The Trophy Husband

CHAPTER SIX

UNFAMILIAR sounds woke Sara by degrees: quick, firm footsteps, the chiming clink of glass and china, then the swish of heavy curtains slowly being drawn back. Sunlight warmed her drowsy face and she opened her eyes.

'Buongiorno, signora.' A middle-aged woman was extending a satin and lace wrap to her with a smile.

Sara, sitting up with a start, found herself deftly en-veloped in the garment. The pillows were plumped and a tray set before her. Venice… She was in Venice in the magnificent palazzo which had been in the Rossini family for centuries. They had arrived very late last night to be greeted by the housekeeper, Marcella. Declining the offer of supper, Sara had been shown up to this exquisitely furnished room, so exhausted that it had been an effort; to spare her fabulously ornate surroundings more than a dull-eyed glance. As she glanced at her watch now she realised in astonishment that she had slept the morning away.

Only when the bustling Marcella skimmed curious dark eyes across the pristine white pillow beside hers did Sara recall that last night had been her wedding night, Her creamy skin reddened with sudden embarrassment. It was perfectly obvious that she had spent the night alone and undisturbed. Why on earth should she be blushing over the fact? she asked herself furiously.

Yet she had somehow still expected to wake up with Alex beside her. The discovery of that inexplicable con-viction infuriated her even more. Why on earth should she have expected that? She could only be grateful that Alex had accepted the reality that nothing would persuade her to share a bed with him now! After all, she had maintained a frigid silence from the instant the jet had landed, speaking only when forced to do so, making her hostility pointedly obvious. So why did the memory of that mute response in the face of his teeth-clenchingly perfect manners now make her squirm?

Some ten minutes later, still savouring the last bite of the delicious light meal she had eaten, Sara thrust away the tray and sprang out of bed. The skyline beyond the windows was a visual feast of domes, pinnacles, oddly shaped chimneys and campaniles. The Grand Canal below was as busy as any city highway at rush hour but the traffic was far more interesting. A speedboat foamed past, followed at a more sedate pace by a chugging vaporetti crammed to capacity and then a little barge heaped with vegetable produce, tailed by an old-fashioned fishing boat. Sara couldn't help being charmed by the sheer colourful vivacity of the scene.

In the adjoining bathroom she sank into a sumptuous sunken bath so large that it reminded her of a miniature swimming pool. But even such sybaritic splendour couldn't make her relax. She had rushed into marriage at breakneck speed. Who was to say that she hadn't asked for what she got? Who was to say that she didn't thoroughly deserve the mess she was now in? No such thing as a perfect hero, Sara, she told herself. But a male with a scruple or two-had that been too much to hope for?

Alex had no regrets either. Why should he care how it felt to be forced to see oneself as a purely sexual object… a female thing, desired for her body and for nothing else? For when you stripped all the pretences away that was the true sum of her worth to Alex. He had used all the right buzzwords like 'home' and 'family', blinding her with specious flattery and clever argument, but ultimately his sole objective had been her voluntary placing of her physical self into the bed of his choosing. With her in love with another man and mere weeks from her wedding, the average male would have seen her as out of reach. But Alex lived in the rarefied society of the very rich, where anything could be acquired for the right price… or the right tactics. And Alex was famous for being so tortuously serpentine in his business negotiations and so innately secretive that even his top executives could be surprised, red-faced and drop-jawed when he pulled off some deal entirely on his own.

'You never really know what Alex is up to. It fairly keeps you on your toes,' Pete had grumbled once.

The decision to expose Brian's infidelity had cost Alex not one sleepless night. Shrewdly flicking through his options, Alex had known that nothing could better a first-hand encounter with her fiancees feet of clay. And in one chillingly precise move he had ensured that her engagement would be broken so that he could smoothly step into the breach to persuade her that he was the 'far more entertaining possibility' that her future could offer.

Whatever else Alex was he was ruthless, aggressively resourceful and he thrived on challenge. Only what you saw was not necessarily what you got with AlexRossini, she conceded painfully. Like some science-fiction shape-shifter, Alex could fit himself to any required backdrop, so that within a head-spinning handful of days Sara had been treated to Alex the reformed womaniser, hearing the pure clarion call of domesticity, talking about settling down, Alex the family man… Tears stung Sara's embittered eyes. Well, they said that there was a fool born every minute. She had swallowed every lying word whole!, 'Did you sleep well?'

Dredged from her all-absorbing thoughts with a vengeance, Sara flinched in horror before she abruptly catapulted upright in a wave of noisily displaced water and ' snatched at a towel to shield her dripping length from the brazen male poised scant feet from her. Wide-eyed with disbelief, she clutched frantically at the towel and gaped at him. 'How dare you?' she shrilled.

