CHAPTER TEN

‘THERE’s Alexius now,’ Rosie’s aunt Sofia carolled in Rosie’s ear. ‘I told you he’d be here! He never misses one of Dad’s parties.’

Rosie focused her attention on the noticeable crush that had formed on the far side of the room. She could only see the top of Alexius’s arrogant dark head because he was taller than the men around him. Perspiration beaded her short upper lip and her hands clenched in on themselves. A full week had passed since she had left the island and Alexius had not got in touch once. Not once! Keeping her distance from him demanded every ounce of her self-control and she wondered why that was so when he was the one behaving badly. What had happened to her pride? ‘Who are all those people with him?’ she asked, unable to suppress her curiosity.

‘Alexius always gets mobbed in public. He’s a very powerful man in business. The men want a piece of what he’s got and the women want a piece of him,’ the older woman spelt out with a suggestive chuckle.

Socrates had chosen to throw his party in his flagship city hotel and had insisted on buying Rosie a new dress for the occasion even though she had shown him an outfit that she had been convinced would do. Had it not been for the emotional turmoil she had suffered in leaving Alexius, she would have thoroughly enjoyed the week she had spent in her grandfather’s company. On his home turf, Rosie and Socrates had relaxed and developed a close bond, discovering a very similar sense of humour and an equally strong appreciation of unpretentious living.

Rosie was wearing white, which nicely set off the light golden tan she had acquired on the beach, and she had had her hair done specially for the occasion, so that the pale strands fell waterfall straight past her shoulders. The dress was more revealing than what she was accustomed to wearing though, and she felt wildly self-conscious in it. Sofia had taken Rosie shopping, however, and saying no to the ebullient Sofia was no easy task. Rosie thought that she and her aunt were too different to ever be close, but Sofia had curbed her waspish tongue since Rosie’s arrival and the older woman’s blunt opinions were, admittedly, informative and often amusing. The older woman knew everyone who was anyone in society and was thoroughly acquainted with every scandal and secret worth hearing about. Rosie was convinced that all the guests must already know that she was pregnant and by whom for she could not believe that Sofia was capable of keeping such a juicy piece of gossip to herself.

‘Who’s she?’ Rosie prompted, dry-mouthed, as a gap in the crowd round Alexius revealed a glimpse of a striking brunette in a bright blue skimpy dress with a possessive hand locked to the father of her child’s arm. Yes, that was right, Rosie reminded herself vitriolically, he was the father of her child and it was cheap and tasteless of Alexius to be showing off another woman at her party.

‘Yannina Demas … Demas Shipping,’ Sofia extended authoritatively. ‘They’re old friends, but Nina has always wanted more. Don’t stare at him, Rosie. Never wear your heart on your sleeve for a man, particularly not one with so many options available.’

Instantly, Rosie turned her pale head away, flags of stricken colour mantling her cheeks as if she had been slapped. Was she that transparent? Were her feelings for Alexius so obvious? She could hardly eat and she certainly wasn’t sleeping. Undeniably her spirits were low. With each day that had dragged past without a visit or even a casual phone call, Rosie had suffered more as she struggled to keep her feelings under control. At one point she had almost got desperate enough to phone Alexius and tell him not to be so stupid but had managed to restrain herself from such a revealing act. Old friends? Former bed partners or genuine old friends? Nina Demas was clinging to Alexius as though he were her only support in a violent storm. Rosie blanked the view and suppressed the thought to smile at the tall young man asking her to dance.

Alexius watched Rosie walk onto the dance floor: she looked disorientatingly unfamiliar. That dress had certainly not come from the conservative wardrobe he had ordered for her. It was very short with a fitted bodice that bared her shoulders and showcased her breasts, while the skirt sat out below her waist decorated with fluffy flowers of fabric. Once she would have dismissed such a very feminine dress as silly and frivolous but the whole effect was stunning and sophisticated and it stood for all the qualities Alexius had never wanted Rosie to acquire.

He had liked her simplicity, her unashamed lack of glamour and vanity. He didn’t like her putting her pregnancy-enhanced breasts on display or showing off her slender, shapely legs, which would only encourage men to wonder what it would be like to lie between them. If it weren’t for the salient little fact that he had ditched her, Alexius would have rushed over there and wrapped his jacket round Rosie to shield her from the clothes-stripping male eyes locked to her because she was attracting far too much attention. And Alexius didn’t like that either. Even less did he like the way she was behaving as he watched her slender hips swivelling in time to the music in a sexually provocative display. What the hell did she think she was playing at? His temper smouldered like boiling oil below the polite social smile he wore in response to a sally from Nina.

