The Trophy Husband. LYNNE GRAHAM
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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!’
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