'But not quick enough, cara,' Alex breathed with chilling bite. 'Not quick enough.'
That chill went right down inside her and hurt, making her feel rejected and shut out. She had been inexcusably tactless, she told herself angrily. Naturally Alex did not want to hear about Brian on their wedding day. Why hadn't she kept her stupid mouth shut? she asked herself as she slid out of the limo outside the fabulous country hotel where the reception was being staged.
'Much better than two million…you're a girl after my own heart,' Marco teased her as he kissed her on the cheek. 'No hard feelings?'
'No more cracks about boots and berries, little brother,' Alex interposed, making Marco flush.
'I'm not about to take my life in my hands.'
Pete drew her to one side, his anxious eyes meeting hers. 'You didn't tell Alex all that nonsense I spouted that morning, did you?' he prompted worriedly.
'Of course not.'
'I mean, obviously,' Pete stressed with an amused shake of his head as he perceptibly relaxed, 'Alex is nuts about you! I was way out of line.'
No, Pete hadn't been as far out of line as he fondly imagined, Sara found herself thinking irritably. She was a bit fed up with people saying how madly in love Alex was with her when it was so patently obvious that he was not. Oh, yes, he might be behaving as any bridegroom was expected to behave, but Sara knew that he was only putting on a good show. Why advertise the fact that this was a marriage of convenience? That was private, not for public consumption.
Five minutes before the meal began,Sara saw Antonia and Brian slipping into the only two seats left vacant. Her cousin was wearing a fixed smile. By her side Brian looked grim and uncomfortable. Nothing could have concealed the marks of strain that had thinned his face and lent a harsher line to his mouth.
'The happy twosome,' Alex commented flatly. "They deserve each other, don't you think?'
Sara focused on her wineglass. 'I wish them well. I really do.'
'If you tell yourself that often enough, I might actually start to believe it too,' Alex breathed with an undertone of rawness that sent her tension screaming up another notch.
After the meal Alex whirled her round the dance-floor with breathtaking expertise. It was Sara who mumbled apologies when she collided with his feet and who couldn't wait to sit down again because she felt that her lack of dexterity, her sheer clumsiness must be embarrassing him when every eye in the room was upon them.
A little while later she was chatting to family friends when she felt a hand touch her shoulder. She turned her head with an enquiring smile. She had to force the smile to stay in place when she saw Brian.
'Care to dance?' he asked loudly.
Sara hesitated, alarmingly conscious of their audience. 'If you like,' she said grudgingly.
'Antonia was determined to come, so don't blame me,'
Brian muttered in an embittered undertone as he pulled her onto the floor. 'Dear God, Sara…what happened to us?'
'You know exactly what happened, Brian.'
'But I feel like some bloody pawn people push around for fun!' he vented down at her, his face furiously flushed. 'I was set up, Sara. Last week I found out that some private investigator had been snooping around after me, pestering my colleagues at work, blasted well paying for information about my movements!'
Sara wondered uneasily if he was drunk. 'A private investigator?' she queried, incredulous at the suggestion as thev proceeded round the floor at the snail's pace of the vaguely dancing shuffle which had always been their style.
'You tell me how anyone knew Antonia and I were going to be in the flat that day at that time. It was a last-minute arrangement. And who made that phone call which brought you there to find us in flagrantedelicto?' he completed bitterly.
Her mouth compressed. 'I really don't see that it matters now-'
'The only person I know who could afford a private investigator is your new husband!' Brian cut in with clenched teeth. 'He's rich, he's devious and he hates me like poison, and if you ask me I'm lucky I'm still alive! Back in his homeland that smooth, calculating bastard would probably just have hired a hit man to get me out of the way!'
'Have you any idea how ridiculous you sound?' Sara enquired in disbelief, tugging back from him because anger was making him grip her far too tightly and closely for comfort. 'Why should Alex have hired a private investigator?'
'Well, you ask yourself who got what he most wanted out of this nightmare. And Rossini must have wanted you very badly to marry you this quickly! Very neat, wasn't it-how he was in the right place at the right time to step into my shoes…not off abroad the way he usually is, not involved with another woman… No, he was right there waiting to catch you on the rebound, wasn't he?'
'Forgive me for interrupting this touching reunion…'
Alex's smoothly controlled drawl sent a shiver down Sara's taut spinal cord as her head whipped round in shock. She had never heard that much menace, wasn't surprised when Brian paled and abruptly dropped his arms from her. 'Hates me like poison', Brian had said, and it occurred to her that that bit was certainly true.
Bypassing Brian, Alex drew her close, his strong face tight with suppressed anger.
Sara stumbled and said, 'Why do you dislike him so much?'
'He's still breathing, walking around, causing trouble.'
An uneasy laugh was torn from her. 'Alex… he wasn't trying to make a pass at me.'
'Were you hoping he would? Or was it enough of a power play merely to let his wife watch the two of you clinging to each other and so totally absorbed that neither of you noticed that the music had stopped?' Alex demanded with roughened quietness, dark eyes icy with condemnation.
Sara paled under the unexpected attack. 'It wasn't like that-'
'He's still in love with you… or at least he thinks he is, but he's married to another woman now. Your behaviour was inappropriate,' Alex spelt out grimly. 'As was his. But it is you whom I choose to censure, for you are my wife and I expect certain standards to be maintained, particularly in public. If you cannot maintain those standards around your former fiance, how can you possibly remain in contact with your family? There will be no ongoing problems in that department, cara. I assure you of that.'
Sara was shaken and angered by his rebuke. In all her life she could not recall any male ever telling her that her behaviour had been unacceptable. Her pride smarted furiously. Possibly she should have been more distant with Brian in so public a setting when all too many people were aware of how recently their relationship had been severed, but she did not feel that she deserved to be dragged mortifyingly over the coals of Alex's grim disapproval as if she were a child who had let hersel
f down in front of the grown-ups!
'If you had heard what Brian was saying, you might have understood why I was still standing there after the music had finished!' Sara returned defensively.
'You couldn't tear yourself away from him?'
She bridled. 'No, only not for the reasons you imagine. I couldn't believe what he was saying! Brian was accusing you of having put a private investigator on him, of having set him up to be caught in the act with Antonia… for h-heaven's sake…" As she noticed the sudden narrowing of Alex's dark gaze, his immediate, poised stillness, her voice tripped and then slowly drained away.
She had expected him to laugh with that wonderful spontaneity of his, or at worst react with angry exasperation at such an absurd allegation. But Alex did neither. His chiselled golden features clenched, his expressive mouth flattening, and then, in that pulsing silence, one of his twin sisters bounced in between them and grabbed his hand! Throwing Sara a mischievous glance, she tugged her big brother back onto the dance-floor.
As Sara hovered with an uncertain frown pleating her brows, she saw the man with the grey streak in his hair bending down to speak to SandroRossini. And it came to her then where she had seen that man before. Outside the flat that day when she had been fleeing from the sight of Brian and Antonia in each other's arms. Yet he was one of Alex's security guards. Maybe he lived in the same street. Coincidence, nothing more… How could it be anything more?
Alex couldn't possibly have had any connection with that episode. The very idea was ridiculous! Was Brian's paranoia contagious? But when had she ever known Brian to be paranoiac? Or Alex silent?
An image swam back up in her memory. She remembered Alex coming into her office that afternoon, not a single word of criticism passing his lips about the unanswered phones, his uncharacteristic quietness, his astonishing inability to distinguish between brandy and black coffee in spite of the fact that the bottle had been sitting in open view on Pete's desk… And even if he hadn't noticed all that he must surely have known that she was sloshed out of her stupid mind when she couldn't even walk in a straight line down the corridor!