CHAPTER SEVEN

ROSIE sat on the wonderfully comfortable seat, buckled up for take-off. The seat was comfy but she was not. The sheer opulence of the private jet spooked her. Bas lay in his basket on the seat beside her, slumped in an awkward pose, one front leg enclosed in a cast. He was quieter since the assault, more nervous too, Rosie conceded with regret, frantic to think of anything other than the forthcoming ordeal of meeting her father’s family in Athens. She didn’t feel like herself any more, not sheathed in the very elegant little green dress that nipped in at her bust, waist and hips to give her a shape she had not known she had. Every garment had been professionally altered to suit her height and she didn’t even want to think about how much money such perfect tailoring might have cost. Used to shopping in children’s departments to find any kind of a fit, Rosie was unnerved by the fashionable expensive clothing that had been delivered to her bedsit to fill not only one but three accompanying suitcases. Would she be expected to change clothes several times a day like a member of the royal family?

Her exams were over but she had not been free to go out on the town with her classmates to celebrate the night before. Not only could she not drink but she had also been reluctant to face Alexius with bruised eyes and the pallor of someone who had stayed out too late. But since when had she become so concerned about what she looked like? That new pitiful self-consciousness that had her sitting in high heels that flattered her legs but that nonetheless pinched like the very devil infuriated Rosie. Everything that had once mattered to her from her fierce independence to her freedom seemed to have been wrenched from her. She thought of her baby and mentally apologised to it for her troubled mood.

Meanwhile, gloriously unaware of the doubts and insecurities assailing his passenger, indeed assuming that she was looking forward to meeting her wealthy relatives, Alexius worked with determination at his laptop on the other side of the saloon. Watching her board, her pale hair bouncing on her shoulders and shining in the sunlight, her chin lifting in challenge when she saw his attention lingering, had been quite sufficient. He saw her, he wanted her like a starving man faced with a banquet: it was that simple, that shamefully basic. And Alexius didn’t like feeling like that one little bit. Subjected to that galling heat when he least welcomed it, he brooded on the mystery of it and longed to shake free of it. The maddening hunger she had infected him with like a virus outraged his pride and threatened his self-control. He wondered if greater access to that enticing little body would provide the cure that would kill the constant ache of arousal and programme his brain back to cold normality. He would get bored with her—he always got bored with his lovers, he reflected with sudden satisfaction.

‘Where will I be staying tonight?’ Rosie asked abruptly.

‘At your grandfather’s …’ Alexius raised a questioning black brow at the expression of dismay his answer had earned. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘I assumed I’d be staying at a hotel … I mean, I don’t know these people and it’s not going to help that I arrive pregnant and unmarried, is it?’ Rosie pointed out apprehensively. ‘It could be very uncomfortable for me.’

‘That’s an understandable concern,’ Alexius positively purred, delighted to step into the breach in her hour of apparent need. ‘I should have thought of that. You’ll want to get to know Socrates at a more relaxed pace than you would enjoy as a house guest.’

‘Yes …’ Rosie awarded him a look of relief at his grasp of her plight. ‘I’m glad you can see that.’

‘I’m not as insensitive as you like to believe,’ Alexius told her, a shot of adrenalin firing through him, his devious streak having a field day at her expense. On a high of gratification, he stood up and even bent down to stroke a daring forefinger over Bas’s exposed spine as he moved past. Bas twisted his head round, his bat ears unfurling like sails, and bared his crooked teeth in a growled warning that Alexius should keep his distance.

‘No, Bas,’ Rosie said firmly.

Suppressing a revealing grin, Alexius buzzed the steward to pour drinks. Suddenly he felt like punching the air: this was his chance to take her home with him!

A couple of hours later, Rosie sat rigid in the limo whisking them out to the suburbs where Socrates Seferis lived, her nervous tension pronounced. ‘Who else lives with my grandfather?’

‘Currently only your aunt Sofia.’

Rosie’s spine eased down a little. ‘Do we admit that I’m pregnant … I mean, how are we going to broach that?’ she pressed with a wince of discomfort at the prospect. She didn’t even know these people but right from the start she would feel at a disadvantage.

