The blood thundered in her ears. How could she ever have believed that she cared for a man who could talk to her like this? ‘You arrogant, unbeliev- able man—’
‘But that’s what happened last time.’
No, that’s where you’re wrong, she thought. Last time, I thought we were both motivated by love; now he had reduced it to the lowest possible common denominator. Lust. Now it was her turn to curve her lips with distaste. ‘You disgust me.’
‘I know. A pity you find it so exciting.’
She’d had enough. Shoulders back, she made an effort and walked to the door. ‘Herete,’ she slung after her, using the Greek word for goodbye.
‘I told you, you aren’t going anywhere, not until you listen to what I have to say. You have angered me, Jade.’
‘Good! You’ve angered me, too—so maybe we’re quits!’
‘Never before,’ he mused, ‘have I been made to look a fool by a woman—’
‘Then maybe you should have done! And if you had, it might have made you more human!’ she retorted, deliberately putting away the memory of him on the island. He had been human then—de- lectably human. Powerful yet persuasive, strong and yet gentle. She nudged the thought away. That Constantine did not exist; he had been playacting, too.
‘All morning,’ he ground out, his eyes dark and gleaming with anger, ‘I have had family, colleagues and business acquaintances cabling me to offer their sincere congratulations.’
Jade stared at him in confusion. ‘What for?’
Another abrasive laugh. ‘On my forthcoming marriage.’
‘I’m not with you.’ Had he been hiding a fiancee up his sleeve all this time? In which case, he had no right to criticise her for supposedly flirting with Russ Robson!
‘But yes, unfortunately, you are. You told the newspaper that I had asked you to marry me, and that you had accepted, and with those words I’m afraid that you have sealed your fate.’
Something in the way he spoke unnerved her, and Jade felt a shiver of apprehension trickle its way slowly down her spine. ‘What in heaven’s name are you talking about? Sealed my fate, indeed! How?’
The black eyes gleamed menacingly. ‘I’m talking of marriage, naturally.’
Jade opened her mouth and the word squeaked out. ‘Marriage?’
He made an impatient gesture with his hand. ’You will marry me, and as quickly as possible.’
There was a shocked, stunned silence as Jade stared at Constantine in disbelief. He’d flipped! Gone completely mad! She tossed her blonde hair contemptuously back over her shoulders and gave him a chilly smile. ‘It may come as a surprise to you to learn that people who despise one another don’t get married. That’s a cute little custom we happen to have in this country!’
‘So your answer is no?’
‘Of course it’s no!’ And yet in those oh, so dif- ferent earlier circumstances her answer had been an ecstatic yes. Unless… Her foolish little mind went into overdrive. What if he was genuinely sorry about the way he’d behaved on finding out that she’d lied about her job? Was he now regretting that savage seduction? What if the feelings that he’d had for her, or claimed to have had for her on the island, were real? What if he still wanted to marry her for…? Her mind dared not even admit the word to itself. But she had to know. ‘Why do you want to marry me?’
‘Wanting does not come into it. The world now knows that I proposed marriage, which you ac- cepted—and I must honour that commitment.’
Jade’s heart did a backward somersault. Of course he wasn’t marrying her for love. Had he, since he’d arrived back in England, behaved like a man who was in love? The very opposite. ‘I’m not sure that I’m hearing this right. You would marry me simply to honour a commitment?’
His eyes flared like sunlight bouncing off granite. ’Not simply for commitment,’ he said harshly. ‘For pride!’
‘Pride?’
‘Yes, pride, or, if you prefer it—honour.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘That I can believe—but it is a concept which shapes the whole life of a Greek,’ he said proudly. ’If I back down now, having given my word that I would marry you—then I will be seen to be dis- honourable, and for a man in my position that is something I simply will not countenance.’
Jade went cold at the unfeeling lack of affection behind his words. ‘You must be mad,’ she whis- pered, ‘to think that I’d ever, ever marry you!’
‘Don’t make me force you, Jade.’
