by Lynne Graham
Constantine stopped ten feet away in a patch of moonlight. Rosie whipped back against the wall, arms spread in sudden instinctive fear, her slender length braced for attack.
‘What the hell is this?’
‘Don’t you dare t-touch me ...’ Her voice was a sick thread of sound.
Constantine stared, incisive black eyes pinned to her frightened face. ‘I’m not a rapist,’ he said grimly. ‘I can take a refusal without becoming violent.’
Trembling, still not quite trusting him, Rosie let her arms slide heavily down the wall and curved them protectively round herself instead, agonisingly aware that she had exposed more than her body to him now in betraying that fear. And a part of her was already acknowledging that she had behaved badly. Lying all but naked on a bed with him and responding with such wild abandon had given him every reason to react incredulously to her sudden change of heart.
‘Watching a woman cringe from me as if I am about to attack her has to be the equivalent of ten cold showers at once,’ Constantine completed flatly, his nostrils flaring.
‘I didn’t think you were about to—’ she began shakily.
‘You did think that.’
But only at the height of her appalled turmoil about what had so nearly happened between them. When she had seen him poised there against the darkness, that old subconscious fear had rushed to the surface in response to the sheer physical threat of his masculine power and size.
‘I have never had to use force to bed a woman. Nor would I,’ Constantine asserted with raw-edged hauteur.
‘I led you on ... I’m sorry,’ Rosie mumbled, frantically wishing he would just go away and leave her to recover in privacy.
‘Why?’
That one bald question made Rosie squirm. There was only one answer but it was not an answer she wished to give. Swallowing hard on her reluctance, she muttered, ‘I wanted you ...’ And admitting that to him was like drinking a cup of poison.
‘Then ...?’ Constantine prompted without pity.
Her face was now burning so hot, she was convinced she was glowing in the dark like a neon light.
‘When you’re trying to shrink into a wall, it is a challenge to see you as a natural-born tease, and you did almost hit the ceiling in your haste to vacate that hotel bed last night. For a woman with a chequered past, you’re strangely nervous when it comes to sex.’
Rosie imagined telling him that she was a virgin and as quickly discarded the mortifying notion with an inner shudder. He wouldn’t believe her. He couldn’t know how utterly terrifying it was to find herself at the mercy not only of feelings and sexual responses that were new to her, but also at the mercy of a sophisticate like him and realise that she had completely lost control. Constantine made a sensual, seductive feast of lovemaking. Never mind those startlingly eye-catching dark good looks, what about the incredible technique?
Blushing all over again, Rosie forced her dry lips apart and said, ‘We don’t even like each other.’
‘That has a strange, perverse appeal all of its own.’
Rosie swallowed with difficulty at that disturbing assertion.
Constantine watched her with eyes that glittered like diamonds in the moonlight. ‘You’re running scared, aren’t you?’ he murmured with sudden amusement.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You’re a control freak and I have found your self-destruct button. I have no doubt that you kept Anton and the throwback spinning in separate orbits with the greatest of ease—’
‘The throwback?’
‘Maurice... the label fits him like a glove. A great hulking thicko, whose only talent is inbred cunning for enriching himself,’ Constantine extended smoothly.
‘Maurice is not thick!’ Rosie hissed furiously.
‘Of course he is. He’s pushed you into my arms. Does he really believe that you’ll go back to him after being with me and living in my world?’
‘I’m not going to be with you in any sense!’
‘But the throwback is history. Anton is dead. And you are Mrs Constantine Voulos... for the moment.’ Constantine swung on his heel and glanced back at her. ‘I won’t have to wait long for you to fall into my bed. I would say you are physically incapable of staying out of it!’
He had almost disappeared into the darkness when Rosie raked in an infuriated tone, ‘How do I get back to my room?’
Constantine spun round, flung his darkly handsome head back and laughed with raw and unconcealed appreciation of her plight. Rosie thrust shaking hands into her pockets and boiled with loathing. In silence because she didn’t trust herself to speak, they reached the relevant corridor.
‘I know where I am now.’
