The Secret Wife

‘What home?’

Rosie loosed a choky laugh. ‘When my mother died, my stepfather put me into care.’

‘Why?’ Constantine shot at her with fierce incomprehension.

‘Because I wasn’t his. He only found out that Mum was expecting me after he married her.’

‘Yet he stayed married to her ... why didn’t he divorce her?’ Constantine demanded.

Rosie compressed her lips. Nothing was ever that simple. Tony Waring had been her mother’s first serious boyfriend. He had pleaded with her to marry him before she’d gone down to London to find a secretarial job. When she had returned home and said yes, he had been too overjoyed to question her sudden change of heart. Her mother had told her that bit of the story more than once in an effort to make Rosie understand that her stepfather was entitled to be bitter, that he had been wronged and that it wouldn’t be fair to expect him to treat Rosie the same way as he did his own two sons.

‘He loved her but he just could never get over her doing that to him,’ Rosie muttered tightly. ‘They had two kids of their own and he still couldn’t forget, so once she was gone there was no way he was going to keep me.’

‘What age were you?’

‘Nine. I went into a council home and then a lot of short-term foster homes. I kept on running away, so I got a name for being difficult. The place I finally ended up in had some very rough inmates.’

‘Including Maurice?’

‘He was only there because the authorities had to keep him close to the hospital his mother was in. His sister was fostered but not too many families want to foster teenage boys. I don’t want to talk about this...’ Rosie started walking away, too upset to be able to

understand why she had told Constantine embarrassing, private things that were absolutely none of his business.

‘You really love that profiteering ape,’ Constantine breathed with savage incredulity. ‘And he’s a low-life bastard who would rent you out by the hour if he could get away with it!’

Rosie spun round, her tear-wet face appalled. ‘How dare you say that?’

‘He thrust you at me. He set the two of us up. Did he care what kind of man I was? Or how I might treat you when that story broke?’

‘He couldn’t have thought—he just couldn’t have ...’ Rosie argued brokenly.

‘You say one more word in his defence and I’ll fly over to England and rip him apart with my bare hands!’ Constantine roared at her in a thunderous, seething fury that shook her so much that she stared wide-eyed. ‘And before you ask me why I didn’t do that the day before yesterday remind yourself that he knows the whole story and not just the tiny part that was published! I have no desire to wake up some day soon to the tale of your sordid affair with Anton!’

Constantine stalked off and then as swiftly turned back again and strode with daunting purpose back across the rough grass. He closed a lean hand over hers. ‘You are coming back inside to finish your meal—’

‘No.’

‘My wife is not going to skulk in the garden and snivel for the entertainment of my staff!’

Rosie gulped. ‘Why are you so angry?’

“That is a very stupid question. In fact that may go down in history as the most stupid question I have ever been asked!’

Constantine produced an immaculate white handkerchief and dabbed with ruthless but surprising gentleness at her damp cheeks. Rosie studied him with reddened, bemused eyes. ‘Oh, right,’ she muttered, believing she had found the answer to behaviour that was plunging her into ever deeper confusion. ‘You don’t want the pretend marriage to fall apart this obviously so soon—’

In response, Constantine bent his arrogant dark head and ravished apart her startled lips in a plundering, passionate kiss. Fire leapt into her limp body and blazed through every skin cell with explosive efficiency. Reeling dizzily with the force of her response, Rosie met blazing golden eyes as he lifted his head again.

Screening his gaze, Constantine surveyed her with disturbing calm. ‘We’ll dine out at the Formentor tonight.

That should give the staff time to get the house into some sort of order.’

Garbed in a divinely sophisticated evening gown in glistening pearl-grey, Rosie was surprised to appreciate just how much she was enjoying herself. The hotel was fabulous and she had even recognised one or two famous faces amongst the other diners. But Constantine was undeniably the most gorgeous-looking male present. That spectacular bone structure, that golden skin and those incredibly compelling dark, long-lashed eyes...

There wasn’t a woman in the place who hadn’t looked at him at least twice and yet amazingly he was feeding her champagne and flattering her with his undivided attention. He hadn’t even spared a glance at the arrival of an only minimally dressed blonde bombshell who had turned every other male head in the room.

‘You’re very quiet, pethi mou,’ Constantine murmured.

It took a terrifying amount of will-power to drag her disobedient gaze from him. Angry with herself, her colour heightened, Rosie watched candlelight twinkle across the slender platinum wedding band on her finger. A frown pleated her brow. Earlier that evening, a jeweller had arrived at Son Fontanal with an extensive selection of rings and a replacement had been picked. Constantine had actually laughed about the fact that she had binned the first ring. Why was he being nice all of a sudden?