Sharon Kendrik - The Millionaires' Cinderellas - Playing the Greek's Game / The Forbidden Innocent / Too Proud to be Bought

Emma gave a polite smile. ‘I’m sure it is, but I don’t eat meat.’

‘You don’t eat meat?’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Which part of my original statement needed clarification, Mr Constantinides?’

He stared at her critically. ‘No wonder you’re so damned pale.’

‘You should try it some time—less meat in the diet is supposed to mean less aggression.’

At this he did laugh. ‘A real man eats meat, Emma.’

There was something about his primitive boast which made her feel quite peculiar and Emma quickly looked down at the very limited vegetarian section of the menu. Did he really think he could come out with all that macho ‘real men eat meat’ stuff and get away with it? Yes, he did—and the horrifying reality was that he could . She suspected he could do pretty well anything he put his mind to, especially where women were concerned. She remembered the way she’d found him looking at her when he’d shaken her awake. That compelling hunger she’d surprised in his eyes. And hadn’t that look made her feel a corresponding rush of desire, which had made her feel as if she were melting beneath his gaze?

Suddenly, Emma felt a trickle of fear sliding down her spine because she suspected that Zak Constantinides knew perfectly well the extent of his power over women. And the very last thing she needed was for him to discover that he had awoken a strange and nebulous need in her .

‘And you’re really going to have to lose the “Mr Constantinides” tag,’ he mused.

‘I would have thought that my constant reinforcement of your superior status would have bolstered your ego.’

‘I don’t need anything to bolster my ego,’ he said softly. ‘So do you think you could try saying “Zak”?’

She snapped the menu shut and looked up. ‘I’ll have the aubergine lasagne and side salad, please…. Zak .’

‘And I’ll have the rib-eye.’ He handed the menus to the waiter, thinking that her soft English accent managed to do erotic things with the single syllable of his name. He fixed her with a questioning look. ‘Wine?’

She thought she probably shouldn’t. In fact, she definitely shouldn’t. Wine might make the meal seem like a pleasure, rather than the necessity it clearly was. But Emma was strung out—and the idea of having to endure an evening facing Zak Constantinides without something to help relax her was more than she was prepared to tolerate.

‘A glass would be lovely.’

He nodded and the sommelier was dispatched, returning with two glasses of red wine so rich that Emma could smell it from five paces away. She took an eager sip and put the glass down with a little sigh, looking up to meet the curiosity lancing through his grey eyes. ‘The wine’s very good,’ she said politely.

‘Of course it’s good—do you really think I’d drink anything but the best?’

‘Silly of me not to realise that everything you do is a testimony to how wonderful you are.’

‘Very silly. But I haven’t brought you here to talk about the wine, Emma. Or about me.’

‘I didn’t think you had,’ she said, her heart suddenly beginning to race, because suddenly she suspected what was coming next.

‘I want to know what it’s like being back in New York,’ he questioned—and now his voice took on a harsh tone. ‘You lived here when you were married, didn’t you?’

So he hadn’t forgotten that she’d lived here—and he hadn’t cared that she might be upset by that fact. Of course he hadn’t—for he had made his hostility towards her very clear, right from the start. He didn’t care how much she hurt—because he saw her simply as an obstacle to be removed from his brother’s life.

She wanted to tell him that her past was none of his business and yet a feeling of resignation made the words die in her throat. Because in a way, hadn’t this conversation been inevitable from the moment she’d first walked into his office? He was determined to know more about her and she couldn’t keep stonewalling questions which were bound to keep coming, could she? It all boiled down to whether she was ashamed of her past. Maybe a little —but she was proud of the way she’d risen from the ashes of it to start all over again.

‘What is it you want to know?’ she questioned.

‘I want to know how a small-town English girl managed to meet and marry someone like Louis Patterson. And whether the price you paid for your ten minutes of fame was worth it.’

EMMA’S fingers tightened around the stem of her wine glass as she met the accusation which glittered from Zak’s grey eyes. ‘I’m surprised you need to ask me anything about my past—I thought you’d already had me investigated thoroughly by some sleuth you’d hired.’

He took a sip of his own wine. ‘I know the facts. What I’m interested in are the reasons behind those facts. And let’s face it, Emma—if your relationship with my brother does survive this separation …’ He paused, not wanting to acknowledge the dark thoughts which flashed into his mind as he tried to envisage this particular scenario. ‘If you really were to become my sister-in-law—then surely you owe it to me to tell me more about your background.’

‘I don’t owe you anything!’

‘No? Then what’s the big mystery? Are you ashamed of what you’ve done? Maybe dabbled in a few things which aren’t strictly legal?’ he speculated.

‘No, I have not!’

‘And does Nat know about your past?’

‘Of course he does.’

‘So why not tell me, too?’

Emma drank down an angry mouthful of wine. Because Nat hadn’t judged her as she suspected this man would judge her. Because she didn’t fancy being dissected by those cold grey eyes and made to feel like some animal in a laboratory, which was vulnerable to the cruel scalpel of the scientist.

Yet she wasn’t supposed to be ashamed of her upbringing, was she? Not any more. Not when she had coped with it as well as she could. Was it her fault that she’d been given a vacuous and man-hungry mother who had always put her little girl second? Who had taught her daughter all the wrong lessons in life, which had taken a while to unlearn.

‘You know I’m illegitimate?’ she questioned bluntly.

Her candour took him by surprise and, to his astonishment, something in the darkening of her eyes made him want to offer an unlikely chunk of reassurance. ‘That’s no longer the stigma it was.’

‘In theory it isn’t,’ she contradicted. ‘In practice it isn’t so good if everyone knows that you’ve never even seen your father—or that you don’t have a clue who he is. Or that your mother seeks the comfort of strangers to warm her bed at night.’

Zak’s mouth tightened, all sympathy now fled. ‘Your mother was a—’

Emma shook her head. ‘Oh, she wasn’t a prostitute—if that’s what you’re thinking. She was just very …’ she swallowed ‘… fond of men. And not very good at choosing men. Something she seems to have passed on to me.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Really?’

‘Oh, I’m not talking about Nat,’ she amended hastily, remembering a little too late that she was supposed to be masquerading as the lovelorn girlfriend of his brother. ‘Nat has been the best thing that ever happened to me.’

‘I’m not here to talk about my brother,’ he bit back, his blood growing heated with what he suspected was more than a feeling of sibling protectiveness. ‘I asked you about Patterson. How did you meet him?’

For a moment Emma said nothing, because it was still painful to relive it. To remember her naivety—a naivety which had been almost laughable in view of the bizarre nature of her upbringing.