Книга - Bride for Real

Bride for Real
LYNNE GRAHAM


Their vows have been broken, yet neither is prepared for what this tempestuous reunion will bring…Tally Spencer is an ordinary girl with no experience of relationships; Sander Volakis is an impossibly rich and handsome Greek entrepreneur. What could they have in common? Little – except an overwhelming sexual attraction. But within weeks Sander finds himself betrayed into exchanging vows with Tally. Just when they think their hasty marriage is finished, Tally and Sander are drawn back together, and the passion between them is just as strong… However, Sander has dark reasons for wanting his wife in his bed again – and Tally also has a terrible secret… THE VOLAKIS VOW A marriage made of secrets… An enthralling two-part story by bestselling author Lynne Graham










‘I still haven’t learned how to stop wanting you.’

‘Sander …’ Shattered by that admission of continuing desire from the husband she was in the midst of divorcing, Tally stared at him, her emotions in turmoil to the extent that she no longer knew what she was thinking or feeling.

‘In fact, wanting you is driving me absolutely crazy, yineka mou,’ Sander admitted darkly.

And for the first time in longer than Tally could remember her body leapt with actual physical hunger. Was it the dark-chocolate luxury of his deep voice which provoked the sudden rise of those long-buried needs? Or the sinfully sexual charge of his golden eyes? Tally had no idea, but she felt a sudden clenching tight sensation low in her pelvis, while her nipples were stung into tight swollen buds. Her mouth ran dry.

Like a rabbit caught in car headlights, Tally gazed back at Sander, feeling as vulnerable as if he had stripped her naked and marched her out into a busy street. Yineka mou—my wife, he’d called her. And she was still his wife, she reminded herself helplessly …










Bride for Real







Lynne Graham






















www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


THE VOLAKIS VOW

A marriage made of secrets …

An enthralling two-part story by bestselling author Lynne Graham



Book One:

THE MARRIAGE BETRAYAL

Tally Spencer, an ordinary girl with no experience of relationships … Sander Volakis, an impossibly rich and handsome Greek entrepreneur … Their worlds collide in an explosion of attraction and passion. Sander’s expecting to love her and leave her, but for Tally this is love at first sight. Both are about to find that it’s not easy to walk away … because Tally is expecting Sander’s baby and he is being blackmailed into making her his wife!

THE MARRIAGE BETRAYAL is still available to read via www.millsandbook.co.uk

Book Two:

BRIDE FOR REAL

Just when they thought their hasty marriage was finished, Tally and Sander are drawn back together and the passion between them is just as strong … But Sander has hidden reasons for wanting his wife in his bed again, and Tally also has secrets … and neither is prepared for what this tempestuous reunion will bring …

Can you wait to find out what happens?




PROLOGUE


BRILLIANT dark eyes grim, Sander studied the photo of his wife, small and sexy in a scarlet evening gown and wrapped in another man’s arms.

He was disturbed to appreciate that he was in shock. The white heat of the rage that followed made him lightheaded and scoured him inside like a cleansing flame, leaving him feeling curiously hollow. Robert Miller, well, that wasn’t a surprise, was it? Sander had noted at the Westgrave Manor party two years earlier that Miller had wanted Tally the minute he’d laid eyes on her. Just as Sander had, once. But in spite of his simmering fury, Sander pushed the newspaper away with a careless hand and glanced at his watching father to say lightly like a practised card player hiding his hand, ‘So?’

‘When will you be fully free of her?’ Petros Volakis demanded sourly, as if an estranged wife, whose new single life was being fully documented by the media, was an embarrassment to the family name.

‘I’m free now,’ Sander pointed out with a shrug, for although divorce proceedings still had a way to go, an official separation was already in place.

As his attention roamed involuntarily back to the newspaper lying close by he questioned the strength of his reaction to seeing Tally with someone else. They were getting a divorce. It should be no surprise that she was back on the social circuit. But, like a man forced to stand still while hot pitch was slowly dripped onto his skin, Sander was in torment. Why? Prior to their breakup Tally had brandished her indifference to Sander like a banner and he had assumed that no man could breach her barriers. The idea that another man might have succeeded where he had failed outraged and challenged him. ‘I don’t see you featuring in the gossip columns the way you did before you married,’ the older man remarked with more insight than Sander usually ascribed to him.

‘I’ve grown up,’ Sander countered drily. ‘I’m also more discreet.’

‘She was a mistake but we’ll say no more about it,’ Petros commented, noting the hardening of his son’s stubborn jaw line with a wary eye.

His lean, darkly handsome face uninformative, Sander had nothing to say, at least nothing worth saying. He marvelled that his parents, who had not even offered him sympathy on the death of his firstborn son, could think that any aspect of his marriage could be their business. But then, relations had long been chilly between Sander and his mother and father. His elder brother, Titos, the family favourite, had died in a tragic accident and, although it was only thanks to Sander that Volakis Shipping had since recovered from his brother’s disastrous management, Sander was still being made to feel a very poor second-best in the son stakes. And now, all of a sudden, he was disturbingly conscious that his meteoric triumphs in business were in stark contrast to a frankly abysmal rating in his private life

Tally, in contrast, had moved on from their marriage at startling speed and was evidently enjoying considerable success: new business, new home, new man. That knowledge infuriated Sander, who remembered a much more innocent Tally, a glowing girl who had once been too excited to breathe when he’d kissed her. He could not stand to think of her in bed with Robert Miller, and the awareness shocked him because he had never seen himself as a possessive man …




CHAPTER ONE


‘WHEN will your divorce from Volakis be final?’ Robert Miller asked casually.

Suspecting that his question was anything but casual, Tally stiffened. Her bright green eyes wary, she averted her head, light glancing over the smooth coil of hair at the nape of her neck and picking out its natural streaks of brighter orange as she leafed through a fabric sample book. ‘In a couple of months …’

‘It feels like it’s been going on for ever,’ Robert complained, his impatience with the situation unconcealed. ‘I’m getting tired of the fact that everyone assumes we’re only friends—’

‘We are friends and you’re my business partner,’ Tally responded lightly, knowing that he wanted more but not at all sure, even yet, that she would ever be able to give it to him.

It was only a year since Sander, the loss of their child and the sad debris of their failed marriage had broken Tally’s heart into tiny shattered pieces. The last thing she wanted in her life was the stress of a man with expectations she couldn’t fulfil. It was fun to meet Robert for casual dinner dates and occasionally accompany him to more formal events but she wasn’t ready for a full-on relationship at present. She valued his friendship and his business guidance and support, but she had yet to feel any desire to take matters to a more intimate level. Sander, she reflected painfully, seemed to have killed those feelings stone dead.

