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‘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.
