A Ring to Secure His Heir

by Lynne Graham

  ‘So, you did set us up?’ Rosie queried.

  ‘Anything was preferable to watching the two of you acting like sulking teenagers on opposite sides of the room,’ Socrates admitted.

  ‘We argued,’ Rosie told him grudgingly.

  Alexius stepped past Socrates into the lift before the doors could close again. ‘But go ahead and announce our engagement this evening. I have every intention of ensuring that we work out our differences.’

  ‘Announce … what? An engagement? Are you crazy? I have no desire to work at anything with you!’ Rosie shouted at him full-tilt as she followed him into the lift, outraged at his declaration.

  ‘Did I say I was giving you a choice?’ Alexius asked tight-lipped.

  ‘And how do you intend to make me listen?’ Rosie hurled. ‘Do you ever listen to yourself?’

  ‘Do you ever know when to shut up?’ Alexius traded. ‘Do you even know why you’re arguing with me?’

  ‘You dumped me … I hate you,’ Rosie responded without even having to think about it as the lift doors sprang open again.

  ‘You’ll get over it,’ Alexius asserted, pouncing on her without warning to swing her up into his arms and head first over one shoulder, one hand splayed to the pert curve of her behind to lock her safely in place. ‘You’re coming home with me now.’

  ‘No, I darned well am not! Put me down right this minute!’ Rosie gasped in ringing disbelief as he strode across the foyer towards the exit with everybody staring at them. As her upside-down face burned crimson with embarrassment her fists battered at his broad back in furious frustration. ‘I won’t tell you again, Alex—put me down!’

  ‘You should know by now that I never do as you tell me and am stubbornly resistant to even good advice,’ Alexius fielded.

  Rosie blinked in horror as flash bulbs went off all around them, momentarily lighting them up and illuminating a sea of grinning faces.

  ‘Alex …’ she wailed, still in shock at his behaviour.

  Alexius lowered her carefully into the rear of the waiting limousine and swung in beside her, watching with helpless amusement as she struggled to sit up and smooth back her tumbled hair from her flushed face. ‘How could you do that to me?’ she demanded wrathfully.

  ‘You didn’t give me a choice. The prospect of a couple of comic photographs doesn’t bother me,’ he admitted with a level of calm that disconcerted her.

  ‘Where on earth are you taking me?’ Rosie demanded sharply.

  ‘Back to the island where we can fight in privacy.’

  ‘I’m not going back to the island,’ Rosie told him stonily.

  ‘Please don’t make me carry you through the airport kicking and screaming,’ Alexius urged impatiently.

  ‘I don’t know what’s come over you.’

  ‘The knowledge that I don’t have the right words to persuade you and that sometimes actions speak more loudly and truly,’ he countered levelly.

  ‘You didn’t try to persuade me.’

  ‘I told you I wanted you back.’

  ‘That was persuasion?’ Rosie was wide-eyed at the sheer primitive nature of that idea. ‘I’ll never forgive you for making a spectacle of us like this.’

  Alexius contrived to look unconcerned by that warning and even dared to smile when Rosie got out of the limo at the airport and demonstrated no desire to run away. But then shock had overwhelmed Rosie’s temper and made her think hard instead. She was very much shaken by Alexius going to such extraordinary lengths to try and get her back, even grudgingly impressed by the level of importance he had to have attached to her to act in such a way in public. And on one point he was undeniably right: they did have to talk, had to sort out their future relationship along civilised lines for the baby’s sake. Her grandfather’s crack about ‘sulking teenagers’ had hit a bull’s eye with Rosie and made her squirm with embarrassment.

  Another barrage of cameras greeted them at the airport and she wondered bitterly if their colleagues outside the hotel had tipped them off. If they were hoping for another show of some kind they were disappointed when Alexius and Rosie merely walked decorously past. They boarded the helicopter before Rosie remembered her pet. ‘Bas is at Grandad’s!’ she exclaimed in dismay.

  ‘No, he’s not. I took care of him before I arrived at the party.’