‘We’re not dependent teenagers, Rosie.’

‘The way we behaved we might as well have been.’

‘I will deal with it. You don’t need to say anything.’

‘Maybe you should just let it go for the moment—it’s not like I’m showing yet.’

His beautiful, wilful mouth tightened. ‘On this issue, I prefer honesty from the outset.’

She resisted the temptation to say that she wished that had always been his attitude. The limo purred up a driveway to a large impressive modern house set in manicured gardens. She climbed out, gripping Alexius’s hand to steady herself when she teetered on her heels.

‘You can hardly walk in those shoes,’ Alexius censured.

‘But they look good,’ she countered flatly. ‘And according to you that’s all that matters.’

‘It wouldn’t matter to me if you walked barefoot.’

Considering that he had not been put off by her cleaning uniform, she gave considerable weight to that remark. A manservant received them in a large airy hall and then a heavily built older man with grizzled grey hair strode out of one of the rooms to survey her with keen eyes and a wide welcoming smile. ‘Rosie?’

The warmth of his greeting dispelled her worst tension and she gave him a shy smile. ‘Grandad …?’

‘And Alexius.’ The man by her side was welcomed with an open affection that seemed to make her companion’s lean darkly handsome features set in even tauter lines. For the first time, it occurred to Rosie that Alexius, for whatever reasons—and she didn’t want to think about that—had not been looking forward to this meeting in the slightest. ‘Smile,’ Socrates urged. ‘This is a day of celebration. You’ve brought my grandchild home to me.’

They were ushered into a large sunlit room and a small blonde woman, who looked to be in her forties and had sharp, not unattractive features moved forward to introduce herself as Sofia. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. Her father began to ask Rosie a stream of eager questions, his interest in her likes, dislikes and hobbies rather touching for a young woman who had never before found herself the focus of so much attention. The older man’s grasp of English was not the equal of his godson’s, however, and several times Alexius stepped in like an interpreter to clarify her answers. When she told Socrates about her studies, he beamed at her in approval, and she would have mentioned her plans to go to university had she not been thinking that with a baby in tow that might yet prove an impossible challenge. The more Socrates talked to Rosie, the more stiff and silent Sofia became until eventually she closed a determined hand to Rosie’s forearm. ‘You and I need to get better acquainted. I’ve got photos of the family to show you,’ she said, urging Rosie across the room to a sofa and settling a large album down on her lap.

‘I can’t help being really curious about this family,’ Rosie admitted, leafing through the album while Sofia put a label to innumerable faces. She recognised her own father as a teenager in a beach photograph, good-looking, smiling and surrounded by girls. It was a fair match for the faded photo that was all her mother had had to show for her affair with Troy Seferis. When Rosie’s aunt pointed out her uncle, Timon, Rosie asked if she would be meeting him as well.

Sofia frowned. ‘I don’t know. Timon is in rehab again. I’m afraid my brother has been a drug addict since he was seventeen and my father is still struggling without success to straighten him out.’

Rosie absorbed that sad news without comment, wishing that Alexius had forewarned her and desperately searching for a safer topic of conversation. ‘Can you tell me anything about my father, Troy?’ she prompted hopefully.

‘Only that with the exception of my father the men in this family are and were fairly useless,’ Sofia told her in a tart undertone. ‘Timon has two sons but while they were working in one of Dad’s hotels they set up a scam to skim off money for themselves.’

Rosie was taken aback at that admission of her cousins’ criminality. ‘My goodness …’ she remarked uncertainly just as her grandfather sprang up out of his chair on the other side of the room with surprising vigour and spat something in guttural Greek at Alexius, which sent her startled eyes flying in that direction instead. ‘What’s happened?’

Alexius’s body was rigid and unyielding, his face hard and expressionless. Rosie had never seen his innate reserve so pronounced. His godfather was ranting at him and Alexius was saying very little in response.

‘Thee mou, you might look ladylike and quiet but you’re clearly a very clever little schemer,’ Sofia commented, shooting Rosie a look of tremendous satisfaction.

