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

CHAPTER TEN

‘NO RECEPTION committee,’ Rose said, sounding relieved.

‘No,’ Mathieu agreed, not sounding as though he shared her relief.

She shot him a curious look. ‘You’re annoyed?’

Mathieu’s eyes, cold as steel, flickered briefly over her face. ‘You’re my fiancée—not to come out to meet you is a deliberate snub.’ Andreos could be as rude as he liked to him, it was water off a duck’s back, but Mathieu would make sure that his father treated his future wife with the respect she deserved.

‘But I’m not.’

Mathieu flashed her a strange look, then retorted, ‘He doesn’t know that.’

He probably will about five minutes after seeing us together, she thought, pressing a hand to her churning stomach.

‘There’s no need to be nervous.’

Rose tried to smile. ‘And here I was thinking that I was hiding it well,’ she quipped.

‘Come in, it’s been a long day. You’ll feel better after a shower.’

It was silly, she knew, but the light pressure of his hand in the small of her back made her feel more confident.

Halfway up the path to the villa they were met by a man in uniform. He bowed slightly to Rose, then turned to Mathieu and made what sounded to Rose like a profuse apology.

Mathieu responded to him in the same language and he walked a little ahead of them the rest of the way. When they reached the entrance, a glass atrium from which several corridors radiated, Mathieu turned to her and said, ‘Spyros will show you to your room.’

‘You’re not coming?’ Hearing the sharpness of anxiety in her voice, she frowned, but she need not have worried. Mathieu appeared not to notice anything amiss.

‘I need to speak to Andreos.’

She watched him stride away and tried not to feel deserted.

‘Miss …?’

She turned to the uniformed man smiling encouragingly at her and followed him further into the villa.

His father was in his study. He glanced up when Mathieu walked in, then almost immediately returned his attention to the newspaper he was reading.

Mathieu walked straight across to him, grabbed the newspaper and threw it on the ground.

The older man looked at him in open-mouthed astonishment. ‘What do you think you are doing?’ he thundered.

‘I’m laying down a few ground rules, Andreos.’

‘You’re laying down rules to me?” The older man gave a snort of scorn.

‘Rule one …actually there is only one rule,’ he revealed, flashing a cold smile that made the other man look wary for the first time. ‘In future you will not slight Rose in any way; you will treat her with the respect she deserves.’

Andreos got to his feet. ‘You are very sensitive all of a sudden. Who is this Rose, anyway?’

‘The woman who is wearing my ring … that is all you need to know. Do we understand one another?’

‘Oh, I understand you. You march in here as if you own the place.’

‘I do.’

The soft intervention caused the older man’s already high colour to deepen. ‘If Alex had been alive none of this would be happening.’

‘Alex isn’t alive.’

‘You were always jealous of him,’ Andreos accused, stabbing a finger towards his first-born.

‘If he had been someone else I might have,’ Mathieu conceded. ‘But he wasn’t, he was Alex.’ It was hard to explain but nobody could be jealous of Alex—he just didn’t inspire negative emotions in people.

Or hadn’t. Sometimes even after eighteen months Mathieu still expected him to breeze into a room with that grin that was impossible to resist.

‘I’ve stepped into my brother’s shoes because you asked me to, Andreos.’

The reminder earned him a dark scowl.

‘But this is one area where I am not prepared to step into my brother’s shoes … not even to see the Constantine fortune swell the Demetrios coffers. I will marry the woman of my choice, not someone you chose for me.’

‘She’s half in love with you already.’

‘She thinks she is.’

And that was the problem. She’d been hurting after Alex’s death and he’d been there. He’d shown her a little kindness and she had developed a crush. In the natural course of things the crush would have died a natural death. But their respective parents kept it alive by continually contriving to throw them together.

The poor kid was so vulnerable. Couldn’t the old foxes see how cruel they were being to the girl? In his opinion they needed their heads banged together, but that not being an option, all he could do was not play their little game.

Hand on the door handle, Mathieu turned. ‘Just don’t try and manipulate me, Andreos. I don’t bend.’

