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Rosie stared in disconcertion at Alex Kolovos. He must have seen what was happening as he was leaving the building. Jason’s face was livid, his stance openly threatening.
‘Let go of Rosie,’ Alexius instructed curtly, his face hard as granite in the street light.
‘Don’t get involved in this,’ Rosie urged, trying once again to pull free of Jason’s grip.
Although coming to the rescue of a damsel in distress was not his style, Alexius experienced not an ounce of hesitation. He had seen the encounter as he emerged from the building and had known that he had to intervene. She was clearly in trouble.
‘Yeah, that’s right … don’t get involved or you’ll be sorry!’ Jason shouted in a rising rage, at the sound of which Rosie paled and shivered in the cool night air. ‘This is a private conversation—’
‘Not when you’re manhandling a woman,’ Alexius interrupted in a tone of undisguised condemnation.
Rigid with raging tension, Jason swore and took a violent swing at Alexius. A gasp of dismay escaped Rosie but, faster than she would have believed possible, Alexius ducked the incoming fist and punched Jason squarely in the solar plexus. Winded, Jason reeled back a step in shock at the hit and thrust Rosie away from him with a brutal shove so that he could more easily move in to attack again. As Rosie lost her footing and went flying across the pavement with bruising force a cry of pain was wrenched from her lips. Almost simultaneously, she heard a shout, Jason’s roar of fury and finally the sound of running feet.
In the space of a minute, Alex Kolovos was bending over her and raising her up. ‘Don’t try to move,’ he urged, already noting the blood that had seeped through the legs of her cotton uniform trousers on which she had gone skidding across the pavement. ‘Something might be broken.’
‘Don’t think so … it just hurts,’ Rosie was suddenly painfully conscious of the ache of her bruises and the sting of the abrasions inflicted on her legs and arms. She grimaced, feeling ridiculously like a child who had fallen down, reckoning that the skinned knees and elbows she could feel had borne the brunt of the damage.
He was talking urgently in Greek into a mobile phone and her brow furrowed in discomfiture until he switched back to English. ‘I’m taking you to a doctor.’
Instantly, Rosie tried to sit up on her own. ‘That’s not necessary—’
But the sudden movement made her head swim and she felt horribly queasy and just as fast she rested back again on the strength of his supporting arm while struggling to master her body’s unfamiliar weakness. She thought she would die of shame if she threw up in front of him.
‘What happened?’
‘Having met more resistance than he had bargained on, your assailant ran off. You will have to make a complaint against him with the police.’
‘I don’t want to call the police about Jason,’ Rosie said, knowing that she didn’t want the fuss or the complications of getting the law involved but, beneath it, helplessly concerned that Jason might make another attempt to corner her when she was alone. What the heck did Jason want from her?
A car drew up beside them. Alexius vaulted upright as the driver jumped out to yank open the rear door. Alexius crouched down to lift Rosie and was shocked by how very little she weighed in his arms, deciding that below the concealment of her clothes she had to be pure skin and bone. He fed her slender body carefully into the back seat of the car so that she could continue to lie down. He climbed in beside her. The door closed. The car moved off.
Still fighting the queasiness in her stomach, Rosie glanced at Alex Kolovos, only to discover that he was frowning down at her. Light eyes bright as stars in his taut, darkly handsome face surveyed her with none of the chill that had confounded her in the conference room, and a flock of butterflies was unleashed in the pit of her stomach. When he looked at her like that, she found him irresistible and the reaction unnerved her. She was terrified that she was behaving like a teenager with a bad crush; her gaze skimmed off him to examine the interior of the car in which she lay. ‘Whose car is this? Who’s driving?’ she asked in dismay.
‘It’s my car. One of the security guards brought it and offered to drive so that I could keep an eye on you.’
‘If you’re so convinced that I need to see a doctor why didn’t you call an ambulance?’ she prompted curiously.
‘I knew this would be faster and more efficient,’ Alexius responded smoothly. ‘And you do need to see a doctor. You were assaulted.’
