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.
