Читать книгу Constantine's Revenge - Kate Walker - Страница 6

IT HAD begun with a knock at the door.

Such a simple thing and yet it had changed Grace’s life for ever. It had taken her happiness, her dreams of a future, and ripped them into tiny shreds. And as a result, even now, two years later, she still had to nerve herself to answer any summons from someone on the outside of the house.

‘Gracie, sweetie!’ Ivan’s voice reached her from the kitchen, where he was busy creating his own devilishly intoxicating version of a fruit punch. ‘Are you going to answer that or just stand and stare at the door all day?’

‘Of course I am!’

She hadn’t even been aware that that was what she had been doing, Grace realised as, with a fierce little mental shake, she pushed herself into action. It was stupid to react in this way. After all, it was fully twenty-four months since that appalling day. This wasn’t her father’s house, the place she had used to call home, but the elegant Victorian building where Ivan had the ground-floor flat. And nothing could be more different from the careful preparations for the elaborate society wedding of the past than the casual, noisily crowded atmosphere of the party her friend was giving to celebrate his thirtieth birthday.

‘I didn’t know we were expecting anyone else!’ she tossed over her shoulder, using laughter to disguise the irrational uncertainty that still clutched at her stomach as she hurried to answer a second imperious knock at the door. ‘Just how many people have you invited? The place is bursting at the seams already.’

‘A party isn’t a party until you don’t have room to breathe!’

Grace barely heard Ivan’s response. Joking hadn’t helped. If anything, the crazy feeling of apprehension had grown worse. She felt like some nervous cat, scenting the approach of an aggressive intruder into its territory, every fine blonde hair lifting at the back of her neck, her soft grey eyes clouded and shadowy.

Lightning couldn’t strike twice! she told herself. At least not the sort of lightning she had in mind.

White teeth digging sharply into the softness of her lower lip, she dragged in a deep, fortifying breath before grasping the handle firmly and pulling at the door.

It came open far more swiftly than she had anticipated, flying back towards her with a force that almost knocked her off balance, so that she staggered slightly, struggling to keep upright.

‘Steady…’

A deep, drawling voice, rich as honeyed cream, was the first thing she registered. Then two other facts hit home at the same time, with the force of a devastating blow in the pit of her stomach.

Two frighteningly significant facts. Two disturbingly familiar and shockingly vividly remembered details about the man before her that made her thoughts reel, her head spinning sickeningly.

Deep, dark eyes. Eyes black as jet, and every bit as hard. Their stunning colour and blazing intensity had been etched into her memory long ago, impossible to erase. And that sensual voice, exotically accented, seemed to coil around her nerves, tightening and twisting them until they screamed.

Other images bombarded her. Smooth olive-toned skin, a strong jaw, a beautiful mouth with a surprisingly full lower lip. Hair black as a raven’s wing, cropped uncompromisingly short in order to subdue a rebellious tendency to curl. Suddenly it was as if some cruel hand had reached out from the past, snatching hold of her and dragging her back into the tumult of emotions she had experienced then.

‘Are you all right?’

Strong hands had fastened over her arms, supporting her, and only when she was secure on her feet did the tall, dark man actually look into her face.

‘You!’ he said sharply, his expression changing instantly from one of concern to a look of pure contempt that seared over Grace’s already rawly sensitive skin. ‘I didn’t recognise you, looking like that.’

Every vital function in her body seemed to have shut down in shock. She had to tell herself to breathe, her heart to beat. Lightning could strike twice, it seemed. Certainly Greek lightning could. Because the force of the most violent electrical storm had always been the effect that this man had had on her.

‘Constantine!’

Her tongue felt clumsy as it tangled around the name that she had refused to speak for so long. The name she had promised herself she would never, ever use again if she could help it. But now sheer shock and a sense of unbelieving horror had forced it from her against her will.

‘What are you doing here?’

The look he turned on her burned with cynical disbelief. Only an idiot would have had the stupidity to ask that question, his lofty disdain declared. And if there was one thing that Constantine Kiriazis was quite unprepared to tolerate then it was the presence of any sort of a fool.

‘I was invited,’ he declared, his voice as curt as his movements as he belatedly became aware of the way that he was still holding her, long, tanned hands on her arms, the immaculately manicured fingers incongruous against the shabby, well-worn leather of her jacket.