Outside the room Mathieu almost collided with a still figure. Hands on her shoulders, he steadied Rose before firmly pushing her away from him so that he could look into her face.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I was looking for you.’

‘Well, you found me. How much,’ he asked, nodding towards the door behind him, ‘did you hear?’

‘Pretty much all of it.’

Enough to know he had loved his brother; she could hear it in his voice. She was just amazed that his father seemed deaf to his remaining son’s pain. As for Mathieu’s relationship with his father, that was even rockier than she had imagined. Ironically if his father had not pushed the union it was entirely possible that Mathieu would have fallen in love with the eligible Sacha, if she was beautiful, and Rose was sure she would be.

Maybe he already was in love with her?

‘I didn’t mean to, the door was open and …’

‘You decided to listen in.’

He didn’t look annoyed, which surprised her. ‘Well, you weren’t exactly quiet.’

‘So why were you following me?’

‘I asked Spyros to tell me where you were.’ She nodded towards the man who was standing by the wall being selectively deaf. ‘My phone was charging on the plane; you put it in your pocket. I want to ring my sister.’ Want was actually the wrong word, but she did feel obliged to assure Rebecca she was all right.

‘So I did,’ Mathieu said, digging the phone from his pocket and handing it to her.

Rose sucked in a tiny breath when his fingertips—was the contact accidental?—brushed hers. It was easier to hide your reaction when you knew what was coming.

‘You have a sister?’

She nodded, wondering what Mathieu’s reaction would be if he ever discovered he had already met Rebecca.

‘Just the one?’

She nodded.

‘And you’re close?’

‘Pretty close,’ she agreed, ‘though she’s married now, so … well, we don’t see as much of one another.’

Mathieu said something to the waiting Spyros, who vanished. ‘Come, you look exhausted. You should lie down before dinner.’

Rose couldn’t pretend the idea did not appeal; the day was beginning to catch up on her with a vengeance. She had to make a conscious effort to put one foot in front of the other.

‘This is my suite.’ He pushed open a door and preceded her into a large, elegantly furnished sitting room. ‘Your room is there.’ He pointed towards a closed door to her left. ‘And that is mine,’ he added, indicating the one next to it. ‘And your parents— they are alive …?’

For a moment the edit function on her vocal cords disconnected and Rose was horrified to hear herself say, ‘Is Sacha beautiful?’

‘Yes, she is.’

‘Then why don’t you want to marry her?’ she wondered as she moved around the room looking at the artwork on the walls. ‘Are these all genuine …?’

‘I should think so,’ Mathieu said, not looking at the artwork.

‘You should know—they’re yours.’

‘Then, yes, they are genuine.’ The soft wide-legged trousers she wore clung to the warm womanly curves of her hips and thighs as she moved.

‘You’re a beautiful woman too.’

Startled, Rose spun around, the heat rushing to her cheeks. ‘Are you trying to change the subject?’

Her beauty was a subject that was never very far from his thoughts, but he judged that this might not be the best moment to mention it.

‘No, I am trying to give you a compliment. Who would have thought,’ he murmured, moving towards her, ‘that it would be this hard?’

‘Well … all right, thank you. I think,’ she added cautiously. ‘Why don’t you want to marry her?’

Mathieu sighed and sank into an upholstered armchair. He propped his chin on steepled fingers and looked at her. ‘Are we talking about Sacha again?’

‘Well, if she’s beautiful your children would be winners of the genetic lottery,’ she mused, a frown of dissatisfaction settling on her soft features as her thoughts lingered on a mental image of golden-skinned little boys with grey eyes and jet hair. And pansy-eyed little girls with curls and sweet cupid-bow mouths.

‘I think that was a compliment.’

‘Like you’re totally unaware that you’re good-looking,’ she retorted, having some sort of heat rush and not the good kind— if there was a good kind. Concentrate, Rose, she told herself, sucking in a deep breath and saying crossly, ‘What are you doing?’ as he grabbed her wrist and pulled her down onto the arm of the chair.

‘I am looking at your neck,’ he explained huskily.

‘Well, don’t. I don’t like it.’ Like wasn’t the last word she would use to describe the slow-burning heat that was invading every cell in her body.

