Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  Responding to the pressure of the hand in the small of her back, Rose began to walk towards the door.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘SORRY we’re late.’

  There were seven people sitting around the table. Following the lead of the heavy-set grey-haired figure, presumably Andreos Demetrios, at the head of the table the men rose courteously as Rose approached.

  It would seem he had taken Mathieu’s demands to heart.

  Rose carried on smiling—it could be that the pasted smile might have to be surgically removed at a later date—as Mathieu made the introductions.

  It was always hard walking into a room of strangers. Walking into a room of strangers when you were pretending to be someone you weren’t raised the stress stakes a hundredfold. But she was not, Rose realised, nearly as nervous about being the focus of six pairs of critical eyes as she was at the thought of being alone with Mathieu once dinner was over.

  What was she going to say?

  Andreos gave her a hard assessing glance. She smiled faintly back. If she hadn’t been so distracted by the scene in the bedroom still playing in her head she might have managed a token display of the deference that Mathieu’s powerful father obviously considered his due.

  Now of course she could think of a hundred responses ranging from amused to cuttingly sarcastic that would have left Mathieu in no doubt that she was not interested.

  Instead what had she done? Nothing. Nothing was only slightly less incriminating than the truth, which was his suggestion had excited and scared her. She hadn’t said anything because she had been afraid that if she opened her mouth she might hear herself say something along the lines of, Yes, please.

  The knowledge appalled her.

  ‘Well?’

  Rose, about to take her seat, stopped and glanced towards her host. She saw the flash of annoyance in his face. Damn.

  ‘My father asked if we had a good journey.’

  ‘It was an experience. I’m not used to travelling in such luxurious style.’ She turned her head as she lowered herself into the chair that Mathieu held out for her. Their eyes brushed before he straightened up. She found his expression hard to read. He seemed tense. Did he think she’d gone out of her way to annoy the older man?

  Besides the two cousins who were like paler, less bulkier versions of Andreos Demetrios, there was the man himself, an aunt, a lawyer who had been introduced as a family friend, the lovely Sacha and her mother, a thin woman who drank water and pushed her food around her plate.

  The mother looked at Rose with a marked lack of the warmth and animation that was in her face when she addressed Mathieu, who sat opposite Rose.

  Sacha’s expression when she looked at Mathieu was equally transparent. Rose found it difficult to believe that Mathieu could be as indifferent to her shy adoration as he appeared. The younger girl looked gorgeous in a dress that showed off her smooth pale gold shoulders. The moment her glance lighted on the glowing young brunette, Rose felt like an ancient and overweight frump.

  ‘Not hungry, Rose?’ Mathieu asked in a voice intended for her ears only as he leaned towards her.

  Rose’s own hushed voice had a shaky quality due in part to the shock of having her foot nudged, which might have been accidental if her shoe, an elegant high-heeled court, had not been slipped off. There was nothing accidental about the fingers that curled around her ankle.

  ‘I…’ Rose gave a yelp as the fingers slid higher, and drew her foot back, blushing deeply.

  ‘I bit my tongue.’ She sent a look of seething reproach in Mathieu’s direction while nodding fervently to the maid with the wine bottle who had materialised at her elbow.

  She was beginning to suspect she’d need whatever prop was available to get her through this meal.

  By the time the fish course was served Rose’s initial discomfort had been replaced by a tipsy recklessness.

  She was wondering if anyone would actually notice if she got up and left, when Andreos’s deep voice cut across the quiet and slightly stilted chatter of the dinner table. ‘So my son tells me that you met in Monaco.’

  Rose lifted her eyes from her plate.

  As she put her fork down on her plate Rose could hear the beat of her pulse in her throbbing temples. Her eyes moved past and beyond Andreos to Mathieu who was sitting directly opposite her.

  She wondered for the umpteenth time since they had arrived how she had allowed him to talk her into this.

  ‘Oh, I love Monaco,’ she heard Sacha bubble happily. ‘It’s just about my most favourite place in the world.’