Yet at six feet tall with dark hair and bright blue eyes, Robert was a very attractive man and a successful software designer with his own company. Nine months earlier, Robert had given Tally her first major project when he’d engaged her to make over the interior of his London Docklands apartment. Thanks to the publicity garnered by that job, Tally’s brand new interiors firm had expanded rapidly to cope with a steady influx of keen clients. Although business was good, Tally had still found it impossible in the depressed economic climate to get a bank to invest in the future of Tallulah Design. Times were hard for newly self-employed people and when Robert offered her the finance she’d needed to set up her office in upmarket premises and hire extra staff, she had been very grateful. For the past six months Robert had acted as a supportive silent partner.

Sadly, an unpleasant surprise was in store for Tally that afternoon when her assistant, Belle, told her she had a confidential call on hold for her. ‘I’ve been advised that the house you shared with Mr Volakis in France is about to be sold,’ her solicitor told her. ‘I’ve also been informed that if you want anything from the house you will need to go there and collect it.’

Thoroughly taken aback by that news, Tally grimaced and thanked the older man for passing on the information. She tried not to think about the house she had loved being sold, but it was no use; she had stamped her personality and style on the rambling property and she had once been very happy there. Knowing that it would soon belong to someone else filled her with a tide of regret. She had not been prepared for Sander to sell the house, though she could not have explained why. Would it have been a comfort to picture him there with some other woman? Absolutely not. Indeed she shivered at that offensive image and hurriedly suppressed it. When so many more important things had been lost, it would be ridiculous to bemoan the loss of bricks and mortar and memories of more contented times.

Even so, divorcing Sander was proving to be an ongoing challenge, Tally conceded ruefully as she checked her diary to work out if she could make a trip to France that very weekend and get the matter over and done with. Their divorce could certainly not be labelled a civilised break-up. Had Sander so desired, he could easily have had her belongings shipped back to the UK for her to sort out; but he had made not one single helpful gesture since their separation. He had not seen her; in fact he had, at one point, flatly refused to speak to her and had cut her out as though she had never been a part of his life.

Was that because she had walked out on him? Get over it, Sander, Tally thought angrily. If anything, she was proud of the fact that she’d had the courage to break free of a marriage that was making both of them unhappy. Since then she had read that, statistically speaking, marriages very rarely survived the death of a child.

Driving home to her apartment, Tally had to blink back a hot surge of tears and suppress the distressing recollections threatening to tear her apart. She had got over the worst of the anger, the self-pity and the bitterness; but, without warning, grief could still roll in over her like a suffocating blanket and it would be hours until she could function normally again.

Sander, however, had not suffered from that problem. Grief had not immobilised Sander in any way. During the wretched months when Tally’s life had fallen apart and she had sunk into depression, Sander had contrived to rebuild Volakis Shipping into a lean, mean, fighting machine of a booming business and had won lucrative new transportation contracts with Asian factories. At a conservative estimate Sander had quadrupled his financial worth during that contentious period of their lives. Yet Tally, determined to stand on her own financial feet as her mother had never contrived to do, had refused to accept a penny from her husband once they had parted.

Tally had not felt entitled to benefit from her estranged husband’s wealth. After all, Sander had only married her at her father’s instigation because she’d been pregnant. That brutal truth had come back to haunt her once their marriage was in crisis. In a relationship that lacked a sound foundation she had decided that it was unrealistic to hope that time would cure the tensions between them. Indeed she had had to stop and ask herself why she was still struggling to hold onto a man who had never returned her feelings. And that, in a nutshell, was why she believed their marriage had broken down: he had never loved her. She was also utterly convinced that Sander must have been relieved to get his freedom back.

‘Are you getting a share of the house in France?’ her mother, Crystal, demanded that evening on the phone when Tally mentioned her plans for the weekend. For more than a year Tally had seen little of her mother because Crystal was engaged to Roger, a retired British businessman, and had made her home in Monaco with him.

‘You know I don’t need Sander’s money—’

‘I think you’re being very short-sighted. I always needed your father’s money and don’t know how I’d have managed without it!’ Crystal asserted, referring to the Greek businessman, Anatole Karydas, who had supported Crystal and Tally, his illegitimate daughter, right up until Tally completed her education.

‘I’m managing fine just now,’ Tally retorted.

‘But be sensible and think of the future. Take a van over with you and empty the place!’ Crystal advised without hesitation. ‘By all accounts, Sander Volakis is as rich as sin and he’s not going to miss a few sticks of furniture. You walked out on a very wealthy man!’

Aware that Crystal genuinely believed that a woman should hang on for grim death to any rich man for the sake of her long-term security, Tally, who was far more independent, had the tact to swallow back an acerbic retort. She might not see eye to eye with her parent on many subjects but she was very attached to the older woman. Nonetheless, it was Binkie—Mrs Binkiewicz, a Polish widow—who had virtually brought Tally up. It was then Binkie whom Tally missed the most when life was tough. Binkie had acted as Tally and Sander’s housekeeper in the South of France; and when their marriage had ended the older woman had returned to the UK and had taken a job with a family in Devon.

That Friday afternoon, Tally flew into Perpignan airport. Soon after she arrived she received a surprising phone call from her mother. Crystal, who had been living in Monaco with Roger for the past eighteen months, announced without the smallest preamble that she would be returning to London the next day.

‘My goodness, that’s very sudden. Has something happened between you and Roger?’ Tally enquired gingerly, conscious that her mother’s love life tended to be rather unsettled.

‘Roger and I have decided to call it a day.’ Crystal’s tone was defensive and Tally wisely made no comment. ‘I assume I can stay with you until I’ve got somewhere of my own sorted out …’

‘Of course you can!’ Tally exclaimed. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Nothing lasts for ever,’ her mother said flatly and that was the end of the call; Crystal evidently being in no mood to talk.

A slim figure in a purple print sundress, Tally collected a hire car to drive into the foothills of the Pyrenees. The old farmhouse, reached by a narrow private road that snaked through tortuous bends up a steep hill, rejoiced in glorious views. With extensive wooded grounds that were in turn surrounded by a working vineyard and orchards, it also enjoyed great privacy. Tally was very tense as she parked outside the stone house with its vine-covered, wrought-iron loggia. Her solicitor had assured her that he would inform Sander’s representative so that she could gain access to the property. But still not knowing what form that access would take, she first knocked on the door. Only when there was no response did she dig out the key she had never returned and made use of it.

