by Lynne Graham
‘No... he could not have handled that and stayed,’ Constantine conceded half under his breath.
‘He had already had so much to bear.’ The older woman looked at Rosie and sighed heavily. ‘All my life I’d received everything I wanted without effort. When my son was stillborn, when I finally had to accept that I was unlikely ever to give birth to a living child, I took my bitterness and my anger out on my husband and I rejected him. I told him I needed to be alone and I drove him away. I had less right than most to complain when he turned to another woman...’
Constantine frowned darkly. ‘I had no idea your marriage had ever been in trouble.’
‘It was before you came to us. And I allowed Rosie to remain a secret to conserve my own pride too. I also knew that her mother was married and I felt safe. As the years passed, I always made a point of seeking out those photos. Anton only placed them in a safety-deposit box shortly before he died.’
‘All this time...you knew about me,’ Rosie whispered in a daze.
‘But it never occurred to me that Anton had found you. I was aware that he had attempted to trace you when you were younger and reached a dead end. When he became so buoyantly cheerful six months ago, I even suspected that he was having another affair.’ Thespina surveyed the younger woman with wry but warm eyes. ‘But I’m not sorry that he found you, Rosie. I’m glad that he was able to spend time with you before he died. I do know what that must have meant to him.’
Rosie licked her dry lips. ‘You’re being very understanding.’
‘Secrets make everyone so uncomfortable,’ Thespina pointed out ruefully. ‘I am also now aware of the terms of my husband’s new will. I would be very grateful if one of you would now tell me whether you are genuinely married or only pretending to be married for the sake of that will.’
Rosie swallowed the giant lump impeding her voice. ‘We’re faking it—’
‘Like hell we are!’ Constantine shot at Rosie in raw, angry disagreement.
‘Perhaps I was a little premature with that question.’ Setting down her empty coffee-cup with a faintly amused smile, Thespina stood up. ‘But if you feel you could stay together long enough to supply me with a grandchild I would be very much obliged. I’ve been waiting a long time for that pleasure.’
Rosie studied her feet, burning colour in her cheeks. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Constantine but she also realised what her father’s widow was trying to tell her. Thespina was letting her know that she was ready to accept her as part of the family.
‘Where are you going?’ Constantine demanded of his stepmother.
‘This was only intended as a flying visit to clear the air. I shall come back and see Son Fontanal some other time. By the way, Rosie...’
Rosie glanced up nervously. Thespina smiled again. ‘Your father managed to persuade his mother not to sell the family portraits with the house. I would be happy to see them hung here where they belong.’
‘Thespina could run rings around Machiavelli,’ Rosie mumbled as the limousine disappeared from view. ‘She wiped the floor with us both.’
Still in shock, she started back indoors. And then it hit her: Thespina knew everything. There was no further need for pretence, no necessity to wait before seeking a divorce. All of a sudden, Rosie’s lower limbs felt like toothpicks struggling weakly to wade through a swamp. Thespina had dissolved the artificial boundaries within which their relationship had been formed. They had run out of time.
‘How could you tell her that our marriage was a fake?’ Constantine condemned wrathfully. ‘Did you really think that was necessary?’
With difficulty, Rosie straightened her slumped shoulders and dug deep into her reserves of pride as she forced herself round to face him. ‘I told the truth. After she had been so frank, anything less would have been an insult.’
Glittering black eyes centred on her with near-physical force. ‘How was it the truth? Are we not married? Are we not lovers?’
Rosie’s nerves were jangling like piano wires. ‘You made it very clear how you felt about me last night.’
‘Christos ... I thought I did but now I’m not so sure. You put me through hell for no good reason. I may have wounded your pride by dismissing your claim to be Anton’s daughter but you must have realised that the concept struck me as so incredible, I didn’t even pause to consider it!’ Shimmering dark eyes intercepted her evasive gaze. ‘OK...I was in the wrong, but what I don’t understand is your failure to repeat that claim once we knew each other better.’
‘I didn’t see that it would make any difference—’
‘It would’ve made one hell of a difference if I’d known! And stop acting dumb!’ Constantine bit out in frustration. ‘I was shattered by the contents of that file. You seemed so open yet you had hidden the very essence of yourself from me...’
Her fingers clenched in on themselves as she faced the prospect of never seeing him again. Just walking away as if they had never been together, as if the past weeks had never happened. Acid burned her aching throat. The fear that she could not control her turbulent emotions drove her to say, ‘It doesn’t matter now, does it? We don’t need to pretend for anyone’s benefit now. We can get a divorce.’
Constantine perceptibly froze, his strong face clenching. ‘I don’t want a divorce.’