Rosie lowered her eyelashes again, feeling too weak and nauseous to fight him. Even if he was no longer freezing her out, he was domineering and she had never liked men of that ilk. Jason’s ilk, she labelled ruefully. Her one-time flatmate, Mel, had gloried in what she had seen as Jason’s essential masculinity until she saw the downside of his unpredictable moods and rages, not to mention his habit of making passes at other women whenever the notion took him. But it wasn’t fair to compare Alex Kolovos to Jason, Rosie thought guiltily. He was virtually a stranger yet he had risked life and limb to free her from Jason, which astounded her, for strangers usually put their own welfare first.
‘Did Jason hurt you?’ she whispered, wondering what had happened in the struggle that must have taken place after she had gone careening across the pavement.
Alexius rubbed his hard jaw line thoughtfully. ‘He got in one blow before I knocked him down. I was on the boxing team at school. I will have a bruise, nothing more …’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Rosie muttered. ‘I didn’t know he was going to be waiting for me. I wasn’t expecting to ever see him again—’
‘Is he your ex-boyfriend?’
‘My goodness, no! I would never get involved with someone like him. He was dating a friend of mine.’
Alexius watched her succulent pink lips compress on that closing remark, which explained nothing. He wondered what the real story was, whether she had encouraged that Neanderthal, who, unless he was very much mistaken, was pumped up both physically and mentally on steroids. He studied her. Her wealth of pale hair was spilling off the edge of the seat in a silken swathe, the big green eyes that dominated her triangular face dark with anxiety. She was still trembling with shock. She was so tiny and vulnerable that he was tempted to put his arms round her to offer comfort. But the very thought of such an unnatural urge shook Alexius to his very depths. When had he ever offered comfort to a woman? Why would he even want to touch her in that way? Sex was one thing and always acceptable, comfort and its complications, something else altogether. It was fitting that he had saved her from further harm and would now ensure that she received medical attention, but there was no need of any more personal element in their dealings. He had already decided to recommend her to her grandfather. While the way she had addressed him earlier had angered him, she was honest and forthright and a hard worker. The next time he saw her she would be in Greece with Socrates. When he had told her to leave, the strangest bad mood had settled over him at the awareness that the masquerade was at an end: he should be rejoicing that the job was done.
The car came to a halt outside a brightly lit town house in an imposing Georgian square. Rosie frowned while Alexius sprang out and turned to scoop her up into his arms before she had the chance to object. ‘I can walk!’ Rosie protested. ‘Where on earth are we? I thought you were taking me to Casualty.’
‘Where we would wait for hours before receiving attention. Dmitri Vakros is a doctor and a friend. He is just finishing his evening surgery,’ Alex explained.
A nurse greeted Rosie in a small changing room and helped her out of her soiled overalls into a gown. She was ushered into a surgery where a small stocky Greek told her to sit down on the examination couch. He checked her over, frowning at the blackening bruises on her arm from Jason’s fingers while the nurse attended to the abrasions on her knees. It all took very little time and she was relieved when she thought of how long she would have had to wait to receive attention at a busy casualty unit where people with much worse injuries would naturally take precedence. Of course, she reflected wryly while she donned her tunic and trousers again, she wouldn’t have bothered going to a hospital had she been on her own. Rosie was used to picking herself up from life’s more trying events and dusting herself off to go on as normal. Making a fuss or seeking attention had never been encouraged by the social workers who oversaw her childhood. She was secretly amazed that Alex Kolovos had made such a fuss over a minor event, behaving as if she had been badly hurt when she had only suffered the most minor damage at Jason’s hands.
‘You see, I’m fine,’ she told Alex breezily when he sprang upright to greet her in the elegant waiting room. His suit fitted him like a glove, she noted suddenly. It was a dark pinstripe, like something a banker might wear, very conservative, very smart. The close fit accentuated broad shoulders, narrow hips and long, powerful legs. Her cheeks warmed when she realised that she was staring, shaken anew by the obvious dichotomy in their lifestyles.
