The Married Mistress (15 page)

‘Sarah?’ It was a sound of pure exasperation.

Sarah hunched into the soft folds of the towelling robe, pushing her hands deep into her pockets as if she was cold. And the truth was that the ice that seemed to enclose her heart was freezing her from the inside outwards so that, in spite of the warmth of the day, she was shivering miserably.

‘Sarah, what is this?’ Damon was definitely impatient now. ‘I would have thought that after last night…’

But that was just too much. That ‘last night’ was the trigger, the match that set a light to the barrel of emotional gunpowder deep in Sarah’s heart.

‘Last night!’ she cried, whirling round to face him, her face a mask of anger to hide the bitter pain. ‘Last night!
I
would have thought that after last night I would never want to see you again, and do you know why?’

‘Why?’

It was cold, curt, totally emotionless.

‘I’ll tell you why. Last night was a mistake. In fact it was the worst mistake I’ve ever made in my life. Even worse than the day that I married you, and that was bad enough! I wish that I could go back and live my life again and make sure that they never happened. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything I regret more!’

Her tirade faded away into the sort of stony silence that set all the tiny hairs on her skin quivering in fearful apprehension. She had to force herself to look up into Damon’s face, and what she saw there dried her mouth in horror, making her legs shake weakly beneath her.

“‘The worst mistake I’ve ever made in my life…”’ he echoed savagely, sounding out each word with a terrible
precision. ‘Do you know, sweetheart, I couldn’t agree more?’

And before the words could even register, before Sarah could focus clearly on what he’d said and exactly what he’d meant, he had turned on his heel and marched out of the room, letting the door slam to behind him.

And then she started feeling.

The first wave of emotion that swept over her was fury. Blind, red-haze-filling-the-mind, unthinking rage.

‘Good!’ she flung in the direction of the closed door, careless of the fact that there was no way Damon could hear her any more. ‘Great! Perfect! So we both agree on something at last! It was a terrible mistake and one we hope never, ever to repeat!’

The silence when she finished speaking was deafening. A long, empty silence that seemed to reverberate around the room, pulsing in her ears. A long, final silence, when she realised that Damon really had gone and he wasn’t coming back at least until lunch time—if then.

Maybe never.

A long, long, lonely silence when the implications of that thought finally set in.

And that was when the desperate feelings she had been trying to squash down finally broke free of her control and welled up inside her, totally overwhelming her. And, in a terrible mood of despair, she sank down onto the bed and gave in to the tears and the desolate fear that swamped her completely.

‘S
ARAH
!
Hey, Sarah!’

Sarah stopped dead in the middle of the huge marble-floored foyer of the hotel and looked around her in confusion.

In the buzz of French voices and French language all around her, the English words stood out starkly. And the voice was the last one that she had expected to hear here, in Paris. It was a voice she associated with London and her job.

‘Rhys?’

She stared at the tall, dark man striding across the foyer towards her, a smile of welcome on his face. Rhys Morgan was the last person she had expected to see in Paris. It was only just over twenty-four hours since she had phoned him to ask if she could take some unexpected leave, and he hadn’t said anything about travelling anywhere himself.

But she was glad to see him. Glad to see anyone who could distract her from the trials of the day.

‘Are you just coming in or going out?’ Rhys asked after greeting her with a warm hug that did just a little to ease her unsettled, miserable feelings.

‘Definitely staying in!’ Sarah told him with a shudder. ‘Have you seen the photographers outside?’

‘Are they still waiting for you?’

Sarah could only nod silently. After her bout of weeping in the bedroom, she had finally gathered herself together enough to decide that she couldn’t waste the entire day sitting around and moping. Besides, just supposing that Damon
should
come back to the room, it would do him
good not to find her there, waiting for him. His ego was hugely over-developed as it was. He needed no extra encouragement to be totally impossible.

So she had forced herself into the shower, scrubbed herself clean in an attempt to get her spirits flowing as well as her circulation, and washed and conditioned her hair. It had worked, to a degree, and when she had finally emerged, with her hair blow-dried into a sleek, swinging mane, and dressed in a green and white striped shirt and toning slim pencil skirt, she had felt more like coping with a day exploring Paris, without Damon if necessary.

The determination had lasted as long as it had taken her to put one foot outside the door of the hotel. She had barely appeared on the pavement, under the red and gold awning that shielded the entrance from the weather, before the fusillade of camera flashes and the shouts of the reporters that she had come to dread had shattered the morning air.

‘Yes, they’re looking for me. This time they took just a couple of seconds to register the fact that Damon wasn’t with me—so then of course they wanted to know why.’

The whole crowd of journalists and cameramen had surged forward so swiftly that she had been terrified she was going to be trampled underfoot. The uproar had destroyed her ability to think or act in her own defence, so that she had frozen to the spot, struggling desperately to think of answers to questions like:

‘Have you had a row?’

‘What is this? Trouble in Paradise, then?’