The evocative scent of lavender and beeswax flared her nostrils in the terracotta-tiled hall and she was surprised to see a beautiful arrangement of flowers adorning a side table. There were no fallen petals either. Presumably the house was being as well maintained as though it were still occupied to make it appear more appealing to buyers. Even so it was distinctly eerie to walk back into the marital home she had abandoned over a year earlier and pick up on a familiar ambience that hinted that she might only have walked away the day before.

There were more flowers in the airy main reception room and a pile of the most recent interior design publications lying on the coffee table. Pale drapes were ruffling in the fresh air filtering through an open window. She spotted a small sculpture she and Sander had bought together in Perpignan and her heart lurched, for she remembered that day so clearly. Then, happily pregnant, ignorant of the tragedy to come, she had nagged Sander into taking some rare time off and spending the day with her. They had laughed and talked at length over a leisurely lunch before wandering into the art gallery and spotting the sensually curved stone figure of a couple.

Emerging from her reverie with hot cheeks, Tally realised that she was almost mesmerised by the atmosphere that so strongly evoked the past. She shook her head as though to clear it. Would she really want to take that sculpture and its attendant memories back to London with her? She thought not and mounted the oak stairs to the upper floor. Her heart started beating very fast when she entered the main bedroom. She could remember what a state she had left things in there, with clothes scattered around as she hastily packed only what she could conveniently carry in one case. Now she peered into a wardrobe in the dressing room and saw the same items all neatly hung up, the drawers full of immaculately folded garments.

Emerging from the room in a dazed state, she fell still outside a door at the end of the landing and lost colour. She had to breathe in deep, perspiration breaking out on her brow, before she could make herself depress the handle to push the door wide open. She froze on the threshold in surprise—the enchanting nursery that she had furnished with such love and hope for the future no longer existed. Her shaken eyes scanned the freshly painted walls and full-sized bedroom furniture. There was nothing now to remind her of what had once been; but the memories inside her own head, she acknowledged. She was surprised but relieved that the baby equipment, colourful wallpaper and toys were gone. In the months after the stillbirth of her little boy, Tally had haunted that room, pointlessly, painfully dreaming of what might have been.

The dulled repetitive clack of rotor blades in the distance sent Tally to the landing window where she focused on a black helicopter moving in the cloudless blue sky over the valley. Sander had taken to flying in and out during the last months they had spent in France, citing the advantage of his being able to work while someone else transported him. By then it had sunk in on her that she was married to an unashamed workaholic to whom time meant money and the eternal pursuit of profit. A pregnant wife and a marriage needing attention had been at the very foot of Sander’s to-do list. Of course it would not be Sander coming to visit today, Tally reflected wryly, moving away to pull open a storage cupboard where cases were mercifully still stored.

She would make a start by packing her clothes and then check out the rest of the house for anything she felt she could not live without. Sheets that smelled of Sander, she thought straight away before she could suppress that inappropriate notion. In fact where on earth had that ridiculous thought come from? It was the crazy spell cast by this stupid house getting into her brain and confusing her, she decided angrily. It had been a very long time since such an idea had come naturally to her.

Tally was piling clothing into a case and paying scant attention to the rules of good packing when the noise of the helicopter apparently landing nearby drew her back to the window with a frown of curiosity. By then, the craft had landed on the pad at the edge of the orchard and through the screening mass of summer shrubbery in the grounds she recognised the colourful red ‘V’ logo on its side: V for Volakis. Her heart started beating very fast. It couldn’t be Sander, it couldn’t possibly be Sander!

As Tally backed away unconsciously from the glass she saw a tall, black-haired man in a business suit striding towards the house and shock almost stopped her heart beating altogether. The leashed masculine power of Sander’s proud carriage and long stride were unmistakeable. Something shamefully akin to panic assailed Tally and, for a split second, she seriously thought of stepping into the storage cupboard where she had found the cases and closing the door. She soon shook off that nonsensical idea but she was still frozen on the landing when she heard the front door open.

‘Tally—where are you? It’s Sander,’ a painfully familiar accented drawl announced; and fingered down the length of her spine like a mocking caress.

Her grip on the banister tightened and she moved stiffly to the head of the stairs before starting reluctantly down them, a slender very straight-backed small figure sporting an unconvincing smile. ‘I’ve been packing. What on earth are you doing here?’

‘This is still my house,’ Sander reminded her softly.

Black-haired head tipped back at an almost aggressive angle, he subjected his estranged wife to an intent scrutiny because it felt like a lifetime since he had last seen her. He instantly noted the changes in her and disliked them. Her curls were gone, replaced by a sleek coil of straightened hair worn in a classic style that made her look older; and her summer dress was formal enough to have met even his mother’s strict standards of ladylike grooming. As always, though, Tally’s make-up was subtle, highlighting the undeniable appeal of her big green eyes and soft, full, pink mouth and the freckles scattered across her nose. His chest felt strangely tight. He could only think that he had liked that tousled torrent of rebellious curls and her once youthfully chaotic sense of fashion. Perhaps he just didn’t like people to change, he told himself, uneasy with the strength of his reaction

‘You must’ve planned this! I don’t believe your arrival while I’m here could be a coincidence,’ Tally condemned, struggling not to notice just how incredibly handsome he still was or how wonderfully his thick sooty lashes enhanced his lustrous dark eyes. He was clean-shaven, immaculate in a navy designer suit of faultless cut, and she couldn’t drag her mesmerised gaze from him. The edge of panic inside her snapped taut like a nerve end pulling, goose bumps of awareness rising on the exposed skin of her arms.

She hated Lysander Volakis for the pain and disillusionment he had put her through. She had loved him once—loved him far too much for comfort or relaxation. But a few weeks after their wedding when she had discovered that he had been virtually blackmailed into marrying her because she’d been pregnant, she had attempted to let him go free again. She had walked out then but instead of letting her go he had followed her to the airport and persuaded her that he felt enough for her to give their marriage another chance. She still despised herself for being weak enough to give him that chance. She had dragged out her own suffering because, for a few brief months while on his very best behaviour, he had made her exceedingly happy. Then, when she was at the very height of her rose-coloured expectations of their marriage and looking forward to motherhood, she had lost everything and he had not been there for her; he had not been there for her at all. She had travelled from the warmth of sunlight into the cold of winter.

‘I’ve never believed in coincidences,’ Sander fielded with more than a hint of provocation that dragged her thoughts right back to the present. ‘Naturally I knew you would be here. We can divide up the contents together.’

