by Lynne Graham
Disturbing amusement flared in his brilliant dark gaze. ‘I think it’s time we called a truce.’
‘A ... truce?’ Rosie echoed uncertainly.
Constantine released his breath in a hiss of impatience. ‘I had every excuse to be outraged by the terms of Anton’s will. Possibly I overreacted but Anton was more dear to me than my own father. It was a great shock to learn that he had another woman in his life.’
‘He didn’t. How many times do I have to say it? I was not his mistress! You were in that house,’ Rosie pressed in a tone of frantic appeal. ‘You must have noticed that we had separate bedrooms!’
Constantine shifted a broad shoulder in a fluid shrug but his strong face hardened. ‘Your sleeping arrangements were of no interest to me.’
‘But—’
Constantine slung her a chilling look. ‘I have never slept a night through in a woman’s bed. Does that mean that I am a celibate?’ he traded with sardonic emphasis.
It did not but the information somehow stabbed Rosie like a knife. She veiled her eyes from his but nothing could wipe out a fleeting, distressing image of Constantine sliding out of the lovely Louise’s arms in the early hours to head home. ‘You’re such a cold fish,’ she condemned helplessly. “The minute you’ve had what you wanted, you take off. You should be ashamed to admit that.’
An arc of faint colour scored Constantine’s cheekbones. His mouth clenched hard. ‘Sex is an exchange of mutual physical pleasure—’
‘Wham-bam, thank you ma’am. No romance, no affection, no feelings. No wonder Anton was mortified by your attitude to women!’
Constantine went white beneath his bronzed skin.
‘Christos...’ he ground out raggedly, hanging on to his temper by a hair’s breadth.
In similar shock at the attack she had made on him, Rosie dropped her fiery head. But imagine falling in love with a guy like that! she thought. Her mind ran on unstoppably ... A cold, unfeeling swine who talked smoothly about exchanging physical satisfaction and who desired no deeper connection in a relationship. Listening to him made her blood curdle in her veins.
‘I see nothing wrong in my views.’
‘What about love?’
‘I have never been in love ...’ Constantine dealt her a slashing look of driven impatience. ‘I don’t believe in it. Now, if you were to talk to me of infatuation or lust—’
‘No, thanks. I think you’ve let yourself down enough for one day.’ Rosie picked up her knife and fork to embark on the first course of her meal. Somehow she just didn’t want to look at Constantine any more. He had never been in love? Even with Cinzia Borzone? But then he probably wouldn’t recognise the emotion unless it came with a fat price tag attached and was offered via his mobile phone!
Her preoccupied gaze strayed from the elaborately presented dish to the ring lying on the white linen tablecloth. She dropped her cutlery with a noisy clatter, snatched up the Estrada emerald and whispered uncertainly, ‘Why are you giving it back to me?’
‘Don’t flatter me. I was merely the courier. You left it behind in England.’
‘The last time I saw this ring, it was in my jewel case.’
‘I think not. Maurice found it on the windowsill in the kitchen.’
Rosie reddened with guilty discomfiture as she threaded the ornate gem back onto her finger. ‘I don’t remember leaving it there. I honestly did think that I had put it away. I’m sorry I accused you of taking it,’ she muttered in a very small voice.
‘He also accepted full and complete responsibility for that newspaper article.’
Rosie’s chin came up, her wide eyes pained. ‘No!’
Constantine studied her shocked face with cool, dark, incisive eyes. ‘You’re incredibly naive in some ways,’ he mused. ‘You put Maurice in possession of a story worth a great deal of money. He went for the money—’
‘I can’t believe that... I just can’t!’
‘He admitted it to me.’ Constantine held her distraught gaze steadily. ‘I owe you an apology for calling you a cheat.’
Rosie dropped her head again. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters to me,’ Constantine murmured levelly. ‘I misjudged you. But why did you pretend that you were responsible?’
Rosie struggled to swallow the thick lump forming in her throat. ‘I... I—’
‘Every move you make seems to be based on a pathetic need to protect a man who betrayed you without a second’s hesitation,’ Constantine drawled with derision.
