Bond Of Hatred

‘You daring to say that to me,’ Sarah continued, pressing on with the fearlessness of outrage. ‘You with your women you have to pay to have sex with you! You with your ignorant, chauvinist double standards and sickening hypocrisy! Lay one finger on me, Mr Terzakis, and I will see you in prison with pleasure!’

‘Some day...some incredibly lucky man will beat you stupid and teach you respect!’ Alex Terzakis swore with two clenched fists.

Sarah was on a high of quite extraordinary energy. The sight of him standing there, seethingly frustrated by a desire to kill her just to shut her up, boosted her adrenalin with amazing efficiency. ‘Do you want to know what you really deserve?’ she asked with saccharine sweetness, venom dripping from every syllable. ‘A wife who would make your life a living hell—a real bitch!’

‘Like you?’ He vented a cruelly amused laugh, raking her with merciless derision.

‘I wouldn’t touch you with a barge-pole!’ Sarah’s face was hectically flushed. ‘You are the most utterly repellent man I have ever met,’ she said with impressive conviction. ‘I may not rejoice in much in the way of physical beauty—’ she flung her head high as she made the admission in a small, tight voice ‘—but my standards are very high, unlike yours.’

He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Still as the Greek statue Gina had fancifully compared him to, Alex Terzakis was studying her with almost compulsive intensity. ‘No woman has ever found me...repellent.’ He could hardly get the word past his compressed lips, he was so outraged by the label.

‘Money obviously talks.’ Sarah cast wide the lounge door in an open invitation for his departure. For a split-second, she really thought he was going to take a fighting chance at landing himself in a prison cell. He was possessed by the force of his own fury. He smouldered, he vibrated, he emanated violent rage into an atmosphere that positively sizzled, ready to burst into open flames. And all in silence. She discovered that she couldn’t take her eyes off him either. Involuntarily she was mesmerised by the sheer passion of so volatile a temperament.

Unexpectedly, he strode past her. And then she realised why. Gina was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, eyes out on stalks, too shaken by what she had heard even to pretend not to have been eavesdropping.

‘You will hear from our lawyers.’ The announcement was hissed over one broad, set shoulder halfway out of the front door.

‘One visit, one attempt at intimidation, one even mildly threatening letter and I’ll sing like a canary for the Press,’ Sarah slung before she slammed the door in his wake.

Gina was gaping at her with a dropped jaw. The silence seemed to go on forever.

‘I doubt if he will bother us again,’ Sarah finally muttered stiffly, wondering just how much the older woman had contrived to overhear.

Slowly Gina shook her head, still staring. ‘I just can’t believe what I’ve been listening to...that that was you baiting him, taunting him...’

‘I handed him a few home truths. That’s all. And Mr Ice-cool he’s not,’ Sarah could not resist savouring. ‘I bet every woman he meets fawns on him, feeds his ego...’

‘Is that why you felt you had to tell him that he was repellent,’ Gina enquired not quite steadily, ‘and that he had to pay for sex?’

‘I wanted to hit him where it hurt.’ But Sarah couldn’t meet Gina’s gaze. In retrospect, she was ashamed that she had revealed her knowledge of his sex-life but she was not remotely ashamed that she had accidentally stumbled on the brand of attack he found hardest to tolerate.

‘I don’t believe he has to pay for sex...he’s breathtakingly handsome...and you’re saying that he consorts with hookers?’ Gina probed with rampant curiosity.

‘He keeps two mistresses. If he keeps them, he’s paying for his pleasure—’

‘That’s not the same thing at all!’

‘Why are you defending him?’

Gina groaned. ‘Sarah, he is not responsible for Callie’s death. Nobody is responsible for that. You’re becoming obsessed. You’re hurting, yes,’ she conceded, ‘but you are taking this all too personally—’

‘Losing Callie w-was very personal.’ A shuddering sob suddenly trembled through Sarah’s slight frame.

Gina put her arms round her in an awkward hug. ‘But you have to think of Nicky, love...’

‘Are you telling me that you think I should hand him over to Damon and his wife?’ Sarah asked sickly.

‘If his wife is willing and it’s not just a front to keep Damon sweet...but then, how could you ever know whether it is or not? Don’t look so betrayed,’ Gina pleaded, her round face uncertain and engraved with lines of strain. ‘I’m all mixed up too. I really don’t know what to think any more. But the one thing I do feel is that Nicky’s welfare ought to come first, and with the best will in the world...how can you match a tenth of what they can give him?’

‘Money’s not everything,’ Sarah protested, distressed by Gina’s candour and pierced on her weakest flank by the grudging acknowledgement that Nicky did have the right to a share of the Terzakis wealth...but surely not at the expense of grossly offending against Callie’s memory? However, Gina was right... Ultimately, Nicky’s needs and future happiness had to be considered first and her own bitter feelings, painful as they were, must not be allowed to colour her response to an offer of a loving, caring home from the other side of Nicky’s family.

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...’

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—’