Rosie’s aunt spoke to her as she came off the floor to say, ‘If you can spare five minutes, Dad wants to see you upstairs in his suite.’

Breathing audibly from her efforts on the dance floor, Rosie entered the lift that would take her up to Socrates’s private suite. She wondered if something had happened and worried that the older man had been doing too much and wasn’t feeling well. Taking adequate rest was a challenge for a man as energetic as Socrates Seferis, who was very much a hands-on employer. The door of the suite stood ajar and she walked on in, glancing round, surprised to find herself alone. A moment later, the door opened wide and Alexius strode in impatiently, wheeling to a surprised halt when he saw her standing there.

‘Socrates?’

‘He’s not here yet,’ Rosie proclaimed stiffly, clashing unwarily with liquid mercury eyes set between lush black lashes, her mouth running dry. Alexius looked spectacular in his formal suit, his skin like polished bronze against his white shirt collar, his lean, strong face outrageously handsome but clenched in hard, taut lines. ‘Did he want to speak to you as well?’

‘Right now it looks more like he wanted us to speak to each other,’ Alexius responded with a cynical smile as he closed the door, sealing them into unwelcome privacy.

Rosie froze. ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you.’

‘That’s fine because I’ve got plenty to say!’ Alexius retorted harshly, studying the slim figure shamelessly exposed in the figure-hugging dress, his wide sensual mouth twisting with derision. Her newly plump breasts pouted delectably in the neckline and as he helplessly pictured the taut little berries of her nipples a heavy ache stirred with aggravating intensity at his groin. ‘What are you doing coming out in public dressed like that?’

‘Like what?’ Rosie demanded defiantly, intimidated against her will by the sheer imposing size of him standing within a few feet of her while her mind was bombarded with intimate images she had buried deep: Alexius setting her on fire with his clever hands and even more erotic mouth; Alexius driving her wild from dawn to dusk, his hunger for her knowing no bounds. ‘What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?’

‘You’re showing far too much flesh for a pregnant woman,’ Alexius declared without hesitation. ‘It’s indecent.’

‘I don’t look pregnant yet!’ Rosie flung back at him furiously, wondering if her no longer perfectly flat stomach was visible and all stirred up by the suspicion that she might be looking rather ridiculous.

‘But you are pregnant,’ Alexius reminded her with something very much like satisfaction. ‘And throwing yourself about the dance floor in your condition isn’t sensible.’

‘What would you know about it?’ Rosie snapped, mortified by that cutting description of her behaviour. ‘We’ve never danced together and doesn’t that say all there is to know about us? We’ve never danced. We’ve never had a first date.’

Frustration assailed Alexius. ‘It’s a little late in the day to worry about that.’

‘I hate you!’ Rosie launched at him, having failed to get a rise out of him with what to her was a very salient point. ‘You’re trying to lay down the law and you’ve got no right. What I wear and how I behave is none of your business!’

‘But the baby will always be my business,’ Alexius reminded her succinctly. ‘Of course you don’t hate me.’

‘How do you know? You dumped me!’ Rosie spat back at him with tempestuous bitterness. ‘Did you think that was good for me and the baby? And what about all that sex?’

‘We enjoyed each other,’ Alexius pronounced with supreme assurance, studying the lush pout of her mouth with diamond-bright eyes. ‘You had no complaints at the time.’

His intense gaze set her on fire inside her dress, tightening her nipples, causing a surge of moist heat between her thighs so that she pressed them together. Unbearable hunger pulsed through her slim body and her hands clenched into defensive fists. He reached for her with casual cool, lean fingers closing round her wrists to tug her close.

‘No!’ Rosie yelled at him fiercely, terrified of being touched and giving him the response he no longer had the right to claim.

But his mouth still ravished hers in a taste of heaven and hell. The heaven was the sweet flood of revitalising longing he released and the hell was her inability to suppress her response. His tongue delved deep and made her shudder violently. He hauled her up against his big powerful body, crushing her tender breasts against his muscular chest while his hands slid beneath her skirt to curve to her slender thighs, parting them as he lifted her to clamp them round his waist.

‘What the heck are you playing at?’ Rosie condemned, entrapped by his strength and what she saw as her mental weakness.

‘I want you … you want me, moraki mou. It’s that basic,’ Alexius growled against her swollen mouth. ‘Come home with me now.’

‘No way. We’re over—you made that clear.’

‘I wasn’t thinking clearly,’ Alexius grated. ‘You took me by surprise and then you flounced off before I could do anything about it!’

‘Put me down!’ Rosie shouted at him, desperate to break free of her terrifying longing to cling to him. ‘I left you a week ago and you’ve done nothing … you didn’t even phone!’

