Trophy Husband

by Lynne Graham

Alex didn't move. He exhaled sharply and surveyed her in grim silence for a long moment. 'Maybe you'd like to tell me what the hell all this is about...?'

  Sara flushed uncomfortably. His anger vented, he now sounded coolly reasonable. 'I'm sorry you had such a rough time getting here—'

  'Stick to the point.'

  Sara stiffened. 'I had no idea you would come here tonight.'

  'I very nearly didn't,' Alex admitted. 'Intelligence told me to leave you here to stew.'

  'But you didn't...'

  'No, rage blew me in with the storm. There was also the natural concern that something had happened that I didn't know about... some highly mysterious event which would miraculously justify your behaviour.' Alex regarded her with hard challenge. 'And if you can't come up with that miracle I'm calling a car and going back to London.'

  'You see? You're doing it again,' Sara responded tautly. 'You're threatening me; you do it all the time—'

  'I don't threaten you,' Alex countered fiercely.

  'Maybe you don't even realise you're doing it, maybe it's second nature.' Beneath her bright, anxious eyes, her cheeks were taut with stress. 'But you do it. If I annoy you, Alex, you immediately close me out and start telling me that our marriage is on borrowed time if I continue. You enforce conversational no-go areas—'

  'That is nonsense,' Alex interposed in flat rebuttal.

  She was holding herself so rigid that her muscles ached with strain. 'No, it isn't—'

  'Dio...' Shimmering eyes whipped over her with scorching incredulity. 'You fax me the news that you're leaving me! You drag me all the way from Paris on a fool's errand by crying wolf and then think you can tell me I deserved this childish charade?'

  'I wanted you to know what emotional blackmail feels like,' Sara admitted with helpless honesty. 'You use it on me and it makes me angry too. I don't like having my strings pulled either. I don't like the fact that you make me scared to talk about things we need to talk about. I don't like being judged and refused the right to defend myself...'

  Suddenly his glittering gaze pierced her like an arrow finding its target. 'Madre di Dio.. .you did all this purely because I refused to consider allowing you to become pregnant?' he demanded in outrage.

  Sara flinched in disbelief and then her chin came up, her hands knotting into frustrated fists as her temper rose to the fore. 'I think I'd have to be a mental case to want your baby, Alex! Not only would you not want the child, I would undoubtedly be left to raise it on my own, and believe me, at twenty-three, with my whole life ahead of me, I have no plans to shoot myself in the foot! No intelligent woman would choose to bring a child into an unstable relationship, most especially not when her partner has made his negative attitude resoundingly clear—'

  'We do not have an unstable relationship, and I'm not your partner. I'm your husband,' Alex grated with an irrelevance which merely increased her anger.

  'Furthermore, I bitterly resent the suggestion that I couldn't be trusted not to become accidentally pregnant! How dare you compare me to Antonia?' Sara asked him furiously, well into her stride now. 'I wouldn't trick any man like that—'

  'You wanted his child,' Alex interposed icily.

  Her head swam. Nothing that she was trying to spell out seemed to be getting through. Alex was missing the point... or possibly she was missing his, but what mattered most to Sara at that moment was that Alex should understand that he had misjudged her and, in so doing, caused her a great deal of pain. 'That was different...'

  'Patently.'

  Momentarily Sara closed her eyes, needing to get a grip on her anger, knowing that this was not the discussion she had planned. Slowly she breathed in. 'It was a different sort of relationship,' she proffered. 'Brian and I... we were more friends than lovers. We shared a lot of interests. We had the same goals. Brian likes to feel secure, so do I. We agreed about so many things—'

  'How touching.'

  'What I'm trying to explain is that wanting children was just part of that.' Sara shrugged a shoulder and was briefly silent while she thought back. 'We had our whole future mapped out and it felt very safe, and maybe we both got a bit smug about how well matched we were... and maybe I did get so carried away organising everything that I wouldn't have noticed if he had six Antonias on the side!' ,

  'You loved him,' Alex murmured harshly.