Realising that her aunt understood the source of the conflict between the two men and very much afraid that she did as well, Rosie composed her face and said, ‘And why would you think that?’

‘Falling pregnant by a billionaire is a world-class coup and surely no accident on your part? Not with a mother who pulled the same stunt on my younger brother!’ Sofia jibed with a chuckle of unconcealed amusement and derision. ‘And to think I thought you were coming here to charm and impress my father. Instead, he’s shocked and furious …’

Allowing her aunt’s cheap, unfeeling sneer to roll off her, Rosie pressed urgently, ‘What’s your father saying to Alexius?’

‘This is as good as a soap opera,’ the older woman commented with enjoyment. ‘According to my antiquated father, your reputation is now ruined for all time …’

Well, we’ll see about that, Rosie reflected in exasperation, rising from her seat in a quick movement and advancing to within a few feet of the two angry men. Alexius might not be shouting but she knew by his powerful stance and the wild, stormy glitter of his eyes that he was furious and that only his respect for the older man was making him withstand the tirade in silence.

‘Stay out of this,’ Alexius breathed tautly, when he realised Rosie was at his elbow.

‘No, it’s not fair and it’s not the Dark Ages either!’ Rosie protested, fixing her attention on her red-faced grandfather and addressing him directly. ‘Please calm down. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known I was likely to cause so much trouble between you and Alexius. It can’t be good for your heart to get so worked up … and don’t say anything more to Alexius. He did ask me to marry him.’

‘You … did?’ Socrates turned back to stare at his godson in astonishment, his anger visibly falling away at that information.

‘And I said no,’ Rosie slotted in before her grandfather could get too excited about what was not going to happen.

‘No?’ her grandfather thundered back at her instead. ‘Are you insane? You’re carrying his child and you said no?’

‘I think we should let the dust settle on this and leave for now,’ Rosie suggested tightly, laying a trembling hand on Alexius’s sleeve. ‘I can come back to visit when tempers cool … if I’m still welcome, of course.’

‘Of course, you will be,’ Alexius pronounced with unbelievable cool as if nothing whatsoever had happened. ‘It is I who will not be so.’

‘If you’re not marrying him, you shouldn’t be going anywhere with him,’ Socrates Seferis delivered in a final cutting piece of advice.

Rosie glanced from her grandfather’s angry, dissatisfied face to her aunt’s barely hidden triumph at Rosie’s fast fall from grace and decided that she had had enough of the family reunion for one day. ‘I make my own decisions and I trust Alexius,’ she said quietly.

‘Why on earth didn’t you stand up for yourself?’ Rosie demanded of Alexius once they were back in the car. ‘He’s the one who told you to get to know me.’

‘I have great respect for Socrates, moli mou. He said nothing that was not deserved. I do have the reputation of a womaniser and I should, for once, have practised restraint.’ Yet even in the midst of that, Alexius was hopelessly amused and oddly touched by the manner in which Rosie had waded in like a miniature prize fighter to try and defend him to her grandfather, failing to appreciate that Socrates was probably the only man alive whom Alexius would have allowed to speak to him in such terms.

‘Maybe I should have kept my hands off you,’ Rosie muttered, irritated that he was trying to shoulder all the blame as if she were some helpless little fluttery thing with no brains between her ears.

‘No, I wanted you and I am too used to taking what I want and not counting the cost,’ Alexius breathed with a raw edge. ‘That, at least, was a fair comment.’

‘You should’ve listened to me when I told you not to mention me being pregnant so soon.’ Rosie sighed, wishing he were not so highly resistant to accepting advice.

‘The least I owed my godfather was the truth.’

‘My aunt is poisonous—she really enjoyed that awful scene. Why didn’t you warn me what she was like?’

‘I didn’t want to influence your opinions before you met them. They’re not my family, after all,’ he traded. ‘As a rule, Socrates is a liberal, warm-hearted man but he has your quick temper. He will very much regret the way you parted. I underestimated his reaction. His values are naturally those of the older generation and I should have foreseen that.’

