is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant success with readers worldwide. Since her first book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.

In this special collection, we offer readers a chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may have missed. In every case, seduction and passion with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon® reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

The Secret Wife

Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

HER heart beating like a drum, Rosie crept into the church when the rush was over, sliding into a pew near the back to listen to the memorial service from a safe distance. Anton Estrada had been well-known in the city of London. The dim interior was crammed to capacity with those who wished to pay their last respects.

A black gold-embroidered scarf covering her bowed head, Rosie shivered, lost in the dark well of her grief. As far back as she could remember she had been alone, but for a few agonisingly brief months she had had Anton. And now he was gone, that warm, laughing man, who had called her the joy he had waited for all his life and the greatest love of his existence. Tears shimmering in her shadowed green eyes, she stared down at the huge ornate emerald on her finger until it blurred out of focus. Well, who would love her now? she thought painfully. Who indeed would ever love her like that again?

The silence and the soft murmur of voices finally penetrated. In a daze, she glanced up and realised that the service was over and the church was almost empty again. Disconcerted by her loss of concentration, she flew upright and headed for the exit. A corner of her scarf caught on the end of a pew, jerking her head back, making her stumble.

She would have fallen but for the strong, masculine hand that came out of nowhere to close round her slender forearm and steady her. ‘Are you all right?’ a dark, honey-rich drawl enquired and her lush dark lashes fluttered in momentary bemusement as the fleeting familiarity of accented English washed over her and filled her with unbelievable pain. ‘Perhaps you should sit down again—’

‘No...’ Riven with tension, Rosie straightened and broke free of that male grasp. Forgetting that her scarf was caught, she barely felt the pull as it trailed off and freed the wild, tumbling mass of her Titian hair from confinement. Involuntarily, she glanced up and froze in stark horror, her breath snarled up in her throat, her beautiful face stiffening like pale, tear-streaked marble into stricken stillness. Sheer shock slowed her heartbeat to a numbing thud that echoed sickly in her eardrums.

Constantine Voulos stared down at her, apparently entrapped by the same immobility that paralysed her. He was gorgeous, even more gorgeous than he had looked in Anton’s photographs, Rosie registered helplessly. Luxuriant black hair, stunning bone structure and a wide, wickedly sensual mouth. A wave of dizziness engulfed her as she collided with mesmeric dark deep-set eyes. Her bemused gaze locked with compulsive intensity to his. It was as terrifying as walking off a cliffedge and falling...and falling...and falling. She couldn’t breathe and she couldn’t speak. It panicked her.

‘Who are you?’ he murmured thickly, in one fluid movement drawing closer again as he tugged her scarf free and extended it to her.

Rosie turned white as death and backed off on legs that were ready to buckle, a dark, ferocious wave of violent and confused emotion consuming her. Constantine Voulos, the child whom Anton and his Greek wife, Thespina, had raised as their own.

‘Your scarf...’

Jerkily, reluctantly, she reached out to the child who had become a man. It was a mistake. He caught her thin, trembling fingers in his.

‘Please...’ Rosie gasped, attempting to break the connection, her slim body already twisting on the brink of flight, panic currenting through her.

‘Christos!’ Constantine vented in raw disbelief as he recognised the antique emerald adorning her hand. ‘Where did you get that ring?’

Astonished recognition had made him temporarily loosen his grip. Rosie snatched her fingers back and raced down the steps. The wintry breeze caught her curling torrent of hair and the long, loose black coat, making them flow out behind her like wings as she broke through the lingering groups of people outside and flew across the busy road, indifferent to the screeching brakes and honking horns that accompanied her dangerous passage.

Rosie wandered one last time round the silent rooms. Without Anton’s larger-than-life presence the pretty little house was an empty shell. Having eradicated every scrap of evidence that she had ever lived within these walls, she would slam the door behind her and walk back into her own world. It couldn’t have lasted much longer anyway, she told herself.

She cherished her freedom, yet she had allowed Anton to clip her wings. He had stubbornly persuaded and pressurised and finally pleaded until she’d surrendered and moved in, willing to compromise, wanting to be what he wanted her to be if that pleased him...but always knowing that sooner or later she would be forced to rebel.

‘I am an independent spirit,’ she had said to him gently once.

‘Your independence was forced on you and it was a most unnatural responsibility for a young girl to carry,’ Anton had countered with staunch disapproval. ‘You no longer need to bear that responsibility now that I am here.’

And she had laughed and argued but not very hard, wryly aware that he could not begin to understand the life she had led or the background she came from any more than she could really comprehend his and that it would upset him if she were too honest. So they had built a bridge across the great divide of wealth and culture by making careful allowances on both sides, and ironically it had been remarkably easy for right from the beginning there had been this amazing sense of mutual recognition.

She had been lucky to have that much, she reflected painfully. Four months of perfect happiness was more than some people achieved in a lifetime. Four months of being loved passionately, unconditionally, selflessly. Good memories had taken the edge off the bad ones. She swallowed the thickness of tears in her throat and smiled with sudden brilliance. Nobody could take those memories away. Or the ring that had been in the Estrada family for two centuries, the single surviving heirloom which Anton had slid onto her finger with unashamed tears in his dark eyes.

‘Now it will be worn again for only now is it where it truly belongs.’

Rosie recalled Constantine’s outraged incredulity when he had recognised that ring and a humourless laugh escaped her. So I accepted one little memento; think yourself lucky, Constantine Voulos, for had I been greedy I could have taken far more! Because Anton had wanted to lay the world at her feet. His joy and pride in her had dangerously overwhelmed every other loyalty. That was the only thing they had ever argued about.

And Rosie was guiltily conscious that it had been a struggle to keep her conscience in control. It hadn’t been his wealth that had made her feel like that; she simply couldn’t imagine having that kind of money. No, it had been the squirming attacks of resentment which she had fought to conceal, knowing just how much those feelings would have distressed him. But she was human, fallible, as capable as anyone else of thinking self-pitying thoughts and experiencing envy.

At the age of nine, Constantine Voulos had lost his parents in a car accident. Anton and Thespina had taken Constantine into their home and brought him up as if he were their own child. It had never occurred to Anton that Rosie might resent his constant references to his substitute son’s innumerable virtues and talents, only to despise herself for the unreasoning injustice of such childish promptings.

The silence began to get to Rosie. She shivered at the echo of her own footsteps. She should have cleared out the day Anton had died but she had been in such shock she had simply stopped functioning. Only six weeks earlier, a mild heart attack had put him into hospital. She had been first at his bedside, reluctantly torn from him only when she’d realised that Thespina and Constantine were already on their way from the airport.

‘Stay ... to bell with them all!’ Anton had grated recklessly, already inflamed by the nurse who had attempted to prevent her visit to his private room.

‘You know you don’t mean that. You can’t do that to your wife,’ Rosie had muttered tightly, her better self talking, her worse self bitter that she, who had more right than anyone, should have to fight her way in and then sneak her way out.

‘You never use her name,’ Anton had sighed heavily.

And she had flushed hotly, avoiding his gaze, too many complex emotions swirling about inside her, too much guilt, too much pain. Thespina had been his wife for over thirty years. A wonderfully loyal and loving wife, who had nonetheless been cruelly betrayed. And the simple fact that Thespina was unaware of that betrayal and indeed must be carefully protected from that knowledge did not make the brick-wall barrier of her very existence any more easy for Rosie to accept.

Rosie had slunk in and out of that hospital for an entire week, her natural buoyance soon reasserting itself to soothe her initially frantic fears about Anton’s health. He was only fifty-five. He had been working too hard. Oh, they had talked endlessly about all the sensible things he would have to do in the future! It had occurred to neither of them that that future might be measured only in weeks.

