Bride for Real Read online

  ‘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.

  Sander intercepted her and removed the case from her hold to carry it downstairs for her. ‘A mistake you evidently enjoyed repeating,’ he traded softly.

  Guilty colour ran like a banner into her cheeks as she locked the case into the boot of the car outside. Tormenting images of Sander with other women were playing over and over again inside her head, acting like a refined sort of torture on her vulnerable mind. Mounting distress at those wounding inner pictures made her hand shake as she searched for her keys in her bag.

  Frowning down at her, because he was an observant man, Sander rested a lean hand on the driver’s door. ‘Are you sure that you’re feeling well enough to drive?’

  ‘I’m perfectly fine.’ Annoyed that she had not contrived to fool him with her façade of calm, Tally jumped into the car without further ado, terrified that she might betray her insecurity in other ways.

  ‘You’re running away again, just like you did when you walked out on our marriage,’ Sander condemned bleakly.

  ‘I’m being sensible!’ Tally contradicted in fierce disagreement and slammed the door shut.

  As she drove off she refused to allow herself a backward glance at his tall powerful figure in the driving mirror. That would have been surrendering to weakness and she was ashamed enough of her behaviour over the past twelve hours to feel that she had to withstand even that minor temptation.

  All the while sh
e was thinking of the many times in her life when she’d had to be tough and control emotions that seemed stronger than those of other people. When she was still a child she had often longed for unconditional love from those close to her. Binkie, of course, had loved Tally, but even at a young age Tally had appreciated that Binkie was in a different category as an employee, a housekeeper and childminder, paid by Tally’s mother to do a job. Either the people Tally loved did not have the capacity to love that strongly or she herself did not have the special je ne sais quoi that inspired that depth of feeling in others. Yet she knew that when she loved people she loved with her whole heart and usually got badly hurt.

  The most important person in her mother’s, Crystal’s, world, however, was generally the current man in her life. But then Crystal Spencer was very much a man’s woman and as mother and daughter shared few interests both women had learned to compromise in their expectations of each other. Equally, Tally’s father, Anatole, had always made it obvious that he was ashamed of his elder daughter’s illegitimate birth and, since he was a man to whom appearances meant a great deal, he had never been prepared to openly acknowledge her as his child. The feelings of his current wife, who had long preferred to pretend Tally didn’t exist, were much more important to him.

  Had that unfortunate background encouraged her to look for too much support and attention from Sander? Tally asked herself suddenly. Had she been too needy in their relationship? Had she expected too much from a young man thrust into marriage and parenthood when he had not, at first, chosen to freely embrace either? Her ruminations about her marriage always seemed to return to the same cruel fact: when Tally had fallen pregnant her father had blackmailed Sander into marrying her by threatening the stability of Volakis Shipping. Even though Sander had later insisted that he wanted to stay married to Tally, the truth of the terms on which their marriage had initially been built was a humiliation that could never be ignored or forgotten.

  Yet she had loved Sander so much in those days that she had closed her eyes to the flaws in their relationship. He had not loved her, nor had he pretended to do so. He had wanted her, supported her, cared for her, entertained her in and out of bed, but he had never felt for her the depth of emotion that she had felt for him. And that heart-rending truth had ensured that right from the start Tally felt like the lesser and weaker partner in their marriage.

  With every kilometre of French autoroute that she travelled along, taking her further and further from Sander, Tally was increasingly conscious of a tight, funny ache inside that felt remarkably like the pain of intense loss. She suppressed the sensation, fighting its worrying pull on her disordered senses. That was only her imagination overreacting, she told herself impatiently.

  But why was Sander so keen to get her back? Her tough Greek husband was such a macho guy. Was it simply his possessive streak? Was he like a dog with a discarded bone he wanted nobody else to touch? Had his belief that she was now with Robert Miller powered Sander’s desire to reclaim his wife? It was a desire that astonished her, for she knew his parents had probably heaved a sigh of relief when their son’s marriage failed. She had not impressed her snobbish in-laws as an acceptable wife for their only surviving son. Her illegitimacy and downmarket background had offended them. When she and Sander had still been happy together, his parents’ attitude had seemed unimportant because, aside of Petros Volakis working with Sander in the family business, the older couple had taken very little interest in their son or his wife during their brief marriage. Nor had they attended the sad little funeral for their infant grandchild, choosing to send only a card expressing conventional regret.

  While Tally waited to board the ferry at the cross-channel port, she realised that she was looking forward to the prospect of her mother’s company in London because she was in no mood to be on her own. What had happened with Sander, however, she resolved to keep entirely to herself. Fortunately, she was not so involved with Robert that she owed him any kind of an explanation either. The less time she spent agonising over events that she could not change, the happier she would be, she decided doggedly.

  Unfortunately, when Tally returned to London she found her mother to be in a brittle, evasive mood and more interested in looking up all her old friends than spending time with her only child. Just a week later, however, Tally called in at her apartment to pick up a colour swatch she had forgotten and walked into the midst of an astonishing scene. A stockily built older man in a suit was telling her sobbing mother that tears weren’t going to change anything …

  ‘What the heck is going on here?’ Tally demanded on the threshold of the room.

