The Married Mistress (9 page)

His dark eyes slanted a swift, assessing glance at Sarah’s shaken face, seeing the faint shudder that shook her slender frame at just the thought.

‘If you’d wanted them to find out about our marriage, then you couldn’t have done anything that would have made it more certain they would be determined to ferret it out. They wouldn’t have stopped looking until they found it. But with us apparently being so open about things…’

‘And the cock-and-bull “swept off your feet with passion” story you fed them,’ Sarah put in satirically.

To her astonishment Damon actually let his expression
lighten, breaking into a wide, devastating grin that made her bones turn to water, her legs weakening beneath her.

‘But I sounded convincing, didn’t I?’ he shot back. ‘Had them swallowing it—what is it you say?—line, hook…’

‘Hook, line and sinker,’ Sarah supplied automatically, admitting grudgingly that yes, he had been convincing.

So convincing that even she had almost believed him.

‘But do you think it worked?’ she asked sharply, needing desperately to distract herself from the tearing pain in her heart at the thought of how close she had come to being fooled by him. ‘Do you think they’re convinced enough that we’re just lovers not to start investigating our pasts—digging up dirt…?’

The worst possible repercussion of that digging was only just beginning to dawn on her now.

She had hoped that after six months apart from Damon she could soon start divorce proceedings, that she could be free of him very quickly and very easily, and, above all, quietly. Those photographs would probably already spell the death of those hopes now.

If the marriage became public, the Press would have a field-day—even more than they had had already. And a divorce following soon after would only give them more scandal, and more column inches. Her private life wouldn’t be private for a long, long time. Her head swam thickly at the thought.

One more reason to add to her list of why she hated Damon Nicolaides.

‘Did they believe you?’

‘I don’t know.’

Damon shrugged in total indifference to the sharpness of her tone, stretching his arms up behind his head and leaning his dark head back on them in apparent relaxation.

‘But there is one way that we could convince them.’

‘There is? And what’s that?’

If he had offered his hand, Sarah felt that she would have snapped it off in her eagerness to know.

‘What do we do, Damon? How can we make sure?’

His eyes narrowed as he looked into her face and his change of expression set warning bells sounding even before he spoke.

‘Well, it’s quite simple really—but I don’t think you’re going to like it.’

‘I don’t care if I like it—I’ll put up with it! It has to be worth it! What
is
it?’

Damon sighed, raked one strong hand through his hair, frowning thoughtfully. Then he apparently came to a decision and leaned forward, black eyes holding hers mesmerically.

‘It’s quite simple,’ he said. ‘We give them even more of what they want. We prove to them that you are my mistress.’

It was the last thing she had expected. Almost the last thing she wanted to hear.

‘We—what?’ she stumbled. ‘We… How do we do that?’

‘Easy.’

He grinned at her again, but it was a strange, cold, unamused grin.

‘We just do one thing—we make it real.’

“Y
OU
have got to be joking!’

Damon shook his head, his expression unsmiling now, polished jet eyes burning into hers.

‘I couldn’t be more serious,’ he said in a tone that sent shivers running down her spine. ‘I meant every word I said.’

He sounded serious too, Sarah reflected uneasily. In fact, he sounded absolutely convinced that this was the way out of their dilemma—but it
couldn’t
be! How could making the reporters believe she was Damon’s mistress do any good at all?

And ‘make it real’?

‘Would you care to explain?’

She was proud of the way the words came out. They sounded surprisingly balanced, calm even. No one would have guessed that deep inside her stomach was turning somersaults and her heart was racing in double-quick time just at the thought of Damon staying in the house another day—never mind the implications behind trying to pretend that she was his
mistress
!

‘They think we’re together as a couple so we give them us together as a couple.’

‘You make it sound so simple.’

Perhaps it could
be
so simple, she told herself. After all, Damon was here now. The shock of his arrival last night had started to recede a little. While not actually growing accustomed to his presence in her life and in this house once more, she had at least started to adjust. They each had their own rooms and there was plenty of space in the house for them both to live almost separate lives. 99

And she had her job at the art gallery. And Damon had whatever business had brought him here in the first place.

‘It could work! We could both be out all day, and in the evenings we don’t even have to see each other.’

Which was not what Damon had in mind at all.

When he’d suggested this idea in the first place, it had been at the prompting of some inner impulse that he hadn’t quite understood himself.

But then he had never been totally rational where Sarah Meyerson was concerned. From the first moment that he had met her it had been like plunging head first into an icy, freezing pool, the shock stunning his body and driving all hope of sensible thought from his head. His reasoning processes had been totally suspended and by the time they had started functioning again he had already been in way too deep and unable to find any sort of foothold or solid ground of common sense at all.

‘You really don’t think that would convince them?’

‘So exactly what did you have in mind?’

