The Trophy Husband

CHAPTER NINE

'I’M SORRY,' the polite female voice responded when Sara reached for the phone at almost the same moment that she woke up in bed alone. 'MrRossini is in conference.'

'I'm sorry,' the same infuriatingly detached tone told her an hour later. 'MrRossini is not presently available.

'I am so sorry,' Sara was informed shortly before lunchtime and this time the voice sounded reprovingly weary. 'MrRossini is airborne.'

Airborne? Staving off a ludicrous image of Alex in free flight round the office, Sara cast aside the phone. It had finally dawned on her that he hadn't put his wife's name on the shortlist of approved callers allowed instant access to him…surely a deliberate oversight? How much enough was enough?.A slow, steady anger was escalating inside Sara. She had done nothing to deserve such treatment.

He phoned from Paris at eight that evening. 'Things are hotting up here. I won't be back tonight,' he imparted. 'Everything OK?'

'Great,' Sara said in a stifled tone, for her anger had turned cold and heavy inside her.

'It might take me a couple of days to tie the loose ends up.'

'I understand.'

'I need a copy of a document on my desk in the library. Could you fax it to me?' He passed on the details in exactly the same tone that he had always utilised when she had been a humble employee. And she made a discovery there and then. Alex fell back behind that detachment instinctively when anything was wrong between them. He held her at a distance, forestalling argument or indeed any form of intimacy. No longer did she wonder why she had felt so damnably awkward with Alex on the phone before their marriage. That chill, silent disapproval could come down the line like a blast of polar snow.

Early the next morning Sara reached a very tough decision. No, Alex wasn't going to do this to her-blowing hot, blowing cold, making her feel that the smallest disagreement or displeasure might lead to the breakdown of their marriage. It was like being forced to live on a knife-edge. The more she took of it, the worse it would get. She packed a case with casual clothing. It would mean roughing it but she intended to stay at Ladymead. All she really needed for tonight was food… and a bed. So she would go shopping on the way down.

She faxed a message to Alex before she climbed into the limousine.

'Dear Alex,' it ran, 'waiting to be abandoned is bad for my nerves, so I've taken care of the problem for you. I am abandoning you.'

The builders' foreman greeted her at the door of the manor house. "The phone has been ringing off the hook for you for the past two hours, MrsRossini. Somebody called Pete.'

'So, you are there,' Pete muttered frantically when she answered the next time the phone rang. 'What the heck was in that fax? Alex went through the roof and he was in a bad enough mood even before it arrived!'

'Did he tell you to track me down?'

'Obviously. This bid is at a crucial stage. He's very busy with the French negotiators,' Pete stressed with audible incredulity, that she should require such an explanation. 'Have you had bad news or something? Can't you handle it on your own? You know Alex doesn't like to be disturbed when he's-'

'I don't work for Alex any mote,' she reminded him. 'Just tell him I was too busy to come to the phone.'

'I can't tell Alex that!' he spluttered in horror.

'But then Alex shouldn't have asked you to deal with this.'

In the background, she heard a deeper masculine voice intrude. There was a short silence and then, without warning, her eardrums were seared. 'What the bloody hell are you playing at?' Alex launched down the line at her full volume. 'How dare you send me a message like that?'

'That kind of blackmail doesn't exactly make your day, does it?' Sara pointed out gently.

Alex wasn't listening. 'I want you back in London by tonight!'

'No, Alex-'

'If you don't stop this insanity right now, I'll-'

'Save your breath. I know the options. Either you make a commitment to our marriage or you let me go, and since I really don't think you have the guts to do the first I'm placing my bets on the second,' Sara murmured tightly.

She replaced the receiver, her face white and stiff with strain. Then she straightened her shoulders and slowly released her breath. Now she had to wait. The next move was his to make. What she really needed, she conceded tautly, was nerves of steel, and what nerve she did have was petering out fast. She was risking so much… but not for so little. Would Alex come down to Ladymead? How long would it take him to come? Was she mad to have thrown down the gauntlet so blatantly?