With a fastidious gesture that communicated only too clearly the feeling that simply to touch her had somehow contaminated him, he abruptly let her go and stepped away from her side. The move spoke eloquently of a mental distance that was far, far greater than the few centimetres that actually separated them.

‘This is where the party’s being held?’

With a brusque nod of her head Grace dismissed the unnecessary question. The sheer volume of noise behind her, the music and laughter, the loud buzz of fifty or more different conversations made a nonsense of the fact that he had even asked it.

‘But Ivan wouldn’t have invited you!’

The cynical lift of one black, straight brow mocked at her vehemence, shaking the certainty of her conviction without a single word.

‘Tell me, my sweet Grace, do you really believe that I would appear here, dressed like this…?’ An arrogant sweep of his hand swept down the powerful length of his body, drawing her clouded grey eyes unwillingly after it. ‘Without the excuse of your crazy friend’s theme party to justify it?’

Silently Grace cursed herself for being every sort of a fool. She hadn’t wanted even to look at him. But with that single haughty gesture he had forced her to do just that. And, having looked, she found herself incapable of turning away again.

She didn’t want to be reminded of the lean power and strength of Constantine’s body. Didn’t want to recall the honed muscle and hard bone that she had once known so intimately. It hurt just to remember how it had felt to be held in those arms, to be crushed close to the wall of that chest, feel that sensual mouth on her own.

‘I don’t think you’ve exactly understood the theme of tonight.’

Furious control gave her words a biting coldness, and her clear grey eyes were like shards of silvery ice as she let her gaze run back up the length of his tall frame in an expression of disdain that matched his own of only moments earlier. Matched and outstripped it as she let her full mouth curl derisively.

‘The idea is that this is a Turn Back the Clock party. Ivan’s painfully aware of the fact that at midnight he’ll be thirty, that he’ll have left his twenties behind for ever. Everyone is to dress in the sort of clothes they would have worn ten years ago, so that just for tonight he can pretend…’

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Constantine snapped, his accent deepening as anger marked his voice. ‘I do not need you to explain what I already understand perfectly. And if I had any doubts then the distressingly unflattering outfit you are wearing would erase them once and for all.’

‘At least I entered into the spirit of things!’ Grace flashed back at him, her chin lifting in angry defiance.

She didn’t need to be reminded that what she was wearing was so very different from the way he was used to seeing her. The way anyone was used to seeing her. Ten years ago she had been a mere fourteen, and then the skin-tight denim jeans worn with a white sleeveless tee shirt and a leather biker jacket over the top had been her ideal of relaxed weekend clothing.

Dressing to come to the party tonight, she had actually thought her chosen costume was quite fun. That the uncharacteristic way she had done her hair, tousling the blonde sleekness into wild disarray, together with the use of much more make-up than usual, particularly around her wide grey eyes, made her look younger and more relaxed. She had smiled to see herself looking totally unlike the elegant, controlled Grace Vernon her workmates at the advertising agency would have recognised.

But now, faced with Constantine’s obvious censure, she felt the bubble of euphoria that had buoyed her up burst painfully sharply, leaving her limp and miserably deflated. What had seemed light-hearted and fun now seemed gauche and unsophisticated in the extreme, making her shift uncomfortably from one foot to another as once more Constantine’s jet-black gaze seared over her in a way that brought a burning rush of colour to her pale cheeks. How she longed for the protection of her usual refined way of dressing.

If she had known he would be here tonight she would have worn something that oozed sophistication and would have knocked him dead. Something that would have shown him just what he was missing. What he had discarded so brutally when he had tossed her aside, declaring that she wasn’t fit to be his wife.

If she had known he would be here…!

Who was she kidding? If she had even so much as suspected that Constantine Kiriazis was in England, let alone in the capital, where she and Ivan lived, she would have turned and run, putting as much distance as was possible between herself and the man she had once loved so desperately.

‘I bothered to dress up, while you…’

‘And what, precisely, is wrong with what I’m wearing?’ Constantine enquired with a silky menace that sent a sneaking shiver down her spine.

‘It’s hardly fun, is it? I mean, it’s so…’

Words failed her. The only ones that sprang to mind were such that she clamped her mouth tight shut on them, refusing to let them out.

The truth was that his outfit was pure Constantine, somehow displaying outwardly the very essence of the man.

