'It's beautiful,' she mumbled as Vivien regarded her. 'Stunning,' she added weakly.
'Alex said I wouldn't like you. I was terrified,' Vivien admitted. 'I mean, someone worse than Elise after all the plotting and planning I've been doing to keep her at bay! And Alex acting like he had been trapped... It would take an Amazon to trap Alex!'
The Amazon moistened her dry lips. 'It wasn't a trap but I did employ pressure,' Sarah heard herself saying, desperately wanting to be as honest as possible.
'You had to do that?' Vivien's pretty, animated face looked astonished. 'With Alex? The rat!" she exclaimed. 'I always thought Alex could be depended on one hundred per cent to do the decent thing-----'
'Oh, he can be-—' Sarah backtracked hastily.
'He has a very strong sense of honour and responsibility. Makes him a bit pious sometimes.' Vivien pulled a face. 'But he adores children.'
'Yes.'
'Got rather rigid ideas, though. I spoilt Damon—that's Alex's younger brother—dreadfully. He was such a charmer when he was a boy... not that I don't still love him but he does worry me sometimes.' Vivien leant back against the massive footboard of the bed, looking abstracted and troubled. 'You know, you'll laugh, but when I first heard there was a baby I actually thought Alex might be trying to cover for Damon.'
Sarah had frozen. 'Oh?' was all she was capable of saying. 'And it would totally have broken Andy's heart, and she had been looking a bit peaky and strained lately. Worships the ground Damon walks on-----'
'Andy?'
'My daughter, Androula.'
'Your daughter is married to Alex's brother?'
'I was a widow with a little girl when I met Alex's father,' Vivien explained, with a far-away look in her eyes. 'My first husband was also Greek. I worked in Nikos's office. I couldn't take dictation for tacks but he was always asking for me! Not that he had honourable intentions, let me tell you. Nikos had me earmarked as his next pillow-friend-----'
'His what?' Still reeling from the shock that Damon's wife was this woman's daughter, doubly a part of the Terzakis family because she must have grown up with both brothers as a stepsister, Sarah was none the less fascinated by Vivien's story.
'A little Greek euphemism for mistress.' Vivien wrinkled her nose. 'I said no and no and no again for an entire year and always kept a desk between us. At the end of it he was on his knees begging me to marry him but hating me too, if you know what I mean. So we married and it took me another two years to get rid of what you might call the baggage from his previous lifestyle-----'
'Baggage?'
"The mistress he did have. He just couldn't understand why he couldn't have us both.' Vivien fixed bright blue eyes ruefully on Sarah. 'I presume you are aware that Alex keeps his left luggage in Athens and Paris?1
'Er... yes.'
'Greek men have double standards,' Vivien muttered with rich sympathy. 'Want to know how I kicked out the baggage?'
'Love to,' Sarah said truthfully. 'I made him jealous. A dangerous game, that, but for me, it worked. All of a sudden he realised how / felt and he never strayed again, he was so busy watching my every move. I loved him to death but boy, did I keep him on his toes. What are your plans?'
'Plans?'
'You need a strategy if you want to decimate the opposition. Remember, I'm always at the end of the phone and I come to Paris all the time. I'll be here in a fortnight again to see my grandson properly.' Vivien was already drifting to the door. She turned back for a second and smiled. 'Alex has a conscience... play on it... and of course that.' She indicated the bed meaningfully beneath Sarah's embarrassed gaze. 'I'm sure you're already quite aware that what happens in here is more important than anything else right now. Don't let the sun go down on a row...'#p#分页标题#e#
Sarah nodded dumbly in receipt of her instructions.
'See you next week.' The door shut on Vivien.
Sarah collapsed down on a chair, feeling as though she had tangled with a whirlwind. She was beginning to understand why Alex had looked momentarily helpless. Vivien was a miniature dynamo. And the poor woman was actually rooting for this crazy marriage to work because evidently Sarah was viewed as a lesser evil than Elise!
But Vivien was the mother of Damon's wife. That opened up whole new areas of conjecture. Talk about keeping it in the family! Slowly Sarah shook her buzzing head. The extent of her own ignorance was colossal and frustrating. She knew nothing about the Terzakis family that Callie had not chosen to tell her and she had not seen Alex once in the three weeks which had come between his agreement to marry her and the actual ceremony today. No wonder Alex had been shaken by the sight of his stepmother's descent! Naturally he did not trust Sarah, who had been so vitriolic with him, to keep her mouth shut with Vivien.