With Valentine’s Day, February is always a romantic month. And we’ve got some great books in store for you….

The High-Society Wife by Helen Bianchin is the story of a marriage of convenience between two rich and powerful families…. But what this couple didn’t expect is for their marriage to become real! It’s also the first in our new miniseries RUTHLESS, where you’ll find commanding men, who stop at nothing to get what they want. Look out for more books coming soon! And if you love Italian men, don’t miss The Marchese’s Love-Child by Sara Craven, where our heroine is swept off her feet by a passionate tycoon.

If you just want to get away from it all, let us whisk you off to the beautiful Greek Islands in Julia James’s hard-hitting story Baby of Shame. What will happen when a businessman discovers that his night of passion with a young Englishwoman five years ago resulted in a son? The Caribbean is the destination for our couple in Anne Mather’s intriguing tale The Virgin’s Seduction.

Jane Porter has a dangerously sexy Sicilian for you in The Sicilian’s Defiant Mistress. This explosive reunion story promises to be dark and passionate! In Trish Morey’s Stolen by the Sheikh, the first in her new duet, THE ARRANGED BRIDES, a young woman is summoned to the palace of a demanding sheikh, who has plans for her future…. Don’t miss part two, coming in March.

Kate Walker

THE MARRIED MISTRESS

All about the author…
Kate Walker

KATE WALKER was born in Nottinghamshire, England, and was the middle child in a family of five girls. She grew up in a home where books were vitally important, and she read anything she could get her hands on. Even before she could write she was making up stories.

But everyone told her that she would never make a living as a writer, so she decided that if she couldn’t write books, at least she could work with them by becoming a librarian.

It was at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, that she met her husband, who was also studying there. They married and eventually moved to Lincolnshire, where she was a children’s librarian until her son was born.

After three years of being a full-time housewife and mother she wanted a new challenge, and turned to her old love of writing. The first two novels she sent off to Harlequin were rejected, but the third attempt was successful. She can still remember the moment that a letter of acceptance arrived instead of the rejection slip she had been dreading. But the moment she really realized that she was a published writer was when copies of her first book, The Chalk Line, arrived just in time to be one of her best Christmas presents ever.

Kate is often asked if she’s a romantic person because she writes romances. Her answer is that if being romantic means caring about other people enough to make that extra special effort for them, then, yes, she is.

Kate loves to hear from her fans. You can contact her through her Web site at www.kate-walker.com or e-mail her at kate@kate-walker.com.

To all my special friends in the Teahouse and Gonnabeez from the Queen Bee.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

SARAH stepped back from the partly open door as smoothly and as silently as she could.

It wasn’t easy. The thought of disturbing the occupants of the room, of making them realise that she was here, and that she had seen them, made her heart race and her head swim.

Beneath the bright red-gold hair, her face had lost colour, the brilliant emerald-green of her eyes standing out dramatically against the pallor of her cheeks.

She felt sick—sick with anger and betrayal—and she needed a minute or two to pull herself together before she faced the inevitable. She had to get downstairs again. Had to get away from the scene that had met her shocked eyes as she had first opened the door, taking with it that little peace of mind that just lately she had thought she had finally reached.

Peace of mind. Huh!

That was a laugh! she told herself as she reached the top of the stairs. Peace was something she hadn’t known in a long, long time. Not true peace. Not the wonderful soul-rooted peace that came from knowing you were truly happy, deep, deep down. Truly happy and contented with your world. As she had been once, she’d thought, in a time that now seemed so long ago.

No, she wouldn’t think of the past now. Couldn’t think of it. She had to concentrate on the here and now. The past was what would destroy her ability to handle this.

‘Sarah?’

Jason’s voice: thick and rough with shock.

Sounds of the bed creaking. Of the thud of heavy masculine feet on the carpeted floor. He had heard her and was coming after her.

The man in the hallway heard the sounds too. Heard the voice—a very male voice that made his heart kick sharply and something like disgust twist painfully in his gut.

She had a man. Here. In this house they had once shared. Clearly she hadn’t believed his threat to come back—and soon.

But not soon enough, it seemed. His sweet Sarah had been busy during his absence. She had found herself another man. Found him, and lost him too, if the haste with which the slim auburn-haired figure in the smart pale green shirt and darker pencil skirt was coming down the curving staircase was anything to go by.

Sarah was not happy. She was so unhappy that she didn’t see him standing well back, where his black hair and dark leather jacket blended with the deep shadow of the door. And, that being so, it told its own story of just what she had discovered up in that first-floor bedroom.

The bedroom that had once been theirs.

It was a thought of dark rage, one that brought a red mist rising before his eyes, cutting off his vision completely, and destroying his ability to think rationally. To think at all.

‘Sarah?’ Jason called again, his voice thick with echoes of things she didn’t even want to consider. ‘That you?’

Jason sounded angry now, and before she could find a way to answer, or even make any sort of sound to indicate her presence, he had stumbled out onto the landing and was leaning over the banisters, staring down at her.

His longish fair hair was still ruffled, his cheeks distinctly flushed. But at least he had taken the opportunity to pull on a pair of jeans, even if his chest was still bare, as were his feet.

‘So it is you? Didn’t you hear me calling? Why the hell didn’t you answer? What are you doing back this early?’

It was a technique she recognised only too well. A way of firing questions at an opponent in rapid succession, and so disorientating them that they didn’t know which one to answer first. It meant he was rattled. Because he wasn’t sure just how long she’d been there or whether she’d only stayed downstairs.

‘I can come and go as I please, Jason. This is my house!’

My house, technically, the man in the shadows corrected in the privacy of his thoughts. The big London house had always been the property of the Nicolaides family. He had let her continue to live in it because it suited him that way, but she didn’t own it. Even if she was still, technically, his wife.

But only technically, it seemed.

A moment ago he had been severely tempted to step forward, out of the concealing darkness, and confront the pair of them. But from the moment that the blond man had appeared on the landing outside the bedroom he had changed his mind. Watching and waiting seemed a much better idea. Because if ever he had seen evidence of an illicit assignation, a sexual romp unexpectedly disturbed, it was right there on that bastard’s guilty-looking face. If he was any sort of judge, the other female involved was still right there in the room behind this Jason.

‘Sarah, don’t get so huffy about nothing!’

Jason was descending the stairs now, smoothing his hair back with a hurried hand, belatedly fastening his jeans as he came down.

‘Nothing!’

The freezing note in Sarah’s voice made the watcher grin sharply. He knew that tone well. Too well. Oh, yes, he’d been subjected to just that icy note of indignant reproof more than once. He was still mentally smarting from the impact of the last time.

‘Nothing?’

‘Well, OK, so I took a nap in your bed.’

Clearly the blond man thought he could bluff his way out of this.

‘What’s so terrible about that? We’re going to be sharing it from now on anyway.’

‘I haven’t actually agreed to you moving in.’ To anything, if the truth was told.

‘No, you haven’t said the words, but we both know it’s only a matter of time.’

He sounded so sure of himself, Sarah thought, anger warring with hurt and betrayal and producing a highly explosive combination in her mind. So sure that it was obvious he believed she hadn’t been upstairs; that she wasn’t aware of what had been going on inside that bedroom.

He still thought that he could worm his way out of this. He truly believed that she was so simple, so gullible, that she would swallow everything he tossed at her. And what infuriated her most was the thought that, lonely and unhappy, she must have given him that impression.

‘But we both know it was on the cards.’

‘Jace? Jacey, baby…’

A third voice, a light, petulant, feminine voice, interrupted what Sarah had been about to say. And as Jason whirled, another violent expletive escaping his lips, the bedroom door opened and a small, curvaceous female sashayed out onto the landing. She was wrapped loosely in a deep red silky gown that Sarah recognised instantly. Made for her own slender height, it swamped the other woman’s shorter frame and was too long for her on her legs, falling almost to the floor instead of mid-calf.

‘Are you ever coming back?’ she pouted, peering over the banisters and down at where he stood, frozen to the spot in the hall. ‘I’m missing—’

‘Andrea, I told you to wait!’ Jason cut in furiously. ‘To stay where you were and—’

‘I was bored!’ the woman addressed as Andrea protested. ‘I got tired of waiting for you to come back.’

“‘Don’t get so huffy about nothing”!’ Sarah repeated bitterly. ‘I wonder what your—friend feels about being described as nothing!’

Her outburst silenced Jason temporarily in the same moment that it drew Andrea’s frowning gaze towards where the other woman stood in the hallway.

‘And who are you?’

‘Me?’

To her amazement, Sarah managed it with only a trace of a shake in her voice, though anyone who knew her would have recognised in the stiffness of her tone the struggle she was having to maintain control. The man who was listening to everything knew it only too well.

‘I’m just the owner of this house—of the bed you’ve just got out of, the robe you’re wearing…’

And Jason’s girlfriend, she supposed she could have added, but the words stuck in her throat.

‘The robe you’re—almost wearing!’

She was tight-lipped against her emotions, stiff as a board.

The watcher in the shadows saw how the colour had ebbed from her cheeks, the muscles in her jaw clenching tight, and he was struck by a sudden and distinctly unwelcome attack of something close to compassion.

Dangerously close.

Compassion was a mistake with this woman—a bad mistake—because it left him vulnerable. Once he had given his heart completely and willingly to her and she had smashed it into pieces and tossed it back at him like so much rubbish. He wasn’t likely to risk that happening again.

‘So might I suggest that you go and get back into your own clothes and get yourself out of here? And take your cheating fancy man with you!’

‘But Sarah—’

‘Out!’

She might be able to hold herself together if he went now, she told herself. If he turned and walked out immediately, then she might be able to forget just how foolish she had been over the past couple of weeks. Foolish in that once again she had stumbled into a relationship that had been all wrong from the start.

It had been a relationship in which she had been looking for nothing but comfort and a hiding place, and that had led her to the mess she was in right now.

‘Sarah—please. It meant nothing—honest! It was just a fling.’

‘A fling? You were prepared to betray my trust—to risk our relationship—for something that didn’t even matter! Nothing more than an itch you had to scratch!’

At least Damon had had the honour to really care for his ‘bit on the side’. His mistress had been the woman he wanted as well, and she had only been the wife of convenience.

Jason’s expression was every bit as hangdog and spuriously repentant as she had expected, and he had actually taken a step or two towards her, coming much closer. Too close.

‘Oh, come on, Sarr! You have to understand.’

Another step forward, and this time his hand came out. He had almost reached her, almost touched her, and it was too much.

‘No!’

Her own hands came up, knocking him away as her nerve broke completely, and she whirled, unable to think of anything beyond getting away. She couldn’t even bear to be in the same space as him any longer. She wanted only to be away and clear and free. Free to forget about Jason and all he had ever meant to her.

Free to think of the man who had once meant everything. Free to—

‘Ooof!’

The cry of shock, confusion and near-panic escaped her on a violent expulsion of breath as she blundered, blind and disorientated, straight into an unexpectedly hard and solid mass that was where no mass should be. A hard and solid mass that blocked her path, barring the way.

A hard, solid and warm mass.

A hard, solid, warm, living and breathing form.

A form that was so intensely masculine, lean and hard and forceful, that it could only belong to a man. A tall, strong man, very much in the prime of life.

A man whose arms came out instinctively, folding round her immediately, supporting her, holding her when she swayed off balance and might have fallen. A man whose chest was wide and strong where it supported her head, her cheek resting against his immaculate white polo shirt. She could hear the heavy, regular thud of his heart, echoing the pulse of blood through her own veins. In her nostrils was the heady, sensually intoxicating mixture of clean skin, the subtle tang of some spicy cologne, and the purely individual aroma that was his alone.

A scent that Sarah knew as well as that of her own body. It was one that she recognised so instantly and so completely, not needing to see the man’s face or hear a word spoken in his voice to confirm her immediate and horrified suspicion. Try as she might, she had no hope at all of denying the truth, or escaping from the forceful impact of it.

And if she had needed any further proof, then the instant reaction that flared through her, burning away all other thoughts, all other hopes, provided it in the space of a heartbeat. It licked along every nerve path, obliterating any doubt even before it had a chance to form.

‘Da…’

The single broken syllable was choked from her, impossible to hold back even though her voice didn’t have the strength to complete the name.

Only one man had ever made her feel this way. Only one man had ever been able to stimulate her feelings and her senses so instantly and so furiously.

‘Damon…’ she whispered. ‘Damon!’

Above her head she sensed rather than saw the sensual mouth break into a wide, wicked grin of pure triumph, and felt the faint rumble of amused laughter under her cheek. She knew without the shadow of a doubt that he was glorying in the fact that he had had such an impact on her, and at such speed, evoking the instant effect that she had been unable to hide.

Only the realisation that she had given him the weapon to use against her, putting it almost into his hands herself, kept her silent in mortification, and she had to grit her teeth against the flurry of angry rejection that nearly escaped her. Damon Nicolaides needed no encouragement at all to feel instantly and infinitely superior to any other human being. His head was already swollen wide enough, and he would only take her hurried protestations as an indication of exactly the opposite of what she said.

‘Damon…’ she tried again, aiming for a very different tone. ‘Let me go this minute!’

Once more she felt the chuckle echo in his chest.

‘You know you don’t mean that, sweetheart.’

It was the first time in over six months that she had heard his voice, and the bitter-sweet sensation of its tug at her emotions, the memories it revived in the space of a heartbeat, almost undid her totally.

‘Oh, but I do!’

Gathering together all that was left of her tattered strength, she twisted in his arms and flung back her head so that she could look up, straight into his dark, shuttered face.

And instantly regretted her action desperately.

If letting him feel her immediate response to his presence had been a mistake, then this was definitely error number two—and a far worse, potentially far more dangerous move than anything she had done yet.

Because as soon as she saw him, saw the dangerously handsome face, with the broad, defined cheekbones, the flashing dark eyes and the sensually warm mouth, it was as if he had never been away. In those few, shaken moments, the hundred and eighty days of his absence from her life slid away like so many seconds, and she was jolted back once more to the appalling, devastating moment in which she had learned the truth. When his own father had forced her to see how her love for this man was built not on the strong, sure foundations she had believed it to be, but instead on slippery, shifting sands that had slid away from under her feet, leaving her reeling and lost without any support.

‘I do…’ she tried again, only to hear the words disintegrate as soon as they hit the air, splintering into tiny pieces that had none of the emphasis she aimed for.

And none of the impact she needed, she admitted to herself as she looked into her husband’s deep, dark eyes, and saw there only as much response to her protest as he might have shown if a fly had landed on the olive-toned skin of his arm and he had wafted it away idly with one hand. Instead his smile grew, becoming a broad, fiendish grin as he looked down at her.

‘Hello, sweetheart,’ he drawled in his softly accented tones. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

Before she could register just what the grin meant, before she had time to realise that she had also made mistake number three as well as one and two, the proud head had lowered swiftly and his mouth took hers in a searing kiss.

A kiss that swept away all pretence at resistance. One that slashed through her defences before she even had time to think about building them, sweeping them aside as a torrential flash-flood might deal with a few weakly rooted saplings it had found in its way, carrying them before it on its relentless, savage path.

Sarah was completely in the power of that storm force. Under attack from a bewildering, devastating array of emotions, she simply closed her eyes and went under, surrendering to the deepest, most elemental demand of all. That of total sensuality.

It was like the first kiss she had ever experienced and yet it was like no other she had ever known. It started hard and fierce and demanding, but instantly gentled as in spite of herself she opened up to him, her mouth softening under his, her lips parting, allowing the arrogantly knowing invasion of his tongue.

She was lost, drowning in sensation, losing all sense of substance, of strength, of reality. The ground was unsteady beneath her feet, the hallway in which she stood just a haze of blue, pale and dark, and the hum of the traffic outside, always present in any part of London, a blur of noise, the buzzing soundtrack to the frantic racing of her heart.

She wanted none of this, her mind screamed at her. Wanted nothing—and yet she wanted everything. She longed desperately for him to release her and in the same thought she prayed that he would hold on to her forever, never letting her go. Letting her go would mean that she was once more cast adrift into the emptiness of being alone, the devastation of loneliness that was all her life had been since their brief marriage had broken up. And, having endured it once, she knew it was something she could not go through again.

‘Excuse me.’

The cold, clipped words vaguely penetrated the heated haze that enclosed Sarah’s thoughts, reaching her only as a tone, not any sort of meaning. But that tone was a million miles away from the ostensibly polite phrase, carrying with it a load of barely controlled fury and cold disbelief.

‘Excuse me,’ Jason repeated, with cutting emphasis.

That at least had some effect on Damon. It made him pause, stilling his mouth on Sarah’s, lifting it slightly away from her.

‘Yes?’

It was curt and disdainful, insultingly so. If Jason’s interjection had been cool, then Damon’s response was nothing short of icy.

‘What is it?’

He was still so close that she could feel the whisper of his breath over her skin as he spoke, still taste him on her lips and her tongue. His scent still lingered tantalisingly in her nostrils. It took a shocking effort to crush down the instinctive, weakly betraying murmur of protest that almost escaped her, and to her horror her hands had actually lifted to pull him back to her before she realised what was happening and determinedly forced them back down again. Only by curling her fingers into tight, defensive fists at her sides, nails digging into her palms, did she feel that she had regained enough control not to give herself away completely.

‘What can I do for you?’

Damon’s words were addressed to Jason, tossed at him with arrogant contempt, so that for a moment or two the other man floundered, knowing that he had definitely lost ground, but not really sure how to go about regaining it.

‘I…I’d like to know…’

The fool was definitely rocked, clearly knocked off balance, Damon thought privately, allowing himself a small, grim smile of satisfaction at the sight of Jason’s uncomfortably flushed face, the look of angry confusion in his eyes. And that was exactly how he wanted it. It fitted perfectly with the plan he had come up with while standing by the front door, watching the little drama that had unfolded before him.

He wanted Jason—and Sarah—off balance and unsure of what to do next. Unsure of themselves—and of him.

He wanted them totally on edge and wondering just how he was going to react.

And so he forced himself to smile into Jason’s belligerent face, clearly taking the other man even more by surprise.

‘Yes?’ he enquired politely, not lessening his grip on the woman in his arms for a moment.

It wasn’t purely for display. Wasn’t just part of the image he wanted to present to this other male—the intruder into his territory, the alien who threatened the peace of his domestic set up.

The truth was that, having once got Sarah back into his arms again after the length of time without her, he simply couldn’t let go. He had waited so long for this, dreamed of it, imagined it in the long, dark silences of the night. And now that he’d finally achieved his aim, he wouldn’t—couldn’t—relinquish it without a fight.

The bitter irony was that it wasn’t the sort of reunion he had dreamed of. There had been no other man involved in his imaginings, and certainly no one like Jason or the blonde-haired floozy in the red gown who was still upstairs on the landing, hanging halfway over the banisters, watching everything that was going on with an avid, open-mouthed curiosity.

But a true gambler had to play the hand that fate had dealt him. And these were the only cards he had, so he had no choice.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Well…’ Jason blustered, even more disconcerted than before. ‘Can’t you see?’

‘No, I can’t, I’m afraid.’ Damon’s tone oozed fake sincerity, apparent concern. ‘I’m sorry, but you’ll have to explain. Just what is it that’s puzzling you?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Jason’s temper was rapidly escaping from his control. ‘It’s you! You’re the problem! Just who the hell are you?’

‘Who the hell am I?’ Damon echoed, pretending to give the matter some consideration, though Sarah was fully convinced that he already knew exactly what he was going to say. ‘I thought you knew. But, as you obviously don’t, then I shall have to explain to you. I—’

He broke off, glancing down sharply as Sarah moved convulsively, just once, in the circle of his arms. He turned a brief, reproving frown on her, tightened his grip momentarily, warningly, and watched with grim satisfaction as she subsided back into rebellious silence.

‘I’ll tell you who the hell I am. You need to know anyway, seeing as this concerns you rather a lot. You see, kyrie Jason, I am the new man in the lovely Sarah’s life. In fact, I am the man who has just replaced you in this lady’s bed.’

And, hearing Sarah’s gasp of indignant fury, seeing her open her mouth to voice an outraged protest, he bent his dark head and silenced her in the most effective way he could think of—by taking her mouth in another of those long, passionate and ruthlessly demanding kisses.

CHAPTER TWO

BUT this was a very different sort of kiss.

This was no longer the beguiling, seductive caress of just moments before. It was a kiss of anger, of domination, of possession, which stamped her as Damon’s as clearly as if it had been a white-hot branding iron pressed to her skin.

And the truth was that Damon believed that she was his to do with as he pleased, until he decided otherwise. He had never truly been prepared to let her go. He had only let her walk out on him because she had given him no choice. She had waited until he was away, as he so often was, on business, and then she had packed her bags and fled from the island.

People just did not do that sort of thing to Damon Nicolaides. Certainly, women never did it to him. He made all the running where the women in his life were concerned. He made the first moves; he decreed how long a relationship lasted. And when he was tired and bored, when he felt that things had come to their natural end—as they inevitably did—then Damon was the one who walked away without a backward glance. Not the woman he was leaving.

Sarah had broken all those rules. And as a result she knew that Damon had never forgiven her—would never forgive her. He would hold the memory of what he considered to be her betrayal and the insult to his fiercely macho pride deep in the darkness of his unloving heart, and he would never let it go.

‘Damon…’ she managed against the demand of his mouth, struggling to make it a protest, hearing only the sigh of acquiescence in her tone. ‘I—’ 20

‘Hush, agape mou,’ he reproved, infuriatingly more in control than she had ever been, so that she heard in his words a fake softness. A gentleness that he could never have meant but that he managed to communicate with total credibility. ‘Leave this to me.’

‘But—’

Again she tried to protest, and again she failed as once more he kissed her into submission, this time stealing her soul away with a stunningly enticing caress, one that made her senses swoon and her heart sing with rare delight.

‘Leave this to me,’ he had told her, his tone redolent with a supreme confidence that she would do exactly as he instructed.

And, weakly, she knew that she would. There was nothing else she could do. The ability to act, along with any hope she had of even thinking straight, had evaporated swiftly in the heat of her instant reaction to him. Just his very closeness, to be held so tightly in the warm strength of his arms, crushed up against the hard wall of his chest, had been bad enough, depriving her of the control, the restraint that she had believed she’d acquired in her time apart from him. But the sensations sparked off by those kisses had made everything infinitely worse, buzzing round in her head, fizzing through her body, until she was incapable of thought.

Those three very different kisses had revealed so perfectly the many sides of Damon’s nature. In his make-up, the supremely gentle, irresistibly seductive blended so perfectly with the cruel, the almost brutal ruthlessness that was the opposite side of his personality. The negative to the positive, darkness as opposed to light. She had known them all in her short time with him, and at first she had believed that the gentle, enticing character had been the real man.

She had been very quickly—and very thoroughly—disillusioned. Life, and Damon’s father, had stripped her of her rose-tinted spectacles with ruthless efficiency. And from then onwards she had never been able to look at him in the same way.

‘You’re who?’ Jason demanded, the bluster in his voice showing how rattled he was.

‘The name is Damon Nicolaides,’ Damon tossed at him, clearly expecting, and getting, the instant start of response that always came with the recognition of his name.

‘Nicolaides?’ Jason’s voice shook.

Everyone knew who Damon was. Everyone.

His wealth and his international, jet-setting life put his name and his photograph into the society pages. His relationships with models and actresses, his friendships with film producers and media moguls kept him in the celebrity magazines, where his stunningly masculine looks made a huge impact on every female reader from sixteen to seventy. His money and power meant that he frequently appeared in financial columns, and his ability to constantly acquire more of both made sure that his reputation was as huge as his business empire.

‘Damon Nicolaides?’

He was clearly the last person Jason had expected to come up against in this particular situation. How the hell could she know him? The question was obviously in his thoughts, revealed in his stunned intonation.

‘That’s right.’

Sarah knew that tone of Damon’s voice well—too well. Careful, polite, controlled—but only just.

It meant that Damon was right at the edge of his patience. That he would not take pushing any further or any harder. Not if the person he was talking to was wise and wanted to avoid a full-scale volcanic explosion.

‘Jason…’ she tried, only to feel her body given a small, rough shake of warning by the man who held her.

‘Let me answer the questions, Sarah. It’s simpler that way.’

‘Simpler!’ she couldn’t help protesting. ‘For who?’

‘For everyone!’

The admonition that had been in the way he had shaken her was there again, more strongly this time, in the undercurrents in his voice, a note that sent a shiver down her spine in unnerved response.

This was the Damon she had seen in the past, when some member of his staff had angered him with a foolish mistake, or a journalist had proved too intrusive. It was the prelude to a much more savage outburst, one that made her shudder in fearful anticipation. She had only ever experienced that side of Damon briefly, but that had been enough. She never wanted to see it again.

‘Everyone?’

Damon bent his dark head again until his sensual mouth was level with her ear, the warmth of his breath stirring the auburn tendrils of hair that lay against her cheek.

‘Do you want me to get rid of him or not?’

Oh, yes, she wanted Jason out of here. Out of her house, and out of her life. And she wished he’d take Damon with him. But that, she knew, was not the slightest bit likely.

And so, grasping at what she could see was the only possible lesser of two evils, she clamped her lips tight shut on the furious protest that almost escaped her once more and forced herself to nod in silent acquiescence.

It was all that Damon needed. Satisfied that she had handed over control of the situation into his hands, he faced Jason again.

‘Was there anything else you wanted to know?’

Everything, if she knew Jason, Sarah thought. But he contented himself with one question, his voice wobbling on a note of disbelief.

‘You claim that you two are an item?’

‘Not claim,’ Damon retorted sharply. ‘We are.’

As if to prove his point, he pulled her closer, one steel-hard arm coming round her to hold her just where he wanted her, staking his claim. One ear, one cheek was against his chest, muffling her hearing. But she caught Jason’s dumbfounded response.

‘And you agree with this, Sarry?’

Another silent nod was all she could manage. Just let Damon get rid of Jason, she prayed inwardly, and then she would get rid of Damon. If she could. Damon in one of these stubborn, determined moods was as immovable as a rock, and every bit as hard.

‘So when did you two meet—and where?’

‘The art gallery reception last night,’ Damon stunned her by retorting immediately, and totally unexpectedly. ‘You must have noticed that she didn’t come home. Or perhaps not…’

The movement of his head told its own story. Sarah didn’t even have to look to know that he had directed his black-eyed gaze across the room and up to where Jason’s bedroom companion still lingered, watching everything, silently agog with curiosity.

So silently that Sarah had almost forgotten she was there.

‘I’m sure you were otherwise engaged.’

Damon was fast losing patience now. The sordid little drama he had interrupted might have amused him for a while, but its appeal was strictly limited, and it was evaporating rapidly. He wanted Jason and his trollop out of the house as fast as possible. If they didn’t move now then he couldn’t guarantee that he would be able to keep a strict hold on his temper. And if it slipped from his control then he couldn’t be answerable for the consequences. Things could get really messy.

And the worst part of it all was having to admit just what was affecting him most. Which certainly wasn’t this sleazy rat and his cheap little tart, that was for sure.

‘I wasn’t here last night! My name’s Andrea, by the way.’

It was the other woman who spoke, and Sarah felt a shock of instant recognition at her tone, bringing with it the kick of some primitive reaction deep down inside her. Even fresh from another man’s bed as she was, this Andrea had still responded to Damon’s forcefully macho appearance with a predatory interest that put a husky purr of sensuality into her tone. Wriggling slightly in the iron-hard hold, Sarah could just peer upwards to where the voluptuous woman was leaning over the banisters, displaying an ample amount of what she clearly thought was enticing cleavage.

But Damon appeared far from enticed.

‘You’re here now,’ he flung up at her. ‘And I’d much prefer it if you weren’t. So get some clothes on and get yourself and your lover out of here—fast! Or I won’t be answerable for the consequences.’

Andrea pouted petulantly at his tone, but she read it well enough to know that he meant exactly what he said. Flouncing into the bedroom, she must have tossed on clothes at speed, pushed into action by the threat in Damon’s tone, because it was only minutes before she reappeared, fully dressed in a tight white shirt and the miniest of miniskirts, the red satin robe slung carelessly over one arm. Clopping inelegantly down the stairs in white sling-back stilettos, she marched over to the small group in the hall.

‘I believe this is yours.’

She tossed the robe onto the floor at their feet, then turned to the still staring Jason and caught hold of his arm.

‘C’mon, Jace,’ she said. ‘It’s time we were out of here.’

‘I should listen to the lady, Jace…’ Damon laced both the nickname and the word ‘lady’ with the stinging bite of acidic sarcasm. ‘It is time you were going.’

‘But—’ Jason began, then looked straight into Damon’s deep black eyes and clearly thought better of what he had been about to say.

‘OK,’ he muttered. ‘I’m coming.’

But there was something in his voice that told Sarah he was not finished yet. That he had more to say—or do—before he left them in peace.

Instinctively she tensed in Damon’s arms, waiting, wondering…

But whatever she had feared never came.

The slam of the door behind the departing pair was a sudden shock to her system, jarring every nerve in her tense body and making her head jerk upwards from its secure pillowing on Damon’s hard chest.

‘It’s OK.’

Lazily he stilled her, soothed her with a stroking hand down over her hair, her shoulder, her arm.

‘They’ve gone.’ He looked down at her, grinned into her warily watchful green eyes. ‘It’s safe to come out now.’

‘I wasn’t scared!’

Desperately, Sarah tried to gather together some of the tattered strands of her shattered self-esteem so as to meet the smile in his eyes with some degree of composure. He looked too damn pleased with himself by half.

‘I wasn’t!’ she repeated more emphatically, to answer the tormenting question that was clearly in his thoughts, lifting the corner of one jet-black eyebrow in mocking inquiry. ‘I was simply—held prisoner by you.’

To emphasise the point she twisted in his still restraining arms, attempting to pull herself free. At first, for a heart-stopping moment, she thought he was going to resist, forcing her into either an ungainly and undignified struggle or a humiliating submission. But then, suddenly, he released her with an abruptness that had her swaying uncomfortably on unsteady feet, stubbornly refusing to reach out a hand and cling on to the strength of his arms for support.

The fact that he so obviously knew exactly what was going through her mind only added a hundredfold to her discomfiture. She hated the way that the gleam in his eyes brightened, the tiny quirk upwards at the corner of his lips revealing his amusement.

‘So now you’re free,’ he drawled softly.

‘Yes,’ Sarah managed, adding because she felt she had to, ‘Thank you.’

‘My pleasure.’

He was bending as he spoke, reaching down to scoop up the red robe from where Andrea had tossed it moments before.

‘This is yours, I believe.’

Sarah turned a glance of loathing on the inoffensive article that Damon held out to her. It was impossible not to notice the contrast between the strength of the blunt, strong, tanned fingers and the fine, slippery material that seemed totally insubstantial in the firm grasp. But the thought of touching either made her shiver inside.

