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‘Gracie?’ It was Ivan’s voice, coming from very close behind her. ‘Are you—? Constantine! You made it! So tell me…how is my favourite Greek tycoon?’
‘I am well.’
Grace watched as Constantine submitted to the exuberant hug Ivan gave him with resigned patience. But one dark, straight brow did lift in questioning amazement at the other man’s costume of a school uniform, complete with two-coloured cap.
‘Ivan, my friend, were you truly still at school ten years ago? I thought that at the age of twenty you were actually at university…’
‘Strictly speaking, that’s true.’ Ivan laughed back. ‘But I was much happier at school, so I went for that. And if that’s bending the rules, who cares? After all, this is my party, so I can do as I like.’
‘Fair enough.’ Constantine’s amusement was evident in the warmth of his tone. A warmth that had been distinctly lacking when he had talked to her, Grace registered miserably.
This was one of the ways he had surprised her in the past. She had never expected that such a blatantly macho male as Constantine was would ever tolerate her friendship with the other, openly gay man. But Constantine had not only accepted it, he had apparently warmed to Ivan himself too.
In that, at least, he hadn’t behaved at all in the way she had expected. But in other ways, she reminded herself bitterly, he had been pure arrogant Greek male through and through. And when that pride had been turned on her it had savaged her life, ripping it apart.
‘I wasn’t sure if you would make it,’ Ivan was saying. ‘I thought you might be somewhere the other side of the world.’
As if that would stop Constantine going anywhere he wanted to be. This was a man who used his private plane to fly from country to country with the casual ease that other, lesser mortals might take a bus or the Tube. And wherever he was he always had a fleet of chauffeur-driven cars at his disposal. He had probably expended less effort to get here tonight than Grace herself.
But her thoughts had distracted her from what Constantine was saying. Too late she registered his words with a sense of horrified shock.
‘…major problems in the London office. I expect they will take three months or more to sort out.’
No! Grace barely caught back her response before the single word revealed her feelings. The only way she had coped over the past two years was by knowing that Constantine was thousands of miles away, in his office in Athens, or the family home on Skyros. The thought of him being practically on her doorstep for the next few months was a prospect that appalled her.
‘So we can hope to see more of you,’ Ivan continued, blithely ignoring the look of alarmed appeal Grace shot him. ‘Can’t be bad. Now, let me relieve you of that gorgeous coat.’
But as Constantine shrugged himself out of the elegant garment the sound of a buzzer from the kitchen brought Ivan’s platinum blond head swinging round.
‘The food! I’m sorry, darlings, I must dash or it will all be ruined. Gracie, you’ll see to this for me, won’t you?’
And, dumping Constantine’s coat in the arms she had no option but to hold out—it was either that or let it fall to the floor—he turned and with an airy wave in their vague direction hurried away again.
‘I see Ivan hasn’t changed.’ Constantine’s tone was dry. ‘Outrageous as ever.’
‘That’s Ivan…’
Grace prayed that her response didn’t sound as shaken and upset to Constantine as it did in her own ears. She was having to struggle to control the unexpected reaction that had assailed her simply as a result of holding the coat. It felt too personal, somehow, too intimate.
Soft and sensuous, it was still warm from the heat of Constantine’s body, and the tangy scent of the cologne he always wore still clung to the material, agonisingly familiar. It was impossible not to recall how in the past, when she had been held close to him, that fragrance had always filled her nostrils, intoxicatingly blended with the more subtle, personal aroma of his body. If she closed her eyes she could still feel the heat of his skin under her fingertips, the brush of his black hair against her cheek…
‘Grace?’
Constantine’s husky-voiced question intruded into the torrent of sensual memories that had flooded her mind, snapping her back to reality with a painful jolt. Wide and startled, her eyes flew open to clash sharply with his frowning black ones.
‘Where did you go?’
‘Nowhere!’
Her sharp response was too fast, too spiky, arousing his suspicions instead of subduing them. She saw his dark brows draw together swiftly and hastily set herself to covering her tracks.
‘I—I’m just a little tired,’ she invented hastily. ‘It’s been a difficult week at work. We’ve been having problems with a new campaign…’
‘You are still at Henderson and Cartwright?’
‘Yes…’
That was better. Her voice was back under control, calm and even.
‘I was promoted recently. Now I’m in charge of… But you don’t want to know this.’
She didn’t want him to know it. She didn’t want to let him know anything about her life or what was going on in it. He had relinquished that right when he had turned his back on her, and she had no intention of ever letting him in again.
Constantine’s shrug dismissed her comment as irrelevant.
‘I thought you were making polite conversation,’ he drawled indifferently. ‘It is something you are so good at here in England. It is so very civilised, especially in an uncomfortable situation.’
‘I’m not uncomfortable!’ Grace snapped defensively, grey eyes flashing defiantly.
‘Perhaps I meant myself,’
‘Oh, that I can’t believe!’ With a wave of her hand she dismissed Constantine’s silky murmur. ‘I’ve never seen you fazed by anything. You wouldn’t have got where you are if you let anything get to you. And you’ve been trained by an expert—your father.’
