nurse greeted Rosie in a small changing room and helped her out of her soiled overalls into a gown. She was ushered into a surgery where a small stocky Greek told her to sit down on the examination couch. He checked her over, frowning at the blackening bruises on her arm from Jason’s fingers while the nurse attended to the abrasions on her knees. It all took very little time and she was relieved when she thought of how long she would have had to wait to receive attention at a busy casualty unit where people with much worse injuries would naturally take precedence. Of course, she reflected wryly while she donned her tunic and trousers again, she wouldn’t have bothered going to a hospital had she been on her own. Rosie was used to picking herself up from life’s more trying events and dusting herself off to go on as normal. Making a fuss or seeking attention had never been encouraged by the social workers who oversaw her childhood. She was secretly amazed that Alex Kolovos had made such a fuss over a minor event, behaving as if she had been badly hurt when she had only suffered the most minor damage at Jason’s hands.
‘You see, I’m fine,’ she told Alex breezily when he sprang upright to greet her in the elegant waiting room. His suit fitted him like a glove, she noted suddenly. It was a dark pinstripe, like something a banker might wear, very conservative, very smart. The close fit accentuated broad shoulders, narrow hips and long, powerful legs. Her cheeks warmed when she realised that she was staring, shaken anew by the obvious dichotomy in their lifestyles.
The doctor emerged from his surgery to talk to Alex and the two men chatted in Greek. It was Greek again, which he had been speaking out on the street when he was using his phone, she registered, recognising several words from the classes she had once attended in an effort to learn the language. Throughout the conversation she was conscious of the doctor’s frowning curiosity about her and she flushed beneath his assessing gaze. Evidently he was wondering what Alex was doing with a woman dressed as she was, clearly a manual worker and not in the same class as his friend.
‘I gather Dr Vakros works in the private sector,’ Rosie remarked on the way down the steps.
‘Yes.’
‘He won’t be sending you a bill for seeing me, will he?’ Rosie checked worriedly.
‘No, our friendship is of long standing.’
‘That’s a relief. I should be getting on now,’ Rosie said rather awkwardly. ‘Thanks for all your help.’
‘I’m not finished yet—I’m taking you home,’ Alex announced, addressing the man already waiting outside the car in Greek and catching the keys that were tossed to him.
‘There’s really no need for that. I’ve taken up enough of your evening.’
Alex Kolovos gazed down at her, high aristocratic cheekbones taut, black lashes low over his unnervingly bright eyes. ‘I want to take you home,’ he informed her levelly.
Colour surged into Rosie’s cheeks in receipt of that forceful statement. She didn’t know what to say, how to react. Why was he putting himself out like this for her benefit? Was he attracted to her or simply a good Samaritan? Why on earth would he be attracted to her? she scolded herself irritably. She was small, flat as a pancake out front where it mattered: men didn’t turn their heads to look when she walked by. Embarrassed by her own thoughts and a growing sense of utterly ridiculous inadequacy, she slid into the passenger seat of the saloon car and did up the belt. He drove off but seemed to have difficulty with the gears and cursed only half under his breath when the engine conked out at the traffic lights.
‘It’s a new car. I haven’t driven it much,’ he commented in his own defence, cursing the fact that he so rarely drove himself anywhere. From childhood he had had a chauffeur and had only enjoyed the freedom of driving his own car while at university.
Rosie tried not to smile at the excuse. Just about everybody she knew got around the city on public transport. She wondered if his was a company car and if so, did that mean that even though he had to share an office, he was a bigger wheel than she had appreciated in STA Industries? Glancing out of the window, she finally realised that they were travelling in entirely the wrong direction.
‘Sorry, I should have given you my address first,’ she said and did so.
He hadn’t a clue how to get there: that was immediately obvious to her, although he tried to hide it. She gave him directions and tried not to wince as he wrenched at the gears like a learner driver every time they had to stop at traffic lights.
‘Will you join me for a meal?’ he asked casually when after several wrong turns—she was lousy at giving directions—they finally were within minutes of her bedsit.
Surprised by the invitation, Rosie glanced at him in dismay. At the same time her empty tummy emitted an embarrassing growl and she coughed in the hope of masking it. ‘A meal?’ she prompted.
‘By the sound of it you’re as hungry as I am,’ Alexius remarked, his amusement unhidden.
So, the cough hadn’t worked. Rosie reddened yet again. She could not remember ever being so self-conscious in a man’s company before and it exasperated her. Circumstances had thrown them together and his was a spontaneous invite. Why not? It wasn’t as though he was asking her for a date.
‘There’s a place just round the corner from my bedsit,’ she volunteered. ‘It’s not fancy but the food’s good.’
‘That’ll do.’ Alexius parked the car, noting in the driving mirror that his security team were following in the car behind him. They had probably laughed their socks off every time the car stalled on him, he reflected wryly. But having got into Rosie’s good books again, he had every intention of staying on target, even though he knew that he no longer had his godfather as an excuse to spend time with her. He would do as he liked; Alexius always did as he liked. When he saw the restaurant, a shabby, brightly lit beacon in a rundown street, he was taken aback. He had never eaten in such a place in his life. The sheer scale of the gulf between their daily lives finally penetrated and disconcerted him. Pretending to be someone else was bringing challenges he had not foreseen.
It was a relief for Rosie to know that she would have no need to cook when she got home. She smothered a yawn as he followed her into the self-service restaurant, popular with shift workers for its long opening hours. She lifted a tray and turned to see Alex scanning his surroundings with wide-eyed attention.
‘We serve ourselves?’ Alex enquired, a black brow quirking at the concept.
Without fanfare, Rosie handed him a tray and joined the queue. Across the room three women at a table were giving Alex the eye. He seemed quite unaware of their blatant interest as he studied the menu on the wall. He did attract attention though, Rosie conceded, deciding that he was too good-looking for his own good. It was a thought she was familiar with and it had occurred to her the first time she saw a photo of her very handsome blond, blue-eyed father, Troy Seferis. She had always been wary of very attractive men and for the first time it occurred to her that that was a rather unreasonable bias. Alex had waded in to tackle Jason for her sake and she had no reason to think him vain, shallow or self-serving, in fact, the direct opposite. Her green eyes rested on him assessingly. With his black hair, tall, well-built body and that lean, strong-boned face sheathed in bronzed skin, he was extremely eye-catching … and he was with her. Her narrow shoulders suddenly straightened and she smiled.
At the checkout Rosie tried to insist on paying for her own meal, which seemed to totally bewilder her companion.
‘No woman pays for herself in my company,’ he breathed with arrogant finality, passing money literally
