The Trophy Husband

Even in the state she was in Sara was staggered by such a proposition. The apartment was a penthouse on the floor above, used only by the Rossini family and, very occasionally, their personal friends. ‘I couldn’t possibly—’

‘Where else have you got to go?’

She clutched the keys, meaning to return them but thinking helplessly of the humiliation of dealing with Antonia as she felt now. Her strained eyes unguarded and vulnerable, Sara stared back at him. ‘I’m very grateful.’

‘A fresh start,’ Alex murmured intently. ‘I’m having a dinner party tonight. Why don’t you come? You shouldn’t be on your own.’

A nervous laugh lodged in her aching throat. A party? He thought that she was in the mood for a party? Was he insane or just downright incapable of comprehending the immensity of what had happened to her today?

‘I’ll be fine,’ she returned tremulously, wondering if he needed someone to supervise the caterers. Pete usually attended Alex’s dinner parties, checked the seating arrangements, oiled the conversation and ensured that everything went smoothly. Alex Rossini paid for that kind of service. Alex Rossini was so rich that he could afford to burn money for amusement.

‘I’ll call you later. I’ll send a car to pick you up at seven,’ Alex told her as if she hadn’t spoken.

Dully she fumbled for an excuse. ‘I have nothing—’

‘I’ll buy you a dress to wear. No problem, cara. Don’t even think about something so trivial.’

‘But I—’

Strong brown hands reached down and closed over hers, tugging her gently upright. He angled her towards the door as if she were a walking doll. ‘Go up to the apartment and lie down for a while; practise thinking optimistic, happy thoughts. Smile…’ he urged softly, and a blunt fingertip skimmed below the trembling curve of her full lower lip and withdrew again, the contact feather-light and strangely soothing.

Unwarily, like someone in a dream, Sara looked up at him, connected with shimmering, mesmeric gold eyes and staggered slightly. He balanced her again with ease. An ache unlike anything she had ever experienced made her shiver. ‘Mr Rossini—’

‘Alex…Cristo!’ he exploded, abruptly freeing her.

Sara almost fell over. Numbly she watched him stride over to sweep up the phone that she hadn’t even heard ringing. He swung smoothly back to her. ‘Go up to the apartment and lie down,’ he instructed her again.

Sara backed out slowly and walked back down to her office to collect her bag. Her head was aching. She put a hand up to her hair and undid the tight plait, running her fingers through the loosened tresses. The phone on her desk was ringing. For an instant she hesitated, and then she lifted it.

‘Sara?’ Pete demanded impatiently. ‘Where have you been?’

‘I was—’

‘Look, I need a favour,’ he broke in. ‘Alex told me to get Marco’s signature on some papers yesterday but I forgot. They’re in the top right-hand drawer in my desk. Take a cab over to the studio and get it seen to before Alex asks for them…OK?’

Sara took a deep breath, grimaced and then wearily sighed. ‘OK.’

‘You’re an angel. I bet your replacement won’t be half so helpful.’

The reminder that she was actually working out her notice hit Sara hard as she climbed into a taxi. She would be in the dole queue soon, she realised dully. Her successor was already picked, due to take her place in a fortnight’s time. Brian hadn’t wanted a working wife. And she had no savings. She had poured every penny of her salary into renovating and furnishing the Victorian terrace house that Brian had bought. Weekends and evenings, she had scraped walls, plastered, decorated, cut out and sewn and hung curtains. She had put her heart into transforming that house. The knowledge that now she would never live there sank in on her slowly and then blistered her soul like an acid burn.

Real anger began to rise inside her. Three years ago Sara had stood by, watching Brian pursue Antonia without success. But her cousin would take just for the sake of taking, and throughout the years that Sara had lived in the Dalton home she had been taught that lesson over and over again. Anything she had been foolish enough to value had inevitably been taken from her by her cousin…only this time it had not been a toy or a sentimental keepsake, it had been the man she loved. She clambered dizzily out of the cab with a white, frozen face.

She had never been in Marco Rossini’s high-tech photographic studio before. The reception area was incredibly busy. It made her feel claustrophobic. She forced her passage through the throng and trekked down the corridor indicated by the laconic redhead on the desk.

