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.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HER cheeks as pink as wild roses, her heartbeat thundering at the foot of her throat, Sara crossed the floor of the echoing salon. The sheer grandeur of the vast reception room overpowered her.
'I thought we would dine out this evening,' Alex drawled. 'Would you like a drink before we leave?'
Sara shook her head in a quick, nervous motion, glossy streamers of ebony hair falling forward as she stole a glance down at the little black dress which had seemed the last word in sophistication when she'd bought it a week earlier. Now, set against the splendour of her surroundings, with Alex in a superb white dinner jacket, she had the suspicion that if she added an apron she would be easily mistaken for a waitress. She hovered, waiting for him to say something about the cheque, which she had immediately returned by the same method he had employed to deliver it.
Alex drained his crystal glass and set it down. 'Shall we go, then?'
Her teeth gritted. Was it for this response that she had spent an entire afternoon agonising upstairs? She had been so angry that she hadn't trusted herself to go near him, had deemed it wiser to take stock and cool down. 'That cheque…' she began stiltedly.
'I've opened an account for you instead. An honest exchange, you said.' Alex sent her a cool dark glance. 'Now that we understand each other I see no need for the commercial element to be discussed again.'
Sara drew in a deep breath, her heart lurching behind her breastbone. 'Alex… do you want a divorce?'
In the act of moving towards the door, Alex stopped dead and swung abruptly back to her.
'Because if that is what all this is about, why don't you just say so?' Sara continued, green eyes flashing like jewels against her pallor. 'I mean, let's not beat around the bush here, Alex. I have already received the message that I am a big disappointment and that nothing I have done over the last month has met with your approval-'
'I don't want a divorce.' His strong face was clenched hard, his dark gaze diamond-bright.
'Well, right now I just want to swim back to the airport,' Sara confided with an uneven little laugh, her stomach churning with nausea. 'I see 'MISTAKE' looming in letters ten feet tall over that ceremony yesterday. I'm so very sorry for falling for the house you dangled like bait for my benefit… but I did not agree to marry you because you were rich! And until you wrote that cheque it didn't seriously occur to me that you could even think I could be that greedy. But if this is what you call marrying well I'm afraid you can blasted well keep it, Alex!'
As her voice fractured, betraying her distress, she spun away and began walking fast towards the door. But Alex moved faster, tugging her back to him with lean, determined hands. Closing his arms round her from behind, he expelled his breath in a pent-up hiss. 'I owe you an apology,' he grated roughly.
Sara was rigid. She squeezed her stinging eyes shut and trembled. So much pain-more pain than she had ever experienced, and that in itself was frightening. How did she say to him that she did have feelings for him but that she didn't know where they had begun or indeed even what they were but that the concept of losing him filled her with panic? And she couldn't even say that she liked him because, right now, she didn't like Alex at all. The cruelty of that cheque when he must surely have known that she was talking nonsense in her distress earlier-well, that kind of cruelty was utterly foreign to Sara's nature. It scared her to feel in any way dependent on a male who could behave like that.
'It was my pride,' Alex confessed in a savage undertone as he bent his head down over hers. 'No woman has ever treated me with such indifference.'
'It wasn't indifference. You weren't there. It was all like a dream… coming up to the wedding,' she explained jerkily. 'We didn't feel real but the house did. And you were so distant on the phone…I felt awkward. I didn't know what you expected from me-' 'Too much.'
Her soft mouth wobbled and then compressed. 'I wanted you to be there. Too bad if you don't want to hear that-'
'Dio… it's exactly what I want to hear.' 'Is it?' she gulped.
'Even workaholics like to be missed now and again.' An uncertain shiver of amusement rippled through Sara as Alex spun her round to face him again.
He gazed down at her, and a long forefinger followed the silvery path of a tear stain on her cheek before taking a detour to the tremulous softness of her lower lip. There he lingered to trace that sensitive fullness. Her breath got snarled up in her throat, her slender body tautening in involuntary response to the sizzling sexual energy emanating from him. 'If I'd known, I'd have flown you out,' he remarked reflectively. 'You wouldn't have seen much of me by day but at least we would have had the nights.'
Maybe all men had a one-track mind, Sara found herself thinking, with a regret that was not for sharing. It would have been more of a compliment if Alex had contrived to think of something other than the sexual benefits of her company. But then perhaps she was also guilty of expecting too much too soon. A marriage of convenience had to start somewhere, she reminded herself squarely.
'I wasn't using you,' Sara whispered feverishly, struggling to put her thoughts in order but finding it impossible. All she could really feel was enormous relief that the cold gulf that he had imposed between them had been bridged. 'You were there and I… needed you.'
His dark face tautened. 'And I need you now, cara.' Alex delivered the words with another meaning entirely as he dropped one hand down to the swell of her hips and arranged her into more intimate contact with his powerful thighs. A clenching sensation low in the pit of her stomach made her jerk as she felt the hard thrust of his
