Kate Walker – The Married Mistress (страница 2)

He still thought that he could worm his way out of this. He truly believed that she was so simple, so gullible, that she would swallow everything he tossed at her. And what infuriated her most was the thought that, lonely and unhappy, she must have given him that impression.

‘But we both know it was on the cards.’

‘Jace? Jacey, baby…’

A third voice, a light, petulant, feminine voice, interrupted what Sarah had been about to say. And as Jason whirled, another violent expletive escaping his lips, the bedroom door opened and a small, curvaceous female sashayed out onto the landing. She was wrapped loosely in a deep red silky gown that Sarah recognised instantly. Made for her own slender height, it swamped the other woman’s shorter frame and was too long for her on her legs, falling almost to the floor instead of mid-calf.

‘Are you ever coming back?’ she pouted, peering over the banisters and down at where he stood, frozen to the spot in the hall. ‘I’m missing—’

‘Andrea, I told you to wait!’ Jason cut in furiously. ‘To stay where you were and—’

‘I was bored!’ the woman addressed as Andrea protested. ‘I got tired of waiting for you to come back.’

“‘Don’t get so huffy about nothing”!’ Sarah repeated bitterly. ‘I wonder what your—friend feels about being described as nothing!’

Her outburst silenced Jason temporarily in the same moment that it drew Andrea’s frowning gaze towards where the other woman stood in the hallway.

‘And who are you?’

‘Me?’

To her amazement, Sarah managed it with only a trace of a shake in her voice, though anyone who knew her would have recognised in the stiffness of her tone the struggle she was having to maintain control. The man who was listening to everything knew it only too well.

‘I’m just the owner of this house—of the bed you’ve just got out of, the robe you’re wearing…’

And Jason’s girlfriend, she supposed she could have added, but the words stuck in her throat.

‘The robe you’re—almost wearing!’

She was tight-lipped against her emotions, stiff as a board.

The watcher in the shadows saw how the colour had ebbed from her cheeks, the muscles in her jaw clenching tight, and he was struck by a sudden and distinctly unwelcome attack of something close to compassion.

Dangerously close.

Compassion was a mistake with this woman—a bad mistake—because it left him vulnerable. Once he had given his heart completely and willingly to her and she had smashed it into pieces and tossed it back at him like so much rubbish. He wasn’t likely to risk that happening again.

‘So might I suggest that you go and get back into your own clothes and get yourself out of here? And take your cheating fancy man with you!’

‘But Sarah—’

‘Out!’

She might be able to hold herself together if he went now, she told herself. If he turned and walked out immediately, then she might be able to forget just how foolish she had been over the past couple of weeks. Foolish in that once again she had stumbled into a relationship that had been all wrong from the start.

It had been a relationship in which she had been looking for nothing but comfort and a hiding place, and that had led her to the mess she was in right now.

‘Sarah—please. It meant nothing—honest! It was just a fling.’

‘A fling? You were prepared to betray my trust—to risk our relationship—for something that didn’t even matter! Nothing more than an itch you had to scratch!’

At least Damon had had the honour to really care for his ‘bit on the side’. His mistress had been the woman he wanted as well, and she had only been the wife of convenience.

Jason’s expression was every bit as hangdog and spuriously repentant as she had expected, and he had actually taken a step or two towards her, coming much closer. Too close.

‘Oh, come on, Sarr! You have to understand.’

Another step forward, and this time his hand came out. He had almost reached her, almost touched her, and it was too much.

‘No!’

Her own hands came up, knocking him away as her nerve broke completely, and she whirled, unable to think of anything beyond getting away. She couldn’t even bear to be in the same space as him any longer. She wanted only to be away and clear and free. Free to forget about Jason and all he had ever meant to her.

Free to think of the man who had once meant everything. Free to—

‘Ooof!’

