The Marriage Betrayal (13 page)

‘I gave Cosima a lift home one evening,’ Sander acknowledged with care, wondering if that was Anatole’s notion of small talk.

‘Tally told me that you played the Good Samaritan,’ Anatole commented, watching Sander frown in surprise at that reference. ‘Although I choose not to make a song and dance about it, Tally Spencer happens to be my daughter as well.’

Sander stared fixedly at the older man, convinced he must have misunderstood. ‘Sorry, Tally is … also your
daughter
?’

‘I never married her mother, of course, and my wife and Cosima don’t want the relationship acknowledged. To be frank, I’ve never had much to do with Tally. I can’t stand her harpy of a mother,’ Anatole revealed with a curled lip. ‘But Tally’s still my blood and I won’t stand by in silence and allow you to wreck her life.’

If Tally had been standing there at that instant, Sander truly believed he would have strangled her for concealing her true identity from him. Indeed, from the moment they had met, she had deliberately deceived
him by pretending that she worked for her half-sister,
Cosima. He was beginning to appreciate that he had never known Tally Spencer at all. A male unaccustomed to the discomfiture of being taken very much by surprise, Sander felt his temper blaze up beneath his controlled surface.

‘Obviously you’re aware that Tally is carrying my child. I hope I haven’t wrecked anybody’s life,’ Sander murmured drily. ‘I don’t turn my back on my responsibilities, Anatole, and I will support Tally in every way possible.’

‘You get my daughter pregnant, you marry her,’ Anatole contradicted without hesitation. ‘As far as I’m concerned, any other form of support is an insult to me and my family name.’

Shocked though he was by that speech, Sander could feel a current of icy self-restraint spreading through him, a current powered by the shrewd and cautious genes of his aristocratic ancestors. Anatole’s vulgarity and his attempt to interfere were distasteful but it was not surprising that so self-important a man should have chosen to regard Tally’s situation as a personal affront to his dignity.

‘No insult was intended.’

Already tiring of the conversation, Anatole took a belligerent step forward and shook a clenched fist. ‘Either you marry my girl or I pull the rug out from beneath your father.’

Sander froze. ‘What are you saying?’

‘That, whether you know it or not, Volakis Shipping is dangerously over-extended. Your late brother borrowed and spent too much for a business trading in an economic crisis. Your father needs to win the TKR contract to keep your family company solvent,’ Anatole outlined with a bullish expression. ‘If I speak a
word in
the wrong quarter, that contract will be awarded elsewhere and Volakis Shipping will go down.’

Sander studied Anatole with revulsion. He was well aware that the family shipping firm was over extended. In funding an expansion at the wrong time, his late brother Titos had taken too many risks in a field where competition was fierce and prices keen. Sander had no doubt that it was within Anatole’s power to kill the TKR contract dead with just the whisper that Volakis Shipping might be a risky choice of carrier. Guilt assailed him. He had ignored his suspicion that his father, Petros, was struggling to handle more than he was equipped to deal with, and that sense of responsibility only grew as Sander recognised how much his own unlucky dalliance with Tally might ultimately cost his family.

‘I have to consider this,’ Sander breathed between clenched teeth, his self-discipline stretched thin because he would have been happier to plant a fist in Anatole’s smug face. ‘Did Tally tell you that she was pregnant?’

‘Her mother did,’ Anatole admitted harshly. ‘Tally has no idea I’m here.’

The older man took his leave. Sander was in a daze, the foundations of his world in a state of collapse. He was expected to marry her? Marry Tally Spencer … Karydas? Sander wanted to punch the wall in furious frustration. He felt …
trapped
. He didn’t want to get married. He had once, as a naïve teenager, wanted to marry Oleia but that dream had gone sour overnight, never to be revisited. He had learned a lot from that disillusionment, although clearly not as much as he believed, he conceded bitterly.