  Rosie shot his lean hard profile a frowning glance. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Bas and your clothes were flown out earlier this evening,’ Alexius admitted reluctantly, watching the gleam of incredulity spark in her eyes. ‘I may not be the romantic type but I am very practical, glyka mou.’

  ‘And how did Bas greet you?’

  ‘Like he would greet any kidnapper—with snarls and snapping teeth! But I got him all the same,’ Alexius informed her cheerfully. They were on their way back to the island and he felt more energised than he had felt all week. Although he still felt that he lacked the right words and approach he was convinced that with persistence he could get over that barrier.

  Momentarily weak, Rosie rested her pounding head back against the seat rest. Why had he told Socrates to go ahead and announce their engagement? Did Alexius actually believe that he could railroad her into marriage? Was this her cue to accept that for their child’s sake she had to settle for a guy who only wanted her to provide him with ‘amazing’ sex? Possibly she was guilty of expecting too much from Alexius. Nobody could love to order. Either love was there or it was not. He had had no business criticising her dress and behaviour at the party. What had come over him? She could have been forgiven for thinking that he was jealous.

  Alexius … jealous? Her soft mouth formed a little moue of wry amusement, even as she conceded that she had been jealous of his apparent closeness to Yannina Demas. Seeing Alexius with another woman had been like having little knives shot deep into her shrinking flesh, she acknowledged painfully. But considering that he had walked out of the party leaving Yannina behind, she knew she had no grounds to be jealous.

  Yet weeks had passed since she had faced the fact that if she did not marry Alexius there would be other women in his life. She couldn’t have it both ways, she reminded herself doggedly. Either she married him or set him free, and if she married him she would have to accept that he would be something less than her dream husband. But then how many women got to marry their dream? Alexius was her dream even if she was not his. He didn’t love her—her every regret came down to the same cruel bottom line and there was no escaping it. Could she live without his love? Would it be easier to accept a practical marriage than live without him? But then she wasn’t living without him well … She was absolutely miserable without him.

  It was the early hours of the morning when the helicopter landed on Banos. The big house was fully lit and Bas ran out of the front door barking an excited welcome. Rosie could barely move in her short skirt and Alexius simply laughed when he registered her predicament and lifted her out to set her down. Her high heels crunched across dew-wet grass up the steps and indoors. She scooped up Bas on the way, soothing his frantic licking and fussing with quiet words.

  ‘You know, this has got to be the most insane thing you’ve ever done,’ she told Alexius weakly in the echoing hall and then, in a tone that barely contained her incredulity and frustration, ‘Why didn’t you phone me?’ she yelled at him.

  ‘I didn’t know what to say,’ he muttered fiercely. ‘I was scared I would make things worse and lose you for ever.’

  And something gave within Rosie. I was scared. She had never thought he would admit to anything like that and it touched her deep and made her want to listen for a change.

  ‘I can’t stand this house without you in it,’ he admitted abruptly as he strode into the drawing room. ‘I had to do something.’

  Lashes fluttering over her dazed eyes, Rosie followed him. ‘The something was a bit extreme …’

  ‘Not as far as I’m concerned,’ Alexius asserted. ‘My world comes alive when you’re around but it’s dead when yo
u’re not.’

  Her eyes rounded. ‘You missed me?’

  ‘Of course I missed you! What do you think I am? A stone?’

  ‘I have wondered sometimes.’ Her fancy shoes pinching, Rosie sat down on an opulent sofa and kicked them off with a sigh of relief. He had missed her but he still hadn’t been able to work himself up to a simple phone call. He was a mass of contradictions and complexities, some of which she might never grasp because she was a much more straightforward person.

  He stood in front of formal marble fireplace, rigid with tension. ‘I want you back. I want to marry you.’

  ‘So you’ve said,’ Rosie conceded, no longer sure what her answer should be, for over time the once clear lines of her rejection had blurred as she came to need him more and more.

  Alexius released his breath in a slow hiss. ‘We could have a good marriage. You and the baby would be the most important elements in my world.’

  Rosie dealt him a frowning look of doubt. ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘It’s the truth,’ he declared, a slight flush highlighting his amazing cheekbones. ‘The complete and utter truth, moraki mou.’

