Sandra Marton - Say it with Diamonds...this Christmas - The Guardian's Forbidden Mistress / The Sicilian's Christmas Bride / Laying Down the Law

Sarah went reluctantly, with the solemn promise to return. She followed the direction of the nurse’s finger, but still had to ask for more directions before she found the cafeteria.

Jim and Nick glanced up with questioning eyes at her arrival, Jim looking particularly anxious. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she’d raised his wife’s blood pressure, saying instead that the nurse wanted Flora to rest quietly and they weren’t to go back to her bedside for half an hour at least.

‘If you want anything, you have to order at the counter,’ Nick informed her.

Sarah shook her head. ‘I don’t want anything.’

‘Don’t be silly. I’ll get you some coffee and cake. You have to be hungry. I know I was.’

Jim said nothing during the time it took Nick to return with the coffee and piece of carrot cake. He just kept staring blankly into space.

‘You haven’t eaten your cake, Jim,’ Nick said as he sat back down.

Jim turned his head towards Nick, his eyes remaining vacant. ‘What did you say?’

‘Your cake,’ Nick said, nodding towards the untouched plate.

He shook his head. ‘I can’t eat it.’

‘She’s not going to die, Jim.’

‘But what if she does?’ he said plaintively. ‘I can’t live without her. She’s all I have.’

‘I know, Jim.’ Sarah reached over to press a gentle hand on his arm. ‘But you won’t have to live without her. Not yet, anyway. We’ve caught this in time. We’ll look after her together and make her better.’

His eyes filled with tears, shocking Sarah. She’d only ever seen a man cry once before in her life—her father, at her mother’s funeral. Jim’s crying propelled her back there, to her mother’s graveside and the awful sound of her father’s broken sobs as they lowered her coffin into the ground.

‘I’m just so worried,’ Jim choked out.

‘We all are, Jim,’ Nick said gently.

‘I never thought I’d get married, you know,’ Jim went on, his voice cracking some more. ‘At forty, I was a crusty old bachelor. Not ugly exactly, but not the kind of chap women went for. Flora used to shop in the same supermarket as I did. Not sure why she took a liking to me but she did. Before I knew it, we were hitched.’

A huge lump filled Sarah’s throat as she watched the tears run down Jim’s sun-weathered cheeks.

‘Best thing I ever did,’ he finished up, pulling a hankie from his pocket.

An emotion-charged silence descended on their table. They all fell to drinking and eating, no one saying a word. Sarah noted that the people at the other tables weren’t saying much either.

Cafeterias in hospitals, she decided, were not places of joy, especially late at night.

When her eyes returned to their table, she found Nick staring at her.

What are you thinking? she longed to ask.

But she said nothing, her eyes dropping back to her coffee.

Nick could not believe the crazy thoughts going through his head at that moment. Jim’s touching little story about his romance with Flora must have totally unhinged him. Because, suddenly, he was thinking that that was what he should do: get married … to Sarah.

An incredibly bad idea. Even worse than giving in to his lust and sleeping with her. An affair with a scoundrel could have the beneficial side-effect of educating and protecting her, in a perverse kind of way. But marriage to the same scoundrel had nothing going for Sarah at all. Because such a union would not give her the one thing she wanted most in life: children.

This last thought steeled Nick’s strangely wobbly heart, reaffirming his resolve to keep their affair strictly sexual. That way, when it was over, Sarah wouldn’t be too hurt.

Meanwhile, it would be kinder of him if their affair didn’t last too long. Best it be over by the time she turned twenty-five. Which gave him what time with her?

Six short weeks. Not long to burn out a lust that had been growing for years, and which he now had little control over. Despite all that had happened tonight, he could not wait to get her home, to bed. Which underlined just what type of man he was; not fit to marry a lovely girl like Sarah, that was for sure.

‘I think we should go back to the ward now. See what they’ve discovered.’

Nick’s abrupt suggestion jerked Sarah back to the moment at hand.

‘The nurse didn’t seem keen on Flora having too many visitors,’ she told him. ‘I think it would be best if I went home to bed. I’ll come back and visit Flora tomorrow morning, bring her some things she might need.’

‘That sounds like a good idea,’ Nick agreed.

‘I’m not going home,’ Jim said somewhat stubbornly. ‘I’m going to stay with my wife. They said I could.’

‘Of course,’ Nick soothed. ‘I’ll stay till I find out the doctor’s verdict, then I’ll go home too. I’ll come back with Sarah in the morning.’

Nick stood up first, coming round to hold the back of Sarah’s chair as she rose.

‘ My bed,’ he whispered. ‘Not yours.’

Shock held her rigid. How could he possibly be thinking about sex at this moment? It was the last thing on her mind.

But by the time she unlocked the front door and made her way upstairs, the thought of being with Nick again was slowly corrupting her. She kept telling herself that she was as wicked as he was; that she should be consumed with worry for Flora, not desire for him.

Nick’s brief phone call from the hospital informing her that it had just been angina, and not a heart attack, did soothe her conscience somewhat, though her emotions were still very mixed as she showered and perfumed her body, then slipped, naked, back between those black satin sheets.

She’d heard about people having wildly tasteless sex at wakes, just to prove that they were still alive. Maybe this was something like that.

But she suspected not.

Sarah wanted to believe that it was love behind her behaviour. But she was beginning to wonder if it was more a matter of lust. She’d never experienced the kind of sexual pleasure that she’d had earlier that evening. And she wanted more.

By the time she heard the Rolls throttle down in the driveway, Sarah was beside herself with excitement. When Nick strode into the room already stripping off as he went, desire had rendered her totally mindless.

This time he did not speak and neither did she. Their coupling was fast and furious, a raw, animalistic mating that sent them both hurtling over the edge in seconds. Afterwards, they clung to each other, their skin pearled in sweat, their bodies stuck together.

‘I didn’t use a condom,’ he muttered into her hair.

‘I know,’ she rasped.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ she shocked herself by saying. ‘I liked it.’

Oh, what an understatement. She’d gloried in his hard, unprotected flesh surging into hers, wallowed in his flooding her womb.

His head lifted, dark eyes gleaming. ‘But you’re not safe. You’ve just opened the dungeon door, Sarah, big time.’

Her sex-glazed eyes searched his. ‘What dungeon is that?’

‘The one I’ve kept my X-rated fantasies about you imprisoned in all these years.’

Sarah’s eyes widened at the rather menacing metaphor.

‘Don’t ever imagine I’m in love with you,’ he snarled. ‘Love doesn’t live in a dungeon. Now, go to sleep. I’ve had enough for one night and I’m bloody exhausted.’

‘SOMETHING to drink, Sarah?’

Sarah’s head turned. She’d been staring through the plane window at the panoramic vista below. They’d not long taken off from Mascot Airport and hadn’t yet reached any clouds.

‘Yes, please,’ she said to both Nick and the hovering stewardess. ‘What can I have?’