Ally Blake - Passionate Playboys - The Demetrios Bridal Bargain / The Magnate's Indecent Proposal / Hot Nights with a Playboy

The older man swung back, his expression antagonistic. ‘Were going. Sacha and her mother are arriving tomorrow.’

Mathieu repressed a sigh, reflecting that he really ought to have anticipated this.

‘A fact you neglected to mention when you summoned me.’

The older man gave a thin-lipped smile. ‘It would be an insult to them if you are not here. There have been links between the Constantine family and ours for generations. My father and—’

‘And,’ Mathieu inserted, interrupting the history lesson, ‘there is no son in this generation to inherit and you hate the idea of the Constantine fortune slipping through your grubby fingers.’

A flash of anger darkened the older man’s heavy features. ‘And I suppose you would turn your nose up at it?’ he grunted.

‘I wouldn’t be prepared to marry a girl of nineteen to get it.’ A girl who had coincidentally been engaged to his younger brother. When he had first heard of the engagement, Mathieu had been inclined to view it with cynicism.

Not so much a marriage as a merger.

But Mathieu’s view had changed once he had seen the two youngsters together. They had been very obviously in love.

‘Sacha is a mature nineteen and you could do a lot worse. That actress, for instance, who was plastered all over you at that première. What was her name?’

Mathieu, not explaining it had been a stunt staged to gain publicity for a low-budget movie, dismissed the young starlet with a contemptuous shrug and admitted, ‘I have not the faintest idea.’

She had been and still was a total stranger, despite her offer to show him how grateful she was, a proposal he had said thanks, but no, thanks to.

His taste had never run to that sort of gratitude. The formula-one racing circuit attracted groupies like a magnet. Women who in his opinion represented everything that was bad about today’s depressing shallow, celebrity-obsessed society.

Mathieu had frequently been tempted to say to them, Go away, get a life, get some self-respect, but he hadn’t—any attention at all they took as encouragement. So he had gained a reputation for being aloof and unapproachable. He had changed careers but the reputation persisted. It was on occasion useful.

‘I read the wedding plans were at an advanced stage.’

Mathieu angled a dark brow at the sarcasm in his father’s voice and retorted lightly, ‘I should review the sort of newspapers you read if I were you, Andreos.’

‘You are not me.’

‘Nor even a paler version.’ He knew he took after his mother; he wondered sometimes if looking at him reminded his father of the young woman he had used and discarded.

‘So there is no one—you are not in love?’

Mathieu was not in love or actively seeking it. On the contrary, if he saw it coming he had every intention of running or at least walking swiftly in the opposite direction.

What was the all-consuming attraction of love anyway? A form of temporary insanity that made your happiness reliant on someone else’s smile?

The allure baffled him.

And anyway, the people he loved had a habit of dying.

No, falling in love was not on Mathieu’s list of things to do.

The only person he relied on was himself and that was the way he liked it.

‘I fail to see what business that is of yours, regardless of which I can think of few worse fates than to be married to a teenager, even a mature teenager.’

Andreos’s face darkened with displeasure. ‘I am not telling you to marry the girl.’

‘But you wouldn’t exactly be displeased if I did either, and in the meantime you will take every opportunity to throw us together. You are embarrassingly transparent.’

Andreos looked at him, his face dark with frustration. ‘The girl is Vasilis’s only child, his heir. Her husband would—’

Mathieu lifted a hand to still the flow. ‘I hardly need it spelt out; you are empire-building.’ His lips thinned in distaste. ‘Does the girl have any say in this?’

‘Do not look down your nose at me,’ Andreos barked. ‘And do not pretend you could not make this girl love you if you chose to do so. I have seen you with women.’

‘She is not a woman; she is a child.’

‘She was good enough for your brother.’

‘They were in love.’

‘You have taken everything else of his—why not his woman?’

The words hung in the air, building the tension between the two men, until Mathieu shrugged. ‘I never wanted anything of Alex’s.’

Except a share of their father’s love, but that desire had only lasted until Mathieu was sixteen. He had been living with his father for a year when an overheard conversation had made him recognise that was never going to happen.

Mathieu’s thoughts drifted back to the occasion in question. He had been walking past a half-open door. It was hearing his own name and the anger and frustration in his normally softly spoken stepmother’s voice that had made him pause outside …

‘The boy tries so hard, does everything you ask of him and more. Could you not just occasionally give him a word of encouragement? Would it kill you, Andreos, to smile at him? All Mathieu wants is your approval. He’s desperate for it. I can see it in his eyes when he looks at you. It breaks my heart.’

‘What you see in his eyes is naked ambition, Mia. Why can you not see that? The boy is hard, he is confrontational—’

‘You say you wish that Alex would stand up to you more.’

‘That is not the same thing. Mathieu doesn’t need love and kisses; he needs a strong hand.’

‘Not one raised in anger, I have told you that. If you ever—’

‘No, of course not. I told you I was sorry about that, Mia. You know I have never raised a hand to Alex; it’s just Mathieu lied and then, caught out in the lie, refused to apologise.’

‘Oh, for pity’s sake, Andreos, are you blind? It was Alex who broke your precious statuette and he was too scared to own up so Mathieu took the blame.’

‘No, no, you’re wrong! I don’t know what story he has told you, but—’

‘Not Mathieu, he didn’t say a word. It was Alex who told me about the beating and the broken statuette.’

‘Oh, goddamn that boy … he made me … the thing is, Mia, when he looks at me all I can think is that I wish he’d never been born.’

He had heard enough. Mathieu had moved on, in more ways than one. It had hurt at the time to hear the truth, but it was better to face bitter reality than live in false hope.

‘You will have to pass on my apologies. I’m expected in Scotland.’

A dark mottled colour rose up the older man’s neck until his face was suffused with angry colour. Mathieu watched the effect of his words with clinical detachment.

The truth of it was he had returned just over a year ago at his stepmother’s request, not his father’s. ‘Give it a year, Mathieu,’ she begged. ‘Your father needs you, though he’d never admit it.’

Mathieu was reluctant to shatter the illusion that he cared what his father needed, especially when she added, ‘And when I am gone he will need you even more. The company and the family,’ she reflected with a rueful roll of her eyes as she spoke of the Demetrios clan. ‘They both need a strong hand at the helm. He was grooming your brother for the role …’

A memory had surfaced in Mathieu’s head—Alexander sliding his small hand in his and saying earnestly, ‘I want to be just like you when I am older, Mathieu, even if it means Father doesn’t like me.’

‘Alex would have done it well,’ Mathieu lied.

Mia smiled and shook her head. ‘I appreciate your loyalty, but we both know that isn’t true. Alex hated business. He tried, of course, to please his father, but …’ She shrugged. ‘One day Andreos would have had to accept that Alex would never take his place, but sadly for us all that day never came.’