Marco was lying back in a chair inside the perimeter of a blinding circle of lights in an empty studio. He looked half-asleep but his mobile dark brows hit his hairline at speed when he saw Sara hovering, and he sprang upright with a mocking smile. ‘To what do I owe the honour? Don’t tell me you’ve finally decided to take me up on my offer? Miss December in red boots and a tasteful sprinkling of holly berries…what do you think?’

Sara gritted her teeth as she felt her cheeks burn. She was in no mood to take one of Marco’s baiting sessions. Evading his malicious gaze, she murmured flatly as she extended the file, ‘These documents require your signature.’

Marco suddenly laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’ Sara heard herself demand almost aggressively, the words slurring slightly.

‘Private joke.’

‘If it’s about me, it’s not private!’ Sara told him fiercely, standing her ground.

Marco surveyed her with intense amusement. ‘There’s a price.’

‘A price?’

Marco laughed again. ‘You tell me something first…haven’t you ever once got the hots in my brother’s radius?’

Sara looked back at him blankly. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Alex is a very good-looking guy, beats the women off with sticks. If he wasn’t family, I’d hate the smooth bastard! Come on, you can tell me…if it wasn’t for true love, you’d have given him a whirl, right? You know that movie where Robert Redford pays a million bucks for one night with Demi Moore—Indecent Proposal? You too could have made your fortune…’

‘I don’t understand.’ It was a lie. Sara just couldn’t believe what Marco was insinuating.

Marco dealt her an incredulous glance. ‘Are you saying you didn’t even notice? Or are you telling me that Alex didn’t once chance his arm?’

‘If you are trying to imply that your brother is attracted to me, you’re wrong—’

‘To the tune of a million bucks? He could drop a million without noticing. No, the sum I heard mentioned was two million,’ Marco imparted with undeniable relish. ‘I think Alex thought just one was bargain basement.’

Sara’s head was swimming again. It was so hot beneath the lights that she couldn’t concentrate. ‘This is a very distasteful conversation, Marco.’

‘So Alex wants to jump your bones…is that some sort of crime? Lust makes the world go round,’ he told her impatiently.

Alex Rossini wanted to go to bed with her? Her lashes fluttered in bemusement. She couldn’t believe it.

Marco shook his head slowly. ‘You really didn’t know, did you? Love is truly blind. But hey, don’t let your heart soften in his direction. Remind yourself that you don’t like him and steer clear. Marry your insurance salesman and live happily ever after,’ he advised very drily as he flipped through the file and began scrawling his signature.

Alex Rossini wanted her? Rubbish, nonsense, Marco’s deliberate mistake—doubtless another example of his nasty sense of humour. ‘You don’t like him’. Had her dislike of Alex Rossini been so obvious that even his brother was aware of it? She remembered Alex’s astonishing kindness and tolerance and a stark arrow of guilt abruptly pierced her.

No, she had never liked Alex Rossini—his arrogance, his impatience, his sardonic tongue, his rich man’s self-centred motivation which took no account of anything but his own wishes, his own needs. She had never liked the way he treated women either. As if they were things that he could buy and discard when he got bored…and he got bored so fast that your head would spin. Fast cars, fast women, fast-lane life. Nightclubs, movie premieres, gambling joints, summer in the South of France, winter in the Alps. When the beautiful face and body of his latest lover palled, she got twenty-four regulation red roses and a diamond bracelet. Imaginative in that line he wasn’t.

Why should he be? Women were easy around Alex Rossini. He didn’t need to lie and cheat and deceive. He had no need to make promises that he had no intention of keeping…

Oh, Brian, how could you do this to me?

For the first time Sara met her own anguish head-on, and she swayed slightly, her temples pounding. The heat was suffocating her. Her blouse was sticking to her skin. In a clumsy movement she tugged off her jacket and breathed in deeply. Two million pounds…She wanted to laugh like a hysteric. It was so ridiculous…

‘You know getting married costs a lot,’ Marco murmured reflectively, watching Sara with fascinated eyes as the jacket slid from her limp fingers to the floor. ‘Why don’t you reconsider my offer? Nobody need ever know. I wouldn’t be planning on publishing the shots. It could be your secret…and mine.’

As Sara attempted to focus on him, there was a sudden commotion out beyond the lights. A raw burst of Italian scorched her eardrums. A fist hit Marco on the shoulder, hard enough to knock him back, and suddenly Alex was there, ranting at his brother and with every blistering sentence punching him on the shoulder again, forcing him into retreat, like a boxer playing with a weak opponent.