He had taken a convalescent cruise round the Greek islands but on the same day that he’d flown back to London again Anton had had a massive heart attack. ‘Gone within minutes!’ his secretary had sobbed down the phone, still in shock. ‘Who am I speaking to?’ she had asked then for Rosie had never rung his office before, but when Anton had failed to meet her for lunch she had been worried sick.

Rosie had replaced the receiver in silence. Naturally she could not attend his funeral in Greece. Sick to the heart at her cruel exclusion, she had gone to the memorial service instead, only to run slap-bang into Constantine Voulos through her own clumsy lack of attention. That encounter yesterday had appalled Rosie. She should have packed her bags long ago and gone home! But she had wanted privacy in which to come to terms with the loss of the father she had known for so painfully short a time.

‘Rosalie... ?’

Her heart lurched sickly against her breastbone, the oxygen locking at the foot of her convulsed throat. She jerked round in horror.

Constantine Voulos was standing on the landing outside her bedroom. He was breathing fast, his hard, strikingly handsome features set in a dark mask of fury as he moved towards her. ‘That is your name, is it not?’

‘What are you doing here?’ Rosie gasped, her entire body turning cold and damp with instinctive fear. ‘How did you get in?’

‘You evil little vixen,’ Constantine grated, his six-foot-three-inch all-male bulk blocking the doorway that was her only avenue of escape. He couldn’t take his shimmering dark eyes off her. It was like being pinned to a wall by knives.

With enormous effort, Rosie straightened her slim shoulders and stood her ground but she was deathly pale. ‘I don’t know who you are or what you want—’

‘You know exactly who I am!’ Constantine slung at her, unimpressed, taking a frightening step closer.

‘Stay away from me!’ Rigid with tension, Rosie wondered frantically how he had found out about her and how much he knew.

‘I wish I could ... I really do wish that I could,’ Constantine bit out with clenched fists, the explosive anger that emanated from him screaming along her nerve-endings like a violent storm warning.

Rosie retreated until the backs of her knees hit the divan bed. ‘What do you w-want?’

‘I want to wipe you off the face of this earth but I cannot ... that is what inflames me! How did you persuade Anton to do something so insane?’

‘Do... what?’ she whispered blankly, too scared to be capable of rational thought.

‘How did you persuade one of the most decent men I ever knew to sacrifice all honour and family loyalty?’ Constantine seethed back at her.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—’

‘Don’t you know what Anton did only days before his death?’ Constantine demanded rawly, scanning the suitcase on the bed with a contemptuously curled lip. ‘Have you any idea what his final words were before he died in my arms?’

Numbly, sickly, Rosie shook her head, a dense cloud of spiralling curls the colour of flames rippling round her rigid shoulders. She hadn’t known that Constantine had been with her father when he died. Ironically that new knowledge brought a lump to her throat and warmed that cold place inside her as she thought of that dreadful day. Anton had not been alone but for his secretary. Constantine had been there, Constantine had been with him, and whether she liked it or not she knew just how much that would have meant to her father.

Constantine gave a great shout of raucous laughter that chilled her. Eyes black as night dug into her with unhidden repulsion. ‘Every word which he struggled to speak related to you!’

‘Oh...’ Her stifled response barely broke the smouldering silence. And she heard his pain and didn’t want to recognise it for what it was because she did not wish to admit that she could share anything with Constantine Voulos.

‘He made me swear on my honour that I would protect you and respect his last wishes. But I didn’t even know of your existence! I didn’t understand who or even what he was referring to...nor did I know until last night what those last wishes were!’ Constantine vented on another surge of barely contained rage that visibly tremored through his long, muscular length. ‘He wrote a new will, and were it not for the fact that the publicity would destroy Thespina I would trail you through every court in Europe and crucify you for the greedy, calculating little vixen that you are before I would allow you to profit by a single drachma!’

‘A new will?’ Her teeth gritted as she withstood the lash of his insults. Hot, angry colour drove away her previous pallor. But at least she now understood what Constantine Voulos was doing here and why he was forcing such a confrontation. Evidently Anton had been foolish enough to leave her something in his will in spite of her fierce assurances that she wanted and needed nothing.

His nostrils flared as he surveyed her with dark fury. ‘Months ago, Thespina suspected that there was another woman in his life. Christos... I actually laughed when she shared her fears with me! I convinced her that it was only the excitement of a new business venture which was making Anton spend so much time in London. I was naive indeed. I underestimated the lure of youth and beauty on even the most honourable of men. Anton was obsessed with you... he died with your name on his lips!’

‘He loved me,’ Rosie mumbled helplessly, the acid sting of tears burning behind her stricken eyes as she turned defensively away.

‘And I would lay my life on the line before I would allow Thespina to endure that knowledge!’ Constantine growled rawly.

She understood then. Evidently Constantine Voulos did not know who she was. He assumed that she was the other woman, Anton’s mistress cosily set up in the proverbial love-nest. It was laughable but she couldn’t laugh. Her tremulous mouth compressed into a bloodless line. Anton had kept their secret to protect his wife. A twenty-one-year-old betrayal had gone to the grave with him. She owed it to her father to keep faith with him. The truth would only cause greater pain and distress and for what gain?

She didn’t need whatever Anton had left her. She had her own life to lead and she had no desire to take possession of anything which more rightfully belonged to her father’s widow. That would be wrong, morally wrong, she felt. The ring was different. It was her only tangible link to a heritage and a background she had lived all her life without.

‘As you can see... I’m leaving.’ Rosie lifted her bright head high and surveyed the intimidatingly tall, dark Greek with bitter antipathy ‘You have nothing to worry about. I wasn’t planning to hang around and embarrass anyone—’

‘If it were that simple, we would not be having this distasteful meeting,’ Constantine incised fiercely. ‘I would be forcibly ejecting you from this house!’

Rosie vented a scornful laugh, her own hot temper steadily rising. ‘Really?’ she challenged.

He glanced at the open suitcase, his hard mouth twisting. ‘You weren’t leaving. Possibly you were planning a brief trip somewhere but nothing will convince me that you were about to make a final departure.’

Rosie dealt him a withering glance. ‘My, aren’t we self-important? What gives you the idea that I would waste my breath trying to convince you of anything?’

A dark surge of blood accentuated the savage slant of his dramatic cheekbones. Naked derision fired his dark eyes. ‘I will not lower myself to the level of trading insults with a whore.’

Rosie had a sharp tongue which few attempted to match. She hadn’t expected a provocative response. Thwarted fury stormed through her. ‘Get out!’ she launched at him abruptly. ‘Just get out and leave me alone, you ignorant swine!’

‘Not before you answer one question,’ Constantine asserted in a sudden hiss as he stared broodingly back at her. ‘Are you pregnant?’

Rosie stilled in shock, glancing down at the flowing swing blouse she was wearing and then intercepting his narrowed glance travelling in exactly the same direction. Her cheeks crimsoned.

‘If you are pregnant...then and only then could I understand Anton’s motivation,’ Constantine conceded grudgingly, and yet he was perceptibly devastated by what his own imagination had suggested.

And only now had that possibility even occurred to him, Rosie registered, and boy, did the idea make him sick! That naturally golden skin had assumed an unhealthy pallor as presumably the implications of such a development sank in. This was how Constantine Voulos would have looked had she revealed her true relationship to Anton, Rosie realised with a sudden stab of satisfaction.

Few would deny that Anton’s child, illegitimate or otherwise, might have some sort of claim on his estate. Had she chosen to tell the truth, Constantine would not have dared to insult her. She was Anton’s daughter, his only child, the very last of the Estrada bloodline... and certainly not some calculating little gold-digger!

‘You don’t answer me.’ Abruptly Constantine swung away and then he spun just as swiftly back, his strong features clenched and taut. ‘If I have stumbled on the truth, my opinion of you is unchanged, but I should apologise for having approached you in such anger.’

