The Secret Sinclair Read Online Free Page A

had known with this man kneeling over her, who looked every inch the billionaire he had once laughingly informed her he would be.
    ‘Here—drink this.’
    ‘I don’t want to drink anything. What are you doing here? Am I seeing things? You can’t be here.’
    ‘Funny, but I was thinking the very same thing.’ Raoul had only now recovered his equilibrium. The second his eyes had locked onto hers he had been plunged into instant flashback, and carrying her into the office had reawakened a tide of feeling which he had assumed to have been completely exorcised. He remembered the smell of her and the feel of her as though it had been yesterday. How was that possible? When so much had happened in the intervening years?
    Sarah was fighting to steady herself. She couldn’t believe her eyes. It was just so weird that she had to bite back the desire to burst into hysterical, incredulous laughter.
    ‘What are you doing here, Sarah? Hell … you’ve changed …’
    ‘I know.’ She was suddenly conscious of the sight she must make, scrawny and hollow-cheeked and wearing her overalls. ‘I have, haven’t I?’ She nervously fingered the checked overall and knew that she was shaking. ‘Things haven’t worked out … quite as I’d planned.’ She made a feeble attempt to stand up, and collapsed back down onto the sofa.
    In truth, Raoul was horrified at what he saw. Where was the bright-eyed, laughing girl he had known?
    ‘I have to go … I have to finish the cleaning, Raoul. I …’
    ‘You’re not finishing anything. Not just at the moment. When was the last time you ate anything? You look as though you could be blown away by a gust of wind. And
cleaning
? Now you’re doing cleaning jobs to earn money?’
    He vaulted to his feet and began pacing the floor. He could scarcely credit that she was lying on the sofa in this office. Accustomed to eliminating any unwelcome emotions and reactions as being surplus to his finely tunedand highly controlled way of life, he found that he couldn’t control the bombardment of questions racing through his brain. Nor could he rein in the flood of unwanted memories that continued to besiege him from every angle.
    Sarah was possibly the very last woman with whom he had had a perfectly natural relationship. She represented a vision of himself as a free man, with one foot on the ladder but no steps actually yet taken. Was that why the impact of seeing her again now was so powerful?
    ‘I never meant to end up like this,’ Sarah whispered, as the full impact of their unexpected meeting began to take shape.
    ‘But you have. How? What happened to you? Did you decide that you preferred cleaning floors to teaching?’
    ‘Of course I didn’t!’ Sarah burst out sharply. She dragged herself into an upright position on the sofa and was confronted with the unflattering sight of her sturdy work shoes and thick, black woollen tights.
    ‘Did you ever make it to university?’ Raoul demanded. As she had struggled to sit up his eyes had moved of their own volition to the swing of her breasts under the hideous checked overall.
    ‘I … I left the compound two weeks after you left.’
    Her strained green eyes made her look so young and vulnerable that sudden guilt penetrated the armour of his formidable self control.
    In five years Raoul had fulfilled every promise he had made to himself as a boy. Equipped with his impressive qualifications, he had landed his first job on the trading floor at the Stock Exchange, where his genius for making money had very quickly catapulted him upwards. Where colleagues had conferred, he’d operated solely on his own, and in the jungle arena of the money-making markets ithadn’t been long before he’d emerged as having a killer streak that could make grown men quake in their shoes.
    Raoul barely noticed. Money, for him, equated with freedom. He would be reliant on no one. Within three years he had accumulated sufficient wealth to begin the process of acquisition,