Mathieu agreed, not sounding as though he shared her relief.
She shot him a curious look. ‘You’re annoyed?’
Mathieu’s eyes, cold as steel, flickered briefly over her face. ‘You’re my fiancée—not to come out to meet you is a deliberate snub.’ Andreos could be as rude as he liked to him, it was water off a duck’s back, but Mathieu would make sure that his father treated his future wife with the respect she deserved.
‘But I’m not.’
Mathieu flashed her a strange look, then retorted, ‘He doesn’t know that.’
He probably will about five minutes after seeing us together, she thought, pressing a hand to her churning stomach.
‘There’s no need to be nervous.’
Rose tried to smile. ‘And here I was thinking that I was hiding it well,’ she quipped.
‘Come in, it’s been a long day. You’ll feel better after a shower.’
It was silly, she knew, but the light pressure of his hand in the small of her back made her feel more confident.
Halfway up the path to the villa they were met by a man in uniform. He bowed slightly to Rose, then turned to Mathieu and made what sounded to Rose like a profuse apology.
Mathieu responded to him in the same language and he walked a little ahead of them the rest of the way. When they reached the entrance, a glass atrium from which several corridors radiated, Mathieu turned to her and said, ‘Spyros will show you to your room.’
‘You’re not coming?’ Hearing the sharpness of anxiety in her voice, she frowned, but she need not have worried. Mathieu appeared not to notice anything amiss.
‘I need to speak to Andreos.’
She watched him stride away and tried not to feel deserted.
‘Miss …?’
She turned to the uniformed man smiling encouragingly at her and followed him further into the villa.
His father was in his study. He glanced up when Mathieu walked in, then almost immediately returned his attention to the newspaper he was reading.
Mathieu walked straight across to him, grabbed the newspaper and threw it on the ground.
The older man looked at him in open-mouthed astonishment. ‘What do you think you are doing?’ he thundered.
‘I’m laying down a few ground rules, Andreos.’
‘You’re laying down rules to me?” The older man gave a snort of scorn.
‘Rule one …actually there is only one rule,’ he revealed, flashing a cold smile that made the other man look wary for the first time. ‘In future you will not slight Rose in any way; you will treat her with the respect she deserves.’
Andreos got to his feet. ‘You are very sensitive all of a sudden. Who is this Rose, anyway?’
‘The woman who is wearing my ring … that is all you need to know. Do we understand one another?’
‘Oh, I understand you. You march in here as if you own the place.’
‘I do.’
The soft intervention caused the older man’s already high colour to deepen. ‘If Alex had been alive none of this would be happening.’
‘Alex isn’t alive.’
‘You were always jealous of him,’ Andreos accused, stabbing a finger towards his first-born.
‘If he had been someone else I might have,’ Mathieu conceded. ‘But he wasn’t, he was Alex.’ It was hard to explain but nobody could be jealous of Alex—he just didn’t inspire negative emotions in people.
Or hadn’t. Sometimes even after eighteen months Mathieu still expected him to breeze into a room with that grin that was impossible to resist.
‘I’ve stepped into my brother’s shoes because you asked me to, Andreos.’
The reminder earned him a dark scowl.
‘But this is one area where I am not prepared to step into my brother’s shoes … not even to see the Constantine fortune swell the Demetrios coffers. I will marry the woman of my choice, not someone you chose for me.’
‘She’s half in love with you already.’
‘She thinks she is.’
And that was the problem. She’d been hurting after Alex’s death and he’d been there. He’d shown her a little kindness and she had developed a crush. In the natural course of things the crush would have died a natural death. But their respective parents kept it alive by continually contriving to throw them together.
The poor kid was so vulnerable. Couldn’t the old foxes see how cruel they were being to the girl? In his opinion they needed their heads banged together, but that not being an option, all he could do was not play their little game.
Hand on the door handle, Mathieu turned. ‘Just don’t try and manipulate me, Andreos. I don’t bend.’
Outside the room Mathieu almost collided with a still figure. Hands on her shoulders, he steadied Rose before firmly pushing her away from him so that he could look into her face.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was looking for you.’
‘Well, you found me. How much,’ he asked, nodding towards the door behind him, ‘did you hear?’
‘Pretty much all of it.’
Enough to know he had loved his brother; she could hear it in his voice. She was just amazed that his father seemed deaf to his remaining son’s pain. As for Mathieu’s relationship with his father, that was even rockier than she had imagined. Ironically if his father had not pushed the union it was entirely possible that Mathieu would have fallen in love with the eligible Sacha, if she was beautiful, and Rose was sure she would be.
Maybe he already was in love with her?
‘I didn’t mean to, the door was open and …’
‘You decided to listen in.’
He didn’t look annoyed, which surprised her. ‘Well, you weren’t exactly quiet.’
‘So why were you following me?’
‘I asked Spyros to tell me where you were.’ She nodded towards the man who was standing by the wall being selectively deaf. ‘My phone was charging on the plane; you put it in your pocket. I want to ring my sister.’ Want was actually the wrong word, but she did feel obliged to assure Rebecca she was all right.
‘So I did,’ Mathieu said, digging the phone from his pocket and handing it to her.
Rose