‘Where is he…?’

‘If the doorman hadn’t acted quickly to get between me and them and get me inside, I don’t think I would have got away,’ she told Rhys now. ‘I’m not going out there on my own again. It’s not safe!’

‘That’s the price you pay for having a famous lover,’ Rhys said wryly, the twist to his mouth and the bleak look
in his eyes reminding Sarah that he had had his own experience of Press intrusion into his life when his marriage to a well-known actress had broken up publicly and with spectacular bitterness.

‘So you understand.’

‘I understand only too well. So, if you’re trapped inside, how about having coffee with me—I could do with seeing a friendly face— Or are you expecting Damon?’

‘Not for a while yet.’

Maybe not ever, a miserable little voice inside her head added. But she wouldn’t let herself think about that, and she grabbed on to Rhys’s suggestion as a welcome distraction.

‘I’d love that…’

A short time later they were ensconced in the comfortable blue and gold lounge, a tray with a silver coffee pot and elegant bone-china cups and a plate of delicious-looking biscuits set before them. The room was impossible to see from either the street or the huge foyer and at last Sarah felt able to relax and think about something other than avoiding the scandal-hungry reporters.

‘So now perhaps you can explain to me what
you’re
doing here.’

‘I’m looking for my daughter.’

Rhys’s answer stunned her, making her put down her coffee-cup in shock.

‘Your daughter! I didn’t know you had one.’

Rhys’s mouth twisted again.

‘Neither did I until a few days ago. You remember that phone call I had on Saturday? It was to tell me that Amelie—my ex-wife—was dead. She’d always had a weak heart, and she never really took care of herself. Apparently it just gave out. But before she died, she admitted that her daughter—a child I didn’t even know she had—was in fact mine.’

The shock of that discovery was etched on his face, deep in the blue, blue eyes.

‘Oh, Rhys!’

Sarah leaned forward, reaching for Rhys’s hand in sympathy, holding it tight.

‘And where is the little girl—
your
little girl—now?’

‘That’s the problem. I don’t know. Some cousin of Amelie’s took her. I’m trying to track them down. That’s why I’m here.’

‘I do hope you find them. I really do.’

Impulsively she leaned forward and placed a soft kiss on Rhys’s lean cheek. ‘And you know that if there’s anything I can do—anything—you only have to ask.’

‘The same goes for me too,’ her boss assured her. ‘Look, you can tell me to butt out if you like, but is there something wrong, Sarah? You don’t look happy, not like a woman newly in love should look. If there’s a problem—you only have to call and I’ll be there…’

‘Oh, no, you won’t!’

A male voice, deep and husky and subtly accented, broke into their conversation like the slash of a sword. And Sarah didn’t have to look up to know who had spoken. But when she did, what she saw in his face made her heart quail inside.

‘Damon…’ She tried for a note of appeasement, to erase the black fury she could hear in his savage tones, but Damon swept on without giving her so much as a chance to explain.

‘I don’t know who the hell you are, and I don’t care. You keep your hands off my lady—and your nose out of our affairs.’

Damon didn’t know how long he’d been watching the pair of them. Too long. Long enough to have seen the intimacy in their total concentration on each other, the way that their bodies were positioned, turned towards each
other, blatantly excluding anyone else in the room. And when Sarah had reached forward to take the guy’s hand…

He hadn’t been able to restrain himself any longer. He had pushed himself away from the wall where he’d been leaning and marched across the room to where they sat, rage like volcanic lava bubbling up from deep inside him.

‘Damon, don’t be silly…’

Silly! It was like a red rag to a bull.
Silly!

He had been unable to stop thinking about her all morning. Ever since he had walked out of their room he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. Memories of the infuriating way that she had provoked him, riling him to the point where he just couldn’t take any more, had warred with the image he had of the way she had looked when he’d woken and found her fast asleep, curled up beside him, her head pillowed on his chest. And then when he’d finally walked out.

She hadn’t known it, but he had seen her face in the mirror as he’d left, and he hadn’t missed the bleak, lost and lonely expression that had crossed it, just for a second, as he’d turned away from her.

That expression had haunted his thoughts all morning.

It had come between him and the business deal he wanted to finalise. It had stopped him from thinking straight, prevented him from talking sense, until at last, having uncharacteristically lost the thread of his argument for the fourth time, he had finally given up.

‘I don’t have time for this!’ he’d declared. ‘I have something vitally important I have to attend to.’

And, leaving the finalisation of the deal to his second in command, he had left the boardroom, called for his car, and had the chauffeur drive hell for leather back to the hotel.

He had wasted long, precious minutes fighting his way through the crowd of reporters milling about outside the
main entrance. Not in any sort of mood to smile and pose for pictures, he had given the paparazzi short shrift on his way in, pushing forward without a care for the way it looked, muttering ‘No comment’ and adding a few choice comments in very rude, very basic Greek at the way they were holding him up.