Having stiffened at that almost teasing intonation, Tally gritted her teeth. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘Wouldn’t Robert like it?’ Sander quipped, brilliant eyes like bright chips of golden challenge in his lean strong face.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Tally responded flatly, uneasily aware of the sparks smouldering in the atmosphere and the essentially volatile nature of Sander’s temperament.

Yet she saw changes in Sander too. His recent dazzling success in the business world had boosted the element of darkness in him, giving his lean, strong features a tougher, more ruthless edge and accentuating his hard masculinity. Sander had also acquired an intimidating degree of implacability. And she noted now, registering in surprise, that in the aftermath of their marriage her estranged husband also believed that he had an axe to grind and was in no mood to let bygones be bygones. At that moment it struck her as strange that she had never before acknowledged the likelihood that he might blame her for things just as she blamed him. In retrospect, she was shaken by the extent of her tunnel vision and her view of herself as the victim of his cruel insensitivity. Had she truly fallen into the trap of believing that she was a perfect wife?

‘Miller wouldn’t like the fact that you’re here in this house alone with me,’ Sander proclaimed in a deceptively indolent tone.

Tally was tempted to say that Robert Miller minded his own business but that would immediately reveal that theirs was a friendly rather than intimate relationship and she did not see why she should hand Sander that interesting information on a plate. No doubt he would be amused to learn that when she had last made love with a man it had been him; and that had been at least eighteen months ago. She knew Sander’s hot-blooded nature and was certain that he would have moved on much sooner than she had contrived to do. A bitterness she could not suppress rose like bile in her tight throat as she still could not bear to think of Sander with anyone else.

‘Robert knows better than to try and tell me what to do,’ Tally replied drily, her chin lifting, green eyes glinting as if to say: Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Sander released a husky laugh that purred down her backbone like a taunting scratch. ‘You surprise me; you liked it when I did it …’

And that crack smashed through Tally’s superficial shell of civility like a brick and made her fingers flex like claws and her face burn as red and hot with mortification as any fire. She knew exactly what he was getting at. In the early months of their relationship, Sander had often told her what to do in bed while he explained what he enjoyed. Not only had she had no objection to that intimate education, but she’d also discovered that it turned her on.

‘That’s it … I’m leaving!’ Tally snapped furiously, stepping past him to snatch at the car keys she had tossed down on the side table. ‘You can dump my stuff. I don’t want any of it!’

But Sander’s reflexes were much faster than hers and long brown fingers scooped up the keys a split second before she could. ‘You’re not driving off in the temper you’re in—’

‘Give me those keys!’ Tally launched at him in a burning rage at his interference.

‘How long did you wait before you welcomed Miller into your bed?’ Sander enquired, relishing the sight of her all shaken up, stray strands of hair flying loose from the smooth bun at the nape of her neck while her green eyes crackled like fireworks. All of a sudden she was the woman he remembered again. No other woman of his acquaintance had ever equalled her passion, but the conviction that she had taken another man as a lover was like a knife in his chest and he couldn’t leave the subject alone.

‘You’ve got no right to ask me that!’ Tally hurled, her cheeks burning as she reached for the keys.

Much taller than she was, Sander simply held the keys out of her reach. ‘I’m still your husband and naturally I’m curious—you barred me from your bed for months before we broke up,’ he reminded her harshly, his hard jaw line grim.

‘We’re almost divorced. I’m not having this conversation with you—now give me those keys!’ Tally hissed back at him in vexation.

‘No,’ Sander responded in Greek. ‘I won’t enable you to get behind the wheel in a blind rage …’

‘Oh, so caring all of a sudden!’ Tally raked back at him in a furious hiss of condemnation that she could not restrain. ‘Where did that caring guy go when we lost our child?’

Sander froze as though she had struck him. His dark eyes blazed with hostility before he veiled them, and his superb cheekbones clenched into hard angular lines below his bronzed skin. ‘That’s not something I’m willing to discuss—’

‘No, I didn’t think it would be,’ Tally spat back with raw contempt. ‘Not with your track record for working eighteen-hour days, or being back at your desk the day after the funeral of our child. All you care about is making more money … it doesn’t matter that in comparison to most people you are already rich as Croesus, you never seem to have enough money to be satisfied!’

Thick black lashes lifted on blistering, dark golden eyes as direct as knives aimed at a target. ‘How dare you? You carried our son, so you’re the only one allowed to be sensitive and have feelings, is that right?’

Unprepared for the immediacy of that scorching comeback, Tally muttered, ‘Well, er …’

‘We all cope with grief in different ways. I could have got drunk and slept with other women to express my wounded feelings,’ he grated in a tone of derision. ‘But that’s not who I am. I’m not into therapy or wallowing in emotion either, wasn’t brought up that way … sorry In my family we don’t whinge or talk about stuff like that. I worked every goddamned hour I could because the same day that I lost my son I lost my wife as well and working was the only way I could handle it!’

Totally disconcerted by that explosive response, which roared from him like a tornado set suddenly free from a cage, Tally had fallen back several steps in shock. She was already regretting her attack on him, wincing at how unwise it had been to break open the wound of that painful subject when she was still in the process of healing. Now catching the sheer rawness in his voice, and the caustic charge of bitter reproach in his hard gaze, Tally was paralysed to the spot and recognising in Sander a depth of emotion she had not acknowledged he might possess. Her conscience was already censuring her ill-considered words. Now she was asking herself why she had so hugely underestimated what he might be feeling when their child was born dead.

‘What do you mean … you lost your wife?’ Tally prompted unevenly, reluctant to ask but unable to let the statement stand unchallenged.

‘You acted as if you had cornered the market on grief and you turned into a zombie. You wouldn’t talk to me or go out or do anything but cry. You were suffering from depression but when I tried to persuade you to see a doctor or even a counsellor you went bonkers and told me that I couldn’t possibly understand what you were going through!’

‘I didn’t think you did … I was all screwed up inside myself.’ Tally struggled to defend her past behaviour, her heart beating so fast with tension that she could hardly breathe.

But Sander was not yet finished. Seeing her back inside the house where everything had so suddenly fallen apart had brought the past alive again for him in a way he had not foreseen. He was also reacting in a way he had not known he might and it was one of the very few times in his life that he was not fully in control. He had tried to swallow back the furious words that had come out of nowhere at him but found that he could not silence them, for his sense of injustice still burned deep and strong. ‘When I suggested we have another baby you reacted like that was unforgivable and you screamed that you didn’t want another child!’ Sander bit out in wrathful reminder. ‘And when I made the very great mistake of trying to get back into bed with you again you behaved as if it was an attempted rape!’

