The Volakis Vow: Bride For Real Part 4

AT LUNCHTIME on the first day of his return to the office, before he could step into the lift and leave to meet Tally, Sander was signalled by his highly efficient senior PA to return to his office. Having become accustomed to having his wife within easy reach while they had been in Morocco, Sander was planning to surprise her. But aware that his PA only ever called him back to deal with critical issues, Sander wasted no time in retracing his steps to take the phone call that she had decided was worthy of his attention straight away.

Disconcertingly, he found himself talking to a French lawyer who, ignoring Sander's initial response in the same language, insisted on speaking in heavily accented English on a frustratingly poor line. Sander was forced to ask the man to repeat himself several times and what Edouard Arpin had to tell him came as an unpleasant surprise. Evidently Oleia Telis had died in a Paris hospital of pneumonia and her burial had taken place the day before. Sander was shaken enough by that startling news about the young Greek woman he had loved as a teenager, but he was also astonished to learn that Oleia had made him the sole beneficiary of her estate. Apparently his presence was urgently required in Paris.

Sander suppressed a groan of disbelief. He had at least a dozen questions to ask but the French lawyer had already ended the call, having extracted Sander's a.s.surance that he would come as soon as possible to Paris. Why the h.e.l.l would Oleia have left him anything at all? And could there be a worse case of bad timing? Out of the blue Tally had come back to him, their marriage was back on track and the very last thing Sander felt he needed was a shadowy link cast by a past lover. And, of all women, Oleia-whom Tally had more reason than she knew to be sensitive about, Sander reflected ruefully, his brilliant dark eyes clouding with grudging recollection. Oleia, exotic and flighty as a hummingbird, dead? It seemed impossible.

His mind jumped to their last meeting and hastily backtracked from that contentious recollection again. Not his most shining moment. His strong bone structure tensed with strain: he really didn't want to go there. It was well over a year since he'd had any contact with Oleia and he had had no idea that she had left London to make her home in the French capital. What on earth could Oleia have left him? She had no relatives, he recalled wryly. Orphaned as a child, Oleia had been raised by a G.o.dparent and she had gained full independence at eighteen once she'd come into a very extensive fortune left to her by her parents. He would fly over to Paris first thing the following morning, sort it out and be home again by evening without Tally being any the wiser.

Yet, avoiding any issue and employing secrecy went against his inherently forthright nature. But the desire to keep his wife happy was making Sander cautious and, for the first time in his life, keen to avoid potential sources of conflict. He had never liked surprises and it still bothered him that he had absolutely no idea why Tally had suddenly changed her mind and decided to give their marriage a second chance, for she was not a capricious personality. Now Oleia, who had never surprised him before this, he acknowledged. Perhaps the young Greek woman had left him some ironic gift as a footnote to their troubled relationship ... and his lack of forgiveness. Sander was very conscious at that moment that he had never found it within himself to forgive Oleia for sleeping with another guy when they were teenagers. Like the elephant who never forgot, he had retained a grudge and in retrospect that struck him as a sad indictment of his male ego. Had Oleia had to die for him to appreciate how senseless it had been to nourish a grievance for so long?

The next morning Sander did not expect Tally to wake up before he departed for his early flight to Paris. He was in the kitchen nursing a cup of black coffee when she appeared in the doorway. Wrapped in a fluffy pink robe, she looked incredibly cuddly. Her green eyes were drowsy and her soft full mouth took on a tender curve as she surveyed him. 'So, you're still staging crack-of-dawn starts,' she reproved.

'Because I have an early flight and I want to be home for dinner.'

'Where are you off to?' Tally queried, her gaze lingering on his lean devastatingly handsome features with helpless appreciation.

'Paris.'

Tally recognised the tension etched in the taut angle of his stunning cheekbones and the tightening round the corners of his wide, sensual mouth and wondered at it. 'Is there something wrong?'

Sander shrugged a broad shoulder. 'Why would there be?'

'Did you and your father have a disagreement recently?' she asked, suspecting that that might lie at the root of his tension. Sander was usually too loyal to complain about the problems he had with the older man.

Sander sighed. 'He's gone into virtual semi-retirement. He's never forgiven me for winning that vote of confidence from the board of directors.'

'You had to have their support to push through changes. He'll get over it.'

'Neither of my parents has a good track record for moving on,' Sander reminded her wryly.

