by Lynne Graham
But was it true that Constantine was wealthier than her father had ever been? Anton certainly hadn’t travelled around in a chauffeur-driven limo or hauled bodyguards in his wake. She shrugged. Either way, what did it matter to her? And even if Constantine was filthy rich it didn’t mean he couldn’t also be disgustingly greedy.
But she still took that magazine to bed with her. There was a picture of Constantine, looking spectacularly dark and smooth and dangerous in a dinner jacket. A beautiful blonde was clutching his arm as if she was afraid he was about to escape. Rosie surveyed the blonde with pity. Constantine was the sort of male animal you kicked hard and walked away from. He would thrive on that kind of brutal treatment and come back for more. Even she, with her limited experience of the male sex, had worked that out at first glance.
As Rosie drove herself to the chosen register office in a nearby town three weeks later, she was struggling to suppress a deep sense of unease. Even if she couldn’t condone her father’s ill-considered attempt to endow her with the lifestyle she might have had as his legitimate daughter, she knew that he had written that will in sincerity and that made her feel guilty and disloyal.
As she drew her little van to a reluctant halt in the car park, she espied the now familiar limousine and pulled a face. Constantine’s bodyguards were outside the register office, on the lookout for her. Neither was dressed for the chill of a late Yorkshire spring. They were blue with cold and the younger man, Taki, was sneezing. Both men fell over themselves in their eagerness to open the door for her and follow her indoors.
‘You’re late,’ Constantine grated, striding forward to intercept her.
‘But I’m here,’ Rosie pointed out flatly. ‘Don’t look a gift-horse in the mouth.’
Incredulous dark eyes roved over her waxed jacket and jeans. ‘Theos...didn’t Anton buy you any decent clothes?’
Rosie reddened, her mouth tightening as she took in the full effect of his exquisitely cut navy pinstripe suit, white silk shirt and gold tie. ‘Surely you didn’t think I would get all dolled up for this charade?’
‘This is not a charade,’ Constantine growled in a repressive undertone. ‘We are about to undergo a legal and binding ceremony.’
A split second after a clerk approached them to invite them into the room where the civil marriage service would take place. Rosie froze. ‘I don’t like this at all,’ she whispered frantically. ‘I wish I hadn’t agreed—’
Impatient long brown fingers enclosed her own and urged her onward. ‘You will go through with it for Thespina’s sake.’
Rosie paled at that cruel reminder of her father’s vulnerable widow. This was a cover-up, she reminded herself, an unpleasant but essential manoeuvre to enable Constantine to inherit Anton’s estate without challenging his will. She focused on a rather tired flower arrangement on a nearby table and then minutes later, from somewhere outside herself, she watched in helpless amazement as Constantine lifted her ice-cold hand and slotted a slender gold ring onto her wedding finger.
‘I believe you drove yourself here,’ Constantine murmured on the pavement outside. ‘Give me your car keys.’
Rosie frowned. ‘My car keys?’ She already had them in her hand. ‘Why?’
Without hesitation, Constantine swiped her keyring from between her fingers, tossed it deftly to Taki and said something in Greek.
It happened so fast that Rosie blinked in bemusement as Taki sped off with her keys. ‘What on earth do you think you’re playing at?’ she demanded furiously.
‘He will drive your vehicle home. We’re spending the night at a hotel.’ Constantine closed a restraining hand round her shoulder as his limousine pulled in by the kerb.
‘We... Say that again?’ Rosie shot aghast eyes to his dark, strong face.
‘Were we to part immediately after the ceremony, it would look very suspicious.’
‘To whom?’ Rosie gasped.
‘Should this arrangement of ours ever be questioned, I will not lay myself open to a charge of having entered the marriage on false pretences—’
‘But that’s exactly what you’ve done!’
‘And wouldn’t it be very foolish of me to make that obvious?’
‘No way am I spending the night with you!’ Rosie told him hotly.
‘You have no choice. This is part of the deal.’ Rosie folded her arms and stood her ground. ‘No way,’ she said again. ‘I wouldn’t trust you as far as the foot of the street!’
‘Do you require assistance to get into the car?’ Dangerous dark eyes of warning rested on her.
