The Secret Wife

Rosie retreated until the backs of her knees hit the divan bed. ‘What do you w-want?’

‘I want to wipe you off the face of this earth but I cannot ... that is what inflames me! How did you persuade Anton to do something so insane?’

‘Do... what?’ she whispered blankly, too scared to be capable of rational thought.

‘How did you persuade one of the most decent men I ever knew to sacrifice all honour and family loyalty?’ Constantine seethed back at her.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—’

‘Don’t you know what Anton did only days before his death?’ Constantine demanded rawly, scanning the suitcase on the bed with a contemptuously curled lip. ‘Have you any idea what his final words were before he died in my arms?’

Numbly, sickly, Rosie shook her head, a dense cloud of spiralling curls the colour of flames rippling round her rigid shoulders. She hadn’t known that Constantine had been with her father when he died. Ironically that new knowledge brought a lump to her throat and warmed that cold place inside her as she thought of that dreadful day. Anton had not been alone but for his secretary. Constantine had been there, Constantine had been with him, and whether she liked it or not she knew just how much that would have meant to her father.

Constantine gave a great shout of raucous laughter that chilled her. Eyes black as night dug into her with unhidden repulsion. ‘Every word which he struggled to speak related to you!’

‘Oh...’ Her stifled response barely broke the smouldering silence. And she heard his pain and didn’t want to recognise it for what it was because she did not wish to admit that she could share anything with Constantine Voulos.

‘He made me swear on my honour that I would protect you and respect his last wishes. But I didn’t even know of your existence! I didn’t understand who or even what he was referring to...nor did I know until last night what those last wishes were!’ Constantine vented on another surge of barely contained rage that visibly tremored through his long, muscular length. ‘He wrote a new will, and were it not for the fact that the publicity would destroy Thespina I would trail you through every court in Europe and crucify you for the greedy, calculating little vixen that you are before I would allow you to profit by a single drachma!’

‘A new will?’ Her teeth gritted as she withstood the lash of his insults. Hot, angry colour drove away her previous pallor. But at least she now understood what Constantine Voulos was doing here and why he was forcing such a confrontation. Evidently Anton had been foolish enough to leave her something in his will in spite of her fierce assurances that she wanted and needed nothing.

His nostrils flared as he surveyed her with dark fury. ‘Months ago, Thespina suspected that there was another woman in his life. Christos... I actually laughed when she shared her fears with me! I convinced her that it was only the excitement of a new business venture which was making Anton spend so much time in London. I was naive indeed. I underestimated the lure of youth and beauty on even the most honourable of men. Anton was obsessed with you... he died with your name on his lips!’

‘He loved me,’ Rosie mumbled helplessly, the acid sting of tears burning behind her stricken eyes as she turned defensively away.

‘And I would lay my life on the line before I would allow Thespina to endure that knowledge!’ Constantine growled rawly.

She understood then. Evidently Constantine Voulos did not know who she was. He assumed that she was the other woman, Anton’s mistress cosily set up in the proverbial love-nest. It was laughable but she couldn’t laugh. Her tremulous mouth compressed into a bloodless line. Anton had kept their secret to protect his wife. A twenty-one-year-old betrayal had gone to the grave with him. She owed it to her father to keep faith with him. The truth would only cause greater pain and distress and for what gain?

She didn’t need whatever Anton had left her. She had her own life to lead and she had no desire to take possession of anything which more rightfully belonged to her father’s widow. That would be wrong, morally wrong, she felt. The ring was different. It was her only tangible link to a heritage and a background she had lived all her life without.

‘As you can see... I’m leaving.’ Rosie lifted her bright head high and surveyed the intimidatingly tall, dark Greek with bitter antipathy ‘You have nothing to worry about. I wasn’t planning to hang around and embarrass anyone—’

‘If it were that simple, we would not be having this distasteful meeting,’ Constantine incised fiercely. ‘I would be forcibly ejecting you from this house!’

Rosie vented a scornful laugh, her own hot temper steadily rising. ‘Really?’ she challenged.

He glanced at the open suitcase, his hard mouth twisting. ‘You weren’t leaving. Possibly you were planning a brief trip somewhere but nothing will convince me that you were about to make a final departure.’

Rosie dealt him a withering glance. ‘My, aren’t we self-important? What gives you the idea that I would waste my breath trying to convince you of anything?’

A dark surge of blood accentuated the savage slant of his dramatic cheekbones. Naked derision fired his dark eyes. ‘I will not lower myself to the level of trading insults with a whore.’

Rosie had a sharp tongue which few attempted to match. She hadn’t expected a provocative response. Thwarted fury stormed through her. ‘Get out!’ she launched at him abruptly. ‘Just get out and leave me alone, you ignorant swine!’

‘Not before you answer one question,’ Constantine asserted in a sudden hiss as he stared broodingly back at her. ‘Are you pregnant?’

Rosie stilled in shock, glancing down at the flowing swing blouse she was wearing and then intercepting his narrowed glance travelling in exactly the same direction. Her cheeks crimsoned.

‘If you are pregnant...then and only then could I understand Anton’s motivation,’ Constantine conceded grudgingly, and yet he was perceptibly devastated by what his own imagination had suggested.