To say that Tally regretted what she had invited with her emotional attack on him would have been a severe understatement. Pale as milk, she was trembling with perturbation and disbelief, reeling in dismay from the bitter accusing anger he could not conceal. One minute she had been fighting him for her car keys, the next…?

‘I’m sorry,’ she framed shakily, appalled that she had surrendered entirely to her own pain after their loss while flatly refusing to recognise that he was having a tough time as well.

Sander loosed a harsh laugh. ‘Sorry’s not enough, is it? Sorry doesn’t fix anything!’ he flung back at her without hesitation. ‘Our baby dying didn’t stop me wanting you, it made me need you more …’

Shame filled Tally in the instant that she recognised that they had let each other down. Neither of them had been capable of keeping their relationship alive in the maelstrom of grief and misunderstanding that had followed the arrival of their stillborn son.

Sander tossed the keys back down on the table and turned his darkly handsome head back to her, eyes as black as pitch in the sunlight and glinting with emotions she couldn’t read. ‘And I still haven’t learned how to stop wanting you,’ he breathed in a sizzling undertone that stung her like a hot jet of steam on tender skin. ‘Is there some magical combination of aversion responses that I lack? You did a hell of a number on my libido, Tally!’

‘Sander …’ Shattered by that admission of continuing desire from the husband she was in the midst of divorcing, Tally stared at him. Her emotions in turmoil to the extent that she no longer knew what she was thinking or feeling.

‘In fact, wanting you is driving me absolutely crazy, yineka mou,’ Sander admitted darkly.

And for the first time in longer than Tally could remember, her body leapt with actual physical hunger. She was astonished as she had felt nothing for so long that she had believed that that side of her nature might be gone for ever. Was it the dark chocolate luxury of his deep voice that provoked the sudden rise of those long-buried needs? Or the sinfully sexual charge of his dark golden eyes? Tally had no idea but she felt a sudden clenching tight sensation low in her pelvis while her nipples stung into tight swollen buds of desire. Her mouth ran dry.

Like a rabbit caught in car headlights in the dark Tally gazed back at Sander, feeling as vulnerable as if he had stripped her naked and marched her out into a busy street. Yineka mou, my wife, he’d called her. And she was still his wife, she reminded herself helplessly.

‘Any idea what I can do about it?’ Sander husked that question, strolling closer with the silent elegant grace that was as much a part of him as his physical strength.

‘No, no idea at all.’ Tally had gone rigid, suddenly aware of a danger that she had not realised she might face. She had married a manipulative man and she knew it; indeed, she had once gloried in the level of intelligence and cunning that generally kept him several steps ahead of his business competitors. Sander was a remarkably clever and shrewd guy and now, somehow, she had no idea how, he was pushing her buttons and making her feel things she did not want to feel. As he advanced she backed away until she was trapped between him and the door.

‘You push me much too close to the edge, yineka mou,’ Sander murmured, tilting down his darkly handsome head and running the angular side of his jaw back and forth over the smooth soft line of her cheek like a jungle cat nuzzling for attention. The familiar sandalwood and jasmine scent of his expensive aftershave lotion made her nostrils flare while the faint rasp of his rougher skin scored her nerve endings into life.

Suddenly Tally felt like someone pinned to a cliff edge, in danger and swaying far too close to a treacherous drop. She didn’t want to be there, she didn’t want to fall either, but any concept of choice was wrested from her when Sander found her mouth and kissed her, strong hands firm on her slim shoulders to hold her still …




CHAPTER TWO


THAT single kiss was like dying and being reborn in the heady space of a moment. For one minute Tally was full of doubt and antagonism and the next she was seduced by the instant flow of response and the emotional intensity of her mood.

Her skin was cold and clammy with shock but her mouth was on fire beneath his, her nerve endings tingling as he pried her lips apart and plunged his tongue into the tender interior of her mouth. It was passion at its most primal level and a startled sound of protest broke in her throat as the naked flood of chemical reaction smashed down her barriers. Her head swam, her legs trembled violently and her hands clutched at his suit jacket to steady herself. His breath mingled with hers, sweet, so sweet, it was an unbearable aphrodisiac and her fingers rose to spear into his thick black hair and hold him to her while trading kiss for passionate kiss and revelling in the pressure of his warm sensual mouth on hers.

The breadth of his muscular chest crushed the swollen contours of her breasts and she pushed against him, defenceless in the grip of her overriding need to get even closer to him. A big hand spread across her buttocks and urged her into more intimate contact and she rocked against him, thrilled by the long hard ridge of his arousal, which even clothing could not conceal. Her hand slid down between them, small but highly effective fingers drawn into tracing the thrusting power of his masculinity. With a guttural groan he shifted even closer, inviting her touch while he bent down and used his own hands to lift her dress. His long sure fingers trailing up over the exposed length of her thighs until she shivered and shook with longing.

The heat at the heart of her was more than she could withstand and her thighs pressed together tightly as if to seal in the ache of need before easing apart again. She shivered as he found her most sensitive spot with skilled insistence, for her body was on a hair-trigger high after so many months of abstinence. He rubbed the tiny bud and she moaned out loud, quivering in his hold like an eager racehorse at the starting line—out of breath and empty of thought, fully possessed by her hunger. She felt the delicate band of fabric round her hips tighten and then it tore as, with a sound of impatience, Sander ripped her knickers in two to gain access to the damp pink folds so ready for his attention.

A choked cry escaped her as he explored the swollen silky flesh between her thighs and then he dropped down to his knees and used his mouth and his tongue on the tender tissue. Beneath that sensual onslaught Tally’s legs shook like mad. It was his arms that held her steady when all control was wrested from her by her enthralled response to his exquisite carnal expertise. Her body was on the very edge, surging and hurtling towards orgasm, when he sprang upright and lifted her. Something made of china broke noisily and he brought her bottom down on a cool surface but neither of those bewildering facts could interfere with the fire raging out of control inside her.

Sander hauled her back to the edge of the table with impatient hands and parted her thighs. He slid into her, long and impossibly thick and hard, stretching her honeyed channel to capacity. As he withdrew and then slammed back into her swollen softness again the delirious excitement washed back in an intoxicating tide. With each bold stroke erotic ripples of pleasure assailed her and he held her to him, his hands firm on her hips as he thrust deeper into her with every rhythmic movement. She was out of control and out of her mind with excitement. When he drove her into a climax she screamed in release, shuddering and shaking from the seething intensity of sensation that threatened to tear her body apart as she travelled from the height of stressed-out tension to ecstatic limpness.