Slowly she reached out, took hold of the crimson silk, then gave in to her inclinations and, crushing the garment mercilessly, she crumpled it into a ball and flung it with all her strength as far away from her as she could manage.

‘I don’t want it! Not after she’s worn it! I couldn’t bear to touch it again.’

Damon’s dark eyes followed the bright sliver of material as it sailed through the air in a graceful arc and fell to the ground once more. Then his gaze swung back to Sarah’s face, looking deep into her eyes.

‘I’ll buy you another.’

‘No need—I…’

The words died away as she realised not just what he had said but the implications behind it. Clearly Damon planned to stay around, for a while at least. And that was not something she was comfortable with. Certainly not after the scene he had just witnessed, and the interpretation he had obviously put on it. And, even worse, after the discovery that she had made about herself.

‘I can get one myself. I earn a good salary at the art gallery; I can afford to buy myself a nightgown…’

She was speaking only to fill the silence, she knew. And to distract her own thoughts. There were too many things she didn’t want to think about—didn’t dare to think about—and for now it was so much easier to concentrate on the immediate present and what was happening in it.

After all, there was more than enough to face up to there. Sarah drew in her breath sharply and let it out again on a silent sigh. Jason might have gone—and Andrea. And quite frankly she was more than glad to see the back of both of them. But Damon was still here. And getting rid of him was a different prospect altogether.

Her shoulders, which had relaxed in the moments she had watched Jason and Andrea walk away, now tensed again. Her throat tightened so that she had to swallow hard to ease the dryness there, and her chin came up as defiance flared in the green depths of her eyes.

‘What are you doing here, Damon?’

‘I came to see you, of course, my darling…’

‘That’s not what I mean, and you know it!’ Sarah put in hastily and sharply, terrified of hearing that emotive word ‘wife’ on his lips.

Once she had been proud and happy—so happy—to be his wife, even if for his own reasons Damon had insisted that, for a while at least, they told no one the truth. But now their brief, painful façade of a marriage was something she desperately wanted to forget. To obliterate from her mind, if she couldn’t erase it from her past.

‘I want to know why you’re here—in London.’

‘I have business in town. Important meetings.’

It was not the truth, at least not the full truth, Damon admitted to himself. But the truth wasn’t something he was prepared to admit to. Not yet. Perhaps not ever at all.

He had had a meeting planned—one with Sarah to discuss their marriage, or what was left of it. The thoughts that had been in his mind as he’d arrived at the house such a short time before now came back to haunt him, mocking his gullible beliefs and the naïve hope that had been uppermost in his mind then.

He had given Sarah enough time to calm down, he had told himself. After six months of living on her own, stubbornly refusing to see him, returning every one of his letters unopened, surely she was now prepared to listen?

She would listen, he had told himself. No matter what he had to do to make her. He would talk—and she would listen. Somehow he would make her come back to Greece with him. To Mykonos. Where he would show her what he had done. And then…

He hadn’t got any further than that.

‘I see—business. Of course. What else?’

Sarah’s voice was cold and tight. If he didn’t know better, he’d have said she sounded disappointed. Which might have pleased him when he had first reached the house—when he’d still had hopes and illusions of a future. Before the appearance of Jason and his obvious familiarity with Sarah’s bedroom had shattered those illusions.

‘You know me, ghineka mou,’ he shot back. ‘Always busy, making deals, signing contracts.’

‘Acquiring land?’ Sarah returned with even more bite in her tone. Whatever disappointment she had been feeling a moment before, if disappointment was the right word, it was now totally submerged under the angry bitterness that blazed from her eyes. ‘Built any nice extensions to your hotels lately, Damon?’

‘Not since you left, my love,’ he returned, his tone dripping saccharine-sweetness. ‘And, as I recall, you never signed the papers agreeing to the one that I wanted.’

‘No, I didn’t, did I? That must have made things rather awkward for you.’

Damon’s smile in reply to the barbed comment was grim, tight, totally without any warmth.

‘No more awkward than they were already, agape mou. I told you then that your ownership of that land was not why I married you.’

‘I know what you told me, husband, dear, but I also know what I believe.’

Let him think that what had driven them apart was the piece of land that the Nicolaides Corporation coveted most on all the island of Mykonos. That was the reason she had given him for leaving in the letter she had left behind, the one she had clung to when he had come after her in a towering rage, demanding that she return at once. That and the fact that she had grown tired of their marriage, bored with life on the small Cyclades island. And it was one she would far rather have him believe than the actual, the hatefully painful truth.

‘Admit it, it was remarkably inconvenient for you that I discovered that the land my grandfather had left me was just the part of the island that you wanted. Especially when the old man had declared to your father’s face that he would rather die than sign the land over to anyone from your family.’

Her grandfather had been half Greek on his mother’s side. Through that line he had inherited the land on Mykonos. The land in question lay between two of the Nicolaides Corporation’s smaller hotels, and it had been a long-held ambition of both Damon and his father to link the hotels into one spectacular resort by building across the empty space. But Alexander Meyerson’s mother’s family had had a long-running feud with the Nicolaides clan, one that he had held fast to in spite of the increasingly huge amounts offered in exchange for the tiny portion of the island he owned, much to Aristotle Nicolaides’ increasing frustration.

So when Damon had learned that Sarah, as her grandfather’s only heir, would now own the land on Mykonos, he had come looking for her.

And she, poor blindly besotted fool that she was, had made matters so much easier for him by falling head over heels madly in love.

‘How you must have cursed those lawyers who wrote and let me know about my luck before you’d had time to get me to sign on any dotted lines.’

‘It was certainly, as you said—inconvenient,’ Damon growled, his stunning features setting into a dark frown. ‘But it was not necessarily fatal. Or it need not have been if you had only stayed to talk things over with me, or come back…’

‘Come back!’ Sarah couldn’t hold back the exclamation of shock and disgust that was pushed from her lips by his outrageous declaration. ‘Come back to a marriage that had never been a real one right from the start? That was built on nothing but lies and deceit? A marriage that you had been determined not to let anyone know about because you were ashamed of it?’

‘Not ashamed!’ Damon flung at her. ‘It just would have been…difficult to make our marriage public at that point.’

‘I’ll bet it would! Well, perhaps in the end I ought to thank you for that. After all, you spared me a lot of humiliation and the adverse publicity that I might have had to put up with if people had found out that we were married. Now all I have to do is wait for the legalities to be sorted out and we can be divorced as quietly as we were married. Excuse me.’

She tried to sweep past him, only to have to come to an awkward halt as he blocked her way, coming between her and her path across the hall.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Upstairs.’

‘Why?’

‘Is it any business of yours?’

‘Humour me.’

Seeing the stubborn, unmoving set of his face, the taut line of his hard jaw, she sighed her exasperation, knowing only too well that he had no intention of letting her pass until she told him something.

‘I want to go and strip the sheets off the bed that—that Jason and his fancy piece used!’

Distaste curled her lip, tasted bitter on her tongue.

‘I have to put them in the wash immediately—though if I’m honest I’d prefer to burn the damn things!’

To her relief Damon sidestepped neatly, moving out of her way, but as she mounted the first of the stairs she realised that he was right there behind her, following close on her heels.

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘No!’

But he totally ignored her protest and just kept on coming.

‘Damon…’

She whirled on the stairs until she was facing him. Looking down into his handsome face, she saw the determination stamped hard on it, the unyielding set to his jaw.

‘I don’t need you!’

Just the thought of having this man, the man who had been her husband for such a brief time, follow her into her bedroom spoke of an intimacy that she was totally unwilling to allow herself to recall. I don’t want you, she should have said. But the words had other, much more disturbing implications that meant her voice would not actually speak them with the conviction she needed.

‘It’ll be easier with two,’ Damon returned, and just kept on coming so that she was obliged to skip backwards hastily up the stairs if she was not to have him collide with her.

‘I’ve done it by myself many times…’

‘I’m sure you have.’

Another step upwards necessitated another couple of hasty jumps back and away to avoid a crash.

‘But I’m here now, so there’s no reason for you to have to do it alone today.’

‘Damon, it’s my room!’

Exasperation, a touch of breathlessness from the undignified scramble up the staircase, and a shockingly sensitive awareness of the man below her put a betraying shake into her voice. The physical strength of his chest and shoulders was emphasised from this angle, the gleam of the sunlight on the dark waves of his hair made it shine like glossy silk, and the flash of white teeth as he grinned up at her was startling against the olive skin of his face.

‘Sarah, it’s my house!’ he retorted, with an infuriatingly deliberate echo of her own tone, her own emphasis.

And what could she say in response to that? There was no answer she could give him. At least not one that he would accept, pay any heed to. It was his house, and that was the fact. She hadn’t wanted to take anything from him, but she had desperately needed a roof over her head. And for all she knew Damon had already built on her disputed land. He was perfectly capable of ignoring any morality in the case and just going right ahead.

With inelegant haste she hurried up the remaining stairs and arrived safely on the landing, facing him with determined defiance.

‘You said I could live here!’ she protested, and shivered as she saw a dark tide of change cross his face, shadowing his eyes.

‘I said you could live here,’ he acceded. ‘Not you and sundry assorted hangers-on.’

Now was the time to tell him the truth, Sarah knew. The time to point out that, no matter how it had seemed, Jason had had neither her agreement nor her permission to be in the house. At least not in her bedroom, and certainly not in her bed.

So why did the words stick in her throat? Why could she not just fling them in his face and be done with it?

Because he had no right to interfere in her life. He had given up any rights to that when he had betrayed her trust and treated her as a thing, a chattel, something to be used for his own ends, not as a true wife of his heart.

Wife of his heart!

Hah! That was a joke. A very sick, very black sort of joke. One that slashed at her heart, her soul, like a rusty knife, reopening old wounds that had barely even begun to heal.

She had never really been Damon’s wife, not in the truest sense of the word—not in any sense of the word, except perhaps the sexual one. She had been his wife in bed and nowhere else. He had wanted her physically. There was no way he could have hidden, or faked, the passionate desire he had felt for her. And that must have made the rest of his scheme so much easier for him to carry out.

The pain that came along with the rush of memory drove all thought of common sense from her mind and instead had her spitting at him in blind rage.

‘And I suppose that you’ve been living a pure and celibate life for the last six months!’

He actually looked taken aback by her attack. It even silenced him, and she watched him withdraw into himself, shutters coming down behind the gleaming jet eyes, hiding his thoughts from her.

‘Nothing to say, Damon? I thought not. Ever heard of the saying about pots calling kettles black?’

‘I know the saying, yes. But I do not see its relevance to the current situation.’

He had the nerve to look innocent—and it was unnerving just how innocent he could appear, with his deep, dark eyes wide open in apparent ingenuousness.

For a brief second Sarah closed her own lids against the pain of memory. Against the hated recollection of the moment that Aristotle Nicolaides had revealed the truth about his son’s relationship with Eugenia Stakis. About the marriage that had been planned for so long and that would unite the fortunes of the two Greek dynasties as well as the two lovers. In a moment, he had explained just why Damon had insisted that this pragmatic, purely business deal of a marriage should be kept secret from everyone.

But of course Damon didn’t even know that his poor deceived wife had any knowledge of his machiavellian behaviour and so he still thought he could get away with pretending he was blameless.

‘Of course you don’t.’

Opening her eyes again, but carefully avoiding meeting any lying glance that Damon might send in her direction, she swung away, turning her attention to the rumpled bed before her.

‘I didn’t give Jason free run of my house!’ she said abruptly, covering the savage bite of misery with a sudden rush into action as she snatched up a pillow and shook it roughly out of its pale gold case. ‘And I certainly wouldn’t even have given him a key if I’d known the use he was going to put it to.’

‘But, as you’ve made only too plain, the way you’ve lived your life this past six months is no business of mine.’

Damon’s voice had grown colder by the second. Now it sounded positively glacial, sending icy shivers sliding down Sarah’s spine.

She managed some unintelligible murmur that he could take as agreement or not as he wished and dumped the denuded pillow on the floor, flinging the cotton case after it. It was as she reached for the crumpled sheet that a sudden recollection of how she had felt as she’d stood outside on the landing and heard the sound of Jason’s voice attacked without warning, making her sway weakly, fingers clenching on the bedding until the knuckles showed white.

‘Sarah?’

Damon must have been watching her every move because he stepped forward, reaching her before she had even realised herself that she was no longer steady on her feet.

‘Sarah!’ he said again, his voice rough with some emotion that she couldn’t begin to name.

There was anger in there, but at who? And it was blended with a whole range of feelings that made her head whirl just trying to separate them.

But she was weak enough not to resist when he gathered her into his arms, held her close against him, her cheek resting on his shirt, one hand cradling the back of her head.

‘Sarah, the bastard isn’t worth it! Don’t waste your tears on him.’

Tears?

Somehow Sarah edged a hand up to touch her face and find that Damon had spoken nothing less than the truth. Her skin was wet with tears that she had been unaware of letting escape, her eyelashes spiked into damply clinging clumps.

They were the tears that had been threatening ever since she had pushed open the bedroom door a crack and seen Jason—the man who had said that all he wanted was to heal her broken heart—naked in bed with another woman. She would feel better if she could let them fall. If she could simply give in to her feelings and, abandoning all restraint, weep her heart out on Damon’s supportive shoulder.

It was a dangerously tempting prospect and one she was having to struggle fiercely against, because if she did start crying then she knew the interpretation that Damon would put on it. The only interpretation that he believed was possible.

He would think that she was crying for Jason.

He would believe that the other man had callously broken her heart by being caught in her bed with his mistress in the middle of the afternoon.

He would curse him, call him every name under the sun, possibly even threaten vengeance on him. In fact, if she knew this husband of hers, estranged or not, he might actually try to take off after Jason and then she would have to hold him back, beg him to stay.

And if she did that then she knew it would destroy her.

There could never have been a good moment for Damon to reappear in her life, but this afternoon had to be the worst one possible.

At last she had thought that she was finally growing a new, protective skin over the wounds that this man had inflicted on her in their short marriage. Only this morning she had told herself that she was gradually starting to get her life back under her control again, get things in order, consider the prospect of beginning again without dissolving into total misery. She had a good job as PA to Rhys Morgan, an international art dealer and owner of a hugely prestigious gallery here in London. Jason seemed to have set himself to charming her out of the black depression into which she had fallen since her return from Greece. And, most important of all, the husband she had adored, and who had taken her love and used it for his own totally selfish ends, was thousands of miles away, on the Greek island he called home.

The only reason Jason had been in the house at all today was because she had been expecting an important delivery. The freezer in the kitchen had died with a spectacularly dramatic waste of food, and she had had to buy another. But when she had been asked to go in to the gallery to cover for a sick workmate, she’d thought she would have to cancel the delivery until Jason, who had recently been made redundant from his own job, had stepped in and offered to wait for it instead. They had been out on a couple of what he called dates but in her eyes they were little more than friends.

‘I’m not doing anything important,’ he’d said. ‘Only checking the jobs pages—I can do that as easily at your place as I can at home.’

But then she had come home unexpectedly early, having been given the afternoon off by an unusually preoccupied Rhys, who had clearly wanted to be anywhere but in the office, and she had seen Jason’s car parked outside as she had walked up the street towards the house. Some instinct had kept her silent as she opened the door, crossed the hall. A faint noise from the first floor, the sound of laughter—another woman’s laughter—had drawn her to the stairs, and she had mounted them in silence.

‘This is the life, Jace! I could really get to like this!’ The woman’s voice had floated out clearly to her as she reached the top, and set foot on the thick blue carpet of the landing.

‘Well, don’t get too comfortable, honey.’ Jason’s drawling, upper-class tones had been unmistakable. ‘The prissy Ms Meyerson will be home by five—and you’ll have to get your pretty little butt out of here well before then.’

‘I wish I didn’t have to! I don’t like sharing you with her, Jacey. I really don’t.’

‘And I don’t like wasting my time with her either, sweetie,’ Jason had hastily assured her. ‘But the lady is loaded! Look at this house for a start. It’s huge, and in this part of London it must be worth a fortune! She has to be worth millions. And she’s almost mine. She’s already given me a key so that I can come and go as I please. Another couple of weeks and I’ll have her eating out of my hand…’

And it was then that she had known. Known that whoever it was who had said that lightning didn’t strike twice had been absolutely right.

Because even as she had listened to Jason and his witchy girlfriend planning to play on her emotions simply to use her, she had realised that she just didn’t care. That in spite of her barely formed hopes, her dreams of starting again, Jason didn’t mean a thing to her, and his greedy, grasping plans even less.

No, the shock that had ripped through her, shattering her composure and destroying all that hard-won peace of mind, was the realisation that it had all been just a delusion. That her hopes of a new life, of a new beginning, putting behind her the pain and the betrayal of the past, were built on the shaky foundations of self-deceit. She was no more ‘over’ Damon than she was capable of flying to the moon.

And if she had any room for doubt, any hope of being wrong, that hope had been totally destroyed in the moment that she had blundered into Damon’s arms and into the feeling that she had come home.

She had fallen totally, blindly and irrevocably in love with Damon Nicolaides in the first seconds that she had ever seen him, and nothing that had happened had changed that. He had taken her heart prisoner and he still held it captive in his strong, powerful hands. All the dreaming of a future, of a new life, had been just a fantasy, one that had evaporated like mist before the sun at the first touch of reality.

The reality was that she loved Damon desperately and she always would, while he had never felt anything for her but the searing passion that had driven him to take her to his bed. And even that had been a complication he hadn’t looked for, hadn’t wanted in his campaign to use her to get what he wanted.

It was for that reason and that alone that she now wanted to weep. To try to wash away the savage pain in her heart under the rush of tears.

And of course she could do nothing of the sort for fear of betraying herself totally to the man who was responsible for that anguish in the first place.

CHAPTER THREE

WHAT the hell was he doing? Damon asked himself furiously, suddenly convinced that he had made the worst move possible since he had come into this house.

Getting hold of Sarah like this had to have been the dumbest, the craziest, the most ill-judged thing he could have done. And he was regretting it savagely.

Or was he?

His thoughts might be screaming the need for caution, but in his senses it didn’t feel like regret.

It had been bad enough when she had blundered into his grasp downstairs and he had let his arms close around her, holding her tight. He had known exactly what he was doing then. He’d been supremely conscious of Jason the rat standing there in the hallway beside them, watching every move. And those moves had been deliberately calculated for their maximum effect on the other man.

But they had had plenty of effect on him too. It had been impossible to hold this woman, to feel the satin warmth of her skin, inhale the sweet, clean scent of her body, and not react in the most primitively masculine way. Even now, his body still ached with the memory of the instant, savage hardening, the tightness that had twisted at his guts. The thought of how it had once been.

How easy it would once have been simply to fold her in his arms, lift her from the floor, carry her over to the bed. He could lower her to the mattress, come down beside her…

‘Damon?’

There was a hesitation in Sarah’s voice, a questioning note that asked, without any more words being needed, just what he thought he was doing.

What did he think he was doing?

What was he doing?

He was holding Sarah in the way that he had dreamed of, hungered for, over the past six months. He had her in his arms again and her hair was like silk under his cheek, her breath a warm whisper across his skin. When she spoke, her soft mouth came dangerously close to the strong muscle that corded his neck. If he moved—just an inch—then her lips would touch, would caress, would entice…

‘Damon—please!’

It was the note of breathless protest on the words that told him how, unthinkingly, his hold on her had tightened, driving the air from her slender body, almost crushing the delicate bones of her ribcage.

‘Sighnomi—I’m sorry…’ he murmured, but he still couldn’t let her go.

For a second he eased his hold on her, then almost immediately tightened it again, so fiercely that her head came up sharply, wide, startled green eyes looking up into his in an expression of shock.

‘No, I’m not sorry,’ he muttered, the words rough and thick. ‘Do you know how long I’ve wanted this? Dreamed of it?’

The nights had been the worst. The nights when once he had lain awake, the pulsing throb of sexual satisfaction slowly, gradually ebbing from his satiated senses. He had never been able to sleep, because even when he had just experienced the wild, primal explosion of the fiercest climaxes he had ever known he had still been unable to surrender to the weary satisfaction that engulfed his body.

Instead he had always had to lie there; to prop his head up slightly on the pillow so that he could watch her drift into sleep. And even just watching her had been a sensual act in itself.

His gaze had drifted from the high, smooth forehead, down over her softly closed eyelids, where the long, thick lashes lay like feathered crescents on the pale skin of her cheeks. He had traced the warm, sensual curve of her mouth, the sweet line of her jaw and chin, the length of her throat. And when his eyes had moved to the rich curves of her body, to the swell of her breasts and hips, still stained with the afterglow of their passion, then his body had hardened all over again, threatening to throw off the satiated sense of fulfilment in a second and start to clamour all over again for something more. For the renewal of the pleasure his senses had known; to climb once again to the peak of ecstasy that he had experienced during the night. He always ended up wanting her again with even more hunger than he had felt the very first time.

Theos! He felt that way now. His body was on fire; he had never felt so viciously hard, so brutally hungry. If she moved against him, it was blissful agony, making him grit his teeth hard against the groan of tortured response.

‘Damon—you’re hurting me.’

‘Huh?’

Jolted from the fever of his memories, he looked down at her through passion-glazed eyes, struggling to focus. Her face was turned up towards his and her eyes were huge and emerald-brilliant against her pale skin.

‘Sighnomi…’ he began, then broke off violently. His hands clenched on her arms again, giving her a small, reproving shake.

‘Maybe I want to hurt you—I want you to know how I feel. To understand what it’s been like…’

‘I do…I do…’

Kristos! Had he put those tears into her eyes? Had he made them spill out from under her lids until they soaked the fine skin of her cheeks? They didn’t run down her face, but simply lay, like a soft sheen, glistening in the afternoon sunlight, a silent but eloquent reproach.

‘Sarah!’

Her name escaped his lips like a sigh in the same moment that his proud, dark head bent, his mouth coming down, making her jump like a startled deer.

It was his gentleness that was shocking. It was so totally unexpected and so much at odds with the hard, heated pressure of the fiercely aroused body that was crushed so tightly against hers.

But his lips were soft and gentle, tenderly kissing away the tear stains from her face, pressing her eyelids shut and brushing the lingering salt drops from her lashes. And it seemed to Sarah that with them went her fury and distress, the need to fight seeping from her like air from a pricked balloon.

‘Oh, Damon…’

Her breath caught in her throat, escaping on a small, choking cry, a sound of surrender. She subsided softly against him, feeling the need of his support, deeply grateful for his strength holding her when she couldn’t stand alone.

Overwhelmed by all that she had just realised, she buried her face in his shirt, not knowing whether she needed to hide or simply to get much closer to him, burrowing into security like some small, vulnerable creature. She felt his mouth drift over her tumbled auburn hair, the warmth of his breath on the delicate curl of her outer ear. The clean, faintly musky scent of his skin tormented her with the memories it evoked, the heat of his body surrounding her like a protective cloak.

And with the memories came the awakening of need, the savage burn of hunger.

‘Damon…’

Even in her own ears, the sound of his name had changed totally. It was no longer the soft, submissive surrender, but a sharpened sound of longing, of demand. And as she spoke she drew in her breath on a sobbing gasp, turning her face to him once more.

‘Damon, please—kiss me. Kiss me properly.’

‘Kiss you—’

It was raw and thick, hopelessly roughened at the edges.

‘Oh, lady…’

She didn’t know who moved first, whether his dark head came down hard and fast or her own lifted to his as swiftly. She only knew that in the space of a swift, thudding heartbeat, their mouths had met and clashed and crushed so fiercely that she almost expected to see sparks fly up into the air from their joining.

All the loneliness, all the yearning, all the misery of the past six months was in that kiss. All the memory of the long, empty days and the cruel, bleak nights swelled up inside her, rose, and spilled out fiercely like red-hot lava erupting from a volcano and surging, wild and unstoppable, down the slopes of the mountain.

They snatched at each other’s mouths, nipped, bit, came apart to draw in deep, ragged breaths, then rushed together again, unable to stay apart. It was like a fight for survival more than any sort of caress. Like a wild, primal mating ritual that had nothing of the civilised or of courtship in it, only raging need, uncontrollable craving, the desperation of having lost once and the terrible fear that it could happen all over again.

‘I want you,’ Damon muttered harshly against her mouth. ‘Want you—want you…’

His command of language seeming to desert him, he broke into Greek, alternating the words of his native tongue with his suddenly roughened and disjointed English in a raw and incoherent litany of desire.

And Sarah could do nothing but nod again and again, her own mouth only capable of forming the word ‘yes’, repeated with the gathering intensity of a growing thunder storm, a counterpoint to his harsh declaration.

‘Yes, Damon, yes, yes, yes…’

This was all she would ever have of Damon, was the phrase that ran through Sarah’s head. If she could only have today and this elemental, primitive passion that had flared between them, then she would take it and welcome it and enjoy it for as long as she was able.

No, enjoy was not the right word. It came nowhere close to describing this starving hunger, this aching, desperate need.

This feeling was as essential to her as each raw, painful breath she dragged into her burning lungs between each hungry kiss. Without it she could never live, only exist. And yet at the same time she felt each moment of contact, each desperate caress, as torment in her soul, ripping and shredding, increasing the emptiness in her heart in the same second that it appeased the hunger in her body.

‘I want you too, Damon. I’m desperate for you…desperate…’

Her hands spoke for her when she could no longer string two coherent words together. Grabbing at the soft white cloth of his polo shirt, she wrenched it free of the waistband of his trousers, roughly pushing it aside so that her greedy hands could have free access to the bronzed skin she sought, her fingers almost scrabbling his clothing out of the way in her rush to touch him.

‘Sarah—sweetheart—angel…’

There was a shaken, rough note of laughter threading through Damon’s vain attempt at a protest, and the hands he brought up to try and catch at hers, to still them, or at the very least to slow their frantic, urgent movements, were as unsteady as his words.

‘There’s no need to rush—we have all day, the night…’

But even as he spoke, his own actions denied the muttered restraint, the urge to caution.

His movements mirroring Sarah’s, he pushed her blouse up and away from her skirt. The ominous wrenching, tearing sound told of the fact that he had completely forgotten that hers was not a stretchy T-shirt, and a second later there were several soft thuds as broken buttons flipped away and bounced on the dressing table, the window sill, the floor.

‘Forgive me…’

He sounded only vaguely apologetic. If anything, he was even more distracted than before, his attention on the few remaining fastenings that still needed undoing.

‘I will buy you…Theos…’

The words died on his lips, and he froze into a sudden stillness. His silence tugged on her nerves, forcing her eyes to his face, to see the absorbed, intent expression there as he stared down at what his impatient movements had exposed.

The wrenched and torn shirt lay askew and gaping over her chest. Below the pale green material, the creamy flesh of her breasts was lifted up and forward by the pink satin and lace of her bra, openly displayed for his gaze to feast on.

‘I had forgotten how lovely you were. Or, rather, I had remembered, but feared that my memory had played tricks on me. I told myself that you could not be so beautiful…’

Jet-black eyes, in which the golden flames of desire burned savagely, lifted and blazed into her hazy green ones. And Sarah felt her heart flip over inside her as she saw the hunger and the need he didn’t trouble to disguise.

‘But I was wrong…’

‘You’re—you’re not so bad yourself.’

Sarah’s tongue stumbled over the only words that would form in her mind.

‘You’re beautiful too. Quite beautiful, but…’

‘But…’ Damon echoed ominously, dark eyes narrowing swiftly, straight black brows drawing together in a frown at that impertinent and provocative ‘but’.

‘But you have too many clothes on.’

‘Is that so?’

His quick, flashing grin was almost her undoing. The wide brilliance of it took her breath away, but there was something disturbingly triumphant in it that made her heart flutter in uncertainty.

‘Well, that’s easy to deal with.’

In one swift, efficient movement, he pulled the white polo shirt up and over his head, exposing the bronzed and muscled torso, shadowed with curling black hair, that lay beneath.

Sarah drew in her breath sharply then swallowed it down, her thoughts hazing swiftly. She half lifted her hand then dropped it to her side again, losing her nerve.

Standing there like that, half-naked, only inches away, he was pure sensual temptation. She wanted to touch, wanted desperately to feel the warm, satin texture of his skin under her fingertips, longed to trace the powerful lines of the straight shoulders, the muscles sheathing the strong bones, the broad ribcage. But she didn’t dare. She felt like a child drawn to stick her fingers into a golden fire, yet knowing that she had been warned that to do so would bring devastation down on her head.

‘Go ahead,’ Damon murmured softly. He had caught the look on her face, the longing in her eyes. ‘Go ahead and touch. I won’t bite.’

Sarah closed her eyes against the temptation. But in the same moment she knew she was going to give in to it. She couldn’t stop herself; couldn’t resist it. He might not bite, but she couldn’t help thinking that her own hunger, her own need would. She had been starved of the sight, the feel, the taste of him for six long months. And now she was presented with a feast that only a fool would resist.

Or was it just forbidden fruit like the tree in the Garden of Eden?

But she couldn’t hold back all the same.

Slowly she reached out, still keeping her eyes closed. The moment that her fingertips made contact with hot, smooth skin it had the same startling, fizzing effect as making contact with a live electric current. She almost snatched them back, but then her eyes flew open, looking straight into the deep, opaque gaze of the man in front of her.

‘Go on,’ he encouraged huskily, his tone pure enticement. ‘You know it’s what we both want.’

Her throat was agonisingly dry; her lips felt as if they were cracking, they were so parched. She slicked her tongue over them in an attempt to ease the situation and saw from the faint flicker in the jet-dark stare that he was aware of the small betraying movement. But his gaze never faltered for a moment, holding her mesmerised so that she felt she had no will of her own, but was only capable of following his command.

‘Touch me…’

‘Yes…’

His will was hers anyway, she told herself, shrugging off the tiny pinpricks of doubt. What he wanted was what she wanted.

‘Oh, yes…’

It came out on a long, slow sigh as her fingers trailed down the taut muscle cording his throat and along the hard, straight line of his shoulder. She watched his reaction intently, saw the tiny, involuntary jerk that he was unable to control, and a small, satisfied smile curved her lips.

‘I’ll touch—but only if you promise to do the same.’

Damon made a rough, raw sound deep in his throat as her hands drifted lower.

‘You can be sure of that, lady,’ he muttered hoarsely. ‘Depend on it.’

He gave her free rein to wander where she would, standing still and unflinching under her caress. He swallowed hard when her teasing touch circled first one small, dark male nipple, then the other, making them tighten, harden instantly, his jaw clenching hard against a gasp of response. But a second later he had himself back under control again, though the pulse that beat at the base of his neck and his uneven, ragged breathing betrayed the amount of effort he was having to exert in order to remain that way.