And that was a truth and no mistake, Tally conceded ruefully when Sander had gone. Even when she was carrying their unborn grandchild, Petros and Eirene Volakis had made no attempt to welcome her into the family circle. They had kept her at arm's length in much the same way as they treated Sander. He was their son but forever doomed to live in the shadow of his late brother, t.i.tos, who had died in a car accident a few years earlier. Their att.i.tude infuriated Tally, who knew that it had been Sander who had saved Volakis Shipping after t.i.tos had steered the family firm to the edge of destruction.

While Sander was in Paris, Tally was looking forward to a relatively laid-back day browsing through furniture showrooms on behalf of a client. Sander caught his flight and had to wait for his appointment at Edouard Arpin's offices. That waste of time chafed his already stretched nerves. When he was finally ushered into the solicitor's room only to be handed a handwritten letter, which he was a.s.sured would answer his questions, he was far from impressed.

It was a letter from Oleia and, apparently, a long-winded one.

'This is crazy.' Gritting his even, white teeth, Sander shook out the sheets of closely written notepaper with an air of long-suffering male incomprehension. Why the h.e.l.l would Oleia have chosen to write him a letter? Who on earth wrote letters these days?

'I believe everything will be clearer once you have read my late client's explanation,' the solicitor remarked as he left Sander alone in the room.

Suppressing a groan of exasperation and extending his long powerful legs in an att.i.tude of resolute relaxation, Sander settled down to read.

Unfortunately he hit a rock that derailed him at the same instant that he came on the unexpected word, 'baby'. Frowning in bewilderment, because he had no idea where the reference to an infant had sprung from, he had to retrace several lines and read with greater care and concentration. As he read an awful presentiment of impending doom began to creep through his big powerful length like spooky fingers of frost. His worst expectations fulfilled, he sprang upright in a sudden movement of repudiation with a curse on his lips and flung the letter violently aside.

No, it couldn't be true, he reasoned in thundering disbelief, unable to read any further because acting the role of pa.s.sive victim made him feel like a rat caught in a trap. He could not have got Oleia pregnant when he had briefly turned to her for consolation after his marriage had disintegrated ... Could he have? Hypothetically speaking, he was grudgingly forced to admit that as his recollections were vague in the extreme such a development was humanly possible.

But surely G.o.d would not punish him that harshly? Had he not already lost a child? Sander clung to the comforting belief that he had paid his dues with pained conviction. He refused to credit that one ill-conceived night with the wrong woman could serve him with so brutal a retribution as a baby, a consequence that his wife would never accept or forgive. He had made a mistake and he had known as soon as he made it. He had also immediately done what he could to redress the balance with honesty. Even so, that night had lain on his conscience ever since.

And only now was he learning-too late to change anything-that Oleia had fallen pregnant that same night and had chosen to keep the fact a secret from him. She had duly given birth to a little girl-but what the heck had she done with the child? Breathing audibly from lungs that felt constricted and with a fine veil of perspiration now forming on his brow, Sander was forced to retrieve the letter and read on a good deal faster than he had previously done to answer that all-important question.

Apparently, Oleia had called her daughter Lili and she had not put the child up for immediate adoption as he might have a.s.sumed. It was even more of a challenge for him to imagine a free-spirited party girl like Oleia willingly a.s.suming the responsibilities of a single parent. In fact he could not imagine that miraculous development at all. Yet evidently that, and in his opinion inconceivably, was what Oleia had done.

Making it clear that she had long foreseen his likely reaction to the sudden shocking news that he was a father, Oleia had informed him in her letter that she had left a sample of Lili's hair with a reputable French DNA testing agency so that Sander could have a test done and check out the child's parentage for his own satisfaction. There was something so frighteningly factual about that obliging information that it punched a substantial hole in the barrier of Sander's disbelief. He folded the letter and dug it into a pocket, unable to face reading any further revelations before he had come to terms with what he had just learned. Could it be true that he had become a father without knowing it? That he had fathered a child with Oleia Telis? Shock and consternation ripped through Sander like a paralysing electrical current and it was at that juncture, while he was frozen by the window with preoccupied eyes, that Edouard Arpin chose to rejoin him.

The lawyer spoke clearly and concisely and Sander finally understood why his presence had been so urgently required in Paris. A four-month-old little girl had just lost her mother and now Sander was her legal guardian. Whether or not he felt the need to check out Lili's exact parentage was Sander's own private business and had no bearing on the reality that, regardless of what he discovered in that line, he would still be officially responsible for the welfare of Oleia's daughter.