‘You want to know about Sacha? I will tell you. She loved my brother. She needed someone after Alex died and I was there.’

‘Your father said she loves you.’

‘It is a crush, nothing more,’ he said, sounding irritated. He loosed his grip on her arm and Rose got hastily to her feet.

‘I think that I’ll take that nap if you don’t mind,’ she said, backing quickly towards the door.

The interconnecting door between their rooms was ajar, Rose presumed left this way by the maid who had just brought fresh flowers into her own room.

Lips compressed, she tapped on the interconnecting door loudly. It made her feel odd to know that Mathieu could have walked in any time when she was asleep.

Not that she could imagine he would have unless he had a thing for snoring women.

‘It’s open.’

Rose stepped inside. ‘I have a slight problem with that.’

He was standing at the window gazing out to sea.

‘There is a key if you’re worried for your virtue.’ Mathieu, who had been standing at the open French doors, turned as he spoke.

Rose was conscious of her already tumultuous pulse giving several loud erratic thuds as it banged against her ribcage. Mathieu looked conspicuously sexy in a beautifully formal dark dinner jacket, and she barely noticed the stunning backdrop of the turquoise sea crashing onto the rocks below.

Her lashes came down in a protective sweep and she swallowed, ashamed of the silky heat between her thighs.

‘And don’t think I won’t use it.’ She could only hope he’d do the same because it would be good to have temptation removed.

And there was no point pretending that Mathieu wasn’t temptation. Head tilted a little to one side, Mathieu looked her up and down. Being the subject of his silent and critical perusal made Rose’s temper fizz, but she fought to control it, aware that flushed cheeks would ruin the aloof but sexy look she’d aimed for. ‘Pity.’

Her head came up. ‘I’m so sorry if I don’t meet with your approval.’ Anxious not to give him the totally false impression— she actually wanted it—she refused to ask him what was wrong with the way she looked.

‘Oh, you look fine,’ he said, his glance dropping once more to skim the pale blue silk shift dress she had taken a good deal of care to select.

She had also taken care with her hair and make-up and until he had turned up his nose she had been feeling confident that whatever else let her down it would not be her appearance.

Rose’s temper flared to the surface as she fixed him with a hostile look. ‘I look fine?’ she repeated in a dangerously quiet voice.

She didn’t want to look fine, she wanted to look outrageously gorgeous, although on a more realistic level she would have taken presentably pretty.

The dangerous note in her voice awoke a gleam of humour in his steely grey eyes, but his expression remained serious as he observed with a note of regret, ‘It’s just a pity you didn’t choose something that showed …’ His glance sank significantly to her breasts, which began to heave against their covering.

‘Show what, exactly?’

‘A little more cleavage. My father would have been too distracted to ask any awkward questions.’

‘Have you never—’ she choked ‘—heard of political correctness?’

‘Heard of it, but I don’t have an awful lot of time for it. Don’t take it personally, Rose, I’m just being practical.’

‘Practical,’ she spluttered, practically shaking with outrage.

‘I don’t think there’s anything incorrect in using what assets you’ve got, and don’t tell me you never have.’

This cynical suggestion made her temper fizz. ‘No, I haven’t.’

She knew she shouldn’t respond to his sceptical shrug because he was obviously trying to needle her, but Rose couldn’t bite her tongue.

‘As for encouraging anyone called Demetrios to leer at me,’ she said, ‘I don’t think so—just being around anyone of that name for any length of time is enough to make me want to go lie down in a quiet, darkened room.’ She would have felt a lot happier if the mental image that accompanied that hot statement had her lying alone in the quiet, darkened room.

‘I had no idea you felt that way …’ He glanced at his watch and sighed. ‘Unfortunately my father does not like tardiness. Otherwise I would be perfectly willing to oblige.’

The colour flew to her face; he had an uncanny ability to read her mind. ‘I meant alone in a darkened room with a cold compress on my head, not you …’ On top of me … inside me. What would that feel like, she wondered, to feel the weight of his hard body on top of her? His silky hardness filling and stretching her?