‘You’re very—strong…’ Sarah murmured, deliberately edging the last word with an emphasis that made its double meaning plain. ‘Have you been working out?’

‘Some.’

It rasped from a throat so raw that he sounded as if he hadn’t used his voice in weeks.

He had had to do something to distract his mind from the fact that she had walked out on him with not even a backward glance, without a word of warning. He had come back from a business trip to find a bed that had been empty so long that the sheets were thoroughly chilled, and a note that was even colder, icy as the Arctic. The punishing physical routine he had set himself in the gym had helped to drain the burning energy from his body, leaving him drenched in sweat and limp with fatigue. It had filled hours in the day, but it had done little to ease the hungry longing that clawed at him in the night, keeping him wide awake and in restless torment from his thoughts and his memories.

It was in the darkness that images of her luscious body would come back to haunt him, hardening him in an instant, and refusing to ease the erotic hold they had on him. In the silence of the night he could almost feel her there beside him, hear the soft sound of her breathing. He could recall with agonising accuracy the warmth of her skin, the soft scent of her body, the tiny, wildly arousing murmurs she had made in her sleep as she shifted, stretching with a sensuousness that grabbed at his loins and twisted cruelly. No matter how he had shifted and adjusted his position on the luxurious bed, he had been unable to get comfortable, the hope of sleep just an unattainable fantasy.

‘I—needed the exercise.’

‘I like it…’

She more than liked it. He felt wonderful. He even smelt wonderful, the intensely personal scent of his skin intoxicating her senses in the way that no alcoholic drink, however potent, could ever manage. He felt leaner and harder and more powerful than ever before and it was strangely shocking to have such a fiercely masculine creature standing still and submissive under her lightest touch.

Almost submissive.

She couldn’t deceive herself that he was actually under her control in any way. He was letting her do what she wanted with him right now because it suited him, and only for that reason. If he changed his mind, grew impatient, decided enough was enough, then she would stand as little chance against him as a buzzing fly that he would flick away with arrogant ease.

And it seemed that his patience was fraying, wearing thin.

Her ears, sharpened into acute sensitivity by the burning awareness of everything about him, caught the tiny hiss of a rawly indrawn breath as her wandering fingers drifted lower. She saw the quiver of his tanned flesh, the twitch of long, strong fingers and instinctively tensed in wary apprehension, green eyes locking with burning jet-black.

‘Losing your nerve, darling?’ he questioned huskily.

‘Never…’ she managed, though there was a disturbingly revealing tremble in the word.

His unwavering gaze challenged her to continue and, still with her eyes fixed on his, she let her fingers move again, tracing soft, curving patterns over his skin, drifting across his chest, down—

‘Enough!’

A hard hand snapped out, clamped over hers, stilling the teasing caresses in an instant.

‘Enough,’ he said again. ‘It’s my turn now.’

The hungry possessiveness in his tone turned her bones to water and she had to stumble backwards, sinking weakly onto the bed before she fell. The view she had from this position, of Damon’s lean, muscled waist, the wide leather belt around his waist, the close-fitting jeans where the swollen force of his erection pushed at the taut fabric, did nothing at all to help her regain any sort of composure.

‘Or, rather,’ Damon went on, ‘it’s your turn.’

‘My…?’

With an effort she dragged her gaze from the stretch of blue denim straight in front of her and looked up. And immediately wished she hadn’t.

Standing above her like this, black eyes blazing down into hers, broad shoulders blocking out the light from the window, Damon seemed even bigger, stronger, more powerful, more male, than ever. And when his hands came down onto her shoulders it was all she could do not to flinch away in apprehension.

But all he did was to tug gently at the pale green linen of her shirt, flicking the collar with one contemptuous finger.

‘Now you’re the one who is wearing too many clothes. This will have to go.’

For all the softness in his words, it was clearly a command; one he intended to have obeyed. And Sarah didn’t have the strength or the will to oppose him. Instead, she lifted her hands like someone in a dream, her eyes still fixed on his, and dealt unseeingly with the one remaining button which was all that held the blouse together at the neck. Then slowly, with a natural grace, she let the fine material drop, slithering down the length of her arms to lie in a soft, crumpled pool behind her on the bed.

Damon stayed as still as a marble statue, watching her through hooded eyes. She could feel the burn of his stare on her exposed skin; see the glitter of desire through the lush black lashes.

‘Good…’ he said at last, drawing in one long, deep breath and expelling it on a sigh, ‘for a start… And what about the rest?’

The movement to reach the back fastening of her bra arched her spine, pushing her chest forward, making gold flames flare in the darkness of his gaze. But when she would have slipped the lacy straps down from her shoulders he moved suddenly, his hands coming out again to stop her.

‘No—let me…’

Crouching down in front of her, he hooked his thumbs under the straps, sliding them down over her arms in a blatant caress that made her skin shiver at the promise of delight it held. He took his time about it, watching her for every long, enticing second, so that he couldn’t have been unaware of the way that her eyes widened, and darkened, revealing her inner response to him.

But from the moment that the silky confection dropped away from her, letting her breasts tumble out into the hard heat of his waiting hands, everything changed. In the space of a thudding heartbeat, the atmosphere in the room became electrically charged, heavy with a dark sensuality that was primitive in its force.

‘Theos…’ Damon muttered, almost reverentially. ‘You are so lovely…’

His hands closed over soft flesh, cupping, smoothing, caressing, and Sarah moaned aloud at just the delight of his touch.

She had been starved of this. Hungered for it. And after so long an abstinence, the feeling of joy overwhelmed her. It rushed straight to her brain like the effects of some potent alcoholic spirit and she felt her head swim uncontrollably.

Heat coiled in the pit of her stomach, spiralled through her body, and she closed her eyes the better to experience the glorious sensations. Leaning back on her hands, she concentrated fiercely on what was happening to her, hearing the roughly muttered words in Greek in the same moments that she felt his mouth speaking them against her skin.

And then there was silence as the heat and softness of his lips closed over one nipple, his tongue circling it, arousing it, waking it to tight, yearning sensitivity. And only when it peaked in hungry demand did he take it fully into his mouth and suckle hard.

‘Damon…’

The sound of his name was a swooning cry of surrender blended with an unspoken demand for more of the same. And yet when he moved his dark head to devote the same attention to the other breast, the erotic blend of stinging pleasure flooded so wildly through her that she felt she might actually lose consciousness from the joy of it.

‘Damon…’

It was stronger now, harder, needier. And that need pushed her from simply taking, accepting the pleasure that he was giving her, into wanting to give, to return the delight she was experiencing, and reduce him to the same molten, mindless, abandoned state.

‘Let me kiss you…’

Her hands clenched tight in the ebony silk of his hair, clutching at thick handfuls and pulling him upwards, forcing his head up towards hers.

‘Kiss me,’ she muttered fiercely, struggling to drown the anguished protest of every fiercely awakened nerve at the abrupt cessation of the pleasure they had known under another, different, but equally drugging sort of delight.

The pressure of Damon’s mouth against her own crushed her lips open, hot tongues tangling, two breaths mixing into one. And if it hadn’t been for the support of his hands at the back of her head, holding her upright, she would have tumbled back onto the mattress behind her, falling under the hot, heavy weight of his strong body.

Damon went with her willingly, following her muttered demands with a sense of relief. His beleaguered body needed some moments to gather its resources, recover some degree of control. If he didn’t then this lovemaking would be over before it began. As it was, he was more than tempted to simply fling her back onto the bed, force her skirt up, rip away the flimsy silk and lace barrier that came between him and the secret, female core of her, and bury himself deep and hard inside her welcoming body.

And that would be all he would be capable of doing. He knew that as soon as his flesh touched hers, in the seconds that the hot, slick sheath closed around him, he would be lost. He would come in a wild, uncontainable rush, all thought, all possibility of restraint leaving him in a split-second.

And so now he plundered her mouth instead of her body, seeking the moments needed to draw breath, get himself back in hand, so that he could make this into the experience it should be for both of them.

But she wasn’t making it easy for him. In the same seconds that her mouth opened under his, inviting his intimate invasion, her hands started wandering, visiting all the most sensitive parts of his body, sparking off explosive reactions wherever they touched. He was kneeling astride her, his legs on either side of hers on the bed, the mattress giving under their joint weight. His chances of staying in control were reduced from low to impossible in between one breath and another, and when she fell back amongst the tangled bedclothes, still clutching at him, he had no choice but to go with her.

As they rolled together, twisting, turning so that he ended up as the one on his back, Sarah on top, he felt her hands move to his waist, tugging and pulling at the buckle of his belt.

‘Sarah!’

Her name was pushed from him on a breath that combined laughter and protest, a tiny sense of desperation creeping in at the thought of how things had got so hot so fast.

He should be thinking—trying to think! This wasn’t what he had planned on—or was it?

What had he planned on? He didn’t know—couldn’t remember—frankly, didn’t care.

With a smothered half laugh, half groan of surrender, he gave up the attempt at using his mind and flung his arms open wide, stretching them out on the bed so that she could have free access to what was left of his clothing.

And froze as his left hand made contact with something cold and hard and metallic.

‘What the hell…?’

It was partly hidden under the pillow, just a small section of chain sticking out across the sheet, and as he pulled on it he twisted his head to one side to see what it was.

A chain.

A thick, heavy-linked gold chain, with a circular St Christopher medal hanging from it.

A very masculine gold chain.

The sort of chain he could well imagine Jason the rat wearing.

And as he moved his head again he caught the heavy, musky aroma of some overly potent aftershave that was still clinging to the pillow covers. He recognised that scent immediately. It had been thick on the air downstairs—when Jason had come close as he walked past and out the door.

From being close to white heat, his blood cooled immediately, freezing in his veins. All trace of desire left him in a rush, to be replaced by a volatile mixture of cold fury, bitter betrayal and sheer blind frustration. Nausea grabbed at his stomach, making it twist violently.

‘Damon?’

Sarah had noticed the change—how could she not? Her hands had stilled at his waist, the belt buckle lying open, and she lifted cloudily questioning eyes to his face.

‘What?’

He didn’t speak, couldn’t speak. He could only lift his hand, the chain and medallion dangling from his fingers.

All colour leached from Sarah’s face, leaving her ashen, tinged with a ghastly cast of green. The next moment she recoiled violently, almost throwing herself off the bed, scrambling inelegantly in her haste to get away.

Damon wasn’t far behind her.

He felt sick. Sick, disgusted and damn well used. Twisting his long, lean body, he jackknifed off the other side of the bed to stand, blind black fury stamped on his face, glaring at her across the room.

‘Whose is this?’

He didn’t need to ask, of course. Didn’t need his already certain suspicions confirming. But he had to ask—to say something, no matter what.

Sarah wouldn’t meet his eyes. If he felt sick then she looked even worse.

‘You—you know…’

‘Answer me!’

Sarah couldn’t find the strength to say a single thing. Bitterly conscious of her half-undressed state, the way that her hair was ruffled and tangled, the dishevelled condition of her skirt, she grabbed at the lilac towelling robe that lay over a chair and clutched it tight against her, gaining some morsel of strength at least from its protection.

‘Whose…?’ Damon repeated, ominous threat lacing every letter of the word.

‘J-Jason’s!’

He knew, damn him. He didn’t need to ask!

But what he didn’t know—and didn’t trouble to ask—was that the only reason Jason’s medallion had been in the bed was because the other man had been up here this afternoon—with Andrea. Never, ever with Sarah herself. Though that was the accusation that was etched savagely onto his face.

And his next words proved as much.

‘Jason’s,’ he repeated, spitting the name out as if it was poison. ‘Jason—your lover—’

‘No!’

‘No, not any more perhaps. Not since he spoiled things by playing away from home. Or, rather, at home…’

The grim humour in his tone, the glint of something demonic in his eyes threw her completely. How could he laugh?

But then Damon looked down at the rumpled, dishevelled bed, and all trace of humour, black or otherwise, vanished in the blink of an eye.

‘How could you?’

It was low and savage, a brutal, slashing demand with danger in every word.

‘How the bloody hell could you?’

‘How could I what, Damon?’

Her lips felt so stiff and tight that they might as well have been made of wood for all the expression she could put into the cold little voice.

‘How could I do—what?’

If he truly believed what she suspected then he was going to have to say it. If he thought that she was capable of the appalling crime that had stamped that expression onto his stunning features, then he was going to have to accuse her of it to her face. She wasn’t going to give him a chance to slide out of things later by claiming I never said that.

‘Tell me.’

‘You were actually prepared to make love to me in the bed that you normally share with your boyfriend!’ he flung at her in pure ‘you asked for it’ tones. ‘The sheets were barely cold—’

‘From his assignation with his girlfriend!’

Her stomach lurched queasily at just the thought.

‘So you thought you’d do what? Have your revenge with me in the same place that he’d betrayed you? What is it you call it? Tit for tat?’

‘No! It wasn’t anything like that!’

She felt so ill that she couldn’t control her tongue in any way, letting it run away with her totally.

‘And don’t you dare call what just happened making love! We both know it wasn’t anything like that!’

‘We certainly do.’

After the hard incisiveness of his anger, the deliberately lazy drawl was viciously insulting.

‘There was nothing of love in that. All you were after was a quick—’

A swift glance at her face had him cutting off the crude description abruptly.

‘It was lust, nothing more.’

She’d known that all along; had been under no illusion from the start. But still it hurt so very much to hear him state his lack of feeling quite so openly and bluntly.

‘But then we both knew that already.’

He had the nerve—the vicious nerve—to smile, directing the icy, humourless look straight into her clouded green eyes.

‘Of course,’ Sarah responded tightly, and he nodded his satisfaction. The smile faded, turning his mouth into a grim, hard line.

‘At least we agree on something.’

Stooping, he snatched up his shirt from the floor and pulled it over his head. The brusque, decisive way he tucked it into the waistband of his jeans, pulling the belt tightly shut over the top, put a firm, cold stop to the passion that had flared so briefly and yet so wildly between them.

Not that he needed to bother, Sarah told herself miserably. She had never felt less passionate in all her life. Shaken and shivery after the desperate assault on her senses, the sudden, brutal halt to her arousal, she was distinctly unsteady on her feet. Her legs felt weak and hollow, lacking the strength to hold her upright. But she had to stay where she was. At least until Damon left.

She would rather die than have him see just how appalling she felt. So she tried to copy him by pulling on the robe she held, belting it so tightly round her waist that she pinched the skin underneath painfully.

‘It was a mistake we should be glad we never made.’

‘Absolutely.’

Damon’s glare threatened to shrivel her right where she stood and bitterness and pain at his hypocrisy stabbed straight to her already wounded heart. The anguish pushed her into wild, unthinking words.

‘Since when did you get so picky?’

‘Picky?’

For a rare moment he frowned his incomprehension.

‘I didn’t put you down as the fastidious type!’ Sarah elaborated cynically. The memory of Eugenia, beautiful, dark, exotic Eugenia, her looks so unlike Sarah’s very Celtic pallor and red hair, gave her words an added bitter bite.

‘I’m not just some sexual opportunist.’

‘Of course not! You were just driven wild with passion for me!’

‘So wild that I stupidly forgot what you are,’ Damon muttered darkly.

‘What I am…?’

Sarah froze in horror at his tone, looking into the carved coldness of his face, trying to read what was behind the black rejection in his eyes—and failing miserably.

‘What am I, Damon?’

The look he flung at her said so plainly, You know what you are, that she almost thought she had heard the words spoken aloud, and she started in shocked surprise when he actually answered her as well.

‘The sort of woman who will take a new man to bed when the door has barely closed on her last lover.’

‘A new…’

Sarah swallowed hard but still the words seemed to gather in a tight knot in her throat.

‘A new man!’ she managed to croak. ‘But you’re not a new man, are you, Damon, darling? You’re the past—over and done with. Nothing to me any more—or ever again.’

And right now she wished that it were true. At this moment she longed to be able to go back to the wonderful, if fleeting, days of peace she had known when she had thought that she was over Damon. That she had put their brief and unhappy marriage behind her and was ready to move on into the future.

But the truth was that she couldn’t. And the volatile mixture of love and hatred that she felt was boiling up inside her, creating a violent volcano of emotion over which she had no control at all.

‘Not quite the past, agape mou,’ Damon tossed back with icy contempt. ‘In the eyes of the law you’re still tied to me; I’m still your husband.’

‘And I wish you weren’t! I wish I’d never set eyes on you; never been fool enough to say I’d marry you!’

‘Nevertheless you are still my wife…’

‘No, I’m not!’

That emotive word was just too much for her, driving her into desperate action. Whirling towards the bed, she snatched up the nearest thing to hand—one of the big, feather-stuffed pillows—and flung it straight at him with all the force she could muster.

‘I’m not! I’m not! I’m not!’

Caught off guard, Damon didn’t manage to protect himself from the first attack so that the pillow flew straight at him and hit him hard in the face, temporarily knocking him off balance. But he recovered with incredible speed, righting himself in time to catch both the second and third missile and drop them coolly to the floor.

‘I’m not your wife—not any more! I’d rather be anything else than that! And I don’t give a damn about the law either! All I want is for you to go—get out of here and leave me alone!’

‘OK.’ Damon was surprisingly agreeable, making her blink in stunned confusion at his easy acquiescence. ‘I’ll do that. I need to get my things from the car and bring them in anyway.’

‘Get your…’

That was not what she had meant. And it was certainly not what she wanted!

‘You’re not staying here!’

‘Oh, but I am, sweetheart,’ he returned imperturbably. ‘Where else would I stay?’

‘Anywhere—a hotel…’

‘Don’t be silly, Sarah,’ he chided almost gently. ‘Why would I want to pay out good money for a hotel when I have the whole house at my disposal?’

‘Because I live here!’

‘But it’s my house,’ he reminded her, with a deadly emphasis on that ‘my’. ‘And, that being the case, I have every right to stay here whenever I choose. And there are another five bedrooms to choose from. It’s not as if I’m suggesting that I share your bed.’

‘Over my dead body! I do have some pride!’

Her defiant retort wiped the tolerant look from his face in a second, replacing it once again with the mask of cold black fury that made her quail inwardly in fearful distress.

‘And so do I!’ he snarled savagely. ‘Which is why the first thing that I’m going to do when I get to my room is have a long, hot shower.’

He gave a faint, but definite shudder, a grimace of distaste crossing his strongly carved features.

‘I don’t know about you but I feel distinctly grubby.’

Then, just in case she hadn’t quite got the point he was trying to make, he turned those deep ebony eyes on the bed once more before lifting them to look her straight in the face.

‘I think it will take me quite a while to feel clean again.’

And while Sarah was still gasping in shock and horrified disbelief, unable to find a single word to throw at him, he turned on his heel and strode out of the room, letting the door slam shut emphatically behind him.

‘Ohhhhh!’

With a scream of pure frustration, Sarah flung the last remaining pillow after him, needing to express her pain and anger in some physical way. She managed to retain what was left of her control only for as long as it took for the cushion to land against the wood with a soft, dull thud and tumble softly to the floor, but then all her strength left her. Throwing herself down onto the bed, she pummelled the mattress over and over again with her fists, wishing with all her heart that it was Damon’s cold, uncaring face, the hard wall of his chest that was feeling the force of her blows.

‘I hate him!’ she muttered fiercely, timing each word to the pounding of her fists. ‘I hate, hate, hate him!’

But even as she vented the words, willing herself to believe them, she knew that they were only in her mind. That her heart knew the truth.

And in that truth was the seed of real despair.

Because even now, even hating him for the foul insults he had tossed at her, for his hypocrisy in calling her un-discriminating, with the implication that he believed she was promiscuous, for the way he had seduced her quite callously and unfeelingly, she still couldn’t deny the way she felt about him. She might detest him, but she also loved him desperately. He was as essential to her as the air she breathed, the beat of her heart, to keep her alive. And he always would be.

And as she admitted that to herself, the cleansing rush of anger waned, and in its place was a terrible sense of dread of what the future might hold.

How was she ever going to survive even the next few hours—never mind the possibility of days—with Damon actually living in the same house?

CHAPTER FOUR

IT WAS a terrible struggle for Sarah to get out of bed the next morning.

Not because she had slept heavily. In fact she had hardly slept at all, but had spent most of the night lying wide awake and staring at the ceiling, wondering just what she was going to do. But by the time that dawn came around, and then each hour that passed after it, she was nowhere nearer to coming to any conclusions, and she was most definitely not ready to start the day.

Not with Damon living in the house and determined to stay there, no matter what she said or did.

Any foolish hopes she might have had that he had changed his mind, packed and left during the night, were cruelly dashed in the moments that she heard, dimly through the walls, the sound of his shower working. She was only able to listen to the murmur of the water for a few moments before the rush of memories it brought had her burying her head under the pillows to try and shut it out.

But even then cruel, painfully erotic images assailed her mind, forcing their way into her thoughts until she was gritting her teeth to hold back the cries of pain the recollections threatened to force from her.

Damon would be standing under the pounding water, his tall, powerful body slick and wet. His eyes would be closed, springing black hair plastered down onto his skull, emphasising the shape of the strong bones, the line of his jaw. His long, muscular legs would be planted slightly apart, bronzed skin startling against the white of the shower-stall floor, and his hands would be moving over his chest, spreading soap and foam over the wide ribcage, the narrow hips and down, down…

‘No!’ she moaned aloud, tossing restlessly as a flame of pure physical need shot through her, heating her blood in an instant. ‘No, I mustn’t think…’

But she couldn’t not think, though the pain of her memories was almost more than she could bear.

In the early days of their marriage, Damon had rarely, if ever, showered alone. On the morning after they had shared his bed for the first time, he had woken before her and had silently padded his way on bare feet across the room to the en suite bathroom. Then, as now, the sound of the shower had woken Sarah and, unable to stay where she was, needing desperately to see this man who had come to mean so very much to her in such an amazingly short time, she had followed him, as if attached by a thread that had drawn tight and tugged her close.

He had already been in the shower, the steam from the water clouding the glass so that she could barely see him, and she had pulled open the door just a crack, meaning only to peep in. The faint touch of the cooler air had alerted Damon to her presence, making him turn. Sharply embarrassed by being caught acting like a peeping Tom in this way, Sarah had been about to hurry away, but, seeing her hotly pink face, the blush that washed her cheeks, Damon had laughed in good-humoured amusement.

‘Good morning, little wife,’ he had said softly. ‘Couldn’t you bear to be parted from me even for a second?’

And when she could only shake her head, too tonguetied to be able to utter a word, he smiled a wide, triumphant, arrogantly satisfied grin.

‘I like that,’ he said, his voice thickening noticeably in the same moments that his body hardened, responded to her presence in a hotly aroused manner. ‘I like that a lot.’

And he reached for her, opening the shower door to catch hold of her arm and pull her in under the water with him. Within seconds the fine silk of her nightdress was saturated, plastered against her body like a second skin, the water making it almost totally transparent.

For a brief time Damon contented himself with smoothing the wet material against the lines of her body, the heat of his palms adding to the warmth of the water cascading down on her. When her nipples peaked wantonly, pushing against his hands, he bent his proud head and suckled her hungrily through the soaking silk, sending stinging arrows of pleasure down right to the central core of her being. But very quickly this ceased to satisfy him and he tugged the delicate nightdress from her body, tossing it carelessly to the floor and trampling it underfoot as he pressed her up against the wall of the shower cubicle and pushed his hand down between her legs…

‘No, no, no!’ Sarah moaned again, flinging the pillow against the wall and tossing off the bedclothes, too hot, too jittery to stay still any longer.

She was out of bed and pacing restlessly around the room, struggling to get herself back under control, when she heard a new sound, that of a door closing, way down the long landing that separated them. Damon’s footsteps followed it, moving closer, past her room then down the stairs into the body of the house.

He was up and about, then, and no doubt expecting that soon she too would make her way downstairs to start her day. She couldn’t stay here and hide all morning. But she didn’t know how she was going to face him either.

It took her a long time to force herself to get dressed. Going into the shower was an ordeal that brought hot tears to her eyes, reminding her as it did of the heated scenes she had been recalling only moments before. Not knowing whether it was herself, or Damon, or simply fate that she was furious with and hated most, she reached up and snapped the temperature control from warm to cold, gasping out loud in shock as the icy current pulsed down onto her exposed body.

Five seconds was all it took to drive the erotic memories from her mind. Shivering with cold, shaking all over, she turned the shower off again, and grabbed a towel, rubbing herself dry so roughly that her skin glowed pink from the friction.

But at least she felt more in control, cooler-headed as well as cooler-bodied. And, having pulled on a deep purple long-sleeved T-shirt together with a well-worn and distinctly baggy pair of jeans that had seen much, much better days, she felt stronger too, armoured both physically and mentally. A brisk, no-nonsense brush of her hair before fastening it into a tight pony-tail down her back completed her preparations—no need for fuss and fripperies like lipstick or mascara—and she was ready.

Head high, back straight, chin up, she marched down the stairs, ready to face any and every sort of sarcastic or caustic comment that Damon might decide to throw at her.

So it came as something of a shock when she stalked into the kitchen to find that Damon was not at all in the sort of mood she expected. Instead, he was lounging in a chair at the big oak dining table, long legs stretched out in front of him, his head buried in the financial section of one of the thick Saturday papers. He was even more casually dressed than she was, being still in a navy-blue silky robe, his legs and feet bare, and his strong jaw darkly shadowed with a night’s growth of stubble. He might have showered that morning, but he certainly hadn’t shaved or dressed.

‘Good morning!’

She looked as if she was preparing for battle, or some other sort of terrible ordeal, Damon reflected, slanting a swift sidelong glance in Sarah’s direction from under his eyelashes as she stood hesitating in the doorway. Aggression practically prickled all over her, sending out electrically charged sparks into the atmosphere so that it fizzled with tension.

And she’d clearly slept as badly as he had. There were blue-grey shadows under her amazing eyes and she had pulled her glorious hair back into a severe, ruthlessly controlled style. He knew that style of old. It declared quite clearly that she was not in the mood for any messing about. She was also, obviously, not dressed to kill.

‘Morning,’ he acknowledged easily, his attention apparently still on his paper, as she forced herself across the threshold and into the room.

What would she think if she knew the way that the print was blurring in front of his eyes, growing worse the harder he tried to focus on it? He could only pray that she wouldn’t guess how much of a struggle he was having not to look at her, not to think of the glorious shape of her body beneath the baggy, unflattering clothes, the scent of her skin as it had surrounded him last night.

And didn’t she realise that the dragged-back, schoolmistressy way she wore her hair was in fact a silent challenge to any man with red blood in his veins? It just made him want to pull off the constricting elasticated band that bound the red-gold locks into such confinement. To rip it off and release the tumbling silk of her hair so that it fell loose onto her shoulders. He longed to comb his fingers through its softness, feel it fall around his face, stroke across his chest…

No!

His hands clenched tighter on the sheets of paper he held and the figures in the report he was pretending to read danced before his eyes.

Damn it to hell, he must not think like that! He had let such fantasies into his mind last night, and look where that had got him! Tumbling into bed with her without a thought for the wisdom of his acts; the possible consequences.

Oh, face it, man, you didn’t think at all!

Or at least if he had done then it had been with a far more basic part of his make-up than his intelligence! The part that was reacting only too visibly now, making him shift uncomfortably in his seat, crossing his legs in what he hoped was a casual manner, and drawing the concealing newspaper lower down so as to cover his lap.

Why the devil hadn’t he taken the time to get dressed properly instead of just throwing on this far from covering robe, with only a pair of boxer shorts on underneath? He should have known that he wasn’t in control of his sexual responses where Sarah was concerned. That his body was likely to betray him if she was near.

But he had slept so badly that when he’d finally given up on the attempt to get any rest he’d just forced himself under the shower and then shoved on the dressing gown, thinking only of hot, strong coffee, a much-needed shot of caffeine.

‘There’s coffee in the pot if you want some.’ He tried to say it with a casualness he was very far from feeling.

‘Oh—thanks…’

What else could she say? Having nerved herself for a fight, or at the very least some sort of confrontation, she was thoroughly thrown off balance by his relaxed, almost totally indifferent reaction to her appearance. After the appalling scene in her bedroom the evening before, she hadn’t been able to force herself to go downstairs again, not even to get something to eat. Instead she had made up the bed with clean sheets and pillowcases, and stayed resolutely right where she was, watching mind-numbingly boring television programmes on the small portable set until well after midnight. It was only after she had finally heard Damon switching off all the lights and heading upstairs that she had even tried to settle to sleep.

So his calm nonchalance was the last thing she had expected, anticipating instead some challenge as to what she thought she was up to, or a taunt about her blatant cowardice in hiding away.

‘Would—would you like some more?’

‘Please.’

A hand appeared around the side of the paper, holding out a used, empty mug in her general direction, Damon not even looking up as he continued reading.

‘Thanks,’ he acknowledged briefly as she took it from him.

‘No problem,’ Sarah forced herself to mutter, struggling to resist the urge to fill the mug and then throw it and its contents straight at his uncaring head.

Which was so totally ridiculous when she considered it that she actually laughed out loud. All last night she had wished that Damon had never reappeared in her life. She had longed for him to be anywhere but here. And she had dreaded the prospect of the coming morning which would mean that she had to face him when she fully expected that he would subject her, if not to any physical harassment, at least to some sort of verbal assault that would make her want to curl up and die inside.

So why was she now so annoyed that he was actually ignoring her? Wasn’t it really what she actively preferred? What she should feel most comfortable with? What would make her life a whole lot easier?

‘What’s so funny?’

Damon’s question caught her unawares, making her hand clench so tightly on the coffeepot that it shook precariously in her grasp.

‘What?’

The paper rustled as he finally lowered it to look straight at her and, of course, with the perverse frame of mind she found herself in, she now would have preferred that he had done nothing of the sort.

‘You laughed,’ Damon explained mildly. ‘I was wondering what had amused you.’

‘Oh, just my thoughts.’

Sarah tried for airy carelessness and prayed that she had succeeded. She wasn’t too sure, though, and the way that Damon’s black eyes narrowed sharply warned her that she might actually have sounded revealingly uncomfortable.

‘I—was thinking of something I saw on TV last night…’ she invented rapidly, and was deeply thankful when he apparently seemed to believe her.

At least, he said nothing, but simply shrugged and went back to his paper, bringing it up before his face again as if as some sort of defence against her.

‘It was a comedy programme,’ she embroidered unnecessarily. ‘A funny one.’

‘Obviously.’

The dry comment made her realise how foolish she must be sounding and she forced her attention back on to preparing the coffee. For some strange reason the very simple task suddenly seemed to have acquired complications and difficulties that she had never encountered before. Impossibly, she couldn’t decide whether to put milk in her mug first or the coffee, and instead found herself frozen into immobility as she dithered from one move to the other and back again.