When he questioned Edouard more closely about the circ.u.mstances of Oleia's death he was dismayed to be told that Oleia's party lifestyle had probably weakened her immune system and led to the pneumonia that had killed her. In addition Lili's current living arrangements could not continue as her nanny had already handed in her notice. Decisions had to be made and quickly.

As a guy who had already paid a steep price for his unwillingness to commit to the responsibility of being a parent, Sander felt as if he were walking on eggsh.e.l.ls over ground he had hoped he'd never have to cover again. In the back of his mind he could not help but ask himself what Tally would expect from him. He knew that his reluctance to be a father had caused the first cracks in his marriage and had further contributed to Tally's lack of faith in him as a husband. After all, Tally had had a hopeless father figure in Anatole Karydas, which had ensured that she set a very high value on a man's ability to be a good parent. He could only wish that that painful truth had occurred to him when they were first married.

Within ten minutes of leaving Edouard Arpin's office, Sander was on the way to the DNA testing agency, keen to get that formality settled and out of the way. The procedure, the taking of a saliva swab, took only seconds. At Oleia's apartment, Sander was greeted by the nanny, Suzette, a thin, frowning blonde, and before he even got as far as the hall he received a stream of complaints.

Her charge was impossible... refused to sleep ... eat ... stop scratching. How soon would the new nanny be arriving? In the background a baby was wailing incessantly. It was shrill, forlorn crying and an a.s.sault on Sander's eardrums. His brow furrowing, a pained look in his dark eyes, he admitted that he had yet to hire a replacement nanny but that he would be doing so immediately. He offered to significantly increase Suzette's salary if she would stay on until he could put other arrangements in place. A smile removing the sour slant from her lips, the blonde agreed and insisted on showing him straight into the nursery.

So great was the noise that Sander would not have been surprised to see an entire row of screaming babies in the room, but the big centrally placed cot contained only one very small child. It had to be said that Lili was a very miserable-looking baby. Her very red face was screwed up unattractively and swollen, her equally undersized limbs lost and flailing around in the folds of a baby suit that was too large. No magical sense of recognition or bonding a.s.sailed Sander, who had to work hard just to stand his ground in spite of the appalling racket.

For an instant he recalled on a sharp surge of grief the baby son who had failed to even draw breath at birth. He remembered those terrible minutes while the doctors had worked frantically in an effort to save the life already lost. He remembered that hideous silence, when any sound from their son would have been welcomed, finally being torn apart by Tally's sobs of disbelief. He remembered trying to be strong for her, which basically had meant not crying alongside her while he wondered insanely if his lukewarm att.i.tude to becoming a father could have somehow caused the tragedy.

'Does Lili often cry like this?' he enquired without any expression at all.

'Toujours... always,' the nanny contended wearily. 'I get no sleep.'

Unable to summon up at will a more acceptable emotional response, Sander strove to be practical instead. He questioned the nanny carefully about Lili's short life to date and his lean strong face took on a grave aspect. The baby would have to be taken to London. The Paris apartment would be cleared and the contents stored until someone had time to go through them and see if anything ought to be kept. Returning to the hall, which was at least quieter, Sander called his PA in London and then Edouard Arpin and did what came naturally to him: he made arrangements and reached decisions. He contacted an agency in London and was promised the creme de la creme of nannies to care for Lili in the hotel suite he had booked for her occupation. He saw no s.p.a.ce for inspiration in any of the choices he made. To look after Lili he had to take her back to London with him and he could scarcely take her home to Tally. His brain found it impossible to move beyond that boundary.

'I will travel to London with her and pa.s.s her over to the new nanny,' Suzette conceded reluctantly.

By that stage, Lili had cried herself to sleep. Sander gazed broodingly down at the slumbering child. He saw no familiar Volakis traits in her indistinct features and felt absolutely nothing. Was this wretched little waif his daughter? His flesh and blood? His conscience was p.r.i.c.ked and he was angry with himself. Shouldn't he feel something? Or was it shock freezing his responses? He had one final act to perform in Paris: he bought the orchids Oleia had loved, flaunting blooms in her favourite scarlet, and set them on her grave. For the first time he wished he had some of Tally's faith but he could find no comfort in prayers. What had happened had happened, and nothing he said or felt in retrospect could change that hard fact.

