Читать книгу Rags To Riches: Hired For His Satisfaction - Линн Грэхем, Emilie Rose - Страница 10

ALEXIUS surveyed Rosie where she lay on the sofa in his penthouse apartment. She was coming round again, her slight body shifting, a sigh fleeing her lips. She looked like a doll, a doll dressed as a teenager in jeans, striped sweater and jacket. A woolly hat with a bobble actually stuck out of one jacket pocket. The canvas shoes on her feet were badly worn, the fabric backing showing through in places. Thee mou, what the hell had he been thinking of when he bedded her? And the answer was that he had not been thinking at all. Finally, he let his attention rove to her delicate profile, the lashes fluttering now, faint pink warming her cheekbones as natural colour drove away the extreme pallor she had worn only minutes earlier. Her soft pink mouth pouted and he hardened in a reaction as predictable as a wave hitting the shore, he decided wrathfully. He could still feel the hot tight embrace of her body, but even better did he recall the look of wonder in her eyes afterwards. No woman had ever treated Alexius to a look quite like that. Indeed, for three long, endless weeks, Alexius had been reliving that night, trying to sleep with an erection that wouldn’t quit, dreaming about her, waking up still unsatisfied and still angry with himself.

He had got involved, something he never did with a woman, and it looked as if that error of judgement was going to pay off in spades in record time.

Rosie opened her eyes on a great wall of glass that she didn’t recognise and sat up in dismay to glimpse a rooftop view of London that could only belong to someone who inhabited a hugely privileged world. Her head swam and she grimaced at the discomfort.

‘Don’t try to get up while you’re still feeling woozy,’ Alex advised smoothly.

Not Alex, Alexius, she reminded herself doggedly, finally turning her head to look at him. There he was, standing straight and tall, arrogant black head tilted back, and it was a moment when he looked every inch what he was: a very well-dressed rich and powerful businessman with silver eyes as sharp as a laser beam. He was so beautiful it hurt her to look at him and she dropped her gaze again, protecting herself from her weakness. But those lean, darkly handsome features of his were breathtakingly beautiful and she no longer marvelled at the ease with which he had got her into bed. He was uber-temptation, way beyond what an ordinary girl could expect to meet up with and withstand.

‘Where am I?’ she asked.

‘This apartment is above my office. I wanted privacy in which to talk to you.’ His voice was concise, cool, measured. His complete calm gave her a horrendously strong desire to slap him.

‘You lied to me about who you were.’

It begins, Alexius thought fatalistically. ‘I didn’t lie. I merely omitted certain portions of the truth.’

Rosie swung her feet to the smooth wooden floor. Her attention skittered across smoked glass tables, luxury furniture and several very impressive paintings and the dazed feeling she was suffering from returned in full force. She was a fish out of water in such opulent surroundings. ‘Semantics and I just bet you’re a master of them! What the heck kind of a game were you playing with me?’

‘Sit down again, Rosie,’ Alexius urged. ‘It wasn’t a game. Your grandfather—’

‘I don’t have a grandfather—’

‘Your father’s father, Socrates Seferis, is still very much alive,’ he countered.

‘My mother told me that my father had no living relatives,’ she replied argumentatively, chin lifting in challenge.

Even with her hair scraped back in a no-nonsense ponytail, she was quite astonishingly pretty, Alexius reflected grimly, not best pleased to have noticed the fact. Quite deliberately he thought of the sort of woman who usually attracted him. Tall, curvy, dark-haired and ladylike, and here was Rosie, tiny, boyish in shape, quick-tempered and cheeky and quite irresistibly appealing on some level he couldn’t penetrate.

‘Your mother knew very well that your grandfather existed because she applied to him for financial help after your father deserted her when she was pregnant with you,’ Alexius told her. ‘He gave her money.’

Rosie had paled and slowly she sat down again. ‘But I never saw any money.’

‘That may be so. I’m aware that you grew up in foster care but nonetheless the fact remains, your grandfather did care about what happened to you and did what he could to ensure that you were raised in comfort and security.’

