‘Come back!’ Sarah couldn’t hold back the exclamation of shock and disgust that was pushed from her lips by his outrageous declaration. ‘Come back to a marriage that had never been a real one right from the start? That was built on nothing but lies and deceit? A marriage that you had been determined not to let anyone know about because you were ashamed of it?’
‘Not ashamed!’ Damon flung at her. ‘It just would have been…difficult to make our marriage public at that point.’
‘I’ll bet it would! Well, perhaps in the end I ought to thank you for that. After all, you spared me a lot of humiliation and the adverse publicity that I might have had to put up with if people had found out that we were married. Now all I have to do is wait for the legalities to be sorted out and we can be divorced as quietly as we were married. Excuse me.’
She tried to sweep past him, only to have to come to an awkward halt as he blocked her way, coming between her and her path across the hall.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Upstairs.’
‘Why?’
‘Is it any business of yours?’
‘Humour me.’
Seeing the stubborn, unmoving set of his face, the taut line of his hard jaw, she sighed her exasperation, knowing only too well that he had no intention of letting her pass until she told him something.
‘I want to go and strip the sheets off the bed that—that Jason and his fancy piece used!’
Distaste curled her lip, tasted bitter on her tongue.
‘I have to put them in the wash immediately—though if I’m honest I’d prefer to burn the damn things!’
To her relief Damon sidestepped neatly, moving out of her way, but as she mounted the first of the stairs she realised that he was right there behind her, following close on her heels.
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No!’
But he totally ignored her protest and just kept on coming.
‘Damon…’
She whirled on the stairs until she was facing him. Looking down into his handsome face, she saw the determination stamped hard on it, the unyielding set to his jaw.
‘I don’t need you!’
Just the thought of having this man, the man who had been her husband for such a brief time, follow her into her bedroom spoke of an intimacy that she was totally unwilling to allow herself to recall. I don’t want you, she should have said. But the words had other, much more disturbing implications that meant her voice would not actually speak them with the conviction she needed.
‘It’ll be easier with two,’ Damon returned, and just kept on coming so that she was obliged to skip backwards hastily up the stairs if she was not to have him collide with her.
‘I’ve done it by myself many times…’
‘I’m sure you have.’
Another step upwards necessitated another couple of hasty jumps back and away to avoid a crash.
‘But I’m here now, so there’s no reason for you to have to do it alone today.’
‘Damon, it’s my room!’
Exasperation, a touch of breathlessness from the undignified scramble up the staircase, and a shockingly sensitive awareness of the man below her put a betraying shake into her voice. The physical strength of his chest and shoulders was emphasised from this angle, the gleam of the sunlight on the dark waves of his hair made it shine like glossy silk, and the flash of white teeth as he grinned up at her was startling against the olive skin of his face.
‘Sarah, it’s my house!’ he retorted, with an infuriatingly deliberate echo of her own tone, her own emphasis.
And what could she say in response to that? There was no answer she could give him. At least not one that he would accept, pay any heed to. It was his house, and that was the fact. She hadn’t wanted to take anything from him, but she had desperately needed a roof over her head. And for all she knew Damon had already built on her disputed land. He was perfectly capable of ignoring any morality in the case and just going right ahead.
With inelegant haste she hurried up the remaining stairs and arrived safely on the landing, facing him with determined defiance.
‘You said I could live here!’ she protested, and shivered as she saw a dark tide of change cross his face, shadowing his eyes.
‘I said you could live here,’ he acceded. ‘Not you and sundry assorted hangers-on.’
Now was the time to tell him the truth, Sarah knew. The time to point out that, no matter how it had seemed, Jason had had neither her agreement nor her permission to be in the house. At least not in her bedroom, and certainly not in her bed.
So why did the words stick in her throat? Why could she not just fling them in his face and be done with it?
Because he had no right to interfere in her life. He had given up any rights to that when he had betrayed her trust and treated her as a thing, a chattel, something to be used for his own ends, not as a true wife of his heart.
Wife of his heart!
Hah! That was a joke. A very sick, very black sort of joke. One that slashed at her heart, her soul, like a rusty knife, reopening old wounds that had barely even begun to heal.
She had never really been Damon’s wife, not in the truest sense of the word—not in any sense of the word, except perhaps the sexual one. She had been his wife in bed and nowhere else. He had wanted her physically. There was no way he could have hidden, or faked, the passionate desire he had felt for her. And that must have made the rest of his scheme so much easier for him to carry out.
The pain that came along with the rush of memory drove all thought of common sense from her mind and instead had her spitting at him in blind rage.
‘And I suppose that you’ve been living a pure and celibate life for the last six months!’
He actually looked taken aback by her attack. It even silenced him, and she watched him withdraw into himself, shutters coming down behind the gleaming jet eyes, hiding his thoughts from her.
‘Nothing to say, Damon? I thought not. Ever heard of the saying about pots calling kettles black?’
‘I know the saying, yes. But I do not see its relevance to the current situation.’
He had the nerve to look innocent—and it was unnerving just how innocent he could appear, with his deep, dark eyes wide open in apparent ingenuousness.
For a brief second Sarah closed her own lids against the pain of memory. Against the hated recollection of the moment that Aristotle Nicolaides had revealed the truth about his son’s relationship with Eugenia Stakis. About the marriage that had been planned for so long and that would unite the fortunes of the two Greek dynasties as well as the two lovers. In a moment, he had explained just why Damon had insisted that this pragmatic, purely business deal of a marriage should be kept secret from everyone.
But of course Damon didn’t even know that his poor deceived wife had any knowledge of his machiavellian behaviour and so he still thought he could get away with pretending he was blameless.
‘Of course you don’t.’
Opening her eyes again, but carefully avoiding meeting any lying glance that Damon might send in her direction, she swung away, turning her attention to the rumpled bed before her.
‘I didn’t give Jason free run of my house!’ she said abruptly, covering the savage bite of misery with a sudden rush into action as