When Sander phoned that evening to say he wouldn't be back until the next day instead, Tally was not that surprised. He sounded preoccupied and she a.s.sumed his mind was still on business. But just thirty minutes later she received another call, which took her very much by surprise. That second call came from her half-sister, Cosima Karydas, and it broke a silence that had lasted for well over two years, during which time Cosima had ignored Tally's wedding in order to maintain her distance from her illegitimate elder sibling. Cosima, Anatole's younger daughter, born of his marriage to a Greek woman, had never really come to terms with the existence of Tally, who had been raised apart from Cosima and with none of the material advantages Cosima took for granted. 'My goodness, Cosima ...' Tally exclaimed.

'Sorry I haven't been in touch ... you know how it is when you're busy-'

'Of course I do,' Tally responded, relieved to hear from the younger woman again.

'Would you be free for lunch tomorrow? I'm dying to see you!'

Pleased by Cosima's enthusiasm but wryly amused at her impatience after so long a silence, Tally mentally rescheduled an appointment and agreed to meet up. Her sibling made a predictably late arrival. Heads turned to follow Cosima's enviably shapely figure as she crossed the restaurant. With silky dark wings of hair framing her bright dark eyes she was very pretty girl.

'I gather you're back with Sander,' Cosima remarked over a gla.s.s of wine. 'I don't blame you: he's gorgeous.'

Tally went pink and smiled, heartened by her sister's easy acceptance of their reconciliation. 'He still floats my boat.'

'Boat ... Volakis Shipping ... Pun! Well, it's good to know you haven't lost your sense of humour.' In spite of that sentiment, however, the younger woman still looked very tense. 'I've heard something. I just had to check it out with you, though you'll have to promise first not to tell Dad that I pa.s.sed it on ...'

Tally's smooth brow furrowed. 'I won't repeat anything you tell me.'

'You weren't always so scrupulous,' the younger woman reminded her ruefully.

Tally took that on the chin, for she had once reported Cosima's wrongdoing to their father to ensure that she did not carry the can for things that had gone wrong while both were staying for a weekend at a country house. 'You were much younger then.'

Cosima winced. 'And in the wrong when I spiked your drink at that party,' she slotted in, shamefaced. 'I'm sorry about that and sorry, too, I didn't have the guts to apologise at the time.'

'It's over and done with,' Tally said soothingly.

Cosima rested troubled eyes on Tally. 'You're making me feel awful. I just can't tell you the story I heard recently ...'

'I haven't a clue what you're talking about-'

'I know and that makes it worse,' Cosima complained.

'Start at the beginning,' Tally advised. 'That's usually the best place.'

'Once upon a time,' Cosima began in a teasing tone but her eyes were troubled and evasive, 'there was a very beautiful girl called Oleia ... Oleia Telis.'

Every sc.r.a.p of colour slowly drained from Tally's cheeks, her eyes reflecting the jolt of shock she had received at hearing that particular name spoken out loud for the first time in a very long time. 'I've heard about her.'

'So you know that Oleia and Sander-'

'Were an item when they were teenagers,' Tally slotted in flatly, wondering why her sibling was subjecting her to such an unwelcome reminder.

'A little bird in Athens is suggesting that they've been together a lot more recently than that,' Cosima let drop in a concerned undertone. 'I thought you should know. I honestly didn't want to upset you. I just thought you shouldn't be left in the dark while other people talk behind your back.'

Tally grimaced at that frank admission. 'I'm not in the dark. I met Oleia once and it was a memorable occasion. There's not much she wouldn't do to get Sander back, so I'm not surprised there's gossip doing the rounds.'

'This is more serious than gossip. There's a rumour that there's a child,' Cosima almost whispered.

'A child?' Tally gave her pretty sibling an arrested look and her eyes widened with disbelief. 'Sander and Oleia's? That's outrageous. Of course there isn't a child!'

'If you're sure.'

There was an angry sparkle now in Tally's green eyes. 'Of course I'm sure. Where did you hear this ridiculous rumour?'

'I heard my father discussing it with my mother. Before you ask, he had no idea whether it was true or not and I was forbidden from mentioning it to you or anyone else,' Cosima confided with a grimace. 'He was furious I'd overheard their conversation.'

Renewed shock had made Tally's heartbeat thud so loudly in her ears that she thought it might stop dead and never start again. The reference to Anatole, whom she knew to be a fertile source of all kinds of confidential information in Greek society, disturbed her. Naturally she had no very clear idea of what Sander had been doing during their separation, but she was convinced that an ambition to father a child with Oleia Telis would not have featured. Nor, considering his feelings for his one-time girlfriend, could she credit that he would have chosen to get involved with the glamorous brunette again.