The long black cashmere overcoat he wore against the unexpectedly bitter winds of the last evening in March had to have been handmade and superbly tailored into its perfect fit on his athletic form. It spoke of wealth, more wealth than the average person could even begin to dream of, but an affluence that was very definitely old money. Riches that had been in the family for so long that they no longer even registered on their owner’s mind. And they certainly needed no show or ostentation to draw attention to their existence.

Constantine Kiriazis had never flaunted the trappings of the fortune she knew he possessed, both from having grown up as the son of a very rich man and from having earned a second, equally huge amount in his own right. His clothes, like the rest of the man, were always exquisite but severely restrained, the heavy, square-faced gold watch he wore on his wrist the only ornament he ever indulged in.

Underneath the luxurious overcoat he wore equally stark black and white: a pristine shirt, bow tie, close-fitting black trousers and, unexpectedly, a tailored waistcoat, but no jacket. In contrast to the weird and colourful assortment of clothing worn by the other guests in response to Ivan’s choice of the theme for his party, he looked polished, sophisticated, totally disciplined, not at all in the mood for a party.

‘So…?’ Constantine echoed, a dangerous edge to his voice.

‘So—controlled, so…’

She was only too well aware of the way that her own complicated feelings were setting her nerves on edge, making her take exception over what was in fact very far from her real preoccupation. She wanted—needed—to drag her thoughts away from their wanton fixation on the very masculine body beneath the fine clothes, the devastatingly sexual male animal that she knew Constantine to be.

‘You look like nothing so much as a waiter.’

Something violent flared in the depths of those stunning eyes at her tone, and she actually heard his strong white teeth snap together, as if he had bitten back the furious outburst he had been about to make. She knew her remark had caught him on the raw, stinging the fierce pride that was so much a part of his character.

‘It runs in the genes,’ he had told her once. ‘The ancient Greeks were cursed with it—the hubris that so often brought about their downfall. These days we call it perifania, but the feeling is exactly the same.’

‘It might interest you to know, my sweet Grace,’ he said now, ‘that that is exactly how I am supposed to look.’

His tone was surprisingly soft, but laced through with a thread of darkness that revealed only too clearly the ruthlessness with which he had reined in his volatile temper.

‘Ten years ago, when I was twenty-one and fresh out of university, my grandfather insisted that I learn about every aspect of his business empire—from the bottom up. I spent my first six months working as a waiter in one of the hotels owned by the Kiriazis Corporation.’

‘Oh…’

It was all she could manage. Her lips were suddenly painfully dry and she moistened them nervously with her tongue. The movement froze as she saw those intent black eyes drop to fix on the small action that betrayed the chaotic state of her thoughts, and at the same moment the significance of what he had said came home to her on a rush of shock.

‘Then—then Ivan did invite you?’

‘Ivan invited me,’ he acceded, moving at last into the small hallway and kicking the door shut behind him. The thud it made slamming home into its frame had such a sound of finality that Grace shuddered on a feeling of irrational dread. ‘You didn’t know that?’

Grace shook her head, sending her blonde hair flying.

‘I didn’t know.’

How could he? How could Ivan have done such a thing and not told her? He must have known how Constantine’s appearance would affect her, the pain it would inflict. Ivan of all people would know how far from being fully healed were the scars of the past, and yet he had behaved in a way that was the emotional equivalent of ripping open the old wounds.

‘But believe me, if I had known—if I’d had so much as the faintest suspicion that you might be here—then I wouldn’t have come. I would have gone anywhere rather than here—anywhere at all. After the way you behaved, I never wanted to see you again…’

Constantine’s beautifully carved mouth twisted in an expression of scorn that was heightened by the flare of fury in the inky depths of his eyes.

‘After the way you behaved…’ he returned silkily ‘…the feeling is entirely mutual. The question is, where do we go from here?’

‘You could turn round and walk out.’ Grace made the suggestion with little hope that it would be taken up, her fears confirmed as she saw the uncompromising shake of his dark head. Constantine Kiriazis would have known she must be here, and would have had his strategy worked out well in advance. He had never backed down before anyone. She had never really expected that he was going to start now.

‘Then…’

‘Gracie?’ It was Ivan’s voice, coming from very close behind her. ‘Are you—? Constantine! You made it! So tell me…how is my favourite Greek tycoon?’

‘I am well.’

Grace watched as Constantine submitted to the exuberant hug Ivan gave him with resigned patience. But one dark, straight brow did lift in questioning amazement at the other man’s costume of a school uniform, complete with two-coloured cap.

