by Lynne Graham
‘I couldn’t live with you for one week, never mind a couple of months!’
Constantine shot her a look of naked derision. ‘Who do you think you’re kidding? You’re about to enter bimbo paradise! I have no choice but to keep you in the lap of luxury. But the prospect of rewarding you for your treachery and guile disgusts me!’
Hot-cheeked and seething with resentment, Rosie started practising ignoring him. If he fondly imagined she intended to hang around eating humble pie and imitating a wall fixture for the next couple of months, he had another thought coming!
But two hours later, a truly enormous and absolutely delicious meal having brought her back from the edge of starvation, Rosie had a remarkably sunny smile on her formerly disgruntled face. She was lying back in the Jacuzzi in the fabulous bathroom attached to her allotted bedroom. Constantine lived in a breathtakingly beautiful walled estate outside the city. His vast palatial villa swarmed with servants, wondrously keen to ensure that she didn’t have to lift a finger to help herself. It was like staying in a five-star luxury hotel.
Admittedly, she had been most uncomfortable when Constantine had introduced her as his blushing bride to the domestic staff. But she had been delirious with delight when she had understood the ramifications of his care in explaining the internal phone system to her. He had informed her that if she had to speak to him she was to dial a certain number. He would grow old and grey waiting for her to call. And in a house this size she was sure to get hold of a phone with an outside line to contact Maurice soon. Constantine could not be everywhere simultaneously.
She hated him. And he despised her. So how could she possibly be attracted to him? Surely that amount of animosity ought to be a complete turn-off? And why was that extravagantly gorgeous face of his somehow etched behind her eyelids like a burr under a saddle? And why, even though she was frantically glad to finally be free of his company, could she think of very little else but Constantine? Rosie frowned over that conundrum. She felt oddly dislocated...as if she had lost something, as if she was missing out on something... what, another fight?
But, much as it went against the grain, she had to give him points for some virtues. He clearly adored Thespina. Seemingly there was nothing that Constantine would not do to keep her in happy ignorance of her late husband’s last will and testament. And greed had nothing to do with it. Rosie flushed uncomfortably. Constantine was every bit as filthy rich as Maurice had said he was. His private jet, his fantastic home and his lifestyle spoke for themselves.
He had loved her father too, Rosie conceded reluctantly. Yet they had been such different men with diametrically opposed personalities. Anton had always been cracking jokes and grinning, looking on the bright side of every problem and, if possible, cheerfully ignoring the problem altogether.
Was it easier for Constantine to believe that Anton had gone off the rails for a young and pretty face? The truth, she suspected, would be far more damaging. Anton had kept a big, dark secret from his family for over twenty years. But then her father had wanted what he could not have: he had wanted his daughter without hurting his wife.
And although he had often talked about confessing all to Thespina he hadn’t been able to grasp that nettle even when he was contemplating his own death. How could her father have demanded that Constantine marry her? Rosie shook her head and sighed. Even had Constantine accepted that she was Anton’s daughter, her father had had no right to demand such an outrageous sacrifice from his ward.
Wrapped in the towelling robe put there for the purpose, Rosie strolled out of the bathroom, feeling reasonably rested and relaxed. The sensation was short-lived. The bedroom harboured a tall, dark, very masculine intruder.
Rosie tensed, green eyes flying over the Italian-styled double-breasted beige suit Constantine was wearing. It gave him the look of a stunningly sexy and dangerous gangster. For a split second, he quite took her breath away and she was transfixed. That sensation didn’t last either.
Constantine frowned at her. ‘Did I not make it clear that for the duration of your stay here you were to behave as if this was a normal marriage?’
Uncertainly, Rosie nodded.
‘Then why did you insist on dining from a tray instead of joining me downstairs for dinner? And why did you refuse my housekeeper’s offer to give you a guided tour of the villa?’
Rosie heaved a stoical sigh. ‘Anything else I’ve done wrong?’
‘You’re not a guest here. This is supposed to be your home. Act like a newly married woman.’
‘I haven’t a clue how a newly married woman acts.’
