an electric fence, shock waves making every raw nerve-ending scream. Deliberately she turned her head away, closing him out again. No, she was not susceptible. She had proved that to her satisfaction over and over again.
‘Then I’m afraid you’ll have to take his place.’
‘His place?’ Nobody could possibly take Pete Hunniford’s place. Pete was Alex’s most devoted gofer. Nothing came between Pete and ambition. He had freely admitted to Sara that his first marriage had fallen apart because he was never at home. And right at this minute, if Alex employed his mobile phone, Pete would be out of the labour ward like a rocket.
‘Nothing too onerous…Relax,’ Alex breathed in that distinctively rich dark voice which rolled down her spine like golden honey, burning wherever it touched. ‘I only want you to take down a couple of letters.’
Her brow furrowed as she automatically lifted a pad and pencils. He was talking very slowly, not with his usual quick impatience. He hadn’t even asked her why she hadn’t answered the phones. He stood back for her to precede him from the room, and in her need to keep as much physical space between them as possible she jerked sideways and skidded off balance.
Strong hands whipped out and closed round her upper arms to steady her. Her head swam, her heartbeat kicking wildly against her breastbone. She quivered, fighting off sudden dizziness, and he drew her back. ‘OK?’ he murmured, still holding her on the threshold.
‘F-fine…Sorry.’ Her nostrils flared in dismay as the warm, definably male scent of him washed over her. Aromatic, intrinsically familiar…intimate. Intimate? What was the matter with her? What the heck was the matter with her? As she stiffened he released her and she walked down the corridor with careful small steps, noticing that the double doors of his office at the end looked peculiarly out of focus. Now near, now far, now skewed. All that brandy. Drunk in charge of a phone. But it felt shamelessly, unbelievably good: a short-term anaesthetic against the enormous pain waiting to jump on her—the pain she could not yet face head-on. As long as she didn’t think, she could protect herself.
‘Sit down, Sara.’ She plotted a course across the thick carpet with immense care and sank down on the nearest seat, suddenly terrified that he would notice the state she was in. Being intoxicated suddenly didn’t feel good any more. In Alex Rossini’s presence, it felt like sheer insanity. Discovery would be unbelievably demeaning.
Disorientatedly, she glanced up and found him standing over her. She flinched. Her hands trembled and she anchored them tightly round the pad. He didn’t sit down. He strolled with silent grace across to the floorlength windows. A stunningly handsome man, he had an innate elegance of movement, his superbly cut mohair and silk-blend charcoal-grey suit the perfect complementary frame to wide shoulders, lean hips and long, powerful thighs.
From beneath luxuriant black lashes he surveyed her. ‘Shall I begin?’
He didn’t normally request permission. Uncertainly she nodded. He dictated with incredibly long pauses that enabled her more or less to keep up but she still missed bits because her mind wouldn’t stay in one place. Shock was giving way to reality, denial giving way to bursts of agonised pain. For how long had Brian been deceiving her with Antonia? Her memory threw up the image of the open bottle of wine in the lounge, the half-filled wineglasses by the bed. No sudden passion there. They had carried the glasses with them into the bedroom. A carefully staged lunchtime encounter when Sara should have been at work.
‘Did you get all that?’
The page currently beneath her fingers was blank. Briefly she simply closed her eyes, willing herself to find calm and control.
‘It’s all right, Sara…the letter isn’t important.’
The softness of the assurance astonished her. Dazedly she glanced up, encountered Alex Rossini’s brilliant dark eyes and was mesmerised by the sincerity she read there. He was resting against the edge of his polished desk, far too close for comfort. He reached down and removed the pad from her nerveless fingers, setting it carelessly aside.
‘Something has upset you…’ he drawled.
Her creamy, perfect skin tightened over her fine facial bones as she focused on his silk tie. ‘No…’
‘You’re not wearing your ring.’
Sara went white. The pencil she was fiddling with snapped in two.
‘You are clearly distressed,’ Alex murmured in the same quiet, disturbingly gentle tone which she had never heard him employ before. ‘I believe you were called home unexpectedly this morning. What happened there?’
She was appalled to discover that she wanted to tell him, spill out the poison building up inside her, but instead she bit down hard on her tongue.
‘Perhaps you would prefer to go home for the rest of the day?’ Alex suggested lethally.
‘No…’ Sara muttered, horror bringing her back to life. Antonia would be waiting for her and she could not yet face that confrontation.
‘Why not?’ he prompted her.
‘I found my fiancé in bed with my cousin.’ As soon as she had said it she could not believe that she had said that out loud and to him of all people. A tide of chagrined colour crawled up her slender throat.
But Alex Rossini didn’t bat a magnificent eyelash and his response was instantaneous. ‘A merciful escape.’
‘Escape?’ Sara queried blankly.
Alex spread beautifully shaped brown hands expressively. ‘Think how much more disturbing it would have been had you discovered such a sordid liaison after the wedding.’
‘There isn’t going to be a wedding now,’ Sara said shakily, and whereas telling that same fact to her aunt had seemed like part of a living nightmare it now felt like hard, agonising reality.
‘Of course not. No woman would forgive such a betrayal, would she?’ Alex drawled softly.
The silence hummed. The tip of her tongue snaked out to moisten her dry lower lip. Forgiveness…understanding. Brian had been asking for both within seconds. He had not stood shoulder to shoulder with Antonia…
‘After all,’ Alex continued with honeyed persistence. ‘How could you ever trust him again? Or her?’
The darkness sank back down over Sara where for an instant she had seen a wild, hopeful chink of light.
‘Were you thinking of giving him another chance?’ Alex enquired in a tone of polite astonishment.
Sara flinched. ‘No,’ she muttered sickly, duly forced to see the impossibility of ever trusting again.
Yet she could not believe that she was actually having such a conversation with Alex Rossini, who was not known for his concerned and benevolent interest in his employees’ personal problems. Indeed, the Rossini credo was that the best employees left their private life outside the door of Rossini Industries and never, ever allowed that private life to interfere with their work.
‘Why are you talking to me like this?’ she whispered helplessly.
‘Do you have anyone else to confide in?’
Sara tried and failed to swallow. It was almost as if he knew, but how could he possibly know how frighteningly isolated she now was? She could not turn to Antonia’s parents and she had no other relatives, no close friends who were not also Brian’s friends or colleagues. ‘No, but—’
‘Nothing you have told me will go any further,’ Alex asserted, his night-dark eyes, sharp and shrewd as knives, trained on her, but those eyes were no longer cutting, no longer cold, no longer grimly amused.
‘You’re being so…so kind,’ Sara said in a wobbly tone as she fought to conceal her disbelief, for this was a side of his character that she had never thought to see, indeed never dreamt existed.
‘You have had a traumatic experience