‘Force me? This is London, you know, not the back of beyond—you can’t throw me over the back of your horse and carry me off somewhere!’ Even though just the thought of it sent a betraying little frisson of excitement through her body.
‘More subtle force than that,’ he answered, with smooth assurance.
‘Oh, really?’ She gave a disbelieving laugh, but there was something about the steely determination on his face which again stirred those misgivings into life. ‘Like what?’
‘Like the fact that two hours ago I bought your proprietor out and that I now own the major con- trolling interest in this newspaper.’
The room swayed. Jade swallowed. ‘You can’t have done!’ she blustered. ‘Not that quickly! This article was only published this morning. You can’t possibly have bought the paper!’
‘But that is where you are so wrong—with the right financial incentive anything is possible,’ he answered, with a cynical smile. ‘Surely you knew that, Jade?’
She eyed him with frosty disapproval. ‘No, I didn’t,’ she answered witheringly. ‘I’m not in the big money league. Besides, whether or not you’ve bought the paper is of absolutely no interest to me.’
‘Oh, I think it is,’ he said softly.
He obviously had no inkling of the fact that she was now no longer a member of staff! Jade gave him a superior smile as she savoured her moment of triumph. ‘Wrong!’ she retorted. ‘I’ve already handed my notice in. So you see—whether or not you own the newspaper has nothing to do with me, because I no longer work here!’
‘You wouldn’t have done in any case—as my wife I would not have you working on such a scurrilous rag.’
Jade felt like shaking him, if his sheer size hadn’t made him so immovable. ‘I’m not going to be your wife, you ruthless tyrant! Don’t you understand? The fact that you own the paper means nothing to me, absolutely nothing!’
‘Then you care nothing about the fate of your former colleagues?’ he enquired silkily.
Actually, no, certainly not Maggie, not after her betrayal, and most of the other journalists would find work on other newspapers.
She chewed anxiously on her bottom lip. Wouldn’t they?
‘Not particularly,’ she said evasively, but her heart sank a little since she knew that several of them were mortgaged up to the hilt. ‘Journalists are used to switching around—it’s that kind of job.’
‘But the others?’ he persisted. ‘The men in the print room, for example, who I am told by your editor you are rather fond of.’ His mouth curled disdainfully. ‘But then, they are men, are they not?’ The insulting implication was made painfully clear. ‘And some of these men,’ he continued inexorably, ‘look too old to start anew.’ If they should lose their jobs,’ he said, with deliberate emphasis.
Jade stared back at him with fascinated loathing. ’You wouldn’t,’ she whispered. ‘You wouldn’t do that?’
‘Wouldn’t I?’ he answered remorselessly. ‘Be- lieve me when I tell you that I would do whatever it takes.’
Jade often shared a snatched lunch break in the Lamb and Flag with the stalwarts of the print room. She thought of dear old Arthur, saving like mad for his retirement so that he and his wife could re- tire to a small complex in Spain. And Bill, whose married son was out of work, and whose wage meant that his grandchildren got toys at Christmas. And clothes for the rest of the year.
She stared into the cold, black eyes. ‘Are you saying that I could save these people their jobs—�
�
‘If you agree to marry me? Yes.’
This was preposterous—things like this just didn’t happen in her world! ‘You can’t,’ she protested. ’The unions will—’
‘I can,’ he said implacably. ‘And I will.’
Jade ran her fingers wildly through her mussed hair, closing her eyes as she tried to piece her thoughts together. Could she bear to see people like Arthur and Bill thrown out of a job because of her foolishness, her indiscretion? And if the only way to put a stop to it was by marrying Constantine…
She looked up into the impenetrable black eyes, and perhaps he read the unwilling capitulation in hers, for the corners of his mouth lifted in an arro- gant half-smile of triumph.
‘So you’ll marry me?’ he asked.
‘What choice do I have?’ she answered bitterly. ’Only someone as heartless as yourself would dream of saying no.’
