The Taming of Xander Sterne(45)

                There had to be some other way. Some way to stop his blackmail once and for all. There just had to be.

                ‘And if I insist?’

                Sam was breathing hard, her emotions in turmoil. But she couldn’t, she wouldn’t, give in to Malcolm’s blackmail. Because she knew that once it started it would never stop. Until one day she would wake up and find herself once again imprisoned, totally entrapped.

                She drew herself up determinedly. ‘You can insist all you like, Malcolm, but my answer will still be no.’

                He shrugged, his fingers once again tightening painfully about her wrist. ‘Obviously you would rather the two of us talked through our lawyers.’

                ‘I would rather—’ She broke off, her eyes stinging with unshed tears, knowing she had to get away, before she gave Malcolm the satisfaction of seeing those tears fall. ‘I have nothing more to say to you, Malcolm. And I have to go now,’ she added before he could speak again. ‘I have to drive Mr Sterne to his physio appointment.’

                ‘Have dinner with me this evening, Sam, and we can discuss this further then.’

                Sam repressed a shiver of fear. ‘I’m not going to do this, Malcolm,’ she told him shakily. ‘Not dinner this evening, not any of it.’

                He chuckled softly. ‘Give it time, Sam, and you’ll do exactly as I want,’ he drawled confidently. ‘You have until the end of the week,’ he added coldly. ‘After which I’m calling my lawyer.’

                Sam wrenched her wrist painfully from his grasp before opening the car door and climbing quickly out onto the pavement, slamming the door closed behind her, before turning on her heel and walking off in the direction of Xander’s apartment.

                All the time aware that her wrist ached abominably, her knees were knocking together, and her body was shaking in complete awareness of the fact that Malcolm had just demanded that she become his mistress by threatening Daisy.

                A demand, despite her defiance of him, that placed her as the fly to Malcolm’s spider...

                * * *

                Xander had been aware that there was something seriously wrong with Samantha from the moment she’d returned from walking Daisy to school earlier that morning. Her face was pale, her eyes almost feverish, and she was totally distracted as she went off to change into a red long-sleeved shirt before silently driving him to his physio appointment. The return journey had been made just as quietly.

                Xander was thoroughly worried by her uncharacteristic silence by the time they arrived back at his apartment just before one o’clock, and he now sat at the breakfast bar watching her as she moved about the kitchen preparing lunch. ‘Are you still angry with me for what happened on Saturday evening?’ he finally prompted gruffly.

                Events that had resulted in him spending two sleepless nights unable to banish thoughts of Samantha, who was lying in her own bed just a short distance down the hallway. He had wondered if she was also awake and thinking of him.

                Somehow Xander doubted that very much.

                Samantha had been so cool towards him on Sunday, so businesslike in her dealings with him today, even when helping him in and out of the shower this morning. An occasion when he had been unable to hide the arousal her touch incited in him. He might as well have been a block of wood for all the notice Samantha had taken of that!

                And that rankled.

                This whole indifference thing Samantha now had going towards him rankled!