For an instant, Rosie hesitated, and then she climbed into the limousine in one quick, angry movement. ‘A man who has to threaten to use brute strength to get his own way is a pathetic apology for a man!’
‘Pity me, then,’ Constantine advised with silken unconcern, treating her to a long, lingering scrutiny that made her shift and tauten. ‘Every time you shout at me I want to slap you down so hard you’ll be scared to raise your head again. I can’t say that you bring out the best in me and you must have put on one hell of an act for Anton. Anton would have run a mile from that mouth of yours.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with my mouth—’
‘It’s an incredibly sexy mouth... until you open it.’ Night-dark eyes partially veiled by lush black lashes rested on the full pink lips in question.
Sharply disconcerted, Rosie flushed. ‘Don’t talk to me like that.’
‘Don’t tell me what I can and can’t say,’ Constantine drawled softly. ‘Nobody does that.’
Involuntarily, Rosie stiffened, feeling that sudden chill even in the warmth of the luxurious car. ‘I’m not prepared to stay at a hotel with you.’
‘But you will. It’s part of our little arrangement. I will not run the risk that at some future date this marriage could be set aside as null and void. I am merely ensuring that we abide by the law to the letter.’
Silence fell, thick with tension, between them.
‘Just how much did Anton tell you about me?’ Constantine demanded abruptly.
‘Much more than I wanted to hear, believe me!’
His sensual mouth hardened and twisted. ‘We were close but evidently not close enough,’ he mused grimly. ‘He was too ashamed to tell me about you—’
‘Anton was not ashamed of me.’
‘Anton was a very happily married man until you came along.’
Rosie bit her lip and made no response. Anton had spent several years and a lot of money striving to trace his illegitimate daughter. For the first nine years of her life he had received photographs of her on every birthday, but her mother, Beth, had included no return address. Rosie had often wondered why her mother had taken the trouble to secretly post those photos to Anton’s London office. Had the exercise simply been an annual embittered reminder of the brief affair which had messed up Beth’s life and cost Anton his only child?
Rosie didn’t know. By the time she had heard the full story of her parentage, her mother had been dead for many years. But she could still remember her mother struggling to handle the brooding bitterness of a husband who had never been able to forgive her for marrying him when she was pregnant by another man. Beth had been dead only a week when Rosie’s stepfather had called in the social services to tell them loudly and aggressively that he had no intention of keeping a child who wasn’t his. That had been his revenge.
The limousine drew up in front of a country-house hotel. Rosie climbed out and hovered. ‘This is ridiculous.’
‘It wouldn’t look quite so ridiculous if you weren’t dressed like some revolting teeny-bopper hitchhiker I happened to pick up on the road here!’
In the intimidatingly elegant foyer and from a distance of almost twenty feet Rosie watched him sign the register. The hotel receptionist was far too well trained to stare but she squinted surreptitiously at Rosie. Rosie went pink and turned her back.
On the first floor, they were shown into a beautifully furnished suite. Seeing the conn
ecting door, Rosie hastened through it to explore. Beyond lay only one bedroom complete with bathroom. He was out of his mind, she thought incredulously.
‘If you think I am spending the night in there with you, you are living in a world of fantasy!’
Constantine dealt her a sardonic glance. ‘I take the bedroom. You get the couch.’
Momentarily, Rosie couldn’t get oxygen into her lungs. Wild-eyed, she stared back at him.
‘I’ll ruffle the pillows in the morning. Taki also has instructions to collect a change of clothes for you. No doubt Maurice will rise nobly to the occasion,’ Constantine continued with smooth derision. ‘I think your muscle-bound boyfriend would sell you to cannibals for the right price.’
‘Maurice is a friend, not a lover!’
Constantine elevated an unimpressed brow, his expressive mouth curling.
‘You have such a dirty mind,’ Rosie told him fiercely.
Unexpectedly the beginnings of a smile tugged at the corners of his ruthless mouth. Brilliant black eyes rested intently on her furious face. ‘So much fire and spirit. That intrigues me. If you hadn’t been Anton’s woman first, I would be very tempted to take you to my bed.’
