A Ring to Secure His Heir

‘Because I have to make plans and I need to take this opportunity to get to know Socrates. I’ve never had a relative interested in me before—it means a great deal to me, but he’s not a young man any more, Alexius. Who knows how long he’ll be there for me to be with him?’ she appealed, her green eyes deeply troubled. ‘Don’t make it difficult for me to do what my conscience tells me I have to do.’

‘I have no intention of doing so, but if you walk out of this house, it’s over between us. I’ll support you and my child but I’ll move on with my life without you.’

‘I know you’re annoyed with me, I know I should’ve discussed this with you first, but you’re not being fair!’ Rosie cried, panic taking hold of her in a great dizzy surge that made her tummy roil as if she were back in the boat on the sea again. ‘You can still see me in Athens—’

‘And sleep with you? I don’t think so,’ Alexius derided. ‘Once Socrates has you under his roof, you’ll be reinvented as a vestal virgin.’

‘A pregnant vestal virgin?’ Rosie scorned with a jerky little laugh, horribly hurt that he had mentioned nothing but a need for her body. ‘Is that a joke? You don’t really mean that it’s over between us, do you?’

‘I do,’ Alexius confirmed with icy restraint, the strong bones of his darkly handsome face set in uncompromising lines of resolve. ‘I very rarely say things I don’t mean, Rosie. If you leave without my permission, we’re done for all time.’

‘I think, at least I hope, you mean agreement rather than permission,’ Rosie interrupted sickly. ‘Because I don’t need your permission for anything.’

Alexius shot her a glittering glance of smouldering hostility. ‘You’re right. You don’t.’

And with that somehow sobering concession for she would have preferred an argument, Alexius strode back out of the room. Rosie sank down on the edge of the bed like a sleepwalker suddenly waking up to find herself in a strange place. A very strange place indeed, she adjusted shakily, anguish threatening to consume her alive. He didn’t mean it. He couldn’t mean it. They could not be over when only minutes earlier he had been ready to make love to her. He couldn’t simply switch off like that … Could he?

Over. She tasted the concept and retreated from it again with a shudder. He was angry; he wouldn’t stay angry for ever. Her heart still told her that she owed Socrates her attention but her heart was also ready to split right down the middle at the challenging prospect of Alexius dumping her cold. He was acting like a bully. He was too used to always getting what he wanted. He was behaving badly, using emotional blackmail to hit her where it hurt, she thought with pained resentment. And if she was weak, his cruelty would work, but she was not weak. She had to fight him, stick to her guns. He would come round; he had to come round. She loved him, she loved him even when he was acting like an absolute four-letter word and lashing out at her. But she should have prepared the ground better, talked over her plans with him, not issued a blunt announcement when he was least in the mood to hear it. The sight of her half-packed suitcase had been a red rag to a bull.

Over—what if he truly meant it? Well, if he did, he was no loss, Rosie reasoned wretchedly, tears pushing past her squeezed-closed eyes as she struggled to hold them back. She was not about to cry and grieve over a guy who issued ultimatums as if she were one of his humble employees! She was strong, she could get by without him, enjoy life without him. She might feel as if she couldn’t but such a belief was melodramatic nonsense.

CHAPTER TEN

‘THERE’s Alexius now,’ Rosie’s aunt Sofia carolled in Rosie’s ear. ‘I told you he’d be here! He never misses one of Dad’s parties.’

Rosie focused her attention on the noticeable crush that had formed on the far side of the room. She could only see the top of Alexius’s arrogant dark head because he was taller than the men around him. Perspiration beaded her short upper lip and her hands clenched in on themselves. A full week had passed since she had left the island and Alexius had not got in touch once. Not once! Keeping her distance from him demanded every ounce of her self-control and she wondered why that was so when he was the one behaving badly. What had happened to her pride? ‘Who are all those people with him?’ she asked, unable to suppress her curiosity.

‘Alexius always gets mobbed in public. He’s a very powerful man in business. The men want a piece of what he’s got and the women want a piece of him,’ the older woman spelt out with a suggestive chuckle.

Socrates had chosen to throw his party in his flagship city hotel and had insisted on buying Rosie a new dress for the occasion even though she had shown him an outfit that she had been convinced would do. Had it not been for the emotional turmoil she had suffered in leaving Alexius, she would have thoroughly enjoyed the week she had spent in her grandfather’s company. On his home turf, Rosie and Socrates had relaxed and developed a close bond, discovering a very similar sense of humour and an equally strong appreciation of unpretentious living.

