A REASON FOR MARRIAGE

Except… Unexpected as it might have been, it hadn’t been seeing Bruce which had made Sara ill. That had only happened when the other man’s wife had joined them. Was it because Sara still had feelings for the man, and the existence of that wife now made reconciliation impossible? Her scathing attitude towards her ex-fiance whenever she spoke to him would seem to imply otherwise. And yet… There was no denying that something had made Sara ill just a short time ago. The same something that was still causing her to tremble.

Simon had no idea what Sara was reacting to any longer, and that irritated him as much as everything else about this evening displeased him; he had believed earlier that they were coming to know each other, to like each other- and now this!

“We will speak again later in the week, Lincoln,” he assured the older man stiffly before turning to leave.

“I’ll be in touch, angel.”

Sara stiffened as Bruce called after her softly, not fooled for a moment by the pleasantness of his tone. She turned to look coldly at him. “We have nothing to talk about,” she assured him scathingly.

He quirked blond disbelieving brows. “No?”

“Absolutely not,” she snapped, before turning to his father. “Goodbye, Lincoln. It was nice seeing you again. Take care,” she added huskily, not sparing Bruce so much as a second glance as she and Bruce finally left together.

“Not here and not now,” Simon advised gruffly as Sara tried to speak once they were outside.

She shot him a fleeting glance. “I was only going to say thank you.”

Simon’s tension eased slightly and he relaxed his grip on her arm. The last few minutes had been far from pleasant. For any of them. “If you insist, you may offer me suitable thanks once we are alone together in my apartment,” he assured her gruffly.

She looked uncertain. “Your apartment…?”

He shrugged broad shoulders. “We have to return to Hamilton tower in order for you to collect your car. Once there, we might as well go up to my apartment and talk in comfort.”

An argument to which she had no rebuttal, Sara acknowledged ruefully. Her car was at Hamilton Tower, and she did owe Simon a suitable thank you- although she had a feeling her idea of suitable and Simon’s might differ greatly in content! He had been so supportive of her this evening and she owed him an explanation as to the reason he had needed to be so.

___________

“Coffee, wine or brandy?” Simon offered dryly once they were once again in the anemic sitting room of the penthouse apartment at Hamilton .

“Oh, I think this situation calls for brandy all round, don’t you?” She sighed wearily as she sank down in one of the boxy cream armchairs.

“I am unsure as yet exactly what this situation is.” He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over a chair, before moving to the bar situated at the other end of the room and pouring brandy into two glasses.

Sara grimaced as she took the glass Simon held out to her before moving to stand a short distance away from her. “It isn’t every day that you meet your ex-fiance by accident!” She sipped the brandy, instantly feeling the effects of the fiery alcohol as it slid easily down the back of her throat. “The last I heard of Bruce, he was living and working in France.”

“Which is obviously where he met and married Emily,”

“Obviously,” Sara echoed noncommittally as she stared down at the beige carpet.

“Are you still in love with him?”RêAd lat𝙚St chapters at Novel(D)ra/ma.Org Only

She gave Simon a startled look and the glass shook precariously in her hand.

“What?”

His smile lacked humor. “In the circumstances it is a relevant question, I would have thought.”

Sara drank down the rest of her brandy before answering him, in the hopes that its warmth would melt the block of ice that seemed to have formed in her chest. “What circumstances?”

Simon kept his expression deliberately bland. “You did not appear to become ill until after the appearance of Bruce’s wife…. Do not cry, Sara.”

All attempts to remain detached fled as he saw the tears shimmering in Sara’s huge brown eyes, and Simon quickly placed his brandy down on the glass-topped coffee table before moving onto his haunches beside the chair where she sat, to take her icy cold hand in his. “Talk to me, Sara. Tell me why you are crying.”

“I’m not,” she denied, even as those tears began to fall down the paleness of her cheeks. “I just… You’re right. Seeing Emily…. It was a shock-” She broke off and began to cry in earnest.

It was as if a dam had burst inside her -the dam that had held back all the grief and pain she had buried deep inside her when her hopes and dreams of having a family of her own, a baby of her own, had been dashed years ago, when the specialist had told her that she’d lost her baby.

Simon was completely at a loss as to what he should do or say as Sara buried her face in her hands and sobbed as if her heart were breaking. Which perhaps it was. Over Bruce Bennet? Having no experience upon which to draw, it wasn’t for Simon to criticize whom others might choose-or not choose-to love. Except that Bruce Bennet was everything Simon disliked in a man: shallow, selfish and, where Sara was concerned, in Simon’s opinion cruelly vindictive. None of which changed the fact that Sara could not seem to stop crying as if her heart were breaking.

Simon reached out and gathered her up into his arms, lifting her and cradling her tenderly against his chest before sitting down in the chair himself. Her tears quickly dampened the front of his shirt. Simon ran his fingers soothingly against her temple, considering the irony of holding the woman he desired in his arms as she cried over another man. If his cousin Zach could only see him now.

“It was the baby,” Sara finally choked out painfully. “I-we-I got pregnant when we were still engaged… And I lost it after our horrible break up,” she sobbed.

Oh, dear God! And that cold-hearted bastard Bruce Bennet had stood there and calmly introduced his pregnant wife to Sara, all the time knowing that Sara had lost theirs! The absolute bastard!