Sarah uttered an embarrassed laugh. She hated it when Gina started on about men as if they were the beginning, the middle and the end of a woman’s existence. She didn’t attract the opposite sex. As a teenager, she had been painfully shy and studious, the class swot. As an adult, she had had neither the time nor the opportunity. Sure there had been men who’d asked her out from time to time at work, and occasionally she had accepted, only to discover that they didn’t want her company, they wanted sex. And that was why they had approached her. She was plain and quiet and they had undoubtedly imagined that she would be so grateful for the attention that she would fall into their bed on the first date with the barest minimum of effort.
She made herself recall her painfully humiliating experience with the boy she had had a crush on at sixteen. He had invited her out to a disco one night and she had been electrified with delight...until she’d heard some of her classmates giggling about it in the ladies’ cloakroom. He had done it for a bet. Every giggle had been a knife in her heart, every cruel word engraved on her memory for life.
‘She looks like an albino.’
‘And she’s got no boobs at all.’
‘You don’t need boobs with an IQ like hers.’
‘Her IQ didn’t warn her that Ashley is setting her up for a bet... She’s too busy following him with those big moony eyes of hers...making a real idiot of herself... I wonder how far she’ll let him go when he gets her on her own?’
‘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 like this. 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.
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 height to 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.