‘You are still the most incredibly sexy woman I’ve ever met,’ Sander growled, breathing audibly as he pressed a string of appreciative kisses across the bridge of her nose.

Closing strong arms round her, Sander lifted her off the table to carry her upstairs. She was only dimly conscious of the fact that he was crunching over the broken shards of pottery and scattered blooms that were all that now remained of the floral arrangement that had sat on the table until they’d sent it flying.

So stunned by what had happened between them that she couldn’t think straight, Tally was nonetheless struggling to regain control. ‘What are you doing?’ was the best she could manage.

Sander did not respond. Dark golden eyes vibrant, he scanned her flushed face and simply settled her down on what had once been the marital bed. But then he had no desire to talk about anything other than the most superficial things. He had too many recollections of attempts to talk that had blown up in his face over a year earlier. Now, playing safe in silence, he wrenched back the bed linen, ignoring it when the silken bedspread spilled down in a heap on the oak floor. He followed Tally down to the mattress and began to kiss her again with a hunger that had not abated in the slightest.

Sander had always been great at kissing. The ravishing sensual force of his mouth on hers again rocked her from inside out. Nothing and nobody tasted quite as good as Sander. Roused from satiated weakness, she revelled in the renewed response of her own body, stretching up to kiss him back eagerly while he shed his clothing in fits and starts. The level of his continuing desire enthralled her and made her suspect that perhaps her estranged husband had been more faithful to her memory than she had ever had reason to hope. Surely only self-denial could make him want her so badly?

Tally was desperate to touch him, her palms skimming across his broad satin-smooth shoulders and down over his muscular, hair-roughened pectoral muscles before moving more skittishly lower.

‘Don’t tease me, yineka mou,’ Sander growled in a roughened undertone, his flat stomach muscles contracting beneath her spread fingers while a tremor of anticipation shook his long lean body against hers in a way that made her feel incredibly desirable.

‘I won’t …’ Tally collided with hot golden eyes and felt her heart jump. As he shifted against her, inviting her touch with the raw sexuality that only grief had made her resist, she refused to think of anything but the moment.

In the back of her mind Tally knew and accepted that later their encounter would demand a strict accounting from her and just then she was painfully aware that she couldn’t face it. How could she confront the conflict and mess of responses that Sander had roused in her from the moment she had walked out of his life and match it with her loss of control over events that afternoon? But, even as she avoided examining what she was doing, she was taking strong note of the fact that the guy she had let go to reclaim his freedom was getting straight back into bed with her the first chance he got. That gave her the most colossal kick of satisfaction and pleasure. It encouraged her to entertain the stunning idea that there might not have been other women in his life since their separation. And that heady suspicion somehow made everything that had occurred feel acceptable to her.

‘You’re irresistible, yineka mou, ‘Sander purred, cupping a pouting breast and catching the swollen pink peak between thumb and finger so that she quivered, heat rising from the very heart of her in response. ‘I can’t get enough of you.’

He wanted her again, wanted her even more fiercely

than the first time, the pulse at his groin more pressing than he could bear. He crushed her reddened mouth under his again and her senses drowned in the intoxicating flood of almost painful arousal thrumming through her reawakened body. Muttering her name against her lips, he pulled her to him and turned her over, groaning his acute pleasure against her cheek as he sank his bold shaft into her lush clinging warmth all over again. And if wildness had distinguished their first bout of intimacy, control and steady intensity distinguished the second. As he held her fast and plunged into her velvety depths again and again her excitement reached a height she had never dreamt of and she forced her face into a pillow and bit into the soft cloaking fabric to suppress the cries of a pleasure beyond bearing.

Afterwards she was so weak she couldn’t move and it was a blessed relief to allow the limp heaviness of her exhausted body to simply slump in the shelter of his cradling arms. For the first time in more months than Tally wanted to count she felt both content and happy and she fell blissfully asleep reassured by that conviction. Everything in her world might be in turmoil but it was a turmoil that felt astonishingly right.

Around dawn she wakened with a start and sat up, disorientated. The curtains weren’t drawn and morning light was stealing across the furniture in shades of peach and gold. But all that mattered to Tally in that instant was the reality that she was alone. The pillow beside hers was dented but empty; and the sheet was cold when her palm traced an investigative sweep across it. She leapt out of bed as though jet-propelled and paid the price for that impulsive movement, wincing as muscles stretched and complained and an ache between her thighs reminded her all too bluntly of how she had passed the night. It was the work of an instant to snatch up the bedspread and cover her nudity within its shimmering folds.

Tally peered out of the window and saw without surprise that the helicopter was gone because, when she thought about it, she did have a dim distant memory of the noise of its take-off at some stage of the night. Sander had slept with her then gone, and she felt gutted, not to mention feeling like the worst female fool since the start of the world. Like a woman in a bad dream, shattered and without any proper objective, she wandered down to the ground floor, stiffening in dismay when she heard a noise coming from the kitchen and almost retreating back upstairs again. A cleaner? Housekeeper? After all, both the flower arrangements and the level of cleanliness made it obvious that the house was being efficiently looked after.

A dark head appeared in the doorway and Sander, an impressive bronzed figure clad only in form-fitting silk boxers, gazed up at her with glittering dark eyes of enquiry.

‘I thought I heard something. I thought…’ But she bit back the remains of such a revealing admission, determined to save face. ‘I wondered where you were.’

‘I was making breakfast,’ Sander announced with staggering cool as if it were something he did on a regular basis rather than an entirely new departure for him.

Unshaven, hair still springy and damp from a shower, Sander looked as drop-dead gorgeous as a glossy tiger on the prowl. But no four-legged animal could have sported his muscular six-pack and long powerful thighs. Her heart was racing, her tummy flipping as she moved instinctively closer. ‘Breakfast?’

‘Just toast and coffee,’ he declared in case she might be at risk of expecting something more ambitious, which, with his track record, was most unlikely.

As she padded into the spacious kitchen diner she picked up on the smell of charred toast in the air. The windows were wide open, presumably to clear the lingering fug of smoke. ‘The toaster here is rubbish,’ Sander proclaimed in exasperation.

