The Secret Wife

‘G-go to sleep?’ Rosie queried shakily, every fibre of her trembling body centred in awareness on the bold thrust of his erection against her slender hip.

‘I have not slept more than a handful of hours in the past three days. So when I sleep you sleep too,’ Constantine told her, his deep, dark drawl winding audibly down in speed and volume.

Rosie twisted round in the manacle-like imprisonment of his arm. In a bewildered daze, she surveyed him. His drowsy eyes were darkly shadowed, the crescent lashes as long and luxuriant as a child’s already in the act of drifting down towards his cheekbones. Close up, she noticed how pale he was. As she recalled the travel schedule he had outlined, the strangest little pang of guilt nudged at her conscience and provoked a deep flush on her troubled face.

‘You don’t trust me not to disappear again,’ she gathered tautly. ‘But I’m prepared to promise that I’ll still be in this house when you wake up.’

In unconvinced response, Constantine shifted and snaked his other arm beneath her, forcing her even closer and into, if possible, an even more disturbing intimacy because this time she was facing him and lying half over the outrageously relaxed sprawl of his abrasively masculine frame.

‘Constantine ...!’ Rosie shrieked in anguish as he crushed her breasts into the solid wail of his hair-roughened chest and pushed her head down under his chin.

‘If you keep me awake I’ll get amorous,’ he warned her thickly. ‘I like to make love before I sleep. Sex is a wonderful antidote to stress and tension, pethi mou.’

There was only one tense person in the bed after that assertion and it wasn’t Constantine.

Rosie lay as still as a statue with the slow, steady beat of his heart thudding against her breast and the deep rise and fall of his breathing stirring her hair. He had both arms wrapped round her in an entirely asexual embrace. Indeed she might as well have been an inanimate toy. He had dragged her into bed with him only to ensure that she did not get the chance to make a break for freedom again. Now he was sleeping like a big, happy, contented log!

In dismaying contrast, Rosie was in a state of turmoil which was becoming horribly familiar to her in Constantine’s radius. Pure panic had provoked her flight from Greece. She winced at the awareness. Even asleep, Constantine reacted to that slight movement of hers, his arms tightening round her as he rolled over, pinning one long, powerful thigh between hers. Her taut nipples throbbed and her stomach clenched with horrendous excitement, her treacherous body responding with a brazen life and hunger all of its own. Rosie simply wanted to die of mortification.

He had ripped off her clothes and she had experienced not one decent pang of fear. She had been outraged but not scared and, worst of all, when he had told her to go to sleep she had been shattered and then ... and then ... disappointed? A sexual craving that horrified her still hungered like a wicked beast inside her. And she felt even more threatened by the discovery that one glimpse of Constantine looking exhausted could make her feel guilty and strangely sympathetic. How could she feel guilty about a male she loathed? Where had all her anger gone?

Shaken awake in an only vaguely familiar bedroom, Rosie slowly lifted her head off the pillow she was hugging, bemused eyes landing on Constantine. Fully dressed, he was standing by the bed, every vibrant battery blatantly recharged, energy sizzling from him in intimidating waves. He looked incredibly gorgeous.

‘What time is it?’ she mumbled, disorientated by the daylight still flooding through the windows and then deeply disturbed by the realisation that she had actually managed to fall asleep in his arms. True, she had not slept a great deal herself in recent days, but that was no excuse for relaxing to that extent.

‘Three in the afternoon. It’s time for you to get up. Lunch is being prepared.’

‘By whom...Carmina?’ she muttered round a still sleepy yawn as she stretched.

‘Since I was aware that the house had only an elderly caretaker in residence, I arranged for a number of my staff to follow me here,’ Constantine supplied drily. ‘But since habitable rooms are at a premium they’ll be using the holiday cottages on the edge of the estate.’

Sitting up, Rosie carefully hugged the sheet to her collarbone. Without shame, Constantine stared. A rosy red blush started at her breasts and crawled up her throat before she hurriedly broke back into speech. ‘How the heck did you find out where I wa

s?’

“The passenger manifest of your flight. Is this trip meant to be some sort of sentimental journey?’ Constantine dealt her a stonily unimpressed appraisal, openly suspicious as to why she should have chosen to take refuge in Anton’s family home.

‘I thought it would be the last place you would look for me.’ Rosie ducked her head, her eyes clouding. A sentimental journey...if only he knew. But then he didn’t know and he had shot her down in flames when she had tried to tell him who she was. His contemptuous dismissal of her claim had bitten deep.

‘Where is your wedding ring?’ Constantine demanded so abruptly that she jumped.

‘I took it off.’

‘Then put it back on again,’ Constantine told her grimly.

‘I can’t...’ Rosie shrugged. ‘I dropped it in a bin when I got off the plane at Palma.’

Constantine slowly breathed in and slowly breathed out again. Rosie recognised the exercise for what it was. It was the Voulos equivalent of counting to ten. What she did not understand was the flare of dark colour over his hard cheekbones and the momentarily seething look of a male striving not to react to a personal affront.

‘I didn’t think I was going to need to wear the wretched thing again!’ she protested in the hissing silence.

‘We’ll talk downstairs when you’re dressed.’ Constantine strode to the door and sent her a slashing glance. ‘You owe me an apology for the manner in which you chose to leave my home.’

‘I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.’ Rosie tilted her chin. ‘I’m not very good at apologising.’

‘But you will learn.’ Constantine spelt out grittily.

Why did he never learn? He was even more stubborn than she was. Grimacing, she slid out of bed. The sparsely furnished bedroom rejoiced in a very old-fashioned adjoining bathroom. The bath was big enough to accommodate an entire family. Still in possession of its Victorian shower attachment, it was the sort of bath which Maurice would have gone into raptures over, but unhappily there seemed to be no hot water available.