The Secret Wife

‘While being aware that that made no kind of sense! The only other possible explanation for Anton’s will was the one I came up with. And you only have yourself to thank for the way I treated you.’ His hawk-like profile rigid with repressed emotion, Constantine dealt her a raw-edged glance. ‘But I have to live with the awareness that I cruelly and cynically misjudged Anton and did everything I could to evade the responsibility that he trusted me to accept. And that responsibility was for his daughter. I betrayed his trust in every way possible.’

‘You didn’t betray anything... it was outrageous of him to demand that you marry me!’ Her anxious eyes clung to the fierce cast of his features. ‘I know he had good intentions but it was still crazy!’

‘I was one bloody mixed-up kid when the Estradas got landed with me... They put up with me and straightened me out. Without their love and guidance, I’d have gone off the rails. You can never repay a debt like that.’ Pale beneath his dark skin, Constantine compressed his lips and turned away from her again to stride over to the window and yank open the curtains on the clear moonlit night beyond. The savage tension in his wide brown shoulders made her drop her aching eyes.

It was something of a shock for Rosie to appreciate that Constantine’s early years with his own parents might have been less than perfect. Yet she remembered him admitting that Anton had meant more to him than his own father. She stifled her curiosity because she was already squirming with all kinds of incredibly guilty feelings. Constantine had interpreted her silence as evidence of malice and a vengeful desire to put him in the wrong. He had even cherished the suspicion that she had been lying in wait for some kind of spiteful showdown with Thespina.

‘I’m sorry... maybe I should’ve spoken up again sooner, but you really cut me off that day when I tried to tell you, and then later, when you started talking about debts and stuff,’ Rosie framed tremulously, ‘I just couldn’t face—’

Abruptly, Constantine wheeled round and strode back across the room. Alarmingly strong hands closed over her shoulders and dragged her upright. Blazing golden eyes swept her shaken face in smouldering fury. ‘You were a virgin...but you would have died sooner than give me the pleasure of knowing that you had not been Anton’s woman first! Every way you could, you turned the screw on me! What a cold, vindictive bitch you are,’ he grated thickly. ‘And what a bloody fool I was to think differently!’

As the door thudded shut on his exit, Rosie stood there with slow, painful tears tracking down her quivering cheeks. Only hours earlier she had gone to sleep in his arms. She had felt so close to him, so... cherished. Cherished? A hiccuping sob escaped her, and then another. Why did she kid herself like that? Why was she so wretchedly naive? So Constantine was fantastic in bed and he was experienced enough to make a woman feel incredibly special, but that was all. It didn’t mean he had been falling in love with her or wanting to make their marriage a real one.

And now, he despised her. It had never occurred to her that the information she was withholding might have such a devastating emotional effect on him. What had she expected? Well, at the very least she had expected the chance to tell him herself and she had expected him to be incredulous and then probably apologising all over the place for not believing her claim the first time she had made it.

Constantine... filled with remorse and humility, shamefacedly apologising? Rosie squirmed. At the back of her mind, hadn’t she been looking forward to that highly imaginative moment and feeling slightly smug that he was in for a major shock? Hadn’t she been determined that he should want her for herself and not because she was Anton’s daughter? And hadn’t she even secretly hoped that by the time she got around to breaking the news at a carefully chosen optimum moment it might finally strike Constantine as terrific news? She winced in remembrance.

All along she had blithely ignored the nature of the male animal she was dealing with. In her hurt pride and insecurity, she had been selfish and insensitive. Constantine made a real virtue of candour and plain speaking. Her continued silence had been a form of deception and he could scarcely be blamed for assuming the worst about her motives.

After pacing the floor for what felt like hours, Rosie tried to get some sleep, but she found it impossible to still her uneasy conscience or to suppress the suspicion that she had made a poor showing in her own defence. Switching on the bedside light, she discovered that it was almost three in the morning. Would Constantine be asleep? Or

would he be lying awake like she was?

Clad in a faded cotton nightshirt, Rosie tiptoed across the landing and slowly opened the door. Moonlight shone through the windows onto the untouched bed. From the stairs, she saw a dim light showing beneath the drawing-room door. In the hall she hesitated, wondering what on earth she was going to say when she couldn’t bring herself to admit that she was head over heels in love with him...

Right now he hated her, and even if he got over that aversion the announcement that she was in love with him might scare him all the way back to Greece. A male who had never been in love and who was extremely wary of commitment was unlikely to feel comfortable with being loved, even by a temporary wife, who would be lying in her teeth if she said she didn’t have a hidden agenda.

Rosie tilted her chin and opened the door. Only one lamp was lit, leaving most of the vast room in gloomy dark shadow. Constantine was lying on a sofa. She crept over to him just as he muttered something slurred in Greek. His dense black lashes lifted and it appeared to be a struggle for him to focus on her.

‘Constantine?’

He blinked twice, a slow frown drawing his ebony brows together, and he responded to his name in his own language.

His black hair was tousled and a heavy blue-black shadow of stubble obscured his hard jawline. But it was the look of desolation in his eyes which punched a hole in Rosie’s heart. She dropped down on her knees by the sofa and reached for one lean brown hand. ‘I’m so sor—’

A flicker of movement stirred in the shadows and Rosie gasped, almost jumping out of her skin. Having risen from his seat behind the door, Dmitri strolled forward. ‘I’ll look after him, Mrs Voulos.’

‘Is he ill? I mean...’ She fell silent as she belatedly picked up the strong smell of alcohol. Her attention skimmed to the whisky bottle and glass lying abandoned on the rug and she froze in dismayed comprehension. ‘He’s... he’s—?’

‘A little under the weather. Go back to bed,’ Dmitri urged flatly. ‘I’ll stay with him.’

‘Does he make a habit of this?’ Rosie managed shakily, her small fingers curving possessively round one lean, unresponsive thigh.

‘I have never seen him like this before.’ Even in shock that Constantine could do something as uncharacteristic as get paralytically drunk, Rosie would have had to be blind to miss the coolness in the older man’s eyes and the protective way he hovered at the head of the sofa, as if she were some sort of a threat to his employer’s safety.

‘What’s he talking about?’ she pressed as Constantine shifted and muttered some more.

‘Rabbits,’ Dmitri informed her with extreme reluctance.

‘Rabbits?’ Rosie queried weakly.

‘I’ll take him up to bed...’ Dmitri stepped forward, forcing Rosie to relinquish her hold and scramble upright.

‘I’ll help you.’

‘Thank you but that won’t be necessary.’

Rosie backed away, dismayed by the bodyguard’s barely concealed hostility. He hesitated, clearly determined not to subject Constantine to the indignity of his assistance while she lingered. From the door, she glanced back. ‘It’s not the way you think it is,’ she said helplessly.