LITMIR.BIZ

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thoughts and experiencing envy.

      At the age of nine, Constantine Voulos had lost his parents in a car accident. Anton and Thespina had taken Constantine into their home and brought him up as if he were their own child. It had never occurred to Anton that Rosie might resent his constant references to his substitute son’s innumerable virtues and talents, only to despise herself for the unreasoning injustice of such childish promptings.

      The silence began to get to Rosie. She shivered at the echo of her own footsteps. She should have cleared out the day Anton had died but she had been in such shock she had simply stopped functioning. Only six weeks earlier, a mild heart attack had put him into hospital. She had been first at his bedside, reluctantly torn from him only when she’d realised that Thespina and Constantine were already on their way from the airport.

      ‘Stay ... to bell with them all!’ Anton had grated recklessly, already inflamed by the nurse who had attempted to prevent her visit to his private room.

      ‘You know you don’t mean that. You can’t do that to your wife,’ Rosie had muttered tightly, her better self talking, her worse self bitter that she, who had more right than anyone, should have to fight her way in and then sneak her way out.

      ‘You never use her name,’ Anton had sighed heavily.

      And she had flushed hotly, avoiding his gaze, too many complex emotions swirling about inside her, too much guilt, too much pain. Thespina had been his wife for over thirty years. A wonderfully loyal and loving wife, who had nonetheless been cruelly betrayed. And the simple fact that Thespina was unaware of that betrayal and indeed must be carefully protected from that knowledge did not make the brick-wall barrier of her very existence any more easy for Rosie to accept.

      Rosie had slunk in and out of that hospital for an entire week, her natural buoyance soon reasserting itself to soothe her initially frantic fears about Anton’s health. He was only fifty-five. He had been working too hard. Oh, they had talked endlessly about all the sensible things he would have to do in the future! It had occurred to neither of them that that future might be measured only in weeks.

      He had taken a convalescent cruise round the Greek islands but on the same day that he’d flown back to London again Anton had had a massive heart attack. ‘Gone within minutes!’ his secretary had sobbed down the phone, still in shock. ‘Who am I speaking to?’ she had asked then for Rosie had never rung his office before, but when Anton had failed to meet her for lunch she had been worried sick.

      Rosie had replaced the receiver in silence. Naturally she could not attend his funeral in Greece. Sick to the heart at her cruel exclusion, she had gone to the memorial service instead, only to run slap-bang into Constantine Voulos through her own clumsy lack of attention. That encounter yesterday had appalled Rosie. She should have packed her bags long ago and gone home! But she had wanted privacy in which to come to terms with the loss of the father she had known for so painfully short a time.

      ‘Rosalie... ?’

      Her heart lurched sickly against her breastbone, the oxygen locking at the foot of her convulsed throat. She jerked round in horror.

      Constantine Voulos was standing on the landing outside her bedroom. He was breathing fast, his hard, strikingly handsome features set in a dark mask of fury as he moved towards her. ‘That is your name, is it not?’

      ‘What are you doing here?’ Rosie gasped, her entire body turning cold and damp with instinctive fear. ‘How did you get in?’

      ‘You evil little vixen,’ Constantine grated, his six-foot-three-inch all-male bulk blocking the doorway that was her only avenue of escape. He couldn’t take his shimmering dark eyes off her. It was like being pinned to a wall by knives.

      With enormous effort, Rosie straightened her slim shoulders and stood her ground but she was deathly pale. ‘I don’t know who you are or what you want—’

      ‘You know exactly who I am!’ Constantine slung at her, unimpressed, taking a frightening step closer.

      ‘Stay away from me!’ Rigid with tension, Rosie wondered frantically how he had found out about her and how much he knew.

      ‘I wish I could ... I really do wish that I could,’ Constantine bit out with clenched fists, the explosive anger that emanated from him screaming along her nerve-endings like a violent storm warning.

      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.

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