The Married Mistress (7 page)

Then, purely for something to do and not because she was in any way really hungry, she opened one of the cupboards and pulled out the toaster, dumping it heavily on the worktop.

‘Toast?’ It was brusque to the point of rudeness, but it didn’t even make Damon put down his paper.

‘Please.’

He was regaining some degree of control over his wayward senses, thank God. Another minute and he might actually be able to look in her direction without making a total fool of himself.

Because he was determined he was not going down that road again. Yesterday he had let his libido get the better of him and had ended up feeling a total fool—and dirty into the bargain!

Inwardly, Damon shuddered at the mental image of himself rolling on the bed with Sarah—on the bed that she had been sharing with
Jason
, for God knew how long. That was not going to happen again!

But what
was
he going to do?

He’d come here to talk some sense into Sarah, to persuade her to give their marriage a second try. He had expected that it wouldn’t be easy, that she would still be angry and distant because of the way they’d parted. What he hadn’t expected to find was that she’d already moved another man in and was living with him.

Last night he’d vowed to himself that he wasn’t going to stick around. That as soon as the day dawned he would repack the bag he had so recently unpacked and head back to Greece, shaking the dust of London and this house from his feet for good. But the lack of sleep and a need for coffee had delayed him and…

And—
face it, you fool!
he told himself furiously, recalling his body’s instant reaction to Sarah’s appearance in the doorway, the sound of her footsteps on the stairs.

Face facts!

He wasn’t going to be able just to walk out and not look back, however much he had planned on it. Sarah Nicolaides, the former Sarah Meyerson, had him tangled up in her web of seduction, and no matter how hard he twisted and tugged, the sticky net was coiled tightly round him. So what was he going to do about it?

Of course after yesterday it was unlikely that Jason would be back, but he’d be happier if he thought that the other man was right out of the picture once and for all. If only he could think of some way that he could get Sarah to come back with him to Greece…

‘One slice or two? Butter or margarine?’

Absorbed in his thoughts, he totally missed the tart edge to Sarah’s voice.

‘Two, please. And, yes, butter and…’

The faint thump of something hitting the back of the newspaper and then tumbling to the floor brought him up sharp, making him lower the defensive barrier and actually look at her properly for the first time. His puzzled frown was met by a brilliant emerald glare as Sarah turned a furious face to him.

‘So what did your last slave die of?’ she muttered angrily.

‘Slave?’

Damon made a play of examining the newspaper where
whatever missile she had launched at it had struck before heading to the floor. There was a sticky, greasy patch—toast crumbs, butter and… He tested it gingerly with a finger.

‘Lime marmalade! I haven’t tasted that in ages.’

And that was something that Sarah knew only too well. In fact it was the marmalade that had been positively the last straw, driving her to rebel, to lose her temper and finally fling the toast she had prepared for him straight at the newspaper, desperate to bring him out from behind his protective shield.

‘Well, yours is on the floor!’ she snapped, pointing down at the slice of toast that lay, buttered side predictably downwards, at his feet. She found herself wanting desperately to provoke him. To put him into as spiky a mood as she found herself in.

‘My, we are in a bad mood this morning.’

Infuriatingly, Damon seemed totally unprovoked. Instead he appeared mildly amused, a faint gleam of humour lighting in his deep eyes, incensing Sarah even further.

‘What’s the problem, did you—what is that strange saying you have? Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?’

‘It’s get
out
of bed on the wrong side!’ Sarah flung at him through gritted teeth. ‘As I’m sure you damn well know! Your English has always been just about perfect—so don’t suddenly go all Greek on me! And no, I did
not
get out of bed on the wrong side!’

‘Then what did happen? Oh…’

Abruptly his expression sobered, the teasing gleam fading from his eyes.

‘I’m sorry. I understand. I was being insensitive.’

‘You were?’

Sarah’s head went back in shock at the sudden change in the man before her. Was she imagining things? Letting
her mind deceive her into seeing things she wanted to find in his face? Or was that truly an expression of some sort of sympathy she could read there?

‘Of course. You are missing Jason.’