In fact, self-evidently, Cosima was repeating a nasty, malicious rumour and Tally considered herself to be too sensible to pay heed to that sort of nonsense. Someone knew about Oleia's obsession with Sander and had spitefully put that together with the fact that Sander's first child had been stillborn. What other connection could there be? She did not think she had ever heard a more unpleasant piece of gossip!

'I just thought that if it was me in your position, I'd want to know,' Cosima told her silent companion awkwardly in the humming silence. 'Oh, Tally, should I have kept quiet?'

Tally a.s.sured her half-sister that it was only a silly story and not worth getting upset about. She hoped the hollow note in her own voice was not recognisable. Keen to seem impervious to what she had been told, she remarked on how hungry she was and ordered a snack for lunch, only to push it round the plate, praying that Cosima was too intent talking about her latest boyfriend to notice that Tally had mislaid her supposedly healthy appet.i.te.

Obviously the reference to a child was manufactured twaddle to add drama to the scandals that had once dogged Sander's every footstep as a single man. All the same, Tally reasoned, it was not unlikely that Sander might have met up with the beautiful Greek girl again and not impossible that the attraction between them could have revived. Her gla.s.s held like a shield in a white-knuckled grip, Tally sipped her wine and thought and fretted about Sander, whom she loved with an all-consuming pa.s.sion that sometimes scared her ...

Sander, who often did the unexpected and whose thoughts and actions she could never second-guess. Sander, who could be as volatile as petrol sprayed on a blazing fire ...

CHAPTER SIX.

ON THE flight back to London on his private jet, Sander was served with a tasty early dinner. He felt like the condemned man being presented with a last meal and eventually nudged the plate away untouched.

Lili was an unforgettable presence because she cried throughout the flight. The combined attentions of her nanny and the cabin crew made no impression on her and the playful sallies and compliments the baby attracted soon dried up. Regardless of whether she was held, rocked or fed, Lili sobbed inconsolably. Sander decided the child needed a doctor to check her over and possibly a nanny with a more nurturing approach. Lili had not inherited her mother's cute factor and her incessant crying and seeming unresponsiveness to her handlers would have taxed the patience of even the keenest carer. But it was first and foremost his job to look out for her needs, he recognised grimly.

Tally would never forgive him.

The thought sliced like a rapier through his brain, shooting him back on target to reality with a stinging jolt. Sander drew in a shuddering breath and bolted down another whisky without appreciating the flavour of its rare vintage. He had to tell Tally about Lili before someone else did because Lili's existence would unleash the kind of feverish speculation that the gossip columnists and, it had to be admitted, many of his friends revelled in. But how could he tell his wife that he had fathered a baby by another woman after their own child had died? It would be too cruel to tell her such a thing, yet to remain silent was equally impossible. No, he decided heavily, there was no escaping the inevitable and there were no adequate words to describe such a departure from good taste and acceptable behaviour.

Tally had made a conscious effort to get home early that afternoon in order to dress up for Sander's return. When she was a teenager she'd had a different att.i.tude, deeming the urge to put on an artificial show for a man degrading. But she had learned to think differently while married, once she'd seen how a glimpse of sensual lingerie or a revealing outfit could light a fire in Sander's eyes that he couldn't control. It had given her a taste of feminine power that she liked very much. And, in the vicinity of a male who could leave her dry-mouthed and breathless with one winging glance, she had enjoyed that sense of equality.

Of course, lighting fires carried the obvious cost of extinguishing them again, she acknowledged with pink cheeks as she chose a dress made of a stretchy purple fabric that moulded the swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and hips and slid her feet into velvet open-toed stilettos. Cosima's tale had seriously rattled the bars of the cage that held her insecurity. Tally could have done without the knowledge that a rapacious beauty like Oleia was out there ready to move in and take full advantage of Sander's relatively recent availability. Sander was a very attractive, very wealthy, man and the promises inherent in the wedding rings they had once worn had been damaged by their separation. This time around Tally felt that she could not afford to take anything for granted. It would take time and effort to build the bonds of trust again. And, in the short term, she could not take Sander out of circulation, she could only hope that he valued their marriage enough to respect it.