He made coffee so black and strong it was like treacle and it would upset her stomach, she reflected ruefully; he couldn’t cook, either—he couldn’t cook to save his life. He thought he could cook but his tools or his ingredients always let him down, whether it was a faulty oven timer or temperature gauge or a tough cut of meat. Convinced that any idiot could cook, he had no patience and was prone to taking disastrous shortcuts. She could picture what had happened this morning: he would have stood over the ‘faulty’ toaster and cancelled the operation because he couldn’t be bothered waiting for the toast to pop up on its own time. Then, when the bread was partially done, he probably had put it in the toaster again and it had burned. But Tally was touched that he was making what she could only interpret as a romantic effort on her behalf, even if his attempt to give her breakfast in bed was more likely to burn the house down.

‘I’m not very hungry,’ she said, trying to be helpful because the toaster was sending up a warning plume of smoke again and she crossed the kitchen to switch it off before it could set off the fire alarm.

Sander pulled her back into the heat of his big powerful body and growled, ‘I’m only hungry for you—we shared a fantastic night, moli mou.’

Her memory leapfrogged in some discomfiture over the dynamic night of intimacy that they had shared. He had been insatiable, while she had been wildly, encouragingly responsive to his every move and he had made a lot of them. Indeed his seemingly limitless hunger for her body has struck her as distinctly gratifying when she considered the number of options he had to have as a single male soon to be in full repossession of his freedom. But was very satisfying sex enough to power a reconciliation? Was such a far-reaching idea as ditching their divorce petition even on his mind? With Sander it didn’t pay to make assumptions because he was not predictable, nor was he particularly conventional.

A stray thought came out of nowhere and assailed Tally. Reacting to it, she tugged free of him and yanked open the refrigerator, staring in at the packed shelves of fresh produce with wide suspicious eyes. While she mulled over that thought she poured two glasses of fresh orange juice and handed him one. ‘Have you been renting this place out?’

‘Of course not,’ Sander asserted with hauteur. ‘I don’t want strangers here. This was our home.’

There was only one other explanation for that very well-stocked fridge and it struck Tally like a wake-up call that blew away the cobwebs of a night in which she had enjoyed very little sleep. As she drank her orange juice her brain was suddenly functioning again. Her smooth brow furrowing, green eyes wide with suspicion, she flipped round to study his lean darkly handsome face. ‘Did you set me up for this?’

Sander quirked a winged ebony brow. ‘What are you talking about?’

And, that fast, Tally knew that Sander had flown to France with an agenda and that she had been seduced to plan within an inch of her life. ‘You planned to see me here, you even planned to spend the night here with me and you set the scene—that’s why there are flowers everywhere and the kitchen has been stocked with food.’

‘Would you have preferred to have gone hungry? Or to have slept in a damp bed?’ Sander enquired in bewilderment, clearly not seeing what all the fuss was about. ‘We could hardly stay in comfort in a house that has been empty for so long. Of course I had it prepared for our occupation.’

‘You’re so devious. How am I supposed to feel about this set-up? I was entrapped!’ Tally flung at him furiously.

Brilliant dark golden eyes wary, Sander heaved a sigh and spread lean brown hands in a wholly unconvincing expression of innocence. ‘You’re my wife and I want you back. That’s not a set-up or a crime …’

I want you back. Not at all sure yet how she felt about that possibility and shaken by it, Tally stalked past him, the bedspread trailing across the floor in her wake. ‘I’m going for a shower.’

Sander breathed, ‘Tally …?’

Tally twisted back. ‘No, don’t say anything more. You’ve already said enough to hang yourself!’ she warned him bitterly.




CHAPTER THREE


BUT mere minutes after Tally’s fiery exit, Sander stepped into the shower cubicle with her, bold as brass as he always was in a challenging situation.

Before she could react, he caught her wet slippery body to his and plunged his mouth down on her angrily parted lips. And what she might have said was forgotten when she did not get the chance to say it. Indeed, it did cross her mind that, although they might have spent many hours together during their marriage, they had shared very few verbal exchanges. But then Sander had always been a man of action and, equally, a man of few words. She acknowledged this dizzily, her hormones surging up with greedy enthusiasm to interfere with such clear-minded thoughts.

In the aftermath of that sizzling bout of lovemaking in the shower, Sander held her close while she tried to persuade her legs to hold her up without his support. Still breathing heavily, he lifted a thick strand of dripping straight hair to ask in bewilderment, ‘Why isn’t it curling again now that it’s wet?’

His mystified expression provoked a spontaneous laugh from Tally. ‘I had a special straightening treatment done at a salon and it won’t curl again for months now. It’s much easier to handle,’ she told him brightly.

Releasing that recalcitrant strand from his fingers, Sander stared down at her with a very masculine frown of incomprehension. ‘Let it go back to normal,’ he urged. ‘I loved your hair the way it was …’

Tally was amazed. He had loved the corkscrew curls that were the bane of her life? Well, he had never mentioned the fact before. The water was running cool. Switching it off, Sander thrust back the shower doors. As she stepped out he enveloped her in a big fleecy towel. It awakened reminders of the way he had quietly taken care of her in the later stages of her pregnancy when her body had grown heavy and clumsy, restricting her ease of movement. That extra degree of consideration had seemed to come so naturally to him that it had made her heart sing with hope for their future as a new family. And then cruel fate had struck down her fond hopes with tragedy. When their little son had been born dead, let down by placental insufficiency, the hope of them becoming a family had perished with their child and their marriage had followed suit.

Stunning, heavily lashed dark golden eyes resting on her troubled face, Sander tugged her back to him with hands that would not be denied. ‘I want to forget the past eighteen months.’

An uneasy laugh fell from her lips. ‘It’s not that simple.’

His strong jaw line squared. ‘It can be as simple as we want it to be. We are the only two people involved here, moli mou.’

Sander wanted her back. Maybe he had set her up by inviting her to the house and arriving when she wasn’t expecting him, but seemingly he had done so with good intentions. Here she was and, in her own opinion, she wasn’t beautiful, wealthy or even particularly talented. But Sander, who enjoyed every one of those worldly advantages, still wanted her back as his wife. That was a truth that could only flatter Tally and it reminded her once more of his eagerness to make love to her again.

And Tally’s mouth opened, strong curiosity sending words to her lips before she had even taken the time to think them through and question whether or not she might be asking something without being properly prepared for the answer she might receive. ‘If I thought that you hadn’t been with anyone else since we parted, maybe I could consider that possibility,’ she dared to suggest.

A deathly silence fell in which her words hung like a precariously balanced pane of glass ready to drop and noisily shatter. The instant she looked up at Sander she knew that her fond hopes had roamed dangerously far from the truth. His bronzed skin tone could not hide the fact that in receipt of that declaration he had lost colour, his classic cheekbones prominent beneath his brown skin, his wide sensual mouth clenching into a troubled line.