Rosie stared at her canvas-shod feet. She had never had security, even at Beryl’s house when she was aware that she could be moved on to other carers at any time. But she was now recalling a period in her life when her visits with her mother had been almost exciting. Jenny had had loads of photos to show her daughter of foreign beaches and fancy hotels and she had worn colourful flashy clothes and skyscraper heels. Later, with hindsight, Rosie had assumed that her mother must’ve had a rich boyfriend providing her with those luxuries. But what if the money that had financed Jenny’s designer wardrobe and frequent travels abroad had come from Rosie’s grandfather, Socrates, instead? It was certainly possible that Jenny Gray had lied. If she had accepted money to help her raise the child she was not actually raising, it would have been an act of fraud that could have got her mother into serious trouble, Rosie reasoned ruefully. What was more, even as a child Rosie had realised that her mother commonly told lies when it suited her to do so. It made sense that Jenny would have concealed Socrates’s existence to cover her own tracks. Alexius’s version of events might well be the truth as Rosie had never known it but what she could not comprehend was why Alexius Stavroulakis should be discussing her unknown grandfather with her.

‘What’s your place in all this?’ Rosie demanded with spirit. ‘What connection do you have to my grandfather? How do you know these things about my background?’

‘Socrates Seferis is my godfather and a very old friend.’ Alexius breathed in deep and slow, relieved that she seemed calm for all the air of bewilderment that clung to her. ‘He asked me to get to know you and tell him what you were like.’

‘Get to know me?’ Rosie repeated, studying him in frank astonishment. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘He wanted to know what sort of woman you were before he invited you to visit him in Greece and he trusted my judgement. It should interest you to know that I’ve already informed Socrates that you are everything he could hope for in a granddaughter,’ he delivered with patronising cool.

‘ And that’s why you started talking to me, helped me out with Jason, took me for a meal?’ Rosie guessed sickly, her heart sinking down to her sock soles in the strained silence. It had all been a lie, everything from his first taking notice of her to his seeming interest and the amazing pleasure he had introduced her to in bed that same evening.

‘Naturally the sex wasn’t part of the plan,’ Alexius remarked with perceptible distaste.

White as milk, whipped by that distaste, Rosie gazed back at him, big green eyes pools of distress and censure. Her small hands balled into defensive fists.

‘I took advantage of you when you were vulnerable. That was wrong,’ Alexius murmured even though it was a challenge for him to sound suitably humble. He had no intention of apologising for the best sex he’d had in a decade but he was well aware it had been inappropriate in the circumstances.

Rosie stared at him through her cloaking lashes, her heart thumping far too fast for comfort. With shame she felt the clamour of her awakened body respond to him, the tightening tingle of her nipples and the surge of damp awareness between her legs. He had taught her to want him and now that deceptive sense of intimate connection was ready to betray her. But he was not the guy she had believed he was: he really was a stranger. She refused to think about him taking advantage of her because that made her feel small and out of control of her own destiny. That was a humiliating appraisal of their intimacy that she just did not need at that moment.

‘That cash that supposedly got caught up in the vacuum cleaner? Was that some sort of a test?’ Rosie pressed bitterly.

‘A rudimentary but effective one. I needed to know for my godfather’s sake if you could be trusted,’ Alexius declared smoothly. ‘Please accept that I did not intend to injure you in any way when I approached you. I was trying to help out a close friend at his request. Have you no questions to ask about your grandfather?’

Picking up on the hint of reproach in that query, Rosie stiffened even more. ‘Should I have? A man whom I didn’t even know existed until five minutes ago? A man who knew I existed but who has never tried to meet me? And a man who asked you to check me out for him, rather than get to know me himself?’

