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

‘All right, then,’ she conceded crossly. ‘You saved my life, but that doesn’t give you the right to invent stories and virtually call me a tramp.’

‘It was not a term I used, but what would you call a woman who targets famous men with the purpose of adding another scalp to her belt? An icon of modern female empowerment?’

‘Famous?’ she echoed, getting seriously angry. ‘Am I supposed to know who you are?’

Dark brows elevated to an incredulous angle, he shot her a look of sardonic amusement in the rear-view mirror. ‘You are trying to tell me you don’t?’

‘I have never laid eyes on you before today,’ she snapped angrily.

‘Fine.’ He sighed, sounding like someone who was bored but prepared to go through the motions for a quiet life. ‘I am Mathieu Gauthier …’

Of course she knew the name even though she didn’t follow formula one. Well, it explained the arrogance—the adulation those drivers got was ludicrous. He had probably started believing his press releases.

‘Is that meant to mean something?’

It was obvious from the brief look he slung her over his shoulder that he didn’t swallow her pretended ignorance for a second, but to her relief he didn’t challenge her lie, but sounded lazily amused as he said, ‘If you are a fan of formula one it might.’

‘I thought you were Greek. Gauthier doesn’t sound very Greek to me.’

The lazy smile faded from his face. ‘Half Greek. I used my mother’s name professionally.’

‘So you are actually …?’

‘Mathieu Demetrios. Look, you don’t need to do this. I’m not going to tell anyone if that’s what is worrying you. Maybe your life has moved on and you’re ashamed of your past … though in my opinion you’d do better to come clean with whoever is in your life now.’ He didn’t doubt for a moment there would be somebody; for women who looked as she did there was always somebody.

‘Thank you for the advice,’ she gritted, thinking it was so not asked for. ‘But I’m not ashamed. I have nothing in my past to be ashamed of.’ Which makes me one of the most sad twenty-six-year-olds on the planet. ‘I don’t even know where or when I’m supposed to have tried to … to … seduce you.’

‘Monaco.’

‘Well, I’ve never been to Mon—’ She stopped. She hadn’t, but Rebecca had. She had the postcard to prove it.

Rose closed her eyes, a silent sigh leaving her lips. The woman he was talking about, sneering at, the woman who had tried to seduce him, was none other than her twin.

Rebecca who had been dumped literally at the altar and gone a little crazy. It all fitted, the timing, everything. They were talking about Rebecca’s ‘summer to forget’ when she had by her own admission done a lot of things she would like to forget. It looked as if jumping into the bed of a formula-one champion driver had been one of them.

It was like seeing the last piece of a jigsaw slot horribly into place—she had always hated jigsaws.

Oh, God, Rebecca, how could you? Rose felt guilty for the selfish question the moment it popped into her head. If anyone had had a reason to go slightly off the rails that summer it had been her sister.

Simon with the floppy hair and the sweet smile had been the boy next door quite literally. He and Rebecca had been childhood sweethearts, dating since they were sixteen and engaged at nineteen.

Rose had been one of six bridesmaids—the wedding had not been a low-key affair—in a dress that had made her look almost slim. The sun had shone, the babies had refrained from crying, Rebecca had looked stunning like a dream bride.

The only thing missing had been the groom.

In response to a desperate phone call Rose had jumped in the vicar’s Mini and gone to Simon’s house. She had found the best man looking stunned in the driveway.

‘Is it nerves?’ she asked him.

He just looked at her, shook his head and asked for a cigarette. Rose reminded him he didn’t smoke and went indoors. When she’d dragged the reason for his no show from the groom she briefly contemplated starting smoking herself.

‘You have to tell her, Rose, I can’t do it. Tell her I’m sorry and I love her, just not that way.’

‘Oh, sure, that will make her feel much better. Shall I tell her before or after that her fiancé has waited until his wedding day to admit he’s gay?’ Rose wasn’t in the mood to feel much empathy for anyone else but her twin that day.

Rose fully anticipated that Rebecca would collapse or lose it totally when she told her about Simon, but her sister was calm, almost surreally so considering the circumstances.

It was Rebecca who had taken control, which was good because their father was almost catatonic and their mother was stressing about the protocol of returning the gifts.

She insisted on telling the guests personally. Rose would never forget the image of her standing there like a serene goddess in her frothy white wedding dress explaining in a few dignified sentences that the wedding would not be going ahead.

Watching her, knowing how much she had to be hurting, broke Rose’s heart; she knew that if the roles had been reversed she could never have been as brave.

It was about four days later that it actually hit Rebecca, then there were the tears, the anger … and a few weeks later she announced she had swung a refund on the honeymoon and some of the reception and planned to travel for a few months with the money.

It looked pretty much as if her travels had at some point taken her to Mathieu Gauthier’s bedroom.

‘It’s gone quiet back there. Could it be your amnesia has been cured? Is it all coming back?’ he suggested in a silky sneery voice that made Rose fantasise about wiping the superior smirk off his face.

‘For your information …’ She stopped the words playing in her mind—the tramp in your bed wasn’t me, it was my twin sister.

It didn’t matter how much she wanted to squeeze an apology out of the awful man. Her loyalty to her twin was more important. It was the very least that Rebecca deserved.

It wasn’t as if it mattered one way or the other what Mathieu Demetrios or whatever he called himself these days thought of her.

She drew herself upright and, glaring at the back of his neck, shook her head, closing her mouth firmly on the retort. ‘I’ve never been to Monaco.’

‘Then you have a twin out there somewhere.’

Yes, I do, and I could give you her address, though I doubt her husband would be too happy about it. ‘If you say so,’ she agreed, shivering as she turned her head to look out of the window. ‘I don’t think the cottage hospital even has a casualty department.’

‘It’s a hospital. There will be a doctor.’ If there wasn’t it would have to be Inverness.

‘I’m fine and I’m late …’ She grabbed the door handle to steady herself as he took a corner clearly under the impression that he was still at the wheel of a formula-one car, not a battered Land Rover.

‘We’ll let the man who trained for six years decide if you’re fine, shall we?’

Rose pursed her lips and didn’t say another word. What was the point? He was clearly going to do what he wanted no matter what she said.

It turned out he was right, there was a doctor at the small community hospital—one of the local GPs who said they had done exactly the right thing when she related her story, apologising repeatedly for wasting his time.

When she returned to the waiting area a few minutes later she thought at first that her racing-driver rescuer had left … then just as some of the tension was leaving her spine he peeled himself away from a wall.

‘Oh, I didn’t see you in the shadow.’ The tension was back with a vengeance. She had never met anyone who aroused such feelings of antipathy by doing nothing more than drawing himself up to his full and admittedly impressive height. It was lucky really—if she’d liked him she’d have felt that in some irrational way she was being disloyal to her twin.

‘I said I’d wait.’ His brows drew together in a straight line when she shivered.

‘And I said it was not necessary. I’m quite capable of making my own way back.’