Morbid amusement touched Rosie. He was backtracking fast on his offensive. Was he afraid of her now, afraid of the power she might have to disturb the smoothly planned future he no doubt envisaged for himself as sole controller of Anton’s various business enterprises? The idea that she might be carrying Anton’s child was a threat that shattered Constantine Voulos.

‘But be assured,’ he drawled flatly. ‘Should there be a child, every possible test would be required to prove your claim.’

Rosie was helplessly entertained by the knots he was tying round himself. Having come up with his own worst-case scenario, he was forgetting the boundary lines he had mentioned earlier. ‘But wouldn’t that be terribly upsetting for Thespina?’

His breath escaped in a startled hiss, his eyes flashing ferocious gold. ‘Your malice is indefensible...’

The instant Rosie had voiced the words she had wished to retrieve them, had realised too late how she would sound. For a moment she had longed to strike back at Thespina and Constantine and now she was bitterly ashamed of that spiteful prompting. She dropped her head, closed the case and tugged it down off the bed. ‘I’m not pregnant. Go in peace, Constantine. I am not a threat to either you or Thespina,’ she muttered heavily.

Downstairs the doorbell shrilled, breaking the pulsing tension within the bedroom.

‘That’ll be my cab.’ Rosie moved past him with relief. Her knees felt wobbly but she was bolstered by a feeling of innate superiority. Her father had been wrong about Constantine, his ward and son in all but name. Constantine was not, after all, Mr Perfect—well, that was hardly a surprise, was it?

Anton had been naive to imagine that Constantine would generously open his arms to his own natural child. Rosie had never paid much heed to her father’s oftrepeated assurances that if Constantine was ever given the chance he would fall over himself to be welcoming to the sudden advent of a little sister... not that Anton had ever referred to her and Constantine in such gruesome terms as brother and sister!

No, instead Anton had talked with immense warmth and approval about ‘family obligations...family support...family honour’, blithely ignoring the fact that Rosie would sooner have put an end to her existence than become anyone’s obligation! Furthermore she had been born a dyed-in-the-wool cynic.

Constantine had reacted exactly as she had expected to the idea that Anton might have fathered a child—with shock, horror and dismay as he foresaw what an expensive dent such a child might conceivably make in his own financial expectations. Feeling that she was a better person than Constantine Voulos because monetary greed had no hold on her, Rosie held her head high.

‘Don’t open that door!’ Constantine suddenly bit out from behind her.

Rosie’s head spun. He was halfway down the stairs, his diamond-bright gaze centred on her with ferocious intensity. ‘What the—?’

‘Quiet!’ he whispered rawly, slashing an overpoweringly arrogant brown hand through the air in emphatic command.

With an exasperation she did not even seek to conceal, Rosie simply ignored his demand and yanked open the front door. Disorientatingly, however, it was not a cab driver who stood on the doorstep. Rosie blinked, gulped and froze.

A small, slim woman in a black suit stared at her in wide-eyed distress, every scrap of colour slowly fading from her olive skin. She took a hesitant step back and then stilled, a look of complete bewilderment drawing her brows together as Constantine’s large dark frame appeared behind Rosie.

Faced with her late father’s wife in the flesh, Rosie had stopped breathing. Not a muscle moved on her paralysed face as she struggled not to let her horror show. A heavy hand came down on her shoulder like an imprisoning chain of restraint. Constantine said something soft in Greek but Rosie could feel the savage tension holding his big, powerful body in tautly unnatural proximity to hers.

Without warning the older woman lifted her hand and gently caught Rosie’s fingers, raising them to study the emerald which trapped the sunlight in its opulent green depths. ‘The Estrada betrothal ring,’ she whispered unevenly, and then she slowly shook her head in comprehension. ‘Of course... Anton gave you the ring for her! Constantine, how foolish I have been; I should have guessed ... but why didn’t you tell me?’

In receipt of that bemused appeal, Constantine inhaled sharply and Rosie felt his rigidity. ‘It did not seem an appropriate time to make an announcement—’

‘Only a man could believe that...as if the news that you are to marry would not bring me joy at any time!’ Her face wreathed in a delighted smile, all her uncertainty and anxiety vanished, Thespina beamed appreciatively at Rosie. ‘Exactly how long have you been engaged to my son?’

‘Engaged?’ Rosie echoed in a daze of disbelief, the pink tip of her tongue snaking out to moisten her dry lower lip.

‘It is very recent,’ Constantine drawled flatly.

‘But you should have told me,’ Thespina scolded in a troubled but tender undertone. ‘How could you have believed that I would be distressed by your happiness? If you only knew what madness was in my thoughts as I came to this door—’

A taxi filtered noisily into the driveway. ‘My cab,’ Rosie muttered in stricken relief.

‘You are leaving? But I have only just met you,’ the older woman protested in surprise and disappointment.

‘I’m afraid that Rosalie has a plane to catch and she’s already running late,’ Constantine slotted in inventively, closing a lean hand round Rosie’s case before she could reach for it again and carrying it swiftly from the house, presumably to enable her to make a faster exit.

‘Rosalie... that is a very... a very pretty name,’ Thespina mused after an odd moment of hesitation, her eyes swiftly veiling before she glanced up again and continued with apparent warmth. ‘Forgive me for arriving without an invitation but I shall look forward to spending time with you very soon.’

‘I’m sorry I have to rush off like this,’ Rosie mumbled in a stifled voice, quite unable to meet the older woman’s eyes, twin spots of high colour highlighting her cheekbones.

Constantine already had the door of the cab open. She sensed that if he had had access to supernatural forces a smoking crater would have been all that survived of her presence. But as she began to slide into the cab he caught her with a powerful hand and lowered his arrogant dark head, diamond-hard eyes raking over her with cold menace. ‘We have business to discuss. When will you be back?’

‘Never.’

‘You’ll come back for the money all right,’ Constantine forecast between gritted teeth, the necessity of keeping his voice down lest he be overheard by Thespina clearly a major challenge to his self-control. ‘Now I must force myself to bid you goodbye as a lover would.’

‘If you want a knee where it will really hurt, go ahead,’ Rosie invited with a venomous little smile and scorching green eyes full of threat.

‘Theos...’ Constantine breathed rawly, his hard fingers biting into her elbow. Bending down with a grim reluctance she could feel, he dropped a fleeting kiss on her brow. One blink and she would have missed it.

Until he touched her, Rosie was as stiff as a little tin soldier, and then she shivered, backed away and scrambled at speed into the cab. It drove off and she could not even make herself look back or wave to add a realistic note to his masquerade. Her heart was racing so fast, she felt physically sick.

Her fingers clenched together tightly on her lap. She felt the ring and she was furious with herself, for hadn’t she asked for what she had got and the trouble she had caused? She should have moved out of the house the instant she’d learnt of Anton’s death! She should not have openly worn the emerald either.

Her stomach cramped up. She saw Thespina’s face as she had first seen it and repressed a shudder. At first Anton’s widow had looked devastated. The older woman had somehow found out about the house and she had valiantly come to face whatever or whoever she found there. And, like Constantine, her intelligence had supplied only one possible explanation for Anton’s surprising use of a second residence in London... that the husband she had loved and so recently lost had been keeping another woman.

Rosie felt horribly guilty. If Constantine hadn’t been the sleek, sneaky type of male who thought fast on his expensively shod feet, what would have happened? If he hadn’t pretended that he had given her the Estrada ring because they were engaged, what on earth would Anton’s wife have thought?

The sheer intensity of Thespina’s relief when she had believed she could lay both house and youthful redhead at Constantine’s door rather than at her late husband’s had been painful to behold. And her resulting sincere friendship had mortified Rosie. The art of deception was not one of her talents, even if in this case it had been a kindness to protect a woman who had never done anyone the smallest harm and who had already had more than her fair share of disappointment in life.

