Bond Of Hatred

But, dear lord, Alex Terzakis had accused her of using Nicky as a weapon of revenge when nothing could be further from the truth! If Damon and his wife genuinely wished to bring Nicky up as their child, let them come and make that offer personally, let them demonstrate their sincerity and their whole-hearted desire to take him into their family... It was not Alex’s job to do their talking for them! And then Sarah might well be forced to think again of what was best for Nicky. In the meantime, Nicky was not some kind of parcel to be posted off into the unknown. Dear God, she loved him!

‘He’s a tiny little baby and I reckon you’re going to find him a far heavier burden than you ever found Callie,’ Gina sighed. ‘You’ll have to live here with me. There is no other way.’

* * *

The following week was a period of turmoil for Sarah. Nicky was adorable but he didn’t sleep very much. He didn’t want to eat every four hours either; he wanted to eat constantly. Gina had never had anything to do with babies. She tried to help, but Sarah relied heavily and slavishly on every word of advice advanced by the health visitor. At the same time, she was still struggling to adjust to the reality that Callie really was gone.

The phone rang and she expected it to be Callie. She saw someone with long blonde hair in the street and was jolted. She visited her sister’s grave three times in an anguished attempt to teach herself acceptance, but what made her alternately sob and rage most was the anger. And the anger was what she was least equipped to deal with.

Only with Alex Terzakis had she been able to let the anger out. She found that she couldn’t open up with Gina. Presumably her hatred for Damon’s brother allowed her to vent her true emotions freely, and that was good, not peculiar, good, she told herself repeatedly. And he had been a most satisfying target.

One week later to the day, Alex turned up again without warning. Gina was out. It was about eight in the evening. Sarah had just got out of her bath and she was on the way to bed, having decided that the only sensible way to manage was to sleep when Nicky condescended to sleep. When the bell went, she groaned, reckoning it was yet another of Gina’s friends, who frequently came round to gossip at night over a long gin and tonic.

But it was Alex Terzakis. Sarah was appalled. One slim hand grabbed at the loose neckline of her faded floral robe, the other frantically attempting to tighten the sash. She was immediately conscious that she was naked beneath the thin fabric, and that both embarrassed and infuriated her. ‘What do you want now?’ she muttered shakily.

He stepped gracefully past her. ‘Five minutes of your time.’

‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get dressed,’ she enunciated frigidly.

Coming through the door, he hadn’t even looked at her. Now he did. Golden eyes wandered a most unwelcome path over her in the dim hall light. ‘Why bother?’ he drawled flatly. ‘It wouldn’t bother me if you were stark naked.’

Crimson ran up in a river of colour to her hairline. Her mouth closed tightly. She stalked past him and settled herself down on the sofa without any ceremony. The towel wrapped turban-style round her small head began to fall and with a jerky hand she trailed it off and threw it aside.

A cascade of silver-blonde hair fell in a silky tangle of disarray almost to her waist. He stopped dead in his tracks and dealt her an arrested glance. Sarah searched his suddenly narrowed golden gaze blankly and then looked over her shoulder to see what had attracted his attention. Gina’s floral wallpaper covered by blooms the size of dinner-plates? The cuckoo clock?

She turned back to him irritably. For some reason, he still looked riveted and he very narrowly missed tripping over one of the tiny wine-tables which cluttered the room. He snaked out a speedy hand and restored the rocking article, his perfectly shaped mouth twisting with annoyance.

‘May I sit down?’ He surveyed her expectantly.

‘Suit yourself.’

‘You could offer me a drink,’ he suggested drily.

‘You are not a welcome guest, Mr Terzakis.’

Under her stunned scrutiny, he strolled over to the tray of alcoholic beverages on the sideboard, located the whisky, selected a glass and helped himself. ‘I should warn you that I find it impossible to be even slightly courteous in your vicinity.’

Sarah took refuge in silence but her nerves were singing like a soldier’s on the brink of a battlefield.

He sank down with indolent grace into an armchair opposite and regarded her with utterly unreadable black ice eyes fringed by ridiculously long, luxuriant lashes. ‘Last week, I made several miscalculations,’ he murmured smoothly. ‘It is obvious that you have no intention of giving up Nikos—’

‘Nicky,’ Sarah slotted in shortly.

‘Nicky—how cute.’

But he was saying it, she noted with rich satisfaction.

‘No intention of giving him up...am I correct?’

‘Very rarely, but on this occasion, yes.’ But was that quite true? Sarah had tossed in her bed over several nights, questioning whether she was doing the right thing in utterly rejecting the proposal he had made for Nicky’s future. In material terms certainly the Terzakis family had a great deal to offer Nicky, and the further suggestion of two parents... But then, it was the potential parents that worried Sarah the most.