‘Missing—Jason!’

For a split-second, she actually couldn’t think who he meant. But then memory came back in an unwanted rush.

‘I’m doing no such thing! I was glad to see the back of him!’

Too late she realised, as she saw the softer light die from his eyes, just what she was making him think. He truly believed that Jason had been her lover. That she had at least shared her bed with someone that she cared for. Her total indifference to his departure, her casual dismissal of it could only make her look shallow at best and at the worst cheap.

But was that the worst?

Wouldn’t in fact the worst of this be having Damon know the truth? The real facts of what she had been thinking and feeling which had made her react in the way she had?

Wouldn’t it be far more difficult to have him know that in those few short moments since she had come into the kitchen she had somehow, unknowingly and unthinkingly, slipped into a once-familiar routine that she used to share with him?

It was as if the time in between, their painful separation, had never happened. During their brief marriage they had shared so many lazy breakfasts in just this way. In those early days, foolishly blind and besotted with her new husband, Sarah had been only too happy to pour him coffee, make him toast. And this morning she had slipped right back into that role, buttering his toast, reaching into the cupboard automatically for the lime marmalade because Damon had always loved it so much.

But she didn’t want to remember those times. Didn’t want Damon to think that she remembered them. Didn’t want him to know that she still thought of herself as his wife in any way at all.

‘Good riddance to bad rubbish!’ she declared over-emphatically, waving her hand in a wild gesture to underline the point.

‘Careful…’

But Damon’s warning came just too late. Sarah’s gesticulating arm caught her coffee-mug, knocking it to the floor, where it crashed noisily, shattering into fragments, the steaming liquid spreading everywhere.

‘Let me…’

Before she could protest, Damon was out of his chair. He grabbed for a cloth in the same second that Sarah caught up a tea towel. Together they bent to the mess on the floor, reached to wipe it up. Then froze, eyes locking together.

Sarah drew in her breath on a long, deep sigh.

‘Damon…’

She couldn’t help it. She reached out a hand, just needing to touch him, to make contact. To somehow bridge the impossible divide that yawned there between them like a huge, gaping chasm.

‘Please…’

For the space of a heartbeat it looked as if he might actually respond. But then he suddenly blinked hard, and she saw the change in his eyes with a terrible sense of dread.

They froze over like ice on a pond, black as pitch and hard as polished jet.

‘I’ll see to this,’ was all he said, but the rejection and the callous coldness were there in his tone, if not actually in his words.

Big mistake, you fool! Damon reproved himself savagely. He had meant to keep his distance, had told himself
that if he could just keep space between himself and Sarah then he would be able to get himself back under control. He didn’t need the temptation of being close enough to smell the faint herbal scent of her shampoo, see the smudges of tiredness under those brilliant eyes. Already his heart had kicked into a heavier beat, making his pulse throb. If this was keeping his distance, then he was going to have to get a grip on himself and fast!

Would it always be like this? Sarah wondered miserably. Would she always be so desperately vulnerable to his closeness, to just the scent and the warmth of his body? When she had been in his arms last night it had felt so right, like coming home. But the truth was that she no longer belonged in Damon’s arms, in Damon’s life, if in fact she had ever done so. He had never loved her, never really wanted her. He had only ever married her as a financial move. A way of getting what he wanted easily.

She couldn’t take it any more. Tossing down the cloth, she jumped to her feet in a rush, unable to bear Damon’s closeness. It was impossible to guess what she felt most—regret or relief that he watched her go without protest or reaching out to hold her still.

‘I’ll make some fresh coffee.’ Anything to distract herself, she thought, wrenching open the fridge door. ‘Ah. No milk.’

She had used the last of it in the mugful that now was splattered across the floor where Damon was dealing with the mess with swift efficiency.

‘Not to worry.’ Did her assumed nonchalance sound as forced and fake to him as it did in her own ears? She prayed it didn’t because it gave away far too much of her inner turmoil. ‘There should have been a delivery by now…’

At least by going to the door she could gain herself some breathing space. A chance to still the racing judder of her heart, get her breathing back under control.