An ebony brow was elevated. 'How dare I what?'

'Invade my privacy!' Sara gasped, hotly flushed as j she struggled to anchor the fleecy towel round her, but the foot of it had already trailed in the water and the sodden weight of fabric was anything but easy to handle. 'Get out of here!'

'I see you have miraculously rediscovered your tongue.' Supremely at ease, Alex sank down on a corner of the bath, an unhidden smile of amusement curving his expressive mouth. Densely lashed golden eyes engaged on a boldly unapologetic survey of every gleaming wet inch of pale flesh on view. 'What a promising start to the new day…'

'I want you to listen to me.'

'I am a captive audience,' Alex assured her cheerfully.

Sara quivered with rage. If there was one thing she couldn't bear, it was not to be taken seriously. 'You're trying to behave as if yesterday never happened!'

A lean brown hand snaked out and caught her left hand, one long forefinger suggestively brushing the circle of bridal gold she wore. 'Didn't it?'

Deprived of one hand's anchorage, the towel dipped down dangerously low over her breasts and with a strangled hiss of mingled temper and mortification Sara dropped down into the water again. 'Go away!' she roared at him furiously.

'You're changing… You're changing into the woman you've always kept hidden and stifled,' Alex murmured with quiet satisfaction. 'The woman you were born to be. Fiery and passionate, not quiet and submissive. I saw it in Marco's studio first-all that you would conceal and all that I would set free.'

Sara opened her sultry mouth and closed it again, trembling with thwarted fury. 'Don't try to change the subject,' she finally shot back at him.

'Why would I do that? You needed to know the truth. I made no attempt to conceal it,' Alex reminded her. "The brandy bottle was the one unknown, cara. I suspect that without that handicap you would have suspected the truth the same day. I did not foresee how rapidly events would move… or how swiftly our relationship would develop. I was prepared to wait for you to turn to me.'

'You don't even seem to appreciate the evil of what you've done!' Sara launched at him.

'The evil was Shorter's, cara. Don't make the mistake of laying the original sin at my door,' Alex warned her softly. 'Had he been faithful, I would have been powerless to interfere.'

'You had no right to interfere!'

'I saw my advantage and I used it. What else would you have expected me to do? If I hadn't intervened, you would have suffered a far more public betrayal. I don't believe that your fiance had any intention of replacing you with your cousin… but the lady had other ideas,' Alex imparted with grim dark eyes. 'How much closer to the wedding would you have liked to come?'

Her teeth gritted. 'That's not relevant!'

'You think not? Without my "evil" intervention, bellamia, the invitations would have been out, the wedding presents arriving. Your cousin has a sense of the dra-matic. I think she would have left it to the eleventh hour You would have been greeted out of the blue by the an-nouncement that they were in love. Would you have pre-ferred that scenario?'

'Shut up, Alex!' Sara blitzed back at him rawly wanting to cover her ears from his devious reasoning 'Shutup!'

Alex dealt her a uniquely cynical appraisal, his handsome mouth twisting. 'No, you would not have fallen over yourself for the opportunity to play the jilted bride, a sad object of pity to all concerned. You are far too proud to willingly subject yourself to such humiliation.'

'Damn you, Alex…I hate you!' Resentment was blazing out of control like a forest fire inside her.

'You married me to save face, cara… If I have to live with that reality, why shouldn't you?' Alex drawled murderously quietly.

'You sneaky, manipulative swine!' Lunging forward without hesitation, Sara closed two angry hands over the hem of his immaculate grey jacket and tipped him backwards into the bath.

There was a burst of startled Italian, a resounding splash, a sudden dismaying weight on her extended lower limbs and then an instant of stark silence. And then Alex laughed. He threw back his handsome dark head and laughed with uninhibited appreciation.

'You asked for that,' Sara bit out mutinously, refusing to share in his amusement. 'Now perhaps you'll remove yourself.'

Alex bent forward and flipped off his shoes and socks. 'I don't think so,' he murmured, straightening his back fithely and shrugging his shoulders out of his jacket, pitching it carelessly aside. 'And what's that supposed to mean?' He jerked his tie loose, then embarked on unbuttoning his shirt. 'I am where I want to be-'

'Let me up,' she instructed feverishly, pinned in place by the weight of his hard length.

Alex angled up his lean flanks to unzip his trousers and Sara took advantage of the movement to snake her legs back, but he was far too quick and agile for her. He flipped over and caught her arms before she could complete her escape and brought his mouth down hard on hers.

