—an act which took so much will power that she felt drained.

  'We shared something very special which I don't want... or intend... to lose. It doesn't matter that you were on the rebound... the only thing that matters is how we both feel now,' Alex drawled very quietly. 'Clean page, open book.'

  'Close it,' Sara said between gritted teeth. 'I don't mind you cutting off your nose to spite your face.. .per Dio, I mind very much if you attempt to make a similar sacrifice of me!' Alex covered the space between them in one long, fluid stride. 'I made a mistake, damn you!' Sara spat, tears scorching her eyes.

  'No, cara. That's where you're wrong. What happened between us was no mistake—not for me and not for you either.'

  'Am I entitled to voice an opinion of my own?'

  'Not right now... no.' Alex lifted the case from her, set it arrogantly aside. 'The prudish streak is threatening to go on the rampage.'

  Sara flinched as though he had struck her.

  'Bella mia...' Alex sighed reprovingly, smoothing long brown fingers caressingly over one pale, taut cheekbone, his accented drawl low and very soft. Even though she didn't want to stand there and allow him to touch her again, something frightening, something stronger than she was kept her still, unresisting, her slender length leaning involuntarily closer as if she wanted to curve into that hand and stretch like a sensual cat. 'Don't leave. I promise not to try and force anything more. You need time and space to think. I'll give it to you. I'll be patient... I'll stay in the background.'

  'Alex...' Her voice fractured as she fought to free herself from the spell he cast even while she mentally reeled at the impossible image of Alex Rossini endeavouring to sink into the woodwork.

  "There's nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to regret—'

  'But I don't want this!' Sara gasped, suddenly finding that freedom to speak her own thoughts. She jerked her head away from him. 'I don't want to have an affair with you. Last night was madness—'

  'Sweet insanity that worked like a dream... Don't deny what you're feeling right now.'

  'I feel nothing. ..nothing!' she swore violently, and, snatching up her case again with an energy born of desperation, she s
tarted down the stairs.

  'Sara, you cannot possibly go back into the office after this.'

  He caught up with her in the hall. A firm hand closed round hers and tugged her back and round to face him again.

  'You think I'm going to be your mistress, you think wrong!' Sara threw at him rawly.

  'What did I tell you to be sure to remember today? That this was not how I wanted it to be between us,' Alex reminded her with controlled anger. 'But you wouldn't settle for anything less and now you blame me for it. That's very female but bloody unfair."

  Her shocked eyes fell from his. 'I'm not blaming you. I just want to forget this happened, that's all.'

  'But I will not play that game...and take your hair out of that excruciatingly ugly old-maid style!' Alex suddenly gritted, and hauled her even closer, banding one strong arm round her narrow back as his free hand roved free to the thick coil of hair and released it from its confinement. 'You're a beautiful young woman; rejoice in that beauty...don't stifle it!'

  'Let go of me!' Sara told him shrilly.

  'All I want to do is take you back to bed,' Alex confided in an undertone of angrily suppressed passion as he brought her up against him, a lean hand splaying to the feminine swell of her hips with a lover's intimacy.

  Appalled cat-green eyes collided with his gaze and the atmosphere sizzled. She blinked bemusedly, feeling the piercingly sweet heat reawaken low in the pit of her stomach, the sudden ache of her nipples as her breasts stirred beneath her bra. Her soft mouth trembled. Alex smiled lazily down at her, shifted with fluid emphasis against her and she felt the force of his arousal with shock. Her lower limbs turned to cotton wool. Her ability to breathe and think for herself diminished with terrifying rapidity. 'Stop it..." she whispered breathlessly.

  'One kiss, bella mia, and I'll let you go into work,' he bargained mockingly.

  'No!' she spat as her heartbeat pounded like a trapped bird in a cage. :

  'Stubborn...' Alex breathed thickly, amused. 'You want that kiss as much as I do.'

  'I'm sorry...I didn't realise...I used the rear entrance,' another voice intervened.

  Alex's hand dropped instantly. Sara sprang back from him, eyes wide with horror when she saw Pete Hunniford standing several feet away, his mobile features momentarily transfixed with incredulity and then swiftly rearranged into total impassivity.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SARA stood there like a graven image as Pete handed a file to Alex.

  'Sara needs a lift back to the office.' Alex quirked a sardonic black brow as he glanced reflectively at her 'Unless you've changed your mind, cara?'

  'No.' She wrenched open the heavy front door for herself, and frankly couldn't get out of the huge house quickly enough.

  Alex dropped an arm round her and walked her out onto the top step, seemingly indifferent to a degree of icy, repulsing rigidity which would have frozen off the continuing advances of any normal male. 'Lunch at one... Sara?'

  Sara was staring in consternation at the man who had darted out from his position by the railings and focused a camera on them both. Click! Grinning, he then ran across the street and jumped into a car. 'How unfor-tunate,' Alex said, and he didn't even attempt to sound convincing.

  The thick atmosphere between Sara and Pete on the drive back to the office would have defied the sharpest knife. 'Right,' Pete began grimly. 'Now the first thing you do is lie like a trooper to dear Brian. You worked late, had to stay over... you say I was there too. You do not confess; do you understand that, Sara? Believe me, Brian does not want the whole truth and nothing but the truth in this instance. That story covers you on all fronts. The paparazzi are always watching Alex. So there'll be a photo of you emerging from his house at ten in the morning in tomorrow's papers... What does that prove? Nothing.'