White-faced, Marco leapt behind Sara. ‘Dio…switch him off before he kills somebody!’

CHAPTER TWO

SARA’S emerald-green eyes were wide with shock and incomprehension.

‘I’m ashamed of you!’ Alex roared at Marco, his strong features a mask of dark fury. ‘For a bet, for a lousy fifty K. She’s smashed out of her mind! She doesn’t even know what day it is!’

‘She’s still a hell of a lot safer with me than she is with you!’ Marco condemned furiously. ‘And why shouldn’t I have asked her?’

‘Get out of my sight, you little jerk! Think yourself lucky it didn’t go one step further—’

‘All I did was make her an offer!’ Marco shouted back.

‘Then why’s she got her jacket off?’ Alex demanded with clenched fists.

‘She took it off herself! Big deal! She wears more bloody clothes than Scott did in the Antarctic! Can nobody take a joke around here? I’m sorry, Sara,’ Marco breathed harshly, turning back to her. ‘I didn’t know about your engagement, but now the deck is clear I would go for that two million and not a penny less!’

Shoulders unbowed, Marco walked away out beyond the lights.

‘What the hell did you think you were doing coming over here in the state you’re in?’ Alex demanded with ferocious bite.

It was her turn, Sara registered numbly.

‘Didn’t I tell you to go and lie down? You could have fallen under a bus or something! When I realised you’d gone out again, I couldn’t believe it!’ Alex gritted, perfect white teeth flashing against sun-bronzed skin.

‘I n-needed his signature on some papers.’

‘So why did you take your jacket off?’ Alex persisted.

‘I was hot,’ she muttered heavily.

Alex swept down a lean, impatient hand and lifted the article. ‘Dio… I should’ve worked that out for myself. A woman who wears her skirts below the knee and covers up every inch even in the heat of midsummer is highly unlikely to strip off for the camera. You’re too much of a prude.’

Sara went suddenly rigid. Anger roared up through her without warning. ‘I am not a prude!’

Alex had fallen very still. ‘So you do have a temper,’ he murmured in a tone of discovery.

‘Just don’t put me down,’ she warned him unevenly, shaken now by the anger that had mushroomed up inside her and demanded an exit.

Alex drew fluidly back several paces and spread graceful brown hands. ‘I was worried about you. You see, my creepy little brother laid a bet with me six months ago—’

‘A bet?’ Sara echoed with a frown.

‘He bet me fifty thousand pounds that he could get you to pose in the nude.’

Sara shuddered, sick mortification flooding her.

‘It never occurred to me that there was the slightest possibility you would fulfil that bet. You’re not the type. It was a joke, Sara. Marco loves a good joke; sometimes, like today, he’s tempted to take it too far.’

Sara studied the floor with burning eyes. She could feel the tears but they were mercifully dammed up. ‘A good joke’. Her stomach twisted. A lousy male bet had lain behind Marco’s constant baiting. A choked laugh fell from her tremulous mouth. She couldn’t meet Alex’s gaze. Marco had never had the smallest hope of winning his puerile bet but Alex had still chased after her. Why? Alex was already painfully well aware that she had gone off the rails once today. All along, she registered in anguished embarrassment, he had known that she was drunk.

‘I’ve made an ass of myself,’ she whispered with stinging bitterness.

‘You haven’t made an ass of yourself,’ Alex breathed with raw emphasis. ‘You’ve had a rough day. That’s all.’

She quivered, a turmoil of emotion sweeping over her. She wanted Brian’s arms round her so badly that she thought she would break apart. But Brian would never put his arms round her again. That was finished, dead, destroyed. More pain than she would have believed possible was suddenly coming at her from all sides. Her hands knotted together.

‘You really love that bastard,’ Alex murmured flatly.

She covered her cold face with spread fingers, as if she could somehow hold in what she was feeling. She fought to get a grip on herself again.

A pair of determined hands drew her forward and balanced her. With enormous effort, she managed to slide her arms obediently into the jacket which Alex extended.

‘What was the crack about the two million?’

Sara’s slender length tensed as she shakily tugged her hair out from beneath the collar of her jacket and shook it back out of her way.