He made a soft laugh, and rose from behind the desk with all the stealth and grace of a jungle cat moving in for the kill, and Jade eyed him with a deep hatred which was nonetheless mixed with a deep longing which she couldn’t seem to shake off. Cornered, she began to back away from him as he approached.
‘I want to get a few things straight,’ she said, and he immediately halted, eyeing her with a calculat- ing interest. ‘You’re marrying me just to keep your word and maintain your honour?’
‘Oh, no,’ he negated mockingly. ‘Not just for that.’
‘It isn’t?’ Jade’s eyes widened as she wondered just what other motivation there could be behind this preposterous marriage.
‘No, indeed,’ he repeated, on a deep, silky note, which made the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up like soldiers. ‘An added incentive is that I desire you with a compulsion which I find pro- foundly disturbing; it disturbed me when I first met you, and making love to you just once seems to have only exacerbated it. By marrying you, it will enable me to have you whenever I like and how often I like, so that inevitably my desire for you will lessen, and—diminish,’ he concluded callously.
Somehow, Jade managed to keep her face poker- straight. ‘And then?’
He shrugged. ‘Then, in a few months’ time—we can divorce, if you wish it.’ His mouth became an implacably hard line. ‘I will probably have grown tired of you by then.’
‘But surely that will heap even more dishonour on your head?’ suggested Jade sarcastically.
He shook the black head emphatically. ‘Not at all. My family and my Greek friends will doubt- lessly expect the marriage to fail from the begin- ning—and they will blame its failure on the cultural differences between the two races. Besides, if we marry in England in a register office, it won’t even be considered a proper marriage, no matter what the law says—because to all my family and friends only a church wedding in Greece will fulfil that function.’
He looked so cold, so hard, as if he were dis- cussing some board-room take over. ‘My God,’ whispered Jade. ‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you? Every single ghastly aspect.’
‘But naturally,’ he continued inexorably. ‘It is the way I always operate. So,’ the eyes glittered blackly. ’You agree to my proposal?’
Jade lifted her chin and glared at him. ‘I will consider it.’ But his attention didn’t seem to be on what she was saying, for she saw that he was staring openly at her breasts, and his eyes had darkened into glittering chips of black ice as he began to ap- proach her once more.
She watched as he moved, clasping her hands together to stop them trembling, knowing that she should stray from his relentless path, but some- thing in his face stopped her. Oh, the fascinating planes and shadows of that harsh and ruthless face! It was as though everything which was dark and powerful and savage and masculine—all the primitive qualities which made some men so devas- tatingly attractive—had been bestowed far too lib- erally on Constantine. He made every other man she’d ever met seem like insubstantial shadows by comparison.
‘And now…’ He was so close now: she could smell that soapy fragrance mingled with the hot, salty and aroused male tang of him. ‘A kiss for your husband-to-be…’ His voice sounded like gravel scraping over velvet.
He lowered his mouth with exacting precision over hers, his tongue gently probing her half- protesting lips apart, and she felt it move slowly into her mouth, sliding erotically over her teeth… inexorably seductive… until there was no protest left in her, and she kissed him back. And back… as the intimacy of the kiss grew and grew. And, with each second that passed, the kiss pro- voked a tense excitement which built and built and built, so that her body and her heart cried out for joy when he slowly and deliberately swept his hand down over her breast, her belly, briefly alighting on one thigh before encircling her waist.
She felt the hot, fierce and wet release of desire and she gave a little moan, half-crazy with wanting. In the dimmest recesses of her mind some voice of reason spoke its protest, wondering how she could allow him to do this to her after all that had happened.
But the desires of her body seemed to have oblit- erated everything but its own intense need, and her mind and the voice of reason weren’t getting a look in—not when his hand had moved down to un- button her shirt and she felt the cool air on her skin, immediately closing her eyes with helpless pleasure as he slid his hand inside her bra, so that the exquisitely sensitive nub nudged insistently against his circling palm.
