SARAH stepped back from the partly open door as smoothly and as silently as she could.

It wasn't easy. The thought of disturbing the occupants of the room, of making them realise that she was here, and that she had seen them, made her heart race and her head swim.

Beneath the bright red-gold hair, her face had lost colour, the brilliant emerald-green of her eyes standing out dramatically against the pallor of her cheeks.

She felt sick — sick with anger and betrayal — and she needed a minute or two to pull herself together before she faced the inevitable. She had to get downstairs again. Had to get away from the scene that had met her shocked eyes as she had first opened the door, taking with it that little peace of mind that just lately she had thought she had finally reached.

Peace of mind. Huh!

That was a laugh! she told herself as she reached the top of the stairs. Peace was something she hadn't known in a long, long time. Not true peace. Not the wonderful soul- rooted peace that came from knowing you were truly happy, deep, deep down. Truly happy and contented with your world. As she had been once, she'd thought, in a time that now seemed so long ago.

No, she wouldn't think of the past now. Couldn't think of it. She had to concentrate on the here and now. The past was what would destroy her ability to handle this.

"Sarah?"

Jason's voice: thick and rough with shock.

Sounds of the bed creaking. Of the thud of heavy masculine feet on the carpeted floor. He had heard her and was coming after her.

The man in the hallway heard the sounds too. Heard the voice — a very male voice that made his heart kick sharply and something like disgust twist painfully in his gut.

She had a man. Here. In this house they had once shared. Clearly she hadn't believed his threat to come back — and soon.

But not soon enough, it seemed. His sweet Sarah had been busy during his absence. She had found herself another man. Found him, and lost him too, if the haste with which the slim auburn-haired figure in the smart pale green shirt and darker pencil skirt was coming down the curving staircase was anything to go by.

Sarah was not happy. She was so unhappy that she didn't see him standing well back, where his black hair and dark leather jacket blended with the deep shadow of the door. And, that being so, it told its own story of just what she had discovered up in that first-floor bedroom.

The bedroom that had once been theirs. It was a thought of dark rage, one that brought a red mist rising before his eyes, cutting off his vision completely, and destroying his ability to think rationally. To think at all.

"Sarah?" Jason called again, his voice thick with echoes of things she didn't even want to consider. "That you?"

Jason sounded angry now, and before she could find a way to answer, or even make any sort of sound to indicate her presence, he had stumbled out onto the landing and was leaning over the banisters, staring down at her.

His longish fair hair was still ruffled, his cheeks distinctly flushed. But at least he had taken the opportunity to pull on a pair of jeans, even if his chest was still bare, as were his feet. "So it is you? Didn't you hear me calling? Why the hell didn't you answer? What are you doing back this early?"

It was a technique she recognised only too well. A way of firing questions at an opponent in rapid succession, and so disorientating them that they didn't know which one to answer first. It meant he was rattled. Because he wasn't sure just how long she'd been there or whether she'd only stayed downstairs.

"I can come and go as I please, Jason. This is my house!" My house, technically, the man in the shadows corrected in the privacy of his thoughts. The big London house had always been the property of the Nicolaides family. He had let her continue to live in it because it suited him that way, but she didn't own it. Even if she was still, technically, his wife.

But only technically, it seemed. A moment ago he had been severely tempted to step forward, out of the concealing darkness, and confront the pair of them. But from the moment that the blond man had appeared on the landing outside the bedroom he had changed his mind. Watching and waiting seemed a much better idea. Because if ever he had seen evidence of an illicit assignation, a sexual romp unexpectedly disturbed, it was right there on that bastard's guilty-looking face. If he was any sort of judge, the other female involved was still right there in the room behind this Jason.

"Sarah, don't get so huffy about nothing!" Jason was descending the stairs now, smoothing his hair back with a hurried hand, belatedly fastening his jeans as he came down.

"Nothing!"

The freezing note in Sarah's voice made the watcher grin sharply. He knew that tone well. Too well. Oh, yes, he'd been subjected to just that icy note of indignant reproof more than once. He was still mentally smarting from the impact of the last time.

"Nothing?" "Well, OK, so I took a nap in your bed." Clearly the blond man thought he could bluff his way out of this.

"What's so terrible about that? We're going to be sharing it from now on anyway."

"I haven't actually agreed to you moving in." To anything, if the truth was told.

"No, you haven't said the words, but we both know it's only a matter of time."

He sounded so sure of himself, Sarah thought, anger warring with hurt and betrayal and producing a highly explosive combination in her mind. So sure that it was obvious he believed she hadn't been upstairs; that she wasn't aware of what had been going on inside that bedroom.

He still thought that he could worm his way out of this. He truly believed that she was so simple, so gullible, that she would swallow everything he tossed at her. And what infuriated her most was the thought that, lonely and unhappy, she must have given him that impression.

"But we both know it was on the cards." 'Jace? Jacey, baby..."

A third voice, a light, petulant, feminine voice, interrupted what Sarah had been about to say. And as Jason whirled, another violent expletive escaping his lips, the bedroom door opened and a small, curvaceous female sashayed out onto the landing. She was wrapped loosely in a deep red silky gown that Sarah recognised instantly. Made for her own slender height, it swamped the other woman's shorter frame and was too long for her on her legs, falling almost to the floor instead of mid-calf.

