The Secret Wife

‘Anger sharpens my wits but it would appear to scramble yours.’

‘Maurice is a completely innocent party in all this.’ If Maurice had alerted the Press, it could only have been because he genuinely believed that Constantine was trying to cheat her and that publicising their marriage would somehow strengthen her position. In other words, Maurice could only have done it for her benefit, so ultimately the responsibility was hers. ‘I can’t believe that you would want to injure him.’

‘Yet you say that Anton told you so much about me.’

Rosie’s troubled mind roamed over Anton’s frequent descriptive references to Constantine. A ruthless aggressor in business and temperamentally incapable of accepting defeat. A relentless enemy who never forgot a slight, fiercely loyal only to his family, and a male who didn’t know what relaxation was... except in the bedroom, women being his one leisure indulgence. Was that how he kept himself so fit?

Colouring, Rosie frowned at her inexcusable loss of concentration and then felt her stomach sinking at the reality of what she had recalled. Her father had loved and admired Constantine for all the qualities that he himself did not possess, she acknowledged wryly. So what did Constantine’s enemies have to say about his character?

‘This is an evening outfit...I look really stupid in this,’ she objected as the cooler temperature of the foyer assailed her bare arms and shoulders.

‘You look exactly as I want you to look...like a bimbo who hasn’t a clue how to dress in daylight. You don’t need to smile for the paparazzi either,’ Constantine added as mortified pink erupted over her cheekbones. ‘In fact the more miserable and out of place you appear to feel, the less surprised everyone will be when I ditch you again. You see, these rich older guys who bore the pants off their bimbos have a disastrously short attention span for those same bimbos!’

As he led her in the direction of the exit, Rosie was in an agony of teeth-clenching discomfiture. ‘Are you saying that there might be reporters outside?’

A split second later, she was confronted with a frightening sea of faces, snapping cameras and shouted questions. As she shivered violently, Constantine doffed his black cashmere overcoat and, draping it round her shoulders with exaggerated gallantry, banded a controlling arm round her spine. He strode silently through the parting crush to the limousine. Nobody got in their way. Rosie was grudgingly impressed by his cool, commanding presence and relieved to see Taki climbing into the front seat beside the chauffeur.

‘Are you still planning to sack Taki?’ she asked uncomfortably.

‘I am still considering the matter.’

‘It really wasn’t his fault, it was mine.’

Silence rewarded that assurance.

‘I can’t go to Greece without a passport or clothes,’ Rosie pointed out next. ‘I’ll have to go home first.’

‘Dmitri is taking care of that problem. He’ll meet us at the airport.’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘We’ll eat on the plane.’

In frustration, Rosie subsided back into the warmth of his overcoat. The rich fabric harboured the faint, elusive male scent of him. Her nostrils flared and she found herself breathing in deeply. Stiffening, she stole a covert glance at him. He was on his mobile phone again but somehow he immediately sensed her surveillance, his long, spiky lashes lifting to reveal compelling dark golden eyes.

Her heart skipped a startled beat but she couldn’t break that involuntary connection. Those eyes were extraordinarily arresting in that lean, hard-boned face. His gaze roamed at an outrageously leisurely pace down over the exposed length of her shapely legs. Her skin burned as if he had touched her, her pulses racing wildly. A bitter-sweet ache stirred inside her. It was an effort to breathe as the tension thrummed ever higher between them.

Constantine smiled with sudden raw, earthy amusement, challenging her scrutiny with clear knowledge of the exact effect he was having on her. That awareness shook Rosie inside out. It gave her a shocking foretaste of the very sexual male animal she was dealing with and she was completely unnerved. With a jerk, she turned her head away and flipped his coat hurriedly over her legs.

Constantine threw back his head and laughed.

“Shut up!’ Rosie snapped without looking at him.

‘You have an astonishing air of innocence,’ he murmured silkily. ‘I am no longer surprised that Anton fell hook, line and sinker. He was at a dangerous age. It’s a shame that he never had the opportunity to see you in your true environment. Only then might he have sensed how false the image was.’

‘He had an equally false image of you. He told me that you had great charm, beautiful manners and fascinating conversational skills.’ At that point Rosie screened a yawn of boredom with her hand, and was secretly furious and thoroughly disconcerted when Constantine laughed with even greater amusement.

Less than an hour ago, he had been incandescent with rage. But now he exuded the indolent cool of a male in supreme control. But he is in control, an unwelcome inner voice reminded her. And all, seemingly, because of Maurice. Yet Rosie was still stunned by that apparent betrayal. She had to get her friend on the phone and find out what had really happened. Maybe the photo had been stolen. Maybe the Press had already been on Constantine’s trail...

Rosie was deriving precious little pleasure from her first trip abroad. As the car wove through the heavy Athens traffic, she sat rigid-backed and tense at the prospect of having to face Thespina again.

When Dmitri had joined them at the airport with her one suitcase and shabby backpack, she had tried to question him about Maurice but Constantine had prevented her. Since then, her temper had been further exacerbated. On board the private jet she had at least had the opportunity to change into more appropriate clothing but she had then slept through the whole of the flight, waking up only as they landed. By then, having gone without both breakfast and lunch, she had been so hungry that she had been forced to beg Constantine for the appropriate currency with which to buy a bar of chocolate as he’d dragged her through Athens airport, refusing to let her out of his sight for a second.

‘If you don’t put that blasted phone down, I will scream!’ Rosie’s hot temper erupted with startling suddenness.

‘What is wrong with you now?’ Constantine lowered the mobile with the long-suffering aspect of a male dealing with a very tiresome child.

Rosie’s teeth gritted. ‘I do not want to be involved in telling any more lies to Thespina.’