He hadn’t stopped kissing her, and his other hand had begun to move her floaty skirt up, and was caressing its way oh, so slowly all the way up her bare and craving thigh, his fingers stroking feather- light touches over the soft skin there. With a muffled groan he pulled her body tightly into his and Jade’s eyelids fluttered open as she felt the tan- talisingly hard pressure of his arousal which pushed against her, and then, through dazed eyes, saw the familiar yet unexpected sight of her boss’s office. Ex-boss, she corrected herself vaguely. Realised, with Constantine’s hand almost on her panties, that if she didn’t stop him soon, now, that he would take her right here, and with as little care or feeling as he had shown before in his hotel-room.
Her mind struggled for ascendancy over body, and with a strength she hadn’t known she pos- sessed she pushed him away from her, and stood hastily adjusting her clothing, her eyes dark with rage and passion, her breathing heavy and laboured for exactly the same reasons.
‘Don’t—don’t ever do that again!’ she declared, once her breathing had steadied enough to allow her to speak. ‘Because here’s the second of my terms, Constantine. Yes, I’ll damned well marry you—because I couldn’t bear to see you put those poor men out of work—but it’ll be a marriage in name only! And I’m afraid that you’re in for a shock if you think you’re going to rid yourself of your desire for me by making love to me—because I don’t ever want you to touch me like that again!’
His eyes glinted. ‘Liar,’ he taunted softly. ‘Do you really think you could stop me?’
She had the perfect counter-attack. ‘You’d force me, do you mean, Constantine? But surely your pride wouldn’t allow you to take a woman who didn’t want you?’
But to her fury, he merely laughed. ‘You have an astonishing and enchanting way of showing me how much you don’t want me,’ he observed arrogantly. ‘But don’t worry, Jade—you won’t have to fight me off.’
Such an about-turn was mighty confusing. ‘I w-won’t?’
He let out one notch of his belt, as though his trousers were unbearably tight, and Jade found herself having to stare deliberately into empty space so as not to be confronted with the visual evidence of exactly why he was having to make the necessary adjustment.
‘No, indeed,’ he concluded, still in that same, mocking voice. ‘You see, living in such close con- finement, I’m confident that, whatever your good intentions, you’ll find it impossible to stay away from me.’
‘Over my dead body!’
‘And that if you’ll be doing any fighting, Jade, it’ll be with your own very healthy desire
s.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
JADE looked up into the hard black eyes. ‘And when do you propose that this—wedding—take place?’
Constantine gave a chillingly ruthless smile. ‘As soon as possible. I shall apply for the special li- cence today. We can be married by Wednesday.’
‘And what happens until then—do I go home to my flat to prepare my trousseau?’ she asked sarcastically.
‘It is not necessary for you to return to your flat.’
‘And if I insist?’
He raised his eyebrows mockingly. ‘Have you not yet learnt that I will disregard your insistence? Be- sides, your flat is no longer suitable. Quite apart from its lack of space, you will have already seen how troublesome the Press can be.’ His mouth twisted as if with the irony of his words. ‘You will come straight with me to my suite at the Granchester.’
Jade shuddered. She couldn’t face going back there… where… She lifted her chin up proudly. ’I’m not staying in that hotel room with you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I… Because there’s nowhere to—’ Oh, why not be honest about it? ‘Where would you sleep?’ she asked pointedly. ‘On the sofa?’ Oh, stupid, stupid, Jade! Why mention the wretched sofa?
He gave a complacent smile as he homed into her thoughts immediately. ‘I doubt it. That particular sofa has far too many erotic memories to be con- ducive to sleep, is still permeated with your scent…’ He let his voice tail off, heavy with suggestion, but then, surprisingly, as if noting her discomfiture at having been reminded of an episode which she would have preferred to remain forgotten, he tried a different tack altogether. ‘Do not worry, agape mou,’ he said, in a gentler voice. ‘It has two bed- rooms. Propriety will be observed.’
‘But what will your family say,’ she was unable to resist asking, ‘when they discover that you’re sharing a suite of rooms with a woman to whom you’re not married?’
‘You think that this would be the first time it’s happened?’ he queried softly, and the cruel taunt hit her like a body blow.
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