Rosie went from fury into deep shock. Her lips moved but no sound came out.
‘And I guarantee that within five minutes you would be eating out of my band like a tame dove trained to please,’ Constantine forecast with a feral flash of even white teeth.
Rosie unglued her tongue from the roof of her mouth. She was trembling. ‘You have an incredible imagination!’
Constantine spread his elegant brown hands in a gesture of flagrant mockery. ‘But how can you try to deny what we both know to be true? The very first time you saw me, you felt the heat rise between us. I felt it too. Raw sexual attraction, nothing more complex—’
Rosie forced a jagged laugh that hurt her throat. ‘Your conceit is unbelievable.’
‘Never challenge a Greek unless you’re prepared to meet fire with fire,’ Constantine drawled softly. ‘But then perhaps that is exactly what you would like...?’
The atmosphere was so tense that her heartbeat thundered while those black eyes smouldered over her in challenging gold enquiry. A brisk knock sounded on the door and she jumped. Dmitri entered.
On dreadfully wobbly legs, Rosie retreated to the couch. There were goose-bumps all over her skin and she was horribly aware of the dull ache in her breasts and the painful tightness of her nipples. Just by standing there, just by looking at her like that, talking to her like that, he had done that to her body. That was scary; that was very scary indeed.
He had attacked on her weakest flank, smiling at her animosity because he could afford to smile while he laid bare the sexual charge between them. ‘Raw sexual attraction’ —no, that didn’t embarrass him. Why should it? Constantine was Greek to the backbone, earthy in his blunt acknowledgement of nature’s most driving force. But perhaps Rosie was most shaken by his unashamed admission that what she was feeling he was feeling too...
But then he was ninety per cent sexual predator, only ten per cent civilised. Hadn’t she got great taste? Bitterly resenting the unfamiliar sense of inadequacy assailing her, Rosie watched Dmitri flip out a sleek portable computer and set it on the desk by the window. A porter entered with a fax machine and hurried to install it. Then a waiter arrived with a tray of coffee... coffee for one! Rosie’s eyes flared. Seeking guidance, the waiter tried to catch her attention but Rosie ignored him, too proud to indicate a need for anything that would be supplied as a mere afterthought.
Meanwhile Constantine talked in fluent French on a mobile phone, his back turned to her, one large brown hand dug into the pocket of his well-cut, elegant trousers, his silk-lined jacket elbowed back to display a murderously flat stomach, the jut of a lean, taut masculine hip and long, long, powerful thighs. He looked so incredibly good in his clothes, she stopped breathing altogether at the thought of what he must look like out of them. Then, truly appalled by a kind of curiosity she had never experienced before, Rosie reddened fiercely, lifted the remote control within her reach and switched the television on to a satellite music channel.
‘If you want to listen to music, use the set in the bedroom,’ Constantine told her, breaking off from his call with a look of extreme irritation and then swinging away again.
Rosie bounced upright, digging angry hands into her pockets. ‘I’ll go out for a walk.’
His imperious dark head turned. ‘No. You stay in the suite. Go and wash your hair or something,’ he advised impatiently. ‘I have work to do.’
Rosie breathed in so deeply, she was frightened she would burst and scream round the ceiling like a punctured balloon. ‘I do what I like, Mr Voulos.’
‘Not around me, you don’t.’ Casting aside the mobile phone, Constantine slung her a long, hard look of warning.
Her hands balled into fists inside her pockets. ‘And what makes you think that?’
‘I should have locked you in the boot of the limo for the night and hired someone else to play the bridal role. What am I getting in return for my money? You look about fifteen in that get-up. The hotel staff must think I’m a pervert...not that anyone in their right mind would credit that we are a newly married couple! And when you’re not sulking it’s yap, yap, yap.’ Flashing black eyes raked over her in unconcealed exasperation. ‘It’s like having a chihuahua, snapping and snarling at my heels!’
Rosie shuddered with incredulous wrath. ‘How dare you?’
‘If you had had me in your bed for four months, you would at least know when to shut up and make yourself scarce!’
‘You would be dead,’ Rosie spelt out in a voice that shook with pure rage.