Rosie was wearing white, which nicely set off the light golden tan she had acquired on the beach, and she had had her hair done specially for the occasion, so that the pale strands fell waterfall straight past her shoulders. The dress was more revealing than what she was accustomed to wearing though, and she felt wildly self-conscious in it. Sofia had taken Rosie shopping, however, and saying no to the ebullient Sofia was no easy task. Rosie thought that she and her aunt were too different to ever be close, but Sofia had curbed her waspish tongue since Rosie’s arrival and the older woman’s blunt opinions were, admittedly, informative and often amusing. The older woman knew everyone who was anyone i

n society and was thoroughly acquainted with every scandal and secret worth hearing about. Rosie was convinced that all the guests must already know that she was pregnant and by whom for she could not believe that Sofia was capable of keeping such a juicy piece of gossip to herself.

‘Who’s she?’ Rosie prompted, dry-mouthed, as a gap in the crowd round Alexius revealed a glimpse of a striking brunette in a bright blue skimpy dress with a possessive hand locked to the father of her child’s arm. Yes, that was right, Rosie reminded herself vitriolically, he was the father of her child and it was cheap and tasteless of Alexius to be showing off another woman at her party.

‘Yannina Demas … Demas Shipping,’ Sofia extended authoritatively. ‘They’re old friends, but Nina has always wanted more. Don’t stare at him, Rosie. Never wear your heart on your sleeve for a man, particularly not one with so many options available.’

Instantly, Rosie turned her pale head away, flags of stricken colour mantling her cheeks as if she had been slapped. Was she that transparent? Were her feelings for Alexius so obvious? She could hardly eat and she certainly wasn’t sleeping. Undeniably her spirits were low. With each day that had dragged past without a visit or even a casual phone call, Rosie had suffered more as she struggled to keep her feelings under control. At one point she had almost got desperate enough to phone Alexius and tell him not to be so stupid but had managed to restrain herself from such a revealing act. Old friends? Former bed partners or genuine old friends? Nina Demas was clinging to Alexius as though he were her only support in a violent storm. Rosie blanked the view and suppressed the thought to smile at the tall young man asking her to dance.

Alexius watched Rosie walk onto the dance floor: she looked disorientatingly unfamiliar. That dress had certainly not come from the conservative wardrobe he had ordered for her. It was very short with a fitted bodice that bared her shoulders and showcased her breasts, while the skirt sat out below her waist decorated with fluffy flowers of fabric. Once she would have dismissed such a very feminine dress as silly and frivolous but the whole effect was stunning and sophisticated and it stood for all the qualities Alexius had never wanted Rosie to acquire.

He had liked her simplicity, her unashamed lack of glamour and vanity. He didn’t like her putting her pregnancy-enhanced breasts on display or showing off her slender, shapely legs, which would only encourage men to wonder what it would be like to lie between them. If it weren’t for the salient little fact that he had ditched her, Alexius would have rushed over there and wrapped his jacket round Rosie to shield her from the clothes-stripping male eyes locked to her because she was attracting far too much attention. And Alexius didn’t like that either. Even less did he like the way she was behaving as he watched her slender hips swivelling in time to the music in a sexually provocative display. What the hell did she think she was playing at? His temper smouldered like boiling oil below the polite social smile he wore in response to a sally from Nina.

Rosie’s aunt spoke to her as she came off the floor to say, ‘If you can spare five minutes, Dad wants to see you upstairs in his suite.’

Breathing audibly from her efforts on the dance floor, Rosie entered the lift that would take her up to Socrates’s private suite. She wondered if something had happened and worried that the older man had been doing too much and wasn’t feeling well. Taking adequate rest was a challenge for a man as energetic as Socrates Seferis, who was very much a hands-on employer. The door of the suite stood ajar and she walked on in, glancing round, surprised to find herself alone. A moment later, the door opened wide and Alexius strode in impatiently, wheeling to a surprised halt when he saw her standing there.

‘Socrates?’

‘He’s not here yet,’ Rosie proclaimed stiffly, clashing unwarily with liquid mercury eyes set between lush black lashes, her mouth running dry. Alexius looked spectacular in his formal suit, his skin like polished bronze against his white shirt collar, his lean, strong face outrageously handsome but clenched in hard, taut lines. ‘Did he want to speak to you as well?’

‘Right now it looks more like he wanted us to speak to each other,’ Alexius responded with a cynical smile as he closed the door, sealing them into unwelcome privacy.

Rosie froze. ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you.’

‘That’s fine because I’ve got plenty to say!’ Alexius retorted harshly, studying the slim figure shamelessly exposed in the figure-hugging dress, his wide sensual mouth twisting with derision. Her newly plump breasts pouted delectably in the neckline and as he helplessly pictured the taut little berries of her nipples a heavy ache stirred with aggravating intensity at his groin. ‘What are you doing coming out in public dressed like that?’