‘Ivan, my friend, were you truly still at school ten years ago? I thought that at the age of twenty you were actually at university…’

‘Strictly speaking, that’s true.’ Ivan laughed back. ‘But I was much happier at school, so I went for that. And if that’s bending the rules, who cares? After all, this is my party, so I can do as I like.’

‘Fair enough.’ Constantine’s amusement was evident in the warmth of his tone. A warmth that had been distinctly lacking when he had talked to her, Grace registered miserably.

This was one of the ways he had surprised her in the past. She had never expected that such a blatantly macho male as Constantine was would ever tolerate her friendship with the other, openly gay man. But Constantine had not only accepted it, he had apparently warmed to Ivan himself too.

In that, at least, he hadn’t behaved at all in the way she had expected. But in other ways, she reminded herself bitterly, he had been pure arrogant Greek male through and through. And when that pride had been turned on her it had savaged her life, ripping it apart.

‘I wasn’t sure if you would make it,’ Ivan was saying. ‘I thought you might be somewhere the other side of the world.’

As if that would stop Constantine going anywhere he wanted to be. This was a man who used his private plane to fly from country to country with the casual ease that other, lesser mortals might take a bus or the Tube. And wherever he was he always had a fleet of chauffeur-driven cars at his disposal. He had probably expended less effort to get here tonight than Grace herself.

But her thoughts had distracted her from what Constantine was saying. Too late she registered his words with a sense of horrified shock.

‘…major problems in the London office. I expect they will take three months or more to sort out.’

No! Grace barely caught back her response before the single word revealed her feelings. The only way she had coped over the past two years was by knowing that Constantine was thousands of miles away, in his office in Athens, or the family home on Skyros. The thought of him being practically on her doorstep for the next few months was a prospect that appalled her.

‘So we can hope to see more of you,’ Ivan continued, blithely ignoring the look of alarmed appeal Grace shot him. ‘Can’t be bad. Now, let me relieve you of that gorgeous coat.’

But as Constantine shrugged himself out of the elegant garment the sound of a buzzer from the kitchen brought Ivan’s platinum blond head swinging round.

‘The food! I’m sorry, darlings, I must dash or it will all be ruined. Gracie, you’ll see to this for me, won’t you?’

And, dumping Constantine’s coat in the arms she had no option but to hold out—it was either that or let it fall to the floor—he turned and with an airy wave in their vague direction hurried away again.

‘I see Ivan hasn’t changed.’ Constantine’s tone was dry. ‘Outrageous as ever.’

‘That’s Ivan…’

Grace prayed that her response didn’t sound as shaken and upset to Constantine as it did in her own ears. She was having to struggle to control the unexpected reaction that had assailed her simply as a result of holding the coat. It felt too personal, somehow, too intimate.

Soft and sensuous, it was still warm from the heat of Constantine’s body, and the tangy scent of the cologne he always wore still clung to the material, agonisingly familiar. It was impossible not to recall how in the past, when she had been held close to him, that fragrance had always filled her nostrils, intoxicatingly blended with the more subtle, personal aroma of his body. If she closed her eyes she could still feel the heat of his skin under her fingertips, the brush of his black hair against her cheek…

‘Grace?’

Constantine’s husky-voiced question intruded into the torrent of sensual memories that had flooded her mind, snapping her back to reality with a painful jolt. Wide and startled, her eyes flew open to clash sharply with his frowning black ones.

‘Where did you go?’

‘Nowhere!’

Her sharp response was too fast, too spiky, arousing his suspicions instead of subduing them. She saw his dark brows draw together swiftly and hastily set herself to covering her tracks.

‘I—I’m just a little tired,’ she invented hastily. ‘It’s been a difficult week at work. We’ve been having problems with a new campaign…’

‘You are still at Henderson and Cartwright?’

‘Yes…’

That was better. Her voice was back under control, calm and even.

‘I was promoted recently. Now I’m in charge of… But you don’t want to know this.’

She didn’t want him to know it. She didn’t want to let him know anything about her life or what was going on in it. He had relinquished that right when he had turned his back on her, and she had no intention of ever letting him in again.

Constantine’s shrug dismissed her comment as irrelevant.

‘I thought you were making polite conversation,’ he drawled indifferently. ‘It is something you are so good at here in England. It is so very civilised, especially in an uncomfortable situation.’

