by Lynne Graham
‘If you’re not marrying him, you shouldn’t be going anywhere with him,’ Socrates Seferis delivered in a final cutting piece of advice.
Rosie glanced from her grandfather’s angry, dissatisfied face to her aunt’s barely hidden triumph at Rosie’s fast fall from grace and decided that she had had enough of the family reunion for one day. ‘I make my own decisions and I trust Alexius,’ she said quietly.
‘Why on earth didn’t you stand up for yourself?’ Rosie demanded of Alexius once they were back in the car. ‘He’s the one who told you to get to know me.’
‘I have great respect for Socrates, moli mou. He said nothing that was not deserved. I do have the reputation of a womaniser and I should, for once, have practised restraint.’ Yet even in the midst of that, Alexius was hopelessly amused and oddly touched by the manner in which Rosie had waded in like a miniature prize fighter to try and defend him to her grandfather, failing to appreciate that Socrates was probably the only man alive whom Alexius would have allowed to speak to him in such terms.
‘Maybe I should have kept my hands off you,’ Rosie muttered, irritated that he was trying to shoulder all the blame as if she were some helpless little fluttery thing with no brains between her ears.
‘No, I wanted you and I am too used to taking what I want and not counting the cost,’ Alexius breathed with a raw edge. ‘That, at least, was a fair comment.’
‘You should’ve listened to me when I told you not to mention me being pregnant so soon.’ Rosie sighed, wishing he were not so highly resistant to accepting advice.
‘The least I owed my godfather was the truth.’
‘My aunt is poisonous—she really enjoyed that awful scene. Why didn’t you warn me what she was like?’
‘I didn’t want to influence your opinions before you met them. They’re not my family, after all,’ he traded. ‘As a rule, Socrates is a liberal, warm-hearted man but he has your quick temper. He will very much regret the way you parted. I underestimated his reaction. His values are naturally those of the older generation and I should have foreseen that.’
Alexius took her back to the airport and it was a shock when they were suddenly engulfed in a seething mass of people waving cameras and shouting questions. She shrank into Alexius’s side, blinded by the flash bulbs going off all around her, barely aware of the security men struggling to keep the crush at bay.
‘Who’s the girl?’ voices shouted repeatedly. ‘What about Adrianna Lesley?’
Journalists, Rosie labelled belatedly, what she supposed were called paparazzi, she guessed as, his handsome mouth clenched, Alexius herded her silently through the building where everybody was staring, no doubt wondering who they were. Although as the airport security staff joined in with Alexius’s own team to practise crowd control in keeping the most overenthusiastic members of the press from preventing their free passage, she began to appreciate that Alexius appeared to be exceedingly well-known and that ironically it was her presence in his company that was creating the stir. At the back of her mind, she was trying very hard not to wonder who Adrianna was. A girlfriend? What did she know about his private life?
‘Sorry about that,’ Alexius pronounced, reading the shock at the onslaught of the paps in her dazed expression after he had slotted her into a helicopter and Bas arrived in his pet carrier.
‘How often does that happen to you?’ Rosie whispered shakily, shooting a troubled glance his way.
‘Too often.’
‘Why were they so curious about me?’
‘You arrived in my private jet. I’m rarely seen travelling with a woman. Someone at the airport probably tipped them off.’ His voice was clipped, offhand, as if such incidents were so common in his daily life that he didn’t even think about them. But what his tone seemed to say was misleading because for the first time ever Alexius had been enraged by a press intrusion. Rosie had been frightened and she was pregnant and it shouldn’t have happened. He had felt like scooping her up into his arms to shield her but had known such behaviour would only serve to incite the paparazzi to even greater aggression.
‘Where are we going now?’ she asked on the back of a huge yawn as she idly stroked Bas’s ear through the bars of his carrier.
‘Somewhere private,’ Alexius breathed, flexing his big shoulders below his finely tailored jacket and relaxing visibly at the prospect, long powerful thighs spreading.