‘I take mine black.’

Unnervingly, Damon had sensed her hesitation, even though he hadn’t lowered the paper again.

‘Coffee—I take it black.’

‘I know that!’

Tension made Sarah’s voice tight and sharp so that she winced inwardly, just hearing it.

‘I remember!’ she added, struggling for calm. ‘It’s not that long ago.’

‘No, it’s not.’

The inflexion he put on the words twisted a knife in Sarah’s heart, eliminating even the faint hint of amusement she had felt earlier. In an awkward, jerky movement she slammed the coffee-mug down on the table beside Damon’s elbow, heedless of the way that some of the hot liquid slopped over the side and onto the table.

Then, purely for something to do and not because she was in any way really hungry, she opened one of the cupboards and pulled out the toaster, dumping it heavily on the worktop.

‘Toast?’ It was brusque to the point of rudeness, but it didn’t even make Damon put down his paper.

‘Please.’

He was regaining some degree of control over his wayward senses, thank God. Another minute and he might actually be able to look in her direction without making a total fool of himself.

Because he was determined he was not going down that road again. Yesterday he had let his libido get the better of him and had ended up feeling a total fool—and dirty into the bargain!

Inwardly, Damon shuddered at the mental image of himself rolling on the bed with Sarah—on the bed that she had been sharing with Jason, for God knew how long. That was not going to happen again!

But what was he going to do?

He’d come here to talk some sense into Sarah, to persuade her to give their marriage a second try. He had expected that it wouldn’t be easy, that she would still be angry and distant because of the way they’d parted. What he hadn’t expected to find was that she’d already moved another man in and was living with him.

Last night he’d vowed to himself that he wasn’t going to stick around. That as soon as the day dawned he would repack the bag he had so recently unpacked and head back to Greece, shaking the dust of London and this house from his feet for good. But the lack of sleep and a need for coffee had delayed him and…

And—face it, you fool! he told himself furiously, recalling his body’s instant reaction to Sarah’s appearance in the doorway, the sound of her footsteps on the stairs.

Face facts!

He wasn’t going to be able just to walk out and not look back, however much he had planned on it. Sarah Nicolaides, the former Sarah Meyerson, had him tangled up in her web of seduction, and no matter how hard he twisted and tugged, the sticky net was coiled tightly round him. So what was he going to do about it?

Of course after yesterday it was unlikely that Jason would be back, but he’d be happier if he thought that the other man was right out of the picture once and for all. If only he could think of some way that he could get Sarah to come back with him to Greece…

‘One slice or two? Butter or margarine?’

Absorbed in his thoughts, he totally missed the tart edge to Sarah’s voice.

‘Two, please. And, yes, butter and…’

The faint thump of something hitting the back of the newspaper and then tumbling to the floor brought him up sharp, making him lower the defensive barrier and actually look at her properly for the first time. His puzzled frown was met by a brilliant emerald glare as Sarah turned a furious face to him.

‘So what did your last slave die of?’ she muttered angrily.

‘Slave?’

Damon made a play of examining the newspaper where whatever missile she had launched at it had struck before heading to the floor. There was a sticky, greasy patch—toast crumbs, butter and… He tested it gingerly with a finger.

‘Lime marmalade! I haven’t tasted that in ages.’

And that was something that Sarah knew only too well. In fact it was the marmalade that had been positively the last straw, driving her to rebel, to lose her temper and finally fling the toast she had prepared for him straight at the newspaper, desperate to bring him out from behind his protective shield.

‘Well, yours is on the floor!’ she snapped, pointing down at the slice of toast that lay, buttered side predictably downwards, at his feet. She found herself wanting desperately to provoke him. To put him into as spiky a mood as she found herself in.

‘My, we are in a bad mood this morning.’

Infuriatingly, Damon seemed totally unprovoked. Instead he appeared mildly amused, a faint gleam of humour lighting in his deep eyes, incensing Sarah even further.

‘What’s the problem, did you—what is that strange saying you have? Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?’

‘It’s get out of bed on the wrong side!’ Sarah flung at him through gritted teeth. ‘As I’m sure you damn well know! Your English has always been just about perfect—so don’t suddenly go all Greek on me! And no, I did not get out of bed on the wrong side!’

‘Then what did happen? Oh…’

Abruptly his expression sobered, the teasing gleam fading from his eyes.

‘I’m sorry. I understand. I was being insensitive.’

‘You were?’

Sarah’s head went back in shock at the sudden change in the man before her. Was she imagining things? Letting her mind deceive her into seeing things she wanted to find in his face? Or was that truly an expression of some sort of sympathy she could read there?

‘Of course. You are missing Jason.’

‘Missing—Jason!’

For a split-second, she actually couldn’t think who he meant. But then memory came back in an unwanted rush.

‘I’m doing no such thing! I was glad to see the back of him!’

Too late she realised, as she saw the softer light die from his eyes, just what she was making him think. He truly believed that Jason had been her lover. That she had at least shared her bed with someone that she cared for. Her total indifference to his departure, her casual dismissal of it could only make her look shallow at best and at the worst cheap.

But was that the worst?

Wouldn’t in fact the worst of this be having Damon know the truth? The real facts of what she had been thinking and feeling which had made her react in the way she had?

Wouldn’t it be far more difficult to have him know that in those few short moments since she had come into the kitchen she had somehow, unknowingly and unthinkingly, slipped into a once-familiar routine that she used to share with him?

It was as if the time in between, their painful separation, had never happened. During their brief marriage they had shared so many lazy breakfasts in just this way. In those early days, foolishly blind and besotted with her new husband, Sarah had been only too happy to pour him coffee, make him toast. And this morning she had slipped right back into that role, buttering his toast, reaching into the cupboard automatically for the lime marmalade because Damon had always loved it so much.

But she didn’t want to remember those times. Didn’t want Damon to think that she remembered them. Didn’t want him to know that she still thought of herself as his wife in any way at all.

‘Good riddance to bad rubbish!’ she declared over-emphatically, waving her hand in a wild gesture to underline the point.

‘Careful…’

But Damon’s warning came just too late. Sarah’s gesticulating arm caught her coffee-mug, knocking it to the floor, where it crashed noisily, shattering into fragments, the steaming liquid spreading everywhere.

‘Let me…’

Before she could protest, Damon was out of his chair. He grabbed for a cloth in the same second that Sarah caught up a tea towel. Together they bent to the mess on the floor, reached to wipe it up. Then froze, eyes locking together.

Sarah drew in her breath on a long, deep sigh.

‘Damon…’

She couldn’t help it. She reached out a hand, just needing to touch him, to make contact. To somehow bridge the impossible divide that yawned there between them like a huge, gaping chasm.

‘Please…’

For the space of a heartbeat it looked as if he might actually respond. But then he suddenly blinked hard, and she saw the change in his eyes with a terrible sense of dread.

They froze over like ice on a pond, black as pitch and hard as polished jet.

‘I’ll see to this,’ was all he said, but the rejection and the callous coldness were there in his tone, if not actually in his words.

Big mistake, you fool! Damon reproved himself savagely. He had meant to keep his distance, had told himself that if he could just keep space between himself and Sarah then he would be able to get himself back under control. He didn’t need the temptation of being close enough to smell the faint herbal scent of her shampoo, see the smudges of tiredness under those brilliant eyes. Already his heart had kicked into a heavier beat, making his pulse throb. If this was keeping his distance, then he was going to have to get a grip on himself and fast!

Would it always be like this? Sarah wondered miserably. Would she always be so desperately vulnerable to his closeness, to just the scent and the warmth of his body? When she had been in his arms last night it had felt so right, like coming home. But the truth was that she no longer belonged in Damon’s arms, in Damon’s life, if in fact she had ever done so. He had never loved her, never really wanted her. He had only ever married her as a financial move. A way of getting what he wanted easily.

She couldn’t take it any more. Tossing down the cloth, she jumped to her feet in a rush, unable to bear Damon’s closeness. It was impossible to guess what she felt most—regret or relief that he watched her go without protest or reaching out to hold her still.

‘I’ll make some fresh coffee.’ Anything to distract herself, she thought, wrenching open the fridge door. ‘Ah. No milk.’

She had used the last of it in the mugful that now was splattered across the floor where Damon was dealing with the mess with swift efficiency.

‘Not to worry.’ Did her assumed nonchalance sound as forced and fake to him as it did in her own ears? She prayed it didn’t because it gave away far too much of her inner turmoil. ‘There should have been a delivery by now…’

At least by going to the door she could gain herself some breathing space. A chance to still the racing judder of her heart, get her breathing back under control.

There was no sort of warning. No sound that might have given her an indication that things were not quite as usual. No shuffle of feet or murmur of voices that was not the normal routine of things on a sleepy Saturday morning, where no one stirred much except perhaps to walk the dog or stroll to buy a morning paper.

So Sarah fully expected to look out onto a silent, deserted street. She was totally unprepared for the chaos and tumult that assaulted her senses when she pulled open the door and stepped over the threshold.

CHAPTER FIVE

IT WAS the lights that affected her first.

The sudden, brilliant flashes, like lightning, but without any rumble of thunder to precede them.

And the strange, deafening sound of clicks and whirrs that she couldn’t understand.

Flash! Click! Whirr! Flash! And then the calls began.

‘Sarah! This way, darling!’

‘Miss Meyerson—over here!’

‘Sarah, can we just have a word?’

‘What?’

She froze, halfway upright again from retrieving the full milk bottle from the step, stared, and blinked as another succession of brilliant flashes blinded her.

‘So Sarah—is it true?’

‘Have you really…?’ The rest of the sentence was lost in a sudden flurry of movement as, somewhere beyond the blur that the light flashes had burned into her eyes, someone scuffled, jockeying for a better position, and was pushed forcibly out of the way.

‘Sarah—give us a smile!’

‘Who are you?’

Still blinking to clear her vision, she straightened fully, frowning her confusion. But at least the shapes before her were starting to be in some way recognisable—though what she saw made no sort of sense to her at all.

Photographers—hundreds of them, or so it seemed to her bewildered eyes. Rows of men and women, standing, kneeling—some of them had even brought stepladders so that they could get a better angle on things. 80

And other people, waving strangely fluffy things that she recognised vaguely as microphones she had seen in television interviews—and film cameras!

‘Come on, darling—look this way…’

‘Give us a smile, can’t you? After all, he must be worth billions…’

‘Who?’ Sarah managed, but she was completely ignored.

‘So where did you meet him?’

‘How long’s it been going on? Do you plan on making an announcement soon?’

‘An announcement’ was framed in such emphatic tones that it almost seemed to be written in the air in large italic letters.

‘What sort of an announcement—about what?’

‘Oh, come on, Sarah! Stop being cagey…’

It was impossible not to sense that the mood had changed, shifting from friendly to something else, something at the opposite end of the spectrum of emotions. Sarah began to feel uncomfortably, frighteningly, as if she was facing a possible lynch mob. They just didn’t seem to appreciate that she really had no idea what they were doing there.

Clutching the milk bottle to her like some sort of hopelessly inadequate defensive shield, she blinked hard to try to clear her blurred gaze, focused as well as she could on a woman in the front row and tried to smile.

‘Can you tell me what’s going on?’

If she had thought she might have found an ally, she was swiftly disillusioned.

‘Oh, come on, Sarah! Don’t be coy! Your secret’s out now. You and the Gorgeous Greek are public property. So how does it feel to be the latest love in the Divine Damon’s life?’

Damon. The name struck home even if she didn’t understand why.

Divine Damon. The Gorgeous Greek. She knew those phrases; she’d seen them in the newspapers often enough. She’d been aware of them even before she ever met Damon. The society pages, the gossip columns, the celebrity magazines, all fed happily on stories of the ‘Gorgeous Greek’ and his love life. And the reports had seemed to haunt her ever since she had run away from her travesty of a marriage. She couldn’t open a newspaper or turn on the television without reading or hearing something about him.

She could have told them that they were all on the wrong track. That any woman Damon appeared with in public was only a cloak, a pretence, a piece of arm candy. He used his public amours to distract attention from the real thing—and it seemed it had worked because no one, not even Sarah herself, had ever suspected.

‘But I’m not!’ she protested, horrified at the realisation of what they thought. ‘I mean—’

‘Oh, stop messing around! We know—so where is he?’

‘I’m here.’

The words came from behind her, cool and calm and pitched perfectly so that they sliced through the buzz of annoyance, falling clearly into the pool of questions and creating a sudden total hush of awareness. And in the same second a couple of hands came down onto Sarah’s shoulders, apparently gentle, but in fact so forcefully controlling that they stilled her instinctive start of surprise and shock before it had time to form.

‘So what did you want to know?’

The silence evaporated in a second, turning instead into a storm of flash bulbs exploding once again, of clicking, whirring cameras. The whole gaggle of reporters pushed forward, crowding round the steps so that Sarah automatically tried to back fearfully away, only to find her flight stopped by an even firmer pressure of Damon’s hands on her shoulders, holding her where she was.

‘You have five minutes.’

Later, Sarah was to wonder if it had really only been five minutes. To her it had seemed like a lifetime. A lifetime of noise and explosions and shouted questions she barely understood, let alone could answer.

She was vaguely aware of Damon speaking. Of him giving the same sort of responses—the lying responses—that he had fed to Jason only the night before. She struggled to understand the lift of laughter, the man-to-man intonation in his voice when he spoke of ‘whirlwind romance’ and being ‘knocked off his feet’.

She even opened her mouth to protest loudly, but the sharp, painful squeeze Damon gave her shoulders warned her that he was aware of her thoughts and didn’t want her to act on them.

She briefly thought about rebelling, but squashed down the idea of mutiny before it had time to even form fully. It was beginning to dawn on her just what was going on, though parts of it were totally incomprehensible to her.

Somehow the reporters had got hold of the idea that she and Damon were a couple. She had no idea where they had learned such nonsense, but they clearly thought they were on the trail of a very hot story indeed. What she couldn’t understand at all was why Damon was going along with it. Why he didn’t just tell them to go to hell and never come back again was beyond her.

‘OK, that’s enough now…’

Damon’s voice held enough authority to quash even the murmurs of protest that began as he drew the interview to a close.

‘I said five minutes; you’ve had nearly ten.’

To Sarah’s intense relief the pens stilled; some of the notebooks actually closed. But then one of the photographers, more forward than the rest, pushed to the front of the crowd.

‘How about a proper picture, Damon? Give her a kiss, can’t you, man? It’s what our readers want to see.’

‘A kiss—no—’ Sarah tried, but she didn’t even manage to get the words out.

She had barely opened her mouth before Damon moved his hands, clamping them firmly at the tops of her arms, and whirling her round to face him.

As he was standing on the doorstep, just above her, the already forceful advantage of his height was given an extra edge of domination. But, with her face hidden from the cameras at least, Sarah was determined not to give in without a fight.

‘Damon—no!’

‘Damon, yes!’ he interrupted rudely and emphatically, one hand coming under her chin and tilting her head up so that her raging green eyes met the impenetrable darkness of his black stare.

‘Go with it, agape mou,’ he told her bluntly. ‘Give them what they want and they’ll leave us in peace.’

‘No way!’ Sarah spluttered furiously. ‘I’m not—’

The rest of her words vanished under the fierce pressure of Damon’s hard mouth as it clamped down over her lips, cutting off what she had been about to say and silencing her with brutal effectiveness. His hands held her tightly, hard fingers digging into soft flesh so savagely that she was convinced he must be bruising the delicate skin, that she had no chance of escape, no chance to wrench her face away, no chance of any movement at all. She could only submit totally to the crushing, demanding kiss he pressed on her.

And the dreadful thing, the really shocking, scary fact, was that it excited her.

From the moment his cruel mouth touched hers she was lost. A sensual fever invaded her body, making her pulse throb, her heart race. A heated, blinding mist swirled in her head behind her closed eyes, obscuring any thought, and her lips opened up under his, welcoming the intimate invasion of his tongue, the erotic dance it created with her own.

She swayed into the hardness and heat of his body, too lost even to put her arms up around his neck for support. The strength of his hands kept her upright and she abandoned herself to them entirely.

Behind her back she was only dimly aware of a renewed furore of flashes and the sound of a hundred camera shutters clicking wildly. The reporters and photographers had vanished into a blur, only existing on the very outer limits of her perception. In her world, the one she was aware of, there was only Damon and herself and the blaze of hunger they had created between them. And she knew without a hope that she had totally lost her grip on reality and was falling, falling far and fast into a hell of her own making.

Because if he had caught her up in his arms right there and then, if he had put his dark head down to hers and whispered in her ear, if he had said, ‘Come with me…come to bed right now, this minute. Come and let me make wild, passionate love to you all day long…’ then she would have gone with him and taken only what he offered and not asked for anything more.

What the hell was he doing? The question was like a scream inside Damon’s head.

What sort of damn fool was he? Would he ever learn?

But the truth was that he had never anticipated that a performance put on solely for display, for the delight of the cameramen, the perfect ‘photo opportunity’, would turn into this. Into something so deeply and stunningly intimate, so totally personal and private, that it was made for the secrecy of the bedroom, not a public display out in the open.

And if he felt bad then clearly Sarah was in an even worse state. She was leaning against him as if all the strength had seeped out of her body and drained into the earth beneath her. Her eyes were closed and she seemed to be almost in a trance. She didn’t look capable of thinking for herself so he was going to have to think for both of them.

‘OK, gentlemen, that’s enough.’

Gentlemen! That was a laugh! He knew this particular paparazzi pack only too well. Many of them he’d seen often before. And he knew what they were like. Give them the scent of a story—preferably one with all the vital elements of money, sex and glamour in any particular order—and they were hot on the trail with the intensity and concentration of a pack of foxhounds in full cry. Though in the case of one or two of them perhaps a pack of slavering wolves was a closer description.

And his presence here had thrown Sarah right into their jaws.

He was used to them. He’d lived with their intrusion into his privacy all his adult life and he’d learned how to handle it. He’d also learned that if you gave them something of what they wanted then they tended to shut up and go away far more quickly than if you seemed to have something to hide.

And so he’d given them what they were looking for. A kiss. But he had never thought for a moment that it would turn out quite the way it had. A quick peck on the lips, a brief, passing caress. No more.

He had been so damn wrong. And, with visions of the pictures that might appear in tomorrow’s papers in his head, he was forced to wonder if this time he had miscalculated. Badly.

‘We’re going inside now…’

Damn it, Sarah—lift your head! Look like you’re—if not relaxed, then at least as if you’re here, in the world! Not totally fazed out!

With an assumed casualness he tried to angle his arm around her waist. To support her in the same moment that he drew her close, hoping it would simply look like a gesture of affection. God alone knew what they would think if they saw her looking like this.

‘You’ve got your pictures—and your story. There’s nothing else for you here. So how about giving us some peace, guys?’

To his relief they seemed to agree. Certainly some of them nodded and shuffled as if about to move. A couple of cases even came out, ready to have the cameras put away.

‘Say goodbye, darling… Sarah!’

Her head went back against his supporting arm; her face lifted to his. Her eyes were wide and dark and strangely unfocused. And in that moment another single, isolated camera flashed.

‘Say goodbye!’

‘G’bye.’ She spoke like a dazed child or an automaton.

He couldn’t get her inside quick enough, practically hustled her through the door, half lifting her over the threshold, kicking the door to behind him with a resounding thud.

‘Sarah!’

With both hands under her armpits he gave her a swift, hard shake, concerned by the way that she seemed to hang like a limp rag doll.

‘Sarah, what the hell happened to you out there?’

You happened, Sarah responded in the privacy of her own thoughts. Just like you happened in my life a year ago, exploding into it with the force of an atom bomb, blasting my world and my heart apart and leaving it impossible ever to build it back up again. You happened, damn you!

She tried to hate him. She desperately wanted to hate him. It was safer and easier that way. But even as she tried to whip up anger from deep inside, she knew she was failing. That kiss had been her undoing and, having opened the lid of her own particular Pandora’s box, she knew there was no way she could get it back on again.

‘What the hell happened to you?’ she managed, fighting to get herself back under control. ‘What did you think you were doing out there?’

‘Doing?’

He had the nerve to sound indignant, positively offended. And the brilliant black eyes sparked with warning anger.

‘I thought I was helping you. Coming to your rescue.’

‘My…’

Sarah could only shake her head in rejection and disbelief. But the violent movement had an unexpected benefit. It cleared her thoughts, focused her vision, and what she saw sent her temper rocketing up the Richter scale at the speed of light. He was still wearing only the navy silk robe. He hadn’t even taken the time and trouble to put on any clothes before he had appeared on her doorstep.

‘Coming to my rescue!’ she repeated, injecting every ounce of scorn she could possibly drag up into the words. ‘And how, precisely, did you feel you were doing that? I mean, look at you…’

A dramatic wave of her hand swept over him from the top of his crisp dark hair to the bare feet planted firmly on the tiled floor of the hall. He was leaning against the blue-painted wall, apparently totally indifferent to her tirade.

‘You came out of my house dressed like that! Or perhaps I should say undressed like that. You must have known what they were bound to think!’

She recognised the look that slid down over Damon’s handsome face. She’d seen it many times before and it meant trouble. It was one part stubbornness, two parts pride—and injured pride at that—and a further quarter sheer bad temper. It was the emotional equivalent of the instructions on a particularly explosive firework—‘Light the blue touch-paper and stand well back.’ Instinctively she nerved herself for the coming outburst.

For once, Damon surprised her. If anything, his face hardened even further, taking on the icily still cast of a marble statue, eyes carefully blanked off. And when he spoke it was in a tone that was as deadly as it was low and soft, coming very close to the hiss of a striking snake.

‘And that was what, exactly?’

Did she have to spell it out? As she looked into his unyielding glare, it seemed that she did.

‘You’re wearing a robe! N-nothing else. It must have looked as if you—as if we—had just got out of bed. And adding two and two together and getting five hundred, then they must have assumed that we had been sharing the same—’

‘They’d decided that already.’

‘And so—they what?’

‘They’d decided that already. It was why they were here.’ Damon levered himself away from the wall, turning and heading for the stairs. ‘I should have thought that was obvious.’

‘Not to me!’

How dared he dismiss her protests with a comment like that and then just walk away? Already she was only talking to his long, powerful back, and he was clearly intent on going upstairs without so much as another word.

‘Damon! Why would they think that?’

He glanced back briefly over his shoulder, but didn’t pause in his climb up the stairs.

‘Because someone had told them it was what was happening.’

‘Who?’

‘Think about it, darling. It’s pretty obvious really.’

Obvious? Not to her.

As Sarah stood at the bottom of the staircase, lost in thought and thoroughly confused, Damon disappeared from view. But then she heard him pause, turn…and a second later his dark head appeared over the edge of the banisters.

‘Lover boy,’ he declared succinctly before disappearing again in the direction of his bedroom.

‘Lover boy?’

Sarah set off upstairs after him at a trot. She practically ran down the landing, pushing open Damon’s door, not pausing to knock, and hurrying in without waiting for his reply.

‘Do you mean Jason? Because I— Oh!’

Her breath caught in her throat, choking off any words, and for a second she could only stand and stare. Damon had discarded the robe, tossing it onto the bed, but hadn’t yet had time to pull on any clothes. He stood in the centre of the room, naked except for a pair of jersey cotton boxer shorts that hugged the tight muscles of his buttocks, the bulge of his masculinity, exposing long, bronzed, powerful legs softly hazed with black hair. His torso was equally tanned, ridged with muscle, the width of shoulders and chest tapering to a narrow waist and lean hips without a spare ounce of flesh anywhere.

It was too late to look away. Both in the matter of time and emotionally. Damon had already seen her staring at him, unable to drag her eyes away from the sensual perfection of his body, and, besides, she knew that even if she closed her eyes, shutting off the view entirely, she would always see the image of him standing there stamped on the screen of her eyelids, impossible to erase.

‘Seen enough?’ Damon drawled, when she still couldn’t speak, couldn’t make herself look away. ‘Or were you perhaps planning on taking advantage of me while I—?’

‘I—I— No, of course not!’

Face burning fiercely red, she shook her head violently, taking several unsteady steps back, away from him.

‘Of course not! I’m sorry—I shouldn’t…’

The nonchalant shrug of the broad, straight shoulders dismissed her stumbling apology as totally unnecessary, a faintly mocking smile curving the sensual mouth.

‘It’s not as if you’re seeing anything you haven’t seen already. When we were husband and wife—’

‘That was very different. And we aren’t husband and wife now!’

‘We are still, in the eyes of the law.’

‘Well, not in my eyes!’ Sarah flung at him, and saw the curve to his mouth flatten out completely, leaving it in just a cruel, narrow line.

‘That much is only too obvious,’ he returned flatly, squashing her totally.

‘I wouldn’t have minded…’ he continued a moment later, while she was still struggling to find the mental strength to respond to him.

‘Minded what?’

‘If you’d decided to take advantage of me. In fact I think I would rather have liked it. And it would have made a pleasant change to be the one who did the rejecting rather than you.’

‘I never…’ Sarah began protestingly but then, belatedly, she recalled the letter she had left him when she had walked out on their marriage. The one in which, her anguished pride keeping her from admitting that she knew about Damon’s relationship with Eugenia, she had claimed that she had found out about the land deal.

She couldn’t—wouldn’t—stay with someone who had lied to her, she’d declared. She was leaving and she never wanted to see him again.

‘What makes you so sure it was Jason?’

Her gaze skittered away from his and the mockery she could see there.

Coward! He didn’t actually say it, but it was there in the glint in his eyes, the cynical twist to his mouth. But he reached for his jeans, stepped into them as he answered her.

‘It had his stamp on it. And you truly didn’t think that he was just going to take his dismissal yesterday and not try to retaliate?’

‘N-no.’

Sarah was thinking back, recalling the tension she had felt when Damon had told Jason to go, the fear that he would have just one final comeback at them both. And the rush of unexpected relief when he had turned and walked away instead.

‘As soon as I saw those reporters out there, I knew Jason had to have a hand in it somewhere.’ Damon zipped up his jeans with a decisive movement, crossed the room to open a drawer and took out a deep red polo shirt. ‘He must have phoned them with an exclusive.’

‘If you’re so sure he was responsible then why did you come out?’

‘You seemed to be having trouble.’ The words were muffled as he pulled the shirt over his head, pushed his arms into the sleeves. ‘I thought you needed help.’

Could she trust the tiny glow of warmth, the sense of being cherished that suddenly flooded through her? She wanted to feel that way, but wanting just wasn’t enough.

‘And when you kissed me?’

She hated having to say it, had to force the words past stiff, unwilling lips, but she could never live with herself if she didn’t face the truth.

‘Why did you do that?’

‘Why?’

Damon had smoothed his shirt down, leaving it loose at the waist, and now he picked up a brush from the top of the dressing table, swept it through his springing hair with a couple of swift, brusque strokes.

‘I gave them what they wanted,’ he declared, black eyes meeting green through the medium of the glass. ‘They came to see a couple of lovers and that’s what I gave them. It meant nothing; harmed no one.’

Harmed no one.

Each word was like a blow from an icy fist right into Sarah’s wounded heart. Of course it would seem that it had harmed no one. There weren’t any ugly, raw, gaping wounds on display as evidence of the cruel injuries he had inflicted on her. The damage was all on the inside, deep within her, where her spirit was bleeding to death from a thousand savage cuts.

She had put her whole being into that kiss on the doorstep. Damon had taken her mouth in a caress that seemed to draw her soul right out of her body, and she had kissed him back with everything that was within her. She had put her love on the line in that response and she wouldn’t have cared if he had realised it.

And he had said with total carelessness that it had meant nothing.

‘So it was all just a cynical publicity stunt? A public-relations exercise—giving the reporters and the photographers exactly what they wanted.’

What would she do if he said no? Damon wondered. Would she laugh in his face and call him the fool he knew he was? Or would she fling at him once more, as she had already done in no uncertain terms, the fact that in her opinion they were no longer husband and wife, that their marriage, such as it had been, was totally in the past, and she was more than ready to move on?

Tossing the brush back down onto the dressing table, he turned to face her. She looked furious, high colour washing her cheeks, her eyes blazing like emeralds.

‘Jason had clearly told them that you were my mistress and that was what they came here expecting to find. That was the story they wanted and that was what they got.’

‘But it wasn’t what I wanted!’

Sarah paced the room in evident exasperation, her hands coming up in a gesture expressive of her mood.

‘I don’t want to be known as your lover—your mistress! How could you ever think that? It’s the last thing on earth I could want!’

‘Apart from being my wife.’

The speaking look she flung him told him exactly what she felt about that. And this was the woman he had tried to protect! The woman he had foolishly wished he could find some way of keeping near!

He really was losing his mind.

‘I know the Press,’ he explained, enunciating his words coolly and calmly as if he was speaking to a difficult and bad-tempered child. ‘If you look like you have something to hide then they’re like terriers who can smell a rat. They never give up. And they’ll use every dirty trick they can think of to find out what’s really going on.’

‘But nothing is going on! I’ve nothing to hide!’

‘Oh, no?’

Sarah shook her head so fiercely that the band slid from her hair and the red-gold locks flew in a wild haze around her head. ‘No!’

But even as she made the vehement declaration he could see that something had come into her mind, snagged her attention. She paused in her pacing, looked him straight in the eye for a moment and then shook her head, but less emphatically this time.

He could almost see the tiny seed of doubt take root in her mind, leaching the colour from her face, clouding the bright green of her eyes.

‘Nothing at all?’

‘No…’

‘Not even a certain day in June last year? A tiny church—’

‘Stop it!’

‘The words “I do”…’

‘I told you to stop it!’

‘The truth is, ghineka mou,’ Damon said, throwing himself onto the bed and lounging back against the pillows, strong arms crossed firmly over his broad chest, long legs stretched out, ‘it’s way too late to stop it now. The time for backtracking was in those breathless moments just after the priest said “Speak now or forever hold your peace”.’

‘Stop it…’ Sarah muttered, but in a very different tone.

If he had wanted to pick on a memory that had the most impact then he couldn’t have been more successful. Somehow, subconsciously or knowingly, he had homed in on a moment that she still recalled so very vividly from the secret wedding ceremony they had gone through just over twelve months before.

They had only known each other a few sweet weeks. She had been so nervous, actually shaking with the shock of what she was doing. She still couldn’t quite believe that this wonderful, amazing man, Damon Nicolaides, a man who could have his pick of all the world’s beauties, who had them lining up outside his door, begging for his attention, had actually chosen her.

And so, when the priest had spoken the traditional words about knowing of any reason why the two should not be joined together in holy matrimony—‘Speak now or forever hold your peace’—she had tensed in a form of panic. She had actually cast a surreptitious glance over one shoulder towards the back of the church as if in fear that someone might appear at the end of the short, stone-flagged aisle, and shout, Stop! Wait! This wedding can’t go on!