A great flood of pain and bitterness welled up inside Rosie, threatening her fast splintering control. And then the dam broke as she shot him a look of fierce condemnation. ‘I’m not staying married to you just because you’ve got this stupid macho thing about keeping faith with what my father wanted!’
Constantine glowered at her in apparent incredulity. ‘This is not a macho thing, Rosie,’ he said drily.
A sob rollicked about like a death rattle in her chest. ‘Call it what you like. I’m going upstairs to get packed!’
She raced out of the room and upstairs as if all the hounds of hell were on her trail. In fact they were inside her head. A weak, seductive little voice which she loathed was already pointing out that Constantine was offering himself on a plate. If he was stupid enough to do that and she wanted him, why shouldn’t she hang onto him any way she could? Pride would be a cold, lonely bedfellow and there was nothing cold about Constantine. She dashed an angry hand over her tear-filled eyes.
‘Rosie...?’
‘I’m not staying with you because you’re great in bed either!’ she blistered accusingly before she could bite the words back.
Thrusting the door shut and leaning back against it, his lean, powerful body rigid with tension, Constantine stared darkly back at her. ‘But that attraction could be a beginning, a foundation—’
‘Last night you called me a cold, vindictive bitch!’ Rosie reminded him painfully.
Inky black lashes dropped low on fiercely intent golden eyes. ‘Christos, I didn’t mean a word of it. I... I was...’ He hesitated, teeth gritting. ‘I was so...’
‘You were what?’ Rosie demanded.
‘Hurt... You ripped my guts out!’ Constantine shot back in a raw explosion of emotion that silenced her. ‘How would you have felt? I thought we were getting close, and then all of a sudden I find out you’re not even the person I thought you were...and then...Theos...I wake up with the most incredible hangover and I know that you still are...’
‘You still think I’m a bitch?’
Constantine threw his arms wide in furious frustration. of course not! That’s not what I meant!’
‘It’s what it sounded like,’ Rosie mumbled chokily as she stalked over and began pulling out drawers.
‘Last night I thought you had to hate me and I haven’t had much practice at talking about feelings. I attack first. I couldn’t think straight until this morning and then when I got up you’d vanished...’
Hearing the ragged, raw strain in his deep, dark drawl, Rosie ached but refused to look at him, her hands shaking as she mounded clothes willy-nilly into a huge pile. He didn’t love her but he certainly had loved and respected he
r father.
In the dragging silence his mobile phone buzzed.
‘Go on... answer it!’ Rosie hissed nastily over one shoulder.
With a strangled, driven imprecation, he did so. Rosie listened but she didn’t even recognise the language. It wasn’t Greek or French... And then she heard him say ‘Cinzia’ as clear as a bell and sheer murderous rage just exploded like a blazing fire-ball inside her. Scrambling up, she launched herself at him, ripped the mobile phone from his hand and plunged it into the carafe of cold water beside the bed.
‘You can talk to Cinzia when I’m gone, not before!’ she condemned strickenly. ‘I hope the two of you rot in hell... I hope her husband catches you with her and kills you!’
As she spun away again, shaking and trembling like a leaf in a high wind, a pin-dropping silence thundered all around her.
‘Cinzia and I split up years ago. We’re still friends,’ Constantine said almost conversationally. ‘If I allowed Anton and Thespina to assume it was an ongoing affair, it was only because it became very embarrassing to be presented with marriageable young women every time I went to dine with them.’
Rosie blinked and sucked in a slow, steadying breath. ‘Both of them were painfully keen for me to marry and settle down. I wasn’t interested. Cinzia made a good cover story and they stopped lining up blind dates for me.’
In horror, Rosie surveyed the mobile phone sunk at the foot of the glass water container.
“There’s no need for you to be jealous of Cinzia. That was over a long time ago.’
Intense mortification engulfed her. ‘I’m not jealous!’
‘If you say so...’ Disturbingly, a thread of tender amusement softened Constantine’s response. ‘But I do feel that I ought to point out that every time I have had anything to do with another woman you have seen her off with the efficiency of a hit man!’
‘I was pretending to be a wife...just pretending.’
‘I don’t want you to pretend any more. If you walk out that door, I’ll feet like my life’s going to end...’
Stiffening in disbelief, Rosie brushed a wavering hand across her damp cheeks and twisted round. She saw him through a haze of tears. His compelling dark golden eyes were fixed on her with such intense hunger and hope, she trembled.
‘I know you still think you’re in love with Maurice,’ Constantine framed hoarsely. ‘But I think you’ll grow out of that if I’m patient. I can’t face losing you. I tried to last night and all I ended up with was this sense...this knowing that really nothing else mattered as long as I still had you...’
