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

Her chin came up. ‘New wardrobe?’

He seemed not to notice the dangerous note in her voice, though several people they passed as they stepped out of the lift did.

‘If there’s anything else you need don’t hesitate …’

Outside in the air Rose took a deep sustaining breath and counted to ten. She’d have still been mad if it had been ten thousand. ‘Listen, because I’m only saying this once, but I’m not taking clothes from you. I’m not taking anything from you.’

Mathieu threw back his head and laughed. ‘Why, you sweet old-fashioned thing, you. But relax, ma petite, this is not a gift— it is a uniform. Don’t get me wrong. I like the sexy librarian look, but not everyone has my imagination,’ he drawled. ‘And they will expect you as my future wife to look a certain way. When we are alone you can wear what you wish … or nothing at all … though we will have little time to be alone before we leave for Nixias.’

She could hear his laughter as she got into the waiting car. She clenched her teeth and didn’t stop clenching them all evening until he said goodnight at the door of her suite.

‘No, I won’t come in,’ he said.

‘I wasn’t about to ask.’

‘But you did think I’d expect it?’ His cynical smile deepened at her expression. ‘I want my father to realise that you are not a casual pick-up, but the woman I want to be my wife.’

‘You don’t intend to have sex with the woman you marry?’

‘After an appropriate courtship I intend to have a great deal of sex.’

Rose, her face aflame, almost threw herself through the door. ‘Not with me, you’re not,’ she yelled, before slamming the door in his grinning face.

Rose discovered Mathieu hadn’t been joking. Other than the events he had listed in his precious intinerary she barely saw him at all and as on all of those occasions they had been in the full glare of the press—she had blinked at more flash bulbs than she would have dreamt existed—it had not been exactly relaxing.

The morning of their journey to Nixias arrived and there had been only one occasion when she had seen a tiny glimpse of the real man. Or was that wishful thinking on her part?

They had been getting into a car after a meal, the paparazzi had been snapping happily, when a stray dog had appeared from nowhere. One of the photographers had tried to kick the mangy creature out of his path and that was probably the last thing he had known until Mathieu had hauled him off his feet, practised smile gone as he’d said something that had made the man’s colour retreat.

‘I take it you like dogs.’

Mathieu had smiled grimly and said simply, ‘I dislike men who kick anything that is weaker or unable to hit back.’

If that night he had suggested coming in when they got back to her hotel suite she would have said yes, but he hadn’t.

* * *

They reached the airport around ten in the morning. One brow lifted as Mathieu’s silver eyes swept her face before he took hold of her left hand. ‘You are not wearing your ring.’

‘Not my ring … the ring. If it was my ring I’d be keeping it when this contract is over. I didn’t wear it for the journey because it is obviously valuable … what if I lose it?’

‘Then obviously you will spend the rest of your life paying me back,’ he said, leading the way towards the terminal building.

Trotting on her four-inch heels to catch him up, she caught his sleeve. ‘I’m serious, Mathieu,’ she said. ‘People who walk around with jewellery like this have bodyguards.’

‘What makes you think I’m not serious?’

She met his silvered gaze, flushed and as things tightened low in her belly complained crossly, ‘Don’t you ever give a straight answer?’

‘Relax, it’s a prop.’

‘You mean it’s not real.’ Rose didn’t know whether she was disappointed or relieved.

‘My father would spot a fake at twenty feet.’

‘Then it is real. You father sounds scary.’ Considering his son, genetically speaking this was pretty much a foregone conclusion.

‘This might help,’ he said.

Rose glanced with a frown at the file he had placed in her hand. ‘What is this—another itinerary?’

‘Some things about my father … his likes, his dislikes, things you might find useful.’

Rose, her expression incredulous, shook her head. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to learn Greek on the flight over as well? Mathieu, if you wanted covert operations you took on the wrong person,’ she told him bluntly. ‘If I was your fiancée I wouldn’t be interested in pleasing or impressing your father.’

‘Just me.’

Rose pretended not to hear his sly insertion. ‘It would probably be more useful if I knew something about you other than how you like your steak and how prettily you smile for the camera. It’s all so … shallow …’

‘It or me?’ he said, sounding unconcerned. ‘I’m sorry if you feel neglected, but you can spend the next few days learning all my unplumbed depths.’

Rose rolled her eyes while her heart did a double flip. ‘I can hardly wait,’ she grunted. What had she let herself in for?

He accepted the file without comment when she distastefully handed it back to him, though he actually sounded serious when he said, ‘You’ve got a point—it is probably best if you try as much as possible to be yourself.’

‘Well, it would be kind of hard to be anyone else, wouldn’t it? And what would be the point?’

He gave her a strange look. ‘Most people, Rose, spend most of their life pretending to be someone they’re not.’

‘Well, I—’ She stopped dead as she saw the private jet that was waiting for them. ‘Oh, God!’ she groaned. ‘This is so not me. I will never carry this off. I’m just not billionaire’s bride material.’

Mathieu grinned at her dismay and nodded to the man who greeted them. ‘Don’t knock it until you try it, ma petite.’

Rose slung him a disgruntled look. ‘Some things, you know, don’t fit without trying.’

‘Oh, I think we fit perfectly.’

Not unnaturally his purred comment reduced her to red-cheeked silence. It was a silence that Mathieu seemed in no hurry to break.

By the time the private helicopter circled the island five hours later she doubted that she and Mathieu had exchanged more than a dozen words. He had been immersed in his laptop for the entire journey totally oblivious, it seemed, to her growing resentment.

It wasn’t as if she expected him to hold her hand, but neither had she expected him to tune her out. Every time she had made an attempt to initiate conversation he had given a monosyllabic response. In her opinion it would have occurred to anyone with an ounce of sensitivity that she was nervous, that she required a little reassurance.

‘So we’re here, then.’ Mathieu looked up as if finally remembering she was there.

She looked in the direction he indicated, taking in the long, low, sprawling villa built into the rock and surrounded by acres of manicured grounds.

The private jet that had brought them to Athens, the transfer by helicopter, and now the private island retreat—it was just hitting home how seriously off-the-scale rich the Demetrios family was.