She had taken Alex by surprise. You had to knock him off balance to make him listen. And if he left her here, chose to take her at her word-well, she was only ending what would have ended anyway, she told herself unhappily. She had to know whether or not he intended to give their marriage a chance. From the outside it didn't look as though he did. If she crossed him, he closed her out and put as much distance between them as he could. And maybe if he had loved her she could have handled that better, practised patience and hoped that time would take care of the problem.

But Alex didn't love her. Even worse he disliked the idea that she had any sort of power over him, even if it was only the far from cerebral power of sex. All the control had to be on his side…just as it had been in Venice. The expert lover and the amateur.Alex had controlled everything they'd shared. She sensed that it had always been like that for him with women. He had to call every shot. He didn't compromise. And he didn't trust her either.

By mid-afternoon the bed that she had purchased had been delivered. For the first time in her life, Sara had employed cash as an inducement to better service. She couldn't say that she was proud of herself but she could live with it when the alternative was sleeping on the floor. Ladymead was empty by four. The workforce downed tools and took off. Sara was left alone, free to wander silent rooms and wonder how she would furnish them, but the moment she appreciated that Alex might never share the house with her any interest she might have had drained away.

Almost as quickly she began to doubt and question her own actions. Wasn't it very probable that Alex would see her behaviour as a selfish, immature demand for attention? Suddenly she could not picture him responding to her change of abode with anything other than exasperated silence. Give her enough rope and let her hang herself with it-she could imagine Alex thinking like that. She had been the one to walk out; let her be the one to dig herself out of the tight corner she had put herself in. And that was assuming that Alex didn't decide just to let her go…

Suddenly she saw that, while she had very real concerns about their relationship, challenging Alex to such a degree had been needlessly provocative. Shouldn't she have tried harder to cut across those barriers of his to tell him without anger that they had to talk openly and honestly?

It was getting dark when she made herself sandwiches and then looked at them without appetite. The rain had come on slowly in a soft mist that dampened and blurred the windows. Now hailstones were lashing the panes. The electricity was only on in part of the house. As the shadows lengthened, she negotiated the magnificent main staircase with care, grateful that she had bought a torch. She crossed creaking floorboards in the bedroom that she had selected because it was next to the one functioning bathroom. Eventually she stopped pacing and wished that she had brought something to read with her. Shortly after ten she climbed into bed to keep warm while she listened to the rain and the wind battering the house.

A distant thumping noise woke her up at some timeless stage of the night. For a minute she was completely disorientated and then recall returned, making her spring out of her bed, breathlessly locate the light switch and lift the torch. It was almost two in the morning. From the top of the stairs, she could see the sturdy front door shuddering in complaint on its wrought-iron hinges and hurried down.

'What did I do in my last life to deserve this?' Alex splintered savagely as he rammed the door back in his eagerness to get over the threshold and out of the howling wind and rain.

Sara fell back, momentarily astonished by his appearance. He was soaked to the skin, his suit plastered to every muscular line of his powerful frame. He looked as if he had been swimming fully clothed, but he was not only very wet, he was also very dirty: mud was caked on his shoes and trousers and the front of a once pristine white shirt where he had clearly wiped his hands.

'If this is country life, you can bloody well keep it!' he blistered, fixing outraged golden eyes on her. 'The Bugatti died in a flood down that hellish mud track!'

'Oh, dear…' Sara said in a wobbly undertone, watching him rake a shaking hand through his wet, curling hair, pushing it back off his forehead as he stood there dripping, and she had a truly terrifying urge to put both arms round him and soothe him as if he were a furious, frustrated little boy who had just discovered the awful truth that life didn't always go his way.

'I need a bath and a drink.'

'Oh, dear…' Sara said again helplessly, knowing that neither was available and not quite sure how to break such bad news.