‘But you have an incredible imagination. Use it,’ Constantine suggested with sardonic bite.
It was already being used. In her mind’s eye, Constantine had mysteriously become a brooding gangster from a shadowy old black and white movie. And mysteriously sharing that same scene was... Rosie, garbed in a fabulous fringed twenties dress, the sole focus of her gangster’s seething passions. Emerging in shock from her first experience of erotic fantasy, Rosie drew in a tumultuous, steadying breath and wondered frantically what was going on inside her head.
‘What’s the matter with you? You’re unusually quiet.’ Constantine ran suspicious black eyes over her.
‘Jet lag,’ Rosie said shrilly, embarrassed to death by that sexual daydream.
‘I’ll see if I can arrange a flight for you every day,’ Constantine drawled without a flicker of a smile on his way out of the door.
While she had been in the Jacuzzi her luggage had been unpacked but Rosie was surprised to see her little brocade jewel case sitting on the dressing-table. In fact, having already had an unhappy preview of the collection of motley garments Maurice had tumbled willy-nilly into the case, she was astonished that he had been thoughtful enough to pack her jewellery into the backpack.
Opening it, she frowned and then poked through several sets of tangled costume beads in an increasingly desperate search for what she had expected to find. Her heart stopped dead and her stomach literally heaved. The Estrada ring was no longer there ... and Rosie lost no time in jumping to the most obvious conclusion. Constantine had been determined to take that ring from her. And, lo and behold, it was now gone! Obviously Constantine had stolen her father’s gift from her!
Rosie raced down the long, sweeping staircase barefoot. The light of battle in her furious gaze, she saw Constantine emerging from a room off the huge hall. ‘I want my ring back!’ she slung at him full volume.
Startled, Constantine wheeled round to face her. ‘What the hell—?’
‘The Estrada ring. It was in my jewel case. Now it’s gone.’
‘Gone?’ Constantine stressed as he curved a hand round one slight shoulder and pressed her into an elegant reception room. ‘Gone where?’
Rosie grimaced. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t do this.’
‘If you’ve lost that ring,’ Constantine spelt out rawly, ‘I’ll strangle you!’
‘The best line of defence being attack, right?’ Rosie looked deeply cynical and her lip curled. ‘Look, I know you have the ring and that you are responsible for its disappearance—’
‘Christos...do you dare to accuse me of stealing?’ Constantine flared in outrage.
Rosie winced and backtracked a diplomatic inch or two. ‘I wouldn’t use that term. Let’s just say that you have retrieved something which you believe I have no right to retain. But I have every right. Anton gave me that ring.’
‘I am not a thief. If the emerald is missing we will call the police, but not until I am fully convinced that this is not another ploy.’
‘Ploy... what’s that supposed to mean?’ Rosie splintered.
‘It means,’ Constantine stated with hauteur, ‘that I would not at all be surprised to learn that your boyfriend has the ring. I’m already well aware that you’re a liar and a cheat—’
‘You swine!’ Rosie gasped with a shudder of disbelief.
‘And I imagine the ring is heavily insured—’
At that instant, a servant came to the door and spoke to Constantine while Rosie stood with balled fists of fury.
His arrogant dark head turned. ‘You’ll have to excuse me. I have a visitor.’
For the space of three minutes, Rosie was frozen to the carpet by that careless dismissal. Either Constantine didn’t believe that the ring was genuinely missing or he was being very clever in his pretence of distrust and ignorance . He had to be lying—he had to be! Her restive gaze fell on the telephone and stilled. Only then did it occur to her that she didn’t know the international code for the UK. A minute search of the room revealed no directory. She didn’t even know how to dial the operator in Greece, so how could she contact Maurice?
Frustration currenting through her in a wild surge, she marched out into the hall again and then hesitated, frowning as she heard voices. Constantine and his visitor. His late caller was female and, surprisingly, English. Curiosity took her to the ajar door. She glanced in.
‘Louise...’ Constantine was saying very, very drily.
