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.
‘But you should have told me,’ Thespina scolded in a troubled but tender undertone. ‘How could you have believed that I would be distressed by your happiness? If you only knew what madness was in my thoughts as I came to this door—’
A taxi filtered noisily into the driveway. ‘My cab,’ Rosie muttered in stricken relief.
‘You are leaving? But I have only just met you,’ the older woman protested in surprise and disappointment.
‘I’m afraid that Rosalie has a plane to catch and she’s already running late,’ Constantine slotted in inventively, closing a lean hand round Rosie’s case before she could reach for it again and carrying it swiftly from the house, presumably to enable her to make a faster exit.
‘Rosalie... that is a very... a very pretty name,’ Thespina mused after an odd moment of hesitation, her eyes swiftly veiling before she glanced up again and continued with apparent warmth. ‘Forgive me for arriving without an invitation but I shall look forward to spending time with you very soon.’
‘I’m sorry I have to rush off like this,’ Rosie mumbled in a stifled voice, quite unable to meet the older woman’s eyes, twin spots of high colour highlighting her cheekbones.
Constantine already had the door of the cab open. She sensed that if he had had access to supernatural forces a smoking crater would have been all that survived of her presence. But as she began to slide into the cab he caught her with a powerful hand and lowered his arrogant dark head, diamond-hard eyes raking over her with cold menace. ‘We have business to discuss. When will you be back?’
‘Never.’
‘You’ll come back for the money all right,’ Constantine forecast between gritted teeth, the necessity of keeping his voice down lest he be overheard by Thespina clearly a major challenge to his self-control. ‘Now I must force myself to bid you goodbye as a lover would.’
‘If you want a knee where it will really hurt, go ahead,’ Rosie invited with a venomous little smile and scorching green eyes full of threat.
‘Theos...’ Constantine breathed rawly, his hard fingers biting into her elbow. Bending down with a grim reluctance she could feel, he dropped a fleeting kiss on her brow. One blink and she would have missed it.
Until he touched her, Rosie was as stiff as a little tin soldier, and then she shivered, backed away and scrambled at speed into the cab. It drove off and she could not even make herself look back or wave to add a realistic note to his masquerade. Her heart was racing so fast, she felt physically sick.
Her fingers clenched together tightly on her lap. She felt the ring and she was furious with herself, for hadn’t she asked for what she had got and the trouble she had caused? She should have moved out of the house the instant she’d learnt of Anton’s death! She should not have openly worn the emerald either.
Her stomach cramped up. She saw Thespina’s face as she had first seen it and repressed a shudder. At first Anton’s widow had looked devastated. The older woman had somehow found out about the house and she had valiantly come to face whatever or whoever she found there. And, like Constantine, her intelligence had supplied only one possible explanation for Anton’s surprising use of a second residence in London... that the husband she had loved and so recently lost had been keeping another woman.
Rosie felt horribly guilty. If Constantine hadn’t been the sleek, sneaky type of male who thought fast on his expensively shod feet, what would have happened? If he hadn’t pretended that he had given her the Estrada ring because they were engaged, what on earth would Anton’s wife have thought?
The sheer intensity of Thespina’s relief when she had believed she could lay both house and youthful redhead at Constantine’s door rather than at her late husband’s had been painful to behold. And her resulting sincere friendship had mortified Rosie. The art of deception was not one of her talents, even if in this case it had been a kindness to protect a woman who had never done anyone the smallest harm and who had already had more than her fair share of disappointment in life.
After all, Thespina had not been able to give Anton the child they had both so desperately wanted. One miscarriage after another had dashed their hopes. Only once had Thespina managed to carry a baby to term but the result had been a stillborn son, a shatteringly cruel and final blow to them after so many years of childlessness.
When Thespina had then sunk into deep depression, leaving Anton to struggle alone with his grief, their once strong marriage had begun to crumble. It had been during that period that Anton had been unfaithful with Rosie’s mother, Beth... Rosie crushed that discomfiting awareness out. But it was, she discovered, difficult to forget Thespina again. Had they really managed to set the older woman’s fears to rest? Had she been convinced?
Before she got on the train that would take her back to Yorkshire, Rosie found herself queuing for a public phone. She dialled the number of the house, praying that Constantine was still there. As soon as she heard his voice, she sucked in a deep breath and said stiffly, ‘It’s Rosie. Look, I meant what I said earlier. You can keep the money... OK?’
‘What sort of a game are you playing?’ Constantine launched back wrathfully down the line. ‘You think I am impressed by this nonsense? Thespina’s gone and we have to talk. If she hadn’t arrived, I wouldn’t have allowed you to leave. I want you back here right now!’
Rosie’s teeth ground together. It wasn’t as if she had even wanted to speak to Constantine Voulos again and she honestly didn’t give two hoots about the money. That had only been her opening salvo, calculated to soothe. Her conscience had driven her to the phone. She felt bad about Thespina. She wanted reassurance that her father’s widow hadn’t smelled a rat in their performance and had her worst suspicions reawakened. ‘I—’
‘You