Rosie was so sleepy and overwhelmed by the events of the day that she would not have cared had he announced that he was taking her to the moon. He had turned her life upside down though: she was very much aware of that. She flexed her crushed toes in the designer shoes she wore, brushed the expensive fabric of her dress with a wondering hand and rested her head back drowsily. It was like being a princess for a day, she thought ruefully, but fine feathers did not make fine birds because underneath she was the exact same Rosie Gray and not at all the sort of woman normally associated with a billionaire. And while enumerating all the possible ways in which she did not fit that frame, Rosie fell asleep.
Alexius almost laughed when he realised that Rosie was dead to the world: a woman had never fallen asleep in his company before. After all, he never spent the night with a woman and while he was awake his normal style of lover was too hyped up with the desire to entertain and impress him to relax to that extent. But then Rosie didn’t fall into the normal category for him, he acknowledged absently. She was no star-struck groupie, ready to do anything to please, and he was discovering that he very much liked her ability to treat him as an equal and her lack of awe and subservience.
Rosie awakened only when the helicopter landed and she stumbled groggily onto solid ground again. It was dark but the moonlight illuminated a giant white house set against a dark backdrop. She blinked, not quite sure of what she was seeing, for it was so imposing a building that it looked vaguely like a film set to her. ‘Where on earth are we?’
‘We’re on Banos, the island where I spent my earliest years,’ Alexius supplied as outside lights came on to show her a uniformed older man trundling their luggage across an immaculate lawn towards the house.
‘An island … and a house like a palace,’ she mused, insanely aware of her tousled hair and crumpled dress and scolding herself for being so vain. Had she snored while she was asleep? A school friend had once told her that she had snored on a sleepover. Inwardly, she cringed.
‘Can I let him out?’ Alexius enquired because Bas was whining and scratching in his carrier.
In answer, Rosie grasped the carrier and undid the door. Bas lurched out like a little drunken dog, struggling to balance on his three good legs against the weight of the cast.
‘Thee mou, he could wring pity from a stone,’ Alexius groaned. ‘How long does he need the cast for?’
‘Another month …’ Rosie was endeavouring not to stare goggle-eyed at the magnificent house with its white weatherboarding and long gracious colonnaded verandah. ‘Any minute now I expect Scarlett O’Hara to appear on the front step,’ she admitted.
‘It was modelled on a Southern plantation house in the thirties for one of my grandmothers,’ Alexius conceded.
Nothing could have more adequately illustrated his illustrious, privileged background, Rosie thought dizzily, than the awe-inspiring sight of the marble hall, ornamented with a huge crystal chandelier, a superb wide staircase, bronze statues and more gilded furniture than Rosie had ever seen outside a museum. She just couldn’t imagine anyone actually living in such a grand setting and she swallowed hard when a small group of staff filed out of a rear doorway to greet them.
‘Rosie, this is Olympia, my housekeeper,’ Alexius informed her. ‘Olympia will show you upstairs …’
The stout older woman led Rosie up the sweeping staircase and through double doors to the most massive room that Rosie had ever seen. The four-poster bed was draped in what appeared to be hand-painted silk and the rugs were so elegant and muted in tone that Rosie walked round them rather than across them to peer int
o the dressing room and bathroom that completed the accommodation. Wow and wow again, she reflected, feeling uniquely undeserving of such overpowering luxury. What had he thought when he saw her humble bedsit? It hadn’t frightened him off, she conceded with a sense of satisfaction that surprised her. Her cases arrived and with them a maid, who commenced unpacking them and hanging them up in the fancy dressing room. Feeling light years out of her depth at being waited on, Rosie grabbed up her wash bag and fled into the bathroom to take refuge there. Removing her makeup, which had streaked round her eyes enough to make her groan out loud, she stripped off to use the shower and freshen up. The warm flow of the water revived her somewhat and she made use of the towelling robe available to return to the bedroom. Mercifully, the maid had finished and Rosie finally had the time and the opportunity to more closely examine some of the clothes that had arrived only the day before, for she had had to pack them in a hurry. From a drawer she extracted a slinky pale blue nightdress and put it on, noting that excess fabric puddled round her feet. A knock on the door heralded the appearance of another maid with a tray of food.