But at last he had made it indoors, heading straight for the fast elevator up to the penthouse suite where he had left Sarah that morning.

Only to find that she wasn’t there.

His first thought was that she had left, running away without a backward glance as she had done six months before. He had actually hunted frantically for the carelessly written note that he fully expected to find, until it dawned on him to check that her clothes were still in the wardrobe, her cosmetics and toiletries in the bathroom.

When he’d found them, the relief had been so great that for a few moments he had had to sit down on the bed, dragging in deep, calming breaths in an effort to still the racing of his heart, get his mind back under some degree of control.

That was when he had come back downstairs. A few discreet enquiries at the reception desk had had him heading for the lounge, just in time to see Sarah reach out and take the hand of the man sitting opposite her.

The hand of the man who was the epitome of ‘tall, dark and handsome’, and who clearly held a potent fascination for her.

His jealousy had been like a red, buzzing haze in his mind, coming between him and rational thought. And when he saw Sarah—
his
Sarah—lean forward and kiss her male companion on the cheek, he had completely lost the vague grip he had been trying to keep on his temper.

‘Sarah…’ he said warningly, and his tone had the other man getting out of his seat. Damon had the unnerving ex
perience of meeting him eye to eye. It was not something he was used to. And the stranger clearly had no intention of backing down.

‘Is this guy bothering you, Sarah?’

‘This guy’ incensed Damon, especially as he had the very strong suspicion that the other man knew only too well just who he was, but was deliberately pretending not to.

‘
This guy!
Do you know who—’

‘No, really—he’s—’

‘I came back for you!’

He’d hit completely the wrong note. He knew it from the way that her face froze up, the spectacular eyes turning to chips of emerald ice between one heartbeat and the next.

‘So you did,’ she said coolly. ‘But that doesn’t explain your rudeness in barging in here like some uncouth yob while—’

‘Damn you, Sarah, I came back for you and I find you with—with…’

‘With Rhys,’ she inserted calmly. ‘With my boss.’

‘With…with
who
?’

‘With my boss,’ she explained on a note of pained exasperation. ‘This is Rhys Morgan, the man I work for.’

‘Oh.’

It was all that Damon could manage.

‘My apologies.’ He forced himself to say it through gritted teeth, unable to smooth the stiffness out of his voice.

Rhys Morgan’s nod of acknowledgement was equally distant, and he was watching closely, looking for any further wrong behaviour.

‘I’ll just be over here, Sarah,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll leave you and—’

‘No!’

‘Yes!’

Sarah’s voice and Damon’s clashed together, both speaking at the same time.

‘No,’ Sarah said again, more emphatically this time. ‘Don’t go anywhere, Rhys! Don’t leave me alone with him.’

‘Get the hell out of here,’ Damon growled, only to be met with a total stonewalling expression, the Englishman refusing to budge.

‘You heard what the lady said.’

‘Yeah, I heard. But…’

‘Damon,’ Sarah inserted, getting to her feet too and forcing him to look her right in the face, ‘I asked Rhys to stay and he’s staying. Until you can speak to me like a human being, and get a grip on that stupid temper of yours—’

‘I was jealous!’ Damon flung at her, hating to admit it. ‘OK, I know I was mad, but I was—’

‘You were jealous!’ Sarah echoed, total disbelief sounding on the last word.

‘Ne…’

Damon ducked his head in a moment of severe embarrassment. Already their confrontation was attracting interest. The other hotel guests scattered around the room had stopped their conversations and were listening with various degrees of discretion. Some of them were openly, avidly staring.

‘You were
jealous
!’

To his horror, Damon realised that Sarah wasn’t just stunned. She was
furious
.

If the truth was told, he had never, ever seen her quite so angry before in his life. The green eyes blazed with golden fire, wild colour burned along the high, fine cheekbones, and even her nostrils flared as she struggled to breathe normally. And when his own startled gaze dropped to where her elegant hands hung at her sides, he was horrified to see how they were clenched into hard, tight fists, eloquently revealing the fierce struggle she was having for self-control.

‘You were jealous!’ she repeated yet again, giving every single word an emphasis that threatened to strip the skin from his body, flaying him alive.
‘You…!’

‘Ne…’

He struggled to explain. He had been so sure that acknowledging he was jealous would sway her opinion round to his way of thinking. After all, damn it, admitting he was jealous was tantamount to saying he
cared
, wasn’t it?

But Sarah didn’t seem in the least bit convinced of that. On the contrary, she appeared even further apart from him than she had been upstairs, in their room. If that was possible.

‘Sarah, I…’ he began again, but she wouldn’t let him finish.

‘
You
were jealous!’ she said yet again. ‘You
dare
to be jealous of me! Of the way I was just sitting here—
talking
to Rhys! You have no right to be jealous! Do you hear me? No right at all! How
dare
you be jealous of me when all the time—right from the start—you were having an affair behind my back? When you…’