That was a cooler and more critical appraisal of the situation than he had expected to receive from a woman who had already admitted that she was keen to have a family. Alexius frowned, disappointed by her response. ‘There is some excuse for his behaviour. Socrates had major heart surgery only a couple of weeks ago and he is currently recuperating at his home in Athens. He is in no shape to fly over here to meet you in person.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, but since he was so keen to have me vetted behind my back to see if I was the sort of person he was willing to know, I can’t say much more,’ Rosie countered curtly. ‘I think this is a horrible way to find out that I have a grandfather. You lied to me—’

‘I didn’t lie,’ Alexius shot back at her icily. ‘My full name is legally Alexius Kolovos Stavroulakis.’

Her triangular face froze as if overnight frost had struck it pale and tight. ‘You lied,’ she said again. ‘You wanted to mislead me as to who you really were and it worked. I was so stupid, I fell for it!’

Alexius stiffened, fiercely resisting an urge to move closer. The distress in her darkened eyes struck him like a slap in the face. ‘I’m sorry but I hope you will forgive me when you meet your grandfather—’

‘I’m not planning to meet him,’ Rosie told him flatly. ‘I’ve got enough trouble in my life without going out on a limb to meet some old man who tried to judge whether or not I was worth knowing before he even met me.’

‘Socrates has asked me to bring you to Greece. Don’t let the offence I have caused be laid at his door,’ he advised grimly. ‘If you do, I believe you will live to regret it. You are a kind-hearted woman.’

‘Kind-hearted?’ Rosie settled blistering green eyes of condemnation on him. ‘If you were standing at an open window at this moment I’d push you out of it! I hate you—’

‘You hardly know me … how can you hate me?’ Alexius fielded drily.

Taken aback by that unwelcome reminder, Rosie stood up and walked across the room, taking in everything around her, recognising that the perfectly decorated walls and toning upholstery were undoubtedly the work of a top-class interior designer. It looked like a glossy magazine spread: faintly unreal. She turned back to collide unexpectedly with stormy liquid-silver eyes. ‘Why are you angry with me? What have you got to be angry about?’ she demanded furiously.

Alexius, who prided himself on his powers of camouflage and reserve, gritted his even white teeth together. ‘I’m angry that I made such a mess of getting to know you that you will take it out on your grandfather.’

‘I don’t take things out on people who haven’t done me any harm. I’m sure he’s a nice old man and I wish him well, I truly do,’ she muttered uncomfortably. ‘But I don’t know if I want to meet him and I certainly don’t want to go anywhere with you after what I’ve found out about you!’

‘What have you found out about me that is so threatening?’ Alexius traded, striving not to notice the pert curve of her derriere in the jeans and the tininess of her waist. He liked her body, the delicacy and restraint of it, the slender perfection that had so entranced him in her bed. The pulse at his groin quickened, and he felt the heavy push of arousal.

‘You might as well be an alien from another planet,’ Rosie told him truculently, throwing up her hands in expressive comment on the opulent room. ‘You’re rich and educated. I’m poor and struggling to complete my education. But, worst of all, I can’t trust you because you don’t tell the truth.’

His shapely sensual mouth quirked with a hint of amusement that infuriated her. ‘If it helps, I can promise you now that I will not tell you another half-truth or omit the truth no matter how unwelcome it may be to you.’

‘That would be a good start. I mean, how rich are you?’ she prompted shakily. ‘Do you have a private jet?’

Alexius had a fleet of them but decided to keep that news to himself. He nodded confirmation.

Her face fell in disappointment because she had hoped that he was not that rich. ‘And do you own more than one house?’

Beginning to appreciate by the expression on her revealing little face that she was not enamoured of what she was finding out about his bank balance, Alexius released his breath in an impatient hiss. ‘Yes. I inherited a great deal of money from my parents, both of whom were wealthy in their own right when they married.’

How dumb must she have been to believe that he was a comparatively ordinary guy? Pain gripped Rosie, pain that she could have been so blind as not to notice the very expensive gold wristwatch he wore, the diamond-encrusted cufflink winking against the pristine white of his shirt, the impossibly well-tailored cut of his striking dove-grey business suit. Not an office worker with a company car. No, he owned and ran the business and, according to her employer, STA Industries was an extremely large international concern.