  Wild-eyed, Crystal flung her a daughter a startled look and, emitting a strangled sob, she scrambled upright and fled into her bedroom without another word.

  In bewilderment Tally directed her attention to her mother’s visitor instead. ‘Maybe you could tell me what this is about?’

  ‘I’m afraid that I’m not at liberty to do so. This is a very confidential matter,’ the older man responded starchily as he lifted his briefcase and headed for the door. ‘I’ve left my contact details on the table. Perhaps when Miss Spencer has had the chance to consider her options she will call me.’

  Mystified, Tally saw him out and then sped back into the lounge to lift his business card and frown down at it: Henry Fellows. He was a solicitor and she had never heard of him before. Rapping her knuckles lightly on the door of the guest room, Tally went in.

  Standing by the window with defensively folded arms, her mother shot her an apprehensive glance from reddened eyes. ‘Has he gone yet?’

  ‘Yes, he’s gone. What did he want with you?’

  Crystal’s slim shoulders drooped. ‘I might as well tell you because you’ll find out soon enough. Roger is threatening me with the police.’

  Aghast, Tally stared at the older woman. ‘The … police? Roger? What on earth are you talking about?’

  The story that Crystal began to tell was not entirely unexpected. Over the years, Tally’s mother had often got into financial trouble and Tally was not surprised to learn that the older woman had been in debt when she first moved in with the retired businessman, Roger Tailford, in Monaco.

  ‘At the beginning I managed to keep up payments on what I owed out of the allowance that Roger gave me for clothes.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have told Roger the truth?’ Tally asked ruefully.

  ‘Roger was very puritanical about money and I knew he would think less of me if he ever found out, so I kept it a secret,’ Crystal admitted grudgingly. ‘But then the interest kept on rising and the payments got steeper so I was desperate for more money … and one day I forged Roger’s signature on a cheque and managed to cash it. He insisted on still using cheques—he was very old-fashioned that way. He didn’t hold with debit cards, online banking and the like …’

  Tally was studying the tear-stained older woman fixedly. ‘Did you say that you forged Roger’s signature on a cheque? That’s a crime!’

  ‘I’m not stupid. I know that, but it kept the peace between Roger and I and he was so well-off he never missed the money …’

  ‘Are you saying that you did it more than once?’ Tally pressed in horror.

  ‘I was in debt to my eyeballs!’ Crystal cried defensively. ‘I had to keep the creditors away from the door somehow!’

  ‘But it was stealing! Surely you can see that?’ her daughter challenged her. ‘You were stealing from Roger! Why was that solicitor here?’

  ‘Roger’s accountant questioned some of the cheques and Roger found out what I’d done. That’s why we broke up—he threw me out!’ Crystal sobbed. ‘He sent the solicitor here to tell me that he won’t prosecute me for the forged cheques if I repay all the money I took.’

  Tally was ashen pale. ‘How much money are we talking about?’

  Her mother mentioned a sum that made Tally gasp: it was a much larger sum than she might have expected. Having got away with her initial theft, Crystal had become bolder and
had begun dipping into Roger’s account whenever she had overspent or needed more money. In the course of two years she had helped herself to a pretty substantial amount of cash. Tally was appalled by the total.

  ‘Are you able to pay back anything?’ Tally asked worriedly, a look of hope in her eyes.

  ‘I haven’t a penny,’ Crystal confessed dully. ‘I’ve never had savings. You know that.’

  ‘Well, when it comes to ready cash, I can’t help you. What I have is in the business and I’m bound by my partnership with Robert to leave it there,’ Tally volunteered unhappily. ‘And in the current economic climate, I’ll never get a loan for that amount. There’s only one thing for it: we’ll have to ask my father for help—’

  ‘Don’t waste your time. Anatole would probably love it if I was sent to prison for theft.’

  That night, when Tally phoned her father, she was relieved that he didn’t laugh when she told him about her mother’s predicament, but he didn’t sound sympathetic either. ‘Why don’t you approach your husband for

  assistance? Oh, yes, I forgot. You got bored with him and walked out on your marriage …’

  Smarting at his sarcasm, Tally muttered, ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  But it was very clear that Anatole wasn’t interested in hearing her side of that story. As far as he was concerned, when he had put pressure on Sander to wed his daughter because she was pregnant he had helped Tally make a ‘good’ marriage and in leaving her husband she had recklessly thrown away her golden opportunity.

  ‘Look, I’ll be in London on Wednesday,’ he told her abruptly. ‘I’ll meet you for lunch at the usual place. One o’clock.’

  And with that unanticipated invitation, Tally had to be content while she wondered if there was any real prospect of her father offering his help in order to save Crystal from what he would undoubtedly see as her just deserts. She was well aware of how much her father had resented having to maintain Crystal throughout the years of his older daughter’s childhood. When she got back from a day spent working out a new interior scheme for a client who was infuriatingly given to changing her mind every five minutes, she found her mother sitting in floods of tears at the kitchen table.