Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

‘At least you now admit it is your personal life.’

  Rose rolled her eyes in frustration. What was the point denying it when he obviously wasn’t going to listen?

  ‘I can see that it must have been a shock, but I’m sure you will agree in retrospect that getting drunk and sleeping with strangers was not the wisest response,’ he continued.

  ‘You have obviously never been in love.’ She studied his lean face with dislike, and thought it was a safe bet that there had been droves of women who fancied themselves in love with him. Blinded by his exotic heritage, dark devastating looks and charismatic smile, not to mention the raw sex appeal he exuded from every pore.

  ‘You feel equipped to make this assumption because…?’

  Rose blinked. ‘You’ve been dumped?’ She gave a laugh of total incredulity as her glance travelled up the long, lean length of him. ‘Now that I don’t believe.’

  His lips twitched and a gleam that she deeply distrusted entered his dark eyes. ‘It might be that not everybody finds me as irresistible as you do.’

  ‘For a man with power, position and money a lot of women would be willing to overlook a good many flaws.’

  ‘You are not very charitable to your sisters.’

  ‘I doubt if I have anything in common with your lovers.’ Thinking of them did not improve her mood. ‘You know, it would serve you right if I went around telling everyone that you were awful in bed.’ If she had a reputation she might as well use it.

  Rose was startled when her threat drew what seemed like a totally genuine laugh from him … genuine and attractive, she thought, very conscious of the butterfly-wings sensation low in her belly. It was the brandy on an empty stomach, she told herself.

  ‘You think I’m joking?’ she asked him belligerently. ‘I would, you know.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I’m sure you would. The only problem is I think you’re assuming I have a fragile male ego. I don’t. I imagine,’ he mused, not smiling, ‘it is partly to do with genetics and—’

  ‘And partly,’ she cut in contemptuously, ‘to do with every woman in your life telling you how perfect you are.’ Poor deluded idiots. ‘Newsflash, Mathieu, women lie.’

  ‘You being the exception.’

  ‘Well, I’m not about to tell you you’re perfect,’ she promised grimly as she rose to her feet with slightly wobbly dignity. ‘I’ve said what I came to, I’m going now and I just … no.’ She broke off and lifted her blazing eyes to his before placing her shoulder bag very firmly on top of her case beside the chair. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ No way, that would be letting him off too easily.

  She had come here to vent her feelings and hopefully prick his conscience, but she could see now that it had been naïve of her to expect him to exhibit some remorse. The man was a total stranger to compassion.

  ‘You messed up my life—you can put it right.’

  The smile was wiped from his face. A spasm of distaste contorted the perfectly proportioned contours of his lean features. ‘And how much will this putting right cost me?’

  ‘Cost?’ She stared up at him in bewilderment. Then as his meaning sank in the colour left her cheeks as a wave of revolted fury washed over her. This hateful man couldn’t open his mouth without insulting her.

  ‘You think I’m asking you for cash? I wouldn’t take money off you if I were dead,’ she declared in a quivering voice.

  He looked down at her for a moment, his expression considering. ‘If that were the situation money wouldn’t do you much good, but as you are very much alive …’ His eyes moved from the sparkling scorn in her bright eyes, and touched the soft fullness of her lips before sliding slowly across the smooth opalescent skin of her slender throat.

  ‘I don’t want your money; I want a job,’ she declared.

  He looked perplexed by her explanation. ‘A job?’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Y‘ES, I want a job, the thing I had until you decided to slander me to anyone that would listen.’

  ‘I haven’t slandered you to anyone, I told you—’

  Rose cut off his weary explanation with a bored wave of her hand. ‘Yeah, yeah … It seems to me that under the circumstances it’s the least you could do.’

  ‘Slander is a crime.’

  Rose shrugged, lowered her eyes from his lean face and thought looking sinfully seductive and dangerous ought to be one too.

  ‘And I’m sure you have a team of lawyers who make damned sure that nothing you don’t like ever gets said or printed about you.’