Alexius stared down at her, his light eyes reflective. ‘I thought you would phone me.’

It was true: he had thought that after a little breathing space she would phone him. She was such a chatterbox, always had a thousand things she wanted to share with him. He had assumed she would not be able to resist the temptation to speak to him and he had resented her silence almost as much as her absence.

With a determined flex of her inner thigh muscles, Rosie contrived to loosen his hold and shimmy down the length of him, although not without discovering the potent thrust of his arousal and gritting her teeth on the thought that only sex could motivate Alexius to such a demonstration. She broke away from him with enraged green eyes. ‘How dare you ask me to come home with you?’

‘That’s where you belong—in my home with me,’ Alexius informed her.

‘You dumped me!’ Rosie shrieked at him again.

Alexius winced at her shrillness. ‘I want you back. Back in my home, back in my bed, back with me.’

‘It’s not going to happen!’ Rosie raked back at him in a blazing temper as she stalked to the door and wrenched it open. ‘You had your chance and you blew it!’

Alexius was indignant. He was willing to make amends, willing to talk, but he was not about to grovel for a hearing. Yes, he had made mistakes but so had she.

As the lift doors opened her grandfather stepped out. ‘Did you talk to Alexius?’ he pressed.

‘So, you did set us up?’ Rosie queried.

‘Anything was preferable to watching the two of you acting like sulking teenagers on opposite sides of the room,’ Socrates admitted.

‘We argued,’ Rosie told him grudgingly.

Alexius stepped past Socrates into the lift before the doors could close again. ‘But go ahead and announce our engagement this evening. I have every intention of ensuring that we work out our differences.’

‘Announce … what? An engagement? Are you crazy? I have no desire to work at anything with you!’ Rosie shouted at him full-tilt as she followed him into the lift, outraged at his declaration.

‘Did I say I was giving you a choice?’ Alexius asked tight-lipped.

‘And how do you intend to make me listen?’ Rosie hurled. ‘Do you ever listen to yourself?’

‘Do you ever know when to shut up?’ Alexius traded. ‘Do you even know why you’re arguing with me?’

‘You dumped me … I hate you,’ Rosie responded without even having to think about it as the lift doors sprang open again.

‘You’ll get over it,’ Alexius asserted, pouncing on her without warning to swing her up into his arms and head first over one shoulder, one hand splayed to the pert curve of her behind to lock her safely in place. ‘You’re coming home with me now.’

‘No, I darned well am not! Put me down right this minute!’ Rosie gasped in ringing disbelief as he strode across the foyer towards the exit with everybody staring at them. As her upside-down face burned crimson with embarrassment her fists battered at his broad back in furious frustration. ‘I won’t tell you again, Alex—put me down!’

‘You should know by now that I never do as you tell me and am stubbornly resistant to even good advice,’ Alexius fielded.

Rosie blinked in horror as flash bulbs went off all around them, momentarily lighting them up and illuminating a sea of grinning faces.

‘Alex …’ she wailed, still in shock at his behaviour.

Alexius lowered her carefully into the rear of the waiting limousine and swung in beside her, watching with helpless amusement as she struggled to sit up and smooth back her tumbled hair from her flushed face. ‘How could you do that to me?’ she demanded wrathfully.

‘You didn’t give me a choice. The prospect of a couple of comic photographs doesn’t bother me,’ he admitted with a level of calm that disconcerted her.

‘Where on earth are you taking me?’ Rosie demanded sharply.

‘Back to the island where we can fight in privacy.’

‘I’m not going back to the island,’ Rosie told him stonily.

‘Please don’t make me carry you through the airport kicking and screaming,’ Alexius urged impatiently.

‘I don’t know what’s come over you.’

‘The knowledge that I don’t have the right words to persuade you and that sometimes actions speak more loudly and truly,’ he countered levelly.

‘You didn’t try to persuade me.’

‘I told you I wanted you back.’

‘That was persuasion?’ Rosie was wide-eyed at the sheer primitive nature of that idea. ‘I’ll never forgive you for making a spectacle of us like this.’

Alexius contrived to look unconcerned by that warning and even dared to smile when Rosie got out of the limo at the airport and demonstrated no desire to run away. But then shock had overwhelmed Rosie’s temper and made her think hard instead. She was very much shaken by Alexius going to such extraordinary lengths to try and get her back, even grudgingly impressed by the level of importance he had to have attached to her to act in such a way in public. And on one point he was undeniably right: they did have to talk, had to sort out their future relationship along civilised lines for the baby’s sake. Her grandfather’s crack about ‘sulking teenagers’ had hit a bull’s eye with Rosie and made her squirm with embarrassment.