And only now had that possibility even occurred to him, Rosie registered, and boy, did the idea make him sick! That naturally golden skin had assumed an unhealthy pallor as presumably the implications of such a development sank in. This was how Constantine Voulos would have looked had she revealed her true relationship to Anton, Rosie realised with a sudden stab of satisfaction.

Few would deny that Anton’s child, illegitimate or otherwise, might have some sort of claim on his estate. Had she chosen to tell the truth, Constantine would not have dared to insult her. She was Anton’s daughter, his only child, the very last of the Estrada bloodline... and certainly not some calculating little gold-digger!

‘You don’t answer me.’ Abruptly Constantine swung away and then he spun just as swiftly back, his strong features clenched and taut. ‘If I have stumbled on the truth, my opinion of you is unchanged, but I should apologise for having approached you in such anger.’

Morbid amusement touched Rosie. He was backtracking fast on his offensive. Was he afraid of her now, afraid of the power she might have to disturb the smoothly planned future he no doubt envisaged for himself as sole controller of Anton’s various business enterprises? The idea that she might be carrying Anton’s child was a threat that shattered Constantine Voulos.

‘But be assured,’ he drawled flatly. ‘Should there be a child, every possible test would be required to prove your claim.’

Rosie was helplessly entertained by the knots he was tying round himself. Having come up with his own worst-case scenario, he was forgetting the boundary lines he had mentioned earlier. ‘But wouldn’t that be terribly upsetting for Thespina?’

His breath escaped in a startled hiss, his eyes flashing ferocious gold. ‘Your malice is indefensible...’

The instant Rosie had voiced the words she had wished to retrieve them, had realised too late how she would sound. For a moment she had longed to strike back at Thespina and Constantine and now she was bitterly ashamed of that spiteful prompting. She dropped her head, closed the case and tugged it down off the bed. ‘I’m not pregnant. Go in peace, Constantine. I am not a threat to either you or Thespina,’ she muttered heavily.

Downstairs the doorbell shrilled, breaking the pulsing tension within the bedroom.

‘That’ll be my cab.’ Rosie moved past him with relief. Her knees felt wobbly but she was bolstered by a feeling of innate superiority. Her father had been wrong about Constantine, his ward and son in all but name. Constantine was not, after all, Mr Perfect—well, that was hardly a surprise, was it?

Anton had been naive to imagine that Constantine would generously open his arms to his own natural child. Rosie had never paid much heed to her father’s oftrepeated assurances that if Constantine was ever given the chance he would fall over himself to be welcoming to the sudden advent of a little sister... not that Anton had ever referred to her and Constantine in such gruesome terms as brother and sister!

No, instead Anton had talked with immense warmth and approval about ‘family obligations...family support...family honour’, blithely ignoring the fact that Rosie would sooner have put an end to her existence than become anyone’s obligation! Furthermore she had been born a dyed-in-the-wool cynic.

Constantine had reacted exactly as she had expected to the idea that Anton might have fathered a child—with shock, horror and dismay as he foresaw what an expensive dent such a child might conceivably make in his own financial expectations. Feeling that she was a better person than Constantine Voulos because monetary greed had no hold on her, Rosie held her head high.

‘Don’t open that door!’ Constantine suddenly bit out from behind her.

Rosie’s head spun. He was halfway down the stairs, his diamond-bright gaze centred on her with ferocious intensity. ‘What the—?’

‘Quiet!’ he whispered rawly, slashing an overpoweringly arrogant brown hand through the air in emphatic command.

With an exasperation she did not even seek to conceal, Rosie simply ignored his demand and yanked open the front door. Disorientatingly, however, it was not a cab driver who stood on the doorstep. Rosie blinked, gulped and froze.

A small, slim woman in a black suit stared at her in wide-eyed distress, every scrap of colour slowly fading from her olive skin. She took a hesitant step back and then stilled, a look of complete bewilderment drawing her brows together as Constantine’s large dark frame appeared behind Rosie.

Faced with her late father’s wife in the flesh, Rosie had stopped breathing. Not a muscle moved on her paralysed face as she struggled not to let her horror show. A heavy hand came down on her shoulder like an imprisoning chain of restraint. Constantine said something soft in Greek but Rosie could feel the savage tension holding his big, powerful body in tautly unnatural proximity to hers.

Without warning the older woman lifted her hand and gently caught Rosie’s fingers, raising them to study the emerald which trapped the sunlight in its opulent green depths. ‘The Estrada betrothal ring,’ she whispered unevenly, and then she slowly shook her head in comprehension. ‘Of course... Anton gave you the ring for her! Constantine, how foolish I have been; I should have guessed ... but why didn’t you tell me?’

In receipt of that bemused appeal, Constantine inhaled sharply and Rosie felt his rigidity. ‘It did not seem an appropriate time to make an announcement—’

‘Only a man could believe that...as if the news that you are to marry would not bring me joy at any time!’ Her face wreathed in a delighted smile, all her uncertainty and anxiety vanished, Thespina beamed appreciatively at Rosie. ‘Exactly how long have you been engaged to my son?’

‘Engaged?’ Rosie echoed in a daze of disbelief, the pink tip of her tongue snaking out to moisten her dry lower lip.

‘It is very recent,’ Constantine drawled flatly.