Glazed eyes half closed, her glance drifted to his mouth and a fractured sigh shuddered through her body. She expelled a second, deeper sigh and bit her lip. His raw masculinity and what it did to her was terrifying.

Face burning, she slammed her hand against her forehead, which even as she spoke was beginning to pound ominously.

‘If you want to distract people, Mathieu, and it’s legitimate to use what you’ve got—’ and he certainly had quite a lot, she thought, tearing her eyes from the hard, supple contours of his muscle-packed torso and feeling a bit dizzy as a consequence ‘—why,’ she suggested, sucking in a deep restorative breath ‘don’t you take off your shirt to go to dinner?’

She folded her arms across her chest, causing the silk across her hips to tauten, and fixed him with a tight-lipped smile.

‘See how you like being treated as a sex object?’

‘You would find me taking off my shirt distracting?’ He was definitely finding the way the subtly shiny fabric clung to the peachy curve of her hips and thighs more than distracting. In his mind he could hear the swish of the fabric as it fell in a silken pool around her feet. The image made his body temperature rise a notch and as his imagination lingered over the soft curves the ache in his groin became more difficult to ignore.

He was asking if she would find him performing a striptease distracting …?

Rose’s feeling of superiority vanished faster than her protest had the time he had kissed her. Now this was what was called shooting yourself in your own foot and then stamping on it for good measure.

She laughed nervously, her eyes sliding away as she attempted to treat his suggestion as the joke.

‘One naked man is much the same as another,’ she dismissed, smiling faintly.

Well, what else could she say?

She could hardly go into gratuitous detail about how she turned into a drooling, sex-starved imbecile every time she considered the hard body that filled his superbly cut clothing.

Swallowing hard, she lifted her chin and pinned a fixed smile to her face. She had heard that lust was undiscriminating, but she had not imagined how undiscriminating until she had met this man.

‘So you would be bored?’

‘For God’s sake!’ she snapped. ‘That wasn’t a challenge. You’re an incredible-looking man with a great body,’ she admitted, her attitude see-sawing between exasperation and desperation. ‘But I happen not to be one of those women who go for beefcake. A six pack does nothing for me.’ Well, not up to now it hadn’t, anyway.

Not that Mathieu could be categorised so neatly. Beefcake was just visual candy. Nice, but instantly forgettable, and he was neither.

What he had was far more complex and dangerous than simply the combined appeal of a great body and a charismatic smile. He had an earthy sexuality that evoked an almost visceral response in her. And there was nothing even faintly contrived about it; it was as much a part of him as his fingerprints and equally unique.

A dangerous smile lurking in the back of the platinum eyes still holding her gaze, he slid the unfastened tie from around his neck. ‘In that case,’ he mused, ‘it wouldn’t bother you if I …’

Rose watched, her eyes saucer-wide in horror as he began to slip the buttons of his shirt revealing in seconds a segment of golden skin sprinkled with dark body hair. Unable to tear her eyes from the erotic spectacle, Rose ran the tip of her tongue across the outline of her full upper lip and sucked in a shaky breath as illicit excitement clutched at the quivering muscles low in her pelvis and shot down to her curling toes.

‘Not in the slightest,’ she agreed hoarsely. ‘Although if your father doesn’t like tardiness this might not be the moment to allow your exhibitionist tendencies full rein.’

‘You would not find it that distracting, then?’ he questioned with a show of silky smooth innocence that was in stark variance to the sensual, mocking glitter in his deep-set eyes as they moved from her parted lips and fastened onto her wide, dilated amber eyes.

Another button followed the first two and Rose, fighting for composure, felt the sweat break out on her forehead as he pulled the hem from the waistband of his trousers. ‘N-not in the slightest,’ she said with what she suspected was the most unconvincing show of indifference this century.

‘You should never, ever play poker, mon ange.’ His shirt hung open to the waist, revealing a large proportion of his powerful chest and a tantalising section of muscle-ridged flat stomach.

Rose was shocked and horrified by the shaft of lust that struck to the heart of her. Eyes glazed, she ran a tongue over the dry outline of her lips. The impulse to reach out and touch him, place her hands on the golden glowing skin that looked like oiled silk, was so strong she could physically taste it. She stood poised on the balls of her feet to take flight, but was unable to summon the strength to break the hypnotic hold of his smoky eyes.