‘Why did you come looking for me, Rosie?’ Alexius prompted quietly, wondering why it had never occurred to him before that a woman might actually exist who saw his great wealth only as a barrier and a problem. The concept fascinated him.

Rosie rested dulled green eyes on him and shifted a tiny shoulder in a fatalistic shrug. ‘Because I’m pregnant …’

And that bold announcement just lay there in a silence that grew and grew until it seemed to fill the whole room and threaten to suffocate her, impelling her back into urgent speech.

‘Sorry to dump it on you like that but, although I was taking the contraceptive pill as I told you, I had a stomach upset that same week and my doctor thinks that the sickness probably wrecked the level of my protection,’ she extended in a jerky rush.

Alexius continued to study her much as though she had landed in a parachute in front of him without warning. He had lost colour beneath his bronzed complexion and he was very tense, his brilliant eyes veiled, his hard jaw line clearly delineated. ‘You’re pregnant? Are you sure?’

‘Of course, I’m sure. Tests can tell very early these days,’ she muttered uneasily.

‘And you’re sure it’s mine?’

‘You know there wasn’t anyone else before you and I can assure you that there’s not been anyone else since,’ Rosie proclaimed curtly, resenting that he had asked that question even if logic suggested he had the right to ask it. ‘It’s your baby.’

A baby. The very concept of a baby blitzed Alexius’s brain. Adrenalin pounded through him, powering aggression that had no hope of escape because with her words she had fulfilled his worst fear. She had trapped him as he had always sworn he would never be trapped. He had friends who had put themselves in the same position and it hadn’t worked out happily for any of them. All his adult life he had been careful not to take that risk and yet with her, for no more reason than the fact that his jacket was lying halfway across the room, he had had sex without adequate precautions. As the more experienced partner, he could only blame himself for accepting that threat of consequences without real thought of what it might mean if things went wrong. And they had gone wrong, horribly wrong, he registered harshly.

‘You’re shocked,’ Rosie breathed, stiff with discomfiture at the acknowledgement. ‘I was shocked too but I’m afraid I don’t want a termination—’

‘I wouldn’t ask you to have one,’ Alexius cut in smoothly. ‘We’re adults. We will deal with this.’

‘Babies aren’t so easy to deal with,’ Rosie remarked helplessly, thinking of the heavy round-the-clock demands of the babies she had come across in the foster-care system. A baby was almost a full-time job, she thought fearfully. It couldn’t be left alone for a minute. It needed constant care and might not even sleep through the night. The birth of a baby would blow her life apart and wreck all her plans for the future.

‘I could have done without this right now,’ Rosie added ruefully. ‘I have my exams to sit in two weeks. I’m in the middle of my revision and now I can’t concentrate—’

‘You’re studying for exams?’ Alexius emerged from his black cloud of foreboding to enquire.

‘Yes, I want to go to university in the autumn.’

Alexius thought about the giant holes in the investigation Socrates had had done on her. Just as the photo had not shown her beauty, the basic facts, right down to her current address, had been outrageously inaccurate. She was not content simply to clean offices for the rest of her life; clearly, she had drive and ambition and had he asked a few more personal questions he might have discovered that for himself. But in the long run, who she was, what she was, no longer mattered in the face of the fact that she had conceived his child. Socrates deserved better than that embarrassment at his hands. He dragged in a shuddering breath and braced himself to make the ultimate sacrifice of freedom and self-will. ‘I’ll marry you …’

Rosie laughed and frowned simultaneously as though he had cracked a rather off-colour joke. ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said, staggered by the suggestion.

Alexius gritted his teeth because marriage was the only acceptable solution he could see to the problem, loathe that reality though he did. ‘I’m serious. I’ll marry you. It will give the baby my name and I will support you so that you do not suffer in any way.’