Another barrage of cameras greeted them at the airport and she wondered bitterly if their colleagues outside the hotel had tipped them off. If they were hoping for another show of some kind they were disappointed when Alexius and Rosie merely walked decorously past. They boarded the helicopter before Rosie remembered her pet. ‘Bas is at Grandad’s!’ she exclaimed in dismay.

‘No, he’s not. I took care of him before I arrived at the party.’

Rosie shot his lean hard profile a frowning glance. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Bas and your clothes were flown out earlier this evening,’ Alexius admitted reluctantly, watching the gleam of incredulity spark in her eyes. ‘I may not be the romantic type but I am very practical, glyka mou.’

‘And how did Bas greet you?’

‘Like he would greet any kidnapper—with snarls and snapping teeth! But I got him all the same,’ Alexius informed her cheerfully. They were on their way back to the island and he felt more energised than he had felt all week. Although he still felt that he lacked the right words and approach he was convinced that with persistence he could get over that barrier.

Momentarily weak, Rosie rested her pounding head back against the seat rest. Why had he told Socrates to go ahead and announce their engagement? Did Alexius actually believe that he could railroad her into marriage? Was this her cue to accept that for their child’s sake she had to settle for a guy who only wanted her to provide him with ‘amazing’ sex? Possibly she was guilty of expecting too much from Alexius. Nobody could love to order. Either love was there or it was not. He had had no business criticising her dress and behaviour at the party. What had come over him? She could have been forgiven for thinking that he was jealous.

Alexius … jealous? Her soft mouth formed a little moue of wry amusement, even as she conceded that she had been jealous of his apparent closeness to Yannina Demas. Seeing Alexius with another woman had been like having little knives shot deep into her shrinking flesh, she acknowledged painfully. But considering that he had walked out of the party leaving Yannina behind, she knew she had no grounds to be jealous.

Yet weeks had passed since she had faced the fact that if she did not marry Alexius there would be other women in his life. She couldn’t have it both ways, she reminded herself doggedly. Either she married him or set him free, and if she married him she would have to accept that he would be something less than her dream husband. But then how many women got to marry their dream? Alexius was her dream even if she was not his. He didn’t love her—her every regret came down to the same cruel bottom line and there was no escaping it. Could she live without his love? Would it be easier to accept a practical marriage than live without him? But then she wasn’t living without him well … She was absolutely miserable without him.

It was the early hours of the morning when the helicopter landed on Banos. The big house was fully lit and Bas ran out of the front door barking an excited welcome. Rosie could barely move in her short skirt and Alexius simply laughed when he registered her predicament and lifted her out to set her down. Her high heels crunched across dew-wet grass up the steps and indoors. She scooped up Bas on the way, soothing his frantic licking and fussing with quiet words.

‘You know, this has got to be the most insane thing you’ve ever done,’ she told Alexius weakly in the echoing hall and then, in a tone that barely contained her incredulity and frustration, ‘Why didn’t you phone me?’ she yelled at him.

‘I didn’t know what to say,’ he muttered fiercely. ‘I was scared I would make things worse and lose you for ever.’

And something gave within Rosie. I was scared. She had never thought he would admit to anything like that and it touched her deep and made her want to listen for a change.

‘I can’t stand this house without you in it,’ he admitted abruptly as he strode into the drawing room. ‘I had to do something.’

Lashes fluttering over her dazed eyes, Rosie followed him. ‘The something was a bit extreme …’

‘Not as far as I’m concerned,’ Alexius asserted. ‘My world comes alive when you’re around but it’s dead when you’re not.’

Her eyes rounded. ‘You missed me?’

‘Of course I missed you! What do you think I am? A stone?’

‘I have wondered sometimes.’ Her fancy shoes pinching, Rosie sat down on an opulent sofa and kicked them off with a sigh of relief. He had missed her but he still hadn’t been able to work himself up to a simple phone call. He was a mass of contradictions and complexities, some of which she might never grasp because she was a much more straightforward person.

He stood in front of formal marble fireplace, rigid with tension. ‘I want you back. I want to marry you.’

‘So you’ve said,’ Rosie conceded, no longer sure what her answer should be, for over time the once clear lines of her rejection had blurred as she came to need him more and more.

Alexius released his breath in a slow hiss. ‘We could have a good marriage. You and the baby would be the most important elements in my world.’

Rosie dealt him a frowning look of doubt. ‘How can you say that?’

‘It’s the truth,’ he declared, a slight flush highlighting his amazing cheekbones. ‘The complete and utter truth, moraki mou.’