She had never felt that any of it could be real. Men like Damon just didn’t fall head over heels in love and marry quiet little nothings like her.

And the terrible, the foul, bitter irony was that her fears had all come true. Not at that moment, of course. The tense, scary seconds had passed, and she and Damon had taken their vows. They had exchanged rings and the traditional kiss, and they had walked out of there as Mr and Mrs Nicolaides, and it had all seemed as perfect as a fairy tale. But there was none of that fairy-tale happy-ever-after.

Because Damon had never truly loved her and had only married her to use her to get what he wanted.

And the death of all her dreams had caused her so much more pain by coming later, when she had known some of the happiness she had never believed could be hers.

‘If we had denied Jason’s story,’ Damon went on, relentlessly ignoring her protest, ‘the paparazzi would have thought there was no smoke without fire. They would have wanted to know why we were together at all, and they would have rooted around until they found something—and believe me, those guys don’t give up easily.’

His dark eyes slanted a swift, assessing glance at Sarah’s shaken face, seeing the faint shudder that shook her slender frame at just the thought.

‘If you’d wanted them to find out about our marriage, then you couldn’t have done anything that would have made it more certain they would be determined to ferret it out. They wouldn’t have stopped looking until they found it. But with us apparently being so open about things…’

‘And the cock-and-bull “swept off your feet with passion” story you fed them,’ Sarah put in satirically.

To her astonishment Damon actually let his expression lighten, breaking into a wide, devastating grin that made her bones turn to water, her legs weakening beneath her.

‘But I sounded convincing, didn’t I?’ he shot back. ‘Had them swallowing it—what is it you say?—line, hook…’

‘Hook, line and sinker,’ Sarah supplied automatically, admitting grudgingly that yes, he had been convincing.

So convincing that even she had almost believed him.

‘But do you think it worked?’ she asked sharply, needing desperately to distract herself from the tearing pain in her heart at the thought of how close she had come to being fooled by him. ‘Do you think they’re convinced enough that we’re just lovers not to start investigating our pasts—digging up dirt…?’

The worst possible repercussion of that digging was only just beginning to dawn on her now.

She had hoped that after six months apart from Damon she could soon start divorce proceedings, that she could be free of him very quickly and very easily, and, above all, quietly. Those photographs would probably already spell the death of those hopes now.

If the marriage became public, the Press would have a field-day—even more than they had had already. And a divorce following soon after would only give them more scandal, and more column inches. Her private life wouldn’t be private for a long, long time. Her head swam thickly at the thought.

One more reason to add to her list of why she hated Damon Nicolaides.

‘Did they believe you?’

‘I don’t know.’

Damon shrugged in total indifference to the sharpness of her tone, stretching his arms up behind his head and leaning his dark head back on them in apparent relaxation.

‘But there is one way that we could convince them.’

‘There is? And what’s that?’

If he had offered his hand, Sarah felt that she would have snapped it off in her eagerness to know.

‘What do we do, Damon? How can we make sure?’

His eyes narrowed as he looked into her face and his change of expression set warning bells sounding even before he spoke.

‘Well, it’s quite simple really—but I don’t think you’re going to like it.’

‘I don’t care if I like it—I’ll put up with it! It has to be worth it! What is it?’

Damon sighed, raked one strong hand through his hair, frowning thoughtfully. Then he apparently came to a decision and leaned forward, black eyes holding hers mesmerically.

‘It’s quite simple,’ he said. ‘We give them even more of what they want. We prove to them that you are my mistress.’

It was the last thing she had expected. Almost the last thing she wanted to hear.

‘We—what?’ she stumbled. ‘We… How do we do that?’

‘Easy.’

He grinned at her again, but it was a strange, cold, unamused grin.

‘We just do one thing—we make it real.’

CHAPTER SIX

“YOU have got to be joking!’

Damon shook his head, his expression unsmiling now, polished jet eyes burning into hers.

‘I couldn’t be more serious,’ he said in a tone that sent shivers running down her spine. ‘I meant every word I said.’

He sounded serious too, Sarah reflected uneasily. In fact, he sounded absolutely convinced that this was the way out of their dilemma—but it couldn’t be! How could making the reporters believe she was Damon’s mistress do any good at all?

And ‘make it real’?

‘Would you care to explain?’

She was proud of the way the words came out. They sounded surprisingly balanced, calm even. No one would have guessed that deep inside her stomach was turning somersaults and her heart was racing in double-quick time just at the thought of Damon staying in the house another day—never mind the implications behind trying to pretend that she was his mistress!

‘They think we’re together as a couple so we give them us together as a couple.’

‘You make it sound so simple.’

Perhaps it could be so simple, she told herself. After all, Damon was here now. The shock of his arrival last night had started to recede a little. While not actually growing accustomed to his presence in her life and in this house once more, she had at least started to adjust. They each had their own rooms and there was plenty of space in the house for them both to live almost separate lives. 99

And she had her job at the art gallery. And Damon had whatever business had brought him here in the first place.

‘It could work! We could both be out all day, and in the evenings we don’t even have to see each other.’

Which was not what Damon had in mind at all.

When he’d suggested this idea in the first place, it had been at the prompting of some inner impulse that he hadn’t quite understood himself.

But then he had never been totally rational where Sarah Meyerson was concerned. From the first moment that he had met her it had been like plunging head first into an icy, freezing pool, the shock stunning his body and driving all hope of sensible thought from his head. His reasoning processes had been totally suspended and by the time they had started functioning again he had already been in way too deep and unable to find any sort of foothold or solid ground of common sense at all.

‘You really don’t think that would convince them?’

‘So exactly what did you have in mind?’

She was looking as him as if he had just suggested that she drape herself in live, poisonous snakes or eat a couple of slugs. Had he really made such a mess of their marriage that she still couldn’t forgive him? Or was the real truth, the one he didn’t want to accept, the fact that she was a shallow, promiscuous little tart, one who really had grown as bored with the idea of one man for life as she had declared in the letter she’d left him?

One Sarah—the first—he had had high hopes of winning back. Of persuading her to forgive his mistakes, climb down from the very high horse on which anger had put her, and give their marriage a second try. The other, the Sarah that he had discovered to his shock and distaste on his arrival at the house—was it only last night?—was a different matter entirely.

She was someone he might want in his bed—but that was all. And Kristos, but he wanted her in it, underneath him, her flesh yielding to him, her mouth opening to him, making those soft little cries that escaped her as she became more and more aroused, closer and closer to her climax…

Theos!

With an abrupt, violent movement, he jackknifed off the bed, flexing his shoulders forcefully and pulling the dark red polo shirt down over his too-tight jeans as he struggled with the luridly erotic thoughts that were swamping his mind, drowning his thought processes.

‘This isn’t exactly the best place to discuss this,’ he declared, marching to the door and flinging it open. ‘We’d probably both be more comfortable downstairs.’

He’d be more comfortable anywhere that didn’t revive the sort of memories that sent his libido into a sexual frenzy and stopped him from thinking clearly—from thinking at all.

The kitchen was no better. It held echoes of this morning and the way he had sat there, hidden behind the newspaper and wanting her with a desperation that bordered on insanity. Even to walk past the front door reminded him of the scene on the doorstep earlier and that kiss.

Hell, but he’d got it bad!

In the lounge, he paced the room again, too restless to sit still, knowing from the expression on her face that she was fast losing patience.

And her first words to him there confirmed as much.

‘Well?’ she demanded, perching on the arm of the big gold settee, facing him head on. ‘Are you “comfortable” enough now? And are you going to explain just what you do mean? Because I warn you—’

‘Simply living in the same house isn’t going to convince anyone,’ Damon put in sharply. ‘We’ve given the Press the story that we’ve just met—that we’ve fallen head over heels in love, and we’re crazy about each other. We’re going to have to stick with that story, otherwise they’re going to sense something’s up. And we’re going to have to appear in public together. Make it look as if we really are lovers.’

“‘Make it look as if we really are lovers”!’

Remembering the overwhelming heat of the kiss on the doorstep, Sarah hid the turmoil of her feelings behind a carefully assumed mask of satire.

‘That sounds to me more like a blatant excuse for you to grope me in public, and I won’t be able to do a thing about it.’

‘You’d get to grope me too,’ Damon tossed back. ‘Will that make it easier?’

‘Hardly!’

Just the thought sent her temperature spiralling, her pulse thudding painfully.

‘No one’s going to believe we’re a couple if we don’t look like we can’t keep our hands off each other.’

‘I am capable of some degree of restraint.’

Sarah tried for calm dignity and only succeeded in sounding stiffly cold and haughty.

‘Well, you’d better lose it—or the whole idea’s ruined from the start.’

The look Damon gave her as he spoke made it plain that he was making a special effort to bite back the retort that restraint had been the last thing she had shown when she was with him in the early days of their marriage. Then his teasing name for her had been okulaki or ‘puppy dog’ because she had always followed him so closely at his heels, her big eyes devotedly fixed on his face. Her stomach lurched queasily just to remember how blind and stupid she had been.

‘And you’ll need some time off work. Can you get it?’

‘Some leave? Well, I could—but I’m not going to; I don’t see why—’

‘I’m only going to be here for one more day. Monday morning I leave for Paris.’

Paris. Just the name had the power to stop Sarah in her tracks. She had always longed to see the French capital and once long ago, in another lifetime, it seemed, Damon had promised that he would take her on a belated honeymoon there, once all the secrecy about their wedding was no longer necessary.

Except, of course, that they had never lasted that long.

‘And that has what to do with me?’

Damon looked as if he couldn’t believe that she had been stupid enough to need to ask the question.

‘Well, you’ll be coming with me, of course.’

‘Oh, no, I won’t!’

‘You will if you want this story to work.’

Did she want it to work?

‘I’ve decided that I don’t think I do. It’s all getting far too complicated and quite frankly it’s not worth the effort.’

She let herself slide down onto the settee, and sprawled back against the cushions, trying to look as if she didn’t give a damn about anything.

‘I think we’d do better to forget the whole thing.’

She expected that he would argue with her and nerved herself for the onslaught of his forceful attempt to persuade her, but to her surprise it didn’t come. Instead, Damon simply shrugged as if her decision was the last thing that mattered to him.

‘That’s your choice. But if you don’t want to go with that you’ll have to think of something to put in its place. Something else to tell them.’

‘But I don’t want to tell them anything!’

‘Well, you’re going to have to.’

Damon came and stood behind the chair opposite, strong fingers resting on the cushioned back, the corded muscles in his arms tensing and tightening as he leaned forward.

‘You’re going to have to find some story to fob them off with.’

‘I’ll just say, No comment.’

Sarah adopted a bravado she didn’t actually feel. She had been out of her depth with the horde of reporters who had surrounded her this morning and the thought of facing them again in any situation was not something she anticipated with any relish.

‘And you think that will do the trick?’

‘It will have to. I won’t tell them anything and very soon they’ll lose interest and pack up and go, and…’

Her voice trailed off as Damon shook his head, the firm, almost harsh set of his features draining what little confidence she had left right out of her.

‘That lot out there won’t “lose interest” if they get so much as a sniff of a story. And believe me, Jason must have already fed them quite a tale to get them here in the first place, so they won’t get tired for a long while yet.’

‘But I thought—’

‘Think again.’

Suddenly he moved sharply, coming towards her and reaching out a hand. Before Sarah quite knew what was happening, he had caught hold of her arm, pulled her up from the couch with scant ceremony, and was propelling her across the room and towards the big bay window.

‘Look,’ was all he said.

It was all he needed to say. Sarah looked and what she saw made her blood run cold.

Not only had the reporters not moved, but the crowd appeared to have grown. The whole of the doorstep was sealed off; the pavement was blocked and people spilled out onto the road on all sides. Just looking at them brought back the memory of how it had felt to be surrounded, the noise, the pushing, the incessant questions that came so thick and fast she didn’t have time to hear them properly, let alone think of an answer or speak it.

‘What are they waiting for?’

‘You.’

‘But you’re the celebrity! You’re the one whose name is always in the gossip columns!’

‘Which is why they’re interested in you. They want to know how you met me, what you said, how you snared my interest—’

‘But I didn’t! I never snared anyone!’

In her concern Sarah completely forgot about caution. Pushing the voile curtain aside, she put her face close to the window, peering out at the crowd of reporters gathered outside her door.

‘Sarah…’ Damon’s use of her name sounded a warning note.

But it came too late. Someone turned in her direction, spotted her, pointed. There was a shout and the next moment a fusillade of camera flashes exploded in unison, almost blinding her with their concerted brilliance so that she stepped back in fearful shock.

‘Come away from there, you little fool!’

He grabbed her roughly, swung her round so that her back was to the window.

‘Don’t look at them!’

It was a command that brooked no sort of rebellion, not caring that he was the one who had told her to look in the first place. Even if Sarah had been capable of rebelling, she couldn’t fight both Damon and the paparazzi. His contemptuous glare sizzled over her, scorching her skin, and she didn’t know which was the greater problem, the man before her or the scandal-hungry pack of reporters outside.

‘Don’t you have any sense at all?’ Damon raged, solving that problem in the space of a split-second. ‘That lot would eat an innocent like you alive in less time than it takes to draw a breath. And the sort of thing you just did will only encourage them.’

‘But you seem to think that encouraging them is just what I should do—that I should give them the story that they want.’

Behind her, she could hear the clamour of the interested crowd, and although she didn’t dare to look back she knew that they were still watching the window, waiting for her to make a move.

‘Oh, this is awful! Now I know just what it must feel like to be a wild creature trapped in a cage and have a horde of people standing outside the bars, staring in, studying everything you do.’

Damon’s beautiful mouth twisted sharply.

‘Join the club,’ he returned cynically. ‘It’s what— Oh, hell…!’

‘What?’

Half turning as he pushed past her, Sarah had a swift, blurred glimpse of a face that had suddenly appeared at the window and was pressed against the glass as hers had been, but from the outside peering in. Yet another flash bulb exploding made her jump violently just as she heard the sound of another ladder being thumped against the wall and heavy footsteps climbing to reach the sill.

‘Damon!’

But he had already acted, pushing her away from the window and pulling the thick, heavy gold and black velvet curtains across the glass, blocking the light and cutting off the photographers’ view.

‘They won’t be able to see in now,’ he said on a note of grim satisfaction.

But Sarah was totally rattled now. For her that invasion of her privacy—her home—had been the last straw.

Desperate to get away from the mob at her door, she hurried back into the room and sank down on the settee, burying her face in her hands.

‘I hate this! I hate it! I can’t take much more of it!’

‘Still think you can get away with not telling them anything?’

He sounded so smug, so satisfied, that his question only added to Sarah’s tension, incensing her wildly.

‘I’m not going to tell them anything—but I think you should! After all, it was you that got me into this situation. If you hadn’t been here then none of this would have happened. So why don’t you do something about it?’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, how should I know? You set yourself up as the expert on these damn paparazzi, so you must know what to do. Surely there’s something you can say!’

The silence that descended as her words died away was so deep, so disturbing that it drew every nerve in her body taut with tension. Damon remained silent and completely motionless for so long that it was scary and eventually, deeply reluctantly, Sarah couldn’t take it any longer. She didn’t want to look at him, was afraid of what she might see on his face, but she just had to.

She barely had time to take in his coldly blanked out expression, the bleak opacity of his eyes, before he suddenly snapped into action.

‘All right!’ he said, cold and crisp. ‘I will.’

He was almost out of the door before she found her tongue again. Something in that ruthlessly determined ‘I will’ had set her teeth on edge, bringing with it a sensation of something icy cold and damp slithering slowly down her tautly held spine. She didn’t know what he was up to but she was suddenly very, very suspicious that she wasn’t going to like it.

‘Wait!’

Had he even heard her? Would he stop?

Apprehensively she held her breath, then let it out again in a heavy, rushing sigh, as, just when she had become convinced that he wouldn’t, Damon paused, turned on his heel and swung slowly round to face her.

‘What?’

His eyes were still closed off from her, the gleaming black totally impenetrable, and no trace of emotion showing in their burning depths.

‘Wh-what are you going to do?’

His sigh was a masterpiece. A blend of impatience, irritation and exasperation. With perhaps a little bit of contempt at the stupidity of the question thrown in for good measure.

‘Exactly what you asked me to do. You wanted me to speak to them. That’s what I’m doing.’

‘But—but what are you going to say?’

Another of those terrible scathing looks scoured a protective layer of skin from her face, leaving her feeling intensely raw and vulnerable.

‘Well, you don’t want me to lie and claim that you’re my mistress, so after the line we spun them this morning—and that kiss—I can see only one possible alternative.’

‘And what’s that?’

She didn’t want to have to ask. She had the hopeless, fearful conviction that she wasn’t going to like what he said in the least.

‘The truth.’

‘The…’

Twice Sarah opened her mouth to say the word and both times her voice failed her, fading away to an embarrassing, breaking croak that said nothing at all. With an effort she swallowed hard and tried again.

‘The truth? What truth?’

‘Isn’t it obvious? I’m going to tell them that you’re my wife. That we married secretly a year ago. What else can I say?’

‘No! Oh, no!’

Shock and horror pushed Sarah out of her chair, scrambling to her feet in an ungainly rush. Her legs were shaking so badly that she wasn’t quite steady and had to reach out to grab at a nearby table for support.

‘You can’t do that!’

How could she bear to have everyone know that she had once loved him enough to marry him? That she had foolishly committed her life to his, had worn his ring, shared his bed, in the naïve, blind belief that he loved her? But it had all been a lie and if the world found out about her marriage then one day it would find out about the lie too. They would know how little he had loved her when Damon carelessly tossed her aside and married instead the woman he had always wanted—Eugenia.

And it would all be the worse for having been brought out in the open like this and used as fodder for the hungry gossip industry.

‘I won’t let you! I insist!’

‘Insist all you like,’ Damon returned imperturbably. ‘We have to tell them something.’

But not this! Surely it would work against Damon’s own best interests too, if their marriage became public knowledge. He had to be bluffing—or did he? Looking into his hard, set face, she couldn’t be sure.

‘So?’ Damon pushed for an answer.

Her face was so pale that the skin was practically translucent, and she looked as if she’d just been told that her best friend had died, emerald eyes huge and bruised-looking above ashen cheeks.

Was it really so horrific to her to think that he might claim her as his? That the world might know they were not just lovers but also husband and wife, linked together legally as well as emotionally?

Hell—had she ever loved him at all? Once, at the beginning, he would have staked his life on the fact, but now he was forced to wonder. It was a road he didn’t want to go down, one he’d been avoiding ever since she’d walked out on him.

She was angry over the land deal, he’d told himself. And she had every right to be. He’d messed up there. Badly. So he’d wait until she’d calmed down and then they could start trying to build bridges. But the longer he’d waited, the less likely it seemed that the land was the real reason she’d ended their marriage. Which left him with what?

With the boredom she’d claimed. And, of course, with Jason.

Jason.

The name twisted in his stomach, tying his nerves into knots. If he’d been asked, he would have sworn on his life that Sarah wasn’t the type to leap into bed with just anyone, but he had barely been in the house for five minutes before evidence to the contrary had been thrown right in his face. Jason was clearly so well settled in the house that he even brought his bits on the side into the bedroom he and Sarah shared.

Which brought his unwilling mind right back up against the question of whether Sarah had ever loved him in the first place. Eugenia had unwillingly suggested a reason—that she had married him for his money—but, blinded by passion, he had refused to accept it. Now he was not so sure.

‘All right, so maybe telling them we’re married isn’t the best plan.’

Suddenly the thought of going out there to the Press and declaring that he was married to Sarah lost all the false appeal it had had. They would love that story. The one about the supposedly sophisticated, worldly-wise tycoon who fell for the oldest trick in the book. Who lost his heart to a beautiful, innocent-looking face and a stunning body—and found himself married to a greedy, grasping gold-digger instead.

Though he supposed no one would blame him. They only had to look at her with her auburn hair tumbled around her face, the curvy body that even those appalling clothes couldn’t disguise.

The way she was standing, leaning on the table, thrust her upper body forward, pushing her luscious breasts in sharp relief. And the curve of her tight backside against the worn denim was a temptation to any living, breathing man. If he wasn’t very much mistaken, there was enough space in those loose jeans for him to slide his hands down inside both them and her panties, cup the peach-smooth softness of each buttock…

Oh, hell, no! He mustn’t let his thoughts wander down that sexually distracting path. He had to think of Jason and the bastard’s scheming that had got them into this mess.

‘So what else is there? Any ideas?’

‘Ideas!’ Sarah scoffed, anger helping her regain just a little composure. ‘You’re supposed to be the ideas-man! The one who knows how to handle the Press! You should be the one coming up with suggestions.’

‘I already did that,’ Damon snarled. ‘But you didn’t like any of them.’

‘And does that surprise you? I mean—look at what’s happened as a result of the “idea” you came up with this morning!’

Remembering his idea, and that kiss, and the searing effect it had had on her, together with the devastation of knowing he had only done it for show, brought her up sharp, destroying the rush of confidence and bravado.

‘I wish you had never kissed me!’ she declared, choking on the bitter taste of a terrible sense of betrayal.

‘So do I,’ Damon tossed back darkly. ‘You can’t believe how much. But I did and we have to deal with that.’

To Sarah’s intense relief he had at least turned back, his determined progress towards the door apparently abandoned for now. Standing in the doorway, he raked both hands through the midnight-darkness of his hair, frowning thoughtfully.

‘How about this? If we go back to the original plan, let them think we’re lovers, then I promise that whenever we go out—whenever you have to face them—I’ll be right there, at your side, to see you through it. I’ll answer all the questions, make sure you’re harassed as little as possible. How does that sound?’

It sounded wonderful, Sarah had to admit. ‘I’ll be right there, at your side.’ What more could she ask?

That he would be there because he loved her; not just because he’d been forced into it by circumstances and Jason’s machinations. But that was the impossible dream, and one she had learned there was no point at all in hoping for.

‘I don’t know,’ she said uncertainly.

How could she answer when her mind was threatening to split in two? Her thoughts were warring between horror at the idea of having to endure the reporters’ attentions without him and fear of the pain she would have to endure at being with Damon and knowing that every smile, every touch, every gesture of affection that he made to her was a fake, a lie, an act put on purely for the public and to look good in the paparazzi’s photographs.

Of course, her marriage had been like that: a lie from start to finish. But at least she hadn’t known at the time. She had spent a few short months in blissful ignorance until the truth had been brought home to her with painful clarity.

‘Hell, I’ll even let you officially end it. You can dump me,’ Damon went on, in the tone of someone making a major concession.

For him it probably was a huge surrender, Sarah admitted with a wry smile. Damon Nicolaides didn’t get ‘dumped’ by the women in his life. He made all the running, called all the shots, deciding who he was dating and for how long. He was the one who said when a relationship had run its course and when he did there was no way back, no hope of appeal against the decision. He said goodbye and never looked back.

‘We can stage some huge public row if you like—in a restaurant…at the theatre. And you can just storm out, declaring that you never want to see me again. And I can play the broken-hearted lover, lost without the woman I adore.’

He couldn’t be serious. Sarah stared into his dark, handsome face, unable to accept what she was hearing.

‘You’d do that for me?’ she said in shocked and disbelieving tones.

‘If it’ll get us out of this fix.’

Suddenly a gleam of bleak amusement appeared in the depths of his eyes and his sensual mouth twisted into a wry smile.

‘I’ll even give you a ring that you can throw at me, just to make the perfect dramatic gesture.’

But that was just too much. The thought of throwing a ring in his face came far too close to the truth for any sort of comfort. Sarah couldn’t meet the cynical humour in his gaze, couldn’t raise so much as a flicker of a smile. She could never forget the agony of taking her wedding ring from her finger, knowing it was for the very last time—and forever.

Nothing in the world could induce her to go through anything like that ever again.

‘I’ll have to think about it,’ she said flatly, her voice as dead as her heart.

Another of those exasperated sighs greeted her response and Damon shook his head impatiently.

‘Then think about it!’ he snapped. ‘But don’t take forever about it. We need to make some sort of decision and fast. Because unless you have enough provisions in for a week-long siege, pretty soon one or both of us is going to have to go out that door. And when we do, believe me, all hell is going to break loose.’

Sarah thought about it.

In fact, she thought about nothing else all afternoon. An afternoon in which the house was plunged into unnatural darkness by the way that the curtains on the ground floor were kept drawn shut, blotting out the sunshine.

As a result every room became gloomy and oppressively stuffy and uncomfortable. If she kept the windows closed she couldn’t breathe, but the only time she opened one, even at the back of the house, she found that it brought the sounds of the Press pack, the shuffle of feet, the murmur of voices, the occasional almost conspiratorial laughter, right into the house. She couldn’t get away from them and she couldn’t settle to anything to distract her.

At least Damon had the decency to stay well out of her way. He shut himself up in his room with his laptop and spent the afternoon working, apparently, and infuriatingly, oblivious to the crowd outside.

By the time the afternoon began to turn into evening, Sarah still hadn’t come to a decision. She would have to do so eventually, she knew, if only because once Monday morning came around she would be obliged to go to work—which, of course, meant going out through the door and facing the hunting pack outside. It made her shudder just to think of it. What could she say? And would they follow her right to the art gallery?

Oh, boy. Rhys would just love that!

She was crossing the hall on the way to the kitchen, struggling to ignore the small snowfall of notes pleading for ‘exclusives’ that lay on the doormat, when the rattle of the letterbox announced the arrival of the evening paper. Automatically Sarah caught it up and unfurled it from the roll the delivery boy had made.

One swift glance at the front page had her heading upstairs in a rush.

Damon glared at the small square screen before him and cursed out loud in savage Greek as he realised that once again he had pressed a succession of invalid keys, inputting totally the wrong data into a file. He would have to go back and start over again! And this should have been just a simple task.

Well, what did you expect? he reproached himself. Your mind’s not on the job. In fact, it couldn’t be further from it. All his thoughts and what little was left of his concentration were centred on the woman downstairs, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t switch off from her.

It was her face he saw in the screen of his computer, superimposed on the spreadsheet he was supposed to be working on. Her perfume seemed to linger all around the house, hanging on the air wherever he walked. And it was her body he remembered, hot and hungry on top of his, when he walked past her bedroom on his way down to the kitchen to make yet another cup of coffee.

The sheets and the quilt had been stripped from the bed, dumped unceremoniously in the washing basket, but just the sight of the room itself, even with totally different bed coverings, was enough to make his blood race, hunger uncoiling, growing, demanding until he was ready to groan aloud with the frustration of it. He could still taste her skin on his lips, picture her luscious breasts naked and free and so, so close to his mouth…

‘Ohi, ohi!’ he muttered, shaking his head furiously in an attempt to clear it. ‘No, no, no!’

He had to get himself under control—think of something else.

Think of Jason! Think of Sarah with Jason! Surely that—

The door banged open without warning and the subject of his thoughts marched into the room, rich-coloured hair flying with the speed of her stride, red flashes of colour scoring her high cheekbones.

‘What the hell—?’

Jolted from his unwanted fantasies to be confronted by the reality of his dreams, Damon couldn’t manage to find the self-discipline to put a curb on his tongue, his temper flaring in an instant.

‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded, glaring at her furiously. ‘What do you want?’

Sarah glared right back at him, unconcerned by his anger; evidently she had other, more pressing matters on her mind.

‘This “make it real” business,’ she said sharply. ‘What exactly is involved?’

‘Ti?’

For a couple of unwelcome seconds, Damon couldn’t remember a word of anything but his own language. But then something of the red haze cleared from his mind and he managed to get his thoughts to function once again.

‘What? What the devil are you talking about?’

Sarah’s breath hissed in between her clenched teeth in a sound of pure exasperation. But she clearly mentally counted to ten and managed to answer him with a greater degree of calm than he had shown to her.

‘This idea that you had,’ she explained with insulting care. ‘The one about us pretending to be lovers to distract the flock of vultures outside. How far did you plan it to go? I mean—you didn’t exactly mean that we should actually…’

Her gaze drifted over to his bed then back again to his stony face, the colour spreading wildly across her cheeks.

‘That we would…’

Think of Jason. Sarah and Jason. Together.

‘That we should sleep together? Kristos—no! That was the furthest thing from my mind!’

Liar! his conscience reproached him. Double-dyed liar. But perhaps it wasn’t so very far from the truth—at least not now. The thought of Sarah and Jason together in the bed that he had very nearly shared with her had acted with the force and efficiency of a very cold, very hard shower. In fact, at the moment the idea of sleeping with her made him frankly nauseous.

‘So it’s strictly a pretence. A fake relationship?’

‘Of course.’

He would have thought that his response would have made her feel better. That at least she would lose something of the tension that held her slim body stiffly taut, the anxious look in her eyes. But if anything she appeared worse, the flaring colour ebbing from her face, the emerald gaze cloudy and bruised-looking.

‘An act put on to give the papers something to write about. Nothing more.’

He studied her face again through narrowed eyes, watching the play of emotions she was unable to hide. Uppermost in them was relief. And a certain amount of defiance.

‘What is this, Sarah?’ he demanded sharply. ‘Why the questions? Are you thinking of going along with the original plan after all? Are you planning to come to Paris with me?’

She didn’t speak but only nodded silently, unrolling the curled newspaper she held and dropping it down onto the table in front of him.

He didn’t have to look far to see what she wanted him to see. It was hard to miss.

The two photographs covered the top half of the front page. They had both been taken only that morning, on the front doorstep of this very house.

The first one was the kiss. The two of them tangled together, heads so close, arms around each other until it was impossible to tell where Damon ended and Sarah began. But the sensuality of the moment was there, sharply defined, unmistakable, raw and blatant in its power.

Seeing it, Damon closed his eyes for a brief second, muttering in thick Greek under his breath. But then he had to look at the other photo.

Himself and Sarah again. Of course.

But this one was of the moment when he had pulled Sarah close to him and her head had fallen back against his arm. He knew that she had been in shock at what he had done—the way he had kissed her. That the ordeal of being the centre of forceful media attention for the first time in her life had drained her of her emotional strength, left her dazed and bewildered.

But in the photograph it seemed as if she had eyes for no one but him. That she was looking up at him, with wide, stunned eyes, and an expression of total devotion on her face. And the way her body was pressed against his only underlined the blinding impact he seemed to have had on her.

The black banner headline above the pictures said it all.

‘It Must Be Love!’ it declared, a statement guaranteeing that no other possible interpretation would cross anyone’s mind.

‘Oh,’ he said. It was all that he could manage.