Belatedly appreciating that he was completely serious in his offer, Rosie stared at him wide-eyed. ‘You would do that? You would actually marry me?’ she pressed in helpless fascination.

‘It is what I should do for your sake … and the child’s.’ Cool silvery-grey eyes enhanced by startlingly black lashes met hers unflinchingly. ‘I cannot leave you to raise my child alone.’

‘You’re worried about what my grandfather might think,’ Rosie assumed. ‘But people don’t get married now just because there’s a baby on the way.’

‘It’s still the right thing to do,’ Alexius responded flatly. ‘The most practical approach.’

‘I disagree. You don’t want to marry me, Alex. I wouldn’t marry you on that basis. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us,’ Rosie countered quietly. ‘But I suppose I should thank you for asking—it was a nice thought.’

Alexius stared back at her in stunned silence, unable to believe that she was actually turning him down and with the barest minimum of deliberation. ‘A “nice thought”?’

‘You taking the old-fashioned approach even though it’s not what you personally want,’ Rosie extended in rueful clarification of her thoughts. ‘No, you’re quite safe on that score. I don’t want to marry you either. Please be honest with me—’

Alexius compressed his handsome mouth hard. ‘I am being honest, Rosie—’

‘Alex, you don’t want me as a wife and you don’t want to be a father either. I can feel that reluctance in you,’ Rosie muttered with emphasis, her wide green eyes troubled but open. ‘You don’t need to pretend otherwise with me. I’m just as shocked as you are about the baby but we don’t have to get married to do the right thing.’

‘Your grandfather will very much disagree with you.’

‘Well, should I ever meet him, we’ll have to agree to differ. I don’t want a reluctant husband or an unwilling father for my child and that’s sensible, not silly,’ Rosie pointed out with conviction. ‘For a start I couldn’t fit into your world. Your friends would laugh at me. I’d embarrass you. I’m a cleaner, for goodness’ sake!’

‘Nobody would laugh at you while I was around,’ Alexius ground out forcefully, his accent thickening his vowel sounds to send a quiver of awareness running down her spine. ‘I would make a real effort to be a good husband and father—’

‘But you don’t love me … and to have you trying all the time would be very hard on my self-esteem,’ Rosie protested.

Alexius threw her a derisive look that stung. ‘Love is lust, nothing more, and I can assure you that in that department I’m unlikely to disappoint you.’

Confronted by that amount of cynicism, Rosie was more than ever convinced that she was making the wisest decision. ‘I don’t agree that all love between men and women is lust and if I ever marry, I want love.’

His strong jaw line hardened. ‘I can’t give that to you.’

‘And that’s fine since I’m not going to marry you,’ Rosie replied, stifling the wounded feeling that he could be so very certain that she could never inspire such finer feelings in him and then angry with herself for even thinking that way. ‘Maybe you should concentrate your “trying” on trying to love our child when it’s born.’

A thunderous aspect had clenched his strong features and his eyes were bright as diamonds in a dark night sky. ‘You’re being foolish, Rosie.’

Rosie folded her arms. ‘I’m the best judge of that.’

‘To turn down my offer of marriage without even properly considering it is stupid,’ Alexius informed her harshly.

‘We had a one-night stand, not a relationship!’ Rosie slung back at him hotly, temper surging up through her like lava breaking through rocks to the surface. ‘You don’t know me, you don’t know or care what I need or want and you walked away after that night, making it quite clear that you didn’t even want to see me again!’

A very faint line of colour delineated the high arc of his exotic cheekbones. ‘But I knew I would see you again when I took you to Greece to meet your grandfather,’ he reminded her crisply.

‘I don’t know if I’ll ever agree to that. Right now with the baby I’ve got enough to be getting on with in my life,’ Rosie admitted, tight-mouthed.

Alexius stared at her. The luscious pink mouth that had melted beneath his had now compressed into a tough little line of obstinacy. Frustration leapt through every line of his body. He wasn’t used to defiance or opposition. He wanted to bundle her up and stuff her on a plane, regardless of how she felt about it, because he knew that in this instance he knew best. ‘Are you planning to continue cleaning every night while you’re pregnant?’ he asked with unconcealed scorn.