‘And when did this … staggering change in your attitude come about?’ Rosie prompted, desperate for him to convince her, absolutely pathetically desperate to make that leap.

‘When you weren’t here any more,’ Alexius admitted jerkily. ‘Somehow and right from the start you got under my skin—’

‘Are you sure this isn’t just a temporary condition?’

Alexius lifted his handsome head high, silver eyes screened, his discomfiture pronounced. ‘I haven’t looked at another woman since the day I met you.’

‘You were with that Demas woman this evening,’ Rosie reminded him, afraid to hope, afraid to believe.

‘Nina called me to ask if she could go with me to the party. She’s a friend, nothing more.’

‘And you truly haven’t slept with anyone else since you met me?’ Rosie prompted shakily.

‘Truly,’ he affirmed gruffly. ‘I don’t want anyone else but you.’

Her heart hammered below her breastbone and soft pink lit her small face as she studied him, hope leaping high as the ceiling above. ‘Then I could consider staying for good this time …’

Alexius nodded slowly, as restrained as she in his reaction. He dug into his pocket to produce a small jewellery box and crossed the room to offer it to her. ‘It would make me very happy if you wore this.’

His formality took Rosie aback. This proved to be a magnificent diamond solitaire ring that glittered blindingly in the artificial light. She remembered him telling her grandfather to announce the engagement but she was still dumbfounded, not having expected Alexius to go for such a traditional approach. ‘You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?’ she whispered unsteadily, gently removing the ring from the box and sliding it onto the relevant finger. ‘But you didn’t need to get me a ring …’

‘Yes, I did,’ he disagreed. ‘We’ve done everything else the wrong way round. I wanted to do this the right way.’

Rosie was enchanted by the way her ring caught the light. ‘Who says it was the wrong way round?’

‘I do. It took me too long to realise how much you meant to me … I nearly lost you,’ Alexius told her grittily.

‘I love you, Alex. I have from the start,’ Rosie murmured with gentle dignity as she finally abandoned her defensive attitude. ‘I’d be kind of hard to lose.’

He lifted her off the sofa in one swift movement to crush her against his big, powerful frame. ‘I need you … I don’t like my world without you in it. Is that love?’

‘Only you can tell. I’m horribly unhappy when I have to wake up in the morning without you,’ Rosie admitted ruefully. ‘This past week—’

‘—has been hell,’ he cut in harshly, knotting one hand into the fall of her hair to tip her head back, staring down at her with diamond-bright eyes of tender appreciation and pleasure. ‘I was counting the hours until I could see you again and then when I did see you, it all went wrong.’

‘Yes,’ she conceded. ‘You had another woman with you.’

‘And you didn’t look like you any more in that fancy dress. I don’t like other men looking at you. I’m very possessive when it comes to you and I’ve never felt that way before. It seemed so petty but I couldn’t help it, and when you smiled at that creep you were dancing with I wanted to kill him!’ he admitted grimly.

Rosie smiled up at him with wondering eyes, beginning to believe that he was hers at last, and more hers indeed than she had ever dreamt he might be. ‘I love you, Alex.’

‘We’re going to get married as soon as it can be arranged,’ Alexius told her squarely. ‘Tell me now if you’re going to fight about that.’

‘I’m not going to fight. You need me, you care about me and I think you have room in your heart for the baby as well,’ she said, happiness and hope twinned in her heart and blossoming.

‘Our baby,’ Alexius countered, sliding a hand below her skirt to splay his fingers across her stomach. ‘You’re getting bigger, agape mou. Knowing that’s my baby in there is very sexy.’

Rosie trembled as his thumb stroked across her mound, awakening the awareness that his very presence teased with anticipation. He swept her up in his arms and headed for the stairs. ‘You know, I don’t know anything about being a father,’ he warned her worriedly.

‘And I don’t know much more about being a mother,’ she pointed out equably, stroking a calming hand along the hard angular curve of his jaw. ‘We’ll both learn as we go along. We have all the time in the world.’

He laid her down on his big wide bed with tremendous care. ‘I know I love you and I’ll never stop loving you. But it unnerves me to think that we might never have met.’

‘But we did meet.’ Rosie drew him down to her with determined hands, hungry for his kisses, eager to soothe his concerns and wrap him up tight in her love. ‘And now we’re together.’

‘Together for ever,’ Alexius rhymed, his tender gaze locked to her lovely face. ‘I’m afraid you’ve got a life sentence, agape mou. You get no time off for good behaviour.’

‘I can live with that but I can’t live without you,’ Rosie whispered on a soft sigh of pleasure as his sensual mouth covered hers.