The Secret Wife

‘And then you threw yourself at Anton because you needed to prove to yourself that you were capable of attracting other men! Or was the affair with Anton and the move to London planned as a desperate last-ditch attempt to make Maurice jealous and sit up and take notice of you?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous ... I’m not in love with Maurice.’

‘You certainly weren’t in love with Anton. But then no doubt he was a father figure,’ Constantine responded with sardonic bite.

Rosie froze, her anger decimated by pain. ‘That’s exactly what he was,’ she mumbled.

‘And within minutes of that memorial service you weren’t lusting after any ghost!’

Rosie reddened fiercely at that earthy reminder of the way Constantine had affected her that day. ‘Don’t you have any decency?’

The powerful car shot to a halt in the courtyard. Constantine killed the engine and turned his head to look at her, black eyes as hard as jet in his vibrantly handsome face. ‘It took a hike when you took off in a tantrum with Maurice. He’s your security blanket and I think you’re old enough to do without him. Times have changed and don’t try to tell me differently, pethi mou. It’s me that you want now...’

Always and for ever, she thought fearfully, clenched by a bone-deep sense of her own vulnerability. She wanted much more than she had any hope of achieving.

Constantine lifted a lean hand and caught a colourful handful of corkscrew curls gently between his fingers. He tipped her troubled face up to the onslaught of his starkly assessing gaze. ‘And I want you,’ he completed with lethal brevity. ‘So what’s the problem? As I see it, it’s a simple and perfectly straightforward relationship.’

Rosie snatched in a sustaining breath, almost drowning in the evocative scent of him so close, a whole chain of little reactions making her head swim and her body quiver. ‘But then you only think with your hormones—’

‘Theos, I can’t think with anything else around you,’ Constantine admitted thickly, unconcerned by her censure.

Rosie struggled to suppress a shiver of excitement. Shame engulfed her and she swept up an unsteady hand to detach his fingers from her hair and pull back. ‘I know there are no guarantees in life but that’s not enough for me,’ she said tautly.

‘This is beginning to sound like a negotiation and negotiations invariably end with a price.’

‘Feelings don’t come with prices attached.’

He threw back his arrogant dark head, ebony brows raised in challenge above cool, watchful black eyes. ‘Are you sure of that? I’ve already given up my freedom and, strange as it might seem to you, that feels like a pretty hefty concession when I’ve never done it before.’

Refusing to be driven into retreat by the warning chill in the air, Rosie tilted her chin. ‘You haven’t given up anything for my benefit. You only married me because of the will and we’re only here together now because the Press found out. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel? Well, I’ll tell you how it makes me feel... like the flavour o

f the month for a casual sexual interlude,’ she asserted with steadily rising volume in the face of his dauntingly impassive appraisal. ‘And it might surprise you but I value myself a lot more highly than that!’

A silence punctuated by the audible hiss of her quickened breathing fell.

‘Then we would appear to have nothing more to discuss,’ Constantine concluded softly.

Rosie frowned in bemusement. ‘But...’

Constantine elevated a winged brow. ‘You don’t want a casual sexual interlude... and I don’t want anything else.’

The flush on Rosie’s cheeks slowly drained away, leaving her as white as his shirt-front. That cold-blooded assurance cut right into her like a knife. Nothing had ever hurt her so much. She clambered out of the Ferrari like a drunk trying to act sober, choosing each movement with infinitesimal care. Her stomach churned with nausea.

She could not believe that she had clumsily exposed herself to that level of rejection. Like a frantic teenager in love, she had slung her fear and insecurity at, him in the hope of drawing a reassuring response. But Constantine did not appreciate being put on the spot and he had had no inhibitions about brutally matching her foolish candour.

‘Of course,’ Constantine added softly, smoothly as he studied the rigidity of her slender back, ‘you could always try to change my mind, pethi mou.’

Rosie shuddered as the knife slid deeper still into her unprotected heart. In that selfsame moment, she also learnt that when provoked she could still hate almost as much as she loved.

‘And permit me to offer some advice,’ he murmured. ‘You are not going to do it by chasing off down a mountain with the throwback.’

Rosie lifted her fiery head high and turned round to face him again. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you don’t exist any more. You are beneath my notice,’ she stated with tremulous, driven dignity. ‘And I don’t want anything more to do with you.’

Anguished pain and flagellated pride weighted her as she walked indoors, shoulders square, chin high. Maybe it was just as well that she had been so painfully and naively frank, she told herself heavily. At last she now knew where she stood. And she knew how he saw her now too. She might not have enjoyed having her worst suspicions confirmed but knowledge was protection ... wasn’t it?

‘Oh, you shouldn’t have!’ Rosie scolded when she glanced up and found Carmina hovering over her with a glass of freshly squeezed lemonade. ‘I could have come inside to get something.’

‘When you are inside?’ the old lady grumbled. ‘You come inside only when it is getting dark.’