There was no sort of warning. No sound that might have given her an indication that things were not quite as usual. No shuffle of feet or murmur of voices that was not the normal routine of things on a sleepy Saturday morning, where no one stirred much except perhaps to walk the dog or stroll to buy a morning paper.

So Sarah fully expected to look out onto a silent, deserted street. She was totally unprepared for the chaos and tumult that assaulted her senses when she pulled open the door and stepped over the threshold.

I
T WAS
the lights that affected her first.

The sudden, brilliant flashes, like lightning, but without any rumble of thunder to precede them.

And the strange, deafening sound of clicks and whirrs that she couldn’t understand.

Flash!
Click! Whirr! Flash! And then the calls began.

‘Sarah! This way, darling!’

‘Miss Meyerson—over here!’

‘Sarah, can we just have a word?’

‘What?’

She froze, halfway upright again from retrieving the full milk bottle from the step, stared, and blinked as another succession of brilliant flashes blinded her.

‘So Sarah—is it true?’

‘Have you really…?’ The rest of the sentence was lost in a sudden flurry of movement as, somewhere beyond the blur that the light flashes had burned into her eyes, someone scuffled, jockeying for a better position, and was pushed forcibly out of the way.

‘Sarah—give us a smile!’

‘Who are you?’

Still blinking to clear her vision, she straightened fully, frowning her confusion. But at least the shapes before her were starting to be in some way recognisable—though what she saw made no sort of sense to her at all.

Photographers—hundreds of them, or so it seemed to her bewildered eyes. Rows of men and women, standing, kneeling—some of them had even brought stepladders so that they could get a better angle on things. 80

And other people, waving strangely fluffy things that she recognised vaguely as microphones she had seen in television interviews—and
film cameras
!

‘Come on, darling—look this way…’

‘Give us a smile, can’t you? After all, he must be worth billions…’

‘Who?’ Sarah managed, but she was completely ignored.

‘So where did you meet him?’

‘How long’s it been going on? Do you plan on making
an announcement
soon?’

‘An announcement’ was framed in such emphatic tones that it almost seemed to be written in the air in large italic letters.

‘What sort of an announcement—about what?’

‘Oh, come on, Sarah! Stop being cagey…’

It was impossible not to sense that the mood had changed, shifting from friendly to something else, something at the opposite end of the spectrum of emotions. Sarah began to feel uncomfortably, frighteningly, as if she was facing a possible lynch mob. They just didn’t seem to appreciate that she really had no idea what they were doing there.

Clutching the milk bottle to her like some sort of hopelessly inadequate defensive shield, she blinked hard to try to clear her blurred gaze, focused as well as she could on a woman in the front row and tried to smile.

‘Can you tell me what’s going on?’

If she had thought she might have found an ally, she was swiftly disillusioned.

‘Oh, come
on,
Sarah! Don’t be coy! Your secret’s out now. You and the Gorgeous Greek are public property. So how does it feel to be the latest love in the Divine Damon’s life?’

Damon.
The name struck home even if she didn’t understand why.

Divine Damon. The Gorgeous Greek. She knew those phrases; she’d seen them in the newspapers often enough. She’d been aware of them even before she ever met Damon. The society pages, the gossip columns, the celebrity magazines, all fed happily on stories of the ‘Gorgeous Greek’ and his love life. And the reports had seemed to haunt her ever since she had run away from her travesty of a marriage. She couldn’t open a newspaper or turn on the television without reading or hearing something about him.

She could have told them that they were all on the wrong track. That any woman Damon appeared with in public was only a cloak, a pretence, a piece of arm candy. He used his public amours to distract attention from the real thing—and it seemed it had worked because no one, not even Sarah herself, had ever suspected.

‘But I’m not!’ she protested, horrified at the realisation of what they thought. ‘I mean—’

‘Oh, stop messing around! We know—so where
is
he?’

‘I’m here.’

The words came from behind her, cool and calm and pitched perfectly so that they sliced through the buzz of annoyance, falling clearly into the pool of questions and creating a sudden total hush of awareness. And in the same second a couple of hands came down onto Sarah’s shoulders, apparently gentle, but in fact so forcefully controlling that they stilled her instinctive start of surprise and shock before it had time to form.