Tally had made a very good job of fooling him. An ordinary girl? He suppressed a contemptuous laugh. Self-evidently, there was nothing ordinary about Tally,
who had gone out of her way to conceal her true parentage from him. But it hadn’t taken her long to show her real colours and wheel out the big guns in the shape of her thuggish father. How could anyone expect him to believe that she had not personally informed Anatole of her condition? An accidental pregnancy? How could he ever credit that story now? Anatole Karydas was as crafty and calculating as a man could be and it looked very much as though Tally had inherited more than her lack of height from her paternal genes.

Anatole Karydas was blackmailing him. Sander ground his even white teeth together in disbelief.
Marry Tally or else.
And Sander would have called Anatole’s bluff, had it not been for the fact that it would be his parents, rather than himself, who would pay the price for his refusal to give way to the older man’s demand. He was already uncomfortably aware that, in recent years, he had been a less than dutiful son and although he had never been close to his parents, he still loved them and cared about what happened to them.

Sander knew that he could survive the fall of Volakis Shipping unscathed. He did not depend for support either on his parents or on the family business. But he was painfully conscious that six generations of his family had sweated blood and tears to build that business into a world-renowned shipping line. In the space of three years his older brother had destroyed an established concern with his grandiose determination to modernise and expand almost overnight. Sander’s parents would be devastated if they lost the company, not to mention the comfortable lifestyle and society status that they took for granted.

There was no way that Sander could allow that to
happen to them at their stage in life … no way at all.

He was their son and there were bonds that even the strongest rebel could not deny. He could not stand by and watch Volakis Shipping fail simply to retain his own freedom and independence.

And Tally was, it had to be said, his every fantasy in bed, he mused with reflective heat. That was one plus, though the baby she was carrying was a very big minus on his terms. Sander could barely credit that he had run such a huge risk on the contraceptive front merely to enjoy the freedom of sex without a protective barrier. Why the hell had he done that? After all, he hated the idea of becoming a father, indeed had never been drawn to that prospect. Babies cried and pooped and smelled, and he had always seen them as a very unattractive option. When they grew into toddlers they threw tantrums and food and made incessant demands, and their unappealing habits only became more pronounced and disruptive with age. Even worse, he had noticed that wives tended to concentrate their energies on their children rather than on their husbands. A baby … the very thought of such an entity upsetting his carefree and unashamedly self-indulgent life turned Sander cold. He supposed that he wouldn’t be expected to have very much to do with it. A good nanny, a
team
of good nannies, would make all the difference to their lives, he told himself in mounting desperation.

Marriage … Sander poured himself a stiff drink and tipped it back with scant appreciation. He knew that he was going to get very, very drunk before he went to see Tally the next day. He dared not mention her father’s visit. Suppressing his anger on that issue,
he reminded himself that, having been brutally honest with her when
she told him about the baby, he now had fences to mend. He also had an honourable proposal to make in response to the most dishonourable act of blackmail …

B
EING
no fan of those who wallowed in misery to drama-queen depths, Tally gave herself only twenty-four hours to come to terms with the worst of Sander’s absolute rejection.

He had told her no lies, Tally conceded then, struggling to be fair, even though his reaction to her news had torn her to shreds. Right from the start Sander had spelt out his position on commitment and his loathing for unplanned conceptions. But the sheer level of his angry bitterness and distrust had still come as a nasty surprise. His determination to have nothing more to do with her on a personal basis only reminded her that their child would be an ongoing financial responsibility that he would be less able to avoid. Was he planning to behave as
her
reluctant father had behaved? Would their child in turn become Sander’s youthful mistake and dirty little secret? Did he truly believe that Tally could be eagerly anticipating a future to be lived at his expense?

Yet, wasn’t that in many ways what her own mother had done? a little voice asked Tally, and she almost cringed at that deeply embarrassing but unavoidable comparison. It was a fact that Crystal had stopped any pretence of working for a living after finally being
awarded child maintenance in court. Nor could Tally deny the existence of women willing to conceive a child either in an attempt to hold onto a man or as a means of gaining an income. The most obvious difference between mother and daughter was that Crystal had planned her pregnancy while assuming that the father of her child would marry her. Sadly, her mother’s pungent disappointment at the way in which her hopes and dreams had come to nothing had not abated with the passage of time and Tally wanted no part of such bitterness. By the time she reached her forties she didn’t want to still be agonising over a rejection that had occurred in her youth.