She was looking as him as if he had just suggested that she drape herself in live, poisonous snakes or eat a couple of slugs. Had he really made such a mess of their marriage that she still couldn’t forgive him? Or was the real truth, the one he didn’t want to accept, the fact that she was a shallow, promiscuous little tart, one who really had grown as bored with the idea of one man for life as she had declared in the letter she’d left him?

One Sarah—the first—he had had high hopes of winning back. Of persuading her to forgive his mistakes, climb down from the very high horse on which anger had put her, and give their marriage a second try. The other, the Sarah that he had discovered to his shock and distaste on his arrival at the house—was it only last night?—was a different matter entirely.

She
was someone he might want in his bed—but that was all. And
Kristos
, but he
wanted
her in it, underneath
him, her flesh yielding to him, her mouth opening to him, making those soft little cries that escaped her as she became more and more aroused, closer and closer to her climax…

Theos!

With an abrupt, violent movement, he jackknifed off the bed, flexing his shoulders forcefully and pulling the dark red polo shirt down over his too-tight jeans as he struggled with the luridly erotic thoughts that were swamping his mind, drowning his thought processes.

‘This isn’t exactly the best place to discuss this,’ he declared, marching to the door and flinging it open. ‘We’d probably both be more comfortable downstairs.’

He’d be more comfortable anywhere that didn’t revive the sort of memories that sent his libido into a sexual frenzy and stopped him from thinking clearly—from thinking at all.

The kitchen was no better. It held echoes of this morning and the way he had sat there, hidden behind the newspaper and wanting her with a desperation that bordered on insanity. Even to walk past the front door reminded him of the scene on the doorstep earlier and
that
kiss.

Hell
, but he’d got it bad!

In the lounge, he paced the room again, too restless to sit still, knowing from the expression on her face that she was fast losing patience.

And her first words to him there confirmed as much.

‘Well?’ she demanded, perching on the arm of the big gold settee, facing him head on. ‘Are you “comfortable” enough now? And are you going to explain just what you do mean? Because I warn you—’

‘Simply living in the same house isn’t going to convince anyone,’ Damon put in sharply. ‘We’ve given the Press the story that we’ve just met—that we’ve fallen head over heels in love, and we’re crazy about each other. We’re going to have to stick with that story, otherwise they’re going to
sense something’s up. And we’re going to have to appear in public together. Make it look as if we really are lovers.’

“‘Make it look as if we really are lovers”!’

Remembering the overwhelming heat of the kiss on the doorstep, Sarah hid the turmoil of her feelings behind a carefully assumed mask of satire.

‘That sounds to me more like a blatant excuse for you to grope me in public, and I won’t be able to do a thing about it.’

‘You’d get to grope me too,’ Damon tossed back. ‘Will that make it easier?’

‘Hardly!’

Just the thought sent her temperature spiralling, her pulse thudding painfully.

‘No one’s going to believe we’re a couple if we don’t look like we can’t keep our hands off each other.’

‘I am capable of some degree of restraint.’

Sarah tried for calm dignity and only succeeded in sounding stiffly cold and haughty.

‘Well, you’d better lose it—or the whole idea’s ruined from the start.’

The look Damon gave her as he spoke made it plain that he was making a special effort to bite back the retort that restraint had been the last thing she had shown when she was with him in the early days of their marriage. Then his teasing name for her had been
okulaki
or ‘puppy dog’ because she had always followed him so closely at his heels, her big eyes devotedly fixed on his face. Her stomach lurched queasily just to remember how blind and stupid she had been.

‘And you’ll need some time off work. Can you get it?’

‘Some leave? Well, I could—but I’m not going to; I don’t see why—’

‘I’m only going to be here for one more day. Monday morning I leave for Paris.’

Paris. Just the name had the power to stop Sarah in her
tracks. She had always longed to see the French capital and once long ago, in another lifetime, it seemed, Damon had promised that he would take her on a belated honeymoon there, once all the secrecy about their wedding was no longer necessary.

Except, of course, that they had never lasted that long.

‘And that has what to do with me?’

Damon looked as if he couldn’t believe that she had been stupid enough to need to ask the question.

‘Well, you’ll be coming with me, of course.’

‘Oh, no, I won’t!’

‘You will if you want this story to work.’

Did
she want it to work?

‘I’ve decided that I don’t think I do. It’s all getting far too complicated and quite frankly it’s not worth the effort.’

She let herself slide down onto the settee, and sprawled back against the cushions, trying to look as if she didn’t give a damn about anything.

‘I think we’d do better to forget the whole thing.’

She expected that he would argue with her and nerved herself for the onslaught of his forceful attempt to persuade her, but to her surprise it didn’t come. Instead, Damon simply shrugged as if her decision was the last thing that mattered to him.

‘That’s your choice. But if you don’t want to go with that you’ll have to think of something to put in its place. Something else to tell them.’

