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‘No.’
Living at home would have meant living with Paula, and that was something neither of them could have handled.
‘I have my own place now—about ten minutes away from here. I can walk.’
‘And I will escort you.’
Grace groaned inwardly. She knew this mood of old. When Constantine set his mind on something like this, he was immoveable. A dog with a bone had nothing on him. But she couldn’t give in to him. If she did, then he would only take it as evidence that his own interpretation of events was the real one.
And wasn’t it? her own unforgiving conscience threw at her, refusing to let her off the hook, no matter how much she mentally squirmed. Hadn’t she admitted to herself that she wanted…’
But what she wanted and what was safe were two very different things. She might dream of more time with Constantine, of letting him know her feelings for him, but to do any such thing would be emotional suicide.
Whatever feelings he might once have had for her, they were obviously now all dead. All, that was, except for the burning sexual attraction that had once flared between them, and which time had not dimmed at all. Weakly, stupidly, she had let Constantine see that it was still there, and with characteristic opportunism he had decided to turn that fact to his advantage.
‘Grace, I have never in my life let a woman walk home alone at this time of night. I don’t intend to start now. Get your coat. I am coming with you.’
‘Do I have any choice?’ Wearily she accepted that, short of creating the sort of scene that would have everyone at the party talking for weeks to come, she had no option but to do as he said.
‘None at all,’ Constantine returned on a note of satisfaction that sounded rich as a tiger’s purr. ‘I know that we’ve only just met, but I must insist that you humour me in this.’
Only just met. What…?
It took Grace a moment or two to realise exactly what Constantine meant.
Grace, this is meant to be a Turn Back the Clock party. His words sounded inside her head like a lifeline as she went reluctantly to fetch her coat from the bedroom. Five years ago we would have been complete strangers.
So Constantine was still playing according to the rules they had laid down earlier that evening. They were still pretending that they were complete strangers who had met for the first time tonight.
That being so, perhaps she could cope with letting him take her home after all. Surely even Constantine wouldn’t pounce on what was supposedly their very first meeting?
It was little enough comfort, but it was all that she had. And Constantine wasn’t about to back down, so she could only pray that it was enough.
CHAPTER THREE
‘OVER there.’
Grace lifted a finger to point, then immediately dropped it again when her hand showed a worrying tendency to shake in a way that revealed her inner turmoil.
‘It’s the last house on the right. The one with the blue door.’
Constantine’s nod of acknowledgement was curt and silent as he steered the car to a halt precisely opposite the door she had indicated. Perhaps, like her, he was already regretting the impulse that had pushed him to insist on taking her home. Perhaps he too had found what stiff and hesitant conversation there had been during the brief journey so uncomfortable that he was glad their time together was almost over.
Which suited Grace fine. All she wanted was to get out of the car and get inside, into the safety and privacy of her small flat. If she had to sit next to Constantine for a moment longer, listen to his stilted, one-word responses to the few remarks she had managed to force herself to make, she was going to scream with frustration.
‘That’s perfect. Thank you.’
Already she was fumbling with the seatbelt, even before the powerful vehicle had fully come to a halt at the side of the kerb, anxious to be out of the car and away from his unsettling presence.
‘It was kind of you to see me home… What did you say?’
The question was jolted from her in response to something Constantine had muttered. Something incomprehensible in Greek that had sounded rough and impatient, stilling her nervous movements suddenly.
But even as she asked the question, she saw the change in his mood. With an obvious effort he smoothed away the frown that had drawn his brows, the cynical twist to his carved mouth.
‘I’ll see you to your door,’ he said, his voice retaining nothing of the disturbing intonation of moments before.
‘There’s no need.’
But she was talking to thin air. Already Constantine was out of the car and moving round to open the passenger door for her.
It was only a few yards from the edge of the kerb to the threshold of her house. Just a few short steps, but they seemed to take an eternity, every sound of their feet on the pavement ringing unnaturally loudly in the midnight silence of the street. At her side, Constantine was a dark, silent figure, his long stride outstripping hers so that she had to hurry to keep up with him.
