'Nonsense...' Lost in the depths of his eyes, Sarah stopped breathing.
Alex loosed a kind of strangled groan and took her mouth so hotly that she scorched in shock, unprepared for a frontal assault of such blatancy. His tongue drove between her lips, searching out the moist interior, and an electrifying excitement shot through her, leaving her weak with longing.
The world spun faster and faster. Coloured lights shot through the blackness behind her lowered eyelids. Her hand lifted and her fingers dug into his luxuriant black hair. At last she was alive again after two weeks hovering on the brink of inglorious extinction.
Abruptly, Alex tore his mouth from hers. A dark tide of blood accentuated his hard cheekbones. He looked shattered, frustrated, outraged. 'What the hell are you doing to me?' he growled without warning, dumping herdown on the ground again so fast that she had to sag against the wall to stay upright.
'Me?' It was the most she could manage, planting shaking hands to the wall to steady herself, her temperature still rocketing tempestuously at fever point.
Alex was breathing rapidly. His gaze dropped below the level of her chin to the visible thrust of her nipples beneath the T-shirt. He swore fluently, violently, the brown hand that she could see suddenly sweeping up between them. He grabbed a handful of T-shirt to haul her closer, frightening her out of her wits.
'You wear a bra outside the bedroom,' he grated down at her. 'And you swim in two pieces of bikini. And you sunbathe in the same two pieces. Is that clear?'
Soundlessly she nodded. You didn't argue with a madman. It just didn't seem the time to tell him that she couldn't swim and hadn't yet taken the time to sunbathe.
'You don't flaunt yourself like this!' Alex derided. 'Now go to bed. You have a headache, go to bed...'
Sarah backed away slow step by slow step, lest a sudden move might push him further over the edge of such illogical and utterly incomprehensible behaviour. Flaunt herself? What on earth was he talking about? Her cheeks burned. She wore the least possible clothing for Nicky's bathtime. Not yet as polished as Claudine at bathing her nephew, Sarah invariably got pretty wet and it got so hot in the nursery bathroom with the heating going full blast lest Nicky contract a chill.
At the top of stairs, she glanced back. Alex had returned to the nursery. She wished she could spy on him the way he had spied on her. Did Alex talk baby-talk? Or was it more along the MCP line of 'think of all the women out there, all the conquests, all the entertainment available'? Sarah pulled a face. It was to be hoped that Alex had more wit in his conversation with Nicky then he had with the toys that kept on appearing by the day. Did he really think Nicky would soon beplaying with that incredible train set in the playroom next door to the nursery? And what about the bike? And the talking teddy with the maniacal laugh that made Nicky scream blue murder?
Sarah sagged down on her own bed, knowing she was being unjust. But the truth was she had not been prepared for Alex to take such an interest in Nicky. Instead she got this image of Alex haunting toyshops... Alex, patently ignorant of the stages of child development, purchasing anything and everything which took his fancy and bringing it home to Nicky. On some level she didn't want to examine, something twisted inside her when she pictured Alex in a toyshop, too arrogant to ask advice but trying so hard all the same.
More and more, she was having to acknowledge that on yet another point she had misjudged Alex. He did fully intend to be a father to Nicky. He did genuinely seem to love his nephew. In short, Alex was in possession of a whole set of more appealing characteristics than he would ever trouble to show to his unwanted wife.
Sarah groaned, realising that she had left the book she was reading downstairs. Alex would still be with Nicky.
But Alex, she soon discovered, wasn't with Nicky. She was descending the main staircase when she heard Vivien's voice, shrill and furious, leaking through the ajar door of the library.
'... none of my business when you have a wife and a child to consider? If you think that I am about to stand by while you humiliate that girl, Alex-----'
'You talk of something of which you know nothing,' Alex responded with icicles freezing from every syllable.
'Your father was always discreet... he never embarrassed me in public-----'
'Something more than can have been said for you where he was concerned,' Alex whipped back.'I'm sorry...' Vivien's voice sounded choked. 'I'm sorry that you can remember that.'
Frozen on the staircase, Sarah strained her ears but couldn't catch what Alex said next. It was too quiet. What the heck was Vivien doing interfering? No doubt in a well-meaning spirit, wanting all to be hunky-dory in her stepson's marriage, but didn't she realise how bitterly Alex would resent it?