  ‘I’ve never been there,’ Rose said in a clear voice that carried around the table.

  Mathieu didn’t express panic or even moderate concern that she wasn’t playing the game. Rather his lips quivered and she saw the amused glitter in his eyes before he bent his head, calmly reapplying himself to the food on his plate.

  Rose, her eyes narrowed, looked at his dark head with dislike. A man who had gone to the trouble of inventing a fiancée and kissing her senseless in front of a witness to prove a point ought, under the circumstances, to look less relaxed when it looked as if his elaborate charade was about to be blown.

  Andreos, his manner interrogative, turned his attention to his son. ‘She says—’

  Mathieu’s dark head came up. The warning reflected in his eyes was mirrored in his deep voice. ‘She is called Rose, and she is sitting beside you.’ His eyes swivelled in Rose’s direction. ‘I hope, ma petite, that you will forgive my father. He does not intend to give offence, but he manages it anyway.’ His attention swivelled back to his father, who looked ready to explode at the thinly veiled censure.

  Andreos opened his mouth to deliver a robust denunciation but Rose got in before him.

  ‘Genes being what they are,’ she retorted, reminding herself that Mathieu was only playing a role when he rode to her defence.

  Not that she needed anyone riding to her rescue—she could look after herself. A notable exception to this rule of self-sufficiency being when she was about to drown in the middle of an icy loch. There were moments that she forgot that she owed him her life.

  ‘It would have come as an enormous shock to me if your father had turned out to have manners that could be called faultless.’

  The jibe drew one of Mathieu’s lopsided and wildly attractive grins. His father was a few beats behind in interpreting her comment. When he did his jaw literally dropped. With no experience of guests who told him he was rude, he struggled to come up with an appropriate response, though she could see that his natural instincts leant towards throttling.

  ‘Young woman—’

  ‘Rose,’ Mathieu inserted.

  ‘Rose, you seem to be a very outspoken young woman. That no doubt is what attracted my son to you, but I do not appreciate—’

  Mathieu’s languid drawl sliced across his father’s rebuke. ‘No, I’m shallow—her ability to speak her mind was way down the list.’ His grin broadened as his eyes slid suggestively down her body.

  Rose, her face flaming, dropped her fork. It hit the floor with a clatter. ‘I hardly think your father is interested.’

  ‘Such innocence. Of course he is interested, Rose. I would be most surprised if there isn’t a firm of private investigators working round the clock in search of salacious details. By tomorrow he will know your shoe size and favourite colour. I could have saved you the trouble, Andreos—there is nothing that you could tell me about Rose that would shock me.’

  She thought he was joking until she saw the Greek entrepreneur’s expression. The colour seeped from her face at the idea of strangers building a dossier on her; it made her feel physically sick.

  ‘So you didn’t meet in Monaco. I suppose you’re not engaged to be married either,’ Andreos said, not denying his son’s charge.

  ‘I wouldn’t marry him if he was the last man alive,’ Rose announced to the room at large.

  There was a startled silence, broken when Mathieu put down his fork, th
rew back his head and laughed.

  His reaction made everyone present treat her comments as a joke.

  Rose glared at him with seething frustration.

  ‘I’d be grateful in future if you did not bring your lovers’ tiffs to the dinner table.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  Andreos looked visibly startled by his son’s agreement.

  ‘Forgive us, it is not an appropriate place to air our differences. I can promise you,’ Mathieu continued, his eyes holding Rose’s, ‘that it won’t happen again.’

  ‘Don’t you dare apologise for me,’ she breathed wrathfully. ‘And,’ she added, her gaze swivelling in the direction of the older Demetrios, ‘this is not a lovers’ tiff,’ she gritted from between clenched teeth. ‘We are not even …’ She stopped. She couldn’t think the word in the same context as Mathieu, let alone say it out loud.

  ‘Not even what?’

  ‘Lovers,’ Mathieu inserted.