Rosie fell on the meal like the original starving woman, not even having realised how hungry she was until the tantalising aromas of beautifully cooked food assailed her nose. Afterwards she looked at herself in the mirror, turned sideways and saw that there was still not the slightest sign that she was pregnant, aside of the noticeable swelling of her previously non-existent boobs, a development that fascinated her. She was still very tired, which she knew was common in early pregnancy, and she clambered into bed, thinking that she ought to rest for the blob’s … the baby’s sake. At least he didn’t fake things he didn’t feel or tell her only what she wanted to hear. And she didn’t need to feel guilty about landing him with her as a house guest either, not in such a giant building. Her mind rattled on and on and on, constantly reverting to thoughts of Alexius, which annoyed her. Was it an infatuation similar to something a teenager would experience? she wondered with a grimace while trying not to wonder what he was doing, what he was thinking and … who was Adrianna? Did she have the nerve to ask him? She certainly didn’t have the right. Her lack of self-discipline infuriated her: here she was worn-out with her brain buzzing like a bee and she seemed totally incapable of falling asleep.
At two in the morning, having leafed through several magazines to pass the time and even switched on the television to look in vain for an English channel, she got out of bed again. Once more she was hungry, didn’t know how, only knew that she was. Bas, who did snore like a little train, was sound asleep on top of a rug and she crept out, not wanting to lug him downstairs with her where he might bark at anything strange and wake people up.
The door at the back of the hall through which the staff had emerged led down a stair to a basement kitchen that would have been adequate for a big hotel. She wondered if Alexius entertained a lot, held fancy dinner parties or wild weekends. Strange, he seemed so reserved but in bed he had been anything but. In fact, he had been extraordinarily passionate. She lifted her hands and pressed them to her hot face. ‘Stop it, stop torturing me,’ she urged her mind.
‘Who’s torturing you?’ Alexius enquired lazily from the doorway.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AS ALEXIUS switched on the lights, Rosie whirled round in shock, pale blue silk clinging to her lithe body. ‘You couldn’t sleep either?’
‘No.’ Alexius studied her as she opened the doors of the giant double refrigerator to pull out cold meat, which she ate where she stood. ‘I gather you’re hungry.’
Rosie went red and nodded because her mouth was full. It gave her a most gratuitous opportunity to appraise the full impact of Alexius’s raw sexuality, his lean powerful physique sheathed in a pair of worn tight jeans and nothing else. Bare-chested, all that golden skin and rippling muscle on display, he took her breath away and desire swelled deep down inside her. He was badly in need of a shave, for dark stubble covered his lower jaw, framing his beautifully sensual mouth. As if she could sate her sensual response to him with food, she hurriedly helped herself to some cheese.
‘Didn’t you get a meal earlier?’ he enquired politely.
Feeling the blush begin as far down as her chest, Rosie winced and nodded.
‘Maybe it’s being pregnant,’ Alexius suggested lazily, scanning her glowing face framed by her moonlight-pale fall of hair with a growing hunger of his own that had nothing to do with his stomach. He ached for her in the most painful of ways and it brought out primal instincts he hadn’t known he possessed.
‘Maybe the baby likes protein.’
‘Why were you talking to yourself?’
Rosie closed the doors of the refrigerator. ‘Just thoughts I was having … I couldn’t sleep …’
Like an agile cat, Alexius shifted soundlessly a couple of steps closer. ‘Thoughts about me?’
Rosie settled scornful green eyes on him. ‘Why on earth would I be thinking about you?’
‘Why would I be thinking about you?’ Alexius traded, very much in unfamiliar territory because he had never before discussed feelings or thoughts with a woman.
‘I’m stressing you out?’ Rosie suggested teasingly, trying to kick her brain back into gear, trying not to let her gaze linger on him the way it wanted, needed to as if being away from Alexius even for just a few hours left her with a deficit she had to meet.
