LYNNE GRAHAM - The Secret Wife

‘What are you looking at?’ she demanded aggressively.

An aristocratic ebony brow climbed but rich dark eyes gleamed with grudging amusement and without warning a devastating smile slashed his hard features. That smile blinded Rosie like a floodlight turned on in the dark. Taken by surprise, she squirmed like a truculent puppy unsure of its ground. Her eyes colliding with that night-dark gaze, she experienced the most terrifying lurch of excitement. Her stomach muscles clenched as if she had gone down in a lift too fast.

‘Your hair is a very eye-catching colour,’ he murmured wryly.

‘And usually only rag-dolls have corkscrew curls,’ Rosie completed in driven discomfiture, carefully studying the soft drink she had snatched up, her palms damply clutching the glass and her hands far from steady.

In the church she had assumed that it was the shock of meeting him which had shaken her up. But yesterday she had experienced a magnetic and undeniably sexual response that had briefly, mortifyingly reduced her to a positive jelly of juvenile confusion. But it wasn’t her fault—no, it definitely wasn’t—and there wasn’t anything personal about it either, she told herself bracingly. So there was no need for her to be sitting here with her knees locked guiltily together and her cheeks as hot as a furnace.

It was his fault that she was uncomfortable. He was staggeringly beautiful to look at, but then that wasn’t the true source of the problem. Constantine Voulos had something a whole lot more dangerous. A potent, sexually devastating allure that burned with electrifying heat. Out of the corner of her eye, Rosie watched an older woman across the lounge feasting her attention on Constantine’s hard-cut, hawk-like profile and felt thoroughly vindicated in her self-examination.

‘Let us concede that we met for the first time in inauspicious circumstances,’ Constantine murmured. ‘But the time for argument is now past. There is no reason why this unfortunate affair should not be settled quietly and discreetly.’

Rosie sat forward, tense as a drawn bowstring. ‘I haven’t been honest with you,’ she began stiffly. ‘I made things worse than they needed to be but then you didn’t make things easy either...leaping off on a tangent, making wild assumptions and insulting me—’

‘I don’t follow.’ Impatience edged the interruption.

Pale and tense, Rosie snatched in a ragged breath. ‘I’m not who you think I am. I wasn’t Anton’s mistress...’ She coloured as she said that out loud. ‘I’m his daughter, born on the wrong side of the blanket... or whatever you want to call it...’

Constantine Voulos dealt her an arrested look and then his gaze flared with raw incredulity. ‘What the hell do you hope to achieve by making so grotesque a claim?’

Rosie’s brows drew together. ‘But it’s true... I mean, I suppose you have every reason not to want to believe me, but Anton was my father.’

His mouth curled with distaste and impatience. ‘You really are a terrible liar. Had Anton been related to you in any way, his lawyers would have been well aware of the fact.’

Rosie stared blankly back at him. It had never occurred to her that the truth might be greeted with outright contempt and instant dismissal. ‘But he didn’t tell anyone—’

‘And the proof of this fantastic allegation?’

‘Look, it was Anton who traced me—’

‘Let me relieve your fertile imagination of the belief that the nature of your relationship with Anton has any bearing on the size of the cheque I will write,’ Constantine broke in with withering bite. ‘And now please stop wasting my time with ridiculous fairy stories!’

Rosie dropped her head, a surge of distress making her stomach churn. Proof? She had never had any proof! Anton’s name was not on her birth certificate and Constantine was so full of himself, so convinced that she was an inveterate liar, that he wouldn’t even listen to her. For the first time she realised that with Anton’s death she had been dispossessed of any means of proving that he had been her father. And even though she had never planned to do anything with that knowledge that reality had a terrible, painful finality for her.

‘Let’s get down to business,’ Constantine suggested drily.

Utterly humiliated by his disbelief, Rosie wanted very badly to simply get up and walk out. Only the grim awareness that he would follow her and fierce pride kept her seated.

‘With your agreement, arrangements will be made for the marriage ceremony to take place as soon as possible. The legal firm I use in London will liaise with you. When this matter has been dealt with, you will be most generously compensated,’ Constantine assured her smoothly before going on to mention a sum which contained a breathtaking string of noughts. ‘All I ask from you is discretion and also the return of the Estrada betrothal ring’

Rosie looked up, her face drawn and empty of animation. ‘No.’

‘It is a family heirloom. It must be returned.’

‘No,’ Rosie said again.

‘In spite of its age, the ring has no great financial worth. The stone is flawed.’

Rosie flinched, nausea lying like a leaden weight in her over-sensitive stomach. ‘There must be some other way that the will could be sorted out.’

‘If there was, do you seriously think that I would be here demanding that you secretly go through such a ceremony with me?’

The harsh, derisive edge to the question made Rosie flush. No, Constantine Voulos had no other choice. His very presence here told her that. Nor could she fail to see how deeply and bitterly he resented the necessity of being forced to ask for her co-operation.

‘But Thespina seemed to like me,’ she began awkwardly. ‘And she already thinks we’re engaged. Is there any need for all this secrecy?’

‘If she knew who you really were, do you think she would like you?’ Constantine breathed scathingly. ‘She’d be furious. As for the engagement...I’ll tell her it was a soon regretted impulse on my part. There is no need for her to know about the marriage. I don’t want you meeting her again.’

Rosie’s eyes fell uneasily from his. She might not have been Anton’s mistress but even as his daughter she would be no more welcome an advent in Thespina’s life. And if she agreed to a secret marriage of convenience Constantine would inherit and Anton’s business interests and presumably his employees would continue to prosper. Thespina would have no reason to become suspicious again... indeed, everything would go back to normal, just as if Rosie herself had never existed.

Rosie lifted her head, green eyes veiled. ‘You keep your money, I keep the ring.’ Pulling on her jacket, she stood up. ‘Now if you don’t mind I’d like to leave.’

‘I prefer to pay for favours. Have I your agreement?’

‘I’m agreeing only out of respect for Anton’s memory... just you understand that. But how could you understand it? You only think in terms of financial gain,’ she completed in disgust, and spun on her heel.

‘I think only in terms of the well-being of Anton’s wife,’ Constantine countered with icy emphasis.

Contempt froze her fragile features as she turned back to him. ‘That sounds so impressive coming from a male who sleeps with another man’s wife whenever the fancy takes him!’

Taken by surprise, Constantine Voulos sprang upright. ‘Christos...’

Rosie widened her huge green eyes, revitalised by the shock stiffening his darkly handsome features. ‘Your long-running secret affair with the actress, Cinzia Borzone. So don’t go all pious on me!’

As Rosie walked away, head held high, she heard the ground-out surge of explosive Greek that followed that revelation. The depth of her knowledge about his private life had come as a most unwelcome surprise to Constantine Voulos.