After all, Thespina had not been able to give Anton the child they had both so desperately wanted. One miscarriage after another had dashed their hopes. Only once had Thespina managed to carry a baby to term but the result had been a stillborn son, a shatteringly cruel and final blow to them after so many years of childlessness.

When Thespina had then sunk into deep depression, leaving Anton to struggle alone with his grief, their once strong marriage had begun to crumble. It had been during that period that Anton had been unfaithful with Rosie’s mother, Beth... Rosie crushed that discomfiting awareness out. But it was, she discovered, difficult to forget Thespina again. Had they really managed to set the older woman’s fears to rest? Had she been convinced?

Before she got on the train that would take her back to Yorkshire, Rosie found herself queuing for a public phone. She dialled the number of the house, praying that Constantine was still there. As soon as she heard his voice, she sucked in a deep breath and said stiffly, ‘It’s Rosie. Look, I meant what I said earlier. You can keep the money... OK?’

‘What sort of a game are you playing?’ Constantine launched back wrathfully down the line. ‘You think I am impressed by this nonsense? Thespina’s gone and we have to talk. If she hadn’t arrived, I wouldn’t have allowed you to leave. I want you back here right now!’

Rosie’s teeth ground together. It wasn’t as if she had even wanted to speak to Constantine Voulos again and she honestly didn’t give two hoots about the money. That had only been her opening salvo, calculated to soothe. Her conscience had driven her to the phone. She felt bad about Thespina. She wanted reassurance that her father’s widow hadn’t smelled a rat in their performance and had her worst suspicions reawakened. ‘I—’

‘You think I have got all day to waste on a trashy little tart like you?’ Constantine lashed in roaringly offensive contempt.

‘Just who do you think you are talking to?’ Rosie raked back at him, losing her own temper with a speed that left her dizzy. ‘Some brain-dead bimbo you can abuse? Well, let me tell you, you overgrown creep, it takes more than a big loud mouth and a flashy suit to impress me and this is one trashy little tart who has no plans ever to cross your path again!’

Shaking with temper and mortification, Rosie crashed the phone back down on the cradle and grabbed up her case again, furious that she had put herself out to phone him. Talk about wasting the price of a call! She had got too soft. Anton had done that to her. He had mown down her prickly defences and challenged her to meet his trusting generosity with her own.

But now that her father was gone she could not afford that kind of weakness. This was the real world she was back in, not that sentimental, forever sunny place which Anton had cheerfully and somewhat naively inhabited. And being soft was only an open invitation to getting kicked in the teeth...

CHAPTER TWO

MAURICE strolled wearily into the kitchen. Well over six feet in height, he had shoulders like axe handles and a massive chest, but hard physical work had taxed even his impressive resources. His thick mane of long blond hair hung in a limp damp tangle round his rough-hewn features. ‘Any chance you bought some beer while you were out shopping?’

Barely lifting her head from the grimy cooker she was scrubbing, Rosie threw him an incredulous glance. ‘You’ve just got to be joking!’

‘You can’t still be mad at me.’ Maurice treated her to a look of pained male incomprehension. ‘You should have phoned. If I’d had some warning that you were coming back, I’d have brought Loma in to clean up—’

Scorn flashed in Rosie’s eyes. ‘Your sister has a full-time job of her own. You should be ashamed of yourself, Maurice. When we moved in here, you promised you’d pull your weight. And the minute my back’s turned, what do you do?’ she demanded with fiery resentment. ‘You turn the cottage into a dirty, messy hovel and my garden into a junkyard!’

Maurice shifted his size thirteen feet uncomfortably. ‘I didn’t clean up because I wasn’t expecting you—’

‘Stop trying to shift the blame. Put those bulging muscles into shifting those hideous old baths off the lawn and into the barn!’

Maurice grimaced. ‘The barn’s full:

‘Then sell them on and get rid of them! They make this place look like a rubbish tip!’

‘Sell them on? Are you nuts? They’re worth a packet!’ Maurice was openly appalled by the suggestion. ‘I make more flogging one bath than you make in a week of selling knick-knacks on your market stall!’

Involuntary amusement filled Rosie, defusing her exasperation. Her conscience stabbed her too. Maurice had been her best friend since she was thirteen. She sighed. ‘Look... why don’t you go and have a shower? I’ll help you clear the garden later.’

But Maurice hovered and cleared his throat. ‘I should have said it yesterday but I couldn’t find the words... I’m really sorry you lost your dad so soon after him finding you.’

A lump ballooned in Rosie’s tight throat. ‘He was a nice bloke,’ she mumbled, and swallowed hard. ‘I was lucky I had the chance to get to know him.’

‘Yeah...’ A frown darkening his brow, Maurice hesitated before plunging in with two big feet. ‘But why leave London in such a rush when he seems to have left you a share of his worldly goods?’

‘I don’t want to talk about that—’

‘Rosie...you can’t keep on running away from people and situations that upset you.’

A fierce flush lit her cheeks. In self-defence she turned her head away. The reminder that that had been a habit of hers when she was younger was not welcome.

‘And you can’t leave a legacy hanging in legal limbo either. The executor will be forced to track you down. That’s his job.’

‘He’ll find it difficult. I left no forwarding address’

‘Collect what’s coming to you and I bet you could say goodbye to market trading and start up an antique shop here, just the way you always planned,’ Maurice pointed out levelly. ‘Then between us we could make an offer to buy this place from my uncle instead of renting it.’

Maurice’s fatal flaw, Rosie reflected wryly. A complete inability to miss out on any opportunity to make or attract money. And because of it he would probably be a millionaire by the time he was twenty-five. His architectural salvage business was booming.

‘You could make a better life for yourself. That’s obviously what your father wanted,’ Maurice continued with conviction. ‘And why do you act so flippin’ guilty about his widow? I’m quite sure he hasn’t left her destitute!’

Rosie spun round, pale and furious, but, having said his piece, Maurice took himself safely upstairs before she even reached the hall. Baulked of the chance to tell him to mind his own business, she scowled on the threshold of the tiny lounge, surveying the all-male debris of abandoned take-aways, squashed beer cans and car magazines. Her nose wrinkled. It was going to take her days to restore the cottage to its former cleanliness. With a rebellious groan, she rubbed at her aching back with a grimy hand and wandered out into the pale spring sunshine.

A silver limousine was in the act of turning in off the road. The impressive vehicle drew to a purring halt behind Maurice’s lorry. As Rosie watched with raised brows, a uniformed chauffeur climbed out and opened the rear passenger door. She started to walk towards the barn. It might be the one day of the week that Maurice didn’t open for business but he never turned away a customer. However, when a very tall, dark male sheathed in a breathtakingly elegant dove-grey suit emerged from the limo, Rosie stopped dead in her tracks, shock and dismay freezing her fragile features.

Sunlight arrowed over Constantine Voulos’s blue-black hair, gilding his tanned skin to gold and accentuating the hard-boned hawk-like masculinity of his superb bone structure. He strode across the yard towards her, his long, powerful legs eating up the distance with a natural grace of movement as eye-catching as that of a lion on the prowl. Rosie connected with glittering dark golden eyes set between dense black lashes. Her stomach clenched, her heart hammering thunderously against her breastbone.

“All women find Constantine irresistible,” Anton had told her ruefully. “I don’t think he’s ever met with a refusal. Unfortunately that has made him rather cynical about your sex.”

Rosie surfaced abruptly from that irrelevant memory to find herself being regarded much as she herself might have regarded a cockroach. She flushed, suddenly embarrassingly aware of the soiled sweatshirt and worn jeans she wore and then as quickly infuriated that she should even consider his opinion as being of any importance!

‘We’ll talk inside,’ Constantine informed her grimly.

‘How the heck did you find me?’

He elevated a sardonic winged ebony brow. ‘It wasn’t difficult. Anton’s desk diary contained this address.’