‘Do you?’ His intonation suggested a deeper meaning.
Rosie stiffened, her breath catching in her throat as he curved a staying arm round the base of her slender spine. Raising his hand, he caught a single corkscrew curl and watched with gleaming satisfaction as it coiled obediently round one lean brown forefinger.
Black eyes skimmed direct to hers. ‘You’re not as tough as you like to make out, are you? In fact, you’re on the brink of panic...but think of the potential rewards. Please me and you won’t ever have to sell yourself to an older man again!’
Rosie stumbled into her bedroom like a drunk. She was shaking all over. It had been many years since anyone had made her feel weak and powerless. But Constantine had achieved that feat within thirty-six hours. And she wasn’t just on the brink, she was panicking, with her life suddenly resembling an accident black spot and Constantine continuing to come at her like a particularly deadly juggernaut moving in for the kill.
He had found her Achilles heel and he was already starting to work out what made her tick. She had been a complete fool to keep on challenging a male as sexually experienced as Constantine. And if she ended up in bed with a man who despised her how would she feel about herself then? Wouldn’t it be nice to think that she could resist her own most basic urges?
But then it was him she couldn’t seem to resist. Ignorant, arrogant, macho, clever swine that he was. Little rag-doll—oh, yes, she had been behaving just like a little rag-doll. A toy he could push around and play with. And maybe once or twice she had succeeded in outfacing Constantine, but ultimately she had ended up paying very dearly for the privilege.
Why had Anton never warned her that Constantine could be so terrifyingly unpredictable? Or that beneath those smooth, expensive clothes beat the heart and soul of a very primal and passionate male whose every instinct was ruthlessly grounded on a need not only to win but to dominate?
And what about the other women in his life? Louise, the mistress, emotionally detached but vindictive enough to delight in the belief that another woman might be giving Constantine his comeuppance at last... and exactly where did the beautiful Italian actress, Cinzia Borzone, who was supposedly his only true love, fit in? Rosie was suddenly even more appalled by her own shameless, reckless behaviour. Evidently Constantine had few morals. And she herself had very nearly fallen victim to his magnetic sexuality as well.
It was time she used the brain she had been born with. Why should she have to stay in Greece? It would be madness to risk another uneasy meeting with Thespina. Constantine would simply have to tell her that his bride had already left him. He could even truthfully add that his wife had had a surprise meeting with his mistress... exit wife. Exit where? It didn’t take Rosie two minutes to work out the most desirable destination. She would go to Majorca to see Son Fontanal before Constantine sold it again.
An hour later, weighed down only by her backpack, Rosie was lowering herself off the balcony outside her room. She made a slight detour onto a drainpipe to reach the sturdy climber covering the wall and then descended as sure-footed as a cat down onto the paved terrace below. Somewhere too close for comfort, a dog barked. Rosie took off at speed across the landscaped gardens, dodging and weaving like a professional. There was more than one dog barking now and her adrenalin hit an al
l-time high. As she got near the perimeter wall, some sort of siren screamed and suddenly a man appeared out of the darkness.
Rosie made a rush at the wall. The man got in the way. On the brink of her kicking him, he coughed and she recognised him. ‘Taki...?’
He froze in astonishment.
‘Taki, please,’ she pleaded as the dogs got closer.
He gave her a leg-up over the ten-foot wall. By then another alarm was screeching in tune with the siren. Rosie dropped down onto the road and then scudded across it into the cover of some bushes. A police car with a flashing light wheeled to a screeching halt as the electronic gates sprang open. Rosie set off up the road. Eat your heart out, Rambo, she thought smugly. But Constantine really ought to employ Taki elsewhere. Taki was too impressionable for Constantine’s safety.
Why the heck should she care? Well, she might be putting as much distance as she possibly could between herself and Constantine but she didn’t want anything really bad to happen to him. Her father had been very fond of him. As for her, well, Constantine had taken the ring and severed their agreement. He was on his own now, and so was she, and that was just the way Rosie liked it.
CHAPTER SIX
‘WHERE the blazes are you?’ Maurice bawled at deafening volume down the line.