The doctor emerged from his surgery to talk to Alex and the two men chatted in Greek. It was Greek again, which he had been speaking out on the street when he was using his phone, she registered, recognising several words from the classes she had once attended in an effort to learn the language. Throughout the conversation she was conscious of the doctor’s frowning curiosity about her and she flushed beneath his assessing gaze. Evidently he was wondering what Alex was doing with a woman dressed as she was, clearly a manual worker and not in the same class as his friend.
‘I gather Dr Vakros works in the private sector,’ Rosie remarked on the way down the steps.
‘Yes.’
‘He won’t be sending you a bill for seeing me, will he?’ Rosie checked worriedly.
‘No, our friendship is of long standing.’
‘That’s a relief. I should be getting on now,’ Rosie said rather awkwardly. ‘Thanks for all your help.’
‘I’m not finished yet—I’m taking you home,’ Alex announced, addressing the man already waiting outside the car in Greek and catching the keys that were tossed to him.
‘There’s really no need for that. I’ve taken up enough of your evening.’
Alex Kolovos gazed down at her, high aristocratic cheekbones taut, black lashes low over his unnervingly bright eyes. ‘I want to take you home,’ he informed her levelly.
Colour surged into Rosie’s cheeks in receipt of that forceful statement. She didn’t know what to say, how to react. Why was he putting himself out like this for her benefit? Was he attracted to her or simply a good Samaritan? Why on earth would he be attracted to her? she scolded herself irritably. She was small, flat as a pancake out front where it mattered: men didn’t turn their heads to look when she walked by. Embarrassed by her own thoughts and a growing sense of utterly ridiculous inadequacy, she slid into the passenger seat of the saloon car and did up the belt. He drove off but seemed to have difficulty with the gears and cursed only half under his breath when the engine conked out at the traffic lights.
‘It’s a new car. I haven’t driven it much,’ he commented in his own defence, cursing the fact that he so rarely drove himself anywhere. From childhood he had had a chauffeur and had only enjoyed the freedom of driving his own car while at university.
Rosie tried not to smile at the excuse. Just about everybody she knew got around the city on public transport. She wondered if his was a company car and if so, did that mean that even though he had to share an office, he was a bigger wheel than she had appreciated in STA Industries? Glancing out of the window, she finally realised that they were travelling in entirely the wrong direction.
‘Sorry, I should have given you my address first,’ she said and did so.
He hadn’t a clue how to get there: that was immediately obvious to her, although he tried to hide it. She gave him directions and tried not to wince as he wrenched at the gears like a learner driver every time they had to stop at traffic lights.
‘Will you join me for a meal?’ he asked casually when after several wrong turns—she was lousy at giving directions—they finally were within minutes of her bedsit.
Surprised by the invitation, Rosie glanced at him in dismay. At the same time her empty tummy emitted an embarrassing growl and she coughed in the hope of masking it. ‘A meal?’ she prompted.
‘By the sound of it you’re as hungry as I am,’ Alexius remarked, his amusement unhidden.
So, the cough hadn’t worked. Rosie reddened yet again. She could not remember ever being so self-conscious in a man’s company before and it exasperated her. Circumstances had thrown them together and his was a spontaneous invite. Why not? It wasn’t as though he was asking her for a date.
‘There’s a place just round the corner from my bedsit,’ she volunteered. ‘It’s not fancy but the food’s good.’
‘That’ll do.’ Alexius parked the car, noting in the driving mirror that his security team were following in the car behind him. They had probably laughed their socks off every time the car stalled on him, he reflected wryly. But having got into Rosie’s good books again, he had every intention of staying on target, even though he knew that he no longer had his godfather as an excuse to spend time with her. He would do as he liked; Alexius always did as he liked. When he saw the restaurant, a shabby, brightly lit beacon in a rundown street, he was taken aback. He had never eaten in such a place in his life. The sheer scale of the gulf between their daily lives finally penetrated and disconcerted him. Pretending to be someone else was bringing challenges he had not foreseen.
It was a relief for Rosie to know that she would have no need to cook when she got home. She smothered a yawn as he followed her into the self-service restaurant, popular with shift workers for its long opening hours. She lifted a tray and turned to see Alex scanning his surroundings with wide-eyed attention.
