The Demetrios Bridal Bargain (13 page)

Sacha flushed and lowered her eyes when Mathieu directed his ironic grin in her direction. Her mother, however, was not similarly tongue-tied.

‘A modern man,' Helena Constantine echoed, her artfully pencilled brows lifting as she gave a contemptuous smile. ‘Despite what they may say all women prefer strong men, not a puppy dog.' From the direction of her admiring stare it was not difficult to see whom she was talking about.

Rose rolled her eyes. ‘For goodness' sake, it's not like he needs encouragement.'

The older woman's carmine lips tightened in response to Rose's flippancy. She glanced at Mathieu and seemed disappointed when, far from looking outraged, he was openly amused.

‘A man should lead, a woman should follow,' she said firmly.

‘Not this woman,' Rose promised, quite enjoying the novelty of finding herself cast in the role of staunch feminist. ‘I'm not the following kind.'

‘Mama says that the trick is making a man think the idea was his in the first place,' Sacha confided, glancing towards her mother for support, her smile wobbling slightly when she saw her parent's expression. ‘She says that a clever woman can make a man do…' Her voice dried up totally in the face of an icy glare from the older woman.

It was Mathieu who came to her rescue.

‘There you have it, a clever woman…that leaves you out,
mon ange
.'

There was nothing faintly angelic about the expression on Rose's face as she asked, ‘Are you calling me stupid?'

‘I have far too much respect for my well-being to call you anything of the sort. How fortunate it is I prefer feisty women to the clever variety,' he said, looking straight at her with an expression that in her mind was inappropriate outside the privacy of a bedroom.

‘And as for turning you into a modern man,' Rose said, forcing herself not to break eye contact even though her stomach was churning with a volatile mixture of excitement and heart-racing fear, ‘I'm a realist.'

And as a realist she knew that he was acting a part. He really didn't want to rip off her clothes, send the crockery crashing to the floor and make love to her on the table. Oh, yeah, Rose, hold that thought. It's really going to help you stay calm and in control.

‘As a realist I don't attempt the impossible.'

‘How about…?'

Rose closed her eyes. His manner suggested he had just had an epiphany, while the gleam in his eyes told her he was about to say something that would make her want to curl up and die from sheer mortification.

Unfortunately her reading of that gleam turned out to be spot on.

‘If in the interests of harmony once the bedroom door is closed I will let you take a turn being in charge…'

A choking sound emerged from Rose's throat. Of course she was delusional to have thought even for a second that she could get the better of Mathieu in a war of words; he would always win in the end—he had no scruples.

In the sybaritic image playing in her head he had no clothes either. The only thing covering his gleaming golden skin was a fine sheen of sweat and her thighs where she sat astride him. She blinked and sucked in a shaky sigh as she tried to block the treacherous thoughts that made her skin crackle with heat.

‘You like the idea?'

Rose liked the idea of a deep dark hole opening up at her feet for her to step into. She had never felt so embarrassed in her entire life. She flashed Mathieu a look of appeal, which he responded to with a warm and loving smile. Lowering her gaze, she gave a theatrical yawn before announcing she was actually quite tired.

She didn't meet anyone in the eye as she bid her fellow guests a hurried goodnight and headed for the nearest door.

S
HE
had gone a couple of hundred yards before Mathieu caught up with her. ‘Well, I think that went well,' he observed with some satisfaction. ‘Don't you?'

She stopped dead and spun around to face him. Had he been in the same room as she had?

‘Went well! No, I don't damn well think it went well. I think it was a total nightmare and so were you.'

His long lashes swept down to partially conceal his eyes, but not before she had caught the wicked amusement dancing in the silvered depths. ‘Did I say something to upset you?'

The innocent act made her grind her teeth. Did he get a kick out of baiting everyone or was it just her he liked to see squirm? ‘Now what makes you think that? I just love having people think I'm into, into…bondage or something.'

There was startled silence before his warm laughter boomed out. ‘I admit I am having trouble seeing you as a dominatrix.'

His taunting grin widened when she lifted her hands to her burning cheeks and choked, ‘Shut. Up.'

‘Relax,' he advised. ‘I imagine they are simply thinking we have a healthy sex life.'

Relax. Was he serious? It was bad enough that her own imagination was running riot without the thought of other people speculating about what they got up to in the bedroom.

‘You think that makes me feel better?' she asked. ‘You may like to discuss your sexual preferences with all and sundry, but I prefer my sex life, even my imaginary sex life, to stay private.'

‘It can hardly be private from your lover. Who is your lover, Rose?'

The twin bright spots on the apples of her cheeks deepened to carnation pink. ‘I can't imagine a situation where that information would be any of your business.'