The cry of shock, confusion and near-panic escaped her on a violent expulsion of breath as she blundered, blind and disorientated, straight into an unexpectedly hard and solid mass that was where no mass should be. A hard and solid mass that blocked her path, barring the way.

A hard, solid and warm mass.

A hard, solid, warm, living and breathing form.

A form that was so intensely masculine, lean and hard and forceful, that it could only belong to a man. A tall, strong man, very much in the prime of life.

A man whose arms came out instinctively, folding round her immediately, supporting her, holding her when she swayed off balance and might have fallen. A man whose chest was wide and strong where it supported her head, her cheek resting against his immaculate white polo shirt. She could hear the heavy, regular thud of his heart, echoing the pulse of blood through her own veins. In her nostrils was the heady, sensually intoxicating mixture of clean skin, the subtle tang of some spicy cologne, and the purely individual aroma that was his alone.

A scent that Sarah knew as well as that of her own body. It was one that she recognised so instantly and so completely, not needing to see the man’s face or hear a word spoken in his voice to confirm her immediate and horrified suspicion. Try as she might, she had no hope at all of denying the truth, or escaping from the forceful impact of it.

And if she had needed any further proof, then the instant reaction that flared through her, burning away all other thoughts, all other hopes, provided it in the space of a heartbeat. It licked along every nerve path, obliterating any doubt even before it had a chance to form.

‘Da…’

The single broken syllable was choked from her, impossible to hold back even though her voice didn’t have the strength to complete the name.

Only one man had ever made her feel this way. Only one man had ever been able to stimulate her feelings and her senses so instantly and so furiously.

‘Damon…’ she whispered. ‘Damon!’

Above her head she sensed rather than saw the sensual mouth break into a wide, wicked grin of pure triumph, and felt the faint rumble of amused laughter under her cheek. She knew without the shadow of a doubt that he was glorying in the fact that he had had such an impact on her, and at such speed, evoking the instant effect that she had been unable to hide.

Only the realisation that she had given him the weapon to use against her, putting it almost into his hands herself, kept her silent in mortification, and she had to grit her teeth against the flurry of angry rejection that nearly escaped her. Damon Nicolaides needed no encouragement at all to feel instantly and infinitely superior to any other human being. His head was already swollen wide enough, and he would only take her hurried protestations as an indication of exactly the opposite of what she said.

‘Damon…’ she tried again, aiming for a very different tone. ‘Let me go this minute!’

Once more she felt the chuckle echo in his chest.

‘You know you don’t mean that, sweetheart.’

It was the first time in over six months that she had heard his voice, and the bitter-sweet sensation of its tug at her emotions, the memories it revived in the space of a heartbeat, almost undid her totally.

‘Oh, but I do!’

Gathering together all that was left of her tattered strength, she twisted in his arms and flung back her head so that she could look up, straight into his dark, shuttered face.

And instantly regretted her action desperately.

If letting him feel her immediate response to his presence had been a mistake, then this was definitely error number two—and a far worse, potentially far more dangerous move than anything she had done yet.

Because as soon as she saw him, saw the dangerously handsome face, with the broad, defined cheekbones, the flashing dark eyes and the sensually warm mouth, it was as if he had never been away. In those few, shaken moments, the hundred and eighty days of his absence from her life slid away like so many seconds, and she was jolted back once more to the appalling, devastating moment in which she had learned the truth. When his own father had forced her to see how her love for this man was built not on the strong, sure foundations she had believed it to be, but instead on slippery, shifting sands that had slid away from under her feet, leaving her reeling and lost without any support.

‘I do…’ she tried again, only to hear the words disintegrate as soon as they hit the air, splintering into tiny pieces that had none of the emphasis she aimed for.

And none of the impact she needed, she admitted to herself as she looked into her husband’s deep, dark eyes, and saw there only as much response to her protest as he might have shown if a fly had landed on the olive-toned skin of his arm and he had wafted it away idly with one hand. Instead his smile grew, becoming a broad, fiendish grin as he looked down at her.