In a rage of incredulity, she meant to bite him, scratch him, pummel him with both furiously clenched fists. But at the same second that he fiercely probed her lips apart and delved between them with the stab of his tongue, she ran out of breath and reason and physical coordination. He devoured her with hot, hungry urgency and her hands briefly loosened and then clutched with helpless desperation as he yanked her up against him, crushing her bare breasts to the hard, muscular wall of his chest. She wanted more, so much more that every intoxicating second was only a frustrating preparation for the next. And then he released her.

In a daze she blinked as he sprang out of the bath, peeling off his shirt and dispensing with his sodden trousers and the clinging black briefs in a few impatient movements. He reached down into the water and swept her up as if she were an inanimate and dainty doll.; Breathless confusion overwhelmed her. 'Put me down…put me down, Alex!'

'Getting me wet was a bad move, cara.' Brilliant golden eyes danced over her bemused face. lDio… it made the; odds of you escaping unscathed from this bedroom about ninety-nine to one.'

'If you don't let go of…me!' Her wrathful response ended in a strangled yell as he dropped her down on the welcoming luxuriousness of the bed and she bounced. Alex descended lithely onto the mattress, only to imprison her again, closing both hands over her wildly clawing ones and pressing them flat while at the same time lowering his lean, hard length to keep the rest of her in one place. 'Now…calm down-think,' he urged smoothly.

It struck her that about the very last thing she felt capable of just then was thinking. With every lethally; sexy centimetre of Alex pinned to her damp, quivering I flesh, rational thought was suspended by a sensation closer to pure panic than anything else. Already she could fee/ a sort of lhsMous neat and restive tension threatening her already shattered composure.

'Please-'

“'I wanted you so much,bellamia… how could that ever be a crime?' Alex enquired, subjecting her to the full onslaught of eyes screened to a smouldering sliver of gold beneath inky black lashes. 'For a whole year 1 desired you and you held me at bay with cold, dismissive glances and scornful little smiles. You treated me like my father's wives once treated me-like an unavoidable but greatly to be regretted accident of birth. No man with red blood in his veins would have resisted the challenge.'

'Stop it,' Sara gasped, blocking him out by closing her eyes. She was trying so hard not to listen while at the same time endeavouring to stamp out the burgeoning and quite appalling sexual awareness leaping to life within her every skin cell, making her breath shorten, her heartbeat race and her pulses accelerate. 'You are my wife,' Alex reminded her very softly. 'I don't want to be!' Sara bit out shakily, tiny little quivers assailing her as she angrily fought to stamp out her own hatefully physical reaction to his proximity. 'This is very sudden,' Alex husked. Temper took her again, strengthening her defiance. 'You think that if you chip away at me for long enough you can change the way I think… but you can't! Marco said I'd be safer with him that day and he was right. He told me to go for the two million and he was right about that too! You're just using me!' Sara condemned in sudden, bitter pain. 'And I'd rather be used for money than find myself trapped in a marriage that's a sleazy mockery of everything I believe in. At least the money would have been an honest exchange!'

Without warning, Alex freed her hands and sprang back from her. His strong dark features were harshly set. 'Is that what you really believe, caraV

With a shaking hand, Sara fumbled for the sheet, wanting to cover herself all of a sudden from that look of icy derision in Alex's eyes. 'Yes,' she muttered chokily, knowing that she had told the truth of her feelings.

Of course he would never have offered and she would never have taken money, but the scenario she had forced herself to draw was far more apt in her opinion than the dubious respectability of the wedding ring she wore. A cruel, cheating charade was what Alex had really given her but she had entered their marriage with very different expectations, stupidly, naively trusting and believing in every assurance he had made. She recalled the manner in which he had smoothly tacked on the word 'eventually' to his supposed desire for children and she understood why now.

Alex had never planned on permanence. Alex had merely dangled a wedding ring as bait so that he could satisfy his lust and his ferocious need to win, whatever the cost. If she hadn't been so overly emotional, so eagerly willing to be swayed by his arguments, she would have suspected that reality far sooner. A male like AlexRossini, with a father who changed wives the way other men changed their shirts, was highly unlikely to see the institution of marriage as an unbreakable bond. Alex had simply told her what she'd wanted and needed to hear.

Tears pricked her eyes again and filled her with a furious impatience at her own continuing and dismayingly unfamiliar emotionalism. She rolled herself under the sheet as if she were settling into her shroud.