‘I’m not uncomfortable!’ Grace snapped defensively, grey eyes flashing defiantly.

‘Perhaps I meant myself,’

‘Oh, that I can’t believe!’ With a wave of her hand she dismissed Constantine’s silky murmur. ‘I’ve never seen you fazed by anything. You wouldn’t have got where you are if you let anything get to you. And you’ve been trained by an expert—your father.’

But she was on dangerous ground there. She knew it from the way his proud head went back sharply, the flare of something menacing in his eyes. But when he spoke no trace of his inner feelings shaded his tone.

‘Nevertheless, this could be somewhat…’ He hunted for the right word. ‘Awkward for you.’

‘That’s something of an understatement.’

Biting her lip, she wished the careless words back as she realised the advantage she had thoughtlessly given him.

He was quick to pounce on it, of course, that sensual mouth curving into a sardonic smile at her discomfiture.

‘You are clearly at a disadvantage here—Ivan gave you no warning of the fact that he had invited me, and I presume that some people here will know what passed between us.’

He knew only too well that almost everyone Ivan had invited would be aware of the fact that two years ago she had been about to marry this man, but that the wedding had never taken place. They might be unclear on the gruesome details, but after that final, appallingly public scene in the foyer of the agency, no one could be in any doubt that Constantine had tossed her aside and walked out of her life, ignoring her pleading for a second chance.

The fact that she had also been at fault in the beginning brought the additional complication of a guilty conscience to an already volatile mixture of emotions roiling inside her. Under the cover of the coat, her hands clenched tightly, crushing the expensive material.

‘That was two years ago, Constantine,’ she told him coldly. ‘Two years in which I have got on with my life, as I presume you have with yours.’

His nod of agreement was curt to the point of rudeness.

‘I’m over it,’ he declared bluntly.

‘And so am I.’ Grace wished she could sound as assured as he had done. ‘People have short memories. You and I might once have been a nine-day wonder, but now we’re stale news. Neither of us can leave—it would upset Ivan too much. So we’re just going to have to make the best of things. Don’t you agree?’

The look that seared over her was icily assessing; black eyes narrowed thoughtfully for a moment.

‘It should be easy enough,’ he said at last, his tone a masterpiece of indifference. ‘I shall simply do what I have done every day for the past two years, and that is to wipe your existence from my mind, forget I ever met you.’

‘In that case, why come here at all? You must have known…’

‘Obviously I knew you’d be here, but the wish to please Ivan on his birthday was strong enough to overcome the repugnance I felt at the thought of seeing you again.’

It was meant to hurt, and it achieved its aim with all the ruthless efficiency for which Constantine had achieved his reputation in the business world. Grace was deeply thankful for the protective concealment of the coat she still held as she crushed it close to her, feeling almost as if she needed to stem some agonising internal bleeding that had sprung from the wound he had deliberately inflicted on her.

‘But I don’t have to spend any more time with you. There are enough people here to distract us…’ An autocratic wave of one hand encompassed the crowded room at the far end of the hall. ‘And the room is quite large enough to keep us apart for some time.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’ She had to force herself to say it. ‘If we’re really lucky, we won’t even have to see each other again.’

She would do it if it killed her, would rather die than let him see just what it was doing to her to have him here like this. Constantine nodded slowly, his gaze already drifting away towards the other room where other, obviously more attractive company awaited him.

‘That would make it possible to salvage something from this appalling evening.’

‘Then don’t let me hold you back!’

Her tartness drew that black-eyed gaze back to her for one more of those uncomfortably probing stares, a faintly cynical smile playing around Constantine’s firm mouth.

‘To be honest, my dear Grace, I sincerely doubt that anything you could do would ever affect me again.’

Was it possible? Grace asked herself as he strolled away without so much as a backward glance. Could he really feel nothing for her, not even the dark anger she had seen blazing in his face at their last, cataclysmic meeting? Did she now mean so little to him that he could dismiss her from his thoughts in the blink of an eye? What had happened to the love he had once declared so eloquently, the passion he had been unable to hide?

It was dead, she told herself drearily, dead and gone, as if it had never existed. Which seemed impossible when her own feelings were in such agonised turmoil that she felt as if there was a raging tornado where her heart should be, a monstrous tidal wave of shock and distress swamping her stomach. She could only pray that she was enough of an actor to hide her misery from Constantine. That she would be able to get through what remained of this evening without giving herself away completely.