Bond Of Hatred

A pin-dropping silence stretched. Hooded dark eyes regarded her almost slumbrously. ‘I could handle you with one hand tied behind my back...but you wouldn’t like my methods.’

For some reason the full onslaught of that disturbingly intent dark stare made her breath catch in her throat. Something deep in the pit of her stomach tightened almost painfully. Her breasts felt curiously heavy. Time seemed to have slowed down. And then he turned his head away, tautening, and strode over to the door.

‘Nikos is crying,’ he informed her flatly, as though that in itself were an offence.

‘Nikos?’ Blinking in confusion, Sarah had to dredge herself out of the strange spell she had fallen under for a few dismaying seconds. Involuntarily she shook her head. It was tiredness, stress. Little wonder she was feeling odd.

With a stifled sound of raw impatience at the slowness of her response, Alex strode out of the room and up the stairs, but he hung back for a split-second to breathe in a tone of forbidding censure, ‘A baby should never be left to cry.’

CHAPTER THREE

ALEX had already lifted Nicky by the time Sarah reached the bedroom. Her nephew was howling at the top of his lungs, his adorable little face scarlet with misery. Sarah’s heart clenched at the mere sight of him. He looked so pathetic.

‘Let me take him,’ she said, reaching out instinctively for him, eager to proffer all the comfort that any baby could possibly require.

Alex cast her a coldly amused glance. ‘I do know what to do with a baby. How often do you leave him to cry?’

Fury coursed through her. ‘I never leave him to cry!’

‘In my home, he would have instant attention every hour of the day,’ he informed her.

Sarah’s teeth ground together. ‘If you put him down, I’ll go and heat his bottle.’

‘I will remain here with Nikos until you return.’

That totally bloody man! Sarah banged about the kitchen, furious that Alex Terzakis was actually holding Callie’s child in his arms! She refused to recognise the bond of blood between them. Neither brother had any right to such an acknowledgment, she told herself.

All of a sudden she was reliving the past again, hugging her bitterness to her like a warm blanket to ward off the freezing chill of Alex’s presence in the house.

Seven months ago, Damon had gone over to Greece on business. He had known then that Callie was pregnant, had, according to Callie, been absolutely delighted at the news. Callie had naturally suggested that surely it was time for Damon to introduce her to his brother. With that whopping engagement ring on her finger and Damon’s child on the way, hadn’t Callie had every excuse to have expectations of a quick marriage?

Damon had promised to speak to his brother while he was at home. He had returned, pale and hunted-looking, shorn of his usual insouciance. Alex was immovable, he had told Callie. Alex was not even prepared to meet her. Only then had Callie informed Sarah that she was pregnant. She had dragged Damon with her to make that announcement and Sarah had endured an evening of hideous embarrassment.

No doubt she had been terribly naïve but she had not realised before that evening that Callie and Damon were sleeping together. In the same way she had not known that Callie was actually living with Damon in the apartment he had taken in Oxford. Callie had concealed that fact from her, passing off her change of address and phone number as a move to a cheaper flat with other girls.

‘I am not in a position to marry Callie at this moment in time,’ Damon had informed her stiffly.

‘Alex is threatening to cut him off without a penny! Have you ever heard of such melodrama in this day and age?’ Callie had demanded hotly.

Damon had not been able to meet Sarah’s questioning gaze. Finally, when he could no longer bear the silence, he had said almost pleadingly, ‘I cannot defy my brother...at least, not at present.’

And Sarah’s heart had sunk. It had been an excuse and not a good enough one in the circumstances. Callie had become hysterical. Sarah suspected that somehow her kid sister had expected her to be able to wave a magic wand and make everything fine again. But the reality had been that Damon was a grown man. If he did not have the courage to stand up to his tyrannical brother and forge his own path in life until such time as his family came round to accepting his choice of bride, nobody else could give him that courage.

A week later, Damon had taken off for Greece again with very little warning.

‘Did you know that he was going?’ Sarah had asked her sister worriedly.

‘Don’t worry...he’ll be back. He really wants this baby,’ Callie had asserted doggedly, seemingly unconcerned by the suspicions assailing Sarah.

Sarah had gone over and over Damon’s demeanour that evening in her own mind, wondering if it was wickedly cynical of her to suspect that the young Greek was no longer quite so sure of his feelings for her sister. He had not reiterated his once dramatic assurances that he loved Callie. His strain and the alteration in his behaviour had been pronounced. She had not wanted to worry her sister with her fears.