Her face burned below that derisive appraisal. ‘What do you think?’

‘That you need my support right now so that you can stop working … and concentrate on your exams instead,’ he added reflectively, happier to picture her with books rather than a giant floor polisher almost too heavy for her to lift. ‘You can hardly need to be told that the sort of work you’re doing at present is too strenuous for a woman in your condition.’

Rosie had paled. ‘That’s nonsense. I’m managing fine—’

‘You fainted,’ Alexius reminded her stubbornly. ‘How is that fine?’

Her fingernails bit into her palms as she clenched her hands tight on the wave of antipathy gripping her, which rose higher every time he spoke. ‘Do you want to know why I fainted? I’m getting morning sickness and I can’t face eating first thing so trekking over here on a nerve-racking trip to confront you was a major strain on an empty stomach. I got light-headed, that was all.’

‘And if you get light-headed on a set of stairs, you will very probably fall and get injured. Am I supposed to accept that and just let you get on with it?’ Alexius blasted back at her. ‘What sort of man would simply accept that state of affairs without interfering?’

‘The same man who had sex with me and walked out in the middle of the night without a word of explanation,’

Rosie supplied without hesitation. ‘Let’s not pretend that you are Mr Sensitive, Mr Caring, because you’re not.’

That condemnation still ringing in his ears, Alexius snatched up the apartment phone to communicate with his housekeeper and order breakfast for his disruptive guest. He was in a rage, a rage such as he had not felt since his teenaged years of hormonal turmoil. He was getting nowhere with her. She didn’t listen. She had no respect. She had not even agreed to meet Socrates yet. The temper he always contained was like a wildfire seething inside him, struggling to escape the bonds of his rigid self-discipline.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Rosie demanded unevenly, suddenly breathless at the effect of those stunning liquid mercury eyes beating down on her. ‘I can look after myself, Alex. You don’t need to worry about me.’

‘You can look after yourself so well that you let me into your bed the first night!’ Alexius hurled back at her in a lion’s roar of intimidation.

Unable to argue the truth of that, Rosie didn’t budge an inch or bat a single eyelash. She knew she was annoying him but suspected that anyone who said no to him annoyed him, in which case it was past time someone said no and he was forced to hear and accept it. ‘Everyone makes mistakes … you were mine.’

Alexius strode forward, marvelling that she was standing her ground fearless before him when the rare sound of a raised tone issuing from his mouth sent his staff rushing for cover. How dared she call him a mistake? How dared she turn down his marriage proposal as if it were worth nothing? How dared she not listen?

‘That night wasn’t a mistake, moraki mou,’ Alexius growled low in his throat, his scorching gaze locked to her triangular face, lingering on her emerald-green eyes and succulent pink mouth with an intensity that dismayed her.

Reacting to the simmering buzz of energy he put out, Rosie felt her breasts push against her sweater, her stiff, tender nipples rubbing against the scratchy wool. The hot damp sensation at her feminine core was no longer new to her, for she dreamt about that night almost every night and she was used to it now, accustomed to that nagging pulse, that ache that he had taught her to feel.

‘Of course, it was a mistake,’ she contradicted.

‘No, it was not.’ Alexius locked a big hand round her wrist and pulled her up against his hard muscular body. A spluttered squawk of shock erupted from Rosie before he brought his mouth crashing down on hers with a fire that burned like a naked flame on unprotected skin. He crushed her to him with a rough groan of satisfaction and kissed her with a passion that sang through her senses like a magical spell of entrapment, his tongue stabbing with erotic rhythm into the moist interior of her mouth. One minute she was knotting her hands into his luxuriant black hair to push him away and the next her fingers were delving into those silky depths in exploration and appreciation, before finally moulding to his well-shaped head to hold him close.