Rosie rose almost clumsily upright. ‘I’m not feeling very hungry,’ she muttered unsteadily, and walked out of the room as fast as her feet would carry her.
It hurt so very, very much to believe that Maurice could have sold out their friendship for profit. Yes, she had always known that money was important to Maurice and that he was very ambitious, but his business was booming and he was anything but short of ready cash! Peering with tear-filled eyes into a room that seemed to be bustling with people fussing with office equipment, Rosie cannoned blindly into a uniformed maid and then fled out of the open front doors into the sunlight. Even the courtyard wasn’t empty, and she raced past the van being industriously unloaded and out into the garden, seeking cover and privacy in the same way that an injured animal seeks darkness.
A convulsive sob was torn from her then. She covered her working face with her spread hands and from behind her came two supporting arms which inexorably turned her round. Gasping, she went rigid, a long shudder of repressed emotion quivering through her.
‘Don’t be scared, pethi mou ... it is only me,’ Constantine murmured roughly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world that he should attempt to hold her close in a comforting embrace. ‘It hurts when people let you down...’
‘He’s the only man I’ve ever trusted ... apart from Anton,’ Rosie framed, fighting a losing battle against the tears pouring down her cheeks.
Constantine drew her hands down from her face but with a sudden jerk Rosie pulled away, turning her narrow back defensively on him.
‘How long have you known Maurice?’
‘Since I was thirteen ... And it was weird,’ she whispered thickly in recollection. ‘Before I got to know him, I was more scared of him than I was of any of the other boys in the home.’
‘What home?’
Rosie loosed a choky laugh. ‘When my mother died, my stepfather put me into care.’
‘Why?’ Constantine shot at her with fierce incomprehension.
‘Because I wasn’t his. He only found out that Mum was expecting me after he married her.’
‘Yet he stayed married to her ... why didn’t he divorce her?’ Constantine demanded.
Rosie compressed her lips. Nothing was ever that simple. Tony Waring had been her mother’s first serious boyfriend. He had pleaded with her to marry him before she’d gone down to London to find a secretarial job. When she had returned home and said yes, he had been too overjoyed to question her sudden change of heart. Her mother had told her that bit of the story more than once in an effort to make Rosie understand that her stepfather was entitled to be bitter, that he had been wronged and that it wouldn’t be fair to expect him to treat Rosie the same way as he did his own two sons.
‘He loved her but he just could never get over her doing that to him,’ Rosie muttered tightly. ‘They had two kids of their own and he still couldn’t forget, so once she was gone there was no way he was going to keep me.’
‘What age were you?’
‘Nine. I went into a council home and then a lot of short-term foster homes. I kept on running away, so I got a name for being difficult. The place I finally ended up in had some very rough inmates.’
‘Including Maurice?’
‘He was only there because the authorities had to keep him close to the hospital his mother was in. His sister was fostered but not too many families want to foster teenage boys. I don’t want to talk about this...’ Rosie started walking away, too upset to be able to
understand why she had told Constantine embarrassing, private things that were absolutely none of his business.
‘You really love that profiteering ape,’ Constantine breathed with savage incredulity. ‘And he’s a low-life bastard who would rent you out by the hour if he could get away with it!’
Rosie spun round, her tear-wet face appalled. ‘How dare you say that?’
‘He thrust you at me. He set the two of us up. Did he care what kind of man I was? Or how I might treat you when that story broke?’
‘He couldn’t have thought—he just couldn’t have ...’ Rosie argued brokenly.
‘You say one more word in his defence and I’ll fly over to England and rip him apart with my bare hands!’ Constantine roared at her in a thunderous, seething fury that shook her so much that she stared wide-eyed. ‘And before you ask me why I didn’t do that the day before yesterday remind yourself that he knows the whole story and not just the tiny part that was published! I have no desire to wake up some day soon to the tale of your sordid affair with Anton!’
Constantine stalked off and then as swiftly turned back again and strode with daunting purpose back across the rough grass. He closed a lean hand over hers. ‘You are coming back inside to finish your meal—’
‘No.’