‘Well, I don’t want you here,’ Rosie retorted with angry heat. ‘So you can just take yourself off again!’

‘I’m not leaving until we have reached an agreement.’ Constantine stared down at her, his arrogant jawline hardening, his nostrils flaring as a black frown built between his brows. ‘What age are you?’ he demanded abruptly.

‘Twenty... not that that’s any of your—’

‘Twenty?’ Constantine shot her an appalled look, his sensual mouth twisting with flagrant distaste. ‘Christos ...what was Anton thinking of?’

‘Not what you’re thinking of, anyway!’ Rosie scorned.

‘But then it takes a male of my experience to understand how the mind of a rapacious little tramp works,’ Constantine returned without skipping a beat. ‘And you must have put Anton through hell the last weeks of his life!’

Rosie went white with shock. ‘What are you talking about?’

Constantine strode past her into the cottage. ‘We’ll discuss it indoors.’

‘I asked you what you were talking about,’ Rosie reminded him shakily.

Constantine stood poised on the threshold of the messy, cluttered lounge, his hard-cut profile set in lines of derision. ‘You live like a pig!’ he breathed in disgust as he swung round again. ‘Unwashed...your home filthy. My skin would crawl if I entered that room. You need pest control.’

Stunned into rare silence, Rosie gasped at him as he sidestepped her and swiftly strode back outside again.

‘We will stay out here in the fresh air.’

Her cheeks burning with outrage and mortification, Rosie charged out after him again. ‘How dare you?’

‘Keep quiet.’ Constantine treated her to a chilling look of cold menace. ‘Keep quiet and listen well. Anton was one of nature’s gentlemen but I’m not and I’ve already worked out what your game was. I now understand why Anton wrote that new will. He drew it up without legal advice, had it witnessed by the servants and then he placed it in his desk the day he returned to London. He was afraid that he would have another heart attack and was seriously worried about your future... and why was that?’

Her breath tripped in her throat. ‘I—I—’

Icily judgmental dark eyes raked her flustered face. ‘Before Anton went on his convalescent cruise, you told him that you were carrying his child... didn’t you?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Rosie gasped.

‘Your object was to try and force him into divorcing Thespina. You put him under intolerable pressure but you were lying. You weren’t pregnant. If you had been, you’d have thrown the news in my face with pleasure yesterday!’

Rosie blinked up at him, her lashes fluttering in bemusement. Even though his suspicions were wildly off beam, she was shattered by the depth of calculation he laid at her door.

Constantine studied her with seething contempt. ‘And I’m afraid that Anton chose to deal with a problem that he could not cope with by tipping the whole bloody mess into my lap!’

‘I don’t understand—’

‘Of course you don’t,’ Constantine asserted, his hard mouth curling. ‘No doubt you think that he left you a fortune and that all you have to do is sit back and wait for the money to come pouring in. But, sadly for you, your sordid little game-plan backfired... Anton did not leave you anything in his will!’

Rosie’s brow furrowed as she struggled to comprehend what he was telling her. ‘But you said—’

‘Anton left his estate to me just as he had done in his original will. But in the new version he added a condition to that inheritance. I still inherit... but only if I marry you!’

‘M-marry me?’ Her tongue felt too big for her dry mouth and her green eyes were huge with disbelief. ‘You... marry... me?’

‘Clearly Anton believed that you were pregnant!’ Constantine loosed a harsh, embittered laugh as he swung away from her, broad shoulders fiercely taut beneath the fine fabric of his jacket. ‘Anton panicked and scribbled out that new will without any reasoned forethought whatsoever. Why did he do that? Because if anything happened to him he wanted his fictional child to be protected and legitimised and he could not face the idea of Thespina finding out the truth.’

‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ Rosie protested in a shaken rush. ‘My relationship with Anton was strictly platonic. I didn’t tell him any lies. I—’

‘What sort of a fool do you take me for?’ Constantine interrupted with raw contempt. ‘You were having an affair. He was living with you in that house and he was besotted with you!’

Her knees giving way, Rosie sank slowly down on the weathered bench at the edge of the overgrown lawn. Even presented with Constantine’s twisted interpretation of the facts, she now saw the complete picture and she finally understood. Anton, how could you do this to me? she almost screamed, and inside herself she cringed. Unable to freely and publicly acknowledge her as his daughter, her father had nonetheless been determined that her future security should be safeguarded.

And in a moment of madness, in a moment of desperate anxiety about his health, Anton had come up with what only a madman could have seen as a solution! No, not a madman, she immediately adjusted with a suppressed groan, merely an old-fashioned man who honestly believed that all young women were pitifully vulnerable little creatures, helpless without the support and guidance of some big, strong, domineering man.

‘It can’t be legal...’ she whispered tautly.

‘It is perfectly legal but it would have been better had that will never seen the light of day,’ Constantine acknowledged harshly. ‘It could be challenged and it might well be overturned in court, because Anton made no provision for what was to happen to his estate in the event of no marriage taking place. As a result his business holdings and accounts are now frozen. But it is impossible to take legal action without exposing Thespina to considerable distress.’

Rosie was finding it very hard to think with clarity. ‘Surely she must already know about all this?’

‘She does not. Acquainted as she was with the terms of the original will, she has no suspicion of the existence of a later one. It was only discovered when Anton’s secretary cleared out his desk two days ago—’

‘But what about her? I mean, for heaven’s sake, Anton must have made some provision for his widow.’

‘Thespina is a very wealthy woman in her own right. Anton had no other living relatives. She shared his wish that I should be his heir.’ Constantine’s shrewd dark gaze skimmed her strained white face and a grim smile clenched his lips. ‘And it is not in your own best interests to invite publicity. Open that trashy little mouth and I won’t give you a penny!’

Rosie’s legs suddenly regained the power of movement. She surged upright, her eyes alight with raw antagonism. ‘I don’t want anything!’

Constantine Voulos studied her with cold, reflective eyes. ‘If you think you can drive the price up, you’re making a major error of judgement. You will go through a ceremony of marriage... and in return you will receive a big, fat cheque and a divorce as soon as I can arrange it.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Rosie demanded incredulously. ‘You really think I would go through with a marriage just so that you can get your greedy hands on Anton’s estate?’

A sash window above them was noisily opened. ‘Rosie? What did you do with all the towels?’ Maurice shouted down.

Constantine stiffened and took a step back, the better to get a view of the half-naked young man leaning out of the window. Rosie looked up too, absently conceding that from that angle Maurice looked rather like a blond version of King Kong.

‘Sorry..’ Maurice muttered, belatedly taking in the male with her and withdrawing his tattooed biceps and extremely hairy chest from view. ‘I didn’t know you had company—’

‘Who the hell is he?’ Constantine Voulos raked at Rosie, a rise of dark blood emphasising the savage line of his cheekbones.

‘Do you want me to come down and handle this, Rosie?’ Maurice enquired.

‘When I need you to fight my battles for me, I’ll be six feet under!’ Rosie bawled back, mortally offended by the offer.

The sash window slid reluctantly down again.

‘Anton is scarcely cold in his grave and already you have another man in your bed!’ Naked outrage had turned those brilliant black Greek eyes to seething gold.

Rosie’s hand flew up and connected with one hard masculine cheekbone with such force that her fingers went numb. Stunned by the blow, Constantine Voulos stared down at her with blatant incredulity.

The thunderous silence chilled her to the marrow.

‘I’m sick of you insulting me,’ she muttered through chattering teeth, almost as stunned as he was by the violent response he had drawn from her. ‘And if you touch me Maurice will pulverise you!’

‘He didn’t pulverise Anton...did he?’

Even hot with shame at having used Maurice as a threat to hide behind, Rosie registered the oddly roughened quality of Constantine Voulos’s deep, dark drawl and the indefinable change in the charged atmosphere.