Alex was already standing in the adjoining dressing room, rifling through drawers and cupboards, withdrawing fresh clothing. The significance of what he was doing slowly sank in on her as she abstractedly watched his every lithe, graceful movement. His sudden withdrawal had left her treacherous body aching, and her teeth clenched in shamed acknowledgement of the fact.

"This is your room?' she asked across the yawning gulf of silence, which she found quite unbearable. 'You were sleeping so soundly last night, I did not wish to disturb you.' His startlingly handsome features were shuttered, a cold contempt in his eyes which he made no attempt to conceal.

And for the first time Sara registered that Alex could affect her on a level that she had previously denied. A growing sense of fear and rejection was taking her over. Fear and rejection, she acknowledged dazedly. 'I will not hurt you', he had said, and yet he was hurting her. In fact all of a sudden her mind was toying with the cowardly notion that she had said too much, gone too far, offended too deeply… In dismay, she bit down so hard on her tongue to trap it between her teeth that she tasted blood. 'Submissive', he had called her. No, she was not going to be submissive or apologetic for honestly stating her own feelings. She had a right to say what she felt.

A right… a right-all too often suppressed and surrendered throughout her childhood. She had let herself be forced into a quiet, introverted little slot at an early age because if she'd dared to flex a finger out of that slot Antonia had been waiting, ready to break it. And she had been so grateful that her aunt and uncle had given her a home that she hadn't fought, hadn't defended herself, hadn't expressed herself in any way which might have caused offence or brought her into more open conflict with the daughter they adored. A little martyr of a peacemaker-that was what she had been and much good it had done her!

And where would she end up if one ferociously dirty look from Alex made her want to rush in and tactfully smooth things over as she had done with everyone all her life to date? She couldn't possibly be becoming emotionally attached to Alex. You hate him now, she reminded herself… but you still don't want him to leave this room. The discovery shattered her.

Alex emerged from the dressing room, immaculate again in a supremely sophisticated cream suit that was a spectacular foil for his golden skin and exotically dark eyes. And when did you start gaping at him all the time as if he were first prize in a lottery, eyeing him up like some sort of sex-obsessed teenager with uncontrollable hormones? she asked herself derisively. In the midst of her increasingly frantic self-examination, Alex vented a soft, chilling laugh. Sara permitted her anxious gaze to wander guiltily back to him.

'You want to know why I married you?' he drawled. 'I thought you were different but I should have recalled that old adage that there's nothing new under the sun.' 'I thought you were different too.' But she wasn't going to share the fact that she had actually believed that he had miraculously been transformed from an arrogant, ruthless womaniser into a family man.

'You didn't care.' Alex shot her a glance from glittering dark eyes, his scorn palpable. 'Your cosy future was smashed and you wanted it back, whatever the cost or the risk. I had the means to give it to you-'

'I don't know what you're getting at.'

'Before my very eyes, I watched you fall in love with what I could buy you… and I shouldn't complain, I picked Ladymead out of two dozen properties as the one most likely to appeal. I played a winning bet. Dio mio…it did not occur to me that sometimes winning can feel more like losing.'

Sara had stilled, shaken by the information that he had taken her quite deliberately to Ladymead. That he could actually blame her for the results of his own relentlessly manipulative approach disconcerted her even more. 'You're not being fair-'

'I don't feel like being fair.' His wide mouth narrowed, clenched. 'For the first time I feel a certain sympathy for Shorter. I'm not surprised that he was tempted by a normal flesh-and-blood woman, who only wanted him and not some picture-book fantasy with a fairy castle and a perfect hero.'

'I didn't expect you to be perfect.' Her voice wobbled, betraying the strength of the blow he had dealt her. To hear herself compared unfavourably with Antonia pierced her on her weakest flank. 'But I did expect… honesty.'

'Only you don't like it when you get it. If I'd lied yesterday, you could have kept your rigid little prin-ciples intact and you would have generously shared your body with me last night,' he derided. 'But that wasn't the option I chose. I told you the truth without hesitation.'

'It's a matter of trust… can't you understand that?' Sara was horrified to realise that she was on the brink of tears again. 'I trusted you!'

'I don't think trust played that big a role in your decision to marry me,' Alex countered very drily, his expressive mouth twisting.

'Of course it did!'

'No, Sara. Your objective was to marry well and save face. I do believe I'm the male equivalent of a trophy wife in so far as you actually take notice of my existence. So don't accuse me of using you, cara. As I see it, I'm the one who's allowed himself to be used.'

'No-' she began painfully, her cheeks blazing so hotly that she felt as if she was burning up.

'You took not the smallest interest in the preparations for our wedding. As it was the opening chapter on our future together, I was less than impressed by the level of your commitment. Indeed, had I not intervened, you might well have gone up the aisle in the same dress you had chosen for another man's benefit!'