Alexius lowered her to the sofa and sent a hand roving up below the sweater to tease the dainty swollen peaks that had so entranced him that night three weeks earlier. Her slender spine arched, a moan of startled pleasure wrenched from her as he played with those responsive buds that were so very sensitive to his touch. Pushing up the sweater, he bent his head to dally there with his mouth instead. A knock sounded on the door and he sprang back from her.

Returned to reality with a mortifying bang, Rosie looked down at her bare chest in horror and, wrenching her sweater back down, she sat up. ‘Don’t touch me like that again!’

Alexius skimmed knowing eyes like silver arrows back to her, a slumberous light in his gaze. ‘Because you like it too much to say no?’ he mocked as he strode to the door to open it.

Rosie’s heart-shaped face was so hot it felt sunburned. He was a taker, a user. He had stolen that kiss as coolly as he had stolen her virginity and she needed more self-control around him. She certainly shouldn’t be noticing that he crossed the room with the grace of a strolling tiger, all fluid rippling muscle and aggressive confidence. The real problem was that he excited her and just being in the same room with him was thrilling and there was something frighteningly seductive about the charge of that excitement. Was that excitement lust? She guessed it had to be.

Alexius settled a heavy tray down on the coffee table. ‘Eat …’ he urged.

There was a chocolate croissant amongst the assorted baked offerings in the bread basket and her mouth watered even as she reached for it. She poured tea and asked him politely if he wanted any, for there was a second cup.

‘I only drink coffee,’ he said.

She discovered that she was still trembling in the aftermath of that passionate embrace. He was so hot he burned her, teaching her that she was a much more physical person than she had ever imagined. It was not a discovery she was grateful to have made because it made her feel vulnerable and weak in a way she had never been before.

‘Why did you get angry when I said that night was a mistake?’ Rosie asked curiously.

‘It was too good to be a mistake. I very much enjoyed it,’ he told her with unselfconscious cool.

Rosie almost choked on her tasty mouthful of chocolate croissant and remained silent until she had swallowed it in a painful rush. ‘I’ll think about meeting my grandfather when my exams are over,’ she conceded.

Alexius dealt her an assessing glance, noting that her belligerent streak was currently at bay. ‘And will you also think then about marrying me?’

Rosie stiffened and raised her eyes as high as his slightly stubbled chin. It was a very determined, very stubborn chin with a cleft and outrageously male. ‘No, that decision was clear as cut glass and I won’t be revisiting it.’

Alexius released his breath in an exasperated hiss of impatience. ‘Why not?’

‘How can you ask me that when you don’t want to get married in the first place?’ Rosie prompted with raised brows signalling her astonishment at his attitude. ‘Have you ever wanted to get married?’

‘No,’ he conceded.

‘Have you ever wanted a child of your own?’

Alexius frowned at that unfortunate question and hesitated.

‘You promised to tell me the truth from now on,’ Rosie reminded him doggedly.

‘No,’ he admitted curtly. ‘I have never wanted a child.’

‘So, why on earth would I want to marry you?’

Evidently, she lacked the greed gene he was used to igniting in all her sex. ‘Security? Support? A father for the child?’

‘If I married you, you’d be off with another woman in five minutes flat,’ Rosie forecast with a grimace at that humiliating likelihood. ‘You don’t strike me as the sort of guy likely to adapt easily to domesticity and parenthood either, particularly if you didn’t choose either of your own free will.’

Alexius, ludicrously unused to being deemed a potential failure at anything he attempted, gritted his teeth. ‘I might surprise you.’

‘And pigs might fly,’ Rosie remarked only half beneath her breath.

Alexius elevated a fine black brow. ‘Is that a challenge?’

‘No, it’s not,’ Rosie hastened to tell him, keen not to start another row. ‘Can’t we be friends, Alex?’

‘I don’t want to be friends with you,’ Alexius shot back at her as she brushed crumbs from her lap and stood up. ‘Have you eaten enough?’