‘It was perhaps...tactless,’ he selected softly, ‘of me to suggest that my brother and his wife assume responsibility for him.’

Sarah was not acquainted with him in this mood. She frowned. He was purring like a sensuous cat and toeing the line, a line she had frankly not expected him to abandon so easily. ‘Not tactless,’ she said. ‘Brutally insensitive.’

‘The child’s future could be secured in another way,’ Alex proffered. ‘I could adopt him and bring him up as my son.’

Sarah was thrown by the proposal, tossed casually at her without the smallest of preliminaries. The tip of her tongue snaked out to moisten her dry lips. His darkened eyes suddenly flamed into gold, his attention dropping to the surprisingly voluptuous curve of her lower lip and lingering. Faint colour threw his hard cheekbones into prominence. He tautened, shifting slightly in the chair, a tiny muscle pulling tight at the corner of his unsmiling mouth.

There was a thrumming tension in the air. She didn’t know where it had come from but it unsettled her, brought her skin out in goose-flesh. She stiffened, and watched that so expressive mouth of his suddenly slide into the faintest of smiles. It was there and then it was gone as though she had imagined it, leaving her scrutinising him with uneasy suspicion of she knew not what.

What was the matter with him? Had he been drinking? Perhaps that was why he had to help himself to whisky—dire need rather than simple ignorant bad manners. He had nearly fallen, she reminded herself. In addition, he couldn’t seem to hold his concentration.

And he wasn’t the only one, she registered, although she could scarcely be blamed for losing focus on the conversation when he was behaving so oddly. As for his proposal that he adopt Nicky! Barely worth the breath required to answer. No...no...no.

‘You would hand Nicky over to your brother. That’s what you would do.’ She spoke her thoughts out loud.

‘I am a man of my word, a man of honour.’ Night-dark eyes rested on her again. ‘But then I doubt that you believe that. Yet it is imperative that—er—Nicky should be accepted as a Terzakis.’

‘Imperative to whom?’ Sarah demanded.

‘Do you really think that one day that child will be grateful to you for denying him his rightful place in society?’

Sarah paled, bent her head, assailed all over again by doubt and uncertainty which she was determined not to show him.

‘Your determination to deny my nephew what my family could give him is wholly selfish,’ he derided harshly.

Taut and strained, Sarah studied the carpet at her feet. Was it selfish? She was greatly disturbed by the accusation. Didn’t he see that from her side of the fence the Terzakis men were a particularly abhorrent yardstick by which to measure the rest of his family? Damon: weak, cruel and uncaring, as revealed by his treatment of her sister. Alex: ruthless, arrogant and equally cruel and uncaring of those less fortunately placed in the world. She did not seek to retain custody of her nephew out of revenge and respect for Callie’s memory alone. No, indeed...

A child needed more than wealth and status to thrive. A child needed time, understanding and love to grow into a responsible adult. Was it even reasonably possible that Nicky would find those needs fully met by the Terzakis family? Sarah thought not, but she desperately wished she had a crystal ball to see into the future because she was frightened by the fear that she could be making the wrong decision on Nicky’s behalf. And if that was true, she would never forgive herself...and Nicky might never forgive her either, she reflected painfully.

She cleared her throat and lifted her head, sure on one point. ‘I wouldn’t trust you with Nicky. He’s a helpless little baby and you’re a self-centred workaholic shark who would probably dump him in the full-time care of a nanny—’

The long fingers of one lean brown hand flexed. ‘Your insolence astounds me,’ he admitted in a roughened undertone.

Ironically, Sarah had merely been honest. For once she had not sought to offend deliberately. She had simply been truthful. ‘And what would happen when you married?’ she continued doggedly. ‘Nicky would get a stepmother who would very probably resent him and favour her own children over him.’

‘By what right do you dare to pass an opinion on my character?’ he demanded, springing upright with the restive energy of a prowling tiger.

Sarah tensed. One word of criticism and he was on the brink of explosion. ‘And then,’ she added helplessly, ‘there’s your temper—’

‘My temper?’ he repeated with a stark flash of grinding white teeth.

‘You appear to have little control over it,’ she murmured. ‘Children can be very trying. They can test your patience to the utmost.’

‘You know nothing of my temper!’ he intoned, incensed. ‘I am a very disciplined man.’

Sarah elevated a brow. ‘Oh, I expect you’re an absolute pussycat as long as everybody around you is bowing and scraping and you’re getting your own way.’ She rose to her feet, hoping he was on his way out. ‘What you cannot handle is opposition from a mere female...’