'I'm sorry.' Her eyes smarted painfully.
'But what alternative was there? Your motives may not have been entirely pure but you had more awareness of Nicky's needs than I had. I could not have brought him up on my own, and Elise,' he delivered with a wry twist of his mouth, 'would never have accepted him. I am very fond of children but I have to confess to not having had very much to do with the breed. What I am trying to say to you is that that child needs both of us and I accept that now. However, if the two of us had had access to slightly cooler tempers in the period after your sister's death, we would not now be married...'
She knew it was the truth but it was still like a knife twisting through her heart.
'But I was not prepared to leave you in charge of Nicky, thinking of you as I did then. We were so busy striking sparks off each other, neither one of us showed our true character,' Alex spelt out. 'I was determined that you would gain nothing from the marriage. I knew you were proud. I swore to break that pride.'
The colour drained from her fragile face. 'Yes.'
He vented a soft imprecation, noting her pallor. 'Hence my behaviour after the ceremony. I did not feel like a married man. I did not want to be a married man,' he confessed with grim emphasis. 'I saw marriage as something still quite far in the future, to be embraced at a time of my choosing. So I decided to marry you and get rid of you again by whatever means were within my power.'
Sarah bowed her head, her throat thickening. She had blown Alex's no doubt smoothly organised existence apart. What right did she have to resent the backlash?Hadn't she brought it on herself? How could she demand fidelity from a man who had never wanted to marry her in the first place?
'You're so quiet.'
It was easier to shout and scream in temper, tougher to verbalise really painful emotions which Alex could only be embarrassed by. His candour was slaughtering her, she acknowledged. She had managed by extraordinary means to fall in love with a man primed from the outset to humiliate and hurt her. What was worst of all was not being able to resent that reality.
'Maybe I'm a little stunned that you're talking to me like this.' She strove for a fair approximation of an appreciative smile. It was a lost cause.
'Maybe I would like to be stunned back,' Alex murmured tautly.
He would be stunned if she told him how she really felt about him. Inside herself, she was dying. It was slowly sinking in on her that all that he had said about finding her sexually attractive must have been lies too! Dear God, he had run rings round her! Idiot, fool, sucker, she castigated herself fiercely. Her lack of sexual experience had been so pitifully obvious to Alex, he had made that his first target.
'Sarah. ..I am attempting to clear the air.' He crouched down on a level with her and reached for her tightly clenched hands. Tears were slowly trickling down her cheeks and she was in anguish that he should see them, hadn't even realised the tears were there until she felt them overflow. 'If I've hurt you, I'm sorry, but I will make it up to you.'
His hands engulfed hers with warmth. He looked really concerned. She had never dreamt that those dark golden eyes could soften to such a degree. But that her weakness should provoke his pity tormented her.
'I can,' Alex swore vehemently. 'I can make this marriage work.'Vehemently she shook her head, arching her slender throat, willing the tears back. 'It just can't work, Alex-----'
'But it has to for Nicky.'
'I love Nicky very much... but I don't w-want to stay married to you,' she said. 'This situation is unbearable for both of us. We have nothing in common.'
His lean hands had tightened as she spoke, crushing the blood supply from her fingers. 'Nicky,' he reminded her. 'And there are many facets of your character which I admire.'
What remained of her pride trickled down through a mental grating, gone forever. Her damp lashes concealed the agony in her eyes. Character traits he could admire... was that the best he could come up with? This utterly gorgeous man whom she loved, who did not love her, who wanted to stay married to her for her maternal instincts. She withdrew her hands from his, despising herself for the craving to maintain even that slight contact.
'Alex... I got us into this. Yesterday I was furious with you,' she admitted with difficulty and some understatement. 'But I shouldn't have been and I see that now. If you want to run around with a lot of women, that's your business, because we're not really married, not in the strictest sense of the word.' She paused, disturbed by the dull coins of colour rising over his taut cheekbones. 'Neither one of us went through that ceremony meaning what we said.'
'I did not make love to any of those women,' Alex said harshly, and reached for her hands again with unhidden anger. 'Have you ever heard of the concept of a second chance? Here I am practically on my knees begging for that chance and you sit there like a little stone Buddha being bloody forgiving but as unyielding as a brick wall!'Shattered by the attack, Sarah watched him spring upright and stride across the room, aggression in every line of his long, lithe body. Was it true that he hadn't made love to another woman since their marriage? None of those women, he had said. He might not have been to Athens but he was in Paris practically every damned day! His anger had astonished her. She realised that he was deadly serious about staying married for Nicky's benefit and frustrated by her lack of response.