The Secret Wife

‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ The seething demand penetrated Rosie’s introspection at the same time as a big black shadow fell over the table. Her bright head lifted, her hand jerked and wine slopped out of her glass.

Taki shot upright and fell noisily over a chair. Taking in the situation at a glance, Dmitri surged forward to lift and steady the younger man and urge him towards the exit. His superb bone structure a mask of outrage, Constantine stared at Rosie, his eyes molten gold and as hard as diamonds.

‘I had no idea you’d left the suite. You will return there immediately,’ he ordered in a low-pitched growl of raw intimidation.

There was something about Constantine, something about that outrageous domineering attitude, that brought out the very worst in Rosie even when that same attitude could send an undeniable current of fear shooting through her veins. ‘Or what? I get forty lashes before midnight? I’m just sitting here having a quiet drink—’

‘Upstairs,’ Constantine bit out, pale with rage beneath his olive skin.

‘You Tarzan, me Jane?’ Rosie fed the flames with a flashing little smile of warning. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘We have an agreement,’ Constantine thundered in a repressive undertone that shimmied down her taut spine like abrasive sand on silk. ‘And you are behaving in an inappropriate manner.’

Rosie tilted her head back, her fiery tresses gleaming as bright as her eyes. ‘Frankly, I think I’m behaving very much in character. I’m playing a bimbo,’ she told him helpfully. ‘Lots of bimbos marry rich older guys who bore the pants off them—’

‘Say that again,’ Constantine invited, a slow rise of dark colour accentuating the taut slant of his high cheekbones.

‘So the neglected little wife gets restless and comes down to the bar to watch life pass her by,’ Rosie continued with a sad, soulful aspect.

‘People are looking at us.’ His expressive mouth hard as iron, eyes blazing, Constantine sank down with controlled animal grace into a seat. But he still reminded her of a ferocious tiger prevented at the very last moment from springing.

‘Of course they are ... and congratulations—you’re adding real veracity to this masquerade. Enter suspicious bridegroom in a seething temper. I shall try to look sufficiently quelled by the display,’ Rosie promised, hanging her head and shrinking her shoulders as if she were withstanding the blast of his righteous wrath with suitable humility. ‘But I am certainly not going back upstairs to vegetate in that bedroom.’

Constantine breathed in very, very slowly and deeply in the rushing silence.

Rosie grinned. ‘You’re shrewd, Constantine, I’ll give you that. You see, if you tried trailing me out of here by force, someone might feel they had to intervene on my behalf.’

‘Tomorrow morning cannot come soon enough for me,’ Constantine swore with a feral flash of gritted white teeth.

‘I know... we’re not exactly a match made in heaven.’

‘You are very brave in public places.’

‘You’re a very big guy.’

‘So is Maurice.’

Rosie smiled. ‘Maurice is as gentle as a lamb. He never loses his temper.’

‘But then you wear the pants in that relationship,’ Constantine interposed with scathing bite, a look of blatant disgust in his gaze.

‘I expect you like women servile and adoring. You were born out of time, Constantine. You should have been an Arab potentate with a harem. Do you know that concubines were trained to crawl across the floor of their master’s bedroom and up under, the covers from the foot of the bed?’ Rosie told him informatively.

Luxuriant black lashes dipped. His sensual mouth twisted. ‘I am in the middle of a takeover bid for a company I have been working to acquire for some months.’ The lashes shot up to reveal savagely impatient dark eyes. ‘I don’t trust you. I am not leaving you down here alone to pick up some man on what is supposed to be our wedding night.’

‘I am not going to pick up a man. I have never picked up a man in my life.’

‘I saw how those men at the bar were watching you, Like drooling, sex-starved sailors on shore leave!’ Constantine grated, a faint flush highlighting his taut cheekbones. ‘You wouldn’t need to flex a fingernail. No decent woman would sit in a bar on her own—’

‘I had Taki in tow.’

‘You got him blind drunk!’

‘He’s got a bad cold an

d he was feeling foul and he must have a very low tolerance level for alcohol.’ Rosie grimaced. ‘But I told him to have a. drink—’

‘And his miscalculation in doing so will cost him his employment.’