That fact acknowledged, however, Tally had cried until her eyes were raw. She had lost the man she loved at the same time as she was forced to accept that thanks to her condition he could hardly wait to banish her from his life. His lack of care and concern, not to mention his suspicions about her character, had hurt her a great deal.

‘Realistically,’ Crystal said drily the following week when Tally was calm enough to discuss things without breaking down, ‘what more did you expect from Sander Volakis when you went to see him?’

Tally looked across the breakfast bar at her mother and compressed her soft mouth. ‘I really did think that he cared about me … not true love but, you know,
cared
,’ she stressed with genuine pain in her unhappy eyes. ‘But when I told him about the baby I might as well have been some girl he slept with one night and forgot about afterwards.’

Crystal frowned. ‘You can be so naïve, Tally. If you
think about it, Sander was only with you because he
was having fun … and very few men, if any, see a baby as a fun extra. It’s not what he signed up for.’

‘I suppose not,’ Tally conceded gruffly, resisting a dangerous urge to admit that it wasn’t what she had signed up for either. But if she took that stance, Crystal would again start discussing adoption or termination as possible options to her dilemma. Her mother had said she would back her daughter regardless of what she chose to do. While Tally appreciated that support, she was already sufficiently scared of the future without listening to Crystal tell her yet again how much having a child had impacted on
her
life and spoilt it by stealing her freedom and scaring off eligible men. It astonished Tally that she and her mother could have such different memories of her childhood.

‘But at least Sander didn’t try to deny responsibility and he’s already promised that he’ll cover the bills—he’s streets ahead of your father in that line,’ Crystal pronounced with a level of contempt for Anatole that could only make her daughter wince.

With her final exams coming up, Tally did not have the luxury of sitting about talking or of staring into space and feeling wretched. She retired to her room to study, aware that with a child on the way it was even more important that she gain the qualifications she needed to find work. It was towards the end of that week that her phone rang and she was startled when she realised that it was actually Sander calling her again.

‘We need to talk some more,’ Sander breathed the instant she answered, his dark accented drawl level and expressionless. ‘I’ll pick you up at eight—’

‘No,’ Tally broke in hastily, keen to ensure that he
did not run into her mother but not even hesitating over
whether or not to agree to see him again. ‘There’s no need. I’ll meet you—where?’

He suggested his apartment and although she would have preferred surroundings that would not awaken memories of happier times she knew they could only discuss her pregnancy in privacy. But what could he possibly want to talk about? The stance he had taken at his office had been so unqualified, so final, that it had left no room for compromise. Her curiosity was intense but he gave no hints as to why he wanted to see her again during that brief, almost businesslike call.

The front door was open for her arrival and she breathed in deep, smoothing damp palms down over the filmy top she wore teamed with a short skirt. The only special effort she had made with her appearance had gone into eradicating the evidence of tears and a sleepless night from her face but even so, with all her defensive antenna in place and her head held high, her heart was beating so fast she wanted to press a hand against her breastbone to slow it down.

Sander had only one agenda in mind: to do what had to be done and move on. He had dealt with setbacks before and, at ease with taking charge of difficult situations, he always forged boldly ahead. But when Tally walked in, other responses took over. He noticed the new wariness in her lack of facial expression and cautious entrance. The happy glow and smiles he was accustomed to receiving were gone. Nor, now that he knew the facts that she should never have kept from him, could he rise above the need to see if he could trace her parentage in her looks. Hostility licked through him when he found himself instinctively linking her lack of height and slightly prominent nose to Anatole Karydas’ paternity.

Tally focused on Sander’s lean powerful figure and tried and failed to swallow. She was horribly short of breath. His superb cheekbones were taut below his bronzed skin. He was a devastatingly handsome guy and he still made her tummy flip and her mouth run dry in knee-jerk reactions she could not suppress, but the fierce tension in the air could only increase her discomfiture.