‘Yes—oh!’ Sarah echoed flatly, no life, no feeling in either her face or her tone. ‘So does that answer your question? Yes, I am thinking of coming to Paris with you. In fact I’m more than thinking—I’m going to have to go with you now. I really don’t think that I’ve got any choice.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘DAMON, no!’

Sarah came to a determined halt in the middle of the huge, luxurious hotel room and turned to him in a fury, green eyes blazing, her delicate jaw set at a stubborn, rebellious tilt.

‘I am not sleeping here! No way.’

A dramatic wave of her hand indicated the equally huge, luxurious bed that stood against the far wall, dominating the space between them and the wide plate-glass window that in the daylight would give a wonderful view of the River Seine and the rest of Paris, spread out below. But now, late in the night, all that could be seen were myriad gleaming lights of all sizes and colours, no sound of the traffic or the city’s life reaching them in the high penthouse suite.

‘You said we would have separate bedrooms! That we wouldn’t sleep together! I’m not—’

‘I said no such thing!’ Damon interrupted harshly, striding in from the other room to stand beside her, a dark cloud of anger on his face. ‘And why would I? We are supposed to be acting like lovers, for God’s sake! So who’s going to believe that story for a second if the first thing we do when we reach our hotel in one of the most romantic cities in the world is demand separate rooms? See sense, can’t you?’

‘I am seeing sense!’ Sarah protested. ‘At least the sort of sense I want to see. You did say we wouldn’t sleep together…’

‘Meaning that we wouldn’t make love.’

‘Well, if you meant only that we wouldn’t have sex…’ Sarah amended the phrase with the deliberate bite of acid in her voice ‘…then you should have made it clearer—a lot clearer. Because when you said we wouldn’t sleep together I took it as meaning exactly that. And, as I naturally assumed that the penthouse suite would have more than one bedroom in it, I didn’t think there would be any problem. After all, we booked in here together; we came up to our suite together. No one would have had any idea of what went on in here once the doors closed behind us.’

‘And what about the maid? When she came round to do the rooms in the morning—’

‘I’m perfectly capable of making a bed! I could have tidied up after myself quite easily! And if I kept all my clothes and personal stuff in your bedroom, then no one would have been any the wiser. It wouldn’t have been much trouble.’

‘Well, now you won’t have to go to any trouble at all. Because there is only one bedroom and one bed—and we’re sharing both.’ ‘No!’

Sarah shook her head defiantly and then, as if that wasn’t definite enough, she shook her hand too, for additional emphasis. ‘You can sleep on the couch in the other room—or the floor.’

‘No way.’

It was Damon’s turn to shake his head.

‘We’re meant to be lovers. Lovers share a bed. We are sharing a bed—this bed. It’s big enough.’

It was more than big enough, Sarah had to concede that. If a big bed was a king-sized one, then this would be fit for an emperor. But it wasn’t the size that concerned her. It was the sheer intimacy of the situation. Even with heaven knew how many feet of mattress between them, she would still be in bed with Damon. And just the thought of it made her pulse rate skyrocket.

‘I don’t want this…’

‘You’ve made that only too plain!’ Damon growled. ‘But to be honest, at this moment, I don’t give a damn what you want! I’m tired and I want a decent night’s sleep. Even if I was prepared to take the couch—which I’m not—it’s way too small for someone of my height. So it’s the bed or nothing.’

Glancing at him now, in the light, Sarah suddenly found that her conscience gave her an uncomfortable kick.

He did look tired, she admitted, and perhaps it wasn’t surprising. She knew he hadn’t slept much last night. It had been late, long after she’d gone to bed, that she’d finally heard him coming upstairs and she’d heard him moving around in his room at some point when she’d woken in the night. Then by the time she was up and dressed he was already in the kitchen, the laptop on the table in front of him, and had clearly been working for some time.

‘You work too hard,’ she said now. ‘You ought to lighten up a bit.’

‘My father’s been ill. He’s finally had to agree to handing over the reins of some of his companies to me.’

‘I’ll bet he didn’t like that!’ Sarah declared with feeling.

Aristotle Nicolaides was a totally unreformed, unmodernised Greek male. He clearly thought no one else could handle his businesses the way he wanted, not even his own son. And he had never liked the fact that Damon had brought one ‘of that family’ into his home. But at least the old man had been honest with her. Which was more than Damon had been.

Bitter memories surfaced, unsought and unwelcome, making her swing away from Damon and dump her handbag on the dresser before making a pretence at examining the wardrobe space, of which there was enough to provide clothes storage for a regiment.

‘And how’s Eugenia?’

She couldn’t stop herself from asking it, though she could have bitten off her tongue as soon as the words were out of her mouth. The stunned silence behind her seemed to tell its own story, and feelings of misery and dread stabbed at her as she waited.

‘Damon?’ she asked again, letting the door swing shut so that she could see his reflection in the mirror. He was standing behind her, absolutely still, staring at her as if she had suddenly turned into a snake.

‘Eugenia?’ Even to speak the other woman’s name seemed an effort for him. ‘Why did you ask about her?’

Just what had made her suddenly bring Eugenia into the conversation? To call it a surprise would be a major understatement, Damon thought. It was almost as if she had somehow latched on to the concerns that had preoccupied him last night, the phone call he had received on his cellphone in the early hours of the morning.

‘I just wondered about her.’

There was something wrong with Sarah’s tone. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on or interpret properly. If he’d had a decent night’s sleep then perhaps his head would be clearer, but, after spending the first night in London lying awake, fighting dreams of Sarah, last night had been no better. Genie’s phone call had seen to that. And the throbbing headache he’d developed on the flight over didn’t help.

‘I didn’t think you knew her all that well.’

He was trying to remember just how well Sarah had got on with Eugenia. Would they have confided in each other? Maybe shared secrets?

‘You only met her once, as far as I remember.’

‘So?’

It was definitely aggressive now, but for no reason he could think of. Just how had he stepped on her toes?

‘I can still ask, can’t I?’

‘Of course.’

He had to tread carefully. If he said the wrong thing then it could cause all sorts of problems. If only he hadn’t promised Genie!

‘Eugenia’s fine,’ he said carefully. ‘She had her twenty-third birthday party last week. She’s grown up a lot these last few months—turned into a beautiful woman.’

‘She always was—lovely.’

Sarah was prowling round the room, running her fingers over the polished wood surfaces, tracing the shape of a ceramic vase.

‘And how’s her father? He’d been ill too, hadn’t he? A heart attack?’

‘Yes. He was in hospital for a while but he’s back home now.’

She’d moved around to the side of the bed, switching first one set of lights and then another on and off again as if testing that they were working. Then, losing interest, she picked up the remote control for the television and started pressing buttons. Her unsettled restlessness was getting on his nerves.

‘He has to take things very easy, but— Do you have to do that?’

‘Sorry!’

Sarah hastily clicked off the loud music video that had suddenly started blaring into the room and dropped the remote down onto a chair.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ Damon told her wearily. ‘I’m not in the best of moods. I have a blinding headache—you don’t happen to have anything that would help, do you?’

‘There’s some paracetamol in my bag.’

Sarah hunted through her handbag, then tossed him a silver-foil strip of tablets.

‘You do look rough.’

‘I didn’t sleep too well last night.’

‘Why’s that? My gran always used to say that not being able to sleep was the sign of a guilty conscience.’

The comment sounded light enough, but there was an edge to it that had Damon stopping on his way to the en suite bathroom to fill a glass with water.

‘And what would I have on my conscience?’

‘How should I know?’

She had turned away from him and was unzipping the lid of her case, her tone perfectly casual, throwaway almost. But then she paused, glanced over her shoulder at him, the green eyes disturbingly intent. A second later she blinked, and the strange look vanished so completely that he was forced to wonder if in fact it had been a trick of the light. Certainly she now seemed purely interested in removing some shirts from her suitcase and placing them carefully in the top drawer of the dresser.

Hell, but he needed these tablets!

He had filled the glass with water and was swallowing the pills down when Sarah’s voice drifted through to him again.

‘Unless you have something you want to confess?’

‘Should I have?’

Coming back into the bedroom so that he could at least see her face again, only to find that it gave him no clue at all as to what was on her mind, he frowned in irritated confusion.

‘Is there a point you’re trying to make here, Sarah?’

‘Me? Not at all.’

It still sounded as if she was trying to needle him.

‘Is this some sort of interrogation?’

The wide green eyes that turned his way were guileless and innocent.

‘Only if you see it that way. We have a saying in England about “if the cap fits”. That means—’

‘I know damn well what it means!’ Damon growled. ‘My English is up to that! And if you’ve got something to say I wish you’d come right out with it. I don’t have the energy or the inclination for mind games.’

‘So your lack of sleep wasn’t down to a guilty conscience?’

‘It certainly wasn’t! Unless you think I should feel sorry for a few deliberate lies I’ve told the reporters, in which case, tough—I think they deserve everything they get. Especially as they were told to protect your blushes.’

‘I know they were—and I’m grateful.’

How the blazes did he do that? Sarah was forced to wonder. How did he manage to divert her purpose, deflect her attention away from a determination to see if he had any conscience at all where his affair with Eugenia was concerned, and turn it instead to an appreciation of how he had handled things today?

Because he hadn’t put a foot wrong; she had to give him that. From the moment that they had stepped outside the front door to face the barrage of cameras and microphones, the deafening pandemonium of questions piled upon questions, with no pause in between, no chance to answer one before another butted in, Damon had been in control. He had answered the questions he could with a smile and an easy charm, sticking strictly to the story they had agreed on, the details they had worked out between them the night before.

And he had kept his promise to perfection.

‘I promise that whenever we go out,’ he had said, ‘whenever you have to face them, I’ll be right there, at your side to see you through it.’

Sarah couldn’t fault him on that. Even before he had opened the door he had held out his hand to her, the strong, square-tipped fingers looking totally dependable, a perfect support. And she had put her own hand into it, feeling the warmth of those fingers close around her, their power enclosing her, their size completely dwarfing the frail slenderness of hers.

They had gone outside together, linked, sharing—a team. And Damon had been the stronger partner. Sarah had never had to speak once. Never had to do anything except be there with him, move when he moved, smile for the cameras in response to a gentle nudge from his elbow in her ribs.

And when the crush had become too intense, when she had started to feel surrounded, trapped, and the panic had started to clutch at her stomach, seeming to tie knots in her throat, he had sensed that too. He hadn’t paused in his answer to a question, but an arm had come round her shoulder, warm and strong, drawing her close and into the protection of his lean body. There had been nowhere she could put her cheek but against his chest; nowhere her arms could have gone but round his waist. And when he’d moved forward, she had moved with him, steps in perfect unison, blinded by the camera flashes, but totally confident that he would get her to their car, and safety, and get her out of there.

He’d done just that. He’d promised to be at her side, and he’d never left it. He had stayed so close that when at last, having boarded his private plane and closed the door on all the fuss and attention, Damon had finally moved away to settle into his seat, Sarah had felt lost, strangely bereft, as if a part of her was missing.

The cruellest irony about the whole situation was that, now that she was officially his ‘mistress’ in the public eye, he was treating her with the open respect and affection that he should have accorded her while she was his wife. But while she had been his wife he had never even acknowledged the fact.

Still, he had looked after her wonderfully today. And she’d never actually thanked him for that.

‘You were a great help today,’ she said, wincing at the way the words sounded rather stiff and grudging.

She was still too uptight at the way he had blocked her questioning over Eugenia. Couldn’t he see that she had been trying to give him the opportunity to talk—to confess—to explain if he wanted to? So had he really not understood what she was getting at? Or did he still not feel any trace of guilt at the way he had treated her, using her and her love for him callously for his own ends?

‘I appreciated it.’

That wasn’t any better, and clearly Damon thought so too, to judge by the way his black eyebrows drew together in a swift frown.

‘No problem,’ he returned, giving it a decidedly ambiguous intonation.

But at the same time he pressed two fingers of each hand against his temples, massaging hard, and Sarah’s too-sensitive conscience gave her another unwanted tug.

‘Headache no better?’

‘Not yet. I’d probably feel better if I had something to eat. There’s a room-service menu somewhere—why don’t you take a look at it too, and see what you fancy?’

Was she being unduly suspicious, Sarah couldn’t help wondering, or had he successfully managed to distract her totally from the points of dissension between them? She’d been sidetracked from her attempts to question him about Eugenia; the argument about the bed had been abandoned uncompleted; and now the business of selecting and ordering food would further distance those problems and move the conversation on to more practical matters.

But Damon did seem less than his normally robust self, she admitted. He looked weary and drawn, and there were shadows under those stunning black eyes that seemed to look vaguely cloudy, washed out, quite unlike their usual gleaming jet brilliance.

It would do no harm to call a truce for a time, while they ate at least. Besides, if she was honest with herself, she would welcome the time of peace after a fraught couple of days in which her life, the life she had begun to feel had reached a certain calm, had been turned on its head so that it was impossible to know any longer which way was up.

‘When did you last take a break from work?’ she asked when the food had been delivered, the waiter sent away with a more than generous tip, and they were seated at the small dining table, sharing a bottle of delicious red wine with their meal.

‘Last year—May.’ Damon’s tone was brusque and she knew why.

May was when he had come to find her. When she had fallen desperately in love with him on sight. When all he had wanted was her signature on a document handing over the land on Mykonos for an extraordinary amount of money. And all she had wanted was him.

‘And that was a working holiday,’ she quipped, and knew from his face that the joke had fallen very badly flat indeed.

Damon sighed and stabbed his fork viciously into the steak on his plate.

‘I didn’t set out to get you to marry me.’

‘I never thought you did. You wanted my inheritance. But you must have thought that the fates were truly smiling on you when you found you could get it cheaper by making me your wife!’

The sense of betrayal had a bite that burned like acid, eating into wounds that had already been ripped open afresh since his reappearance in her life.

‘What is it they say about the things Greeks value, hmm? Land first, money second—women a long way third? So was it worth it, Damon—five months of marriage to me in exchange for what your family had been after for generations?’

His smile was chilling, bleak as his eyes.

‘I had anticipated that it would take much longer.’

Like his lifetime.

He’d thought he had finally found the woman for him: his partner. He had taken one look and known that he was lost. That his life would never be his own again. And she had got bored within six months!

The meal he was eating suddenly seemed to lose all appeal, taking on the flavour of well-chewed sawdust. Throwing down his fork, he pushed his chair back and got up from the table.

‘Not hungry?’

Sarah’s surprise grated badly. It carried too much of a reminder of the early days of their marriage, when she had teased him about the amount he could eat, claiming that she could never cook enough to fill him.

‘No.’

He flung himself down onto the settee and dropped his head onto the back, staring moodily at the ceiling.

Six months seemed to be about Sarah’s limit. She’d got bored with him in six months. Moved back to England. Six months later, another man—Jason…

‘So where do you see yourself in six months’ time?’

‘What?’

He lifted his head again, turned to look at her where she still sat at the dining table. She looked frankly bewildered, as if the question was completely beyond her.

‘It’s a simple enough question. Where do you see yourself half a year from now? Not with Jason, obviously.’

‘Of course not!’

Her faint shudder gave emphasis to the statement.

‘Never with him!’

‘Then with who? What about this guy who runs the art gallery? Morgan?’

‘Rhys? No! He’s a great guy but he has emotional complications of his own.’

Well, that put him in his place. He was an ‘emotional complication’. And he’d be a fool to read anything into the ‘emotional’ bit.

Sarah got up from the table and came to sit in the chair opposite, bringing the two wine glasses with her.

‘Here,’ she said, holding one out to him. ‘I think I should tell you about Jason. The truth about Jason.’

Damon’s fingers clenched over the delicate stem of the glass until his knuckles showed white. He was frankly stunned that it didn’t shatter under the pressure.

‘I don’t give a damn about Jason!’

Who was he trying to kid? The thought of her and Jason together had stuck in his throat like a stone ever since he had first seen the other man coming out of her bedroom. He’d never been able to get rid of the image and he’d tried. God help him, he’d tried!

‘Well, I’m going to tell you whether you want to hear it or not.’

Sarah took a long swallow of her wine, and Damon was tempted to do exactly the same, to fortify himself for what was to come. But he had the unnerving feeling that he would find it impossible to swallow and he wasn’t prepared to take the risk.

‘He was never my lover. Not even really my boyfriend. We only had a couple of friendship dates. I asked him to be in my house to take in a delivery I was expecting.’

‘Oh, yeah!’

Now he was truly glad that he hadn’t drunk any wine! He would have choked on it for sure.

‘I should have known you wouldn’t believe me!’

Damon opened his mouth to retort that along with the saying about the cap fitting, the English also had one about pulling legs and bells. But even as he did so something totally inexplicable happened.

Looking deep into Sarah’s eyes, seeing the way that their stunning emerald had turned to a deeper, softer, mossy green, he suddenly knew, totally without reason, that she was telling him the truth. Hastily he caught back the words he’d been about to speak, changing them rapidly and completely.

‘OK, I believe you.’

It was Sarah’s turn to freeze, the hand that held the glass she had raised to her mouth stilling instantly. Staring at him across the top of it, she blinked hard, swallowed.

‘You…’

Her voice cracked, turned into an embarrassing croak.

‘I believe you.’

‘But why?’

‘Why? I wasn’t married to you for five months for nothing. I can tell when you’re lying to me.’

He could tell?

Sarah’s heart missed several beats, then skipped into double-quick time in order to catch up.

Damon could tell when she was lying? Desperately she thought back over the things she’d said to him, both in the last few days and when he had come after her, when she’d fled from Mykonos.

What had she said?

She decided to tough it out. Trying another sip of wine, she was relieved to find that at least it slipped down her throat without any problems.

‘So when have I lied to you?’ she challenged.

Damon placed his drink on the glass surface of the coffee-table with deliberate care. Then, leaning forward, confident black eyes locking with wary green, he began a list.

‘When you claimed to “quite like” the taste of retsina when in fact you hated it. When you said you weren’t scared of flying, that you’d travelled by plane before.’

He ticked off each item on the fingers of his left hand as he detailed them.

‘When you said you loved the gold jewellery I bought you and in fact you preferred silver. When—’

‘OK, OK! You’ve made your point!’

So he really did know. What had she said to him?

She’d said that she’d left because of the deception over the land. It was true—as far as it went. She’d said she hated him—and she had. At least at the time she’d said it. She’d said…

‘And when you said you didn’t mind the fact that I wanted to keep our wedding a secret for a while.’

‘What?’

Sarah could actually feel the colour drain from her cheeks and she knew that her eyes were wide and staring. But she couldn’t actually focus on his handsome features. They blurred and distorted before her as she struggled with the realisation that all the time she’d thought she’d convinced him, he had known otherwise.

It had hurt to know that she couldn’t tell anyone about the wedding that had so delighted her, or wear the ring that she had been so proud to have on her finger. In the moment that Damon had put it there and the priest had pronounced them man and wife she had thought that she would faint away from the complete delight of it, her thoughts spinning in an ecstasy of joy. It had almost broken her heart to take it off and put it in her jewellery box until Damon said she could display it publicly.

‘You said it was because of your father and my grandfather—some feud they’d had between them.’

‘Between the families for generations. And because of the sort of publicity and scandal-hunger it would unleash on the part of the Press. The sort of thing you’ve just had a taste of in the past couple of days.’

That rang true. Thinking back over the intrusion into her life that she had had to endure since Jason had told them about Damon’s presence in her house, Sarah could believe that trying to avoid it might actually have been a consideration.

‘This feud between our families,’ she said slowly, carefully. ‘What was it about?’

‘Oh, you know—the sort of things Greeks value.’ Cynically Damon echoed her own words of just moments before. ‘Land first, money second—women a long way third.’

Sarah winced inside, hearing the cruelty in his tone. She’d believed him with his story of the feud. Parts of it were true; she’d heard snippets of stories from her grandfather before he died. But now she knew that Damon had had a totally different motivation from the plausible explanation he had offered.

He hadn’t wanted Eugenia Stakis and her father to know anything about his pragmatic and inconvenient marriage. Especially seeing as he’d planned to be rid of it as soon as he could and then marry the younger girl in order to add her fortune to his own.

Land first, money second—women a long way third.

‘What a pity you didn’t stick to the belief that our two families should remain sworn enemies,’ she said rashly, pushed into unthinking speech by the savage slash of pain her thoughts brought. ‘Then we would both have been happier.’

‘You think so?’

‘I know so!’

Belatedly recalling his claim that he would know when she was lying, she hastily lowered her eyes to stare down into her drink, swirling the rich red wine round and round in the bottom of the glass. But then a terrible thought struck her and her gaze swung up again, raw and agonised, to fix on his unreadable, withdrawn features.

‘Unless of course you were sticking to the feud all the time! Is that it, Damon? Were you avenging your family’s honour or something? Did you marry me only to gain the land and then plan to divorce me—walk out and leave me—?’

The words died abruptly as Damon’s glass slammed down onto the coffee-table with a loud crash. And this time the fine crystal did break, splintering into many pieces, what was left of his wine spattering out and running over the table top like a pool of freshly spilled blood.

Damon barely spared it a glance. Instead the blazing fire of his eyes was fixed on Sarah’s white and stricken face.

‘If you think that, then you’re out of your bloody mind,’ he tossed at her, his voice never lifting above the quiet, conversational tone he had used before, but injected with a deadly intensity that rocked her back in her seat, flinching away into the chair.

‘I…’ she tried, but he swept on, totally ignoring her.

‘And can I remind you that it was you and not me who walked out on our marriage? While I was away on business. You didn’t even give me a chance to defend myself.’

‘Oh, yes, and you’d have come crawling to me on bended knee, I suppose!’ Sarah scorned, with the knowledge she was holding back, the fear that he might be able to know of that too, driving her to a point where she hardly cared what she said.

The temptation to throw it all in his face and have the whole truth out in the open was almost overwhelming, but some foolish touch of pride held her back. It was bad enough that he had deceived her over the land, that he had used her to his own ends that way. She couldn’t bear it if he should find out that she knew about Eugenia too. That she was aware of just how total her humiliation at his hands had been.

‘You’d have been begging me to forgive you—take you back?’

Damon’s face had set so hard that it seemed to be carved from a single slab of granite. Even his eyes had gone dead, blank and opaque, so that she could read nothing in them. But at his right temple, in exactly the same spot where he had tried to rub away the ache earlier, a heavy pulse throbbed, revealing the savage fury he was fighting to keep under tight rein.

‘Well, seeing as you weren’t there to greet me, you never found out the answer, did you? And now you never will.’

He swung onto his feet in one lithe, furious movement, kicking the coffee-table and the devastation on its top out of his way as he headed for the door to the bedroom.

‘Heaven help me, it’s no wonder that my head aches! The only real surprise, ghineka mou…’ He used the term of affection with a savage bite that took every last drop of warmth from it ‘…is that when you’re around it never does anything else. You make me regret that I ever came to England—ever—’

‘The feeling, andhras mou,’ Sarah used the first two words of Greek she had ever wanted to learn—the words that meant ‘my husband’—to equally deadly effect. ‘The feeling is entirely mutual. You can’t know how much I regret that you came back into my life.’

‘Well, unfortunately I did—and, for my sins, we’re both stuck with each other.’

Suddenly, shockingly, the harsh mask of cold fury split, cracked, peeled away, and Sarah stared in total disbelief as he actually threw back his head and laughed.

But there was no warmth, no real amusement in his laughter. Instead it was so cold, so brutal, so hatefully cynical that it made her blood turn to ice in her veins.

‘What a pity that we’re locked away up here, out of the public eye. Otherwise, my sweet wife, this would have been the perfect opportunity for us to announce that break-up that we’re both so eager for. More so now than ever before. But as, unfortunately for us both, we don’t have the audience we need, I’m afraid that we’re still stuck together.’

Roughly he rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes in a gesture that seemed to combine tiredness and frustration—but might just have been simply angry.

‘I’m going to sleep,’ he announced in a voice that made it plain he was not to be argued with. ‘In the bed. And that point is not up for debate.’

Sarah didn’t dare to argue. Instead she simply stayed where she was, sitting stiffly silent in the chair. With Damon in this mood, she knew she was risking being torn to pieces, verbally at least, if she so much as breathed in the wrong way or raised the slightest protest.

But that didn’t mean she was happy about it.

When Damon stomped off into the bathroom and she heard the shower being switched on she allowed herself to relax enough to start thinking.

She could take the couch she had offered him earlier, but swift consideration showed her that in this at least Damon had been right. Stiffly elegant it might be, comfortable to sleep on it was not. And it was too small even for her slighter frame to have a chance of finding any comfort on it.

So it had to be the bed. Which, as Damon had already stated, was plenty big enough. If they could just keep to their respective sides, then there was no need at all for them even to touch.

‘Of course!’

Inspiration struck suddenly, getting her to her feet in a rush. Hurrying through to the bedroom, she picked up three of the fat, fluffy pillows and laid them end to end down the centre of the bed as a soft, downy barricade separating left from right and—hopefully—preventing either herself or Damon from drifting across into the other’s territory.

‘There!’

She surveyed her handiwork with a degree of satisfaction and nodded approval. The barrier was probably more effective as a symbol than an actual deterrent, but at least it was there. And knowing that made her feel a whole lot better.

She had just finished when the bathroom door opened and Damon stalked out, making her heart skip several beats in reaction to just the sight of him.

He was naked apart from a towel knotted around his hips, the brilliant white material throwing the deep bronze of his skin into sharp relief. His black hair was still damp from the shower, and springing into the beginnings of curls, while on his lush black eyelashes tiny diamonds of water drops still sparkled.

As he surveyed the makeshift barrier she had created through narrowed eyes, his beautiful mouth quirked up sharply at one corner into something that might have been amusement. Or it might simply have been a response of total scorn.

‘I get the message, agape mou.’ He drawled the words laced with dark cynicism. ‘But really you had no need. Believe me, you have never been safer from my unwanted attentions than you are tonight.’

Then, totally unselfconscious, he discarded the towel and slid in between the crisp linen sheets.

‘Goodnight, wife!’ he said, laying his head on the pillow and closing his eyes.

Sarah fled into the bathroom, where she spent an unduly long time washing and preparing for bed. Her tactics worked. By the time she emerged again Damon was sound asleep, his long body relaxed, his breathing deep and slow.

She fully expected to be unable to match him. Her nerves were strung so tightly after the events of the evening that she truly believed that she would be unable to relax and that sleep would be a long time coming.

She couldn’t have been more wrong. From the moment that she curled up on her side of the bed, feeling the security of the pillow barrier snug against her back, a great wave of tiredness rolled over her, washing away her tension and sweeping her into an easy doze. From there it was just the space of a couple of seconds before she drifted into a deep, relaxed sleep that provided the oblivion she needed—at least for a time.

It was only later, in the early hours of the morning, that something unexpectedly startled her into wakefulness.

CHAPTER EIGHT

SARAH was dreaming.

Someone was trying to suffocate her. There was something big and soft and squashy pressed up against her nose and mouth so that she was finding it desperately difficult to breathe. She was struggling hard, so hard; clutching at it and trying to push it away.

But then suddenly she had a good grip on the thing. She could lift it, letting in precious air…

With a final effort she pushed it away completely, picking it up and throwing it right away from her.

But still she felt lost and afraid. She whimpered in her sleep, twisting and turning, until a gentle hand reached out and touched her arm gently.

‘Sarah…’ a voice said, soft and low.

And, responding purely on instinct, she stilled for a second, then rolled closer, coming into the comfort, the protective warmth of a strong pair of arms. Contentedly she nestled closer, her taut body relaxing, her breath coming easily again. And the arms encircled her and held her close. With a small sigh she drifted into peace again.

Damon had been woken by Sarah’s thrashing about. She was crying in her sleep and seemed to be in the grip of a particularly bad nightmare. Suddenly she grabbed at one of the pillows she had placed as a barrier between them, picking it up and flinging it with all her might down to the bottom of the bed, where it slid softly onto the floor.

‘Hey,’ he said quietly. ‘Sarah—relax. It’s just a dream.’

Still with her eyes closed, she turned to him as if seeking comfort. And then, and even Damon couldn’t have said whether it was to his delight or his horror, she suddenly moved towards him like a small, frightened creature seeking sanctuary. In her sleep, she totally ignored what was left of the pillow barrier. In fact she simply rolled right over it and into Damon’s arms.

Reacting purely on instinct, he folded his arms tight around her slender body and drew her hard up against his own.

And instantly knew that he had made a terrible mistake.

‘Theos!’ he muttered, the sound raw and rough, low down in his throat. What had he done now?

Oh, why ask the question?

He knew what he’d done. He’d only acted on his most basic instincts, the instincts that had been clamouring for release from the moment he had first seen Sarah getting out of her car outside the London house a few days ago.

His overwhelming urge in that moment had been to grab her, hold her tight, kiss her until they were both senseless with need and longing. But of course he had had to resist the temptation, subdue the fierce, hungry need that simply being in the same space as Sarah whipped up in him.

The same fierce, hungry need that was eating away at him right now.

‘Sarah?’

Her name was just a whisper. He didn’t want to startle her, but he wanted her to wake, to realise where she was. Because if he did, then surely she would move immediately. She would want to break free from his arms, to move back over that ridiculous barrier and safely into the other side of the bed.

And he would be spared the torment of lying here next to her, with his body on fire.

But wasn’t the truth that he didn’t want to be spared?

Oh, hell!

Damon closed his eyes against the enticement of the thought, then swiftly opened them again because being unable to see only made matters worse. It left him far more sensitive to everything about the position he was in, so that he was totally unable to think of anything else but the feel of Sarah’s soft form, curled up against his. The creamy silk nightdress she wore was long and modest, falling down to her ankles when she was standing. But in her sleep the fine silk had ridden up over her thighs and the long, slender legs were tangled intimately with his.

The nightdress was sleeveless, leaving her arms bare, and the delicate scent of her body, a tantalising mixture of clean, feminine skin and some flowery scented soap that she had used in the bathroom, drifted up to his nostrils, making him want to groan aloud with the delight of it. If he moved slightly, he could bury his face in the silk of her hair, feel the fine strands catching against the roughness of a night’s growth of beard on his chin, and against his neck the sweet warmth of her breath was like a caress, gentle as the brush of a butterfly wing.

Sarah, please wake up!

Sarah! Please don’t wake up!

Please don’t wake up! Please stay…

His thoughts froze as she stirred, murmuring faintly. He heard her draw in a long, deep breath and then his heart stilled in shock as he felt the warm touch of her lips pressing a kiss against the corded muscles in his neck.

He tried to swallow hard but could find no moisture to ease the raw, painful dryness that made his throat ache.

Think about her and Jason. Sarah and Jason. It had worked once before. It had killed his desire stone-dead…

But it had no effect this time. She had told him that she and Jason had never been lovers and he believed her, damn it! He believed her.

