The Secret Wife

Rosie hurled herself at him. ‘I’m not in love with Maurice, I’m in love with you ... and I’m sorry I hurt you but I couldn’t stand for you to want to stay married to me just because Anton was my father,’ she gasped out in a confiding rush, fingers flexing joyously over wide, strong shoulders she had never thought to explore again and lingering in a deeply possessive hold.

He closed his arms round her so tightly, she could barely breathe. ‘Didn’t you realise that I loved you last night? Why do you think I got so damn drunk?’

‘I never even dreamt that I could affect you like that.’

‘And now that you know you’re not going to allow me to forget it.’ Constantine tipped her head up and searched her eyes for confirmation of what he so badly wanted to believe. A brilliant smile drove the last of the tension from his dark features and his gaze gleamed possessively over her.

‘The first time I saw you it was like hitting a wall at two hundred miles an hour. I lost my head when I found you at Anton’s house because you were the very last woman I wanted to find there. I wanted you to be mine and I wouldn’t admit that to myself.’

‘I really got on your nerves at the start.’ Rosie’s fingers were happily engaged in unknotting his silk tie and yanking it off.

‘You wouldn’t let me ignore you and then I began making excuses for you... didn’t you notice that?’ Helpfully he detached himself long enough to shrug free of his jacket. It fell unnoticed to the floor for they only had eyes for each other.

‘Excuses?’ Rosie queried, unbuttoning his shirt with a frown of concentration.

‘On your behalf, I began to come up with all sorts of understandable reasons for you to have ended up as an older man’s mistress.’

‘Like that Maurice was a bad influence who had taken advantage of me, that I was in love with him and flung myself at Anton in despair,’ Rosie recounted for herself, a faintly dazed light in her eyes as she marvelled at her own lack of perception and dragged his shirt down his arms and off. ‘You were making terrific excuses for me even before we ended up in bed.’

‘You didn’t notice ... I did,’ Constantine confided, watching with slightly bemused eyes as Rosie embarked on his belt. ‘Theos...it really shook me that you could have that much effect on my brain. And I was eaten up with jealousy of Maurice. You never shut up about him. Every time I thought I might be getting somewhere with you, he came into it again.’

‘He’s my best friend and there’s never been the tiniest spark between us. You misjudged him,’ Rosie scolded, gaining in confidence by meteoric degrees as she spread a smile of unconcealed admiration over Constantine’s bare chest.

‘Misjudged him?’ Constantine shuddered as Rosie moved on to more physical ways of demonstrating her love and appreciation. She muttered a distracted explanation about Maurice’s sister, Lorna, and her unfortunate experience with the journalist she had fancied. It became very involved and eventually peterod out entirely.

She ran blissful hands across his hair-roughened chest and down over his long, powerful thighs before sliding them up to the hard bulge straining at his zip. He groaned out loud as she let her fingers shape him. And then he grabbed her up to him and plundered her mouth with hungry need. They fell backwards on the bed. He ripped her clothes off. This time Rosie helped and returned the favour...

A long while later, they were wrapped together in a gloriously happy haze of mutual satisfaction and the sheer wonder of loving each other, an abstracted frown clouded Rosie’s brow. ‘There’s just one thing I don’t understand ... rabbits? Why did Dmitri tell me you were talking about rabbits?’

Constantine shifted a little tautly and faint colour darkened his blunt cheekbones. ‘There are two whole crates of them downstairs.’

‘Excuse me?’ Rosie stared down at him.

‘Those Sylvac rabbits you collect...you remember that one I broke? Last week I got on the phone and spoke to a dealer and he put the word out, and you are now the owner of probably the most expensive collection of ceramic rabbits in the world today.’

A delighted grin illuminated Rosie’s face. ‘That’s so sweet, Constantine. You must have been really desperate to impress me.’

‘You’re such a diplomat, Rosie.’ His dark golden eyes glittered over her and a slanting, wicked smile curved his mouth. ‘I’ll be equally tactless. When are you planning to tell me exactly what I do in these fantasies of yours?’

Rosie went pink. ‘I don’t want to shock you.’

‘Did I say a word when my mobile phone went swimming?’ Reaching up to tug her insistently down to him again, Constantine kissed her breathless. An almost soundless little sigh of contentment escaped her. She wondered how much he would enjoy playing a gangster...