thought you were more in love with the bridal trappings…not to mention the wallpaper books, fabric swatches and paint-cards,’ Alex enumerated with sardonic bite.
‘I wanted a home that was really mine. Easy to mock what you’ve always had, Alex.’ Sara shot him a look of angry intensity that challenged him and then tore her gaze away again, but he stayed etched in her mind’s eye. The gleaming black hair, the slashing brows, the hard, arrogant slant of his mouth and nose. Hard—that was the definitive word. He might be possessed of a quite intoxicating masculine beauty but the raw stamp of power and fierce force of will overlaid those spectacular dark good looks like bonded steel.
Her head was pounding sickly. ‘I’m not even asking you where we’re going…’
‘You’re safe with me. Tonight you don’t have to think for yourself.’
She closed her aching eyes. The one male in the world whom she would never, ever have trusted and yet all of a sudden she instinctively did trust him. Alex Rossini, protector. She ought to have laughed at the idea but instead she fell asleep.
Sara surfaced from a nightmare, shivering and perspiring. She sat up with a dizzy start and found herself in a completely unfamiliar room. The bedside lamps were lit on either side of the wide divan bed. The sheet tangled round her was silk. She lifted an uncertain hand to the thin, strappy nightdress clinging to the damp thrust of her breasts and fell still only when she saw the tall, dark male rising from a chair in the shadows.
‘Alex…’ she whispered shakily as it all came back in jagged bits and pieces and she breathed in sharply in relief, helplessly reassured by his presence.
‘Feel like something to eat?’ He sounded so normal, so casual.
‘Where am I…? Oh, Lord, to have to ask that,’ she muttered between clenched teeth.
‘This is my house. I didn’t think leaving you alone in the company apartment would be very wise—’
‘Your dinner party.’
‘Cancelled. Not one of my better ideas.’
From below the screen of her lashes she surveyed him with inescapable fascination. Nothing seemed real—not the day’s events, certainly not the extraordinary alteration that had taken place in their relationship within the space of hours. She had not looked before she’d leapt today. He had looked for her, watched over her, kept her safe. Why? Did he want her so much that he was prepared to put up with her as she was now?
‘I’ll order some food.’
The door flipped quietly shut in his wake but still she looked to where he had been. She had got blindly, foolishly drunk and Alex Rossini had picked up the pieces. But he hadn’t expected her to react that way…What had he expected? Why should he have expected anything when he couldn’t have known what would happen to her today? The dinner party—’Not one of my better ideas’. He had talked almost as though the dinner party had been stage-managed in advance for her entertainment, which was crazy. She must have misunderstood him.
She slid out of bed. Her head was still swimming a little. She grimaced at the foul taste in her mouth and was exceedingly grateful to find a bathroom through the other door that she had espied. Her own tousled reflection in the mirror shook her. Peeling off the nightdress, she switched on the shower and stepped into the cubicle, grateful for the warm water and the rich lather of the soap that would wash her clean.
Who had undressed her and put her to bed? Alex? How strange that she shouldn’t be plunged into stricken mortification over the idea. Yesterday she would have died a thousand deaths. Today—tonight—she knew that she had already betrayed so much to Alex Rossini that the once slavishly cherished sanctity of her own body no longer seemed worthy of such earth-shattering importance.
And why didn’t she face it? She had very probably driven Brian into Antonia’s arms! She had refused to sleep with him before they got married. Deaf to his every protest, she had been determined to wait for their wedding night, had smugly believed that the sexual restraint would lend an extra-special meaning to the vows they would take. Only now there wasn’t going to be a wedding day…and it was cold comfort to acknowledge that she had saved her virginity but lost the man she loved. Maybe she had got exactly what she deserved. She had put her wretched principles first and where had it got her? She slid back into bed, forcing her cold face into the pillow, raw with the bitter pain of rejection and humiliation. Nothing was ever going to give her her pride back.
She didn’t hear the door open; she went rigid when she was gathered up into strong male arms, and then her nostrils flared on the scent of Alex and she trembled, her arms uncoiling and curving round him very, very slowly. No, I mustn’t do this…she thought. But it felt so good, so damned good to be held close. The breath shortened in her dry throat. Her fingers splayed centimetre by centimetre across one powerful shoulder and stayed there. She was almost paralysed by her own daring.
The silence thundered in her ears.
He released his breath in a faint hiss and she could feel the savage tension in his taut, muscular frame and the pounding of his accelerated heartbeat against hers. And Sara smiled for the first time in hours with a sense of gratified wonder and curved even closer, her other hand sliding against his silk shirt-front, feeling the heat of his flesh burning through the fine fabric. His response was intoxicating.
‘Is this a solo party…or a masquerade?’ Alex demanded softly. ‘I am not him. You will not close your eyes in my arms and pretend that I am.’
Shocked, she tipped her head back, eyes wide, and met a vibrant gold challenge. ‘I know who you are,’ she whispered dazedly, yet in his arms, even with her eyes open, she felt as if she was living some fantastic dream.
Lean hands closed gently round her wrists and pushed her back against the pillows. He curved one long-fingered hand to her cheekbone and held her still, raking her bewildered face with grim intensity. ‘You want me to want you now,’ he said tautly.
It was the truth, although she hadn’t seen it for herself. Hectic colour lashed her cheeks beneath that appraisal. ‘Yes…’
‘Not like this,’ Alex swore, his eloquent mouth hardening. ‘And not tonight.’
She had been stumbling round like a clown half the day under his gaze. No doubt whatever imagined attraction he had endowed her with had evaporated fast when he had been faced with such pathetic reality. Alex Rossini was accustomed to sophisticated women and none of those experienced ladies would ever have made such a fool of herself in his presence as she had. As he released her a semi-hysterical laugh was torn from her. It came out of nowhere and shook her.
‘Don’t…’ Alex reproved her thickly. ‘I want to make love to you very badly. I’ve wanted you for a long time but I won’t take advantage of you when you don’t know what you’re doing.’
But she did know, for she knew herself far better than he did and she wasn’t the type to have an affair with her boss, or the sort of woman who longed to see herself made notorious in newsprint as Alex Rossini’s latest bedpartner for a few adventurous weeks. There would be no tomorrow for them; there was only tonight. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, she registered in fascination.
‘Sara…?’ he prompted rawly, his blunt cheekbones overlaid with dark colour and prominent with ferocious tension.
Green