  ‘And when did this … staggering change in your attitude come about?’ Rosie prompted, desperate for him to convince her, absolutely pathetically desperate to make that leap.

  ‘When you weren’t here any more,’ Alexius admitted jerkily. ‘Somehow and right from the start you got under my skin—’

  ‘Are you sure this isn’t just a temporary condition?’

  Alexius lifted his handsome head high, silver eyes screened, his discomfiture pronounced. ‘I haven’t looked at another woman since the day I met you.’

  ‘You were with that Demas woman this evening,’ Rosie reminded him, afraid to hope, afraid to believe.

  ‘Nina called me to ask if she could go with me to the party. She’s a friend, nothing more.’

  ‘And you truly haven’t slept with anyone else since you met me?’ Rosie prompted shakily.

  ‘Truly,’ he affirmed gruffly. ‘I don’t want anyone else but you.’

  Her heart hammered below her breastbone and soft pink lit her small face as she studied him, hope leaping high as the ceiling above. ‘Then I could consider staying for good this time …’

  Alexius nodded slowly, as restrained as she in his reaction. He dug into his pocket to produce a small jewellery box and crossed the room to offer it to her. ‘It would make me very happy if you wore this.’

  His formality took Rosie aback. This proved to be a magnificent diamond solitaire ring that glittered blindingly in the artificial light. She remembered him telling her grandfather to announce the engagement but she was still dumbfounded, not having expected Alexius to go for such a traditional approach. ‘You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?’ she whispered unsteadily, gently removing the ring from the box and sliding it onto the relevant finger. ‘But you didn’t need to get me a ring …’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ he disagreed. ‘We’ve done everything else the wrong way round. I wanted to do this the right way.’

  Rosie was enchanted by the way her ring caught the light. ‘Who says it was the wrong way round?’

  ‘I do. It took me too long to realise how much you meant to me … I nearly lost you,’ Alexius told her grittily.

  ‘I love you, Alex. I have from the start,’ Rosie murmured with gentle dignity as she finally abandoned her defensive attitude. ‘I’d be kind of hard to lose.’

  He lifted her off the sofa in one swift movement to crush her against his big, powerful frame. ‘I need you … I don’t like my world without you in it. Is that love?’

  ‘Only you can tell. I’m horribly unhappy when I have to wake up in the morning without you,’ Rosie admitted ruefully. ‘This past week—’

  ‘—has been hell,’ he cut in harshly, knotting one hand into the fall of her hair to tip her head back, staring down at her with diamond-bright eyes of tender appreciation and pleasure. ‘I was counting the hours until I could see you again and then when I did see you, it all went wrong.’

  ‘Yes,’ she conceded. ‘You had another woman with you.’

  ‘And you didn’t look like you any more in that fancy dress. I don’t like other men looking at you. I’m very possessive when it comes to you and I’ve never felt that way before. It seemed so petty but I couldn’t help it, and when you smiled at that creep you were dancing with I wanted to kill him!’ he admitted grimly.

  Rosie smiled up at him with wondering eyes, beginning to believe that he was hers at last, and more hers indeed than she had ever dreamt he might be. ‘I love you, Alex.’

  ‘We’re going to get married as soon as it can be arranged,’ Alexius told her squarely. ‘Tell me now if you’re going to fight about that.’

  ‘I’m not going to fight. You need me, you care about me and I think you have room in your heart for the baby as well,’ she said, happiness and hope twinned in her heart and blossoming.

  ‘Our baby,’ Alexius countered, sliding a hand below her skirt to splay his fingers across her stomach. ‘You’re getting bigger, agape mou. Knowing that’s my baby in there is very sexy.’

  Rosie trembled as his thumb stroked across her mound, awakening the awareness that his very presence teased with anticipation. He swept her up in his arms and headed for the stairs. ‘You know, I don’t know anything about being a father,’ he warned her worriedly.

  ‘And I don’t know much more about being a mother,’ she pointed out equably, stroking a calming hand along the hard angular curve of his jaw. ‘We’ll both learn as we go along. We have all the time in the world.’