Sander was rigid with heated incredulity, as Tally’s need for that assurance had come at him out of nowhere and far too late in the day to have any value to him. It was also a cautionary reminder that Tally’s apparent spontaneity and lack of calculation could be misleading because there was often far more going on below the surface than she was prepared to acknowledge. And she had just placed a deadly explosive tripwire right in his path and he fiercely resented the fact. What right had she to ask him that now? In the circumstances it was unreasonable. More than eighteen months ago, Tally had barred him from her bed and turned her back very firmly on him as a husband. Refusing even to admit that their problems might still have a remedy, she had walked out on their marriage. She had made it clear that she wasn’t coming back and that she wanted a divorce. Furthermore she had excluded him from every one of those decisions. The period that had followed their break-up was a blurred black hole of deeply unwelcome memories for Sander, a reality that he was too proud to even consider sharing with her.

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you what you seem to want to hear,’ Sander delivered in a grudging undertone, his discomfiture patent.

It was Tally’s turn to pale and the fierce tension made her tummy roll with nausea. For a disturbing instant she just wanted to burst into distraught tears at having received confirmation of what she now knew she had most feared. She was intensely mortified. What on earth had possessed her? She felt unbelievably stupid and naïve for ever having dreamt that Sander might not have sought sexual solace while they were living apart and divorcing. Where had her wits been while she entertained such an unlikely possibility? Sander was, and always had been, a very sexual being.

‘I don’t want to know any more,’ she told him starkly, turning away in outright physical rejection, clutching the towel round her trembling body with defensive hands. Her skin was clammy with shock while she struggled to suppress the most destructive wave of sick and bitter jealousy that she had ever experienced. In the space of seconds she had travelled from revived feelings of tenderness to pungent acrimonious hatred. Lost in grief for their infant son, she had fled back to England with a broken heart to lick her wounds and rebuild her life as a single woman while Sander had evidently partied and shared his beautiful body with a range of new lovers.

‘You’re not being fair,’ Sander murmured flatly, recognising that judgement was being meted out without further debate.

‘Perhaps not … but I can’t help how I feel,’ Tally responded in a cold tone of finality and mentally she was already shutting up shop on the events of the past twenty-four hours.

She had made yet another mistake but not an insuperable one, she reasoned in the first frantic surge of needing to sort her tumultuous emotions out before they swallowed her alive and destroyed her. Over the past year she had fought hard to regain her independence and overcome her heartache and she was determined not to revisit those dark days of depression and self-doubt. It wasn’t that unusual for husbands and wives on the brink of divorce to have one final reunion, she told herself urgently. She had mistaken familiarity for attraction and echoes of the love she had once felt for Sander had clearly confused her. She’d made a mistake, nothing more, nothing less. She didn’t need to make a production out of it and she didn’t need to flail herself for her stupidity either. Sander was a heartstoppingly handsome and sexy man and a long period of celibacy had probably made her more vulnerable.

‘We just did something very silly,’ she muttered, picking up clothes that she had been packing the evening before and sifting through them to find a fresh outfit to wear.

‘No, we did not,’ Sander contradicted with fierce conviction and then, thinking about what she had said and how she had reacted to his honesty, he frowned. ‘Are you telling me that you haven’t slept with Robert Miller?’

‘I’m not telling you anything!’ Tally shot back, refusing to be drawn on that topic and wishing she had had enough sense not to put such a revealing weapon within his reach. Were he to realise that her relationship with the other man remained platonic he would soon guess that she had moved on less smoothly than he had from their break-up and she could not bear to admit that truth to him. It was the wrong moment for her to appreciate that in her heart she had still felt married and loyal to Sander Volakis. ‘I won’t even discuss such a thing …’

‘But while practising your usual double standards, it was all right to put me on the spot,’ Sander traded harshly and then he groaned out loud as though he regretted the tone of that response and, with a bitten-off curse, he reached for her small hands instead. ‘Tally … come here …’

Rage suddenly lanced through Tally like a jet-propelled rocket and her green eyes flashed like emeralds. ‘Don’t touch me!’ she snapped, trailing her fingers pointedly free of his hold.

‘Obviously I should have lied when you asked me that question but that’s not my style.’ His long, lean, powerful body rigid, Sander cornered her and closed lean brown hands to her elbows instead of her hands. His dark eyes were bright with angry frustration. ‘I won’t let you do this to us. You still want me.’

‘No, I don’t. I don’t know what came over me—this was a mistake, meeting you here in this house again was like stepping into a time slip!’ Tally protested vehemently, desperate to make him believe that for the sake of her pride.

He watched her jerky movements as she dressed in front of him, disdaining a bra in her haste to cover up again. Against his will, his gaze was drawn by the bounce of her full rose-tipped breasts as she hauled on a T-shirt and even after the night they had shared the tightening at his groin was automatic. He didn’t want to listen to her spouting rubbish about mistakes and time slips. He didn’t want her to leave. Not only did he want his wife back, but he also wanted to keep her in bed for at least a week in the hope of sating a craving that no other woman could come close to satisfying.

‘The hunger is still there between us, moli mou,’ Sander growled. ‘As strong as ever …’

His dark deep drawl vibrated down her taut spinal cord and she glanced up from below feathery lashes and connected warily with hot golden eyes that challenged her. Her nipples tingled and swelled and she froze in disbelief that she could still be so susceptible to his allure.

‘You know exactly what I’m talking about,’ Sander pronounced with satisfaction.

But Tally was determined not to listen. Convinced that the more heed she paid him, the more likely it was that she would do something foolish again, she was determined to escape. Flipping the case that she had begun packing the day before open again, she began to settle a pile of garments into it.

‘You can’t just walk away and pretend this didn’t happen,’ Sander breathed levelly.

‘I can do whatever I blasted well want!’ Tally flared back, shooting his lean, strong profile a defiant glance.

Raking impatient fingers through his black, spiky hair, Sander dealt her a narrow-eyed intent appraisal. His dark eyes, sharp as knives, brought goose flesh up on her bare arms in spite of the warm temperature. ‘One way or another I’ll get you back, yineka mou.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Tally fielded flatly, her small face stiff with self-discipline as she flipped down the lid on the case and closed it. ‘We’ll be divorced in a couple of months. I don’t want anything else from this place. This is the past and I’ve moved on—’

‘Only an hour ago you were happily reliving that past,’ Sander murmured, smooth as silk.

‘Everybody makes mistakes and you’re mine,’ Tally retorted curtly, heading for the door as fast as her legs would carry her.





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