The tall Greek stared broodingly down at her, smouldering golden eyes alarmingly intent. Involuntarily she met that molten gaze and her heartbeat thundered, her throat closing over, heat igniting in the pit of her stomach. She pressed her thighs together in sudden murderous unease.

‘That ... that was d-different,’ she stammered, utterly powerless in the hold of that entrapping stare which was somehow making her feel things she had never felt before. Sexual things, sexual feelings which filled her not only with astonishment but also with appallingly gauche confusion. Why ... how ... she didn’t understand because she couldn’t think straight any more.

Constantine Voulos took a fluid step back, his lean, powerful length emitting an electric tension. Inky black lashes dipped, closing her out again, severing her from the power source that had made every pulse in her treacherous body leap and leaving her disorientated and trembling.

‘I haven’t got time to play games, Miss Waring. I’ll give you twelve hours to think over your position... and then I’ll put the pressure on where it hurts most,’ Constantine warned in a soft drawl that sent a shiver down her rigid spine. ‘With a little help from me, life could become exceedingly difficult. This property is rented. What happens to the junkyard business if the lease isn’t renewed?’

Dawning perception filled Rosie’s shocked eyes. ‘You can’t be serious.’

A cold half-smile briefly slanted his hard mouth. ‘If I was free to follow my natural inclinations, you’d be begging on the street for your next meal. I’ll call again tomorrow morning.’

‘How did you know we rented this place?’ Rosie prompted helplessly as he walked away from her.

Constantine spun gracefully back. ‘And may I put in a special request?’ he murmured silkily, ignoring the question. ‘You strike me as a woman who knows how to please a man. So have a bath before I show up again.’

Rosie’s breasts swelled as she sucked in a heady gush of air. ‘Why, you—!’

The door of the limousine shut with a soft, expensive clunk. Her head whirling, Rosie stalked into the cottage and threw herself down at the kitchen table. Frustrated fury was hurtling about inside her. For an instant she genuinely thought she might explode. He had actually dared to try and threaten her! But then the stakes he was playing for sounded very high ... What had Anton been worth in terms of cold, hard cash? She shuddered with revulsion. Anton had owned a boatyard, a hotel and a chain of shops in Greece. His business dealings within the UK had been tied up in various speculative property ventures. That nonsensical will! But how very like her father... impulsive and overprotective as he had been.

Her eyes smarted with stinging tears and she gulped. Anton had talked so much about Constantine and always with pride, affection and more than a hint of awe. Wealthy Greek parents expected to have a healthy say in their children’s choice of a life partner... he had told her that too.

“Just as well you’re Spanish!” she had teased.

“Mallorquin,” her father had reproved, still proud as punch of his birth in Majorca even after forty years of living in Greece.

Dear heaven, but she despised Constantine Voulos! Her small hands curled into fists on the table-top. Tramp, whore, trash, tart. And, most unforgivably of all, he had accused her of subjecting Anton to such anxiety that she had shortened his life. Her stomach heaved. Well, he could sling his very worst threats and he would find her immovable. Rosie smiled a little to herself then, her smile slowly growing into a decided smirk. Their landlord was, after all, Maurice’s uncle. No way was she going through some disgusting charade of marriage just to help Constantine Voulos circumvent her father’s will and profit from it!

‘That was the brother from hell...am I right?’ Maurice dropped down opposite her and ruefully appraised her hotly flushed face and over-bright eyes. ‘Who else do we know rich enough to travel around in a stretch limousine? Not only your dad’s substitute son but also large enough and verbal enough to make you so mad you are spitting tacks—’

‘Yes, he was Anton’s favourite, wasn’t he? But then I only had four months, not twenty years to make an impression!’ Rosie condemned painfully, and then she crammed an unsteady hand against her wobbling mouth, ashamed of the bitter envy she could hear splintering from her words.

‘Did you tell him who you were this time?’ Maurice enquired gently.

‘Why should I? Why should I tell that hateful creep anything? If Anton couldn’t trust him with the news, I certainly couldn’t!’

Maurice sighed. ‘Presumably Voulos came up here to sort out this inheritance of yours.’

A choked laugh was dredged from Rosie. ‘I haven’t inherited anything! Anton left me to Constantine instead!’

Maurice frowned. ‘Excuse me?’

‘In fact my father tried to force me on him ... as if I were some brainless little wimp in need of care and protection!’ Registering Maurice’s still blank scrutiny, Rosie thrust up her chin and the words of explanation came spilling out of her.

‘Holy Moses...’ Maurice breathed at one stage, but it was his sole interruption. From that point, he listened intently.

‘Can you imagine that ignorant, arrogant louse even thinking that I might agree?’ Rosie pressed, in a furious appeal for sympathetic accord.

Maurice leant back in his chair, looking very thoughtful. ‘Your father has left him in one hell of a fix.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Maurice slowly shook his head. ‘Have you any idea how fast a business can go down with its cash flow cut off? No money going in, no money going out—’

‘I know next to nothing about Anton’s business ventures and I don’t much care either,’ Rosie said huffily.

‘Get your brain into gear, Rosie. Voulos is in a very tight corner. No wonder the guy’s furious—’

‘Exactly whose side are you on?’

‘As always, on the side of common sense and profit,’ Maurice told her without apology. ‘Do you like the idea of your father’s business concerns going bust on a legal technicality? And naturally Voulos doesn’t want to drag this whole sorry affair into an open court.’

Rosie reddened uncomfortably, not having considered the situation from either of those angles.

‘Voulos came here to bargain with the enemy because he had no other choice. The fastest, easiest solution is to meet the terms of your father’s will.’

‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this—’

‘And Voulos is offering to compensate you for your time and trouble. I wonder how much he’s prepared to put down on the table?’ Maurice mused with a slow grin, unaffected by Rosie’s look of appalled reproach. ‘The trouble with you, Rosie, is that you’re an idealist. Voulos isn’t and neither am I. You’d cut off your nose to spite your face.’

“Then why don’t you deal with him when he comes back tomorrow?’ Rosie snapped, rising angrily to her feet.

‘Do you want me to? I’ll willingly stay around and keep an eye on the negotiations. If his temper is anything like yours...well, we don’t want bloodshed, do we? What would we do with his body?’ Maurice asked cheerfully. ‘And dead men can’t write big, fat cheques.’

‘I won’t be here tomorrow,’ Rosie informed him thinly.

‘Look, it’s a business proposition, nothing more. You won’t have to live with the guy or like him. And if you won’t do it for yourself,’ Maurice murmured with a shrewd eye on her frozen face, ‘think about your father’s employees and what’s likely to happen to them if his businesses go down. You can’t hit back at Voulos without bringing grief to other people.’

‘I don’t want to hit back at him, I just want him to leave me alone!’ Rosie slung in frustrated rage, and stalked out of the room.

Hunched within the capacious depths of an old waxed jacket, Rosie stamped her feet to keep warm and watched her breath steam in the icy air. On a cold, frosty morning the market was always quiet. Maurice strolled up and slotted a plastic cup of coffee into her hand. Rosie surveyed him in surprise. ‘What are you doing here?’

Maurice shrugged, carefully avoiding her eyes. ‘How’s trade going?’

Rosie grimaced. ‘It’s slow.’

Maurice picked up a large green ceramic rabbit and frowned. ‘Isn’t this part of your own collection?’

It was Rosie’s turn to shrug, faint pink spreading over her cheekbones. ‘I’ll pick up another one.’

‘Nobody’s ever going to pay that for it,’ Maurice told her, studying the price tag and wincing.

‘It’s already attracted interest—’

‘But not a buyer. You’re overpricing it because you can’t bear to part with it.’

Frowning at that uncomfortably accurate assistance, Rosie sipped at her coffee. ‘Did he show up?’

‘Yeah...’ Maurice rearranged the stock on her stall without raising his head. ‘I told him where to find you.’