  Sara lowered her head and wondered. Had she ever really loved Brian? She believed that she had been very, very fond of him but Brian had never had the power to tear her heart out as Alex did. There had been no highs, no lows, no soul-stirring fear or excitement. Two lonely people had met and formed a mutual support system which they had called love for want of a better word. 'Not as much as I thought I did. You were right about that,' she conceded wryly, her face pensive. "Three years ago Brian wanted Antonia but she wasn't interested then-'

  'He didn't belong to you.'

  'No, it wasn't only that.' Sara wanted to be fair to her cousin. 'Back then, Antonia's modelling career looked like it was heading straight to the top. She was mixing with a lot of exciting people, travelling the world, having a fabulous time. She was only twenty-one, too. My uncle and aunt may have spoilt her to death but they also landed her with a whole set of gilt-edged expectations to live up to. She was the family star. They expected her to become a supermodel and marry someone...' her soft mouth curved with rueful amusement'... someone like you. I don't think I can blame her for not noticing Brian in those days.'

  'What a very generous outlook you have.' Alex's dark gaze rested intently on her taut profile.

  'No, I don't. I confess to feeling secretly pleased when her modelling career slid downhill again. She's very good at putting people's backs up. When she got into debt last year, she had to sell her apartment and her parents naturally assumed I would share my flat with her. When I think about it, Antonia's had a tough time, yet Brian was always sniping at her, running her down because she hurt his ego. I should have seen that, recognised it for what it was—'

  'Fatal attraction,' Alex interposed flatly. "There whether you want it to be or not.'

  She wanted to be brave enough to ask if that was how Alex felt about her but she couldn't bring herself to plunge that deep. It wasn't a good idea to ask a question if you thought you might crumble when you got the answer, she thought strickenly. 'Brian thought he couldn't have her, so he settled for me.' She swallowed hard in the throbbing silence. 'I don't love him any mote, Alex.'

  His strong dark features were harshly set. 'You don't need to say that, Sara.'

  'You see?' she demanded abruptly, her eyes flaring. 'You're doing it again. You're refusing to accept what I say. Perhaps there's a part of you which feels happier thinking I'm still in love with Brian!'

  'That's a ridiculous suggestion—'

  'Is it? I'm not so sure. Out of bed,' Sara framed tightly, 'you like a certain safe, emotional distance, don't you? All the boundaries are yours. You can barely mention the fact that we're married without implying that it's not likely to last... but that it's going to be all my fault if it doesn't!'

  A dark rise of blood stained his hard cheekbones.

  'It makes me feel like I'm waiting for a redundancy notice, and when I phone you at the office and I can't even get to speak to you I feel like I've already been dumped!'

  'What are you talking about?'

  'You didn't put my name on the list, did you?' Sara accused him.

  'Dio...oi course I didn't—you're my wife!' Alex gritted. 'Are you telling me that that stupid girl didn't put your calls through?'

  Sara's mouth opened and shut again. It had never occurred to her that her inability to get Alex at the end of a phone line might simply be the result of human error.

  'So I have her to thank for that fax!' Alex was visibly enraged by the idea.

  'I assumed that she was doing what she had been told to do.'

  'I am such an ignorant boor that I would tell an em ployee that I will not take calls from my own wife?'

  Sara
reddened hotly. 'Well, no, but—'

  'Grazie, cara... what a wonderful light I appear to you in!'

  'You can't blame me for assuming—' she began defensively.

  'Can't I?' Alex shot her a look of derision. 'Was it totally beyond your power to insist on speaking to me? Is it my fault you let yourself be repulsed by a little office girl?'

  Sara's cat-green eyes glittered. 'Probably. On the phone you treat me as if I'm still "a little office girl". I wouldn't have been too sure of my ground had I chosen to insist. The impression I receive is...' she hesitated and then forced herself on '... is that marriage was a step too far for you.'

  Alex's facial muscles had clenched hard. 'I never thought you would force a confrontation like this.'

  'You didn't leave me with much choice. I'm not like you,' Sara confided shakily. 'I can't shove things under the carpet and pretend they didn't happen the way you do. I can't behave normally when you freeze me off. I get angry and I get hurt. I've never known anyone who can be so warm... and then so cold...'

  Alex was very still and very pale beneath his year-round tan.

