The Volakis Vows: The Marriage Betrayal / Bride for Real

‘I have a train to catch—’

‘But you’re supposed to be leaving with me this afternoon,’ the pretty brunette protested, her surprise and annoyance patent.

‘I’d like to go home now. All the best, Cosima,’ Tally pronounced with sincerity and departed in relief …

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_9d0a41d4-4971-5bc4-9a58-0464fa5e2131)

HAVING breakfasted, Sander was just settling down with the financial section from one of the Sunday broadsheets when he glanced out of the window and saw Tally’s small figure wheeling a case at a brisk pace down the driveway.

Thinking about what might have prompted her sudden departure from Westgrave Manor, Sander’s lean powerful body became tense and he stifled a curse. It was nothing to do with him if that spoilt little shrew, Cosima, had sacked her assistant. But, a moment later, prompted by the same instincts that had once made him search night and day for a week to find a lost dog, Sander sprang upright with a frown and headed out to his car.

It was not that he regretted what he had said to Tally Spencer—he did not. Given a choice he would never have chosen to sleep with a virgin. It was not even that he was still interested in her—he was not. Sander liked sex to be simple and his very frustrating encounter with Tally had persuaded him that in straying from his usual female format he had made a cardinal error. Instead of experiencing a refreshing difference and a lot of passion with his choice of an ‘ordinary’ girl as a lover, he had landed a virgin and a feisty and ungrateful one at that. A fast learner as he was, he knew that in future he would stick to the experienced sophisticates he was accustomed to.

Tally glanced up when she heard the growling sports car behind her slow down, but when she saw Sander gazing back at her from the lowered driver’s window, colour stung her cheeks and her chin came up at a defensive angle. ‘What do you want?’

Her dark blonde hair was blowing in the breeze in a spectacular torrent of curls. Her vivid green eyes were wide and defensive above her creamy skin and her soft full lips that had tasted like ripe strawberries were slightly open and moist. The familiar surging heaviness of reaction at his groin infuriated Sander and he studied her with frowning force, wondering what it was about her that got to him sexually every single time.

‘I’ll give you a lift to wherever you’re going,’ he told her.

‘Thanks, but I’m heading to the station and it’s only down the road,’ Tally told him stonily, convinced as she was that he could only have followed her because he felt sorry for her.

Those lean bronzed features of his were so breathtakingly handsome that that embarrassing need to look and then look again at him was already assailing her afresh. He levelled dark golden eyes fringed by silky black lashes as long as fly-swats on her and she wanted to scream. She’d had sex with him and although the act had not reached the usual conclusion it had still proved a disaster. That awareness clawed at her, making her eyes evasive and her spine rigid as discomfiture spread through her like toxic waste that suppressed every warmer response.

Sander climbed out as if she hadn’t spoken and snatched up the small case by her side to shove it into the small space behind the front seats. ‘Come on,’ he urged impatiently.

Unprepared to have a stand-up row with him within sight of the manor house, Tally compressed her generous mouth and slid into the passenger seat, feeling hugely self-conscious and uncomfortable.

‘Did the spoiled brat sack you?’ Sander enquired, accelerating down the drive. He was striving not to notice the way that her fine wool sweater hugged her breasts and the tight denim defined her rounded thighs, or to recall that glorious body spread before him naked in an invitation that had gone badly wrong.

‘Er … no. We just decided to go our separate ways sooner rather than later,’ Tally parried, not wanting to tell lies or to brand Cosima a liar. She felt uneasy about this fact, yet to tell him the truth was impossible. He was Greek born and bred like her sibling and he moved in the same social circles, so she was too proud to admit her real relationship to Cosima when her father and his family preferred to virtually ignore her existence.

‘That kid is out of control. She committed an offence last night,’ Sander pointed out as he drove out onto the main road.

‘She’s young and wilful. No doubt she’ll get over it—’

‘What age are you?’ he cut in abruptly.

‘Twenty.’

‘You come across as more mature than that.’ Sander was surprised and not best pleased by the news that she was only just out of her teens.

‘Just not mature enough to head you off this morning!’ Tally rejoined with scantily leashed bitterness.

‘Don’t take it that way,’ Sander drawled, shooting a measuring glance at her strained profile as he parked on the quiet road outside the train station.

Tally shot him a look of naked loathing. ‘How did you expect me to take it? It was a lousy experience and you insulted me into the bargain!’

In the simmering silence, Tally scrambled out and flipped round to reach for her case but Sander was faster. Colour scoring his high cheekbones at the bite of that word, ‘lousy’, and the unexpected force of her antipathy, he lifted her case out and extended his arm to her in silence at the front of the car. His self-command in the face of her emotional outburst tightened her expressive mouth and made her feel foolish.