"Are you ever coming back?" she pouted, peering over the banisters and down at where he stood, frozen to the spot in the hall. "I'm missing —"

"Andrea, I told you to wait!" Jason cut in furiously. "To stay where you were and —"

"I was bored!" the woman addressed as Andrea protested. "I got tired of waiting for you to come back."

"''Don't get so huffy about nothing''!" Sarah repeated bitterly. "I wonder what your — friend feels about being described as nothing!"

Her outburst silenced Jason temporarily in the same moment that it drew Andrea's frowning gaze towards where the other woman stood in the hallway.

"And who are you?" 'Me?"

To her amazement, Sarah managed it with only a trace of a shake in her voice, though anyone who knew her would have recognised in the stiffness of her tone the struggle she was having to maintain control. The man who was listening to everything knew it only too well.

"I'm just the owner of this house — of the bed you've just got out of, the robe you're wearing..."

And Jason's girlfriend, she supposed she could have added, but the words stuck in her throat.

"The robe you're — almost wearing!" She was tight-lipped against her emotions, stiff as a board.

The watcher in the shadows saw how the colour had ebbed from her cheeks, the muscles in her jaw clenching tight, and he was struck by a sudden and distinctly unwelcome attack of something close to compassion.

Dangerously close.

Compassion was a mistake with this woman — a bad mistake — because it left him vulnerable. Once he had given his heart completely and willingly to her and she had smashed it into pieces and tossed it back at him like so much rubbish. He wasn't likely to risk that happening again.

"So might I suggest that you go and get back into your own clothes and get yourself out of here? And take your cheating fancy man with you!"

"But Sarah —" 'Out!" She might be able to hold herself together if he went now, she told herself. If he turned and walked out immediately, then she might be able to forget just how foolish she had been over the past couple of weeks. Foolish in that once again she had stumbled into a relationship that had been all wrong from the start.

It had been a relationship in which she had been looking for nothing but comfort and a hiding place, and that had led her to the mess she was in right now.

"Sarah — please. It meant nothing — honest! It was just a fling."

"A fling? You were prepared to betray my trust — to risk our relationship — for something that didn't even matter! Nothing more than an itch you had to scratch!"

At least Damon had had the honour to really care for his 'bit on the side'. His mistress had been the woman he wanted as well, and she had only been the wife of convenience.

Jason's expression was every bit as hangdog and spuriously repentant as she had expected, and he had actually taken a step or two towards her, coming much closer. Too close.

"Oh, come on, Sarr! You have to understand." Another step forward, and this time his hand came out. He had almost reached her, almost touched her, and it was too much.

"No!"

Her own hands came up, knocking him away as her nerve broke completely, and she whirled, unable to think of anything beyond getting away. She couldn't even bear to be in the same space as him any longer. She wanted only to be away and clear and free. Free to forget about Jason and all he had ever meant to her.

Free to think of the man who had once meant everything. Free to —

"Ooof!"

The cry of shock, confusion and near-panic escaped her on a violent expulsion of breath as she blundered, blind and disorientated, straight into an unexpectedly hard and solid mass that was where no mass should be. A hard and solid mass that blocked her path, barring the way.

A hard, solid and warm mass.

A hard, solid, warm, living and breathing form. A form that was so intensely masculine, lean and hard and forceful, that it could only belong to a man. A tall, strong man, very much in the prime of life.

A man whose arms came out instinctively, folding round her immediately, supporting her, holding her when she swayed off balance and might have fallen. A man whose chest was wide and strong where it supported her head, her cheek resting against his immaculate white polo shirt. She could hear the heavy, regular thud of his heart, echoing the pulse of blood through her own veins. In her nostrils was the heady, sensually intoxicating mixture of clean skin, the subtle tang of some spicy cologne, and the purely individual aroma that was his alone.

A scent that Sarah knew as well as that of her own body. It was one that she recognised so instantly and so completely, not needing to see the man's face or hear a word spoken in his voice to confirm her immediate and horrified suspicion. Try as she might, she had no hope at all of denying the truth, or escaping from the forceful impact of it.

And if she had needed any further proof, then the instant reaction that flared through her, burning away all other thoughts, all other hopes, provided it in the space of a heartbeat. It licked along every nerve path, obliterating any doubt even before it had a chance to form.

"Da..."

The single broken syllable was choked from her, impossible to hold back even though her voice didn't have the strength to complete the name.

Only one man had ever made her feel this way. Only one man had ever been able to stimulate her feelings and her senses so instantly and so furiously.

"Damon..." she whispered. "Damon!" Above her head she sensed rather than saw the sensual mouth break into a wide, wicked grin of pure triumph, and felt the faint rumble of amused laughter under her cheek. She knew without the shadow of a doubt that he was glorying in the fact that he had had such an impact on her, and at such speed, evoking the instant effect that she had been unable to hide.

Only the realisation that she had given him the weapon to use against her, putting it almost into his hands herself, kept her silent in mortification, and she had to grit her teeth against the flurry of angry rejection that nearly escaped her. Damon Nicolaides needed no encouragement at all to feel instantly and infinitely superior to any other human being. His head was already swollen wide enough, and he would only take her hurried protestations as an indication of exactly the opposite of what she said.

"Damon..." she tried again, aiming for a very different tone. "Let me go this minute!"

Once more she felt the chuckle echo in his chest. "You know you don't mean that, sweetheart."