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

Her smooth brow pleated as she caught her full lower lip between her teeth and nibbled nervously. Nobody, she thought, staring down at the island retreat—not the other guests and, more importantly, Andreos Demetrios—was going to swallow the engagement story.

Mathieu lived in a different world from the one she inhabited. She fought to maintain her calm as panic nibbled at the edges of her composure.

She slid a surreptitious sideways glance towards her travelling companion, who had abandoned his computer and was also looking through the window. She supposed the wealth thing should have been a consideration earlier. Rose supposed she hadn’t really thought about it earlier because, unlike many people who needed to flaunt their wealth and position to establish their superiority, Mathieu didn’t labour the fact he was staggeringly wealthy.

Not because he had any leanings towards modesty and self-deprecation. In fact, thinking of Mathieu and those worthy qualities in the same sentence made her lips twitch into a wry smile.

No, Mathieu didn’t need to remind people of who he was because he was one of those rare people who possessed a confidence that went bone-deep—a confidence that would have been there if he hadn’t had a penny to his name.

Besides, far from wanting to be an object of envy or surrounding himself with fawning flunkies, he had a genuine disregard for what anyone thought about him, too arrogant to much care what anyone thought about him.

‘I can see now why you don’t just tell your father to mind his own business …’ Honesty was the best policy in theory, but it would take an unusual man to risk losing all this.

‘There’s no chance of me losing all this,’ Mathieu said, his voice just loud enough for her to hear above the noise. ‘I own it.’

‘You own what?’

‘The island.’

She turned and tilted her head back to look into his face. ‘You own the island …’ she echoed, shock stripping her voice of all expression. Her eyes slid to the vista below and she gulped. ‘All of it?’ she added faintly.

He nodded and explained. ‘It never belonged to Andreos, it belonged to my stepmother’s family. She had originally intended that Alex and I share it, but he …’ He stopped, swallowing, the action causing the muscles in his brown throat to ripple, and said, ‘It came directly to me after she died.’ Andreos had been furious, taking the bequest as a personal slight.

Her head was spinning. ‘It didn’t occur to you to mention this to me?’

He raised his brows and looked mildly surprised by the heat in her husky enquiry. ‘Why should I? It isn’t relevant.’

‘I like that you thought it might be relevant for me to know what your father’s favourite colour is but you didn’t think it relevant to mention you own a whole damned island paradise.’ She flung up her hands in exasperation and glared at him.

‘It is only paradise now that you are here, mon coeur,’ he drawled, clasping a hand dramatically to his chest.

Rose took an irritated swipe at him, which he evaded with a laugh. ‘If you keep that up I will just laugh in your face,’ she warned him, wishing with all her heart that laughter, instead of the heavy weakness that affected all her limbs, were her response to his mocking endearment.

CHAPTER TEN

‘NO RECEPTION committee,’ Rose said, sounding relieved.

‘No,’ Mathieu agreed, not sounding as though he shared her relief.

She shot him a curious look. ‘You’re annoyed?’

Mathieu’s eyes, cold as steel, flickered briefly over her face. ‘You’re my fiancée—not to come out to meet you is a deliberate snub.’ Andreos could be as rude as he liked to him, it was water off a duck’s back, but Mathieu would make sure that his father treated his future wife with the respect she deserved.

‘But I’m not.’

Mathieu flashed her a strange look, then retorted, ‘He doesn’t know that.’

He probably will about five minutes after seeing us together, she thought, pressing a hand to her churning stomach.

‘There’s no need to be nervous.’

Rose tried to smile. ‘And here I was thinking that I was hiding it well,’ she quipped.

‘Come in, it’s been a long day. You’ll feel better after a shower.’

It was silly, she knew, but the light pressure of his hand in the small of her back made her feel more confident.

Halfway up the path to the villa they were met by a man in uniform. He bowed slightly to Rose, then turned to Mathieu and made what sounded to Rose like a profuse apology.

Mathieu responded to him in the same language and he walked a little ahead of them the rest of the way. When they reached the entrance, a glass atrium from which several corridors radiated, Mathieu turned to her and said, ‘Spyros will show you to your room.’

‘You’re not coming?’ Hearing the sharpness of anxiety in her voice, she frowned, but she need not have worried. Mathieu appeared not to notice anything amiss.

‘I need to speak to Andreos.’

She watched him stride away and tried not to feel deserted.

‘Miss …?’

She turned to the uniformed man smiling encouragingly at her and followed him further into the villa.

His father was in his study. He glanced up when Mathieu walked in, then almost immediately returned his attention to the newspaper he was reading.

Mathieu walked straight across to him, grabbed the newspaper and threw it on the ground.

The older man looked at him in open-mouthed astonishment. ‘What do you think you are doing?’ he thundered.

‘I’m laying down a few ground rules, Andreos.’

‘You’re laying down rules to me?” The older man gave a snort of scorn.

‘Rule one …actually there is only one rule,’ he revealed, flashing a cold smile that made the other man look wary for the first time. ‘In future you will not slight Rose in any way; you will treat her with the respect she deserves.’

Andreos got to his feet. ‘You are very sensitive all of a sudden. Who is this Rose, anyway?’

‘The woman who is wearing my ring … that is all you need to know. Do we understand one another?’

‘Oh, I understand you. You march in here as if you own the place.’

‘I do.’

The soft intervention caused the older man’s already high colour to deepen. ‘If Alex had been alive none of this would be happening.’

‘Alex isn’t alive.’

‘You were always jealous of him,’ Andreos accused, stabbing a finger towards his first-born.

‘If he had been someone else I might have,’ Mathieu conceded. ‘But he wasn’t, he was Alex.’ It was hard to explain but nobody could be jealous of Alex—he just didn’t inspire negative emotions in people.