Rosie licloed her dry lips and waited, fingers rolled into feverish fists because she was so desperate to fling her arms round him but she wanted to hear the words first.
Constantine breathed in slowly like a non-swimmer about to plunge into a deep pool without a lifebelt. ‘I love you like crazy—’
Rosie hurled herself at him. ‘I’m not in love with Maurice, I’m in love with you ... and I’m sorry I hurt you but I couldn’t stand for you to want to stay married to me just because Anton was my father,’ she gasped out in a confiding rush, fingers flexing joyously over wide, strong shoulders she had never thought to explore again and lingering in a deeply possessive hold.
He closed his arms round her so tightly, she could barely breathe. ‘Didn’t you realise that I loved you last night? Why do you think I got so damn drunk?’
‘I never even dreamt that I could affect you like that.’
‘And now that you know you’re not going to allow me to forget it.’ Constantine tipped her head up and searched her eyes for confirmation of what he so badly wanted to believe. A brilliant smile drove the last of the tension from his dark features and his gaze gleamed possessively over her.
‘The first time I saw you it was like hitting a wall at two hundred miles an hour. I lost my head when I found you at Anton’s house because you were the very last woman I wanted to find there. I wanted you to be mine and I wouldn’t admit that to myself.’
‘I really got on your nerves at the start.’ Rosie’s fingers were happily engaged in unknotting his silk tie and yanking it off.
‘You wouldn’t let me ignore you and then I began making excuses for you... didn’t you notice that?’ Helpfully he detached himself long enough to shrug free of his jacket. It fell unnoticed to the floor for they only had eyes for each other.
‘Excuses?’ Rosie queried, unbuttoning his shirt with a frown of concentration.
‘On your behalf, I began to come up with all sorts of understandable reasons for you to have ended up as an older man’s mistress.’
‘Like that Maurice was a bad influence who had taken advantage of me, that I was in love with him and flung myself at Anton in despair,’ Rosie recounted for herself, a faintly dazed light in her eyes as she marvelled at her own lack of perception and dragged his shirt down his arms and off. ‘You were making terrific excuses for me even before we ended up in bed.’
‘You didn’t notice ... I did,’ Constantine confided, watching with slightly bemused eyes as Rosie embarked on his belt. ‘Theos...it really shook me that you could have that much effect on my brain. And I was eaten up with jealousy of Maurice. You never shut up about him. Every time I thought I might be getting somewhere with you, he came into it again.’
‘He’s my best friend and there’s never been the tiniest spark between us. You misjudged him,’ Rosie scolded, gaining in confidence by meteoric degrees as she spread a smile of unconcealed admiration over Constantine’s bare chest.
‘Misjudged him?’ Constantine shuddered as Rosie moved on to more physical ways of demonstrating her love and appreciation. She muttered a distracted explanation about Maurice’s sister, Lorna, and her unfortunate experience with the journalist she had fancied. It became very involved and eventually peterod out entirely.
She ran blissful hands across his hair-roughened chest and down over his long, powerful thighs before sliding them up to the hard bulge straining at his zip. He groaned out loud as she let her fingers shape him. And then he grabbed her up to him and plundered her mouth with hungry need. They fell backwards on the bed. He ripped her clothes off. This time Rosie helped and returned the favour...
A long while later, they were wrapped together in a gloriously happy haze of mutual satisfaction and the sheer wonder of loving each other, an abstracted frown clouded Rosie’s brow. ‘There’s just one thing I don’t understand ... rabbits? Why did Dmitri tell me you were talking about rabbits?’
Constantine shifted a little tautly and faint colour darkened his blunt cheekbones. ‘There are two whole crates of them downstairs.’
‘Excuse me?’ Rosie stared down at him.
‘Those Sylvac rabbits you collect...you remember that one I broke? Last week I got on the phone and spoke to a dealer and he put the word out, and you are now the owner of probably the most expensive collection of ceramic rabbits in the world today.’
A delighted grin illuminated Rosie’s face. ‘That’s so sweet, Constantine. You must have been really desperate to impress me.’
‘You’re such a diplomat, Rosie.’ His dark golden eyes glittered over her and a slanting, wicked smile curved his mouth. ‘I’ll be equally tactless. When are you planning to tell me exactly what I do in these fantasies of yours?’
Rosie went pink. ‘I don’t want to shock you.’
‘Did I say a word when my mobile phone went swimming?’ Reaching up to tug her insistently down to him again, Constantine kissed her breathless. An almost soundless little sigh of contentment escaped her. She wondered how much he would enjoy playing a gangster...
ISBN : 978-1-4592-6218-8
THE SECRET WIFE
First North American Publication 1998.
Copyright © 1997 by Lynne Graham.
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