Page 42 of The Tycoon's Affair: Tempted By Desire
Alexio saw one of the men put a fleshy hand on her arm and a red mist came over his vision. Before he’d even realised what he was doing he was out of the car and pushing open the door of the small tatty restaurant.
‘Sir,’ Sidonie gritted out, ‘please take your hand off me.’
‘Don’t tell me what to do. You’re servingme.’
Sidonie felt a frisson of fear cutting through her hazy exhaustion, but even that didn’t give her enough adrenalin to pull free. Just then a blast of warm evening air hit Sidonie’s back and she looked around automatically to see Alexio, bearing down on her, his face tight with anger, his eyes fixed on where the man still held her.
Her heart thumped unevenly. For three days he’d dogged her heels and she’d ignored him. She’d seen his car outside and had hated to admit to herself that a part of her liked knowing he was there. She’d told herself stoutly that she hoped he was bored to tears and that she’d irritate him so much that he’d leave and never come back.
Alexio was right behind her now, and treacherously she wanted to lean back, to sink against him. That kept her rigid, fighting the waves of weariness which seemed to be gathering force.
His voice came low and threatening over her head.
‘Let her go.’
The heavyset man was drunk and belligerent. He tightened his grip on Sidonie’s arm, making her gasp out loud. Alexio reached around her and prised the man’s fingers off her arm. He drew her back against him, his other hand going around her midriff, where her belly was round.
It was his touch that did it. It burned like a physical brand. It was too much. Alexio was turning her around now, looking down at her, asking something, but she couldn’t hear it because a white noise was making her head fuzzy.
As if standing apart from herself, observing, Sidonie saw herself looking utterly fragile and helpless, with Alexio’s hands huge on her arms, and she felt a moment of disgust at herself before everything went black.
Sidonie was in a dark, peaceful place with a soft regularbeep-beepsound coming from somewhere nearby. Slowly, though, as her consciousness returned so did her memory, and she remembered looking up into Alexio’s face and seeing him frown.
Alexio.
The baby.
Tante Josephine.
Sidonie’s eyes opened and she winced at the bright light and the stark whiteness of the room. She went to move her arm and something pulled. She looked down to see a tube coming out of the back of her hand.
Her head felt slightly woolly. She noticed a movement out of the corner of her eye—something big—and then Alexio loomed into her vision. Tall and dark. His shirt open at the neck, looking crumpled. Stubble on his jaw.
The faintbeep-beepsound got faster.
Automatically Sidonie’s free hand went to her midriff, where she felt the comforting swell of her baby. Even so, she looked at Alexio. ‘The baby?’
He looked grim. ‘The baby is fine.’
‘Tante Josephine?’
‘Is fine too. She’s been here all night. I sent her home a while ago.’
‘All night?’
‘You collapsed in the restaurant. I brought you straight to A and E in my car. You’ve been on a drip since you arrived and unconscious for nearly eight hours.’
‘Am I okay?’
Some of the obvious tension left Alexio’s jaw. ‘The doctor said you’re suffering from a mixture of exhaustion and stress and are generally run down.’
‘Oh.’
Alexio started to look grim again, making flutters erupt in Sidonie’s belly.
‘You’ve run yourself completely into the ground...’
Something dangerous welled up inside her at his obvious censure and she looked away, terrified of the way her throat was starting to hurt and of the emotion which wouldn’t go down.