  'I mean—' Sara gulped, her throat closing over, knowing that she had dived into deeper waters than she had ever envisaged, but somehow unable to stop herself. 'When you called me from Paris, Alex... I knew you were just delighted to be away from me—'

  'It wasn't like that,' he countered fiercely, his graceful hands restively clenching and then digging into the pockets of his tailored trousers, pulling the fine fabric taut over his long, powerful thighs.

  But he still wasn't going to tell her how it had been, she registered painfully. 'What I'm trying to ask is, did you ever plan for this marriage to be a real one... or was it just a manipulative game which got out of hand? You knew exactly what you had to say to persuade me to marry you but how much of it did you actually mean? If you're having regrets already, it would be kinder simply to be honest.'

  Alex released his breath in a sudden hiss. He looked like someone being subjected to some highly sophisticated form of invisible torture. 'I don't have any regrets—'

  'But you don't trust me.'

  'I've never trusted any woman!' he bit out.

  Her throat constricted. 'Alex, I'd need lessons to be one tenth as naturally devious as you are. What have you got to worry about?'

  He stared back at her with fathomless eyes as dark as ebony. 'I don't want to lose you. You're very important to me, cam.'

  It was the most complimentary thing that Alex had ever said to her that did not relate to sex. She breathed again, a wave of dizziness which she recognised as intense relief sweeping over her, leaving her light-headed.

  'I wasn't aware that I was making you feel threatened,' he conceded in a driven undertone. 'But this kind of communication doesn't come easily to me. In fact, the more I feel, the less I want to talk about it.'

  As her gaze collided with his rather grim half-smile of self-awareness, her heart flipped a somersault behind her breastbone. She wanted to be in his arms but instead she turned away and asked him prosaically if he wanted anything to eat.

  And suddenly Alex was laughing and the tension, still humming uneasily in the atmosphere, evaporated simultaneously. 'You know, bella mia, if I'd arrived here to candlelight and a champagne reception, I'd have been outraged.'

  'You would have felt set up.'

  'But there is such a thing as a happy medium,' Alex imparted with the unevenness of amusement tugging at his dark deep voice.

  'Like a hot bath and a drink?'

  'Banana sandwiches?' He repeated her earlier offer, shaking his darkly handsome head. 'I haven't had them since I was a child. Marcella used to make them for me.'

  And while she made the sandwiches he talked about the palazzo housekeeper with a warmth that eventually made her eyes burn. She had noticed Alex's fondness for the older woman in Venice, hadn't really thought about it much. But now she saw a lonely, loving little boy, starved of affection by a succession of indifferent stepmothers, and with a father who was very charming and no doubt very proud of his eldest son but far too selfish to have made any attempt to give him a stable home life. Alex knew far more than she did about feeling like an outsider. That was why he had so easily understood her own insecurities.

  Dawn was breaking when they finally made it to bed. 'I need to get the Bugatti moved,' Alex groaned.

  "It's Saturday,' she reminded him. 'It won't matter if the drive's blocked but you should have locked it up.'

  'What with? I fell getting out of the car. I dropped the keys and my mobile phone in that filthy water!'

  'Oh, dear.' But she giggled this time when she said it.

  Alex hauled her down on top of him. 'You are the only woman I ever got my feet dirty for.'

  'And you looked so funny!'

  'And never felt less like laughing,' he admitted. 'It was not quite the entrance I had planned.'

  'But I was terribly impressed by it all the same. I was struck dumb.'

  Alex curved a hungry hand round the pouting swell of one bare breast, centring every nerve-ending in her thrumming body on one hot spot, and she ran out of oxygen all in one go, shaken by the sheer intensity of her response. 'I'm feeling very encouraged, bella mia. This is another first. No nightgown,' he teased.

  Perhaps not so strange an oversight. It was wonderful what increased security did for your confidence, Sara mused. Only now did she see that their marriage was as real and as important to Alex as it had always been to her.

  'Yours?' From the doorstep, Janice Dalton scrutinised the cream Jaguar with its scarlet leather upholstery and her mouth compressed. 'Very ostentatious...'

  Sara reddened slightly. 'Alex bought it for my birthday. I was disappointed that you couldn't join us for dinner.'

  'I'm afraid we'd already made other arrangements.'