  The suggestion of unspoken intimacies in the warm velvet undertones of Mathieu’s deep voice brought a rush of colour to Rose’s face. The resulting laughter dissipated the tension around the table. People began to eat once more.

  Mathieu didn’t. He laid down his fork and looked directly at Rose. Her heart began to hammer as she read the message glittering in his platinum eyes—a combination of challenge and something more elusive.

  With a last glare of fulminating loathing at his amused dark face she stared fixedly at her plate until the fragrant lamb was a misty blur.

  She could not have said what else she ate during the interminable meal and when it was over the ordeal went on. The women retired to the salon.

  Rose found the segregation slightly Victorian and the conversation stilted and awkward.

  It could not have been much more than five minutes before Mathieu left the other men who were gathered on the terrace and came to join her indoors, but it felt like longer to Rose.

  As he crossed the room looking like the archetypal dark brooding hero of fiction her heart started to throw itself against her ribcage. The sudden hush that fell amongst the chattering women and almost audible buzz of interest made it clear that hers wasn’t the only heart to misbehave.

  And was it any wonder? Even if you left the drooling sex appeal he oozed out of the equation, aesthetically speaking he was very easy on the eye—even the way he moved was riveting.

  He touched her shoulder as he reached her side and left his hand there, a proprietorial gesture that she had no doubt was for the benefit of the other women. ‘It’s been a long day.’

  She nodded and wondered if there was any way she could make him move his hand without making it too obvious his touch was so disruptive to her nervous system that, given the opportunity, she would have crawled out of her skin to escape the nerve-tingling sensation.

  His attention lingered on her face. ‘You look tired,’ he observed, sounding very much the attentive lover, and then the forceful lover as he announced casually, ‘We will have an early night.’

  Teeth gritted and trying very hard not to think about what an early night with Mathieu might entail if the circumstances were different, Rose responded to the pressure of the hand that was under her elbow and got to her feet.

  An image slipped past the barrier. She wasn’t sure if the groan was in her mind or if it had actually come out of her mouth. Then she saw the way everyone was looking at her—question answered.

  The edges of Mathieu’s deep velvet voice were roughened with concern as he searched her face and asked, ‘Are you all right?’

  She shrugged off his hand. ‘Did it occur to you that I might not want an early night? I’m quite capable of deciding when I want to go to bed and,’ she added grimly, ‘who with.’ She didn’t add that normally the choice was between a good book and the cat from across the way that always came calling when she left her bedroom window open.

  ‘The truth? No, it didn’t occur to me,’ he admitted. ‘But don’t worry—I take rejection well.’

  ‘Like you’d know.’

  To Rose’s relief—she was still biting her tongue—Mathieu didn’t react to her as good as telling him that he was too gorgeous for any woman to resist. She bit her tongue to stop herself explaining that she was an exception to the rule. She was, after all, meant to be engaged to him and, besides, it might just smack of the lady protesting too much.

  ‘Rose,’ he explained for the benefit of the women who were straining to catch each syllable of this lightning-fast exchange, ‘is trying to reform me.’

  ‘Reform?’ Sacha, her dark curls bouncing attractively as she turned her head quickly looking in bewilderment from one to the other, echoed.

  Rose could see the girl’s dilemma. As far as she was concerned it was a case of why reform what was already perfect, and from the way her eyes followed Mathieu it was clear that she thought he could not be improved upon.

  ‘It is her ambition to drag me into the twenty-first century,’ he explained, ‘and turn me into a modern man.’

  Sacha flushed and lowered her eyes when Mathieu directed his ironic grin in her direction. Her mother, however, was not similarly tongue-tied.

  ‘A modern man,’ Helena Constantine echoed, her artfully pencilled brows lifting as she gave a contemptuous smile. ‘Despite what they may say all women prefer strong men, not a puppy dog.’ From the direction of her admiring stare it was not difficult to see whom she was talking about.

  Rose rolled her eyes. ‘For goodness’ sake, it’s not like he needs encouragement.’