‘My wife is not going to skulk in the garden and snivel for the entertainment of my staff!’
Rosie gulped. ‘Why are you so angry?’
“That is a very stupid question. In fact that may go down in history as the most stupid question I have ever been asked!’
Constantine produced an immaculate white handkerchief and dabbed with ruthless but surprising gentleness at her damp cheeks. Rosie studied him with reddened, bemused eyes. ‘Oh, right,’ she muttered, believing she had found the answer to behaviour that was plunging her into ever deeper confusion. ‘You don’t want the pretend marriage to fall apart this obviously so soon—’
In response, Constantine bent his arrogant dark head and ravished apart her startled lips in a plundering, passionate kiss. Fire leapt into her limp body and blazed through every skin cell with explosive efficiency. Reeling dizzily with the force of her response, Rosie met blazing golden eyes as he lifted his head again.
Screening his gaze, Constantine surveyed her with disturbing calm. ‘We’ll dine out at the Formentor tonight.
That should give the staff time to get the house into some sort of order.’
Garbed in a divinely sophisticated evening gown in glistening pearl-grey, Rosie was surprised to appreciate just how much she was enjoying herself. The hotel was fabulous and she had even recognised one or two famous faces amongst the other diners. But Constantine was undeniably the most gorgeous-looking male present. That spectacular bone structure, that golden skin and those incredibly compelling dark, long-lashed eyes...
There wasn’t a woman in the place who hadn’t looked at him at least twice and yet amazingly he was feeding her champagne and flattering her with his undivided attention. He hadn’t even spared a glance at the arrival of an only minimally dressed blonde bombshell who had turned every other male head in the room.
‘You’re very quiet, pethi mou,’ Constantine murmured.
It took a terrifying amount of will-power to drag her disobedient gaze from him. Angry with herself, her colour heightened, Rosie watched candlelight twinkle across the slender platinum wedding band on her finger. A frown pleated her brow. Earlier that evening, a jeweller had arrived at Son Fontanal with an extensive selection of rings and a replacement had been picked. Constantine had actually laughed about the fact that she had binned the first ring. Why was he being nice all of a sudden?
‘Rosie...what are you thinking about?’ He said the abbreviated version of her name for the very first time and somehow it sounded so different the way he said it. That honey-dark drawl made her stupid heart skip a beat.
Studying her champagne glass, Rosie drew in a deep, steadying breath. ‘I was thinking about Maurice,’ she lied, shaken that she had so easily forgotten what had hurt so much only hours earlier.
‘Theos...’ Constantine breathed with flaring impatience. ‘The throwback haunts us!’
Her head tilted back, eyes bright with anger. ‘He may not have your education or your status but when I needed him Maurice was always there for me.’
‘Only not when your needs conflicted with his avarice.’ Lounging fluidly back in his chair, Constantine slung the reminder at her with contempt.
‘You can’t expect anyone to put you first all the time... even Anton didn’t,’ Rosie conceded with difficulty. ‘But when I most needed Maurice he didn’t let me down...’ Her voice trailed away and in a nervous movement she drained the champagne in her glass.
‘I’m still listening,’ Constantine prompted drily.
Her face stiff with strain, Rosie swallowed hard. ‘When I was thirteen, two boys forced their way into my room and tried to assault me... Maurice stopped them and because there were two of them he took a hell of a beating doing it.’
Constantine had paled but his gleaming gaze was veiled in the thunderous silence, his sensual mouth twisting. ‘Do I start calling him St George instead of the throwback? Maybe you should answer one question before I decide... How long was it before he took with your agreement what the others tried to take by force?’
Rosie flinched as though he had struck her. ‘Why...is that how you would have behaved?’