‘You did what?’ Beneath the brim of her black trilby, Rosie’s startled brows shot heavenward.

‘I’ll watch your stall. Here he comes now...’

As Rosie’s horrified eyes fell on Constantine Voulos, her heart turned a somersault and lodged somewhere in the region of her working throat. Her nerveless fingers shook and coffee slopped everywhere without her noticing.

The tall Greek stationed himself on the other side of the stall, his vibrantly handsome features taut with sardonic impatience as he spread a derisive glance around the shabby covered market. ‘You do like to play childish games, don’t you, Miss Waring?’

Maurice uttered an audible groan. Striding forward, he planted the green rabbit into Constantine Voulos’s startled hands. ‘Can I interest you in an increasingly rare example of Sylvac pottery?’

‘It’s a piece of junk,’ Constantine gritted, and dumped the item back down at speed.

‘You wouldn’t know any different, would you?’ Rosie snapped as she swept round the stall to check that his rough handling hadn’t chipped the rabbit.

Constantine Voulos ignored her to study Maurice with icy contempt. ‘I get the picture. You want me to pay for the lady’s time?’

. Maurice folded his arms, his pugnacious aspect belied by the ever-ready sense of humour dancing in his bright blue eyes. ‘Suit yourself, mate.’

‘What the heck is going on here?’ In utter disbelief, Rosie gaped as Constantine flipped out a wallet, withdrew a handful of notes and stuffed them into her pocket. ‘I don’t want his money!’ ‘When a guy expects to pay for every little thing in life, you ought to satisfy him,’ Maurice contended cheerfully. ‘Take him across to the pub, Rosie.’ ‘I’m not going anywhere with him... in fact the two of you can go take a running jump together!’ Rosie attempted to move past Constantine but a lean, hard hand snaked out and closed round her forearm. ‘Let go of me!’ ‘You harm a hair of her head and I’ll swing for you,’ Maurice warned with gentle emphasis as he extended a laden carrier bag. ‘Don’t forget your purchase, Mr Voulos, and treat it with respect. Rosie’s very fond of rabbits—’

In a gesture of supreme contempt, Constantine grasped the bag and dropped it from a height into the metal litter bin opposite. The sound of shattering pottery provoked a stricken gasp from Rosie.

Maurice groaned again. ‘There is just no telling some people.’

Wrenching herself violently free of Constantine’s hold, Rosie darted over to the bin and looked inside the bag. She paled as she viewed the extent of the damage. It was irreparable. Momentarily her fingertips brushed the broken pieces and then she rounded on Constantine like a spitting tigress, green eyes ablaze. ‘How could you do that? How could you do that?’

‘Why are you shouting?’ Incredulous black eyes clashed with hers.

‘You selfish, insensitive, snobbish pig ...’ Rosie condemned wrathfully. ‘I was prepared to sell that rabbit, but only if it was going to a good home!’

‘Are you unhinged or merely determined to cause a public scene?’ Constantine snarled down at her.

‘At least I’m not wantonly destructive and spiteful!’

‘Spiteful? I wouldn’t be caught dead walking around with that ugly piece of tasteless junk!’

With the greatest of difficulty, Rosie haltered her temper. Well, he needn’t think he was getting his money back now. She swallowed hard, dug her hands into her pockets and walked off. Crossing the pavement, she stepped into the road—or at least she’d started stepping, when a powerful hand closed over her shoulder and yanked her back bodily as a car sped past.

‘Do you have a death-wish?’ Constantine Voulos grated.

‘I’m surprised you didn’t push me,’ Rosie snapped, shaken by the experience but determined not to betray the fact. ‘Oh, I forgot, didn’t I? I’m only worth something to you as long as I’m alive and kicking!’

Across the road, she headed in the direction of the small bar used by the market traders, but her companion strode towards the luxury hotel twenty yards further on. Rosie’s chin came up. She squared her shoulders and then hesitated. The sooner she dealt with the situation, the sooner he would be gone. A wave of exhaustion swept over her then. She had had little sleep the night before and now she found herself thinking guiltily about her father again.

Anton would have been appalled by the animosity between his daughter and his ward. In drawing up that wretched will, her father had clearly expected her to tell Constantine who she was. Left in ignorance of their true relationship, Constantine had assumed that she was Anton’s mistress. What other role could he possibly have assigned to her?

So why hadn’t she told him the truth? Rosie’s strained mouth compressed. In her mind, Constantine Voulos had been the enemy long before she’d even met him and Anton’s death had simply increased her bitterness. She resented the fact that Constantine had grown up secure in her father’s love and affection. Why not admit it? At the same age she had lost her mother and had been put into the care of the local authorities...

Dear heaven, could she really have been that unreasonable? The creeping awareness that she had been unjust and immature filled Rosie with discomfiture.

CHAPTER THREE

Two men in dark suits were waiting in the hotel lobby. They looked tense and sprang forward with a strong suggestion of relief when Constantine appeared. A spate of low-pitched Greek was exchanged. Striding ahead of them into the quiet, almost empty lounge bar, the younger man rushed to pull out a pair of comfortable armchairs beside the log fire.

Fluidly discarding his black cashmere overcoat, Constantine sank indolently down and snapped imperious fingers. While Rosie looked on in fascination, the second man stationed behind him inclined his head to receive instructions. The waitress was summoned and drinks were served at spectacular speed.

‘What’s with Laurel and Hardy?’ Rosie nodded in the direction of the two men.

‘Dmitri and Taki are my security men.’

‘I won’t ask why you need them. Your personality kind of speaks for itself.’ Bodyguards, for goodness’ sake? To conceal her embarrassment, Rosie whipped off her hat and a mass of wildly colourful spiralling curls cascaded round her shoulders. In a gesture of impatience, she finger-combed her hair back off her face. As she removed her jacket to reveal the ancient guernsey sweater she wore beneath, she intercepted a disturbingly intent stare from her companion.

‘What are you looking at?’ she demanded aggressively.

An aristocratic ebony brow climbed but rich dark eyes gleamed with grudging amusement and without warning a devastating smile slashed his hard features. That smile blinded Rosie like a floodlight turned on in the dark. Taken by surprise, she squirmed like a truculent puppy unsure of its ground. Her eyes colliding with that night-dark gaze, she experienced the most terrifying lurch of excitement. Her stomach muscles clenched as if she had gone down in a lift too fast.

‘Your hair is a very eye-catching colour,’ he murmured wryly.

‘And usually only rag-dolls have corkscrew curls,’ Rosie completed in driven discomfiture, carefully studying the soft drink she had snatched up, her palms damply clutching the glass and her hands far from steady.

In the church she had assumed that it was the shock of meeting him which had shaken her up. But yesterday she had experienced a magnetic and undeniably sexual response that had briefly, mortifyingly reduced her to a positive jelly of juvenile confusion. But it wasn’t her fault—no, it definitely wasn’t—and there wasn’t anything personal about it either, she told herself bracingly. So there was no need for her to be sitting here with her knees locked guiltily together and her cheeks as hot as a furnace.

It was his fault that she was uncomfortable. He was staggeringly beautiful to look at, but then that wasn’t the true source of the problem. Constantine Voulos had something a whole lot more dangerous. A potent, sexually devastating allure that burned with electrifying heat. Out of the corner of her eye, Rosie watched an older woman across the lounge feasting her attention on Constantine’s hard-cut, hawk-like profile and felt thoroughly vindicated in her self-examination.

‘Let us concede that we met for the first time in inauspicious circumstances,’ Constantine murmured. ‘But the time for argument is now past. There is no reason why this unfortunate affair should not be settled quietly and discreetly.’

Rosie sat forward, tense as a drawn bowstring. ‘I haven’t been honest with you,’ she began stiffly. ‘I made things worse than they needed to be but then you didn’t make things easy either...leaping off on a tangent, making wild assumptions and insulting me—’

‘I don’t follow.’ Impatience edged the interruption.