As she stood there rigid with the force of aggression she was containing and with her luminous eyes still hurling angry defiance, Sander was amused and intrigued. Women never fought with him and even more rarely criticised him and she did not look the type to do so either, for she was so small and softly rounded in shape, an exceedingly feminine woman in appearance. Was it that quality that encapsulated her appeal for him? He was tempted to haul her into his arms, lift her up against him and prove that he could turn ‘lousy’ into orgasmic delight and it annoyed him that he was not to have that opportunity.

‘We should meet for dinner some evening,’ Sander murmured silkily.

‘You’ve got to be joking!’ Tally slung, turning on her heel to walk away without even a hint of hesitation.

‘You don’t know what you’re missing, glikia mou.’

‘Don’t I? I told you how I felt about you!’ she tossed back sharply. ‘And don’t call me your sweetheart. I’m not your sweet anything!’

‘These are absolutely beautiful!’ Binkie exclaimed, burying her nose in the fragrant bouquet of roses that had just been delivered.

‘My goodness,’ Tally remarked, joining her in the kitchen. ‘Does one of Mum’s men think she’s home from Portugal?’

‘They’re not for your mother, they’re for you!’ Binkie proclaimed, turning eyes that positively shone with satisfaction onto Tally.

‘Me?’ Tally was satisfyingly thunderstruck by that announcement and she plucked the card from between the older woman’s fingertips. Literally tearing off the envelope enclosing the tiny card, she stared down at just two words and a phone number.

Dinner? Sander

‘Oh,’ she muttered tightly, dropping the card as though it had burned her, while wondering why Sander Volakis handed out such conflicting messages. And did he seriously think that he could just toss her some flowers and she would phone him like an obedient little girl grateful for his attention and eager to forget how he had offended her?

Only five days earlier, Sander had made it painfully clear that he wanted nothing more to do with her and his insinuation that she had slept with him because he was rich had deeply insulted her. Yet he had offered her a dinner date a mere hour later when he dropped her at the train she had caught back to London. She had made it plain that she wasn’t interested, so why was he now sending her flowers? An extravagant bunch of very expensive and truly lovely roses, as well.

Binkie wanted to know everything about the sender of the flowers and Tally had to belatedly admit to meeting Sander at Westgrave Manor and share what she knew about him. Reluctant to upset Binkie, she did not tell the disheartening tale of Cosima’s antics during that weekend. Her colour fluctuating wildly beneath the older woman’s speculative scrutiny, Tally leant heavily on Sander’s allegedly bad reputation with women as she spoke. The heady glow of romantic hope in Binkie’s eyes slowly began to recede.

While Tally enjoyed arranging the roses and setting the vase in her bedroom she had no intention of making use of Sander Volakis’ mobile phone number. In a weak moment she did a search on his name on the Internet and was immediately rewarded with even more good reasons to keep him at a distance. Sander evidently specialised in leggy, famous blondes of the model, entertainment industry celebrity or socialite brand. He dated ladies who wore very small dresses or bikinis and who were papped leaving nightclubs and posing on yachts. And she was quick to remind herself that she hadn’t liked him, indeed, had wanted very badly to slap him that morning at Westgrave and had only resisted the urge in a futile effort to reclaim her lost dignity.

Bearing those important facts in mind, Tally accepted that it was very perverse of her to lie awake every night thinking about the volatile Greek and the lean hard-boned lineaments of that unforgettable face of his. Her intelligence put Sander squarely in the incompatible category, but something infinitely less rational and more contrary kept him alive and vibrant in her thoughts. Yet he had put her off sex, she conceded in rueful mortification. All very exciting up to a point and then a rather painful disappointment, she recalled with a grimace, wondering if it would have got better had he continued and then scolding herself for her lingering curiosity. She had learnt a good lesson, she told herself instead.

Getting intimate with a stranger was a very bad idea. Sander had assumed that she had sacrificed her virginity in an effort to impress him in some way. So why hadn’t he got the message when she refused to see him again?

Cosima phoned her that same morning and confided that Sander had called her to ask for Tally’s address. ‘Are you seeing him?’

‘No, but he sent me flowers,’ Tally admitted to satisfy the younger woman’s curiosity.

‘Dad was very impressed when I told him—’

‘You shouldn’t have mentioned it,’ Tally cut in. ‘Nothing’s going to happen.’

‘Maybe Sander did it for a bet or something,’ her sibling suggested. ‘Why else would he be chasing you?’

‘I don’t know, but you seem to have more ideas on that score than I do,’ Tally said drily.

Crystal returned that evening from a month-long stay at her current boyfriend’s Portuguese villa. Deeply tanned and wearing a lot of gold jewellery, Crystal watched her daughter work on her latest interior design project for college at the dining room table and sighed. ‘Don’t you ever get tired of being so sensible, Tally?’

‘Meaning?’ Tally prompted, wondering what had etched shadows like bruises below her mother’s fine eyes.

‘Peter has decided that he wants a break from me,’ she revealed with a shrug that was clearly intended to be careless but which didn’t quite pull off the feat. ‘Thinks we’re getting too serious. Well, we have been practically living together for the past six months …’