But she was on dangerous ground there. She knew it from the way his proud head went back sharply, the flare of something menacing in his eyes. But when he spoke no trace of his inner feelings shaded his tone.
‘Nevertheless, this could be somewhat…’ He hunted for the right word. ‘Awkward for you.’
‘That’s something of an understatement.’
Biting her lip, she wished the careless words back as she realised the advantage she had thoughtlessly given him.
He was quick to pounce on it, of course, that sensual mouth curving into a sardonic smile at her discomfiture.
‘You are clearly at a disadvantage here—Ivan gave you no warning of the fact that he had invited me, and I presume that some people here will know what passed between us.’
He knew only too well that almost everyone Ivan had invited would be aware of the fact that two years ago she had been about to marry this man, but that the wedding had never taken place. They might be unclear on the gruesome details, but after that final, appallingly public scene in the foyer of the agency, no one could be in any doubt that Constantine had tossed her aside and walked out of her life, ignoring her pleading for a second chance.
The fact that she had also been at fault in the beginning brought the additional complication of a guilty conscience to an already volatile mixture of emotions roiling inside her. Under the cover of the coat, her hands clenched tightly, crushing the expensive material.
‘That was two years ago, Constantine,’ she told him coldly. ‘Two years in which I have got on with my life, as I presume you have with yours.’
His nod of agreement was curt to the point of rudeness.
‘I’m over it,’ he declared bluntly.
‘And so am I.’ Grace wished she could sound as assured as he had done. ‘People have short memories. You and I might once have been a nine-day wonder, but now we’re stale news. Neither of us can leave—it would upset Ivan too much. So we’re just going to have to make the best of things. Don’t you agree?’
The look that seared over her was icily assessing; black eyes narrowed thoughtfully for a moment.
‘It should be easy enough,’ he said at last, his tone a masterpiece of indifference. ‘I shall simply do what I have done every day for the past two years, and that is to wipe your existence from my mind, forget I ever met you.’
‘In that case, why come here at all? You must have known…’
‘Obviously I knew you’d be here, but the wish to please Ivan on his birthday was strong enough to overcome the repugnance I felt at the thought of seeing you again.’
It was meant to hurt, and it achieved its aim with all the ruthless efficiency for which Constantine had achieved his reputation in the business world. Grace was deeply thankful for the protective concealment of the coat she still held as she crushed it close to her, feeling almost as if she needed to stem some agonising internal bleeding that had sprung from the wound he had deliberately inflicted on her.
‘But I don’t have to spend any more time with you. There are enough people here to distract us…’ An autocratic wave of one hand encompassed the crowded room at the far end of the hall. ‘And the room is quite large enough to keep us apart for some time.’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’ She had to force herself to say it. ‘If we’re really lucky, we won’t even have to see each other again.’
She would do it if it killed her, would rather die than let him see just what it was doing to her to have him here like this. Constantine nodded slowly, his gaze already drifting away towards the other room where other, obviously more attractive company awaited him.
‘That would make it possible to salvage something from this appalling evening.’
‘Then don’t let me hold you back!’
Her tartness drew that black-eyed gaze back to her for one more of those uncomfortably probing stares, a faintly cynical smile playing around Constantine’s firm mouth.
‘To be honest, my dear Grace, I sincerely doubt that anything you could do would ever affect me again.’
Was it possible? Grace asked herself as he strolled away without so much as a backward glance. Could he really feel nothing for her, not even the dark anger she had seen blazing in his face at their last, cataclysmic meeting? Did she now mean so little to him that he could dismiss her from his thoughts in the blink of an eye? What had happened to the love he had once declared so eloquently, the passion he had been unable to hide?
It was dead, she told herself drearily, dead and gone, as if it had never existed. Which seemed impossible when her own feelings were in such agonised turmoil that she felt as if there was a raging tornado where her heart should be, a monstrous tidal wave of shock and distress swamping her stomach. She could only pray that she was enough of an actor to hide her misery from Constantine. That she would be able to get through what remained of this evening without giving herself away completely.
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS impossible.
There was no way at all that she could pretend, even to herself, that she was oblivious to the fact that Constantine was there in the room with her. His presence was like a constant dark shadow, always hovering at her shoulder, following her everywhere she went.
If she paused to talk to anyone she felt him there, just out of sight, driving all thought of what she had been about to say from her mind. If she tried to drink some wine, or taste some food from the extensive buffet Ivan had laid on, her throat closed over what she was trying to swallow, threatening to choke her.
And the worst thing was that, for some private reason of his own, Constantine hadn’t kept to his declaration that he was going to wipe her existence from her mind. She had only to glance across the room to meet the intent stare of his watchful black eyes following every movement she made, every smile, every word she spoke.
In the end she sought refuge in the kitchen, privately admitting to her own cowardice as she used the excuse of the mounting pile of washing up to keep her there, hidden away. She was filling the bowl with hot water for the second time when Ivan wandered into the room.