  ‘That might not be such a bad idea,’ he conceded.

  ‘Are you laughing at me?’ she asked, studying his solemn expression suspiciously.

  He took a step closer and looked at her with his dark head inclined to one side. The expression she didn’t trust was still in his eyes, but she was no longer sure it was laughter. Whatever it was it made her heart beat a lot faster against her breastbone.

  ‘You could sue me,’ he suggested softly.

  Rose held her ground even though every instinct she had was screaming at her to run. The charge that he gave off was electrical, almost physical; her own reaction was definitely physical. Just being this close to him made her toes tingle and her stomach quiver.

  ‘And don’t think I wouldn’t if it wasn’t for …’ She stopped, biting her lip.

  ‘If it wasn’t for what?’

  Rose dropped her eyes and shook her head. ‘Just thank your lucky stars I’m not litigious,’ she gritted back huskily. ‘The legal system is loaded in favour of people like you, anyway.’ Even as she said it Rose knew the stereotyping was flawed; this man might be despicable, but he was not part of the herd. He was unique.

  ‘Like me?’

  His dangerously low-voiced query made Rose wind her anger around her like a protective scarf. ‘You know, if you possessed a fraction of the moral fibre you like to shove down other people’s throats,’ she yelled, ‘you’d own up to the fact it was your fault I lost my job and want to put it right.’

  Mathieu watched as she sucked in a wrathful breath causing a good deal of quivering under the soft angora. The blazing gold eyes that meshed with his were shimmering with tears of anger. ‘Want …?’ he echoed thickly and swallowed.

  The truth was at that precise moment the only thing that he wanted to do was drag her into his arms and kiss her senseless. The raw, primitive nature of the response she drew from him was like nothing he had ever experienced before.

  He had had the opportunity to do a lot more than kiss her and he had walked away. When offered on a plate what his body now craved, he had been able to reject it with no difficulty.

  What had changed?

  Four years ago he had been aesthetically aware of the beauty of the woman who had offered herself to him, but he had not been tempted. There had been no chemistry.

  Yet now he could not be in the same room as her, or even think of the scent of her perfume, without feeling the stirring of desire.

  A bemused groove between his darkly defined brows, his brooding glance drifted speculatively across the soft contours of her face. Emotional and physical control was something he pretty much took for granted, he was master of his appetites and he had met women who were more beautiful, so what was it about this one, beyond the obvious, that ate away at his discipline? And why now and not four years earlier?

  ‘But, of course, someone like you wouldn’t understand what it is like to lose a job.’

  He arched a dark brow as he met her scornful glare. ‘What exactly am I like, Rose?’ He liked the way her name felt on his tongue; it led him to wondering how she would taste.

  ‘I’d tell you if I thought it would do any good, but no matter what I say you’ll still carry on thinking you’re God’s gift to the human race and the female part of it in particular.’ Her angry gaze grew distracted as it stilled on his lean dark face. Wouldn’t anyone who looked in the mirror and saw that face every morning be arrogant?

  ‘But basically you’re someone wh
o wouldn’t have a clue what it means to lose a job. We don’t all have a private income to fall back on.’

  ‘You have a family to go home to—you won’t exactly starve.’

  ‘I have a family and I have savings, but that’s not the point. I’m twenty-six. I don’t want to sponge off my parents.’ And neither did she want to go back and have everyone say I told you so.

  ‘You assume that I have led a rich, pampered existence?’ Anything less pampered than his life up to the age of fifteen would have been difficult to imagine.

  Yet in many ways those years when there had been just himself and his mother living what many would consider a deprived, hand-to-mouth existence had been in the ways that counted the happiest of his life.

  Mathieu was in a position to know firsthand that money and material possessions did not buy happiness. He had wanted for nothing materially when Andreos had recognised him as his son. But that first year there had been many occasions when if someone had offered him the chance to return to the life he had had before Andreos he would have taken it without a second thought.