'My case is still in the car!' Alex delivered between clenched teeth.

'Oh, dear…' It was hard to think of anything more positive to say.

'Madredi Dio…if you say that once more…!' he exploded, but at the same time he shivered convulsively.

And it was the shiver that unfroze Sara. 'You need to get out of those clothes. Come upstairs.'

'The helicopter couldn't fly in the storm,' Alex grated, still boiling with rage as he followed her up the stairs. 'The jet was delayed. And there's not even electric light here. Have you any idea how long I've been banging at that door?'

Sara threw open the door of the bathroom, switching on the mercifully working light with a flourish. "There's no hot water but everything else functions,' she told him encouragingly.

'No hot water?' Alex whispered in stunned disbelief.

Sara gave him a gentle push over the threshold and closed the door on him. Then she thought fast. In minutes she was fully dressed again. Lifting the torch and pulling on a jacket, she left the house.

It was a wild night and the sky was as black as pitch. The drive, with its potholes the size of craters, was a disaster zone for anyone forced to negotiate it without light. Alex's car had died near the very foot where the drive disappeared altogether as it dipped suddenly beneath a large, dark, uninviting expanse of water. Thankfully, Alex hadn't locked his car as he should have done. She waded in and located his leather case, searched for the keys and assumed that he had taken them with him. It was a good half-mile trudge back to the house but the rain was slackening off and the wind was dying down.

Alex had come. Alex had actually made a big effort to come. She hadn't expected him tonight, not so soon. And she certainly hadn't expected him to show up in the early hours, wet and filthy, a far cry from his usual immaculately groomed self. She had wanted very badly to laugh once the shock had worn off but amusement would have been cruel when Alex was so clearly at the end of his tether. A lukewarm shower would be equally cruel, she reflected. Maybe she should have offered to boil the kettle for him… What a shame she had switched the heater off earlier when she couldn't quite work out how to set the time switch.

When she found the bathroom deserted, she thrust the case through the bedroom door like a sneak thief. She didn't look in. 'I'll make you some coffee!' she called winningly, and hurriedly escaped again.

She carefully washed the beaker that she had used earlier and wished that she hadn't been quite so ridiculously sparing in what she had brought for her own needs. She could offer him a biscuit, a cup of instant coffee and banana sandwiches-not exactly a feast for a male with a healthy appetite.

'You shouldn't have gone back to the car for me…but thanks. The gesture was appreciated.'

Sara spun round. Alex was standing in the doorway wearing a black Armani sweater and well-cut linen trousers. He looked heart-stoppingly gorgeous. Her ribcage felt constrained. 'It was the least I could do. Anyway I had a torch.'

'This place is a hell-hole. And it's a judgement on me,' Alex mused fatalistically, scanning the vast, comfortless kitchen with a barely concealed shudder. 'I knew what I was doing. I disobeyed my own instincts-'

'Coffee?'Sara suggested, setting the beaker on the long, scrubbed table. 'Banana sandwiches are all I can offer in the way of food, I'm afraid.'

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. 'Madredi 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 employee 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, bellamia, 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, bellamia. 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, JaniceDaltonscrutinised 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!' JaniceDalton 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…

'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 AlexRossini. 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!' JaniceDalton shot at her in furious reproach. 'I wonder how much interest AlexRossini 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 JaniceDalton looked embarrassed. • 'That's all right. Alex is all the family I need.' 4 'Sara…'

' ButSara 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.

She called Brian at work.

'What do you want?' he snapped.

A wry smile touched her strained mouth. Hardly the response of a man in love, she thought.

'You've heard about Toni and me, haven't you?' he assumed peevishly.

'Do you want to talk about it?'

'Why should you care?' Brian demanded bitterly.

'Once we were good friends. It might help if we talked.'

'I don't see how… but why not?' he muttered in a self-pitying tone.