Alexius took her back to the airport and it was a shock when they were suddenly engulfed in a seething mass of people waving cameras and shouting questions. She shrank into Alexius’s side, blinded by the flash bulbs going off all around her, barely aware of the security men struggling to keep the crush at bay.

‘Who’s the girl?’ voices shouted repeatedly. ‘What about Adrianna Lesley?’

Journalists, Rosie labelled belatedly, what she supposed were called paparazzi, she guessed as, his handsome mouth clenched, Alexius herded her silently through the building where everybody was staring, no doubt wondering who they were. Although as the airport security staff joined in with Alexius’s own team to practise crowd control in keeping the most overenthusiastic members of the press from preventing their free passage, she began to appreciate that Alexius appeared to be exceedingly well-known and that ironically it was her presence in his company that was creating the stir. At the back of her mind, she was trying very hard not to wonder who Adrianna was. A girlfriend? What did she know about his private life?

‘Sorry about that,’ Alexius pronounced, reading the shock at the onslaught of the paps in her dazed expression after he had slotted her into a helicopter and Bas arrived in his pet carrier.

‘How often does that happen to you?’ Rosie whispered shakily, shooting a troubled glance his way.

‘Too often.’

‘Why were they so curious about me?’

‘You arrived in my private jet. I’m rarely seen travelling with a woman. Someone at the airport probably tipped them off.’ His voice was clipped, offhand, as if such incidents were so common in his daily life that he didn’t even think about them. But what his tone seemed to say was misleading because for the first time ever Alexius had been enraged by a press intrusion. Rosie had been frightened and she was pregnant and it shouldn’t have happened. He had felt like scooping her up into his arms to shield her but had known such behaviour would only serve to incite the paparazzi to even greater aggression.

‘Where are we going now?’ she asked on the back of a huge yawn as she idly stroked Bas’s ear through the bars of his carrier.

‘Somewhere private,’ Alexius breathed, flexing his big shoulders below his finely tailored jacket and relaxing visibly at the prospect, long powerful thighs spreading.

Rosie was so sleepy and overwhelmed by the events of the day that she would not have cared had he announced that he was taking her to the moon. He had turned her life upside down though: she was very much aware of that. She flexed her crushed toes in the designer shoes she wore, brushed the expensive fabric of her dress with a wondering hand and rested her head back drowsily. It was like being a princess for a day, she thought ruefully, but fine feathers did not make fine birds because underneath she was the exact same Rosie Gray and not at all the sort of woman normally associated with a billionaire. And while enumerating all the possible ways in which she did not fit that frame, Rosie fell asleep.

Alexius almost laughed when he realised that Rosie was dead to the world: a woman had never fallen asleep in his company before. After all, he never spent the night with a woman and while he was awake his normal style of lover was too hyped up with the desire to entertain and impress him to relax to that extent. But then Rosie didn’t fall into the normal category for him, he acknowledged absently. She was no star-struck groupie, ready to do anything to please, and he was discovering that he very much liked her ability to treat him as an equal and her lack of awe and subservience.

Rosie awakened only when the helicopter landed and she stumbled groggily onto solid ground again. It was dark but the moonlight illuminated a giant white house set against a dark backdrop. She blinked, not quite sure of what she was seeing, for it was so imposing a building that it looked vaguely like a film set to her. ‘Where on earth are we?’

‘We’re on Banos, the island where I spent my earliest years,’ Alexius supplied as outside lights came on to show her a uniformed older man trundling their luggage across an immaculate lawn towards the house.

‘An island … and a house like a palace,’ she mused, insanely aware of her tousled hair and crumpled dress and scolding herself for being so vain. Had she snored while she was asleep? A school friend had once told her that she had snored on a sleepover. Inwardly, she cringed.

‘Can I let him out?’ Alexius enquired because Bas was whining and scratching in his carrier.

In answer, Rosie grasped the carrier and undid the door. Bas lurched out like a little drunken dog, struggling to balance on his three good legs against the weight of the cast.

‘Thee mou, he could wring pity from a stone,’ Alexius groaned. ‘How long does he need the cast for?’

