CHAPTER TEN
SARAH REACHED FOR the second false eyelash. Glued it, like the first, with shaky hands. She was going through the motions—nothing more. Hammers seemed to be in her brain, hammering her flat. Mashing everything inside her. Misery assailed her. She shouldn’t be feeling it—but she was. Oh, she was.
It was over. Her time with Bastiaan was over. A few precious days—and now this.
Reality had awaited her. Max had greeted her with relief—and apology. And with some news that had pierced the misery in her.
‘This is your last night here. Raymond insisted you show up just for tonight—because it’s Friday and he can’t be without a singer—but from tomorrow you’re officially replaced. Not with the real Sabine—someone else he’s finally found. And then, thank God, we can all decamp. We’ve been given an earlier rehearsal spot at the festival so we can head there straight away.’
He’d said nothing else, had asked no questions. Had only cast an assessing look at her, seeing the withdrawal in her face. She was glad of it, and of the news he’d given her. Relief, as much as she could feel anything through the fog of misery encompassing her, resonated in her. Now there was only tonight to get through. How she would do it, she didn’t know—but it would have to happen.
As she finished putting on her lipstick with shaky hands she could feel hope lighting inside her. Refusing to be quenched. Was it over? Perhaps it wasn’t. Oh, perhaps Bastiaan hadn’t been intending to end it all. Perhaps she’d feared it quite unnecessarily. Perhaps, even now, he was missing her, coming after her...
No! She couldn’t afford to agonise over whether Bastiaan had finished with her. Couldn’t afford to hope and dream that he hadn’t. Couldn’t afford even to let her mind go where it so wanted to go—to relive, hour by hour, each moment she’d spent with him.
I can’t afford to want him—or miss him.
She stared at her reflection. Sabine was more alien than ever now. And as she did so, the door of her dressing room was thrust open. Her head flew round, and as her gaze fell upon the tall, dark figure standing there, her face lit, joy and relief flaring in her eyes. Bastiaan! He had come after her—he was not ending it with her! He still wanted her! Her heart soared.
But as she looked up at him she froze. There was something wrong—something wrong with his face. His eyes. The way he was standing there, dominating the small space. His face was dark, his eyes like granite. He was like nothing she had seen before. This was not the Bastiaan she knew...not Bastiaan at all...
‘I have something to say to you.’
Bastiaan’s voice was harsh. Hostile. His eyes were dark and veiled, as if a screen had dropped down over them.
Her heart started to hammer. That dark, veiled gaze pressed down on her. Hostility radiated from him like a force field. It felt like a physical blow. What was happening? Why
was he looking at her like this? She didn’t know—didn’t understand.
A moment later the answer came—an answer that was incomprehensible.
‘From now on stay away from Philip. It’s over. Do you understand me? Over!’ His voice was harsh, accusing. Condemning.
She didn’t understand. Could only go on sitting there, staring at him, emotion surging through her chaotically. Then, as his words sank in, a frown convulsed her face.
‘Philip?’ she said blankly.
A rasp of a laugh—without humour, soon cut short—broke from him. ‘Forgotten him already, have you? Well, then...’ and now his voice took on a different note—one that seemed to chill her deep inside ‘...it seems my efforts were not in vain. I have succeeded, it seems, in...distracting you, mademoiselle.’ He paused heavily and his eyes were stabbing at her now. ‘As I intended.’
His chest rose and fell, and then he was speaking again.
‘But do not flatter yourself that my....attentions were for any purpose other than to convince you that my cousin is no longer yours to manipulate.’
She was staring at him as if he were insane. But he would not be halted. Not now, when fury was coursing through his veins—as it had done since the veils had been ripped from his eyes—since he’d understood just how much a fool she’d made of him. Not Philip—him!
I so nearly fell for it—was so nearly convinced by her.
Anger burned in him. Anger at her—for taking him for a fool, for exploiting his trusting, sensitive cousin and for not being the woman he’d come to believe, to hope, that she was.
The woman I wanted her to be.
The irony of it was exquisite. He’d seduced her because he’d believed her guilty—then had no longer been able to believe that she was. Then all that had been ripped and up-ended again—back to guilt.
A guilt he no longer wanted her to have, but from which there could be no escape now. None.
He cut across his own perilous thoughts with a snarl. ‘Don’t play the innocent. If you think you can still exploit his emotional vulnerability to you...well, think again.’
His voice became harsh and ugly, his mouth curling, eyes filled with venom.