She agreed to meet him after work at the house. Evidently her cousin had refused to live there and Brian had

moved in alone. She was sitting in a traffic jame when,

Alex phoned.

'How did it go with your aunt?' he enquired straight off.

Her stomach twisted with guilt when she thought of the lie she was about to tell. Shakily she breathed in. 'I'll be back late. I've actually just popped out for a few messages. My aunt's invited over some friends and I promised to stay for the evening,' she said stiltedly.

There was a long pause.

'No problems, then?'

She bit her lower lip and tasted blood. 'Well, my aunt's a bit cool-'

'The friends don't include Brian, do they?'

Sara almost choked. 'Of course not!'

'Just checking, bellamia. You sound upset. Why don't you develop a headache and bow out? I was planning to finish early tonight.'

Her eyes burned. 'I'll be home as soon as I can.'

'You stay under the speed limit. No racing,' Alex warned. 'I want you back all in one healthy piece, SignoraRossini.'

The constrictions in her throat ballooned. 'Yes… Sorry, the traffic's very heavy. I have to go now…'

Damn Brian and Antonia, she reflected with sudden, desperate resentment. It was one thing to wish them well, quite another to get involved to the extent of being forced to lie to Alex. But then she should have told the truth and faced the music. She was a lousy liar. And Alex was so attuned to her emotions now that he picked up on her tensions. She had this awful feeling that she was going to have to tell him anyway. And that would cause trouble. Lying had only made it worse, she saw now, and writhed with guilt.

Brian was waiting for her. Sara tried not to stare at the wallpaper half-ripped off the wall in the hall. 'Toni,' Brian said succinctly.

'You can't blame her for not wanting to live here. In every way that matters, I made this my house.'

'I blame her for everything.'

'It takes two people to have an affair.'

'But it only takes one liar to force an affair into a shotgun marriage!' Brian stabbed back bitterly. 'She told me she was pregnant…she's not! She was lying and I was the mug who believed her!'

Sara sank down on a sofa in the small sitting room and suddenly understood a great deal. For the second time that day she was forced to listen to a catalogue of woes, this time from Brian's side of the fence. She had some sympathy for him but she didn't let it show. She let him vent the worst of his spleen, knowing that it would cool him down. 'Had it ever occurred to you that she must love you an awful lot?' she asked when he'd finally finished.

'The only person Toni loves is herself.'

'She deceived you and that was wrong but she must have been desperate for you to marry her.'

'You would never have done anything like that.'

'Brian… Antonia and I are chalk and cheese and always will be, but don't forget that it was Antonia you really wanted.'

'That's not true…'

'Be honest with yourself. She didn't suit you as well as I did but you never stopped being attracted to her. Reminding her of me isn't fair. Where is she now?'

'Staying with a friend. I told her I wanted a divorce…'

'But you don't want one, do you? You only want to punish her,' Sara guessed, and watched him redden. 'Don't you think you could give her another chance?'

'Why should I?'

'It's up to you. But Antonia won't wait forever and she won't crawl. She was very hurt when you didn't stand by her after I found the two of you together. That was the time when you should have admitted how you really felt about her. She was afraid that you and I would get back together again. I'm sure that's the only reason she lied and pretended to be pregnant.'

Well over an hour later Sara climbed back into her car. She was exhausted and she had talked herself hoarse but only time would tell whether she had done any good. At least Brian had been a lot less bitter when she'd left him.

It was a long drive back down to Ladymead. She thought about Alex all the way and hoped that he wouldn't lose his temper when she admitted that she had been with Brian.

The manor house was all lit up. Alex's chauffeur was putting a case in the boot of the limousine. Sara frowned slightly. She found Alex in the spacious library which he used as an office. He was slinging files into a box. She paused on the threshold. 'What are you doing?'

Alex lifted his dark head, ice-cold eyes landing on her in glancing assault. His strong features clenched cruelly hard, his mouth flattening. 'I'm leaving you,' he said.