‘More than enough,’ she insisted, glancing at her watch. ‘I have a class to get to.’

Alexius lifted the phone. ‘I will organise a car.’

‘That’s not necessary.’

‘A car and driver will be at your disposal for the foreseeable future,’ Alexius delivered as she walked to the door.

Rosie spun back, her eyes wide. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. What would I do with a car and a driver?’

‘Use them,’ Alexius responded without an ounce of humour. ‘Give me your phone number …’

‘Isn’t it ironic that you’re asking for it now only because I’m pregnant?’ Rosie tossed at him before she could think better of it, glancing across at him to see that his handsome features clenched hard at that blunt reminder.

‘We still have a lot to discuss, moraki mou.’

Rosie winced. ‘I think I’ve said all I’ve got to say.’

A satiric smile slashed his sculpted mouth. ‘While I have barely begun.’

Rosie wrote her number on a piece of paper and looked back at him. ‘Don’t tell my grandfather I needed time to think about meeting him, just tell him I have exams on,’ she urged suddenly. ‘I don’t want to hurt his feelings.’

‘What about mine?’ Alexius quipped.

‘I don’t think you’re over-endowed in that department,’ Rosie told him frankly. ‘You’re too aggressive and sure of yourself to be sensitive and too selfish to be caring.’

‘I just fed you,’ he shot back in his own defence, disconcerted by her candour. Was that truly how she saw him?

‘You’re probably investing in the fact that I’m carrying the Stavroulakis heir,’ she surmised, suspicion paramount as she gazed back at him, belatedly noticing the strain etched into his face and surprised by it. Did more go on beneath that smooth, sophisticated surface of his than she had supposed? Or was it the horrendous threat of the marriage he had forced himself to offer that had stressed him out? How could he do that? How could he ask her to marry him when he didn’t want to get married and he didn’t want a child? What had made him go against his own nature like that? Was it her grandfather’s likely response to her condition and Alexius’s part in it that he wished to guard against? Was that his main motivation? Marriage as a cover-up, an olive branch?

The Stavroulakis heir, not, by any stretch of imagination, a joke, Alexius mused grimly after he had instructed Titos to put a discreet bodyguard on Rosie. A child, a boy or a girl, he didn’t care which. He had no preferences whatsoever. But if there was a child born, he knew that he would ensure that it enjoyed a very different childhood from the one he had endured as the last Stavroulakis heir. That was his most basic duty towards his own flesh and blood and nothing more complex.

When Rosie stuck her key in the lock the following afternoon after her classes, she was tired and still stuck firmly in a state of mental turmoil. Since the day before she had been whisked everywhere she went by a BMW and a driver, who sat around waiting for her to emerge from every class without complaint. Such a luxury felt weird in her very ordinary life, almost as weird as Alexius Stavroulakis asking her to marry him, disregarding the gulf in their social status, disregarding even the obvious fact that he neither cared for her nor wanted their baby. Why on earth had he done that? she asked herself in frustration. Was he crazy? She might be hugely attracted to him, but to have said yes to such a proposal would surely have been a disastrous mistake, she reflected uncertainly, her head aching from such stressful thoughts. She wanted to give her baby the best possible chance in life but was convinced that so unequal a marriage would never last. Even worse, the fallout from a messy marital breakdown would only cause bad feeling between her and Alexius, which would in turn have an adverse effect on their child. On those grounds, it would be much wiser to build a more distant but civil relationship with Alexius outside the bonds of marriage. A relationship without intimacy or any very deep feelings, she conceded with a regret she could not stifle. But had she not so clearly seen Alexius’s lack of interest or desire for either marriage or parenthood she might have been very tempted to say yes to his proposal.

Martha came downstairs, Bas cradled in her arms. ‘You’ve got a visitor.’

Rosie walked into the lounge and stiffened in dismay when she saw Jason Steele rising from the sofa. Oh, hell, she thought ruefully. She was not in the mood for Jason on top of everything else she had undergone over the past forty-eight hours.