Sarah stirred again and his mind went into shock as he felt her hands begin to move over his body. Still asleep, still with her eyes closed, she was exploring his torso with tentative, feather-light caresses, drifting her fingertips over the lines of muscle and bone, the width of shoulder, the ridges of his ribcage.

And all he could do was lie there and let it happen. If he moved now, if he reacted too sharply, he could startle her awake. And heaven alone knew what she would think if she woke to find herself right on the other side of her ridiculous barrier and with him holding both hands captive in his.

And with his body so heatedly excited.

Because he was aroused. Hotly, fiercely, brutally aroused. He was so hard that he hurt, not just with the ache of wanting, but also with the knowledge that if Sarah did wake up then she would immediately pull away. That after the confrontation they had had earlier that evening she would reject him totally, without a second’s thought.

‘Damon…’

Sarah had murmured in her sleep, and the sound of his name on her lips, here in the private, warm darkness of a bed as he had heard it so many times in the first glorious days of their marriage, clawed at something in his soul, leaving it raw and bleeding.

Dear God, but he wanted her so badly.

‘Damon…’

Her hands had started wandering again, drifting down, over the indentation of his narrow waist, his hips…

Damon’s breath hissed in sharply between his teeth in a sound of intolerable torment, of restraint perilously close to breaking as the soft fingers closed over the heat and hardness of his erection.

‘Sarah!’ he choked, unable to take any more.

The sound of his voice broke into the golden, blissful dream world in which Sarah had found herself.

She was dreaming about the early days of her marriage, remembering how it had been when she was free to touch Damon each and any time she wanted. When she could let her hands rove over the warm satin of his skin, trace the corded lines of muscles, marvel at the hardness of bone. She had always loved to caress him, could never have enough of the feel of him.

And she didn’t want to wake. Because even in her sleep she knew that this was a dream. Because now she could no longer touch Damon. He wouldn’t allow her to come close to him, would brutally repulse any advances if she tried to make them. She had to stand back and look, and see the beauty of his lean, hard body, the wonderful rich colour of his skin, the beauty of those stunning black eyes—but she couldn’t touch.

Never, ever touch again.

And so she wanted to stay safely cocooned in sleep, lingering in the dream world where reality had no place. Here she could not only look and see, but she could also caress to her heart’s content.

‘Damon…’ she sighed.

‘Sarah!’

The hoarse, husky-voiced cry jolted her awake, bringing her eyes open in a rush. For a second she couldn’t see because of the shadows in the room, but then she blinked hard and found that she was staring up into the deep, dark, intent black eyes that she had just seen in her dreams.

But this time they were real. And so was the hard, warm body she was crushed up against. The strong, supportive shoulder on which her head lay. The heavy, thudding beat of his heart directly under her pillowed cheek.

The scent of his skin was in her nostrils, and her hand…

‘Oh, dear God!’ she muttered as she became aware of just exactly where her hand was lying.

And Damon said nothing but continued to look deep into her face, as if searching her inner being for some vital, needed answer that only she could give him.

‘I…’ she tried, but her voice failed her, her throat drying painfully, the single syllable coming out on a fractured croak.

And she seemed to have lost any control over her body. Her hand refused to obey her, and even though her mind screamed at it to move, move now, it still lingered, paralysed in the most intimate caress imaginable, refusing to let go.

‘Damon…’

She knew what had happened to her, though she could hardly believe it. In her sleep she had done what she would never, ever have done while awake. She had discarded the silly barrier she had set up and moved instinctively into his arms. And by doing so she had betrayed her deepest yearnings.

If only he would speak!

If only he would say something—preferably come out with one of his characteristic cynically sarcastic comments—then it would shatter the dream-like trance in which she still found herself held captive. It would drive away the last clinging threads of sleep and fantasy and wake her completely to reality.

But Damon said nothing. Instead, he lay there silently, holding her eyes with his own.

‘Damon…’ she tried again, with no more effect than before.

But then he moved. With a sense of shock and a terrible emptiness in the pit of her stomach, she felt his mouth drift over the tumbled auburn strands of her hair in the softest kiss imaginable. His mouth trailed down over her forehead, the tip of her nose, heartbreakingly briefly on her mouth.

And then he sighed, deep and raw.

‘Yes or no?’ he said, so softly yet with deadly intent.

His hands traced the slim lines of her throat, the fine bones of her shoulders, ran down her arms. Then he caught hold of both her hands and, lifting them to his mouth, he pressed warm, lingering kisses into each palm, then folded her fingers carefully over them.

‘Yes or no?’

And Sarah knew that there was only one answer she could give him.

The empty space inside her had suddenly filled with a thousand fluttering butterflies, all desperately beating their wings against her ribs. And the warmth of those kisses was spreading through her body, heating her blood, making her pulse race, and the innermost core of her being throb with a hungry need.

Even if this was all he ever offered her, all he could give, she couldn’t deny herself any more. She wanted him, needed him so desperately that there was no way she could say no, or turn away. All that was feminine in her was reaching out, responding to his very potent masculinity. She couldn’t say no—it would kill her to do so.

‘Yes…’ she whispered, her voice cracking on the word. ‘Damon—yes.’

She heard his rough sigh, the breath drawn in sharply and released in a rush, and then his mouth touched hers again. But this time the gentleness had gone. In its place was a beguiling, enticing sensuality, one that teased her lips open, had her mouth softening willingly, and seemed to draw her soul out of her body, rising to meet his.

‘Damon…’ she sighed against his lips.

And at the same time that his kisses made her head swim on a warm current of delight, his hands moved softly but surely over her body. Their heat and hardness smoothed the silk down her slender frame, stroking it against her skin until she didn’t know where she ended and the fine material began. But when he reached the spot where the nightdress was pushed up, crumpled around her thighs, he paused, letting his fingers rest on the exposed flesh just for a moment before he began to trace slow, erotic patterns on her naked skin.

‘Damon!’

Sarah’s breath knotted in her throat so that she could only choke out his name, no other words forming in her thoughts.

‘Damon, Damon, Damon…’

It was a litany of need, of yearning, of impatience, but he ignored the note of urging, allowing himself only a faint smile against her mouth, before he let his lips follow the same, teasing path that his hands had traced.

Sarah shifted restlessly on the bed, the hunger growing deep inside her, as he kissed his way along her jaw, down her throat, onto the soft skin at the top of her arms exposed by the sleeveless nightdress.

Beneath the creamy silk, her yearning nipples peaked, pushing against the delicate covering, and Sarah’s heart kicked in raw shock as the wicked mouth closed over one hardened tip. With his tongue he encircled the straining bud, moistening the soft fabric until the pink of her skin showed through. Then, taking her nipple into his mouth, he suckled hard through the silk, sending wild electrical currents shafting through every nerve in her body, creating a pleasure so sharp, so primitive that it was dangerously close to pain.

‘Oh, my…’

Sarah arched up from the mattress, pressing herself even closer to him, so that he could increase the pressure; take more of her into his tormenting mouth. She felt the faint graze of his teeth, blunted slightly by the delicate barrier, and gave a choking cry of delight that would not be held back.

Her nightdress seemed too hot, too restrictive. It came between her and the heated satin touch of Damon’s skin on hers, and her fingers scrabbled impatiently at the garment, struggling to rid herself of its clinging folds.

Damon understood at once, sensing her urgent need, and with one swift movement he pulled the nightdress up and off her restless form, replacing its soft covering with the warmth and hardness of his own body.

‘Yes!’

It was a sound of pure joy, of satisfaction at the wonder of sensation that assailed her. But a moment later she stilled completely, shaken into almost total oblivion, when she felt the reality of Damon’s mouth on her skin, his hands at her breasts. He cupped and held the soft weight, lifting them to his tormenting mouth once more, licking, nibbling, suckling until Sarah felt that her head would explode with trying to contain the tumult of sensations that was pounding at her brain.

The throb of her pulse was like the beat of a huge orchestra working towards the ending of some magnificent symphony, layering sound upon sound, building up to a crescendo like an explosion of fireworks, and she felt that her body just wasn’t strong enough to contain it.

‘Oh, please…’ It was torn from her on a gasping cry. ‘Damon, please…’

‘Hush, agape mou,’ he soothed her. ‘I want this to be right for you.’

‘It is right,’ she muttered feverishly. ‘How could it be anything but right? It’s what I want. What I need.’

‘I want you too. Theos, so much!’

His knowing, tantalising hands found the damp curls at the top of her thighs and he pressed his palm against her, holding her. Sarah’s teeth dug into the fullness of her bottom lip so that she wouldn’t moan aloud, but when one long finger touched on the sensitive bud at the centre of her desire she couldn’t hold back from groaning his name into the mouth that had returned to kiss her senseless.

‘Damon—I want you! I want you with me, in me. Deep inside me!’

‘Yes… Oh, yes…’

It was just a raw mutter as one hair-roughened leg came between the slender length of hers, nudging them open to allow him access to the most feminine core of her. He slid between her thighs, hot and strong and so very, very aroused. Clearly as hungry for her as she was for him.

Sarah tossed her head impatiently on the softness of the pillow, her red-gold hair flying over her face, tangling into knots. Damon paused just for a second to tenderly brush the auburn strands away from her, easing the tiny tendrils that had stuck to her parched mouth.

Then, before she had time to think, he lifted his long body up, supporting himself on the strength of his arms, and thrust into her in one fierce, powerful movement.

‘Sarah!’

Mixed in with Damon’s gasp Sarah heard someone give a wild, keening cry of pleasure, and realised with a sense of shock that it was her own voice she had heard. But the next moment she was beyond thought, beyond speech, capable only of feeling as he moved within her, hard and strong, and only just in control.

She was already so far gone that she needed little to push her to the edge of her own restraint. She felt the forceful thrusts within her, the gathering vigour of his movement. She barely had time to snatch a much-needed breath before her body arched up to meet his, her head falling back, her hands clinging to the hard, sweat-slicked shoulders above her.

One more and she was pushed over and into a world of brilliant sensation where lights like a thousand shooting stars exploded around her and time and place ceased to exist. Where there was nothing but herself and Damon and the wonder of ecstasy that they had created between them.

‘Damon!’ she cried in an aftershock of delight. ‘Oh, Damon!’

And, pushing her hands between their hot, damp bodies, she touched soft fingers to the point where they were joined, smiling against his mouth at his incoherently muttered response.

A ragged heartbeat later she heard Damon groan her name, looked into his eyes and saw the brilliant febrile glitter that burned there. And as she watched she saw his dark head thrown back, the flash of hot colour burning along the sharp line of each cheekbone, his throat corded and tense. In the wide ribcage she could see the heavy beat of his heart, see the rough, uneven breathing that raked through him.

And then he too reached the climax of sensation, taking her with him even higher, deeper, further, until she lost all knowledge of where and who she was and only felt.

Until at last, exhausted and replete, Damon collapsed across, her, dragging in raw breaths, struggling to ease the violent racing of his heart.

She held him, her own eyes closed, her body limp with satisfaction. One hand curled in his hair, twisting the night-dark strands around her fingers, the other stroked the length of his back, from shoulders down to buttocks, unable even now to get enough of the touch of him, unwilling to let him go.

But eventually he groaned, lifted his heavy head, and rolled to one side, releasing her from the pressure of his body. His arms came round her, gathering her close, and she felt his kiss on the top of her head, his face buried in her tangled hair, bright silky strands catching on the roughness of the night’s growth of beard on his jaw.

‘That is what it’s about with me and you, my darling,’ he muttered, his voice rough and thick and filled with dark satisfaction. ‘That is how it is, agape mou. How it always will be.’

And Sarah couldn’t find it in herself to worry whether the husky-voiced terms of affection were true, if they were meant, or if they were just bedroom lies, pillow talk, needed to fill the silence of the time after such a violent explosion of passion.

If they were lies, they were sweet little lies, and she would be content with them, hold them close to her for now. Use them as a protection against the time when such lies might be all she had to comfort her.

Because she had no hope, no expectation that the passion that had flared between them so fiercely in the darkness of the night, the conflagration of desire that had burned them up, consuming them totally in its raging heat, was any sort of a new beginning. It had nothing of any promise in it, only the appeasing of a desperate hunger that wouldn’t be controlled.

Damon had spoken no word of love, or a future together. He had been full of ardour and a primitive carnality that had driven them both beyond the bounds of control, but he had promised her nothing. Nothing but tonight, and with that she knew she would have to be content.

If tonight was all she would have, then tonight she would take and try to be happy with it. She would use it to garner memories, to hold them against the dark, cold, lonely days that must come soon. She knew they were, inevitably, just over the horizon, thankfully out of sight for now, but coming closer, ever closer with each second that ticked away far too swiftly for her liking.

Twice more Damon reached for her in the night, the first time before she would even have thought that either of them could have recovered. But already the hunger was growing deep inside and she responded with the same urgency, the same need as she had experienced before.

Eventually, they slept, but there was one more time, a time when it was Sarah herself who reached for Damon, who took him into her and sobbed out her delight just as the light slowly started to permeate the room. And she knew that for all the rest of her future, no matter where she was or what was happening to her, she would never be able to watch the sun rise, the dawn come up, without remembering this one special night when she had been with Damon in a hotel room in Paris.

Long, exhausted hours later, she finally struggled up from the drugging clouds of sleep into which she had tumbled to hear the sound of rushing water from the shower, and Damon whistling, slightly off-key, in the bathroom.

Hot tears stung at her eyes as the sound took her back to the brief, wonderful days of her marriage, when she had believed it was real. When she had thought that Damon loved her.

Every morning, just like this, she would lie in bed, worn out by the ardour and intensity of their lovemaking. She would hear Damon whistling or singing as he showered. And she would think that she had never been so happy.

But that happiness had been founded on a dream, an illusion. It had never truly existed; never been real.

She knew the truth now, and she would make herself accept it. Damon did not love her. He couldn’t have done, or he would never have used her in the way he had, for whatever reasons.

A buzzing sound forced its way to her attention, distracting her from her unhappy thoughts. It was coming from the suite’s sitting room, reaching her through the open door. It took a moment to register just what it was, but then she realised—Damon’s cellphone.

‘Damon! Phone!’

The sound of the shower and Damon’s tuneless whistle continued unabated. He hadn’t been able to hear her voice through the thickness of the door and the heavy pounding of the water.

‘Damon!’ she tried again. ‘Damon—phone!’

Still no response. Another minute and it would be too late. Already she had thrown back the covers and was hurrying into the other room, reaching for the small silver phone on the table.

‘Damon…’

But it was already too late. With the typical perversity of such things, as soon as she had it in her hand the ringing stopped. She had just enough time to glance at the screen, to try to register the name if not the number, before it went blank again. The caller had clearly given up and rung off.

But not before Sarah had seen the name and it had struck straight to her heart like a cruel knife.

Because the person ringing Damon had been none other than Eugenia Stakis. The woman his father had said he really wanted to marry.

CHAPTER NINE

DAMON knew that something was wrong as soon as he came out of the bathroom.

He had left Sarah curled up in bed, dozing sweetly, while he took his shower, completely relaxed and totally naked. The woman who confronted him when he finally emerged was wide awake, out of bed, upright, obviously uptight, and very definitely dressed in one of the white towelling robes that the hotel provided for its guests’ use.

And if he wanted any further evidence as to the mood she was in, then the very forceful way that the robe was gathered round her slender frame, belted to the point of her barely being able to breathe, and pulled close and tight at the neck so that not an inch of skin showed, would have given him the message loud and clear.

Not that he needed any such help. The look in her eyes, and the set of her mouth, pulled almost as tight as the belt on the robe, told him that. Something had happened in the short time that he’d been in the shower to swing her frame of mind from relaxed and contented to overwrought and totally on edge.

It was probably another report in the paper. They’d left most of the English Press behind when they flew out of London, but the French reporters had been there en masse when they had driven out of the airport, and they’d followed them to the hotel. The story of the Gorgeous Greek’s new English mistress had spread far and wide, and everyone wanted a picture of her—preferably of the two of them together.

But until he knew for sure that that was the case, then discretion was definitely the better part of valour. 153

‘You’re up, then,’ he said as casually as he could, rubbing at his still-damp hair with a white towel.

If the truth was told, he deeply regretted that she had ever got out of bed. He would much rather that she had stayed there, sleepily sensual and warm, with her glorious hair in a rich, red-gold tousled cloud around her fine-featured face, those amazing green eyes clouded partly by sleep and partly by sensual longing. Though if she had been in that state, he would have found it infinitely harder to leave her there, even though he knew he had to. He would much rather have slipped back between the sheets…

‘Yes, I’m up.’

The words were clipped and curt, coming from a mouth that was tight-lipped and stiff.

‘Any reason why I shouldn’t be?’

Ouch! Someone or something had really riled her badly. She was not in a happy mood. Which was a pity, because after the night they had just shared she should, like him, have woken up with the feeling that all was well in her world. That it was a day for new beginnings, the resolution of differences, the clearing up of misunderstandings.

Not so, it seemed.

‘It’s just that I thought you were out for the count,’ he replied, tossing the now damp towel onto a chair and crossing the room to where his case still stood against the wall.

He hadn’t unpacked last night and so the clean clothes he needed were still folded away, something that piqued him slightly. If there was one thing he hated, it was suitcase-creased clothes. And he had an important meeting early this morning.

‘You looked ready to sleep the morning away.’

‘Another feather in your cap, I suppose?’ Sarah snapped.

‘Ti ipate?’

Damon paused in the process of shaking out his clothes, putting them on hangers to let some of the creases fall out.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’d like to take the credit for wearing me out with your—sexual attentions, I suppose,’ Sarah sniped. ‘It would be an accolade for your stamina—a feather in your cap, we’d say. Or perhaps you’d prefer the phrase “a notch on your bedpost”.’

‘I most definitely would not!’

Damon still didn’t know why she was goading him like this, but it was wearing his temper pretty thin. Already the cheerful, optimistic mood he’d woken up in was fraying badly at the edges.

‘Just what is wrong with you this morning? This time you really have got out of bed on the wrong side.’

‘I got out of bed on the side you left me on!’ Sarah retorted obscurely, making him frown in puzzlement.

‘And just what is that supposed to mean? I only went to the bathroom to shower!’

‘And now you’re dressing.’

She seemed to have jumped on to a totally different topic, with no logic at all in her behaviour.

‘It is usual in the morning, agape mou.’

Never once in the past had he ever minded getting dressed—or undressed for that matter—in front of any woman, especially not Sarah. But somehow now, with her glaring daggers at him for her own private reasons, it was a distinctly uncomfortable feeling. And the way she had scowled at the term of endearment was decidedly disturbing. For the first time in his life he was glad when he had his underwear on, and pulled a shirt on over it.

‘And I could hardly attend a meeting in the hotel’s robe—delicious though it does look on you.’

Sarah ignored the blatant attempt at flirting, as he had suspected that she would.

‘So you’re going out.’

‘I have an important meeting to go to. I did tell you that I had to work while I was here.’

‘I know what you said, but that was before the news broke about—about us. I would have thought that you’d rather be out there flaunting your new mistress.’

‘And I would have thought that you would much prefer to stay inside, away from all the publicity.’

‘Great! So you finally bring me to Paris—only a year too late—and all I get to see are the inside of a hotel and the four walls of this suite! Wonderful!’

Oh, was this what it was all about? Was she sulking because she thought that he should take time off to be with her? Well, that he could deal with easily enough.

‘I won’t be working all day, Sarah,’ he said, fastening shirt buttons with swift efficiency.

The attempt to be placatory was ruined by an edge to his voice that warned of the effort he was making to keep a grip on his temper. If she had deliberately set out to provoke, then she was certainly succeeding.

‘The meeting finishes at noon. I’ll come back here then and we’ll go out together.’

He flashed her a cajoling smile, the sort that usually worked wonders on even the most bad-tempered woman.

‘I’ll show you all the sights—Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, everything. I promise.’

Would that appease her?

No response, damn it! No lightening of the sullen frown that had hovered ever since the moment he had first seen her. No answering smile putting a gleam into her eyes. Whatever was bugging her, she really had it bad.

‘You don’t have to bother—I’ll manage by myself. I can find a street map and…’

‘I really wouldn’t advise that.’

‘So what would you advise me to do? Sit quietly in here, in splendid isolation, twiddling my thumbs while waiting for my lord and master to come home?’

‘You know what I mean, Sarah! If the paparazzi spot you they’ll make your time hell. You won’t have any peace and…’

As he zipped up his trousers and buckled the leather belt at his waist he realised that she had something in her hands. Something small and silver that she was tapping restlessly against one palm in a movement that spoke of severe irritation and a worrying inner tension.

‘What’s that?’ he asked sharply.

The repetitive movement stopped abruptly, and Sarah flashed him a look of such mutinous defiance that for a second or two he was sure that she wasn’t going to answer. But then she seemed to rethink and tossed something down onto the bed, where it bounced slightly on the sprung mattress then lay still, gleaming amongst the soft blue of the covers.

‘My phone?’

It was the last thing he had expected, and he really couldn’t understand what this had to do with anything.

‘You had a call while you were in the shower.’

‘You should have shouted for me.’

‘I did—you didn’t hear me.’

‘Well, I’m sorry but…’

He was fastening his tie as he spoke, looking in the mirror. But his busy hands suddenly stilled as he saw her reflection in the glass, caught the look on her face.

It obviously wasn’t just the fact that she had been woken by the phone, or yet that she hadn’t been able to get him to hear.

‘Is there a point to all this, Sarah? Because if there is, I’d very much like to hear it. I really don’t have time for this.’

‘Of course not!’ Her tone took the description ‘tart’ to a whole new dimension. ‘You have your meeting to get to.’

That was just too much.

‘Are you implying that there is no meeting—or that—?’

‘I’m implying nothing. But there is something I want to say.’

With an exasperated sigh, Damon raked one hand roughly through the darkness of his hair, ruffling the locks he had only just brushed into shape.

‘All right, Sarah.’ He flung himself down into the nearest chair, and fixed his attention on her face. ‘Spit it out. Whatever it is that’s getting to you—stop dodging around it and get to the point.’

Well, she’d asked for it, Sarah reflected uncomfortably. But seeing him this way, with his arms folded across his broad chest and that disturbingly belligerent look on his face, she felt uneasy at actually broaching the subject.

She wished she could sit down. Her legs felt disturbingly shaky beneath her. But she much preferred to keep the advantage of height that being upright gave her. So she leaned her hips against the dressing table, supporting herself that way.

‘You had a phone call,’ she said carefully.

‘You already said that. So what?’

‘From Eugenia.’

His sudden start told her that she had his total attention. Unease and distress prickled over her skin as she saw the way his head came up, polished jet eyes opening wide for a moment then narrowing again thoughtfully. The phone call mattered. That much was obvious.

‘What did she say?’

He had recovered slightly now, and his voice at least was well under control. If it hadn’t been for that one, immediate reaction he might have convinced her that he was totally casual about the whole thing. But, agonisingly sensitive to everything about him, she had caught that initial tiny reaction and so was not so sure.

‘I don’t know. She rang off just as I picked it up. All I saw was her name.’

Had he relaxed—even just very slightly? She couldn’t tell. His face was as impassive as if it had been carved from stone; his eyes carefully opaque.

‘She’ll ring back.’

‘I’m sure she will. You must have had a dozen calls from her in the past few days.’

That brought his head up, ebony eyes narrowing sharply.

‘How…?’ he began, and just the tone he used pushed her into a nervy response.

‘I—checked your call record.’

The silence that fell probably lasted no more than ten seconds, but it seemed that each of those seconds was measured out on Sarah’s overstretched nerves. She felt as if someone was plucking at her heartstrings, playing out some ominous overture to a major explosion.

‘Spying on me now, are you?’

The very pleasantness of the way he said it, the almost impossibly light intonation, the easy way he lolled in the chair, were all belied by a new and dangerous sharpening of his gaze, and ominous set to his jaw.

‘N-no.’

‘No? Then what would you call it, hmm? What is it when you invade someone’s privacy, pry into their personal things—is that not spying?’

‘Only if you have something to hide!’

‘And do I? Have something to hide?’

‘I don’t know! You tell me!’

Oh, please, please tell me! If I have to know, tell me now. Bring it all out in the open so that I know once and for all where I stand—or, rather, where I don’t stand!

Please, Damon! Please don’t keep pretending. Not after last night! Please tell me the truth. At least tell me to my face that Eugenia’s the one for you. At least have the honesty, the honour to do that!

But Damon’s face had closed up totally. His eyes were hooded and his mouth clamped so tightly shut that it was just a thin, cruel line.

Pushing himself out of his chair, he snatched his jacket from the hanger on the wardrobe door and shrugged it on. And in spite of herself Sarah couldn’t help thinking how wonderful he looked. How stunningly handsome in the dark blue suit, the crisp white shirt and the sky-blue tie. He had the sort of devastating appeal that should carry a health warning. Certainly it was positively lethal to the shreds of the self-control she was desperately struggling to hang on to.

‘I’ve nothing to say to you,’ he stated icily, freezing every last hope she had had before it had fully time to form. ‘Except goodbye.’

It was like a blow to the heart.

‘What? Just like that? Good— But you said that I—’

‘Goodbye until lunch time,’ Damon elaborated, casting an impatient glance at his watch. ‘I’m going to be late!’

‘Then you—you’re coming back?’

‘I said I would! I promised I’d take you round Paris.’

But that was just too much. It raked up too many bitter memories of the promises he had made in the past. Promises that she now knew had been nothing but lies, or smokescreens to hide his real plans behind.

‘It’ll be too late.’

‘Rubbish! We can see plenty of the city in an afternoon.’

‘Not for that! I mean you’re too late. A year too late!’

‘Sarah, you’re not making sense.’

A dark, dangerous frown drew Damon’s black brows together over his glittering eyes.

‘Just what do you want? Do you want me to come back at all?’

Did she? Her heart cried yes, she would put up with anything, endure the worst mental torment if she could only see him a little bit longer. Stay with him for just a short time more.

But rational common sense warned her that to break it now was the only way. That the longer she stayed with him now, the harder it was going to be to let him go. She was only prolonging the agony, making things so much worse for her. She had to let him go.

And yet deep inside she knew that she couldn’t.

‘Sarah?’ It was a sound of pure exasperation.

Sarah hunched into the soft folds of the towelling robe, pushing her hands deep into her pockets as if she was cold. And the truth was that the ice that seemed to enclose her heart was freezing her from the inside outwards so that, in spite of the warmth of the day, she was shivering miserably.

‘Sarah, what is this?’ Damon was definitely impatient now. ‘I would have thought that after last night…’

But that was just too much. That ‘last night’ was the trigger, the match that set a light to the barrel of emotional gunpowder deep in Sarah’s heart.

‘Last night!’ she cried, whirling round to face him, her face a mask of anger to hide the bitter pain. ‘Last night! I would have thought that after last night I would never want to see you again, and do you know why?’

‘Why?’

It was cold, curt, totally emotionless.

‘I’ll tell you why. Last night was a mistake. In fact it was the worst mistake I’ve ever made in my life. Even worse than the day that I married you, and that was bad enough! I wish that I could go back and live my life again and make sure that they never happened. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything I regret more!’

Her tirade faded away into the sort of stony silence that set all the tiny hairs on her skin quivering in fearful apprehension. She had to force herself to look up into Damon’s face, and what she saw there dried her mouth in horror, making her legs shake weakly beneath her.

“‘The worst mistake I’ve ever made in my life…”’ he echoed savagely, sounding out each word with a terrible precision. ‘Do you know, sweetheart, I couldn’t agree more?’

And before the words could even register, before Sarah could focus clearly on what he’d said and exactly what he’d meant, he had turned on his heel and marched out of the room, letting the door slam to behind him.

And then she started feeling.

The first wave of emotion that swept over her was fury. Blind, red-haze-filling-the-mind, unthinking rage.

‘Good!’ she flung in the direction of the closed door, careless of the fact that there was no way Damon could hear her any more. ‘Great! Perfect! So we both agree on something at last! It was a terrible mistake and one we hope never, ever to repeat!’

The silence when she finished speaking was deafening. A long, empty silence that seemed to reverberate around the room, pulsing in her ears. A long, final silence, when she realised that Damon really had gone and he wasn’t coming back at least until lunch time—if then.

Maybe never.

A long, long, lonely silence when the implications of that thought finally set in.

And that was when the desperate feelings she had been trying to squash down finally broke free of her control and welled up inside her, totally overwhelming her. And, in a terrible mood of despair, she sank down onto the bed and gave in to the tears and the desolate fear that swamped her completely.

CHAPTER TEN

‘SARAH! Hey, Sarah!’

Sarah stopped dead in the middle of the huge marble-floored foyer of the hotel and looked around her in confusion.

In the buzz of French voices and French language all around her, the English words stood out starkly. And the voice was the last one that she had expected to hear here, in Paris. It was a voice she associated with London and her job.

‘Rhys?’

She stared at the tall, dark man striding across the foyer towards her, a smile of welcome on his face. Rhys Morgan was the last person she had expected to see in Paris. It was only just over twenty-four hours since she had phoned him to ask if she could take some unexpected leave, and he hadn’t said anything about travelling anywhere himself.

But she was glad to see him. Glad to see anyone who could distract her from the trials of the day.

‘Are you just coming in or going out?’ Rhys asked after greeting her with a warm hug that did just a little to ease her unsettled, miserable feelings.

‘Definitely staying in!’ Sarah told him with a shudder. ‘Have you seen the photographers outside?’

‘Are they still waiting for you?’

Sarah could only nod silently. After her bout of weeping in the bedroom, she had finally gathered herself together enough to decide that she couldn’t waste the entire day sitting around and moping. Besides, just supposing that Damon should come back to the room, it would do him good not to find her there, waiting for him. His ego was hugely over-developed as it was. He needed no extra encouragement to be totally impossible.

So she had forced herself into the shower, scrubbed herself clean in an attempt to get her spirits flowing as well as her circulation, and washed and conditioned her hair. It had worked, to a degree, and when she had finally emerged, with her hair blow-dried into a sleek, swinging mane, and dressed in a green and white striped shirt and toning slim pencil skirt, she had felt more like coping with a day exploring Paris, without Damon if necessary.

The determination had lasted as long as it had taken her to put one foot outside the door of the hotel. She had barely appeared on the pavement, under the red and gold awning that shielded the entrance from the weather, before the fusillade of camera flashes and the shouts of the reporters that she had come to dread had shattered the morning air.

‘Yes, they’re looking for me. This time they took just a couple of seconds to register the fact that Damon wasn’t with me—so then of course they wanted to know why.’

The whole crowd of journalists and cameramen had surged forward so swiftly that she had been terrified she was going to be trampled underfoot. The uproar had destroyed her ability to think or act in her own defence, so that she had frozen to the spot, struggling desperately to think of answers to questions like:

‘Have you had a row?’