Registering her distress, Constantine frowned and abruptly stretched a hand across the table to reach for her tightly coiled fingers. ‘Rosie, I—’
In stark rejection of that gesture, Rosie trailed her fingers free and said starkly, ‘I reminded him of his kid sister. When he was a child, he had to look after Lorna because their mother was an alcoholic. But after they went into care Lorna was adopted by her foster family and Maurice was left out in the cold. They let them stay in contact but it wasn’t the same. So if you want an explanation for why he stuck his neck out for me that night think clean—or would that be too much of a challenge for you?’
Tears brightening her eyes, Rosie didn’t even look at him as she thrust her chair back and walked out of the dining room. He caught up with her in the foyer, a lean hand curving round her rigid spine and settling on her waist to still her. ‘Rosie—’
‘Constantine!’ a female voice shrilled ecstatically.
Constantine froze and winced as Rosie’s head spun round. The blonde bombshell in the unbelievably tiny black dress was bearing down on them, full breasts heaving, voracious blue eyes glittering with satisfaction. ‘When did you arrive?’ she demanded, literally wrenching him free of Rosie to plant an intimate and lingering kiss full on his mouth. ‘Doesn’t this bring back memories of Monte Carlo, darling?’ she moaned throatily, running caressing hands over any bit of him she could reach and trying for a place or two that no lady should aim at in public.
Constantine detached himself with distinct hauteur, the faintest colour accentuating the hard slant of his cheekbones as his black eyes skimmed with curious expectancy to Rosie.
‘Justine... this is my wife, Rosalie,’ he drawled with supreme self-command.
‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ Rosie said sweetly. ‘I’m not the tiniest bit possessive about you.’
‘You’ve got married? You?’ Justine looked thunder-stuck and finally took Rosie under her notice. ‘To her?’ she gasped in stricken incomprehension as she gawped at Rosie. ‘But why?’
‘If you get me in the right mood, I even loan him out,’ Rosie imparted with a slanting smile beneath which she boiled with rage. Then she turned on her heel and stalked out into the night air. Momentarily her head reeled and she knew that she had drunk a little too much champagne.
But no wonder Constantine hadn’t looked at the blonde bombshell falling out of her dress! Been there, done that... and the creep had had the neck to call her a tart! Rosie did not flaunt herself half-naked and she would cut off her hands sooner than make such a blatant pass at any man in front of an audi
ence of interested spectators.
Several steps beyond the doors, Constantine reached her and closed a hand over her forearm. ‘Christos ... how dare you refer to our marriage and to me in such terms?’ he gritted rawly.
‘Let’s get this straight, Constantine...’ Rosie stopped dead, her oval face flushed with equal fury. ‘We are not married. Got it? If ever I do get married, I will get married in church and the groom will be someone I at least like and respect. He will not be a hypocritical, insensitive, conceited swine who can’t think beyond the level of a one-night stand! So go take a hike!’
‘Don’t speak to me like that!’ Constantine seethed.
‘And your taste in women is pitiful!’ Rosie seethed back, unable to restrain her overwhelming need to pass on that opinion. ‘So why waste your time being nice to me all evening? You must have had a far better time in Monte Carlo, darling Constantine! You’re a womaniser and I wouldn’t touch you with a barge-pole!’
‘Theos... is that a fact?’ Constantine roared.
‘Yes, that is a fact, darling!’ Rosie mimicked with vicious pleasure.
A flash of bright light temporarily blinded her and she blinked in bewilderment, straining to focus on a man in a white shirt darting away with a camera. Constantine took advantage of her stasis to grab her with two furiously angry hands and bring his mouth down hotly on hers. Whoosh! It felt as if the top of her head was flying off, closely followed by the rest of her startled body taking off into orbit with it. I lied, was the last thought she had as her angry fingers knotted fiercely into his thick black hair and held him to her, wanting him, hating him, needing him with a savage passion that was utterly outside her control.
Afterwards, she didn’t remember getting into the car. Dmitri had looked suitably grave head-on but from the back seat and through the thick glass separating them Rosie watched his big shoulders give a betraying little quiver and looked hurriedly away again, mortification eating her alive.
‘I was offensive and you were justifiably angry but when I followed you out of the dining room I intended to apologise,’ Constantine admitted with raw-edged clarity.