all, she had tried for a long time to change her mother, had encouraged, supported, advised, even pleaded, and in the end it had all come to nothing because, regardless of what Rosie did, her mother had had no desire to change the person she was. You had to accept people as they were, not as you would like them to be, Rosie reflected with a pained sense of regret as she recalled that hard lesson. She remembered countless supervised sessions with her mother during which she had tried to shine bright enough to interest her parent in being a parent and in wanting to raise her own daughter. And now she winced, looking back at all that wasted energy and angst, for Jenny Gray had been infinitely fonder of booze, bad boys and a lively social life than she had ever been of the daughter she had purposely conceived.
‘I thought your father would marry me—I thought I’d be set up for life,’ her mother had once confided on the subject of Rosie’s conception. ‘He came from a rich family but he was a waste of space.’
As she was nothing like the ambitious fantasist her late mother had been, Rosie privately thought that a lot of men were a waste of space and that women were better company. The men she had dated had been boringly obsessed with sex, sport and beer. As she had no interest in any of that and better things to do with her few hours of free time, it had been many months since she had even had a date. Not that she was ever likely to be bowled over by a rush of male interest in her essentially unexciting self, Rosie conceded ruefully. Rosie was barely five feet tall and flat as a board back and front, embarrassingly bereft of the womanly curves that attracted the opposite sex. For years she had hoped that she was simply a ‘late developer’ and that if she waited long enough the required badges of womanhood would magically arrive and transform her body and her prospects, but here she was, twenty-three years old and still downright skinny and ultra-small everywhere it counted.
As a straying strand of pale hair brushed her cheekbone she reached up to tighten the band on her ponytail and groaned out loud when it snapped, digging without success through the pockets of her overall in search of a replacement. Her long, wavy hair tumbled round her in an irritating curtain and she wondered for the hundredth time why she didn’t just get it cut short for convenience. But then she did know why: her foster mother, Beryl, had often told her she had very pretty hair and had liked to brush it for her when she was a child. Sadness momentarily touched Rosie for, although it had been three years since Beryl had died, Rosie still very much missed the older woman’s warm common sense and affection. Beryl had been much more of a mother to Rosie than her birth parent.
Alexius sat in an unfamiliar office that belonged to one of his personal assistants, trying to get on with some work, but irritation tinged him every time he reached for something that wasn’t on the desk, for it was a discomfort he was not accustomed to meeting in life. Socrates, he thought grimly of his manipulative godfather, who had played on his conscience to force him into this juvenile masquerade. His even white teeth gritted as he heard the sound of a vacuum cleaner whirring somewhere on the same floor. At least the cleaners had finally arrived and the game could commence. Game? Some game! In fact, he felt infuriatingly and uncharacteristically on edge because deception wasn’t his style. Yet how could he ever get to know a cleaning operative in the guise of who he truly was? It was only sensible to pretend to be a more humble member of staff, but in doing that he was also making the assumption that Rosie Gray wouldn’t recognise him as Alexius Stavroulakis. He doubted that she read the Financial Times, where he was regularly depicted, but there was a chance that she was a fan of the celebrity magazines between whose pages he had also made occasional appearances. The more he thought of the deception involved, the more he thought that accidentally bumping into her in some way outside working hours might have been a wiser approach.
Rosie worked steadily down the line of offices, taking care of routine tasks while Zoe took care of the other side of the corridor. Only one office was occupied and the door stood open. She hated trying to clean round employees working late but couldn’t risk omitting that room in case checks were made on the standard of their work. Most daytime staff had gone home by eight in the evening and she had to ensure that the schedule of duties laid out for STA was completed right down to the last letter on the contract. She peered into the occupied office and saw a big guy with black hair working at a laptop. Only the Anglepoise lamp beside him was lit, casting light and shadow over his strong, dark features. He glanced up suddenly, startling her, revealing ice-grey eyes as bright as liquid mercury in his lean bronzed face. He was drop-dead gorgeous: that was her first thought and a very uncommon one for Rosie.
Alexius stared, both recognising and not recognising his quarry. Bleached of colour, Rosie Gray had looked so flat and uninspiring in that black and white photograph, but in the flesh she was glowing and unusual … and tiny. The Seferis family were kind of small in stature, he recalled abstractedly, but she was as ridiculously tiny and fragile in appearance as a fairy-tale elf. But if her diminutive size almost made him smile, her face and hair riveted him. He had never seen natural hair that colour, a glorious wavy fall as pale a blonde as frost sparkling on snow. It was dyed—of course it was, he assumed, his attention lingering longer still on that amazingly vivid little triangular face of hers: big ocean-green eyes, a neat little nose and a mouth made for sin with the sort of lush pouting outline that gave a man erotic fantasies. Or the sort of man who did erotic fantasies, Alexius adjusted, for he did not. When every woman he ever approached was immediately available, there was no need for fantasies. But those succulent pink lips were definitely sexy, although that was not a thought he wanted to have around his godfather’s long-lost granddaughter. The oddity of the situation was responsible, he decided impatiently. It was throwing him off-balance.
Colliding unexpectedly with those piercing light eyes enhanced by black curling lashes, Rosie swallowed hard and felt her heart hammer behind her breastbone as though she were trapped. He was so very, very good-looking, from the stark lines of his high cheekbones and the bold slash of his nose to the hard angular jaw line and beautifully moulded sensual mouth. But she was quick to recognise the impatience etched in the twist of that firm upper lip and she hastily withdrew from the threshold to vanish back down the corridor. Alarm bells had rung loudly inside her head: this was not a man she wanted to interrupt or inconvenience. She would vacuum the big conference room and then return to see if he had gone.
Her disappearance made Alexius bite back a groan of exasperation. As a male used to women going to often ridiculous lengths to attract and hold his attention, he had virtually no experience of pursuing one. But had he really expected a cleaner to walk up to him and start chatting? Naturally, she had gone into retreat. He strode to the doorway, long powerful legs eating up the distance, and his keen gaze narrowed on the small figure trundling a vacuum cleaner.
‘I won’t be here much longer,’ he said, his deep voice sounding unnaturally loud in the silence of the almost empty office suite.
Taken aback by the announcement, Rosie spun round, her pale hair flying across her face, green eyes openly apprehensive. ‘I can do the conference room first—’
‘You’re new, aren’t you?’ Alexius remarked, wondering what it was about those eyes, that face, that kept him staring longer than he should have done and continually drew his attention back to her.
‘Yes … this is our first shift here,’ she murmured so low he had to stretch to hear her. ‘We want to do a good job.’
‘I’m sure you will.’ Alexius watched her deal with a vacuum cleaner almost as tall as she was and considerably bulkier and he experienced a sudden crazy need to snatch it out of her small hands and force her to give him her full attention. What the hell was the matter with him? He studied her afresh and registered in shock that he was aroused. It had been a very long time since a sexual response that undisciplined had assailed Alexius. Diavelos, he was no longer a boy, horny in the radius of any attractive female. He didn’t understand it, he really didn’t understand the effect she was having on him at all because it was outside his experience. She was little and cute and he didn’t go for little and cute. He liked tall, shapely women with dark hair