His sardonic smile widened and she got a flash of even white teeth. ‘You can't…?'

‘And it just so happens I don't have a lover,' she blurted. ‘I've never had a—' She stopped dead and developed a sudden interest in the patina on the marble floor.

‘Never what? Had a lover?'

She listened to him laugh softly at the idea and gritted her teeth. ‘Now you know my little secret.'

His eyes drifted to her full lips. ‘And now I'd like an answer to my question…' It was not the only thing he wanted…He had never in his life wanted a woman this much. He thrust his hands in his pockets to hide the fact he was literally shaking with need.

‘What question?' She stopped as their eyes meshed. Mathieu raised one brow and gave a savage smile as he watched the colour climb to her cheeks.

‘Oh,
that
question.' She dredged a laugh from somewhere. ‘Don't worry, I didn't take you seriously.'

‘Yes, you did, and I was serious, deadly serious.'

It was hard to maintain her flippancy in the face of his steady and disturbing silver stare but she did—just. ‘Look, Mathieu, you're not paying me that much.'

His upper lip curled. ‘Name your price. I might be willing to meet it.'

Something inside her snapped. Her response was pure reflex. There was no conscious thought between lifting her hand and it connecting with a resounding crack with the side of his face.

‘Oh, God, I'm so sorry…' Tears sprang to her eyes as she watched him rub a hand over the area on his cheek that was already discolouring. ‘No, I'm not sorry, you deserved that. You've progressed from implying I'm some sort of tart to treating me as one.'

Mathieu's hand fell away. ‘Yes, I did deserve it. That was an unforgivable thing to say and I'm sorry.'

The anger faded from her face. ‘You are?

He nodded. ‘It's no excuse, but I'm extremely frustrated.' He placed a hand on the wall beside her head and leaned in, his smoky eyes drifting slowly across her face.

Her chest felt so tight she could hardly breathe as two opposing instincts battled inside her. The sane area of her brain was telling her to back away; another was telling her to lean into him.

Rose couldn't back away because there was no place to go—her back was literally against a wall. The only thing preventing her from taking the second course was a fragile thread of control, but as the heat in her stomach spread and the hunger spiralled that control was stretching to breaking-point.

‘Mathieu,' she groaned, turning her head and kissing the finger he trailed across the cushiony softness of her lips. ‘You're…this is…' She swallowed, her eyes drifting to his mouth. She was willing him to kiss her when the distinctive sound of voices raised in laughter drifted down the corridor. The sound seemed to mock her.

What was she doing? With a horrified squeak she ducked under his confining arm and began to walk away at speed, praying as she did so that her knees would not buckle.

His chest rising and falling in tune with his rapid, shallow respirations, Mathieu watched her walk away. In some women he might imagine that the sexy sashaying sway of the hips was contrived, but not Rose. There was no calculating flirtation or fluttering eyelashes with her.

It seemed incredible to him, but she was genuinely oblivious to the fact she represented to the opposite sex a sexual ideal, the sort of woman that they dreamt about waking up beside in the morning.

No wonder he lost all sense of perspective around her—the woman was a mass of contradictions.

She had jumped naked into his bed and now she blushed like an inexperienced adolescent if the conversation turned to anything remotely intimate.

She showed him a cold face and claimed not to be interested in him sexually. Yet he knew she was lying. He knew she felt the crackle of sexual tension between them as strongly as he did. He had seen her eyes dilate until they were black pools, felt her body tremble at the accidental brush of their fingers and felt the heat under her cool exterior.

Had her idiot ex been too self-absorbed to teach her to enjoy her own body and celebrate her ripe sexuality? Humiliated by him, she had lost her confidence and tried to recapture it by getting drunk and having casual sex with a total stranger—him. Had his own rejection that night been the act that had made her retreat?

He raised his voice and called after her. ‘You didn't read the small print, Rose. No time off, not even for good behaviour, and, let's face it, you were not good back there.'

Breathing hard, Rose swung back, her eyes dilated as she found him standing almost at her shoulder. ‘I never said I'd lie for you and there is no small print, nor any print. You're just making up the rules as you go along.' She ached to wipe the taunting smile off his face, and it wasn't a recognition that violence solved nothing that stopped her, but a suspicion that if she touched him for any reason it might be hard to stop.

‘You know what I think?'

‘I'm shaking with anticipation.'

She was shaking too, Rose realised, registering with a scared frown this new development. Anger, she told herself. She was shaking with anger.

‘I think things are going exactly to your plan. You don't want your father to approve of your bride.'

‘Interesting theory. Just why would I want my father to disapprove of my future wife?'