Then finally she managed to turn her head sharply. Her hands clenched as she fought to calm her erratic shallow breathing and drag enough air into her lungs to stop her head spinning.

‘I prefer poker to the games you play,’ she husked, feeling the unexpected sting of emotional tears fill her eyes.which was crazy because she simply wasn’t a crying person.

‘I don’t play games, Rose.’ There was a note in his voice that she hadn’t heard before. It made her want to search his face, but she knew that would be a bad idea. Looking at him made her mind mush … actually, her mind was permanently mush at the moment.

He covered the few feet that separated them in seconds. Framing her face between his hands, he tilted her head up to his.

Rose’s knees sagged; the sexual smoulder deep in his eyes made things shift and tighten with painful intensity low down in her pelvis.

He’s going to kiss me.

This alarming realisation was almost instantly followed by one that was even more alarming—I want him to!

Wanted him to so badly she could taste it—not, of course, that she was going to let him.

It would have been easy to defuse the situation—she could have laughed in his face, pulled away or told him he was taking the role play a bit too seriously. She did none of these. Rose took an option not on the list. Shaking like someone with a fever, she gave an inarticulate little moan, wove her fingers into silky raven strands of his glossy hair and dragged his face towards her.

Her fingers stayed tangled in his hair as he covered her mouth with his. She was sucking in a tremulous breath when his tongue slid into her mouth in a slow, sensuous exploration. Tugging gently at the pink fullness of her lower lip, he lifted his head slightly.

‘I have been wondering how you would taste.’

The erotic, husky confidence sent a thrill of illicit excitement through her trembling body.

He freed a hand from her face to trace a lone finger along her cheek. ‘I thought you might taste delicious …’ He swallowed, the muscles of his throat working as he ran his tongue over the soft inner surface of her lower lip. Rose shivered and moaned softly. ‘And now I know you taste even better than that …’ he completed in a throaty husk.

Eyes dilated and glazed with passion, she lifted a hand to his cheek. As her fingers slid along the hard line of his cheek and jaw somehow she caught a glimpse of movement in the periphery of her vision.

The realisation that they had an audience swept through her aroused body like an icy chill; they were not alone. She would have pulled her hand away had Mathieu not held it there. Looking past her, he said casually, ‘Hello, Sacha.’

‘S-sorry, I didn’t know …’

The girl, who was beautiful, sounded as miserable and embarrassed as she looked. If Rose hadn’t been dealing with her own feelings of shame and humiliation she might have felt sorry for her.

‘I just came to say that dinner … your father is waiting.’

‘We’ll be right there.’

The door closed and this time he made no attempt to stop her pulling away. Well, he wouldn’t, would he? There was no one to see the tender scene of seduction.

And you thought he genuinely found you irresistible? Self-disgust churned in her stomach as she backed away glaring at him with loathing.

She could not, she would not, fall for Mathieu. This was just chemistry and chemistry she could deal with, she told herself. Who better? Twenty-six-year-old virgins were not renowned for their uncontrolled sexual appetites; she had reached the conclusion a long time ago that hers was underdeveloped. Any chemistry she could ignore. ‘Now where were we?’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ROSE backed away so fast she almost tripped over a low table. Hastily righting it and the porcelain figurine that she had just saved, she straightened up and hitched up the neckline of her dress a protective inch before smoothing it down.

A distracted expression filtered into her wide wary eyes as her hand remained flat on the gentle curve of her stomach. She could feel the heat of her skin through the thin fabric. Mathieu’s body had felt hot when she had been crushed up against him—scorchingly hot. Hot enough to melt her.

Closing her eyes, she counted to ten—slowly. When she opened them he was staring at her.

‘Was that really necessary?’ she asked.

As he carried on studying her flushed face with an unsettling intensity she began to panic. What was he seeing? If he knew how and what she was feeling it would give him an unfair advantage because she as sure as hell didn’t. She had never felt so confused in her life.