‘What is this? Trouble in Paradise, then?’

‘Where is he…?’

‘If the doorman hadn’t acted quickly to get between me and them and get me inside, I don’t think I would have got away,’ she told Rhys now. ‘I’m not going out there on my own again. It’s not safe!’

‘That’s the price you pay for having a famous lover,’ Rhys said wryly, the twist to his mouth and the bleak look in his eyes reminding Sarah that he had had his own experience of Press intrusion into his life when his marriage to a well-known actress had broken up publicly and with spectacular bitterness.

‘So you understand.’

‘I understand only too well. So, if you’re trapped inside, how about having coffee with me—I could do with seeing a friendly face— Or are you expecting Damon?’

‘Not for a while yet.’

Maybe not ever, a miserable little voice inside her head added. But she wouldn’t let herself think about that, and she grabbed on to Rhys’s suggestion as a welcome distraction.

‘I’d love that…’

A short time later they were ensconced in the comfortable blue and gold lounge, a tray with a silver coffee pot and elegant bone-china cups and a plate of delicious-looking biscuits set before them. The room was impossible to see from either the street or the huge foyer and at last Sarah felt able to relax and think about something other than avoiding the scandal-hungry reporters.

‘So now perhaps you can explain to me what you’re doing here.’

‘I’m looking for my daughter.’

Rhys’s answer stunned her, making her put down her coffee-cup in shock.

‘Your daughter! I didn’t know you had one.’

Rhys’s mouth twisted again.

‘Neither did I until a few days ago. You remember that phone call I had on Saturday? It was to tell me that Amelie—my ex-wife—was dead. She’d always had a weak heart, and she never really took care of herself. Apparently it just gave out. But before she died, she admitted that her daughter—a child I didn’t even know she had—was in fact mine.’

The shock of that discovery was etched on his face, deep in the blue, blue eyes.

‘Oh, Rhys!’

Sarah leaned forward, reaching for Rhys’s hand in sympathy, holding it tight.

‘And where is the little girl—your little girl—now?’

‘That’s the problem. I don’t know. Some cousin of Amelie’s took her. I’m trying to track them down. That’s why I’m here.’

‘I do hope you find them. I really do.’

Impulsively she leaned forward and placed a soft kiss on Rhys’s lean cheek. ‘And you know that if there’s anything I can do—anything—you only have to ask.’

‘The same goes for me too,’ her boss assured her. ‘Look, you can tell me to butt out if you like, but is there something wrong, Sarah? You don’t look happy, not like a woman newly in love should look. If there’s a problem—you only have to call and I’ll be there…’

‘Oh, no, you won’t!’

A male voice, deep and husky and subtly accented, broke into their conversation like the slash of a sword. And Sarah didn’t have to look up to know who had spoken. But when she did, what she saw in his face made her heart quail inside.

‘Damon…’ She tried for a note of appeasement, to erase the black fury she could hear in his savage tones, but Damon swept on without giving her so much as a chance to explain.

‘I don’t know who the hell you are, and I don’t care. You keep your hands off my lady—and your nose out of our affairs.’

Damon didn’t know how long he’d been watching the pair of them. Too long. Long enough to have seen the intimacy in their total concentration on each other, the way that their bodies were positioned, turned towards each other, blatantly excluding anyone else in the room. And when Sarah had reached forward to take the guy’s hand…

He hadn’t been able to restrain himself any longer. He had pushed himself away from the wall where he’d been leaning and marched across the room to where they sat, rage like volcanic lava bubbling up from deep inside him.

‘Damon, don’t be silly…’

Silly! It was like a red rag to a bull. Silly!

He had been unable to stop thinking about her all morning. Ever since he had walked out of their room he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. Memories of the infuriating way that she had provoked him, riling him to the point where he just couldn’t take any more, had warred with the image he had of the way she had looked when he’d woken and found her fast asleep, curled up beside him, her head pillowed on his chest. And then when he’d finally walked out.

She hadn’t known it, but he had seen her face in the mirror as he’d left, and he hadn’t missed the bleak, lost and lonely expression that had crossed it, just for a second, as he’d turned away from her.

That expression had haunted his thoughts all morning.

It had come between him and the business deal he wanted to finalise. It had stopped him from thinking straight, prevented him from talking sense, until at last, having uncharacteristically lost the thread of his argument for the fourth time, he had finally given up.

‘I don’t have time for this!’ he’d declared. ‘I have something vitally important I have to attend to.’

And, leaving the finalisation of the deal to his second in command, he had left the boardroom, called for his car, and had the chauffeur drive hell for leather back to the hotel.

He had wasted long, precious minutes fighting his way through the crowd of reporters milling about outside the main entrance. Not in any sort of mood to smile and pose for pictures, he had given the paparazzi short shrift on his way in, pushing forward without a care for the way it looked, muttering ‘No comment’ and adding a few choice comments in very rude, very basic Greek at the way they were holding him up.

But at last he had made it indoors, heading straight for the fast elevator up to the penthouse suite where he had left Sarah that morning.

Only to find that she wasn’t there.

His first thought was that she had left, running away without a backward glance as she had done six months before. He had actually hunted frantically for the carelessly written note that he fully expected to find, until it dawned on him to check that her clothes were still in the wardrobe, her cosmetics and toiletries in the bathroom.

When he’d found them, the relief had been so great that for a few moments he had had to sit down on the bed, dragging in deep, calming breaths in an effort to still the racing of his heart, get his mind back under some degree of control.

That was when he had come back downstairs. A few discreet enquiries at the reception desk had had him heading for the lounge, just in time to see Sarah reach out and take the hand of the man sitting opposite her.

The hand of the man who was the epitome of ‘tall, dark and handsome’, and who clearly held a potent fascination for her.

His jealousy had been like a red, buzzing haze in his mind, coming between him and rational thought. And when he saw Sarah—his Sarah—lean forward and kiss her male companion on the cheek, he had completely lost the vague grip he had been trying to keep on his temper.

‘Sarah…’ he said warningly, and his tone had the other man getting out of his seat. Damon had the unnerving experience of meeting him eye to eye. It was not something he was used to. And the stranger clearly had no intention of backing down.

‘Is this guy bothering you, Sarah?’

‘This guy’ incensed Damon, especially as he had the very strong suspicion that the other man knew only too well just who he was, but was deliberately pretending not to.

‘This guy! Do you know who—’

‘No, really—he’s—’

‘I came back for you!’

He’d hit completely the wrong note. He knew it from the way that her face froze up, the spectacular eyes turning to chips of emerald ice between one heartbeat and the next.

‘So you did,’ she said coolly. ‘But that doesn’t explain your rudeness in barging in here like some uncouth yob while—’

‘Damn you, Sarah, I came back for you and I find you with—with…’

‘With Rhys,’ she inserted calmly. ‘With my boss.’

‘With…with who?’

‘With my boss,’ she explained on a note of pained exasperation. ‘This is Rhys Morgan, the man I work for.’

‘Oh.’

It was all that Damon could manage.

‘My apologies.’ He forced himself to say it through gritted teeth, unable to smooth the stiffness out of his voice.

Rhys Morgan’s nod of acknowledgement was equally distant, and he was watching closely, looking for any further wrong behaviour.

‘I’ll just be over here, Sarah,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll leave you and—’

‘No!’

‘Yes!’

Sarah’s voice and Damon’s clashed together, both speaking at the same time.

‘No,’ Sarah said again, more emphatically this time. ‘Don’t go anywhere, Rhys! Don’t leave me alone with him.’

‘Get the hell out of here,’ Damon growled, only to be met with a total stonewalling expression, the Englishman refusing to budge.

‘You heard what the lady said.’

‘Yeah, I heard. But…’

‘Damon,’ Sarah inserted, getting to her feet too and forcing him to look her right in the face, ‘I asked Rhys to stay and he’s staying. Until you can speak to me like a human being, and get a grip on that stupid temper of yours—’

‘I was jealous!’ Damon flung at her, hating to admit it. ‘OK, I know I was mad, but I was—’

‘You were jealous!’ Sarah echoed, total disbelief sounding on the last word.

‘Ne…’

Damon ducked his head in a moment of severe embarrassment. Already their confrontation was attracting interest. The other hotel guests scattered around the room had stopped their conversations and were listening with various degrees of discretion. Some of them were openly, avidly staring.

‘You were jealous!’

To his horror, Damon realised that Sarah wasn’t just stunned. She was furious.

If the truth was told, he had never, ever seen her quite so angry before in his life. The green eyes blazed with golden fire, wild colour burned along the high, fine cheekbones, and even her nostrils flared as she struggled to breathe normally. And when his own startled gaze dropped to where her elegant hands hung at her sides, he was horrified to see how they were clenched into hard, tight fists, eloquently revealing the fierce struggle she was having for self-control.

‘You were jealous!’ she repeated yet again, giving every single word an emphasis that threatened to strip the skin from his body, flaying him alive. ‘You…!’

‘Ne…’

He struggled to explain. He had been so sure that acknowledging he was jealous would sway her opinion round to his way of thinking. After all, damn it, admitting he was jealous was tantamount to saying he cared, wasn’t it?

But Sarah didn’t seem in the least bit convinced of that. On the contrary, she appeared even further apart from him than she had been upstairs, in their room. If that was possible.

‘Sarah, I…’ he began again, but she wouldn’t let him finish.

‘You were jealous!’ she said yet again. ‘You dare to be jealous of me! Of the way I was just sitting here—talking to Rhys! You have no right to be jealous! Do you hear me? No right at all! How dare you be jealous of me when all the time—right from the start—you were having an affair behind my back? When you…’

‘An affair?’ Damon pounced on the word like a tiger on its prey. ‘What the devil are you talking about? An affair with who?’

‘Oh, stop pretending, will you? Stop it!’

Sarah actually stamped her foot hard on the polished wooden floor, drawing even more eyes in the direction of their small group.

‘You can’t lie about it any more! I know! I’ve known all along. Your father told me! He said—’

‘My father!’

Damon’s thoughts whirled. Now he knew! Oh, yes, now he knew.

He should have realised that his father had had a hand—or, rather, a voice—in all this somewhere. Should have realised that the bitter old bigot would never have sat back and let the marriage that he hadn’t wanted survive—or, rather, take place. Because, as far as Aristotle Nicolaides had been concerned, his son and Sarah Meyerson weren’t yet married.

His son and the granddaughter of the man he had hated all his life. The granddaughter of the man who owned vital Nicolaides land and would never hand it over.

‘My father!’ he repeated on a dangerous note. ‘And just what did my father tell you? Exactly what lies did he use? Tell me!’

‘I— He—’

‘No, on second thoughts,’ Damon broke in savagely as Sarah struggled for words, ‘don’t tell me. At least, not here. We’ve provided a public spectacle for long enough. Come with me—let’s get out of here and talk this over in private.’

‘No.’

Sarah shook her head determinedly, russet hair flying wildly with the movement.

‘No way! I’m not going anywhere with you ever again. I don’t want to be somewhere private, and I don’t want to talk to you any more! I want this over—over and done with. I—’

‘Sarah!’ Damon cut in on her in exasperation. ‘Don’t be stupid! Come with me…’

‘No.’

She held out her hands before her, using them as a shield and a warning as he took a couple of hasty steps forward.

‘Damon, I said no!’

‘And I said yes!’

Beyond thinking straight, beyond any thought at all, he only knew he hated the look in her eyes. Couldn’t bear to see her backing away from him like this.

‘Sarah…’

He reached out in his turn, caught hold of her hands, gripping them tight.

‘OK, that’s enough!’

Rhys Morgan’s cold, incisive tones sliced through the heated atmosphere like a blade of ice.

‘Stop that right now, Nicolaides! I’ll not stand by and let you treat Sarah this way. How can you claim her as your lover and—?’

‘My lover!’

It was part laugh, partly a sound of total exasperation, part admission of defeat, and even Damon couldn’t have said which one was uppermost. He only knew the feeling that he was fighting for his life—his emotional life at least.

‘My lover!’ he repeated ferociously, shaking his dark head almost as vehemently as Sarah had done. ‘My lover! You don’t get it, do you? You really don’t know. Well, I’ll tell you. Sarah isn’t my lover—she isn’t my mistress—never has been. She’s my wife. The woman I married a year ago.’

‘Damon!’

Sarah’s cry of shock and disbelief fell into an atmosphere so thick that it was almost impossible to breathe.

And as Damon came slowly back to himself, as the red tide that had flooded his mind slowly ebbed, leaving his eyes capable of focusing once more, his brain able to function, he realised that the stunned silence was not just surrounding them.

It filled the whole room. And every single person present had abandoned any pretence at continuing with their normal morning and was staring straight at them, mouth agape and eyes wide with fascination.

‘Damon!’ Sarah repeated, on a very different note this time.

And as she did so there was the sound of movement, and a blinding flash as some opportunistic photographer who had somehow managed to con his way into the lounge under the pretence of being there as a guest stepped forward, pointed his camera in their direction and snapped the frozen tableau.

Oh, hell! Damon groaned inwardly. Oh, hell and damnation! He’d really done it now!

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SHE’S my wife.

Sarah couldn’t believe she’d heard right. Had Damon really said what she thought he had—and out loud, in front of all these people?

One glance into the depths of those jet-black eyes soon told her the truth. He had said it. And clearly he was every bit as shocked as she was herself. More, in fact.

And no wonder. It had to be the last thing he should have said. The very last thing that he wanted anyone to know about. Because his whole aim had been to marry her, gain the land, and then divorce her without anyone—and preferably particularly without Eugenia—ever finding out.

He had realised what he had said too. And he was muttering a savage curse in violent Greek as someone stepped forward. The camera bulbs she had come to hate flashed and she flinched backwards, trying to bring her hand up before her face, only to remember that Damon had hold of them and was clearly not prepared to let them go.

‘Is this true, Mr Nicolaides? Is it true, Sarah?’

The lone reporter was intent on making the most of his opportunity for an exclusive, asking questions as swiftly and determinedly as possible before the hotel management could get Security to come and throw him out.

‘Are you married?’

But Damon didn’t honour his question with an answer. He didn’t spare him a glance. He didn’t so much as blink. Instead his attention was fixed on Sarah, his burning gaze locked on to her shadowed green one. 175

‘Sarah—darling—ghineka mou… We have to talk about this. Only talk. I won’t hurt you. Please come with me.’

Sarah blinked hard in stunned confusion.

Please.

Had Damon truly said ‘please’ in that—that almost desperate way?

‘I…’

‘Sarah, no,’ Rhys put in. ‘Don’t—’

‘Sarah…’ Damon cut across him. ‘Trust me on this. Believe me…’

Believe me. It was as if the two words had created some sort of time slip so that she had gone backwards, back to the previous night, when she had been in the bedroom with Damon and she had told him the truth about Jason.

And he had believed her.

Illogically and irrationally and with just a leap of faith, he had believed her without question.

Just as she now believed him.

He wouldn’t hurt her. At least not just now. Because hadn’t all the hurting been done in the past? Hadn’t he already done the worst he could?

‘All right,’ she said, never taking her eyes away from his. ‘Let’s talk.’

Damon allowed himself just one brief hint of a smile, then he twisted her hand in his so that he was holding it gently but firmly as he led her from the room and out into the foyer.

As he went, he pulled his cellphone from his pocket, flicked it open and spoke into it in rapid, authoritative Greek. He must have been calling his chauffeur because only a few moments later a sleek silver car drew up outside the hotel and Damon ushered her out to it, one arm at her waist.

He sensed her hesitation, the rising apprehension as the crowd of paparazzi surged forward and the pressure of his hold increased, his grip tightening.

‘Don’t say a word—just walk…’

Whenever we go out, whenever you have to face them, I’ll be right there, at your side, to see you through it.

And he was with her this time too. He drew her close, so that her face was against his chest, one hand protecting her from the intrusion of the cameras. The other arm around her waist guided her wavering footsteps forward and towards the car so that she didn’t have to see for herself, simply follow where he led.

He wasted no time on smiles or answers to the hundreds of questions that bombarded them from all sides, but kept a strict, stony silence until they were in the car, with the door firmly shut, and edging away from the entrance as carefully as the crush would allow.

‘Where…?’

Sarah’s voice failed her on the question. But she didn’t need to ask it because in that moment Damon leaned forward and addressed the driver, speaking in Greek. But there was one word that Sarah caught, and understood, making her stare at him in confusion and disbelief.

‘Aerodhromio!’ she echoed faintly. ‘The airport! Damon, why…?’

‘Trust me,’ was all he said, once more looking deep into her face.

She had little choice. The car was rocketing through the traffic-filled streets; there was no way she could escape. She could do nothing physically but sit where she was and hope for some sort of explanation before too long.

But at least she could protest.

‘Just what’s going on? I want to know what’s happening.’

‘You will—I promise. Just bear with me… But first—tell me who my father said I had as my mistress. Who was I supposed to be having an affair with?’

‘I don’t really have to say, do I? You know—there was only one person you really wanted to marry.’

A strange expression crossed Damon’s face, one that made him look as if she had actually said something that he wanted to hear. That he had been expecting all the time.

‘Eugenia?’ he questioned sharply.

And when she nodded, his reaction was totally unexpected. He threw back his dark head and laughed. And the laughter seemed strangely real, his amusement genuine.

‘Eugenia!’ he declared in some satisfaction.

The next moment his hands were busy on his phone again, punching out numbers with an urgency that spoke of some desperate emergency.

‘Eugenia?’

The sound of the Greek woman’s name had Sarah sitting up stiffly, every muscle pulling tight. Her eyes turned to Damon again, clouding thickly with hurt. But he shook his head at her and continued with his conversation.

‘Genie—speak English—it’s important. I have Sarah here. Yes—Sarah…’

Pausing, he listened intently while Sarah clenched her hands tightly in her lap, nails digging into her palms. Her sharp teeth bit down hard onto her bottom lip, struggling to hold back the bitter reproaches she wanted to fling into his stunning face.

‘That’s exactly what’s happened,’ Damon continued. ‘So I need your help. I’m going to pass her the phone, and I want you to talk to her.’

‘No!’ Sarah couldn’t hold back the protest. ‘No way!’

‘Yes,’ Damon insisted. ‘Eugenia will talk and you will listen. Genie—I’m calling in that promise you made me. A little early, I know, but I need it now! I want you to tell Sarah—tell my wife—exactly what you’ve been doing today.’

Without further conversation he pushed the phone at Sarah, who could only stare at it in blank confusion.

‘Take it! Talk to her!’

What was he doing? ‘My wife’, he had said. Tell my wife…

And yet his father had been so insistent that Damon’s true plan was to marry Eugenia. So why would he risk ruining that by admitting that he was already married?

‘Take it!’

Sarah reached for the phone as gingerly as if it were a poisonous snake that might rear up and strike at any moment. With her eyes fixed on Damon’s taut, intent face, she lifted it to her ear.

‘Sarah?’

She recognised Eugenia’s voice at once. The big surprise, the stunning, unbelievable fact, was that the other woman sounded—happy. She didn’t seem in the least bit shocked or bewildered at the fact that Damon had announced he was married—to someone else. Instead, Eugenia seemed bubbling over with excitement, amusement, and delight.

‘Yes…’ she said cautiously.

‘Did you hear what Damon said? I have to tell you what I’ve been doing today. But you have to promise me something. You must not tell my papa. Not till I get a chance to do so. You promise?’

‘Yes…’ Sarah said again, wondering just what was coming.

‘Well, then—today I got married!’

It was the last thing she had expected. It was so stunning, so unbelievable, so totally confusing that she actually fell back in her seat at the sound of it.

‘You…’

Her dazed eyes went to Damon, sitting darkly silent and watchful at her side, his face turned to hers, his concentration on her total.

‘But Damon…’ she tried, and heard Eugenia’s laughter.

‘Not to Damon, silly! Why would I want to marry him? He’s like my big brother—nothing more. Oh, I know our fathers wanted the marriage—they wanted to merge our two families, the two fortunes! But it would have been purely a business deal, nothing more. And besides, Damon never wanted me. He hasn’t wanted anyone since he set eyes on you.’

‘He hasn’t…’

It was just a raw croak, her throat so dry that she had to force the words out. And the look she saw in Damon’s eyes only made matters so much worse. She had never seen such raw emotion in anyone’s face, let alone this strong, capable man who had always seemed so much in control. Never seen such hunger, such need, such fear—a desperate, uneasy fear that she might not believe what he was trying to tell her.

‘So what’s the truth?’ she whispered, directing her question at Damon, ignoring the fact that Eugenia was still at the other end of the phone connection.

It was weak with shock and confusion, just a tiny thread of sound almost drowned in the purr of the car’s engine. But Damon caught it and something sparked in the darkness of his eyes as he answered.

‘The truth is that Genie and I understood each other.’

His voice sounded bruised and flattened, but there was no hesitation in his speech, no unevenness or frailty in his words.

‘We both wanted to marry someone our families wouldn’t approve of. And we didn’t want to marry each other. Genie was in a worse position because her father was so ill. She couldn’t risk him finding out that she was in love with a Frenchman—Maurice—so I promised to help them.’

‘He let my papa believe that we were thinking of marriage—covered for me when I saw Maurice…’

Eugenia had caught Damon’s explanation and took up the story.

‘I made him swear to me that he wouldn’t tell anyone about my romance. That was before he met you. I never anticipated that he would be the one who got married first. I never thought he’d fall in love. He’s been helping me meet Maurice in secret—even helped me arrange my marriage. And today I officially became Madame Maurice Messenguer….’

If Eugenia said anything more, Sarah didn’t hear it. Her hand had started to shake terribly, so much so that she almost dropped the phone. Reaching forward, Damon took it from her gently. He murmured some words of thanks, said goodbye, switched it off.

And still Sarah hadn’t moved. Still she sat there, white-faced, wide-eyed, staring at him. If only he knew what she was thinking. If only he could see what was in her mind!

‘Sarah,’ he said roughly, unevenly. ‘Say something—please!’

Didn’t she know she held his whole future in her hands? That she had the sort of absolute power that he had never, ever given to anyone else but her?

‘Your father…’

The way she stumbled over the words made his heart lurch in hope, but he didn’t dare to put any real hope in it. Not yet. He needed more before he knew that he was safe.

‘Your father lied.’

‘Yes.’

It was low and rough and husky. As he spoke the car swung round a corner rather wildly and Damon put out a hand to steady himself against the door, but his eyes never left her face.

‘Yes—I’m so sorry, sweetheart—if I’d only known! He must have guessed—he must have seen that you were important. That you were a real threat to his plans to combine the two dynasties of Nicolaides and Stakis. I should never have left you alone with him.’

‘And I should never have listened to him! Oh, why did I ever…?’

But Damon knew the answer to that one. He didn’t want to admit it but he had put the weapon into his father’s hands and he had only himself to blame if the old man had used it against him.

‘The land,’ he said simply, and saw her head go back in shock.

‘Of course. The land.’

Aristotle Nicolaides was a canny old devil. He’d known that Damon had only come looking for her in the first place because he’d wanted that piece of land so desperately. He’d known that she would believe that, and so, naturally, she would think that everything else he said was true. Feeling desperately low already at the realisation that her inheritance meant more to Damon than she did herself, she had already been wounded and vulnerable, open to the final, the mortal blow.

She’d even challenged Damon about it and he’d admitted…

‘The l-land!’

It was a very different sound now. A high-pitched, wavering cry of pain. And bitter, burning tears stung at her eyes.

‘Oh, why…?’

Damon half reached out, then let his hands drop without touching her, in an oddly defeated gesture.

‘I can explain that, darling,’ he said very quietly. ‘I swear on my life that it wasn’t how you think. I came to see you to try and persuade you to part with the land, yes. But I took one look at you and fell in love. I lost my heart and I lost my head—my mind just wasn’t functioning. I forgot all about the land and the reason I was there. All I wanted was you.’

He sighed deeply, despondently, raking one long hand through the crisp darkness of his hair.

‘I just wanted to get you to marry me as quickly as possible. I thought that then I could explain everything. But I didn’t dare to tell you the truth for fear that you’d turn your back on me—walk away…’

‘As I did,’ Sarah put in softly. ‘When your father said…’

‘And when you accused me of only coming to you for the land—I couldn’t deny it. It was the truth after all.’

But not the whole truth, Sarah saw that now. Oh, if only she could have seen it at the start. But Aristotle Nicolaides had chosen his weapons well. He had studied her closely and he had seen that she was vulnerable. That the chink in her armour was that she didn’t quite believe that someone like Damon could love her. Truly love her.

And he had used that fear with deadly intent.

But Damon understood. He truly understood just why she had been so vulnerable.

‘I should never have kept our marriage secret.’ Damon shook his head in despair at the mistakes of the past. ‘If I’d come right out and said it…’

‘I understand.’

Sarah’s voice had a new strength, the strength that came from hope and joy and love.

‘I understand that you were only trying to protect me. Keep me safe.’

‘But instead I left you wide open to my father’s scheming—to his lies.’

‘But not any more—together we’ll be more than a match for him. Damon…’

But her words were interrupted by the sudden stilling of the car, the sound of the brakes. Looking round, she realised that while they had been talking their journey had been completed. They were at the airport, and she didn’t know why or where they were going.

‘Damon?’

He had turned to her, pushing his hand into his pocket and pulling out…

‘My passport! What are you doing with that? Damon, what—?’

‘Sarah, agape mou, I have to ask you something. I need you to come with me. Not to ask questions, just to trust me and come with me now. I have something I need to show you. Something I want you to see. Will you come with me?’

Would she? Sarah didn’t have to wait even to ask the question of herself. The answer was there in her mind, fully formed and totally confident. After all, hadn’t she made it when she had left the hotel and come with him? When she had put her trust in him then?

‘I’ll go with you to the ends of the earth if that’s what you ask of me!’

‘Oh, Sarah!’

Her name was a choking sound of delight. Of total happiness. And his face lit up as if the sun had just risen behind his eyes, making their darkness warm and glow.

‘Do you know that I adore you? That you are my life?’

‘I know,’ Sarah whispered. ‘Because I feel the same.’

The flight he took her on passed in a haze of delight. Damon’s private jet was fitted out with every luxury imaginable—including a huge and marvellously comfortable double bed. And as soon as the plane had left the runway, and had levelled out at the altitude for flight, Damon took her hand and led her to that bed, where he made love to her so thoroughly and so wonderfully that she felt as if she had no need of the jet, that she was capable of flying high up in the clouds all by herself, lifted and carried on the wings of pure joy and the ecstasy of love.

‘But where are we going?’ she demanded when, some hours later, they had landed and, all the formalities behind them, Damon had hurried her to a waiting helicopter. Taking the controls himself, he piloted them up into the air once more and out over a sea so bright and so brilliant a blue that she knew it could only be the ocean around the island of Mykonos. Damon’s home.

‘Be patient,’ he shouted over the noise of the whirring blades. ‘Wait and see!’

And with that she had to be content until at last he turned the helicopter in a wide circle, bringing it down onto a large expanse of land—a stretch of the island that ran down to the edge of the sea, with a perfect strip of gleaming sandy beach between the earth and the water.

‘Recognise it?’ he asked when, with the engine turned off, they climbed out of the helicopter and stared around. Damon caught hold of her hand and gripped tightly. ‘Do you know where you are?’

‘Recognise…’

Sarah couldn’t make her voice work properly—or her thoughts. She did know where she was, or she thought she did. But the last time she had been here, the only time she had been here, it hadn’t looked like this.

‘Damon—is—is some of this my grandfather’s land?’

‘Yes—but it’s not your grandfather’s land any more. It’s yours.’

‘Mine—no, it can’t be! My land was never this big—this is huge! It’s…’

Something dawned on her, making her head spin in shock.

‘Damon—where are the hotels? Your hotels? What happened?’

‘I had them pulled down,’ he told her. ‘Knocked to the ground—and every last bit of them taken away.’

‘But why?’ She was stunned with the craziness, the extravagance of the gesture. ‘What made you do that?’

‘You did—or, rather, my need to prove to you that this land didn’t matter—that if I couldn’t have you I didn’t want any of it. My father always wanted this land to link the two hotels—from the moment I met you I didn’t give a damn about that. So I bought the land off him, knocked down the hotels and—here…’

His hand went to his inner jacket pocket, pulling out a sheaf of papers.

‘These are for you.’

Through the welling tears Sarah struggled to read the documents, incapable of taking in what they said in spite of the fact that they were written in English.

‘What? Damon—I don’t understand!’

His smile was wide and brilliant as the hot Greek sun blazing in the cloudless sky.

‘Don’t you see, my darling? This land is yours. All of it. Every last centimetre of it. Those are the deeds to it—all signed and sealed and totally legal. That’s why I came to you in London—I wanted to bring you here and give it to you. I wanted you to know that it was yours—all yours—whether you were my wife or not. And then I was going to beg you to come back to me. I wanted you to be sure that I love you for you and not for anything you own…’

‘But I know that now!’

Sarah cut off his words, flinging herself into his arms and kissing him with all the love that was bursting out of her heart, all the joy that made her soul sing.

‘Oh, Damon, my love. You don’t have to do this—you don’t need to—I love you and I believe you and I’d trust you with my life. All that unhappiness, it’s all behind us. It’s in the past. The future’s ours and it’s wonderful and clear and bright.’

Her words were kissed away in their turn, and she was gathered into Damon’s arms and crushed against him, the strength of his hold and the passion in the way he took her mouth making promises for that future that no words could ever express.

And after she had dragged in a much-needed breath, when at last she could speak, Sarah lifted her head and looked around her at the beautiful spot in which they stood, the land that had once been a cause of such dissension but now was like a symbol of the two of them together. The end of the feud. The two families united and at peace.

‘Is this really mine?’ she said thoughtfully. ‘To do with exactly as I please?’

There was no hesitation in Damon’s response. It came swift and clear, and filled with total conviction.

‘It’s really yours, ghineka mou. Totally yours.’

‘Good. Then in that case…’

She smiled up into his glowing eyes, the perfect happiness in her heart showing clearly in her face.

‘What I’d really like is to build a house here. A wonderful, big, happy family house. The sort of place where we can settle down and raise our family and live together for the rest of our lives. So what—andhras mou—what do you think of that as a plan?’

‘It sounds wonderful,’ Damon assured her deeply. ‘Perfect. In fact it was just what I was hoping for too. Especially that “for the rest of our lives”. Because I can’t think of anything that I would rather do with the rest of my days than spend them with you, having you by my side, making love to you each day and making you as happy as I possibly can.’

And, gathering her up into his arms, he took her lips once more in a kiss that sealed the promise forever.

ISBN: 978-1-4268-5803-1

THE MARRIED MISTRESS

First North American Publication 2006.

Copyright © 2003 by Kate Walker.

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