Sander knew exactly what he was going to say when he got home; well, he knew it right up until he walked into the bedroom where Tally, one stiletto heel braced on a chair, was straightening a gleaming silk stocking the colour of a freshwater pearl on a slender thigh. Stockings and suspenders really did it for him but she rarely wore them because she found them uncomfortable. The startling surge of response in his groin as he glimpsed the taut strip of fine fabric between her thighs sent his brain reeling into a plunge bath of sensual awareness that did nothing to sharpen his wits. He knew an invitation when he got one and he almost groaned out loud in his frustration because he knew he dared not touch her just then: but, conversely, he also knew he might never touch her again once he had finished telling her what she had to be told. The reflection threatened to tear him in two with rare indecision.

'Sander ... I a.s.sumed you'd be later than this.' As she met the stunning golden gaze welded to her with such explicit appreciation a hot ache stirred low in Tally's pelvis. Sander was watching her intently from the threshold of the room. With an impatient hand he thrust the door open wider, striding in and angling a hip back against the door to close it: a lean powerful figure in a designer suit with hard bronzed features and eyes full of predatory fire. Her Greek husband was all male and irresistible. His attention did not once waver from her and she trembled with p.r.o.nounced awareness. He was so d.a.m.n beautiful he made her skin tighten over her bones, her heartbeat thump like a panic alarm shrieking through her treacherous body. She understood why Oleia had never got over losing him and knew she intended to hang onto him, whatever it took.

'The jet got an earlier take-off slot ... love the stockings,' Sander husked, coming to a halt and lifting the leg she had lowered to brace it back on the edge of the chair again. 'Loved the view of you standing there. Like my every fantasy brought to life even more, yineka mou.'

The brush of his fingertips against her thigh made her shiver. She stared up at him, raspberry tinted lips slightly parted, and he bent his handsome dark head and tasted her mouth with hungry driving brevity. It only made her want his mouth more and she lifted a hand to snare it in the springy depths of his black hair and draw him back to her again. He kissed her with devastating urgency while he trailed long brown fingers up the length of her raised leg, sliding below the hem of her dress and pushing it out of his path. Knowing that if she looked down she would see her knickers exposed, she felt shameless, but her body was pulsing on red alert. A fingertip skated over the most sensitive area of her entire body and she stopped breathing, time suspended as he lingered on the tiny cl.u.s.ter of nerve endings that controlled her. He released her mouth long enough for her to moan in response and watched her as she pushed against his teasing hand.

'I want you so much,' Sander admitted in a roughened undertone, tugging the thin band of silk away from her overheated flesh.

He cast off his jacket, wrenched loose his tie and dropped down on his knees. She made a m.u.f.fled sound of protest, which he ignored as he trailed down her knickers with determined hands. The first brush of his tongue at the moist heart of her sent a violent shiver of response through her and he closed supportive hands to the backs of her thighs, gently but firmly easing her back against the bed until she folded down backwards on it.

Tally lay back, legs spread, feeling wanton, her hands clutching into the bedspread below her fingers. Sander teased her with his mouth and tongue and a kind of strangled gasp escaped her, arousal shoving surge after surge of heat through her trembling length. Her body went out of control incredibly fast and she hit a shattering climax that roared through her like a tornado.

Seconds later, Sander sank into her still frantically aroused body and she could not resist the hunger he reignited. She was conscious of her intense pleasure when he reached the same completion in the circle of her arms. Afterwards she lay against him listening to the solid rea.s.suring thump of his heart beneath her cheek while her limp body still hummed from a surfeit of excitement.

'The only really sensible thing I ever did in my life was marry you,' Sander muttered shakily, his broad chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath again.

'And even then my father had to twist your arm to get you to the altar,' Tally could not resist reminding him.

Brilliant dark eyes welded to her flushed face, Sander closed his arms round her in a crushing embrace and pressed his mouth to her smooth brow in a soothing benediction. Marmalade strands of hair tickled his chin. 'He didn't do you a favour, yineka mou.'

A little surprised by that uncharacteristic burst of self-mockery, Tally luxuriated in his affection and wrapped her arms round him.

Sander released her to sit up. 'I need a shower.'

Closing his bleak gaze, he sprang off the bed without further ado to head into the bathroom. Reality had rea.s.serted its cruel hold on him. When he reappeared still towelling himself dry, Tally was dozing and he leant down to shake her awake.

'What?'

'Get dressed. We need to talk about stuff ... you and I,' he extended flatly.