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

CHAPTER EIGHT

HAD Mathieu really expected her to say yes to such a crazy idea?

‘My God, I’m not that desperate!’ Rose muttered, slamming the taxi door and in the process trapping the hem of her ankle-length coat in it. ‘Damn,’ she groaned, opening it and rescuing her coat that was now liberally coated with mud along the hem.

After a second definitive slam that made the driver wince, she slumped back in the seat and, eyes closed, exhaled a heavy sigh.

‘The station, please.’

The past half an hour had all been slightly surreal.

She still wasn’t totally sure if he had even been serious. If it had been his idea of a joke. People just didn’t go around asking other people to pretend they were engaged. Though she was learning fast that Mathieu Demetrios was not exactly a man who felt obliged to follow the rules. In fact he seemed most comfortable making them up as he went along.

And he had a way of making the most outrageous suggestion sound almost normal. She sighed and straightened up. Pulling a compact from her bag, she flicked it open.

‘If you’d stayed around a minute longer,’ she told her reflection, ‘you’d have ended up agreeing with him.’ She rolled her eyes and laughed at her joke. Then frowned because her laughter had a slightly hollow ring to it—also the driver was looking worried.

She hadn’t been tempted, not for a second.

Turning her frowning glare on the dour grey stone façade of the house as they drew away, she reached inside her bag for her mobile. The sooner a line was drawn under her Scottish misadventure, the better.

Her twin picked up straight away.

‘Is this a good time?’

‘Rose, of course, I was just thinking about you. How are things in bonny Scotland?’

Rose didn’t waste time wrapping it up. ‘Terrible. I’m coming home. As you and Nick are in New York until March, would it be all right if I stayed at your place for a couple of weeks?’

There was a pause that grew longer.

‘This is where you say I told you so closely followed by I can’t wait to see you.’

‘Of course I can’t wait to see you …’

‘But?’

‘But the thing is, I was going to call you, but Nick said I should leave well enough alone and … the thing is, Rose, Steven’s wife is divorcing him.’

Rose’s eyes opened wide.

She screwed up her face as she made an effort to visualise his face. Should a person have to make an effort to see the face of the person they had decided was the unrequited love of their life?

Even when she had formed a mental image to go with the name his eyes kept switching from blue to silver-grey and another mouth, one that was both sensual and cruel, kept superimposing itself over his.

‘Are you still there, Rose?’

Rose gave her head a little shake and forced a smile even though there was nobody there to see it. ‘Yes … so Steven is getting a divorce?’

Which made him available and ought to make her deliriously happy.

Only she wasn’t, which probably meant that Rebecca had been right all along and whatever she had felt for Steven Latimer hadn’t been love. And had, she realised with dawning shock, was the key word. Whatever it was she had felt for Steven was simply not there.

Which made her shallow and superficial—even worse than that, he was getting divorced because of her and she could barely remember what the poor man looked like.

‘Steven is divorcing his wife?’ This is all my fault.

‘No, Rose, she’s divorcing him.’

The hand with the phone in it fell into her lap as she sighed. ‘Thank God for that.’ Feeling light-headed with relief, she lifted the phone back to her ear.

‘Rose … Rose! Did you hear what I said?’

‘No, sorry, I lost the signal,’ she lied cheerfully.

‘God, does that mean I have to tell you again?’

‘Tell me what again?’ Rose asked, her curiosity roused.

‘Steven’s wife is divorcing him because she found out that he’s been having an affair.’

‘No …no, there was no affair, you were right, I—’

‘Not with you, Rosie. The reptile has been having an affair with the nanny.’

Rose’s jaw dropped. ‘The nanny!’

‘And the thing is, Rose …’ the pity in her twin’s voice made Rose half suspect what was coming next ‘… well, the thing is, it’s been going on for two years. I wouldn’t have told you, but if you’re coming back to London you’d have been bound to have found out.’

Rose closed her eyes. ‘You both warned me, didn’t you? And I didn’t listen.’ The memory of one of the last conversations she had had with Nick and Rebecca before she’d left began to replay in her head.

Rebecca and Nick had seen what he was like all along.

Eyes bleak, she lifted the phone to her ear. ‘Well, it’s easy to see why he found it so easy to keep his hands off me.’ They were all over the nanny. She closed her eyes and allowed her head to fall forward. ‘I thought his love was pure. Tell me, Rebecca, is there much insanity in the family? God, when I think about how he must have been laughing at me.’ She scrunched up her face and swallowed the humiliation burning like bile in her throat.

‘I could kill him,’ Rebecca said at the other end of the line.

Releasing a strangled laugh, Rose raised her head and, phone pressed to her ear, she pushed her hair back from her face with the crook of her elbow. ‘Not if I get to him first,’ she said, allowing her head to sink into the backrest.

‘Just don’t do anything crazy. I’m catching the next plane over there. Planes do go up there, don’t they? I’ll ask Nick. Nick …’ Rose could hear the sound of a muffled conversation. ‘Nick says—’

Rose cut her off. ‘Calm down, there’s no need to fly over here from New York. I’m fine.’

‘Liar, but if it makes you feel any better he’s had the push from his job … even before the affair came out. He made a major and very costly mistake and there was no Rose there to cover it up for him.’

‘I did cover up his mistakes, didn’t I?’ she said with a groan as she thought of all the unpaid overtime she’d put in to make sure that he looked good. ‘You must think I’m a total fool.’

‘Who am I to throw stones, Rose? It’s not as if I have a brilliant track record when it comes to men.’