'Perhaps in small doses. He's scared of strangers.' Sarah held out her arms.
'Maybe he's not well.' Alex had moved forward. His dark, powerful face was troubled as he gazed down at his screeching nephew."There's nothing the matter with him but bad temper,' Nanny asserted. 'Babies have to accustom themselves to a routine.'
Tears smarting behind her worried eyes, Sarah couldn't stand it any longer. She reached out and simply took Nicky, cuddling him close, muttering baby talk as she hurriedly moved back down the aisle. Nicky unglued swollen dark eyes and looked up at her, his mouth alarmingly enlarged on the brink of another howl. He thought better of it and nestled his damp head into her cradling hand.
Sarah took her seat with contentment. Alex studied them both with narrowed eyes. 'He knows you...'
'Of course he does... don't you, my darling?' Her small hand stroked the baby's head in just the way he liked to be soothed and quieted. Glancing up, she found herself in receipt of an intense and frowning appraisal and she wondered why Alex should look at her like that, as if she were behaving strangely. Whether he liked it or not, she was fulfilling the role she was here for and unless the nanny he had arrogantly engaged without consultation betrayed a softer, more flexible attitude Sarah had no intention of leaving Nicky in her care.
She fed Nicky while Nanny glowered disapproval from the other end of the spacious cabin.
'Are you trying to impress me at this late date?' Alex enquired with crushing contempt.
Sarah blinked. 'What on earth are you talking about?'
'All this mock-maternal attention for Nikos?' he derided. 'Why do you think I engaged a nanny?'
"There is nothing mock about my feelings for my nephew,' Sarah countered with a disdain and a temper only controlled by the presence of the baby in her arms. She had no intention of fighting with Alex when Nicky was within hearing distance. A baby could be upset by raised, sharp voices and tension. 'And I would sooner not comment on your acquisition of a nanny. ..althoughI could say that I'm not too impressed by what I've seen so far.'
'She comes with the highest references.'
Sarah's sultry mouth tautened. 'I don't want to be prematurely critical or unfair, but you did about as well as I would have expected, interfering in something about which you know nothing... something I imagine you do with monotonous regularity,' she could not resist stabbing, 'because you are one of those men who always think they know everything-----'
His lower lip had briefly parted company with the upper. A splintering tension screamed from his stillness. He could not believe what he was hearing. A home truth or two and he was ready to explode. Certainly not a product of an upbringing by any Nanny Brown, she thought with sudden helpless amusement. This was a male so absolutely unaccustomed to even the smallest censure that his first response was anger and outrage. Probably spoilt rotten as a child: Born rich, clever, very good-looking. Ambitious, successful, workaholic and domineering, doubtless encouraged by an adoring family and grovelling employees and fawning, stupid women to believe himself the very zenith of perfection in every field. Medallion man with brains, no less.
'Are you a lesbian?'
After a staggered pause, a rosy flush swept up the pale skin of her throat. Sarah stared back at him incredulously. And then abruptly, surprising herself, she laughed out loud. That ego of his... He just could not accept that she should be unimpressed and unattracted by him.
'I thought not.' Far from being ill at ease, Alex trained his night-dark gaze upon her with glittering intensity, a faint but definable smile of grim amusement curving his handsome mouth. "Then ask yourself why you feel such a powerful compulsion to try and put me down.'Sarah opened her jewel-like eyes very wide with pretended naivete. 'Do I really? And you mean you actually noticed?' she gasped.
In a silence of the utmost self-assurance, Alex surveyed her with the lazy indolence of a jungle predator, and, since she found that impregnable cool disturbing, she went on, 'You see, I don't like you, Alex-----'
'Liking isn't required... but I will have respect.'
There was a sizzle in the atmosphere. Sarah revelled in it. 'It's good for a man to have a goal to work towards... even when the goal will remain eternally out of reach.'
'You tread where even my most powerful enemies dare not tread.'
The assurance hung there and provoked an insidious chill down her rigid backbone. Under the drugging onslaught of icy dark eyes', she denied that weakness within her. 'I am not afraid of you.'
Alex's lushly framed gaze dropped to the slender hand unwittingly gripping the arm of her seat. 'Your body language says otherwise. If I banished Nanny and the stewardess, you'd be out of here like a hare with the hounds on its trail.'