Pale and tense, Rosie snatched in a ragged breath. ‘I’m not who you think I am. I wasn’t Anton’s mistress...’ She coloured as she said that out loud. ‘I’m his daughter, born on the wrong side of the blanket... or whatever you want to call it...’

Constantine Voulos dealt her an arrested look and then his gaze flared with raw incredulity. ‘What the hell do you hope to achieve by making so grotesque a claim?’

Rosie’s brows drew together. ‘But it’s true... I mean, I suppose you have every reason not to want to believe me, but Anton was my father.’

His mouth curled with distaste and impatience. ‘You really are a terrible liar. Had Anton been related to you in any way, his lawyers would have been well aware of the fact.’

Rosie stared blankly back at him. It had never occurred to her that the truth might be greeted with outright contempt and instant dismissal. ‘But he didn’t tell anyone—’

‘And the proof of this fantastic allegation?’

‘Look, it was Anton who traced me—’

‘Let me relieve your fertile imagination of the belief that the nature of your relationship with Anton has any bearing on the size of the cheque I will write,’ Constantine broke in with withering bite. ‘And now please stop wasting my time with ridiculous fairy stories!’

Rosie dropped her head, a surge of distress making her stomach churn. Proof? She had never had any proof! Anton’s name was not on her birth certificate and Constantine was so full of himself, so convinced that she was an inveterate liar, that he wouldn’t even listen to her. For the first time she realised that with Anton’s death she had been dispossessed of any means of proving that he had been her father. And even though she had never planned to do anything with that knowledge that reality had a terrible, painful finality for her.

‘Let’s get down to business,’ Constantine suggested drily.

Utterly humiliated by his disbelief, Rosie wanted very badly to simply get up and walk out. Only the grim awareness that he would follow her and fierce pride kept her seated.

‘With your agreement, arrangements will be made for the marriage ceremony to take place as soon as possible. The legal firm I use in London will liaise with you. When this matter has been dealt with, you will be most generously compensated,’ Constantine assured her smoothly before going on to mention a sum which contained a breathtaking string of noughts. ‘All I ask from you is discretion and also the return of the Estrada betrothal ring’

Rosie looked up, her face drawn and empty of animation. ‘No.’

‘It is a family heirloom. It must be returned.’

‘No,’ Rosie said again.

‘In spite of its age, the ring has no great financial worth. The stone is flawed.’

Rosie flinched, nausea lying like a leaden weight in her over-sensitive stomach. ‘There must be some other way that the will could be sorted out.’

‘If there was, do you seriously think that I would be here demanding that you secretly go through such a ceremony with me?’

The harsh, derisive edge to the question made Rosie flush. No, Constantine Voulos had no other choice. His very presence here told her that. Nor could she fail to see how deeply and bitterly he resented the necessity of being forced to ask for her co-operation.

‘But Thespina seemed to like me,’ she began awkwardly. ‘And she already thinks we’re engaged. Is there any need for all this secrecy?’

‘If she knew who you really were, do you think she would like you?’ Constantine breathed scathingly. ‘She’d be furious. As for the engagement...I’ll tell her it was a soon regretted impulse on my part. There is no need for her to know about the marriage. I don’t want you meeting her again.’

Rosie’s eyes fell uneasily from his. She might not have been Anton’s mistress but even as his daughter she would be no more welcome an advent in Thespina’s life. And if she agreed to a secret marriage of convenience Constantine would inherit and Anton’s business interests and presumably his employees would continue to prosper. Thespina would have no reason to become suspicious again... indeed, everything would go back to normal, just as if Rosie herself had never existed.

Rosie lifted her head, green eyes veiled. ‘You keep your money, I keep the ring.’ Pulling on her jacket, she stood up. ‘Now if you don’t mind I’d like to leave.’

‘I prefer to pay for favours. Have I your agreement?’

‘I’m agreeing only out of respect for Anton’s memory... just you understand that. But how could you understand it? You only think in terms of financial gain,’ she completed in disgust, and spun on her heel.

‘I think only in terms of the well-being of Anton’s wife,’ Constantine countered with icy emphasis.

Contempt froze her fragile features as she turned back to him. ‘That sounds so impressive coming from a male who sleeps with another man’s wife whenever the fancy takes him!’

Taken by surprise, Constantine Voulos sprang upright. ‘Christos...’

Rosie widened her huge green eyes, revitalised by the shock stiffening his darkly handsome features. ‘Your long-running secret affair with the actress, Cinzia Borzone. So don’t go all pious on me!’

As Rosie walked away, head held high, she heard the ground-out surge of explosive Greek that followed that revelation. The depth of her knowledge about his private life had come as a most unwelcome surprise to Constantine Voulos.

Certainly Anton had lamented long and hard on the topic of that unsuitable relationship. In his opinion, Constantine had, at the tender age of twenty-five, fallen live into the paws of a designing married woman with a husband who was perfectly content to turn a blind eye to his wife’s infidelity if the financial rewards were great enough.

And although several times over the past four years Anton and Thespina had been encouraged to hope that the affair had run its course Cinzia had ultimately appeared to triumph over every other woman who entered Constantine’s life. Maybe that situation had even been on Anton’s mind when he’d changed his will, Rosie reflected ruefully.

Anton had had the optimistic hope that marriage would cure Constantine’s desire for another man’s wife. And long before his death Rosie had known that her father cherished a happy daydream in which she and Constantine met, fell madly in love and married, thereby bringing his daughter into the family by the only possible route that would not hurt his wife.

Maurice frowned in surprise when she rejoined him. ‘Don’t tell me you walked out on Voulos again.’

‘No. I agreed... OK? I even told him who I was this time.’ Rosie gave her friend a grim little smile. ‘Only he didn’t believe me.’

Taken aback, Maurice stared at her. ‘Why not?’

‘Why should he have? I don’t even look like Anton. I don’t have any evidence of who I am either. In fact, sitting there with Constantine Voulos, those four months started feeling like a rather embarrassing juvenile fantasy,’ Rosie confided thinly, tucking herself back behind her stall. ‘So, if you don’t mind, I’d rather not discuss it any more—’

‘But Anton had all those photos your mother sent him and he must have had other things.’

‘If he did he never mentioned them and heaven knows what he did with those photos.’ Tired and drained of emotion, Rosie shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter much now, does it?’

Late that night, the front door slammed noisily. Half-asleep on the sofa after an evening of exhaustive cleaning, Rosie sat up with a start. Maurice burst into the lounge looking excited and tossed a glossy but somewhat dog-eared magazine down on her lap. ‘Lorna had this. She was able to tell me all about Constantine Voulos.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Rosie mumbled drowsily.

‘My sister has a stack of magazines about the rich and famous. The minute I mentioned his name it rang a bell with her and she looked that out for me. Voulos is a genuine Greek tycoon,’ Maurice informed her impressively. ‘He’s loaded! The guy was born into a fortune. Your father was only a small-time businessman in comparison.’

‘So?’ Rosie groaned as she stood up.

‘Rosie...you don’t want to sign anything away before or after that wedding,’ Maurice warned her. ‘Voulos doesn’t need your father’s estate. He’s already rich as sin. It’s all wrong that you should be cut out just because the guy doesn’t want you around!’

‘I’m going to bed—’

‘I’m trying to look out for you, Rosie. You have got rights too,’ Maurice told her with stark impatience. ‘Your dad would turn in his grave if he knew what Voulos was doing!’

‘Maurice, Constantine Voulos has not one thing that I want.’

But was it true that Constantine was wealthier than her father had ever been? Anton certainly hadn’t travelled around in a chauffeur-driven limo or hauled bodyguards in his wake. She shrugged. Either way, what did it matter to her? And even if Constantine was filthy rich it didn’t mean he couldn’t also be disgustingly greedy.

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