Rosie held the telephone at a distance from her ear. ‘Majorca—’
‘Majorca? What the blinkin’ heck are you doing there? Constantine’s been here... he was frantic! Hell, Rosie, you might have at least left the poor bloke a note! He—’
‘Since when did you start feeling sorry for Constantine?’ Rosie interrupted in an incredulous hiss.
‘Since I saw him demonstrating serious concern for your whereabouts and welfare,’ Maurice informed her with nauseating piety. ‘You’re abroad for the first time in your life, you don’t speak the lingo, you don’t have any money and you disappeared from his home in the middle of the night. I thought you’d grown out of doing moonlit flits.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’ But Rosie flushed furiously.
‘Constantine was hopping mad when he arrived because he was so certain you would be here with me. But when he found out that you weren’t he started panicking.’
‘Constantine is not the panicking type—’
‘Where did you get the money to take yourself to Majorca?’
‘Never mind that, I want to know how—’
‘Where are you staying? I’m coming over.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous—’
‘I’m fed up with you and Constantine raving about the globe like a couple of hot-tempered, irrational lunatics. Last time I saw him he was mobilising the Greek police to look for you! If you don’t tell me where you’re staying, I’ll tell him you’re in Majorca—’
Five seconds later, Rosie slammed out of the phone box without even having found out how the news of the wedding had got into the hands of the Press. It upset her to be at loggerheads with Maurice but it was time that he appreciated that she was no longer the terrified thirteen-year-old he had once saved from sexual assault. She clambered back onto the motorbike she had hired, trying not to think with miserly regret about the secret rainy-day account she had more than half-emptied in the space of three days.
Her sparkling eyes hardened as she rode out of the sleepy little village and back onto the endless mountain road with its perilous bends and truly terrifying drops. Knowing that Constantine had flown over to England in pursuit of her made her feel hunted. It infuriated her too. Little more than a month ago she had not even met the swine and now he was acting as if he owned her! So what if she had fled imprisonment in the middle of the night? She had done what she had agreed to do in marrying him and he had no right, no right whatsoever, to try and demand any further sacrifices from her!
By mid-morning, Rosie was studying a battered iron name-plate hanging by a piece of barbed wire from a set of seriously rusty gates. Son Fontanal appeared to lie up a rutted cart track that climbed a steep hill thickly wooded with pines. Half an hour later, having abandoned the motorbike under the trees, Rosie gazed down at her father’s birthplace in the fertile valley below and caught her breath in enchantment.
The villa had a faded red roof and ageless peach-coloured stone walls, the twin wings of the two-storey building joined by a graceful loggia supported on pillars lushly entwined by a giant jacaranda. Furthermore there appeared to be a more passable paved laneway running to the rear of the building. On the south side, a series of crumbling arches ran round the perimeter of an overgrown garden studded with palm trees. Not crumbling, just old, Rosie adjusted hurriedly, and maybe there were a few roof tiles missing here and there and a few cracks on the walls... but no way was Son Fontanal the ruin which Constantine had called it!
She hurried down the sloping track, her steps only slowing as she approached the courtyard entrance. A plump elderly lady was dozing on a chair in the shade cast by the loggia. As Rosie drew closer, wondering how on earth she was to introduce herself, the old woman woke up and fixed startled eyes on her. Then her creased face slowly blossomed into a beam of positive pleasure.
Rising with surprising vigour, she opened her arms almost as if she was expecting Rosie to rush into them. ‘Señorita Estrada?’ she exclaimed.
Being addressed by her father’s name made Rosie still in astonishment. A torrent of Spanish broke over her as the old lady surged forward to clasp her hands and kiss her warmly on both cheeks. Tears shone in her dark eyes. From the pocket of her pristine white apron, she withdrew a rather crumpled photograph. ‘La hija de Don Antonio...the daughter of Don Antonio,’ she sighed, proudly displaying a snapshot of Anton and Rosie together. ‘I am Carmina...’