  Sara was shown into the lounge. Her determined smile revealed nothing of her uneasiness. Over the past month the Daltons had turned down her every invitation to visit. She had been relieved when her aunt had phoned her and asked her over but there was a marked coolness in the older woman's manner. What on earth was wrong? Sara wondered anxiously.

  'I might as well get right to the heart of the matter,' her aunt told her stiffly. 'Antonia and Brian have split up.'

  Sara tensed. 'I'm sorry.'

  'I wonder if you really are?' A flush had mottled the older woman's cheeks.

  'Yes,' Sara said quietly. 'I am sorry.'

  Her aunt gave her an angry look. 'Of course you can afford to be gracious. You've done very well out of all this. Heaven knows, I never thought to see you swanning up in a brand-new Jaguar, dressed like Princess Diana!'

  'Alex likes me to look smart.' And I will not tell him about this when I go home, she reflected painfully. It was uncanny how often Alex was right about people. Her aunt couldn't hide her resentment that Sara had married a very rich and powerful man, while her adored daughter had married a relatively ordinary one. 'Brian's been very cruel to Antonia.' 'I don't think this is any of my business.'

  "That's the trouble... it's very much your business!' Janice Dalton condemned. 'Brian told Antonia that he's still in love with you!'

  Sara was taken aback by the angry assurance until it occurred to her that it was probably something that Brian had thrown out in an argument. She had known that her cousin and her former fiance" would have a stormy relationship. Brian had very fixed ideas about the sort of wife he wanted and by no stretch of the imagination was Antonia likely to fulfil a stay-at-home role. Antonia didn't cook, didn't clean and sulked if she sat in more than one night a week.

  'I don't believe for one minute that Brian still loves me,' Sara retorted. 'In fact I doubt that he ever did.'

  'Antonia's had a terrible time.' Visibly mollified by Sara's assurance, her aunt began spilling out a highly coloured account of Antonia's sufferings—how Brian had demanded that they live in the house which Sara had furnished, how mean he was with money, how selfish, how insensitive...

&n
bsp; 'In fact what Brian badly needs is someone to talk some sense into him!' her aunt completed, tight-mouthed. 'He wouldn't listen to me but he might listen to you.'

  Sara froze. 'Me... talk to Brian?' she whispered in disbelief.

  'Brian and you were always good friends. Why shouldn't you speak to him?'

  'But I—'

  'After all, Brian and Antonia only had a harmless little flirtation and then you rushed off and got involved with Alex Rossini. Let's face it, you weren't interested in having Brian back then! You couldn't have cared less.

  It's time that Brian heard that from you and stopped throwing you up to Antonia! Believe me, I don't like having to ask you for help,' the older woman informed her bitterly, resentfully, 'but I think you could get through to Brian where nobody else can.'

  'I'm sorry, but I don't want to interfere and Antonia | would be furious, and rightfully so, if I did.' Sara stood Up. .

  'You're being very selfish, Sara. You wouldn't be where you are now if it hadn't been for this family's generosity!' Janice Dalton shot at her in furious reproach. 'I wonder how much interest Alex Rossini would have had in you if you'd been brought up in some council home?'

  Sara had lost all her natural colour. It shook her that her aunt could cruelly throw that debt in her face. Over the years Sara had always shown her gratitude. But maybe she was being selfish. All that crossed her mind was that to meet Brian she would have to lie to Alex because Alex would never agree to such a meeting. Alex was extremely possessive...

  'You owe it to me to do whatever you can to help,' the older woman spelt out harshly. 'Antonia need never know.'

  'And then I melt back out of your lives again... right?'

  For the first time Janice Dalton looked embarrassed. • 'That's all right. Alex is all the family I need.' 4 'Sara...'

  ' But Sara walked away, knowing that she would never walk willingly back into that house again. She wasn't wanted there. The little orphaned niece whom the Daltons had so generously taken into their home had committed the unforgivable sin of obscuring the family star in terms of material advancement. Sara felt slightly sick.

  Further down the street she parked the car and lifted the mobile phone. Get this over with, she urged herself when she hesitated. What Alex doesn't know about won't hurt him. This isn't going to hurt anyone. Aunt Janice is right. If there is any possibility that you could help, you should try.