Bond of Hatred(6)

'As if Ashley would fancy her! Can you even imagine it?' And everybody had laughed themselves into hys­terics at the mere idea. 'Sarah...'

Sarah blinked rapidly and sank back to the present, pale as a ghost. Gina put a hand on her arm and mur­mured, 'I've asked Alexis and Damon Terzakis back to the house...' 'You've what?'

'Well, somebody had to do it!' Gina muttered. 'You acted as though they weren't there.'

'If you let them in, I walk out,' Sarah swore vehemently.

Slowly Gina shook her head, her troubled gaze clinging dazedly to Sarah's blazing eyes and rigid facial ex­pression. 'Sarah, what's got into you these last months?' she asked in genuine confusion. 'I don't know you likethis. It's as if a stranger has taken possession of you-----'

Sarah walked on downstairs. "There's nothing the matter with me, Gina.'

'You used to be the kindest, most gentle girl. A soft touch, I often thought,' the older woman admitted un­comfortably. 'But you've been changing ever since Callie told you she was pregnant. I know how much you loved her. I can understand how you feel-----'

'You couldn't,' Sarah cut in, woodenly controlled.

"That boy must want to see little Nicky-----'

'If Damon wants to see Nicky, he'll need a court order,' Sarah asserted fiercely. 'I'll fight them every step of the way.'

'But they're coming to the house!'

'Let them. I'll deal with it.'

The bell went one minute later. Gina gave her a pleading glance and then took herself off into the kitchen. Straightening her slight shoulders, Sarah answered the door. Alex Terzakis stood alone on the doorstep. For the first time in her life, Sarah found herself wishing that she were wearing four-inch heels in­stead of flats. Alex Terzakis towered over her like an apartment block, casting a long, dark shadow.#p#分页标题#e#

She took a hasty step back. 'I didn't invite you here. You're not welcome.'

A powerful hand suddenly slammed up against the front door, forcing it out of her loose grasp and flat­tening it with a crash back against the hall table. The violence of the gesture shook her and instinctively she backed away out of reach. He strode in and closed the door behind him.

'Now we will talk,' he announced, exuding percep­tible vibrations of all-male satisfaction.

She had very nearly given him a black eye, she noted with grim amusement, scanning the faint bruise adorning one high cheekbone. Pity she hadn't had sufficient heightto do so! Her heart was thudding a frantic drumbeat behind her ribcage. She felt charged with a sensation disturbingly akin to excitement. The tension in the at­mosphere was so thick she could taste it.

Since she was not physically capable of ejecting him from the house, she chose to walk into the lounge ahead of him. 'Frankly, Mr. Terzakis, we have nothing to discuss. Where's little rat?'

'little rat?' He scrutinised her with narrowed eyes.

'Baby brother, the wimp,' Sarah specified with lancing contempt.

'You are the most poisonous woman I have ever met. Would that I had the curbing of that spiteful tongue!' Alex swore in a vicious hiss, one lean hand visibly coiling into a fist.

Sarah laughed for the first time in days, really laughed. Callie had told her a lot about Alexis Terzakis, relaying it in gossip style over the phone in the early days of her romance with Damon. And she was realising that Damon's awed view of his big brother was fatally flawed. Alex was Mr Ice-cool himself in business and in his private life—according to Damon, that was. So why was it that around her he seethed like a volcano ready to erupt?

'Cristos... On the day of the funeral,' he growled at her from a distance of ten feet. He didn't trust himself any closer. She understood that. 'Have you no decent feelings?'

'About as many as you had when you called my sister a cheap little scrubber to my face five months ago!' Sarah shot back tight-mouthed.

'I did not employ such offensive terminology------'

'You said she was after his money and she slept around... Tell me the difference?' Sarah invited with only the slightest tremor in her voice.'I did not believe she was pregnant,' Alex breathed curtly through perfect white teeth. It was obvious that the admission was wrenched from him.

'I want you to get out,' Sarah told him shakily. 'You have no business in this house.'

He sent her a glittering black glance of startling fer-ocity and strode over to the window. 'My brother is too ashamed to face you...' he gritted in a driven undertone

In a weird way, Sarah was beginning to enjoy herself.. If the previous admission of faulty judgement had been wrenched from him, the latter had been ripped screaming from Alex Terzakis. Little brother was a wimp. And that offended and humiliated big brother no end! Family honour and all that macho nonsense. Alex was being forced to deal with a woman he despised in a situation in which he had no defence, she registered with in­creasing confidence: He was here to buy silence.