Kate Walker - Constantine's Revenge

Well, she’d asked for it, Grace told herself unhappily.

“So that’s it,” she said drearily. “That’s all there is to say.”

“Not entirely.” Constantine surprised her by coming back swiftly. “The question is, where do we go from here?”

“Go? Is there anywhere to go?”

“Of course.” He sounded stunned that she should have doubted it.

“But—but you don’t love me. You don’t trust me. So what basis do we have for any sort of relationship?”

“The perfect basis for the kind of relationship I have in mind.”

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

IT HAD begun with a knock at the door.

Such a simple thing and yet it had changed Grace’s life for ever. It had taken her happiness, her dreams of a future, and ripped them into tiny shreds. And as a result, even now, two years later, she still had to nerve herself to answer any summons from someone on the outside of the house.

‘Gracie, sweetie!’ Ivan’s voice reached her from the kitchen, where he was busy creating his own devilishly intoxicating version of a fruit punch. ‘Are you going to answer that or just stand and stare at the door all day?’

‘Of course I am!’

She hadn’t even been aware that that was what she had been doing, Grace realised as, with a fierce little mental shake, she pushed herself into action. It was stupid to react in this way. After all, it was fully twenty-four months since that appalling day. This wasn’t her father’s house, the place she had used to call home, but the elegant Victorian building where Ivan had the ground-floor flat. And nothing could be more different from the careful preparations for the elaborate society wedding of the past than the casual, noisily crowded atmosphere of the party her friend was giving to celebrate his thirtieth birthday.

‘I didn’t know we were expecting anyone else!’ she tossed over her shoulder, using laughter to disguise the irrational uncertainty that still clutched at her stomach as she hurried to answer a second imperious knock at the door. ‘Just how many people have you invited? The place is bursting at the seams already.’

‘A party isn’t a party until you don’t have room to breathe!’

Grace barely heard Ivan’s response. Joking hadn’t helped. If anything, the crazy feeling of apprehension had grown worse. She felt like some nervous cat, scenting the approach of an aggressive intruder into its territory, every fine blonde hair lifting at the back of her neck, her soft grey eyes clouded and shadowy.

Lightning couldn’t strike twice! she told herself. At least not the sort of lightning she had in mind.

White teeth digging sharply into the softness of her lower lip, she dragged in a deep, fortifying breath before grasping the handle firmly and pulling at the door.

It came open far more swiftly than she had anticipated, flying back towards her with a force that almost knocked her off balance, so that she staggered slightly, struggling to keep upright.

‘Steady…’

A deep, drawling voice, rich as honeyed cream, was the first thing she registered. Then two other facts hit home at the same time, with the force of a devastating blow in the pit of her stomach.

Two frighteningly significant facts. Two disturbingly familiar and shockingly vividly remembered details about the man before her that made her thoughts reel, her head spinning sickeningly.

Deep, dark eyes. Eyes black as jet, and every bit as hard. Their stunning colour and blazing intensity had been etched into her memory long ago, impossible to erase. And that sensual voice, exotically accented, seemed to coil around her nerves, tightening and twisting them until they screamed.

Other images bombarded her. Smooth olive-toned skin, a strong jaw, a beautiful mouth with a surprisingly full lower lip. Hair black as a raven’s wing, cropped uncompromisingly short in order to subdue a rebellious tendency to curl. Suddenly it was as if some cruel hand had reached out from the past, snatching hold of her and dragging her back into the tumult of emotions she had experienced then.

‘Are you all right?’

Strong hands had fastened over her arms, supporting her, and only when she was secure on her feet did the tall, dark man actually look into her face.

‘You!’ he said sharply, his expression changing instantly from one of concern to a look of pure contempt that seared over Grace’s already rawly sensitive skin. ‘I didn’t recognise you, looking like that.’

Every vital function in her body seemed to have shut down in shock. She had to tell herself to breathe, her heart to beat. Lightning could strike twice, it seemed. Certainly Greek lightning could. Because the force of the most violent electrical storm had always been the effect that this man had had on her.

‘Constantine!’

Her tongue felt clumsy as it tangled around the name that she had refused to speak for so long. The name she had promised herself she would never, ever use again if she could help it. But now sheer shock and a sense of unbelieving horror had forced it from her against her will.

‘What are you doing here?’

The look he turned on her burned with cynical disbelief. Only an idiot would have had the stupidity to ask that question, his lofty disdain declared. And if there was one thing that Constantine Kiriazis was quite unprepared to tolerate then it was the presence of any sort of a fool.

‘I was invited,’ he declared, his voice as curt as his movements as he belatedly became aware of the way that he was still holding her, long, tanned hands on her arms, the immaculately manicured fingers incongruous against the shabby, well-worn leather of her jacket.

With a fastidious gesture that communicated only too clearly the feeling that simply to touch her had somehow contaminated him, he abruptly let her go and stepped away from her side. The move spoke eloquently of a mental distance that was far, far greater than the few centimetres that actually separated them.

‘This is where the party’s being held?’

With a brusque nod of her head Grace dismissed the unnecessary question. The sheer volume of noise behind her, the music and laughter, the loud buzz of fifty or more different conversations made a nonsense of the fact that he had even asked it.

‘But Ivan wouldn’t have invited you!’

The cynical lift of one black, straight brow mocked at her vehemence, shaking the certainty of her conviction without a single word.

‘Tell me, my sweet Grace, do you really believe that I would appear here, dressed like this…?’ An arrogant sweep of his hand swept down the powerful length of his body, drawing her clouded grey eyes unwillingly after it. ‘Without the excuse of your crazy friend’s theme party to justify it?’