  Rose felt a rush of anger. Surely he wouldn’t be hypocritical enough to suggest anything else. ‘Now why should I assume that when you’re standing there in your fancy suit and handmade Italian shoes?’ she drawled sarcastically. ‘I suppose you’ve spent no end of nights worrying about paying bills.’

  ‘Not lost sleep,’ he conceded. ‘But I have needed to—what is the expression? Rob Peter to pay Paul.’

  Suspecting his mockery, she glared. ‘Oh, yes, I’m sure you had it tough.’

  A flicker of sardonic amusement flashed into his eyes as he lifted his shoulders in a minimal but expressive shrug. ‘You might be surprised.’

  Rose looked at him in disgust and he looked back with a faint smile and cool confidence that went bone-deep. Was that confidence a result of his privileged upbringing or was that inherent in the man?

  Rose suspected the latter was true.

  ‘Surprised that a man who is wearing a watch that costs more than some houses knows what it’s like to be hard up,’ she tossed at him scornfully and folded her arms across her chest. ‘Frankly, yes, I would be surprised. Very surprised. You’re heir to a huge fortune … squillions!’

  And even if his wealth hadn’t been common knowledge it would be obvious just by looking at him, she reflected, her gaze travelling up the long, lean, supremely elegant length of him, that he was part of an exclusive élite.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if your silver spoon was encrusted with diamonds,’ she speculated bitterly. ‘What’s so funny?’ she demanded indignantly in response to his dry laugh.

  The satirical glitter faded from Mathieu’s eyes, leaving his expression sombre as he said, ‘I didn’t always have a silver spoon, Rose.’

  She slung him an irritated glare and swung away, or she would have if he hadn’t caught her by the shoulder and twisted her back.

  ‘Do you mind?’ Her breath was coming in painful little gasps as she forced her eyes away from the disturbing image of his brown fingers curled over her upper arm. ‘I don’t enjoy this hands-on stuff,’ she claimed, even though her entire treacherous body was doing its best to reveal her as a liar.

  She mentally crossed her fingers and hoped he would put down the tremors that were rippling through her body to her revulsion. Fortunately there was no way he could know anything about the warm, squidgy, fluttery feeling low in her belly. And unless she fell down in a heap the weakened state of her knees would remain on a strictly need-to-know basis.

  Even so she half expected Mathieu to respond with a scornful laugh, but he didn’t. As their eyes connected she stopped struggling.

  ‘Mathieu …?’

  ‘I was born in a single-roomed apartment in an area of Paris that the tourists do not visit.’

  Rose stared. The words that had literally shocked her into silence had erupted from his lips with an intensity that made her take an involuntary step backwards. In the split second before she saw his smooth urbane mask slide into place she saw a flicker of shock in his eyes. It was almost as if he was as surprised as she was to hear what he said.

  ‘Actually nobody visits there unless they have no other choice.’ His taut smile did not reach his eyes and his previous stark announcement hung in the air between them. ‘But that is not relevant.’ The words, his manner—they both signalled his intention to draw a line under the subject. A subject you introduced, Matt.

  ‘But I don’t understand.’

  Mathieu’s jaw tightened. Neither did he. He didn’t understand what impulse had made him volunteer personal information that way. He might as well have handed the woman a gold-edged invite to tramp around in his head.

  It was bizarre. Andreos had said a lot worse and utterly failed to get under his guard, but for some reason Rose’s silver-spoon jibe, not to mention her assumption of moral superiority when she had made it, had really got to him.

  Since when did he give a damn what anyone thought of him? It didn’t matter to him if Rose Hall dismissed him as some spoilt, pampered rich kid who had grown into a spoilt, pampered man.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  His lashes lifted from his chiselled cheekbones. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You can’t say something like that and leave it,’ she protested.

  He gave a very Gallic shrug. ‘Why not?’