‘So what did you want to know?’

The silence evaporated in a second, turning instead into a storm of flash bulbs exploding once again, of clicking, whirring cameras. The whole gaggle of reporters pushed forward, crowding round the steps so that Sarah automatically tried to back fearfully away, only to find her flight stopped by an even firmer pressure of Damon’s hands on her shoulders, holding her where she was.

‘You have five minutes.’

Later, Sarah was to wonder if it had really only been five minutes. To her it had seemed like a lifetime. A lifetime of noise and explosions and shouted questions she barely understood, let alone could answer.

She was vaguely aware of Damon speaking. Of him giving the same sort of responses—the lying responses—that he had fed to Jason only the night before. She struggled to understand the lift of laughter, the man-to-man intonation in his voice when he spoke of ‘whirlwind romance’ and being ‘knocked off his feet’.

She even opened her mouth to protest loudly, but the sharp, painful squeeze Damon gave her shoulders warned her that he was aware of her thoughts and didn’t want her to act on them.

She briefly thought about rebelling, but squashed down the idea of mutiny before it had time to even form fully. It was beginning to dawn on her just what was going on, though parts of it were totally incomprehensible to her.

Somehow the reporters had got hold of the idea that she and Damon were a couple. She had no idea where they had learned such nonsense, but they clearly thought they were on the trail of a very hot story indeed. What she couldn’t understand at all was why Damon was going along with it. Why he didn’t just tell them to go to hell and never come back again was beyond her.

‘OK, that’s enough now…’

Damon’s voice held enough authority to quash even the murmurs of protest that began as he drew the interview to a close.

‘I said five minutes; you’ve had nearly ten.’

To Sarah’s intense relief the pens stilled; some of the notebooks actually closed. But then one of the photographers, more forward than the rest, pushed to the front of the crowd.

‘How about a proper picture, Damon? Give her a kiss, can’t you, man? It’s what our readers want to see.’

‘A kiss—no—’ Sarah tried, but she didn’t even manage to get the words out.

She had barely opened her mouth before Damon moved his hands, clamping them firmly at the tops of her arms, and whirling her round to face him.

As he was standing on the doorstep, just above her, the already forceful advantage of his height was given an extra edge of domination. But, with her face hidden from the cameras at least, Sarah was determined not to give in without a fight.

‘Damon—no!’

‘Damon, yes!’ he interrupted rudely and emphatically, one hand coming under her chin and tilting her head up so that her raging green eyes met the impenetrable darkness of his black stare.

‘Go with it,
agape mou
,’ he told her bluntly. ‘Give them what they want and they’ll leave us in peace.’

‘No way!’ Sarah spluttered furiously. ‘I’m not—’

The rest of her words vanished under the fierce pressure of Damon’s hard mouth as it clamped down over her lips, cutting off what she had been about to say and silencing her with brutal effectiveness. His hands held her tightly, hard fingers digging into soft flesh so savagely that she was convinced he must be bruising the delicate skin, that she had no chance of escape, no chance to wrench her face away, no chance of any movement at all. She could only submit totally to the crushing, demanding kiss he pressed on her.

And the dreadful thing, the really shocking, scary fact, was that it excited her.

From the moment his cruel mouth touched hers she was lost. A sensual fever invaded her body, making her pulse throb, her heart race. A heated, blinding mist swirled in her
head behind her closed eyes, obscuring any thought, and her lips opened up under his, welcoming the intimate invasion of his tongue, the erotic dance it created with her own.

She swayed into the hardness and heat of his body, too lost even to put her arms up around his neck for support. The strength of his hands kept her upright and she abandoned herself to them entirely.

Behind her back she was only dimly aware of a renewed furore of flashes and the sound of a hundred camera shutters clicking wildly. The reporters and photographers had vanished into a blur, only existing on the very outer limits of her perception. In her world, the one she was aware of, there was only Damon and herself and the blaze of hunger they had created between them. And she knew without a hope that she had totally lost her grip on reality and was falling, falling far and fast into a hell of her own making.

