Constantine's Defiant Mistress

Laura leaned back against the range. ‘Where did you learn how to cook like this, Demetra?’

‘Oh, I have cooked all my life,’ answered Demetra simply. ‘First for my husband and then for my living. You see, I was widowed when Stavros was just a baby, and so I came here to work for the Karantinos family. They have been good to me. And Kyrios Constantine is a good man,’ she added fiercely. ‘He used to fish with my husband—and when he died he put Stavros through school and university and made sure the boy wanted for nothing.’

The housekeeper’s words of praise for Constantine preoccupied Laura as she began to lay the table on the terrace, beneath a canopy of leaves. But the last thing she needed was to hear praise lavished on him. She wanted to put him out of her mind—at least until tonight.

‘Do you know, I could stay here all day watching you do that?’ murmured a deep voice from the shadows, and Laura whirled round to find Constantine at the other end of the terrace, his black eyes fixed on her. Clearly fresh from the shower, with tiny droplets of water bejewelling the black hair, he had changed from jeans and T-shirt into dark trousers and a thin silk shirt, and he had shaved, too.

‘How long have you been standing there?’ she accused, her heart beginning to race with a ridiculous excitement.

He began walking towards her, his progress made slow by an exquisitely painful arousal. ‘Long enough to see that delightfully old-fashioned pinafore dress stretched tight over the delectable curve of your bottom,’ he murmured. ‘Making me want to touch it again, quite urgently.’

Laura sent an agonised glance in the direction of the kitchen, even though the rattle of china told her that Demetra was not within earshot. ‘Constantine, don’t. Please. Somebody might hear.’

His black eyes mocked her. ‘Ah, Laura! You see how already we are colluding like lovers—even though we are not yet lovers? For that pleasure I must wait—and I am not a man who is used to waiting.’

‘No, I can believe that,’ she said quietly, holding the tray in front of her as if it were a shield.

He lowered his voice until it was nothing but a silken caress which whispered over her skin. ‘Do you know that I feel as a man in prison must feel, ticking off the seconds and the minutes and the hours?’

Laura swallowed. ‘Constantine—’

‘So that the whole day seems stretched out in front of me like a piece of elastic,’ he continued inexorably. ‘Which is tightening unbearably—tighter and tighter—until the time when it snaps and I can once more feel your lips on mine and your honeyed heat as it welcomes me into your body.’

‘Stop it,’ she whispered as the siren song of desire began a slow pulsing through her veins ‘Please, stop it. Or how will I compose myself in front of the others?’

‘You didn’t think through the potential problems of making such an erotic date with destiny, did you?’ he taunted.

She hadn’t counted on being on such an erotic knife-edge, no. ‘Do you think your father’s going to ask me anything?’

‘If he does, then just answer his questions truthfully,’ he said, his whole mood suddenly sobering. ‘If you think you can manage that.’

‘You’re…making it sound as if you think I’m a liar,’ said Laura unsteadily, trying to read his expression—but it would have been easier to have sought some sort of meaning from a statue.

Constantine shook his head. ‘I haven’t quite decided what you are,’ he said softly. ‘Or just what your agenda is.’

Her heart slammed against her ribcage. ‘Who says I have an agenda?’

‘Women always do—it’s in their genetic make-up.’

‘You’re a cynic, Constantine.’

‘No, agape mou,’ he contradicted softly. ‘I am simply a very rich man who has seen female ambition in its every form. And you—of all women—have the opportunity to try to take me for everything you can get your hands on.’

‘You think that I’d do that?’ she demanded breathlessly.

‘I told you—I haven’t made up my mind yet,’ he returned.

And yet Laura had confounded every one of his expectations of her. Her refusal to marry him and her stubborn insistence on coming here to work instead had left him feeling unsettled. After a lifetime spent dodging matrimonial commitment to some of the world’s most eligible women, he had assumed that this humble waitress would leap at the chance of being a rich man’s wife—yet she had done the very opposite. So was she simply being devious, or principled?

‘Now—if you’ll excuse me—I have some business calls I need to make before lunch.’ His eyes glittered with erotic intent. ‘And roll on midnight, my stormy-eyed little temptress, so that we can at last finish off what we’ve started.’

For a moment after he’d gone Laura stood rooted to the spot—unable to believe how a man could switch so quickly from desire to distrust and then back to desire again. She finished laying the table for lunch, and then went to help Alex get ready.

‘Is Constantine’s daddy very old?’ he wanted to know, as he wriggled into a brand-new T-shirt.

‘I believe so, darling—and he hasn’t been too well recently, so you must be well-behaved.’ Surprisingly, Alex let her attempt to tame his dark waves into shape and, stepping back, her eyes shone with maternal pride as she looked at him. ‘But I know you will.’

The lunch table looked beautiful—with little pots of purple and white flowers dotted everywhere—and Stavros and Alex sat at their places, waiting until Constantine appeared with his father. Laura watched as they made slow progress across the terrace, the old man leaning heavily on a stick.