‘But I don’t want to tell them anything!’

‘Well, you’re going to have to.’

Damon came and stood behind the chair opposite, strong fingers resting on the cushioned back, the corded muscles in his arms tensing and tightening as he leaned forward.

‘You’re going to have to find some story to fob them off with.’

‘I’ll just say, No comment.’

Sarah adopted a bravado she didn’t actually feel. She had
been out of her depth with the horde of reporters who had surrounded her this morning and the thought of facing them again in any situation was not something she anticipated with any relish.

‘And you think that will do the trick?’

‘It will have to. I won’t tell them anything and very soon they’ll lose interest and pack up and go, and…’

Her voice trailed off as Damon shook his head, the firm, almost harsh set of his features draining what little confidence she had left right out of her.

‘That lot out there won’t “lose interest” if they get so much as a sniff of a story. And believe me, Jason must have already fed them quite a tale to get them here in the first place, so they won’t get tired for a long while yet.’

‘But I thought—’

‘Think again.’

Suddenly he moved sharply, coming towards her and reaching out a hand. Before Sarah quite knew what was happening, he had caught hold of her arm, pulled her up from the couch with scant ceremony, and was propelling her across the room and towards the big bay window.

‘Look,’ was all he said.

It was all he needed to say. Sarah looked and what she saw made her blood run cold.

Not only had the reporters not moved, but the crowd appeared to have grown. The whole of the doorstep was sealed off; the pavement was blocked and people spilled out onto the road on all sides. Just looking at them brought back the memory of how it had felt to be surrounded, the noise, the pushing, the incessant questions that came so thick and fast she didn’t have time to hear them properly, let alone think of an answer or speak it.

‘What are they waiting for?’

‘You.’

‘But you’re the celebrity! You’re the one whose name is always in the gossip columns!’

‘Which is why they’re interested in you. They want to know how you met me, what you said, how you snared my interest—’

‘But I didn’t! I never snared anyone!’

In her concern Sarah completely forgot about caution. Pushing the voile curtain aside, she put her face close to the window, peering out at the crowd of reporters gathered outside her door.

‘Sarah…’ Damon’s use of her name sounded a warning note.

But it came too late. Someone turned in her direction, spotted her, pointed. There was a shout and the next moment a fusillade of camera flashes exploded in unison, almost blinding her with their concerted brilliance so that she stepped back in fearful shock.

‘Come away from there, you little fool!’

He grabbed her roughly, swung her round so that her back was to the window.

‘Don’t look at them!’

It was a command that brooked no sort of rebellion, not caring that he was the one who had told her to look in the first place. Even if Sarah had been capable of rebelling, she couldn’t fight both Damon and the paparazzi. His contemptuous glare sizzled over her, scorching her skin, and she didn’t know which was the greater problem, the man before her or the scandal-hungry pack of reporters outside.

‘Don’t you have any sense at all?’ Damon raged, solving that problem in the space of a split-second. ‘That lot would eat an innocent like you alive in less time than it takes to draw a breath. And the sort of thing you just did will only encourage them.’

‘But you seem to think that encouraging them is just what I should do—that I should give them the story that they want.’

Behind her, she could hear the clamour of the interested crowd, and although she didn’t dare to look back she knew
that they were still watching the window, waiting for her to make a move.

‘Oh, this is awful! Now I know just what it must feel like to be a wild creature trapped in a cage and have a horde of people standing outside the bars, staring in, studying everything you do.’

Damon’s beautiful mouth twisted sharply.

‘Join the club,’ he returned cynically. ‘It’s what— Oh, hell…!’

‘What?’

Half turning as he pushed past her, Sarah had a swift, blurred glimpse of a face that had suddenly appeared at the window and was pressed against the glass as hers had been, but from the outside peering in. Yet another flash bulb exploding made her jump violently just as she heard the sound of another ladder being thumped against the wall and heavy footsteps climbing to reach the sill.

‘Damon!’

But he had already acted, pushing her away from the window and pulling the thick, heavy gold and black velvet curtains across the glass, blocking the light and cutting off the photographers’ view.

‘They won’t be able to see in now,’ he said on a note of grim satisfaction.

But Sarah was totally rattled now. For her that invasion of her privacy—her home—had been the last straw.

Desperate to get away from the mob at her door, she hurried back into the room and sank down on the settee, burying her face in her hands.

‘I hate this! I hate it! I can’t take much more of it!’

‘Still think you can get away with not telling them anything?’

He sounded so smug, so satisfied, that his question only added to Sarah’s tension, incensing her wildly.

‘I’m not going to tell them anything—but I think you should! After all, it was you that got me into this situation.
If you hadn’t been here then none of this would have happened. So why don’t you do something about it?’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, how should I know? You set yourself up as the expert on these damn paparazzi, so you must know what to do. Surely there’s something you can say!’