Sarah surfaced from the past and found herself perched on a bench in the park down the road from the hospital. To think that all those months ago she had actually been relieved to hear Damon mentioning the necessity of obtaining his brother’s approval before he could marry!
Alarm bells had only really gone off the day she’d caught the name Terzakis on the evening news and glimpsed a forbiddingly handsome male, surrounded by executives and cameras, refusing to comment on his acquisition of some company in New York. She had bought a serious newspaper the next day on the way into work and she had read all about Alexis Terzakis with growing consternation. That evening she had rung Callie and asked her to come home for a night. Callie had come with bad grace, demanding to know what all the fuss was about.
‘You said that Damon was running his family’s hotel in Oxford,’ Sarah had reminded her. ‘What you didn’t say was that the Terzakis family are billionaires!’
‘Alex is the billionaire,’ Callie had said drily. ‘Damon just gets pocket money.’
‘I thought Damon’s family were hoteliers—’
Callie had burst out laughing. ‘Sarah, you are dumb! Don’t you ever read the business columns? Damon’s family own a shipping line, an international string of hotels, engineering plants, finance companies...you name it, they own it!’
Sarah had been disturbed. She had genuinely had no idea that her sister’s boyfriend was from so wealthy a background. Damon had seemed very unassuming. He had settled that evening into their shabby lounge without a shade of discomfort. She remembered Callie referring to her own job as secretarial and quickly dismissing the subject.
Actually Sarah was a humble filing clerk in a big anonymous office and she had not climbed the ladder any higher because the frequency with which she had held down two jobs had meant that she had no time to spare for evening classes. Sarah had spent countless evenings over the past seven years waitressing or cleaning for extra money to stretch their tight budget.
She had tried not to feel hurt that evening she’d first met Damon when Callie had asked her in advance not to mention those latter sources of income. Callie had been embarrassed by her sister’s acceptance of such low-grade employment. And, sadly, Sarah had understood. Callie had always wanted to be somebody and that vein of insecurity had been stirred when she’d found herself mixing with students from far more comfortable backgrounds than her own. She hadn’t wanted anyone to know that the source of the cheap but fashionable clothes she wore with such panache had been a sister, who regularly cleaned office blocks after closing time.
And now Callie was gone. Sarah raised trembling hands to her face as if she could somehow contain the anguish inside her. She could not imagine life without Callie. Callie with her raw energy, boundless untidiness and quick temper. Callie had been born when Sarah was six. Sarah, a quiet, rather lonely child, had delighted her parents by displaying not the smallest atom of jealousy. She had been enchanted by her baby sister. She had read her stories, picked her up when she fell over, taught her nursery rhymes before she started school and later helped her with her homework. With two parents working full-time, there had been plenty of opportunity for Sarah to fill in the gaps in Callie’s days when their mother was too tired or too busy.
‘Miss Hartwell.’
Sarah lifted her aching head like a sleepwalker and focused on Alex Terzakis in disbelief. He looked alien against the backdrop of the scruffy park.
‘Allow me to offer you a lift home,’ he drawled flatly.
Sarah burst out laughing, hysteria clawing like insanity at her cracking composure. Abruptly she covered her working face again, stricken that he of all people should see her in such a state. Dear lord, what did this barbarian want from her now. Couldn’t he even leave her to grieve in peace?
Only a couple of hours had passed since she had been bundled unceremoniously from her sister’s bedside and the crash team had attempted to get her sister breathing again. It had happened so fast and they had tried so hard. But Callie, once the leading light of her school athletics team, had died of a massive coronary, just days off her nineteenth birthday. Sarah had been shattered but she had been totally devastated by what she’d learnt from the consultant gynaecologist afterwards.
Early in her pregnancy, Callie had been warned that she had a weak heart. Routine testing had revealed what nobody had ever had any cause to suspect. She had been advised to have a termination and she had refused. She had not shared any of that with her sister. Sarah had been surprised by the sheer frequency of Callie’s ante-natal appointments but she had had no idea that there was anything wrong.
‘Callie was one hundred per cent determined to have her baby,’ the consultant had told her wryly. ‘That was her choice. Possibly she didn’t tell you because she was afraid that you might try to change her mind.’
‘Miss Hartwell?’ Alex Terzakis persisted grimly, impatiently.
Please God, make him leave me alone, she prayed feverishly, curving her arms round her churning stomach and involuntarily rocking back and forth on the edge of the bench.
‘I cannot leave you here in this condition,’ he continued, his accent growing more pronounced with every unanswered intervention. ‘I wish to see you safely to your home. I also wish to assume responsibility for the funeral arrangements—’
‘You bloody savage!’ Sarah, who never ever swore, found the word flying off her tongue. A stricken sense of horror had attacked her as he’d spoken. ‘You wouldn’t let her marry into your family but you can’t wait to bury her!’
‘I do not intend to stand here being insulted in a public place,’ he gritted through clenched teeth, and she could feel the force of his suppressed rage licking out at her like hungry flames, desperate for fuel to feed on. It was a curiously satisfying experience, warming her chilled bones.
‘Then you know what to do about it, don’t you?’ Sarah collided with blazing golden eyes set between incredibly luxuriant ebony lashes and felt oddly dizzy for a split-second. She tilted her chin. ‘Get lost.’
‘If you were not a woman...’ he launched at her with raw, splintering aggression. He was white beneath his bronzed skin, his classic bone-structure starkly prominent. He was rigid with fury and frustration.
‘You’d be dead,’ Sarah murmured shakily. ‘If I were a man, I’d have killed you for what you did to Callie in your fancy big office five months ago!’
His brilliant gaze had narrowed to piercing pin-points of light, arrowing over her very small, very slight figure and the huge green eyes dominating her triangular face. ‘On this occasion, I desired only to offer you my assistance at a time of severe trial to us all.’
He strode off. Incredibly good carriage, she noted abstractedly, and then it hit her finally. Callie gone... Callie gone forever. She had not cried a single tear. Her eyes had burned and scorched but remained dry through-out. And now the tears came in a silent tidal wave, streaming down her quivering cheeks in agonised relief. She was so terribly grateful that it hadn’t happened in front of him.
* * *
‘You’ll never guess who just walked in.’ Gina nudged Sarah in the ribs seconds after the short funeral service began, her plump over-made-up face suddenly wreathed with rampant curiosity. ‘It’s them...got to be, hasn’t it? Who else could it be?’
‘Shush,’ Sarah urged, her head downbent as the service opened with a short prayer.