‘Thee mou … you’re so beautiful, moli mou.’
Rosie almost laughed out loud but then she saw his eyes and realised that he meant it, truly believed it at that moment and gratification blossomed inside her. For a long, timeless moment they exchanged a look and her heart began to thump really fast in her chest. A hand closed round her wrist and exerted a gentle tug to draw her closer. Brain, she shouted inside her head, heart rate rocketing like an express train, brain, get back here right this minute. His hands closed around her waist as he lifted her to him and their mouths clashed with the frantic, feverish longing that powered them both. She tasted him and she couldn’t get enough of that taste. You weren’t going to do this, her brain reminded her at that point. Shut up, she told it, fingers delving into luxuriant black hair as she strained against him, her body in an electrifying state of anticipation that she couldn’t quell. She kept on kissing him as the ache between her thighs built and thrummed through her like a storm warning.
‘I’ve never stopped wanting you since that night,’ Alexius growled, thrusting back the door into the hall and heading for the stairs.
‘Was that a complaint?’ Rosie asked through swollen lips, thrilled that he had gone on wanting her in spite of his failure to call and the subsequent bombshell of her pregnancy, but all the while knowing that there were other more important things she should be thinking about.
‘No. You make me feel alive for the first time in years,’ Alexius fired back, taking the stairs two at a time with her cradled securely in his arms like a captive. ‘I like it, but I don’t like it when I can’t touch you.’
The admission jerked a tripwire in Rosie’s brain. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this …’
‘We haven’t done anything yet,’ Alexius reminded her darkly.
Her hand lifted to trace the frustrated curve of his sensually full mouth while her eyes connected with the hungry urgency of his. The desire, she realised, was a two-way street and the knowledge strengthened her: she was not the only one suffering withdrawal symptoms, feeling weak in the hold of fighting off those unwelcome promptings. She couldn’t be near him without wanting to touch him and perfectly understood his frustration at not being able to touch her. He kissed her again, his tongue delving with erotic skill, and the world spun dizzily around her. He dropped her down on a mercifully well-sprung bed in a lamplit room even larger than her own and straight away, separated from that big powerful body of his and the devastating allure of him, she remembered what she had wanted to ask him about.
‘Who’s Adrianna?’
Engaged in unzipping his jeans, Alexius glanced
at her with a frown of surprise. ‘Someone I slept with months ago.’
‘Not a serious relationship, then?’ Rosie pried helplessly.
‘I don’t do serious.’
Rosie knew that strategy very well, had enjoyed several first dates with men who couldn’t relax until they had assured her of the same thing. It had amused her that a man could feel the need to warn her off before either of them even got to know each other, but for some reason it did not amuse her when the same phrase fell so smoothly from Alexius’s lips. ‘So, why were the journalists asking about her, then?’ Rosie persisted doggedly.
‘Adrianna gave several interviews to magazines implying that there was more between us than a brief affair. That happens a lot to me with women,’ Alexius admitted, coming down on the bed beside her like a naked bronzed god, or at least a massively aroused naked bronzed god.
‘Aren’t you the popular one? My goodness, it’s no wonder you have an ego the size of the sun!’ Rosie quipped.
Alexius laughed, the tension in his features roused by her questions vanishing. He didn’t always know where he was with her and that was another first for him with a woman. ‘Have I?’
‘Totally,’ Rosie whispered, lying back on his big bed and feeling remarkably like a seductress. It was the way he was looking at her, those light eyes glittering against his brown skin and eating her up as though she were an amazingly desirable creature and she liked the feeling.
‘It doesn’t impress you, though, does it?’
‘No, but I was impressed when you ran up the stairs carrying me,’ Rosie told him truthfully, allowing a hand to settle on a broad bronzed shoulder, exulting in the heat and strength of him.
‘You don’t weigh any more than a child.’
Her sultry mouth down curved. ‘I’m going to get fatter and heavier soon.’
‘There’ll simply be more of you to enjoy, moraki mou,’ Alexius husked, reaching down for the hem of her nightdress to pull it up and over her head.
