The Trophy Husband

Sara grabbed up a handful of clothes and dived into the en suite bathroom. She studied herself in the mirror-red, swollen mouth, shadowed eyes, wildly tousled black hair. Trollop, tart, she castigated herself with tears of rage and shame burning her eyes. How could she have behaved like that with Alex Rossini? She wanted to sink into a great black hole—no, she wanted to put him into a great black hole and pour tons of concrete over him so that he could never escape and she would never have to meet his eyes again!

Thankfully he had already left for the office…Oh, dear heaven, the office! It was already after nine. She would say that she had missed the bus. Nobody would think anything of that; nobody need ever know…but if she had had any choice she wouldn’t have walked into Rossini Industries ever again. However, there would certainly be talk if she suddenly disappeared and failed to work out the last ten days of her notice—much better to grit her teeth and finish her time there. In any case, she conceded bitterly, she badly needed her month’s salary because her bank account was almost empty.

Fumbling, with little of her usual dexterity, she contrived to confine her hair into a murderously tight bun at the nape of her neck.

She crept out of the bedroom, her arm nearly falling off from the weight of the case she was hauling with her. Tight-mouthed, she dragged it along to the landing at the top of the stairs. With every movement, she was more and more aware of the complaint of newly discovered muscles in unmentionable places and the undeniable ache in the least mentionable place of all, and her rage thundered higher with very step.

‘Buon giorno, cara…’

Her throat thickened. Slowly she straightened, stricken eyes flying to the tall, devastatingly attractive male standing at the head of the staircase.

‘I was coming up to see if you wanted to join me for breakfast…but we can do without the luggage,’ Alex assured her very softly, measuring dark eyes speeding over her furiously flushed face and lingering with incipient shrewdness. ‘Don’t do it—don’t say what’s brimming on your lips…Don’t disappoint me, cara.’

She wanted to kick him down the stairs. A temper that she had never had any trouble controlling until now was suddenly threatening to explode. She sucked in air, freezing her facial muscles. ‘I happen to be late for work, Mr Rossini.’ Ice dripped from every syllable.

She hit her lowest ebb as she watched his sensual mouth twist and then compress. She didn’t need to be told how ridiculous she had sounded. Then his strong dark face tautened. Brilliant dark eyes rested on her. ‘Sara…I want you to count to ten and think about last night without prejudice. Is that possible for you?’

‘No,’ she said woodenly, honestly, dragging her mortified gaze from his—an act which took so much willpower that she felt drained.

‘We shared something very special which I don’t want… or intend…to lose. It doesn’t matter that you were on the rebound…the only thing that matters is how we both feel now,’ Alex drawled very quietly. ‘Clean page, open book.’

‘Close it,’ Sara said between gritted teeth.

‘I don’t mind you cutting off your nose to spite your face…per Dio, I mind very much if you attempt to make a similar sacrifice of me!’ Alex covered the space between them in one long, fluid stride.

‘I made a mistake, damn you!’ Sara spat, tears scorching her eyes.

‘No, cara. That’s where you’re wrong. What happened between us was no mistake—not for me and not for you either.’

‘Am I entitled to voice an opinion of my own?’

‘Not right now…no.’ Alex lifted the case from her, set it arrogantly aside. ‘The prudish streak is threatening to go on the rampage.’

Sara flinched as though he had struck her.

‘Bella mia…’ Alex sighed reprovingly, smoothing long brown fingers caressingly over one pale, taut cheekbone, his accented drawl low and very soft. Even though she didn’t want to stand there and allow him to touch her again, something frightening, something stronger than she was kept her still, unresisting, her slender length leaning involuntarily closer as if she wanted to curve into that hand and stretch like a sensual cat. ‘Don’t leave. I promise not to try and force anything more. You need time and space to think. I’ll give it to you. I’ll be patient…I’ll stay in the background.’

‘Alex…’ Her voice fractured as she fought to free herself from the spell he cast even while she mentally reeled at the impossible image of Alex Rossini endeavouring to sink into the woodwork.

‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to regret—’

‘But I don’t want this!’ Sara gasped, suddenly finding that freedom to speak her own thoughts. She jerked her head away from him. ‘I don’t want to have an affair with you. Last night was madness—’

‘Sweet insanity that worked like a dream…Don’t deny what you’re feeling right now.’

‘I feel nothing…nothing!’ she swore violently, and, snatching up her case again with an energy born of desperation, she started down the stairs.

‘Sara, you cannot possibly go back into the office after this.’