Because if he had caught her up in his arms right there and then, if he had put his dark head down to hers and whispered in her ear, if he had said, ‘Come with me…come to bed right now, this minute. Come and let me make wild, passionate love to you all day long…’ then she would have gone with him and taken only what he offered and not asked for anything more.

What the hell was he
doing
? The question was like a scream inside Damon’s head.

What sort of damn fool was he? Would he ever learn?

But the truth was that he had never anticipated that a performance put on solely for display, for the delight of the cameramen, the perfect ‘photo opportunity’, would turn into
this
. Into something so deeply and stunningly intimate, so totally personal and private, that it was made for the secrecy of the bedroom, not a public display out in the open.

And if he felt bad then clearly Sarah was in an even
worse state. She was leaning against him as if all the strength had seeped out of her body and drained into the earth beneath her. Her eyes were closed and she seemed to be almost in a trance. She didn’t look capable of thinking for herself so he was going to have to think for both of them.

‘OK, gentlemen, that’s enough.’

Gentlemen!
That was a laugh! He knew this particular paparazzi pack only too well. Many of them he’d seen often before. And he knew what they were like. Give them the scent of a story—preferably one with all the vital elements of money, sex and glamour in any particular order—and they were hot on the trail with the intensity and concentration of a pack of foxhounds in full cry. Though in the case of one or two of them perhaps a pack of slavering wolves was a closer description.

And his presence here had thrown Sarah right into their jaws.

He was used to them. He’d lived with their intrusion into his privacy all his adult life and he’d learned how to handle it. He’d also learned that if you gave them something of what they wanted then they tended to shut up and go away far more quickly than if you seemed to have something to hide.

And so he’d given them what they were looking for. A kiss. But he had never thought for a moment that it would turn out quite the way it had. A quick peck on the lips, a brief, passing caress. No more.

He had been so damn wrong. And, with visions of the pictures that might appear in tomorrow’s papers in his head, he was forced to wonder if this time he had miscalculated. Badly.

‘We’re going inside now…’

Damn it, Sarah—lift your head! Look like you’re—if not
relaxed, then at least as if you’re here, in the world! Not totally fazed out!

With an assumed casualness he tried to angle his arm around her waist. To support her in the same moment that he drew her close, hoping it would simply look like a gesture of affection. God alone knew what they would think if they saw her looking like this.

‘You’ve got your pictures—and your story. There’s nothing else for you here. So how about giving us some peace, guys?’

To his relief they seemed to agree. Certainly some of them nodded and shuffled as if about to move. A couple of cases even came out, ready to have the cameras put away.

‘Say goodbye, darling…
Sarah
!’

Her head went back against his supporting arm; her face lifted to his. Her eyes were wide and dark and strangely unfocused. And in that moment another single, isolated camera flashed.

‘Say
goodbye
!’

‘G’bye.’ She spoke like a dazed child or an automaton.

He couldn’t get her inside quick enough, practically hustled her through the door, half lifting her over the threshold, kicking the door to behind him with a resounding thud.

‘Sarah!’

With both hands under her armpits he gave her a swift, hard shake, concerned by the way that she seemed to hang like a limp rag doll.

‘Sarah, what the hell happened to you out there?’

You happened, Sarah responded in the privacy of her own thoughts. Just like you happened in my life a year ago, exploding into it with the force of an atom bomb, blasting my world and my heart apart and leaving it impossible ever to build it back up again. You happened, damn you!

She tried to hate him. She desperately
wanted
to hate
him. It was safer and easier that way. But even as she tried to whip up anger from deep inside, she knew she was failing. That kiss had been her undoing and, having opened the lid of her own particular Pandora’s box, she knew there was no way she could get it back on again.

‘What the hell happened to
you
?’ she managed, fighting to get herself back under control. ‘What did you think you were doing out there?’

‘Doing?’

He had the nerve to sound indignant, positively offended. And the brilliant black eyes sparked with warning anger.

‘I
thought
I was helping you. Coming to your rescue.’