‘We serve ourselves?’ Alex enquired, a black brow quirking at the concept.
Without fanfare, Rosie handed him a tray and joined the queue. Across the room three women at a table were giving Alex the eye. He seemed quite unaware of their blatant interest as he studied the menu on the wall. He did attract attention though, Rosie conceded, deciding that he was too good-looking for his own good. It was a thought she was familiar with and it had occurred to her the first time she saw a photo of her very handsome blond, blue-eyed father, Troy Seferis. She had always been wary of very attractive men and for the first time it occurred to her that that was a rather unreasonable bias. Alex had waded in to tackle Jason for her sake and she had no reason to think him vain, shallow or self-serving, in fact, the direct opposite. Her green eyes rested on him assessingly. With his black hair, tall, well-built body and that lean, strong-boned face sheathed in bronzed skin, he was extremely eye-catching … and he was with her. Her narrow shoulders suddenly straightened and she smiled.
At the checkout Rosie tried to insist on paying for her own meal, which seemed to totally bewilder her companion.
‘No woman pays for herself in my company,’ he breathed with arrogant finality, passing money literally over her head to conclude the matter.
Rosie gritted her teeth at being overruled. As she grabbed cutlery and a napkin he hovered with his own tray as if he didn’t know what to do. As a last resort, she lifted cutlery and a napkin for him and asked him if he wanted water. For a fully grown adult male he could occasionally exude the strangest hint of helplessness, she thought in bewilderment.
‘Why didn’t you want me to pay for your meal?’ he demanded once they had found a table.
‘I always pay for myself when I’m with a guy,’ Rosie admitted stiffly. ‘That way there are no misunderstandings.’
His black curling lashes screened his disconcerted gaze. Socrates was going to like her, oh, yes, Socrates was going to like her a lot, he decided with suppressed amusement. But the concept of a woman paying for herself was entirely foreign to Alexius and he didn’t like it at all. ‘Tell me about that thug, Jason,’ he urged. ‘Who is he?’
‘Until about ten days ago, I shared a flat with a friend called Melanie. Jason was Mel’s boyfriend. One night he grabbed me in the kitchen and tried to kiss me and Mel walked into the middle of it,’ Rosie recited, rolling her highly expressive eyes heavenward at the unpleasant memory. ‘She blamed me totally for it and said I must’ve led him on and she told me to get out of the flat. I thought she would have seen sense and cooled down by the next morning but instead she stomped into my room, called me a man-stealing cow and started packing my stuff for me. She threw me out …’
‘And Jason?’ Alexius watched in fascination as she tucked hungrily into her Irish stew like a woman who hadn’t eaten in at least a week. She might be thin but, seemingly, she had a healthy appetite.
‘He was forgiven on the spot … or so I assumed, but tonight he said that they’ve broken up,’ Rosie told him wryly. ‘Whatever, I still don’t want anything to do with him.’
‘Bearing in mind his obvious anger management issues, that’s wise,’ Alexius commented.
‘Are you Greek?’ she asked suddenly. ‘I recognised a couple of the words you used speaking to the guy that drove us to the doctor’s.’
He tensed. ‘You speak Greek?’
‘No, only a few words, tourist stuff,’ she proclaimed, her head tilting, pale blonde hair feathering round her cheekbones in artless waves. ‘I signed up for classes once but only went to a couple. It’s a more difficult language than I expected.’
‘Why Greek?’ Alexius realised in surprise that he was actually quite content to sit in the dump of a restaurant if it meant he could watch her amazingly animated face, linger on her sparkling eyes and the brightness of her fleeting smiles.
Rosie studied him. He was getting a five o’clock shadow, dark stubble marking his hard angular jaw line and defining his beautifully sculpted mouth. On him, it was an incredibly sexy look. Her tummy turned a somersault inside her as he focused those curiously light eyes on her full force. ‘Why Greek? My father was Greek,’ she admitted a little shakily, disturbed by the knowledge that he attracted her as if she were iron filings and he were a magnet. That was a scary first for her. ‘I never knew him, though. He broke up with my mother before I was born and died soon afterwards.’
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