He caught up with her in the hall. A firm hand closed round hers and tugged her back and round to face him again.

‘You think I’m going to be your mistress, you think wrong!’ Sara threw at him rawly.

‘What did I tell you to be sure to remember today? That this was not how I wanted it to be between us,’ Alex reminded her with controlled anger. ‘But you wouldn’t settle for anything less and now you blame me for it. That’s very female but bloody unfair.’

Her shocked eyes fell from his. ‘I’m not blaming you. I just want to forget this happened, that’s all.’

‘But I will not play that game…and take your hair out of that excruciatingly ugly old-maid style!’ Alex suddenly gritted, and hauled her even closer, banding one strong arm round her narrow back as his free hand roved free to the thick coil of hair and released it from its confinement. ‘You’re a beautiful young woman; rejoice in that beauty…don’t stifle it!’

‘Let go of me!’ Sara told him shrilly.

‘All I want to do is take you back to bed,’ Alex confided in an undertone of angrily suppressed passion as he brought her up against him, a lean hand splaying to the feminine swell of her hips with a lover’s intimacy.

Appalled cat-green eyes collided with his gaze and the atmosphere sizzled. She blinked bemusedly, feeling the piercingly sweet heat reawaken low in the pit of her stomach, the sudden ache of her nipples as her breasts stirred beneath her bra. Her soft mouth trembled. Alex smiled lazily down at her, shifted with fluid emphasis against her and she felt the force of his arousal with shock. Her lower limbs turned to cotton wool. Her ability to breathe and think for herself diminished with terrifying rapidity. ‘Stop it…’ she whispered breathlessly.

‘One kiss, bella mia, and I’ll let you go into work,’ he bargained mockingly.

‘No!’ she spat as her heartbeat pounded like a trapped bird in a cage.

‘Stubborn…’ Alex breathed thickly, amused. ‘You want that kiss as much as I do.’

‘I’m sorry…I didn’t realise…I used the rear entrance,’ another voice intervened.

Alex’s hand dropped instantly. Sara sprang back from him, eyes wide with horror when she saw Pete Hunniford standing several feet away, his mobile features momentarily transfixed with incredulity and then swiftly rearranged into total impassivity.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_1df216f3-6ae4-56ae-96ea-bf5eebf1ef02)

SARA stood there like a graven image as Pete handed a file to Alex.

‘Sara needs a lift back to the office.’ Alex quirked a sardonic black brow as he glanced reflectively at her. ‘Unless you’ve changed your mind, cara?’

‘No.’ She wrenched open the heavy front door for herself, and frankly couldn’t get out of the huge house quickly enough.

Alex dropped an arm round her and walked her out onto the top step, seemingly indifferent to a degree of icy, repulsing rigidity which would have frozen off the continuing advances of any normal male. ‘Lunch at one…Sara?’

Sara was staring in consternation at the man who had darted out from his position by the railings and focused a camera on them both. Click! Grinning, he then ran across the street and jumped into a car. ‘How unfortunate,’ Alex said, and he didn’t even attempt to sound convincing.

The thick atmosphere between Sara and Pete on the drive back to the office would have defied the sharpest knife.

‘Right,’ Pete began grimly. ‘Now the first thing you do is lie like a trooper to dear Brian. You worked late, had to stay over…you say I was there too. You do not confess; do you understand that, Sara? Believe me, Brian does not want the whole truth and nothing but the truth in this instance. That story covers you on all fronts. The paparazzi are always watching Alex. So there’ll be a photo of you emerging from his house at ten in the morning in tomorrow’s papers…What does that prove? Nothing.’

Paper-pale, Sara parted her lips, unsurprised by his cynical advice but deeply embarrassed by his frankness. ‘Pete, I—’

‘I can’t believe it…You!’ he muttered, shaking his smoothly styled head. ‘I thought you were bombproof around Alex. I feel responsible. I only gave you the job because you were engaged. Only the day before yesterday you were handing Alex a cup of coffee as though he was the carrier of some dread social disease, and this morning…?’

‘Please, let’s not talk about it,’ Sara mumbled. She thought of yesterday’s sunny awakening, her blinkered innocence of what the day would bring. And then this morning’s devastating dawn.

‘Obviously Alex finally made a move on you. Well, heaven knows, I’ve been waiting for it to happen. I’ve worked around Alex a long time. Believe it or not, I like Alex…but if he looked at my sister the way he’s always looked at you I’d lock her up and throw away the key…because Alex is very bad news with women. He’s emotionally cold and detached. I’ve seen him in action too many times not to know that—’