On the brink—that meant it wasn't too late. It wasn't too late to prove that she could be everything he could want within marriage, was it? But to prove that point would mean ditching not only her personal insecurities but also her pride. Could she do it? Could she turn herself into the sort of woman Alex would desire and need to the exclusion of all others? With only hours in which to achieve that miracle, she understood that she would be struggling to fulfil a pretty tall order and that it was going to take a pretty hefty demonstration to convince Alex that she could change...
Hooded dark eyes were studying her, a faint frown-line formed between his winged brows. He had spoken and she hadn't heard him. 'I said,' Alex drawled, and then, meeting her far-away eyes, his mouth suddenly tightened. He rose abruptly from behind the table. 'Forget what I said. I'll see you at dinner.'
Before Sarah could retrieve her wits and her tongue, Alex was gone. Suddenly galvanised into motion by panic, she pelted after him, but he wasn't on his own.He was striding out of the door with his pilot on his heels. Desperate as Sarah was, she could not quite bring herself to proposition her husband sexually in front of an audience.#p#分页标题#e#
And then he really was gone, the door thudding shut on her hopes and her dreams and her marriage, she reflected melodramatically. Alex was off to put in a few hours at the office before succumbing to Elise's wiles. Olive Oil, she had called her! Talk about seriously underestimating the opposition! Elise might not have slept with Alex before he'd got married but evidently, in her eagerness to extract him from his marriage, she was prepared to get her hair mussed now.
Well, she wasn't the only one, Sarah decided in sudden fury. She intended to put a spoke in Elise's wheels. She was going to get in first. Cheeks hotly flushed, Sarah tracked down Henri and asked him what time Alex took lunch.
Henri blinked. 'It varies...'
'I need to know what time he's taking it today and I want a car to Paris to get me there on time,' Sarah told him. 'I want to surprise him.'
Henri smiled with sudden cunning. 'I'll find out, madame.'
Sarah went upstairs into the dressing-room and began to trawl frantically through the wardrobes for something suitable to wear, something seductive, something that would come off again with the minimum of effort. She couldn't afford to give Alex ten seconds to recall the lunch date he was about to break. If Alex could use sex as a weapon, as he had on their wedding night, couldn't she?
She was ready to tear her hair out and scream when she realised that the most basic weapon in any sensual woman's wardrobe was missing from hers! Downstairs she went again in a rush, straight into the kitchen to find Francois, her chauffeur, with his feet up, reading anewspaper. 'I have to go into Tours!' she announced breathlessly. 'Now!'
Frangois could take a hint. They made it to Tours in record time. The lingerie shop she finally located offered up a wealth of choice. It took her only ten minutes to grab up those most essential missing items and then it was back home, at the same speed, to go racing up to the bathroom to commence her transformation.
By the time she made it back into the car for the drive to Paris, she was badly in need of a stiff drink to aid her recovery. It had taken so long to do her hair that big way on her own. Of course she hadn't been bothering since they married. She had just been washing and wearing it, not making any effort at all, hardly even bothering with make-up... As she counted up her sins, she grew increasingly appalled by such thoughtless inattention to the need to hold a man's interest. Alex was accustomed to such beautiful women. If she succeeded today, she would be spending every spare hour in the beauty salon, concealing nature's deficiencies. But it would be worth it, if it meant she kept Alex.
Every head turned, as she crossed the foyer on the ground floor of Alex's office block. Sarah endeavoured not to appear self-conscious. After all, she had a coat on. The fact that she was not wearing anything very much at all underneath it did not show but she could feel that lack, feel her own shocking nakedness in the most extraordinary way.
Alex's secretary on the top floor was not, she was relieved to note, the kind of sex siren most likely to end up on her employer's lap in a weak moment. From the top of her greying hair to the toes of her flat, sensible shoes, she was efficiency personified. But she looked rather dismayed when Sarah announced her intention to lunch with her husband.
So Elise was pencilled into his diary, was she? Prepared for that eventuality, Sarah waved a supposed tobe arrogant but actually rather desperate hand and said, 'Cancel any other arrangements Alex has made... and hold all calls. I don't want any interruptions.'