‘Another month …’ Rosie was endeavouring not to stare goggle-eyed at the magnificent house with its white weatherboarding and long gracious colonnaded verandah. ‘Any minute now I expect Scarlett O’Hara to appear on the front step,’ she admitted.

‘It was modelled on a Southern plantation house in the thirties for one of my grandmothers,’ Alexius conceded.

Nothing could have more adequately illustrated his illustrious, privileged background, Rosie thought dizzily, than the awe-inspiring sight of the marble hall, ornamented with a huge crystal chandelier, a superb wide staircase, bronze statues and more gilded furniture than Rosie had ever seen outside a museum. She just couldn’t imagine anyone actually living in such a grand setting and she swallowed hard when a small group of staff filed out of a rear doorway to greet them.

‘Rosie, this is Olympia, my housekeeper,’ Alexius informed her. ‘Olympia will show you upstairs …’

The stout older woman led Rosie up the sweeping staircase and through double doors to the most massive room that Rosie had ever seen. The four-poster bed was draped in what appeared to be hand-painted silk and the rugs were so elegant and muted in tone that Rosie walked round them rather than across them to peer into the dressing room and bathroom that completed the accommodation. Wow and wow again, she reflected, feeling uniquely undeserving of such overpowering luxury. What had he thought when he saw her humble bedsit? It hadn’t frightened him off, she conceded with a sense of satisfaction that surprised her. Her cases arrived and with them a maid, who commenced unpacking them and hanging them up in the fancy dressing room. Feeling light years out of her depth at being waited on, Rosie grabbed up her wash bag and fled into the bathroom to take refuge there. Removing her makeup, which had streaked round her eyes enough to make her groan out loud, she stripped off to use the shower and freshen up. The warm flow of the water revived her somewhat and she made use of the towelling robe available to return to the bedroom. Mercifully, the maid had finished and Rosie finally had the time and the opportunity to more closely examine some of the clothes that had arrived only the day before, for she had had to pack them in a hurry. From a drawer she extracted a slinky pale blue nightdress and put it on, noting that excess fabric puddled round her feet. A knock on the door heralded the appearance of another maid with a tray of food.

Rosie fell on the meal like the original starving woman, not even having realised how hungry she was until the tantalising aromas of beautifully cooked food assailed her nose. Afterwards she looked at herself in the mirror, turned sideways and saw that there was still not the slightest sign that she was pregnant, aside of the noticeable swelling of her previously non-existent boobs, a development that fascinated her. She was still very tired, which she knew was common in early pregnancy, and she clambered into bed, thinking that she ought to rest for the blob’s … the baby’s sake. At least he didn’t fake things he didn’t feel or tell her only what she wanted to hear. And she didn’t need to feel guilty about landing him with her as a house guest either, not in such a giant building. Her mind rattled on and on and on, constantly reverting to thoughts of Alexius, which annoyed her. Was it an infatuation similar to something a teenager would experience? she wondered with a grimace while trying not to wonder what he was doing, what he was thinking and … who was Adrianna? Did she have the nerve to ask him? She certainly didn’t have the right. Her lack of self-discipline infuriated her: here she was worn-out with her brain buzzing like a bee and she seemed totally incapable of falling asleep.

At two in the morning, having leafed through several magazines to pass the time and even switched on the television to look in vain for an English channel, she got out of bed again. Once more she was hungry, didn’t know how, only knew that she was. Bas, who did snore like a little train, was sound asleep on top of a rug and she crept out, not wanting to lug him downstairs with her where he might bark at anything strange and wake people up.

The door at the back of the hall through which the staff had emerged led down a stair to a basement kitchen that would have been adequate for a big hotel. She wondered if Alexius entertained a lot, held fancy dinner parties or wild weekends. Strange, he seemed so reserved but in bed he had been anything but. In fact, he had been extraordinarily passionate. She lifted her hands and pressed them to her hot face. ‘Stop it, stop torturing me,’ she urged her mind.

‘Who’s torturing you?’ Alexius enquired lazily from the doorway.