But a fortnight later a suave lawyer had turned up at Damon’s Oxford apartment and served Callie with a notice of eviction. Callie had run home to Sarah, outraged by what had happened but convinced that the eviction could not possibly have had anything to do with Damon. It was, she’d insisted, a stupid misunderstanding with the landlord. She had refused to return to university. Sarah had pleaded with her but Callie had refused to listen to her.

In despair, Sarah had decided that perhaps it was her duty to confront Alex Terzakis and attempt to reason with him. Callie had asked her to do it but Sarah hadn’t wanted to do it. Only her sister’s unblemished faith in Damon had persuaded her. She had been pleasantly surprised when Alex’s very correctly spoken secretary had come back to her within the hour with his agreement. He would meet them the next time he was in London.

She remembered that day in his office. It had been unforgettable. Now that day he had intimidated her. Right from the first moment she’d laid eyes on him, her stomach had churned. She had gone in good faith to that meeting, angry and defensive on Callie’s behalf, but so foolishly certain that when he met Callie he would realise that his prejudice against her was unreasonable.

But Alex Terzakis had never actually met Callie. He had let the two of them enter his palatial office and had then fixed his attention solely on Sarah. ‘I think that you and I should talk alone, Miss Hartwell.’

A chill ran over her flesh, remembering that instant. He had been so very clever about it. She had not realised that the room he smoothly showed Callie into was about to be invaded by two nasty lawyers, set on frightening her sister to death. Divide and conquer. He had deliberately separated her from Callie.

And Sarah had been so stupid; she had been relieved by Callie’s removal from the proceedings, believing that she would be able to talk more freely without her sister’s presence and assuming that Callie would be invited back in once the trickiest part of the confrontation was over.

Alex had lounged back in his imposing chair behind his equally imposing desk and murmured silkily, ‘You have my full attention, Miss Hartwell.’

‘I’m here to ask what you find so objectionable about my sister,’ Sarah had framed tightly. ‘And why you refused even to consider meeting her.’

An ebony brow had elevated, a sardonic smile that was incredibly chilling curving his mouth. ‘That you should even ask that question tells me much. I have no desire to meet your sister. I merely want her out of Damon’s life.’

‘You haven’t answered my question,’ Sarah had persisted.

‘Why should I?’ he had countered with unvarnished insolence. ‘Your sister shared a bed with my brother...that is all.’

‘He asked her to marry him...’

He had shot her a blatant look of ridicule, backed by cold aggression. ‘Pillow-talk...what else? This is not the nineteenth century, Miss Hartwell. Damon is Greek and his blood runs hot. He is also very young—’

‘So is Callie!’ Sarah had gasped in outrage. ‘And she is also pregnant.’

‘I don’t believe that. I don’t think either of you is that stupid,’ he had dismissed without hesitation.

‘Callie is expecting your brother’s child—’

‘I cannot see where you imagine this claim could possibly lead,’ he had interrupted very drily. ‘And I had hoped that you would have the intelligence to know when you are beaten. The bird that lays the golden eggs has flown, Miss Hartwell. He’s back in Greece and he’s staying there. His affair with your sister is finished.’

‘Because you threatened him!’

‘I have never threatened my brother in his life. Damon knows what is expected of him,’ he had asserted grimly, subjecting her to a contemptuous appraisal. ‘And a calculating little bimbo with her eye firmly fixed to his wallet never had any hope of turning Damon from what he knows to be his duty.’

Shocked by his insults, Sarah had burst into speech in defence of her sister’s character and reputation. And Alex Terzakis had thrown back his dark head and laughed scornfully.

‘Your sister, young though she may be, was no virgin. Indeed I understand that she was rather free with her favours long before Damon met her, and not noticeably faithful while he was with her either.’

‘How...dare...you?’ Sarah had leapt to her feet, affronted beyond belief by his attack on Callie’s morals.

‘I’m calling your bluff, Miss Hartwell. If we are to talk of daring, I marvel that you had the impertinence to come here. A word of advice,’ he had purred silkily, indolently amused by her distress. ‘The next time you help your sister to get her claws into a rich Greek, tell her to keep her mouth shut about her previous lovers. Greek men are notoriously backward when it comes to female liberation. They always like to be the first with a woman, or at least to be allowed to pretend they are.’

Dumbstruck by his insolence, she had simply stood there until she’d finally unpeeled her tongue from the roof of her mouth. ‘You foul-mouthed—’