‘Because you take a sadistic pleasure out of doing the opposite of what he wants you to.' Before she actually said it Rose didn't have the faintest idea what she was going to say, but even before she saw the flicker of shock move at the back of his eyes she knew that she had intuitively hit the nail on the head.

‘My father…'

‘Oh, he's just as bad as you are, I can see that. I'm really not concerned with who did what to who.'

To hear his complicated and painful relationship with his father reduced to the level of a school-yard squabble reduced Mathieu to a stunned silence.

‘I just want out of it.' She bit her trembling lip, cleared her throat and added in a flat voice, ‘You chose me because you knew that I'd never fit in.'

Now why should that hurt so much?

Shaking his head, Mathieu reached out his hand. Rose pulled back, her eyes wide and wary. With a shrug and a twisted smile he let his hand fall away. His eyes were flint-hard as he said dismissively, ‘I didn't choose you. This was an arrangement of mutual convenience, though I have to admit there has not been a lot of convenience involved so far. The irony is that you were the perfect choice.' His considering glaze slid over her. ‘If I had turned up with one of the usual suspects…he would have smelt a rat immediately.'

‘Usual suspects?'

‘Well-groomed, articulate…'

‘Everything I am not, presumably.'

‘Oh, you scrub up pretty well.'

‘You know, there being nothing in writing works both ways. If I choose to walk there's nothing you can do to stop me.'

‘You underestimate my resourcefulness…'

She stuck out her chin. ‘But not your total lack of scruples and ruthlessness.'

Mathieu's brows drew together in a dark disapproving line above his hawklike nose. ‘That's what most people say about my father.'

Ironically it was the familial likeness that he appeared offended by, not the insult…Not that this mattered to Rose—her objective had been to annoy him.

‘Most people haven't been forced to spend as much time in your company as I have recently.' She could think of more than a few who would pay for the privilege.

He pretended not to hear her muttered interruption and angled a curious look at her face. ‘My father…you're not scared of him, are you?'

‘Scared?' An image of the broad-shouldered Greek financier flashed through her mind. ‘Why should I be?' Now his son, that was another matter. She turned her head sharply and gave a little shiver as her eyes brushed his profile.

‘He's rich and powerful.'

‘He has nothing I want or need—why should I be afraid of him? You, on the other hand…'

‘You think I'm afraid of my father?'

She had expected the suggestion to produce an offended denial, but the only reaction she got was an amused quiver of his lips.

‘I suppose you think fear is a sign of weakness.'

‘No, I think fear is healthy.'

‘Oh, will you stop sounding so impossibly well balanced? You made your living tied down in a metal box hurtling around in circles while people paid money for tickets to watch while they waited for you to crash. Someone who chooses to make their living that way—' she tapped the side of her head ‘—has a few screws loose.'

It was the families she felt sorry for—the ones who loved those men who risked their lives…and for what? The thrill, the money, the fame…or was it cheating death that hooked them? Either way it was the wives and mothers waiting at the sidelines that had her sympathy.

‘I…' Mathieu closed his mouth with an almost audible snap, shock quickly followed by caution filtering into his expression as he realised what he had been about to do.

Why should he feel the need to justify his life choices, redeem himself in her eyes? Why, when he never asked for anyone's approval, should Rose's good opinion matter so much to him? A man who normally did not duck issues, but met them head-on, he found himself pushing this particular issue to the back of his mind.

‘It was something I was good at.'

She lifted her eyes in mock amazement. ‘You mean there are some things you're not good at? I thought you were brilliant at everything. Except,' she added with a wry twist of her lips, ‘being pleasant to your father.'

‘
Me.
You think it's my fault?' The resentment he told himself he had put aside along with other childish things surfaced and his jaw clenched.

‘Well, it takes two, doesn't it? And you can't deny you don't go out of your way to be nice. There's an atmosphere you could cut with a knife when you're together.'

‘He thinks the wrong son died.'

Mathieu, the most alive person she had ever met, dead. She shook her head in violent mute rejection of the idea and saw the floor moving up towards her.

She gave a sigh of relief when the world steadied, but didn't loose her grip on the ornately inlaid console table she had grabbed on to to steady herself.

Of course he regretted saying it the moment it left his lips. He sounded like someone looking for the sympathy vote and nothing could be farther from the truth.

He regretted it even more when he saw Rose's amber eyes fill with compassion.

She was just the sort of woman who would go for the damaged type, he thought irritably. It wasn't by accident that the women he ended up having relationships with did not want to heal or mother him.

Mathieu was scowling but, more significantly, he was avoiding her eyes. He wouldn't look at her—was he afraid of what she would see?

She felt like yelling, Your father hurt you, big deal, join the rest of the human race. She also felt like wrapping her arms around him and pulling him close, but she knew he was a man who would not appreciate the gesture.