The Secret Wife

‘I’m going to bed—’

‘I’m trying to look out for you, Rosie. You have got rights too,’ Maurice told her with stark impatience. ‘Your dad would turn in his grave if he knew what Voulos was doing!’

‘Maurice, Constantine Voulos has not one thing that I want.’

But was it true that Constantine was wealthier than her father had ever been? Anton certainly hadn’t travelled around in a chauffeur-driven limo or hauled bodyguards in his wake. She shrugged. Either way, what did it matter to her? And even if Constantine was filthy rich it didn’t mean he couldn’t also be disgustingly greedy.

But she still took that magazine to bed with her. There was a picture of Constantine, looking spectacularly dark and smooth and dangerous in a dinner jacket. A beautiful blonde was clutching his arm as if she was afraid he was about to escape. Rosie surveyed the blonde with pity. Constantine was the sort of male animal you kicked hard and walked away from. He would thrive on that kind of brutal treatment and come back for more. Even she, with her limited experience of the male sex, had worked that out at first glance.

As Rosie drove herself to the chosen register office in a nearby town three weeks later, she was struggling to suppress a deep sense of unease. Even if she couldn’t condone her father’s ill-considered attempt to endow her with the lifestyle she might have had as his legitimate daughter, she knew that he had written that will in sincerity and that made her feel guilty and disloyal.

As she drew her little van to a reluctant halt in the car park, she espied the now familiar limousine and pulled a face. Constantine’s bodyguards were outside the register office, on the lookout for her. Neither was dressed for the chill of a late Yorkshire spring. They were blue with cold and the younger man, Taki, was sneezing. Both men fell over themselves in their eagerness to open the door for her and follow her indoors.

‘You’re late,’ Constantine grated, striding forward to intercept her.

‘But I’m here,’ Rosie pointed out flatly. ‘Don’t look a gift-horse in the mouth.’

Incredulous dark eyes roved over her waxed jacket and jeans. ‘Theos...didn’t Anton buy you any decent clothes?’

Rosie reddened, her mouth tightening as she took in the full effect of his exquisitely cut navy pinstripe suit, white silk shirt and gold tie. ‘Surely you didn’t think I would get all dolled up for this charade?’

‘This is not a charade,’ Constantine growled in a repressive undertone. ‘We are about to undergo a legal and binding ceremony.’

A split second after a clerk approached them to invite them into the room where the civil marriage service would take place. Rosie froze. ‘I don’t like this at all,’ she whispered frantically. ‘I wish I hadn’t agreed—’

Impatient long brown fingers enclosed her own and urged her onward. ‘You will go through with it for Thespina’s sake.’

Rosie paled at that cruel reminder of her father’s vulnerable widow. This was a cover-up, she reminded herself, an unpleasant but essential manoeuvre to enable Constantine to inherit Anton’s estate without challenging his will. She focused on a rather tired flower arrangement on a nearby table and then minutes later, from somewhere outside herself, she watched in helpless amazement as Constantine lifted her ice-cold hand and slotted a slender gold ring onto her wedding finger.

‘I believe you drove yourself here,’ Constantine murmured on the pavement outside. ‘Give me your car keys.’

Rosie frowned. ‘My car keys?’ She already had them in her hand. ‘Why?’

Without hesitation, Constantine swiped her keyring from between her fingers, tossed it deftly to Taki and said something in Greek.

It happened so fast that Rosie blinked in bemusement as Taki sped off with her keys. ‘What on earth do you think you’re playing at?’ she demanded furiously.

‘He will drive your vehicle home. We’re spending the night at a hotel.’ Constantine closed a restraining hand round her shoulder as his limousine pulled in by the kerb.

‘We... Say that again?’ Rosie shot aghast eyes to his dark, strong face.

‘Were we to part immediately after the ceremony, it would look very suspicious.’

‘To whom?’ Rosie gasped.

‘Should this arrangement of ours ever be questioned, I will not lay myself open to a charge of having entered the marriage on false pretences—’

‘But that’s exactly what you’ve done!’

‘And wouldn’t it be very foolish of me to make that obvious?’

‘No way am I spending the night with you!’ Rosie told him hotly.

‘You have no choice. This is part of the deal.’ Rosie folded her arms and stood her ground. ‘No way,’ she said again. ‘I wouldn’t trust you as far as the foot of the street!’

‘Do you require assistance to get into the car?’ Dangerous dark eyes of warning rested on her.

For an instant, Rosie hesitated, and then she climbed into the limousine in one quick, angry movement. ‘A man who has to threaten to use brute strength to get his own way is a pathetic apology for a man!’