'No…' Sara mumbled sickly, belatedly grasping how very much she had taken for granted.

'I called you every day and all you could talk about was medieval glass, oak panelling and the complexities of renovating listed buildings! But the ultimate insult has to have been the presence of your ex at our wedding,' Alex informed her with icy precision. 'You had the time and the opportunity to prevent that development, but you didn't. There is no pretence of love between us but I found the spectacle of you clinging like a limpet to another man in front of my family and friends deeply offensive.'

Her stomach was churning with nausea now. Seen through Alex's eyes, her behaviour both before and during the wedding reached heights of crass insensitivity that she had never dreamt she could be capable of. She lowered her head, swallowing hard. 'No pretence of love between us', she thought wretchedly. No safe, secure raft of liking and bonding to fall back on when there was a crisis.

'And if you ever tell me again that you love him I will throw you out,' Alex completed with absolute conviction. 'I have not the faintest desire for your love but I will not tolerate the use of that kind of smug self-indulgence as a weapon… most especially not when it relates to a weak, lying, cheating little jerk who couldn't keep his pants on even within the family circle!'

The door shut with a thud. That was some exit, Alex, she conceded dazedly. Nothing like going out with a big bang.Nothing like pulling the ground from beneath my feet and changing the whole tenor of my outlook within the space of five agonisingly mortifying minutes.

Everything he had thrown at her had hit home hard. Guilty of bowing out on the wedding arrangements, guilty of yapping on ceaselessly about Ladymead, guilty of not having the guts to tell her relatives that she refused to have Brian at their wedding. After all, Alex, not her family, had paid for it all. And Brian's presence had ruined the day, making Sara feel self-conscious, strained and guiltily on the defensive.

Yes, she had fallen in love with Ladymead, but that was surely not a crime? The real problem had been that when Alex had phoned her their relationship had felt unreal to her. The house had seemed a safe subject to concentrate on. In a sense, too, she had been showing off. See, I can take care of all these things very efficiently without bothering you. See, I can turn that house into a home so fast you'll be really impressed, was what she had been trying to tell him. Only Alex had been anything but impressed.

And why should he have been? Alex had married her for sexual gratification, not for her home-making abilities… hadn't he? Yet that demeaning assumption no longer seemed to fall so neatly into place. Had she been overreacting to what she had learnt yesterday, letting her imagination, her insecurity run away with her? After all, she might still be shattered by the lengths to which Alex had gone in his determination to get her, but those same extremes surely indicated a great deal more than a mere fleeting sexual interest… didn't they?

Hesitantly Sara breathed in, a sense of greater calm enfolding her. For goodness' sake, she had been reacting like a neurotic! Alex had cunningly contrived the very existence of their relationship but that did not mean that absolutely everything he had told her was a lie! Alex might desire her but she could not believe that he would have sacrificed his freedom on that basis alone. Had her sole attraction been physical, Alex would have concentrated his brilliant powers of negotiation on persuading her into having an affair instead.

And on one other count Alex had also been right: it was wrong of her to keep on throwing up Brian. Brian was married to Antonia now… and it was extraordinary, she conceded, how little emotion she could currently stir in response to that reality. No, she was no longer hopelessly in love with her former fiance. How could you continue to love a man who had turned out to be a figment of your imagination?

Brian had lied, cheated and deceived her, then abandoned her to the heat of everyone's anger while protecting himself. But she understood now what it seemed that her cousin had understood all along. Brian had really wanted both of them-Sara to be the good little wife, home-maker and supportive partner, Antonia for excitement, glamour and passion. And she herself had not given him that passion, so how could she really blame him for seeking it elsewhere? A rueful smile tinged Sara's mouth as she began to get dressed.

It was Alex she had to worry about now. So she had made mistakes… but then Alex had to. He had been too impatient. He had pushed the wedding through far too fast, denying her the time she had needed to adjust to their relationship. Well, whether Alex liked it or not, her necessary breathing space had come before the wedding and he had not aided his own cause by seeing her only twice during that period. Somehow, at the end of a phone line Alex had felt more like her boss again. She laughed at the idea, helplessly recalling Alex tipping backwards into the bath.

She was walking towards the grand staircase when a smiling young maid caught up with her. The girl extended a silver tray bearing an envelope with only one word slashed where the address should have been. Sara smiled too, seeing her own name inscribed in Alex's handwriting.

Alone again, she flipped open the envelope, her eyes sparkling with curiosity.

It was a cheque made out in her name for the sum of two million pounds.