  Rose rolled her eyes. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I am not the subject of this conversation.’ His sanity possibly should be. For the first time in his life he was worried that if he started talking he couldn’t guarantee where the cut-off point would be. He had already let this woman have a glimpse of himself that should have remained private. That was a pretty heavy price to pay just for the pleasure of the look of smug superiority wiped off her face.

  ‘Your father is Andreos Demetrios, isn’t he?’ Just about the richest man in Europe and Mathieu was his heir. How could what he was saying be true?

  A growling sound escaped Mathieu’s clamped lips as he bared his teeth in a ferocious smile and glared down at her. She was like a damned terrier with a bone.

  Rose, who didn’t have a clue what she had done to earn such seething resentment, kept her chin up but regarded him warily.

  ‘You want the salacious details? Fine.’ His lip curled contemptuously as he punched the air in a gesture of frustration and asked himself, ‘Why not?’ before dragging a hand through his hair. ‘Andreos is my father; I have the DNA results to prove it. But my mother,’ he continued in the same driven manner, ‘was not his wife. My mother was a young girl who gave birth nine months after a one-night stand.’

  ‘Then you were a…’

  ‘A bastard—yes, I am.’ Her embarrassed flush brought his mocking smile to the surface.

  ‘And you had no contact with him … your father … when you were young?’ A pucker appeared on her smooth brow. ‘Surely he gave your mother financial support.’

  ‘It was only after my mother’s death that I learned who my father was.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask? Weren’t you curious?’ It seemed inconceivable to Rose that anyone would not want to know their roots.

  He shook his dark head, his expression remote as though his thoughts were in another time and place. ‘We were fine as we were, just the two of us.’

  ‘Did he know?’

  ‘About me? Apparently not. I went to live with him six months after she died.’ He related the information in a flat, expressionless tone … well, having revealed this much there seemed very little point holding back now. Dieu, what was it about this woman that activated some previously dormant soul-bearing gene in his make-up?

  She met his eyes. All she could see was her own reflection in the mirrored silver surface. His expression, in stark contrast to the blaze of white-hot emotion that had been written there moments earlier, was inscrutable. ‘It is sad, your mother being alone …’

  ‘She wasn’t alone; she had me.’

  ‘How
old were you when she died?’

  ‘Nearly fifteen.’

  ‘And that six months before you went to live with him?’

  Mathieu ran a hand over his jaw and nodded. It was years since he had even allowed himself to think about that time in his life. There was something almost liberating about allowing himself to share these private recollections.

  ‘I stayed on in the flat and I worked as a construction labourer to pay the rent.’ These were things he had never told anyone—not even Jamie, his best friend.

  ‘But you were fifteen,’ Rose exclaimed, her eyes round with shock.

  ‘I was tall for my age.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. You were a child—you shouldn’t have been alone that way. You should have been at school.’

  ‘I didn’t go to school when she got ill, and afterwards …’ He gave a careless shrug. ‘I suppose I fell through the cracks. Look,’ he said, changing the subject abruptly, ‘whether you believe it or not, I am sorry you lost your job, but I have no vacancy that would suit your qualifications.’

  ‘I’m a qualified librarian, but I haven’t always worked with books.’ As she looked at him Rose was unable to shake the image from her head of him as a lonely little boy forced first to care for his dying mother and then to fend for himself. Her tender heart ached when she thought about it.

  ‘I know what you’re good at,’ he said, his eyes lingering on her lush mouth as he once again was overwhelmed with the urge to kiss it, ‘and that I can get it for free.’

  Mathieu moved his head to one side just a split second before her hand would have connected with his cheek. He caught her wrist and surprised her almost as much as he did himself by bringing it up to his mouth and brushing the smooth blue-veined inner aspect of her wrist with his lips.

  Eyes wide, she released a small cry and pulled back. Mathieu released his hold and watched as she nursed her hand against her heaving breasts.

  ‘Sorry, that was a cheap crack.’ And he had made it to drive the look of compassion from her face. If there was one thing he could not tolerate, it was pity.

  Rose’s head came up; he had sounded genuinely regretful.