To her intense annoyance she found that her inner tension had communicated itself to her hands, so that she fumbled clumsily as she tried to insert her key in the lock. Supremely conscious of Constantine’s eyes, dark as the night sky, watching every awkward move, she cursed herself silently under her breath, trying again. Luckily this time she succeeded, and turned back to face him, relief evident in her smile and her voice.
‘Well, here I am. Safe and sound, as you can see. Thank you again for seeing me home.’
If this really had been a first meeting, she would have added something about having enjoyed her evening, perhaps even a suggestion that they could do it again some time. But of course the idea that they could turn back the clock in that way was a pure fiction, throwing her mind into total confusion as she hunted for a way to say goodbye that fitted the circumstances.
‘I—I’ll say goodnight, then.’
‘Is that all?’
‘All? You— I mean, what else is there? After all…’ She aimed for flippancy and missed it by a mile, her voice becoming high-pitched and shrill. ‘We’ve only just met tonight.’
‘So would it be too forward to ask for a kiss goodnight?’
The question sounded light, friendly even. The way he’d been earlier in the evening, in the kitchen, when they’d been pretending that they really had just met.
A goodnight kiss; nothing more. She could cope with that.
But underneath all the carefully rational, logical reasoning lay something darker, something more disturbing. Something that lurked like the jagged rocks at the bottom of a still, calm sea, just waiting to catch at the base of her thinking and rip it apart, laying open the real truth. The one she hardly dared acknowledge to herself. The fact that she wanted this, wanted Constantine’s kiss more than she would ever admit.
‘Okay.’ She nodded—casually, she hoped. ‘One kiss goodnight…’
Constantine’s head lowered, blocking out the light from the nearby streetlamp, and instinctively her lips parted slightly.
But it was her cheek that his mouth made contact with, the kiss brushing against it warm and soft and so painfully familiar. And heartbreakingly brief.
‘Goodnight.’
Before she even had time to think, even as she was steadying herself for the real kiss, the one her lips were aching for, the one that had already quickened her heartbeat in anticipation, he had stepped back.
‘Goodnight,’ he said again, his voice harsh and flippantly dismissive. ‘See you around.’
Grace couldn’t believe it. She shivered inside as pain, raw and cruel, ripped through her, lacerating her heart. She had actually let herself believe—had hoped… Bitter tears of humiliation burned in her eyes, blinding her.
‘G-goodnight.’
She forced herself to say it. Forced herself to turn the handle and open her door. Felt the rush of warm air from the hall out into the coldness of the night.
But she couldn’t make herself step over the threshold and into the house. Even now she couldn’t turn and move away from him.
It was not enough! She wanted more, so much more. That one kiss had sparked off all the need, the hunger, the passion she had once felt for this man and which she had thought was safely buried, out of sight.
But it seemed that Constantine had spoken nothing more or less than the truth when he had said so casually, ‘I’m over it.’
‘I—I’ll…’
Go! Her mind screamed at her. Out of here now, before it gets any worse!
But, no, her heart pleaded. Let me have just a little bit more. Just one moment longer in his company. After these two long, empty years, let me have one more chance to hear his voice, see him smile.
Before she knew she had even formed the thought she had acted impulsively. The aroma of Constantine’s cologne and the warm, clean scent of his body reached her nostrils as she leaned towards him, making her head swim with the force of its sensual impact. His eyes were deeper, darker pools in the shadows of the night, and she could hear the soft, regular sound of his breathing.
‘Goodnight,’ she said on a very different note as, taking her cue from him, she pressed her lips to the hard, lean plane of his cheek. The warm satin of his skin was slightly roughened by the result of a day’s growth of beard that brushed abrasively against her mouth.
‘And thank you…’
But that one unthinking act proved her undoing. With a phenomenal speed of reaction, Constantine turned his head so that her lips were forced to move. Unable to do anything but slip over the bronzed skin, as if on ice over a frozen pond, they found themselves sliding inexorably towards the heated softness that was his mouth.
‘Grace…’
He muttered something thick and rough in Greek against her lips before taking them harshly, urgently, crushing her mouth under his.
‘You should have gone—headed for safety—while you had the chance. Now it’s much too late.’
Too late! Grace echoed inside her head on a note of disbelief. It had already been too late in the moment that he’d kissed her. Even such a desultory peck on the cheek had told her all she needed to know.
