‘You are distraught,’ Alex Terzakis informed her with apparent calm, but she was not fooled. A dark line of blood had risen over his high cheekbones and his mouth had flattened into a pale line.
People did not speak to Alex Terzakis in such a tone. He was fabulously rich and terrifyingly powerful. His minions bowed and scraped. His family walked in awe of him. His word was law. He did not expect opposition. The media had published several bloodcurdling stories about what happened to those foolish enough to challenge Alex Terzakis in business. But Sarah had no fear of him. Sarah would have given twenty years of her life to have the power to hurt Alex Terzakis as he had hurt her sister.
‘You murdered her...you killed her with unkindness. I hope you’re satisfied now!’ Sarah shot back at him with raw venom.
‘Miss Hartwell.’ A strong hand caught her wrist as she attempted to walk past him.
‘Let go of me, you swine!’ Sarah hissed in outrage.
‘Were it not for the fact that I am capable of making allowances for your understandable grief, I would demand an apology,’ Alex slashed down at her from his imposing height, tiger’s eyes raking her enraged face. ‘But this is not the place for such a confrontation. Compose yourself before I lose my temper!’
Sarah was shivering as though she were caught in a force-ten gale. Outright fury controlled her as he retained that bruising hold on her wrist. She lifted her free hand and hit blindly up at that dark, arrogant face with all her strength. He released her with an incredulous growl, a lean hand flying up to one sculpted cheekbone.
Sarah staggered back. ‘Don’t ever come near me again!’ she slung wildly, dimly shocked by that raw surge of uncharacteristic violence. She could not remember ever striking another human being before. Even as a child she had been a pacifist.
For a split-second, she collided with splintering golden eyes, incandescent with disbelief. And then she tore her gaze from his and forced herself to walk straight-backed down the corridor and out of the hospital.
She was in shock, so deep in shock that she didn’t even know where she was going. Callie was dead. She could not yet accept that. Their parents had died in a car crash when Sarah was seventeen. There had been no money. Callie had only been eleven.
‘Look after Callie,’ her mother had moaned repeatedly in Intensive Care. Mary Hartwell had still been fretting about her youngest child when she’d breathed her last.
Sarah had left school, given up all hope of any further education and concentrated on her sister’s needs. She had persuaded her father’s cousin Gina to let them live with her. With Gina in the background, the social services had allowed Sarah to keep her sister. Sarah had worked as a waitress. Every day she had come home to cook and clean and tidy up after Gina, who had regarded her as unpaid domestic help and had, in addition, taken almost every penny of her meagre wages.
As soon as she was eighteen, Sarah had found other accommodation. She had done her utmost to give Callie a secure and loving home. She had made her sister her number one priority. And Callie had thrived. A golden girl with the long-legged lithe good looks of a Californian blonde. Smart into the bargain, Sarah observed with helpless pride. It hadn’t been easy to keep her lively extrovert sister’s mind on the necessity of studying to get on in the world.
But Sarah had managed it. Callie had passed her A levels and gone on to university to study languages. Sarah had been as proud as any mother could have been. She had taken on another job part-time in the evenings so that Callie wouldn’t be short of money. Everything had been going so well before Damon Terzakis had entered her sister’s life.
‘I’ve met this truly fabulous Greek!’ Callie had gushed down the phone. ‘He’s incredibly handsome and rich and crazy about me...’
‘Sounds too good to be true,’ Sarah had murmured tautly, disconcerted by Callie’s excitement. Callie’s boyfriends normally came and went without Callie enthusing about any of them. A beauty from her early teens, Callie had taken young men very much in her stride.
‘I’ll bring him over to meet you some time soon,’ Callie had promised.
But weeks had passed before Sarah had finally met Damon. He had been twenty-five, boyishly good-looking and full of careless charm. His lustrous brown eyes had helplessly followed Callie’s every move. He had talked to Sarah as though she were Callie’s mother rather than her sister, painstakingly courteous and deferential. By the end of the evening, Sarah had felt like a middle-aged matron of at least fifty.
Damon had gone out of his way to stress that his intentions were serious. Reaching for Callie’s hand, he had said, ‘I love your sister very much and I want to marry her.’
Behind her polite smile, Sarah had ironically been appalled. She had considered Callie far too young to make such a commitment. She had worried that Callie would abandon her studies outright or, at the very least, allow romance to take over to the detriment of her work. But Sarah had been too sensible to allow her feelings to show. One hint of opposition and Callie was likely to rebel. Her sister was headstrong and opinionated. Only tact and diplomacy were likely to win Sarah a hearing.
‘Of course marriage,’ Damon had stated smoothly, ‘it would be in the future.’
Sarah had rewarded him with a beaming smile. ‘I think that’s very sensible,’ she had said. ‘Both of you have all the time in the world.’
‘Don’t talk platitudes,’ Callie had snapped, withdrawing her hand from Damon’s abruptly.
‘But we have already discussed this, Callie mou,’ Damon had protested and, turning his attention back to Sarah, he had added, ‘Our love must be seen to have stood the test of time if I am to have any hope of winning my brother’s consent to our marriage.’
‘Your brother’s consent?’ Sarah had repeated helplessly.
‘Greek families function on the basis of a strict hierarchy,’ Callie had intervened witheringly. ‘At the top of the family pecking order is the dominant male. Damon’s father is dead. His brother, Alexis is the big wheel in the Terzakis tribe.’
Faint colour had darkened Damon’s good-looking features. He had cast Callie a look of surprisingly strong reproof.
‘I don’t think you should take cheap shots at Damon’s big brother,’ Sarah had told her unrepentant sister while she’d prepared supper in their tiny kitchen. ‘Or his family. He was offended—’
‘Stuff!’ Callie had muttered, still angry. ‘He’s a grown man with a responsible job. But when he talks about Alex he acts like a little boy. He never stops talking about him. Alex this...Alex that. You’d think Alex was God in his life.’
‘Damon is Greek,’ Sarah had reminded her gently. ‘His culture, his background and his upbringing are bound to differ greatly from yours. If you really love him, Callie...all that goes with the territory.’