‘Uh—oh! I wondered where you’d got to. Does this mean I made a mistake?’
‘In inviting Constantine?’ Grace turned a reproving look on him. ‘What do you think? Ivan, how could you?’
‘No chance of you two making it up, then?’
‘Was that what was in your mind when you asked him here? If that was the case, you couldn’t be more wrong. It’s over, Ivan, and has been for years.’
‘Are you sure? He was pretty keen to accept. I thought perhaps—’
‘Well, you thought wrong,’ Grace inserted hastily, as much to squash down her own foolishly weak heart as it leapt on an absurd flutter of hope as to disillusion her friend. ‘Whatever reasons Constantine had for coming here today, seeing me wasn’t one of them. I mean, does he look like a man who can’t let me out of his sight?’
‘He looks like a man with something on his mind, if you ask me,’ Ivan returned, with a nod towards the open door.
Reluctantly Grace followed the direction of his gaze, her eyes fixing immediately on the tall, muscular figure of Constantine leaning against the wall. With a glass in one hand, he had his attention firmly fixed on the woman in front of him. Small and curvaceous, with long dark hair, she was wearing a nurse’s uniform with a skirt so indecently short she would never have been allowed on to any hospital ward.
‘And what he has on his mind is very definitely not me,’ she said, unable to erase the bitterness from her voice.
Her stepsister Paula was dark and petite, she recalled on a wrench of pain at the memory. And Constantine had always admitted to being attracted to small, curvy brunettes, so much so that Grace had never quite been able to understand just what he had been doing with her.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Ivan, leave it!’ Grace pleaded, unable to take any more.
The words had barely left her lips when Constantine looked up suddenly, deep-set eyes meeting Grace’s clouded grey ones. For a fleeting, tormenting moment their gazes locked, and she shivered before the cruel indifference in their ebony darkness. Then with a cold travesty of a smile Constantine lifted his glass in a grim mockery of a toast, one that had her biting down hard on her lower lip to keep back an expression of pain.
Swinging round so that she no longer had to see him or his companion, she squirted washing-up liquid into the bowl with a force that made bubbles boil up wildly.
‘Constantine has no thought of any reconciliation on his mind,’ she said through gritted teeth, blinking hard against the burning tears that stung her eyes. ‘Just get that into your head, will you?’
And just who are you trying to convince? her conscience questioned reproachfully, distracting her so that she was barely aware of Ivan leaving her alone again.
Was it true? Was it possible? Had she really been fool enough to harbour even the faintest hope after all this time? Oh Grace, Grace! You fool! You crazy, weak-minded fool!
How could she ever have been so stupid? Hadn’t Constantine made his feelings, or rather his lack of them, brutally clear? Had she spent so many long, lonely nights lying awake with that final callous dismissal still sounding in her thoughts, and yet not been convinced by it? She had to be out of her tiny, crazy mind if that was the case.
We have no future together… The words Constantine had flung at her, the coldly contemptuous voice in which they had been spoken lacerated her soul all over again, making his feelings for her patently clear.
Clear enough even for the most foolish, naively besotted heart, Grace told herself miserably. In spite of being blinded by love, as she had been then, she had heard the conviction in his voice, recognised the finality of the emotional life-sentence he had been handing her. So why should she allow herself to dare to question it now, when surely the two years’ silence, two years’ distance on Constantine’s part, was added evidence of just how much he had meant what he’d said?
‘If you wash that plate any more, you will erase the pattern from it.’
The dryly amused voice, instantly recognisable as Constantine’s, broke into her reverie with such unexpected suddenness that she started violently, dropping the plate into the washing-up water in a plume of spray.
‘Don’t sneak up on me like that!’
‘I did not sneak. You must have a guilty conscience to jump like that. Or perhaps you were daydreaming. Is that it, agape mou? Were you thinking of some man—someone deeply important to you, to judge by the look on your face?’
‘I wasn’t thinking of anyone!’ Grace objected, terrified that he would suspect the true nature of her thoughts. ‘And don’t call me that! I’m not your love any more!’
‘So you remember the Greek I taught you?’
She remembered that particular phrase! How could she ever forget it? Her thoughts skittered away from memories too painful to bear. Memories of tenderly embracing in the warm darkness of a mild early spring evening on Skyros, her head pillowed on the strong frame of his chest, hearing that softly accented voice whispering those words in a way that resonated with barely suppressed desire.
‘Oh, yes, I remember that, and so many other valuable lessons you taught me.’ Grace laced the words with vinegar, deliberately taking them miles away from the sort of lessons he had originally had in mind. ‘And believe me, I don’t ever intend to forget them. I— What are you doing?’
She flinched back as Constantine moved suddenly, one hand coming out towards her face.
Her instinctive panic earned her a sharp-eyed glance of reproof, Constantine’s mouth twisting cynically.
‘You have soap bubbles on your nose…’ A long finger gently flicked the froth away. ‘And on your brow… They might have gone into your eye.’
