The Secret Wife

‘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—’