‘You think so?’ A slow-burning smile of savage amusement slashed his strong dark features. ‘No, I think you would have learnt how to behave around me by the end of the first week. Unlike Anton, I’m low on patience and high on expectation and right now you are scoring zero all the way down the line.’
‘Not ten minutes ago you were trying to make a pass at me!’ Rosie condemned in outrage. ‘But you knew you weren’t going to get anywhere, so now you’re being deliberately offensive!’
Constantine tilted his arrogant dark head to one side and narrowed his eyes to allow them to wander with slow incredulity over her. ‘That was a pass?’ he derided in disbelief. ‘So that’s what’s biting you. I’m supposed to be panting with uncontrollable lust, am I? And you call me conceited? At this moment you have all the sex appeal of a vagrant—’
‘If you say one more word, I’ll... I’ll...’
A winged ebony brow rose enquiringly. ‘You’ll what? You’ll bite?’
Speechless with rage, Rosie could only gasp, green eyes blazing like emeralds in her hotly flushed face.
Constantine dealt her a cold smile of menacing strength. ‘Let’s get one thing straight, little rag-doll. You bite me, you’ll get bitten back to the bone. And if you’re cherishing the wild and ambitious hope that I plan to become your next wealthy meal-ticket you’re losing touch with reality. I felt the heat but I have no intention of melting—’
‘You ignorant, arrogant swine!’ Rosie splintered, finding her tongue.
‘I have this curious feeling that our minds are finally meeting in perfect harmony,’ Constantine murmured lazily, his lush black lashes lowered over brilliant dark, incisive eyes. ‘And the thought for the day is...better to be an old man’s darling than a young man’s fool!’
Rosie shivered with rage and backed away from him. Never in her life had she felt as if she could kill... until now. She wanted Maurice’s muscles. She wanted to knock Constantine off his feet, swing him around her head and then pound him into a pulp.
The mobile phone buzzed again.
Rosie reached the bedroom door on wobbling legs.
‘Can you type?’ Constantine enquired without warning and it was as if the previous conversation had not taken place.
’T-type?’ Rosie stammered helples
sly.
‘Take dictation?’ he prompted impatiently. ‘The fewer people who are in on this arrangement the better... but it’s bloody inconvenient not to have my personal staff around.’
‘I don’t type or take dictation,’ Rosie breathed through rigidly compressed lips.
Constantine angled a scathing, unsurprised glance over her slight, stiff-as-a-board figure. ‘But I bet you’d be a rousing success at climbing cutely onto any middle-aged employer’s lap.’
CHAPTER FOUR
AN HOUR later, Taki having delivered an embarrassingly unimpressive plastic carrier bag to the bedroom, Rosie turned from her incredulous examination of what Maurice had packed on her behalf and reached immediately for the phone.
‘Are the contents of this bag supposed to be a joke, Maurice?’ Rosie demanded, threading outraged fingers through the diaphanous nightdress, the silky little rasp-berry-coloured slip dress and sheer tights. Three-inch-heeled strappy velvet shoes and the box of make-up that had been a Christmas gift from his sister completed the collection of impractical items. Naturally there was neither a change of underwear nor a toothbrush included.
‘It’s your wedding night. I thought you might want to dress up.’
‘Ha, ha,’ Rosie gritted, unamused.
‘Has Voulos asked you to sign anything yet?’ Maurice prompted worriedly.
‘Not even the hotel register.’
‘I think he knew a pre-nuptial contract mightn’t be worth the paper it was written on if it ever came before a British court but he’s sure to try and get you to sign something surrendering any financial claim on him. On the other hand,’ Maurice mused, ‘should the Press get to hear about the marriage, his goose would be fairly cooked.’
‘Maurice, I’m very fond of you but right at this minute I am thoroughly ashamed of your greed!’ Rosie spelt out angrily, and slammed down the receiver.
She called Room Service and a menu was delivered. She wasn’t very hungry but she put in as much time as possible working her way through a pot of tea and a plate of chicken sandwiches. As a rule she never watched much television and she paced the floor in growing boredom and resentment, an unappreciative audience to the buzz of the fax and the stream of constant phone calls in the next room.