  Paper-pale, Sara parted her lips, unsurprised by his cynical advice but deeply embarrassed by his frankness. 'Pete, I-'

  'I can't believe it... You!' he muttered, shaking his smoothly styled head. 'I thought you were bombproof around Alex. I feel responsible. I only gave you the job because you were engaged. Only the day before yesterday you were handing Alex a cup of coffee as though he was the carrier of some dread social disease, and this morning...?'

  'Please, let's not talk about it,' Sara mumbled. She thought of yesterday's sunny awakening, her blinkered innocence of what the day would bring. And then this morning's devastating dawn.

  'Obviously Alex finally made a move on you. Well, heaven knows, I've been waiting for it to happen. I've worked around Alex a long time. Believe it or not, I like Alex... but if he looked at my sister the way he's always looked at you I'd lock her up and throw away the key... because Alex is very bad news with women. He's emotionally cold and detached. I've seen him in action too many times not to know that—'

  'Pete...' Had everyone but her been aware of Alex's interest in her?

  'Your two predecessors fell head over heels for him and made a blasted nuisance of themselves! I thought you had more sense.'

  Sense? When and where had sense figured in yesterday's turmoil? She felt cheap and stupid and desperately ashamed of herself. Was that prudish? But she couldn't discard the values of a lifetime overnight. She had invited... no, far worse, virtually pleaded for Alex's sexual attentions. She had thrown herself at his head. Her stomach cramped with nausea.

  How could she have done that? Why had she done it? Had she sunk so low in self-esteem that she had been grateful to Alex Rossini for finding her desirable? Had she needed the proof that she could still attract a man after seeing Brian in Antonia's arms? Or on some level had she sought revenge for that agonising betrayal? If that had been her motivation, she was now discovering that revenge was a two-edged sword that could turn back on you and inflict piercing pain and regret.

  When she and Pete arrived at the office Gina, the svelte receptionist, gave her a curious, veiled look as she mur-mured a greeting. Two executive secretaries were out in the corridor having a close conversation, but fell silent as she walked past. Their greetings were very muted indeed. Sara didn't have to wait long to find out why. 'Miss Lacey?' A uniformed waiter whipped the covers from a selection of food on a heated trolley. 'Breakfast, compliments of Rossini.'

  'Bloody hell,' Pete said only half under his breath as he drew to a halt beside her. Clearing his throat, he said rather loudly, 'I hope there's enough for two. Working so late, I slept in—didn't have time for much this morning.'

  Sara was so taken aback that she couldn't even throw Pete a look of gratitude for his efforts to cover up for her. In any case, who was likely to believe that Alex had demanded Pete to leave his wife's side and work overtime last night?

  She sank down behind her desk, watched numbly as the food was served. She hadn't eaten since breakfast yesterday, but she might have eaten last night had she not been far more intent on seducing Alex Rossini into spending the night with her. Hectic colour fired her creamy skin. Alex hadn't wanted her to return to the office. He would be well aware that such an extravagant gesture would create gossip—the kind of gossip that Sara shrank from. Could he be cruel enough to use that as a weapon against her?

  'What did Molly have... a boy or a girl?' she asked, striving valiantly for normality.

  'Didn't Alex tell you? He was on the phone a good ten minutes with me yesterday...' Pete flushed. 'Sorry-little girl. We're going to call her Flora.'

  'Congratulations.' Sara lifted her knife and fork, her fingers all thumbs.

  'Sara... you look like death warmed over,' Pete said, tight-mouthed.

  'I'm fine.'

  She wondered if she would ever feel fine again. As she forced herself to eat, she drowned in a torrent of brutally unwelcome erotic images. She sat there growing ever more appalled, ever more bewildered by the wanton creature that she had become in Alex Rossini's arms. If only it had been unpleasant, sordid, disappointing even... She hated him all the more for the fact that it hadn't been! She did not think that she could ever forgive herself for finding
Alex Rossini more physically exciting than the man she loved. What did that say about her?

  Maybe her aunt had been right about her all along. Janice Dalton had regularly lectured Sara on the dangers of promiscuity. As a quiet, far from precocious teenager, Sara had found those sessions deeply humiliating and she had bitterly resented the knowledge that the older woman feared the hereditary factor. 'I don't want you turning out like your mother did,' her aunt had told her. Had the mother she barely remembered slept around? The concept had been distastefully implied more than once. There had always been a grim irony in Janice Dalton's blind refusal to see how her own daughter lived her life.

  'Sara?' Pete was in the doorway.

  Sara glanced up from the accounts that she was checking. Her job covered a lot of ground. She had overall responsibility for the day-to-day running of Alex's various homes round the world. She dealt with minor household crises, changes of staff, repair and maintenance bills, indeed all the boring minutiae that Alex didn't have time to deal with but which had to be dealt with if the smooth running of his domestic arrangements was to continue with the faultless efficiency that he took for granted.

  'I understand that Alex gave an order that you were| to receive no personal calls yesterday afternoon.'

  “Did he?'

  Pete grimaced. 'Brian is on his way up in the lift.'

  Every scrap of colour ebbed from her cheeks.

  'See him in here. I'll take myself off.' . 'But Alex-'

  'So Alex doesn't allow personal visitors... but then Alex isn't in yet.'

  Sara stood up slowly. Brian appeared on the threshold. He looked as if he'd been up all night—pasty pale, tense, his eyes bloodshot. Pete closed the door on his way out, giving her a ludicrous thumbs-up sign behind Brian's back.

  'Sara...' Brian swallowed. 'What do I say to you?'

  It was as if a glass wall stood between them, as though a thousand years had passed since yesterday. 'There's nothing to say.' She felt nothing, absolutely nothing at all, only a terrible emptiness. |