‘You have the most beautiful hair. I always wanted to see it loose.’ Alex’s dark eyes rested on the silky black torrent tumbling down to her waist. ‘Don’t ever get it cut.’

She slowly lifted her head, bewildered green eyes colliding with smouldering gold. It was electrifying. Stunned, she kept on looking at him. ‘Marco said…Marco said you’d pay two million pounds for one night with me…’

Alex tautened, dark colour accentuating his hard cheekbones. ‘You are even more drunk than I thought you were.’

Her glazed eyes fell from his. ‘I’ve put my foot in my mouth—’

‘I intend to put my fist in Marco’s.’

‘I was only joking.’

Alex pressed her towards the door. ‘He wasn’t…’

‘H-honestly?’ she stammered in disbelief.

‘You think I’d be here if it wasn’t true?’

He guided her out through the buzzing reception area. Her blitzed brain was endeavouring to absorb what he had confirmed. Alex Rossini wanted her. He found her desirable. What would have threatened and appalled her a mere twelve hours earlier now, for some reason, fascinated her. ‘You were so kind this afternoon—’

‘And I wouldn’t be kind without a hidden agenda?’

‘No,’ she said without even thinking about it.

A chauffeur was standing by the door of a silver limousine. Sara climbed in, slid along the richly upholstered leather seat. Her luxurious surroundings made no impression on her at all. Don’t think about Brian, don’t think about Brian, she urged herself feverishly. ‘Why didn’t you…? I mean, you never showed—’

‘Sara, I’m not a lovesick teenager. I find you physically very attractive. That is chemistry.’

‘Sex.’

‘Sex,’ Alex agreed drily.

Was that the way Brian wanted Antonia? Did it matter whether it was love or infatuation or simply lust which had motivated him? Would love hurt any more than the way she was already feeling? Had it only been guilt which had made him chase out of the flat in her wake? Stop it…stop it a little voice shrieked inside her. It’s over, Sara. Accept it. Alex was right. You could never trust Brian again.

‘You think I’m very naive,’ Sara muttered, closing out the seething turmoil threatening her again.

‘No. I don’t think this is the time for this conversation.’

‘I don’t believe in love any more.’ For hadn’t Brian done all the right things? Romantic cards, constant phone calls. Last night he had been with her, holding hands, smiling…the consummate actor, and she had been the blind fool, for she had noticed nothing different.

‘How would you like to sink into an alcoholic stupor and have a nice long sleep?’ Alex enquired with unconcealed hope.

‘Very, very much,’ she whispered painfully.

The silence pulsed with undertones that she didn’t understand.

‘I really didn’t know your feelings went this deep.’ A grim laugh splintered from him.

She didn’t show her feelings. She had learnt that young. But today she had been brutally wrenched out of her protective shell. ‘How could you know?’

‘I thought you were more in love with the bridal trappings…not to mention the wallpaper books, fabric swatches and paint-cards,’ Alex enumerated with sardonic bite.

‘I wanted a home that was really mine. Easy to mock what you’ve always had, Alex.’ Sara shot him a look of angry intensity that challenged him and then tore her gaze away again, but he stayed etched in her mind’s eye. The gleaming black hair, the slashing brows, the hard, arrogant slant of his mouth and nose. Hard—that was the definitive word. He might be possessed of a quite intoxicating masculine beauty but the raw stamp of power and fierce force of will overlaid those spectacular dark good looks like bonded steel.

Her head was pounding sickly. ‘I’m not even asking you where we’re going…’

‘You’re safe with me. Tonight you don’t have to think for yourself.’

She closed her aching eyes. The one male in the world whom she would never, ever have trusted and yet all of a sudden she instinctively did trust him. Alex Rossini, protector. She ought to have laughed at the idea but instead she fell asleep.

Sara surfaced from a nightmare, shivering and perspiring. She sat up with a dizzy start and found herself in a completely unfamiliar room. The bedside lamps were lit on either side of the wide divan bed. The sheet tangled round her was silk. She lifted an uncertain hand to the thin, strappy nightdress clinging to the damp thrust of her breasts and fell still only when she saw the tall, dark male rising from a chair in the shadows.

‘Alex…’ she whispered shakily as it all came back in jagged bits and pieces and she breathed in sharply in relief, helplessly reassured by his presence.

‘Feel like something to eat?’ He sounded so normal, so casual.