Carmina, once her father’s nursemaid. Rosie realised that she needed no further introduction. This old lady actually knew who she was. When Anton had flown in to buy Son Fontanal, he had found Carmina still in residence, and in the emotional grip of that reunion and homecoming he had clearly confessed that he had a daughter. Rosie’s own eyes stung and a tremulous smile of happiness curved her lips. It meant so much to her that her father had confided in someone about her existence.
The old woman went back into her pocket and produced a carefully folded piece of newspaper and slowly shook her grey head. ‘No señorita...señora,’ Carmina stressed with a cheerful smile of self-reproof. ‘Senora Voulos...yes?’
Bloody hell, Rosie thought, limp with incredulity and resentment. Halfway up a mountain in a foreign country, she still couldn’t shake off Constantine and the consequences of that stupid wedding ceremony! Speaking in an excitable mix of Spanish and increasingly confident English now, Carmina went on to enquire anxiously as to the whereabouts of her esposo...Spanish for husband, Rosie gathered, her teeth gritting. And almost simultaneously a distant humming noise in the background broke like a thunderclap over the brow of the steep hill she had climbed. Frowning, she looked heavenward.
A scarlet helicopter hung like a giant brash bird against the cloudless blue sky. Rosie left the courtyard to watch the craft circling in search of a landing place. It came down about fifty yards away on the flat ground to the front of the villa. Even before the rotor blades had stopped twirling, a large male figure sprang out. Rosie’s heart sank and then gave a paradoxically violent lurch of excitement that interfered with her ability to breathe and filled her with appalled and ashamed discomfiture.
Constantine powered towards her on long, lean, muscular legs. Rosie skidded off one foot onto the other, accidentally clashed with blazing, implacable black eyes and froze, caught like a butterfly pinned live to a specimen board. ‘I—’ she began in an odd, squeaky, breathless voice she didn’t recognise as her own.
As Constantine drew level with her, he stopped dead. Without the smallest warning, he bent and swept her off her feet into his arms. Rosie was silenced by complete shock.
‘What I have to say to you does not require an audience,’ Constantine splintered in a menacing undertone. ‘And isn’t it traditional to carry
the bride over the threshold?’
Rosie’s last view of the helicopter took in Dmitri, whose rock-like visage usually defied interpretation. Not on this occasion, however. Constantine’s bodyguard wore a huge appreciative grin.
Scarlet-cheeked, Rosie spat, ‘Put me down!’
‘Make me,’ Constantine challenged, stalking through the open doors of Son Fontanal.
Rosie struck his back with two outraged fists. ‘You’ll have to do better than that, little rag-doll—’
‘Don’t call me that...I hate it!’ she launched at him as he started up a wide stone staircase.
‘But it is so appropriate. If I was the kind of husband you deserve, I would be on the happy brink of beating the stuffing out of you!’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Rosie gasped.
‘That I have to come up with another method of punishment—and I have had plenty of time to toy with several interesting possibilities, haven’t I?’ Constantine murmured in a sizzling purr of threat as he thrust open a carved door. ‘In three nightmare days, I have flown from Athens to Manchester, from Manchester to London and from London back to Athens...and then from Athens to Palma. I want someone to pay in spades for that travel itinerary.’
‘I don’t know why you bothered—’
‘Do you want to know what kept me going?’ Constantine yanked her off his shoulder, tossed her in the air to clamp two incredibly strong hands beneath her arms and then held her in suspension, face to menacing face. Rosie’s immediate surroundings shrank to her own shocked and tiny mirror image in a pair of implacable, glittering black eyes.
‘No...’ she whispered, dry-mouthed and hypnotised.
‘The thought of this moment,’ Constantine spelt out not quite evenly as she gazed back at him like a mesmerised rabbit. ‘When I show you how a Greek husband treats a runaway wife—’
‘Not your wife...’ Rosie fumbled with great difficulty to find that disjointed denial. Her brain felt for all the world as though it was set in cement. Not a single rational thought clouded her head. The warm, musky scent of him overlaid with a faint hint of some citrusy aftershave floated into her flaring nostrils, and the more she breathed, the more dizzy and peculiar she felt.