  The older woman’s carmine lips tightened in response to Rose’s flippancy. She glanced at Mathieu and seemed disappointed when, far from looking outraged, he was openly amused.

  ‘A man should lead, a woman should follow,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Not this woman,’ Rose promised, quite enjoying the novelty of finding herself cast in the role of staunch feminist. ‘I’m not the following kind.’

  ‘Mama says that the trick is making a man think the idea was his in the first place,’ Sacha confided, glancing towards her mother for support, her smile wobbling slightly when she saw her parent’s expression. ‘She says that a clever woman can make a man do.’ Her voice dried up totally in the face of an icy glare from the older woman.

  It was Mathieu who came to her rescue.

  ‘There you have it, a clever woman … that leaves you out, mon ange’

  There was nothing faintly angelic about the expression on Rose’s face as she asked, ‘Are you calling me stupid?’

  ‘I have far too much respect for my well-being to call you anything of the sort. How fortunate it is I prefer feisty women to the clever variety,’ he said, looking straight at her with an expression that in her mind was inappropriate outside the privacy of a bedroom.

  ‘And as for turning you into a modern man,’ Rose said, forcing herself not to break eye contact even though her stomach was churning with a volatile mixture of excitement and heart-racing fear, ‘I’m a realist.’

  And as a realist she knew that he was acting a part. He really didn’t want to rip off her clothes, send the crockery crashing to the floor and make love to her on the table. Oh, yeah, Rose, hold that thought. It’s really going to help you stay calm and in control.

  ‘As a realist I don’t attempt the impossible.’

  ‘How about …?’

  Rose closed her eyes. His manner suggested he had just had an epiphany, while the gleam in his eyes told her he was about to say something that would make her want to curl up and die from sheer mortification.

  Unfortunately her reading of that gleam turned out to be spot on.

  ‘If in the interests of harmony once the bedroom door is closed I will let you take a turn being in charge…’

  A choking sound emerged from Rose’s throat. Of course she was delusional to have thought even for a second that she could get the better of Mathieu in a war of words; he would always win in the end—he had no scruples.

  In the sybaritic imag
e playing in her head he had no clothes either. The only thing covering his gleaming golden skin was a fine sheen of sweat and her thighs where she sat astride him. She blinked and sucked in a shaky sigh as she tried to block the treacherous thoughts that made her skin crackle with heat.

  ‘You like the idea?’

  Rose liked the idea of a deep dark hole opening up at her feet for her to step into. She had never felt so embarrassed in her entire life. She flashed Mathieu a look of appeal, which he responded to with a warm and loving smile. Lowering her gaze, she gave a theatrical yawn before announcing she was actually quite tired.

  She didn’t meet anyone in the eye as she bid her fellow guests a hurried goodnight and headed for the nearest door.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SHE had gone a couple of hundred yards before Mathieu caught up with her. ‘Well, I think that went well,’ he observed with some satisfaction. ‘Don’t you?’

  She stopped dead and spun around to face him. Had he been in the same room as she had?

  ‘Went well! No, I don’t damn well think it went well. I think it was a total nightmare and so were you.’

  His long lashes swept down to partially conceal his eyes, but not before she had caught the wicked amusement dancing in the silvered depths. ‘Did I say something to upset you?’

  The innocent act made her grind her teeth. Did he get a kick out of baiting everyone or was it just her he liked to see squirm? ‘Now what makes you think that? I just love having people think I’m into, into … bondage or something.’

  There was startled silence before his warm laughter boomed out. ‘I admit I am having trouble seeing you as a dominatrix.’

  His taunting grin widened when she lifted her hands to her burning cheeks and choked, ‘Shut. Up.’

  ‘Relax,’ he advised. ‘I imagine they are simply thinking we have a healthy sex life.’

  Relax. Was he serious? It was bad enough that her own imagination was running riot without the thought of other people speculating about what they got up to in the bedroom.