  He laid her down on his big wide bed with tremendous care. ‘I know I love you and I’ll never stop loving you. But it unnerves me to think that we might never have met.’

  ‘But we did meet.’ Rosie drew him down to her with determined hands, hungry for his kisses, eager to soothe his concerns and wrap him up tight in her love. ‘And now we’re together.’

  ‘Together for ever,’ Alexius rhymed, his tender gaze locked to her lovely face. ‘I’m afraid you’ve got a life sentence, agape mou. You get no time off for good behaviour.’

  ‘I can live with that but I can’t live without you,’ Rosie whispered on a soft sigh of pleasure as his sensual mouth covered hers.

  EPILOGUE

  ROSIE descended the stairs of the villa on Banos. The big house had been modernised into a vision of stunning contemporary elegance soon after her marriage to Alexius. Her green designer dress was complimented by a breathtaking set of diamond jewellery reputed to have once belonged to the Russian royal family and a gift to her from her husband on their first anniversary. As she reached the hall, a little girl bowled up to her with Bas dancing at her heels.

  ‘You look like a princess, Mummy,’ Kasma opined. She was a very pretty little girl with a shock of black Stavroulakis curls and her mother’s bright green eyes. Her enquiring mind, impish sense of humour and quick tongue were a mix of both parents. ‘Great-grandad is in the drawing room. He looks very smart too.’

  Socrates Seferis was enjoying a quiet drink by the fire. The party being hosted that night by his granddaughter and her husband was to mark the occasion of their fifth wedding anniversary. Time had been kind to the older man, for although his hair was now white, laughter lines were more prominent than frown lines in his weather-beaten face. His health had been good since his surgery, enabling him to continue at the helm of his hotel chain long enough to train Rosie into following in his footsteps.

  Rosie and Alexius had settled in London after their wedding when she was five months pregnant with Kasma. Kasma had been born there and Rosie had not gone to university until her daughter was a year old. Basing themselves in the UK had made it easier for Rosie to study for her degree in business management. Alexius had had great plans for his wife to work alongside him after her graduation but a few weeks spent at her husband’s elbow being told what to do every minute of the day had persuaded Rosie that they w
ere not natural companions in an office environment. Instead, Rosie had gone to work for her grandfather and learn the hotel trade and together they had proved an unbeatable combination.

  ‘You look wonderful,’ her grandfather told her cheerfully. ‘I made a wonderful match for you both, didn’t I?’

  Rosie’s fine brows shot towards her hairline. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  Socrates gave her a teasing little smile. ‘When I saw that first photo of you after I had had you investigated, you reminded me so much of my late wife, your grandmother, that I prayed that you had inherited more than her looks. Alexius needed a down-to-earth woman who could make him a home and give him a family, not a fancy beauty more interested in shopping and socialising. That’s why I urged him to look you up and get to know you for me …’

  Rosie stared at him in shock, astounded that he could have been so manipulative. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Aren’t you a marvellous fit for each other? Aren’t you happy with him?’ her grandfather prompted with unconcealed satisfaction. ‘Well, then, it was worth the risk.’

  Rosie smiled but she was really waiting for the sound of a single helicopter overhead, for Alexius was late. A fleet of helicopters would soon follow, ferrying most of their party guests out to the island for the celebration. Some of the guests were sailing in on their yachts.

  ‘Aren’t you having a drink?’ Socrates asked.

  ‘Not at the moment,’ Rosie hedged, for she had news she wanted to share with Alexius first. Alexius, much to his surprise, had discovered that he really adored being a father and he was wonderful with Kasma, but the extreme busyness of their lives had made extending the family too much of a challenge until recently. Now that they were spending more time in Greece and on the island, the pace of their lives had slowed down. They had had more time to be together as a family, as a couple. Her eyes took on a dreamy hue as she recognised the thwack-thwack noise of the helicopter approaching.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Socrates advised with amusement as she shifted her feet restively. ‘Don’t mind me. He loves it when you rush outside to welcome him home!’