A gorgeous brunette with legs as long as rail tracks and even better exposed was reclining on a chaise longue, making very unconvincing play with a frilly handkerchief.
‘But to read something like that in a newspaper... I was devastated, Constantine! How could you get married without telling me? You said you wouldn’t be marrying for years and years and I’m really not at all sure that I can find it within myself to continue as your mistress now that you have a wife,’ Louise moaned in a petulant lament, flicking back her glamorous dark mane of hair while her steel-blue gaze carefully judged her effect on the target of her complaints.
Unfortunately that target was out of Rosie’s view but that did not inhibit her. Eyes sparkling like emerald gemstones, Rosie pressed the door back and planted herself on the threshold. ‘I think I can help you to make up your mind,’ she murmured sweetly. ‘Come within one hundred yards of Constantine again and I will scratch your eyes out!’
The brunette reared up in comical shock. Constantine spun round, black eyes aflame with sheer incredulity.
‘As for you,’ Rosie breathed, folding her arms with undeniable enjoyment in her role and fixing her full attention on her fake husband, who curiously felt rather more like a husband than he had yet, ‘I suggest you remove your ladyfriend from my home immediately ... because I never make a threat I can’t carry through on.’
At the repetition of his own words of earlier in the day, Constantine turned pale beneath his bronzed skin. An incandescent blaze of gold shimmered in his eyes before he veiled them, his sensual mouth compressing into a bloodless line of self-restraint. Constantine silenced. Well, well, well, how the mighty have fallen, Rosie savoured without pity.
The brunette strolled out provocatively slowly past Rosie. She was about a foot taller. Then she paused and glanced back with a curious malicious smile in Constantine’s direction. ‘It may seem a strange thing to say in the circumstances but your little jailbait bride has just made my day. Why do I get this feeling that life as you know it is over? She’ll give you hell and you deserve it!’
Rosie watched Louise depart, secretly impressed to death by her cool, dignified exit. As a door slammed in the distance, she sighed, ‘I’m so glad you didn’t break her heart. Well, how did I do?’
The silence pulsed as if it were about to explode.
‘How ... did ... you ... do?’ Constantine framed between audibly grinding teeth.
‘In the newly married woman stakes ... was I convincing? I mean, there is just no way a wife would walk past a scene like that in her own home. As you reminded me, I am not just a guest here.’
Constantine swung away from her and spread lean brown hands in an unsteady arc of scantily leashed rage. She had the feeling that he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened to him. He swore raggedly half under his breath in his own language. Then he murmured, not quite levelly. ‘Do you have a single sensitive bone in your body?’
Rosie shook her fiery head. ‘Not where you’re concerned. I was a bit worried that I might be reading the signals wrong and that your ladyfriend might be sincerely attached to you. But she wasn’t, was she? So no harm done.’
‘You did it quite deliberately. I am preventing you from contacting that prehistoric ape Maurice and in return you decided to start screwing up my private life.’
‘Newly married men don’t have private lives.’
‘You think not?’ Constantine purred like a big jungle cat as he prowled round her in an ever-shrinking circle of intimidation. ‘Are you not a part of my private life? Have you not forced me to acknowledge you as my wife?’
Rosie suffered a sudden alarming loss of confidence, for the first time wishing she hadn’t been quite so eager to confess to sins she hadn’t committed earlier in the day. ‘Constantine—’
‘What?’
Rosie took a tiny backward step, her heart thumping somewhere in the region of her throat. ‘I think it’s time I went to bed.’
‘So do I.’ Constantine closed his arms deftly around her slim frame and swept her off her feet.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Rosie shrieked.
‘What I should have done last night!’ Constantine started up the stairs with determination.
‘Put me down! Have you gone crazy?’
‘It’s your own bloody fault! Christos...you keep on pushing and pushing!’ Constantine roared down at her accusingly. ‘I put you in a room as far away from me as I could get you and still keep you under the same roof! I was determined not to be tempted by you again. I have tried to keep my distance—’
‘Well, you’re not trying very hard now, are you?’ Rosie snapped back tempestuously. ‘And if you don’t let go of me right this minute I’m going to hit you so hard you’ll be knocked into the middle of next week!’
