Bond of Hatred(22)

'How did you achieve this astonishing metamorphosis virtually overnight?' Alex demanded in a low growl.

Sarah flushed, convinced that he was being hatefully sarcastic. She tilted her chin. 'I hired an image consultant.'

'I beg your pardon?' Alex sounded almost dazed.

'When you don't know how to do something, you consult a higher authority.'

'And what didn't you know how to do?'

Her ripe mouth, expertly enriched by lipstick the exact shade of her peach-coloured shoes, tightened and then she noticed that his dark gaze seemed to be positively welded to her lips and instinctively withdrew even further into her self-imposed corner. What on earth was the matter with him? Why was he asking such stupid ques­tions? After all, it had been he who had given her the idea in the first place. 'With concentrated effort and professional advice, you could be quite attractive...' he had said, buttering her up, of course.

'I didn't know how to make the best of myself with clothes and that sort of stuff. Frankly, I never had the time or the interest before,' she muttered defensively. 'Or the money to do it.'

'You spent a pittance.'

He couldn't be serious. She had spent a fortune on her own terms. Admittedly, her new wardrobe didn't in­clude any designer labels but it did include classic sep­arates and suits that would not date and a rainbow collection of shoes, handbags and lingerie. And the con-sultant, whose advice had been indispensable, had cost an arm and a leg!

'An absolute pittance,' Alex repeated, continuing to scan her elegance with narrowed eyes.

He really meant it, she registered. Virtue one. Alex Terzakis was not stingy.

'And I am flattered that you were moved to such effort upon my behalf.'

'Your behalf?' Sarah echoed blankly. Dear heaven, for flattered read smug and amused... the conceited swine! she thought. 'I did this for Nicky. Why on earth would I do it for you?' 'Nicky?' he repeated very drily.

'I don't want to embarrass him-----'

'He's six weeks old!' Alex suddenly raked at her incredulously.

'I don't ever want to be a mother that he will be ashamed of,' Sarah responded shortly.

'And what about gracing me with a wife that I don't have to be ashamed of?'

Sarah regarded him with blatant astonishment, without even trying making it painfully obvious that such an ambition would never have occurred to her in a million years.

A dark flush had highlighted Alex's savagely high cheekbones. He was outraged, she realised. Dear heaven, were all male egos this fragile? This was a marriage of convenience and he loathed her not one whit less than she loathed him. Why would she want to make herself more attractive for his benefit?

'I wish you would stop staring at me,' she muttered tightly, accusingly.

'What did you expect?' he drawled flatly. 'You have altered yourself out of all recognition... apart from the hair...'

His accented voice had dropped in pitch and disturb­ingly roughened. Involuntarily, Sarah felt her everymuscle tighten. Like a mesmerised statue, she watched a lean brown hand reach out across the great divide that separated them and flick one long shining silver strand and then linger.

Her heart in her mouth, her shocked eyes helplessly glued to smouldering gold ones, Sarah jerked back like a bristling cat cornered by a pit bull terrier, plastering her slender body against the door behind her.

'Stop that/ Alex intoned in a growl of terrifying threat, a ferocious anger simmering in his intent gaze and hardened face.

'Stop wh-what?' Sarah stared down with horrified eyes at the beautifully shaped brown fingers winding, for some peculiar reason, into a whole hank of her tumbling mane of hair. He was imprisoning her. She absolutely couldn't breathe and she was trembling, her body seeming to have found a movement of its own in re­sponse to the terrible tension that had come out of nowhere.

She didn't know what he was doing! Was he a violent man? Was he planning to hit her or something? In a frantic attempt to distract him, she gasped, 'I don't want Nicky to have a nanny.'

Lush ebony lashes swept up. For a long and timeless instant, brilliant golden eyes probed hers in stark, in­credulous frustration. 'A nanny?' he almost whispered, as though she had spoken in some strange foreign language.

Her taut mouth wobbled. 'I'll look after him.'

'You will be far too busy looking after me,' Alex countered in a black velvet purr.

'You have servants to do that.'

'No, I have a wife now to do that.' Alex had shifted right across the back seat and she really was cornered now. His other hand came up and pushed up her chin, forcing the eye contact that she sought to avoid in her confusion.Throwing him a look of infuriated bemusement, Sarah brought up both hands and planted them on his broad chest to hold him at bay. Suddenly he laughed with a raw spontaneity that shook her.