No, it had been earlier than that. It had happened in the moment when she had opened Ivan’s door and looked into the black depths of his eyes and known that, no matter what had happened, Constantine was still the only man in the world for her.
‘Sweet Grace…’
A cold sneaking wind wound itself around Grace’s legs, but she was beyond noticing it. The bulk of Constantine’s strong body protected her from the cold, and the heated race of her blood through her own veins warmed her skin until she felt as if she was on fire. Her heartbeat was staccato with excitement, the coming and going of air in her lungs feverishly erratic.
‘You really should have gone in.’ Constantine’s breathing was every bit as uneven as her own, his voice hoarse and jerky. ‘Now there’s no turning back. Grace, agape mou…invite me in.’
Invite me in. It was a command, not a request. She knew exactly what was behind it, what was uppermost in his mind.
So why wasn’t she saying no? Why wasn’t she telling him to get out of there and out of her life? The thought slid into her mind very briefly, but then, just as swiftly, slid straight out again.
‘D-do…?’
Her voice failed her, drying painfully, so that she had to moisten her lips before she could speak again. In the light from the hall she saw Constantine’s black eyes drop to her mouth, to follow the tiny, unconsciously provocative movement with an intensity that made her heart jerk convulsively against her chest.
‘Do you want to come in?’
‘Do I…?’ It was a shaken, husky laugh. ‘Grace, I swear to God that if you don’t let me in with you right now, I’ll—’
‘There’s no need for that!’ Grace broke in hurriedly, shaken, breathless, half terrified of what he might be about to say. ‘Come in, out of the cold.’
It seemed to her that the slam of the door behind her, shutting out the world and closing them in together, was a sound of decision, defining a moment that would change her life for ever. It was now too late to go back, to even think of changing her mind.
And she didn’t want to. All she wanted was right here, with her, at her side. His arms enclosed her. His heart beat under her cheek, and she felt as if she had come home.
But once inside the mood changed sharply. She had barely closed the door before Constantine released her so abruptly that she felt as if she had been dropped from a great height, landing, stunned and disbelieving, on a very hard floor.
She could only watch as he pushed his way into her flat and prowled around it like some caged wild beast, scenting out the borders of its new territory.
Slowly, deliberately, he turned on his heels so that his dark-eyed gaze could take in the comfortable living room with the pale cream armchairs—the room was too small to take a settee—peach velvet curtains, and softly polished pinewood dresser. On the far wall, opposite the big bay window, was a Victorian style cast-iron open fireplace set in a tiled surround.
‘It’s not very big…’ he murmured at last, his survey completed.
‘It’s all I could afford!’ Grace protested indignantly. ‘We can’t all have homes on every continent and a private plane to ferry us between them.’
‘Half of the houses are owned by my parents,’ Constantine pointed out, his tone coolly reasonable. ‘I only have the use of them.’
‘But what you do own my poky little flat would fit into a hundred times over.’
‘Did I say it was poky?’ he murmured smoothly, continuing his exploration.
He didn’t need to, Grace was forced to reflect, ruing her foolish tongue. What she had really meant was that now she saw him in her flat it was as if his tall, imposing presence so dominated the room that it appeared it had shrunk around him, becoming impossibly small and claustrophobic.
‘W-would you like coffee?’ Belatedly she remembered her role as hostess.
‘No.’
Stark and uncompromising, it was tossed over his shoulder at her as he studied the collection of paperbacks on her bookshelf.
‘Tea, then?’
‘No…’
‘Something stronger?’
The question was high-pitched and uneven, coming from a throat that had tightened uncomfortably over the question she knew she was really asking. This was his opportunity to say no, he couldn’t drink any more because he was driving.
‘Some wine, perhaps?’
An autocratic gesture dismissed the question; Constantine’s attention was still fixed on her book collection. But then a moment later he shook his dark head.
‘Perhaps—yes…’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Constantine!’ Grace exploded, more on edge than she had allowed herself to admit. ‘Yes—no—perhaps… Which is it?’ she added, braving his swift frown. ‘Make up your mind.’
‘Cristos, I am trying to be civilised, that is all! But I feel—’
‘You feel?’ Grace echoed when he broke off abruptly. ‘What do you feel?’