‘Your mouth is bigger than you are,’ Constantine growled, his deep voice thickening in a manner that sent Rosie’s self-preserving instincts shooting to full power. ‘Why not kiss me instead?’
‘Because I don’t want to kiss you!’
‘No?’
‘Do I look that dumb?’ Rosie spat.
But then Constantine blocked out the light with the hot, hungry heat of his mouth, and the world spun so violently, she gasped and clutched at him. Electrifying heat engulfed her... or maybe it was him. He seemed to be burning up too. Her fingers framed his hard cheekbones and her head went back as he knotted one hand tightly into her hair and kissed her with bruising, demanding thoroughness until she thought she would pass out from lack of oxygen but didn’t care because nothing had ever felt so good.
In darkness he brought her down on a bed, and as he released her mouth with a stifled groan of frustration she lay there winded and gasping in air like a drowning swimmer. A light went on and she blinked dazedly. Constantine came down on the bed beside her, wrenching at his silk tie, shrugging out of his jacket. Run, a little voice urged her. But she clashed with eyes of searing gold and her whole body turned liquid and unfamiliar, her mind blanking out as an uncontrollable surge of hunger overwhelmed her.
‘Don’t lie there like a sacrifice, you little witch,’ he breathed unevenly. ‘Don’t let me think...I only want to feel—’
His hand wasn’t quite steady as he tugged her up to him again. Intense satisfaction filled her, along with a heady sense of power. She snatched in the husky male scent of him so close and every sense thrilled, a desperate wanting that overpowered inhibition driving her hand up to sink wonderingly into the silky black depths of his hair. A tenderness that was new to her made her heart twist and her fingers tremble and his ebony brows drew together in a frown that might have been surprise.
He leant forward and let the tip of his tongue dip between her lips in a heart-stoppingly erotic foray. She shivered violently and then reached for him because she couldn’t help herself, finding his carnal mouth again, and instantly he took charge with a husky growl of dominance, kissing her until she was a quivering mass
of aching nerve-endings.
A lean hand jerked at the tie on the towelling robe and then closed over one small, pouting breast. The sensation of pleasure was so intense, Rosie almost had a cardiac arrest.
Lifting his dark, tousled head, Constantine smiled sexily down into her shaken face. ‘You like that?’
Rosie didn’t have words to tell him how much. She was lost in another world, a wholly physical place where only sensation ruled. He sent his tongue skimming over a swollen pink nipple and her back arched, her teeth clenching, her nails clawing into the bedspread beneath her. All she knew was that she wanted more, more of that stunning, heart-racing pleasure, and only he could give it. He lowered his head and tasted her supersensitive flesh and she jerked and whimpered, experiencing a pleasure that blew her mind and reduced her to trembling, gasping submission.
‘Christos...you’re hot,’ Constantine groaned, lowering his big, powerful body and shuddering as his hands sank to the swell of her hips, forcing her into contact with the hard, swollen evidence of his arousal and then rolling back from her with a curse of frustration, an impatient hand flying to the belt-buckle of his trousers.
Hot...hot? Rosie tensed, her brain flying back into gear. She squinted down at the shameless thrust of her bare breasts, still glistening damply from his lovemaking. For an instant she was frozen there, at a peak of appalled horror that almost equalled her former pitch of excitement, and then she was off that bed so fast, she could have challenged and outrun an Olympic sprinter.
‘Theos...!’ Incredulity exploded from Constantine and took his fluent English with it as he vented a flood of guttural Greek.
Rosie fled into the dark corridor like a lemming charging suicidally at a cliff. Hot ... cheap, easy, sordid. Dear heaven, how had she let him get that far? One minute she had been shouting at him and the next ... Typical Constantine manoeuvre: hit on her one vulnerability and try to use her to level the score. Turn a pitched battle into a sexual orgy and then smirk with macho male superiority. She shuddered in disgust and then registered in horror that the corridor had come to a dismaying dead end.