‘Where am I…? Oh, Lord, to have to ask that,’ she muttered between clenched teeth.

‘This is my house. I didn’t think leaving you alone in the company apartment would be very wise—’

‘Your dinner party.’

‘Cancelled. Not one of my better ideas.’

From below the screen of her lashes she surveyed him with inescapable fascination. Nothing seemed real—not the day’s events, certainly not the extraordinary alteration that had taken place in their relationship within the space of hours. She had not looked before she’d leapt today. He had looked for her, watched over her, kept her safe. Why? Did he want her so much that he was prepared to put up with her as she was now?

‘I’ll order some food.’

The door flipped quietly shut in his wake but still she looked to where he had been. She had got blindly, foolishly drunk and Alex Rossini had picked up the pieces. But he hadn’t expected her to react that way…What had he expected? Why should he have expected anything when he couldn’t have known what would happen to her today? The dinner party—’Not one of my better ideas’. He had talked almost as though the dinner party had been stage-managed in advance for her entertainment, which was crazy. She must have misunderstood him.

She slid out of bed. Her head was still swimming a little. She grimaced at the foul taste in her mouth and was exceedingly grateful to find a bathroom through the other door that she had espied. Her own tousled reflection in the mirror shook her. Peeling off the nightdress, she switched on the shower and stepped into the cubicle, grateful for the warm water and the rich lather of the soap that would wash her clean.

Who had undressed her and put her to bed? Alex? How strange that she shouldn’t be plunged into stricken mortification over the idea. Yesterday she would have died a thousand deaths. Today—tonight—she knew that she had already betrayed so much to Alex Rossini that the once slavishly cherished sanctity of her own body no longer seemed worthy of such earth-shattering importance.

And why didn’t she face it? She had very probably driven Brian into Antonia’s arms! She had refused to sleep with him before they got married. Deaf to his every protest, she had been determined to wait for their wedding night, had smugly believed that the sexual restraint would lend an extra-special meaning to the vows they would take. Only now there wasn’t going to be a wedding day…and it was cold comfort to acknowledge that she had saved her virginity but lost the man she loved. Maybe she had got exactly what she deserved. She had put her wretched principles first and where had it got her? She slid back into bed, forcing her cold face into the pillow, raw with the bitter pain of rejection and humiliation. Nothing was ever going to give her her pride back.

She didn’t hear the door open; she went rigid when she was gathered up into strong male arms, and then her nostrils flared on the scent of Alex and she trembled, her arms uncoiling and curving round him very, very slowly. No, I mustn’t do this…she thought. But it felt so good, so damned good to be held close. The breath shortened in her dry throat. Her fingers splayed centimetre by centimetre across one powerful shoulder and stayed there. She was almost paralysed by her own daring.

The silence thundered in her ears.

He released his breath in a faint hiss and she could feel the savage tension in his taut, muscular frame and the pounding of his accelerated heartbeat against hers. And Sara smiled for the first time in hours with a sense of gratified wonder and curved even closer, her other hand sliding against his silk shirt-front, feeling the heat of his flesh burning through the fine fabric. His response was intoxicating.

‘Is this a solo party…or a masquerade?’ Alex demanded softly. ‘I am not him. You will not close your eyes in my arms and pretend that I am.’

Shocked, she tipped her head back, eyes wide, and met a vibrant gold challenge. ‘I know who you are,’ she whispered dazedly, yet in his arms, even with her eyes open, she felt as if she was living some fantastic dream.

Lean hands closed gently round her wrists and pushed her back against the pillows. He curved one long-fingered hand to her cheekbone and held her still, raking her bewildered face with grim intensity. ‘You want me to want you now,’ he said tautly.

It was the truth, although she hadn’t seen it for herself. Hectic colour lashed her cheeks beneath that appraisal. ‘Yes…’

‘Not like this,’ Alex swore, his eloquent mouth hardening. ‘And not tonight.’

She had been stumbling round like a clown half the day under his gaze. No doubt whatever imagined attraction he had endowed her with had evaporated fast when he had been faced with such pathetic reality. Alex Rossini was accustomed to sophisticated women and none of those experienced ladies would ever have made such a fool of herself in his presence as she had. As he released her a semi-hysterical laugh was torn from her. It came out of nowhere and shook her.