A Ring to Secure His Heir Page 4

  A 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 over her head to conclude the matter.

  Rosie gritted her teeth at being overruled. As she grabbed cutlery and a napkin he hovered with his own tray as if he didn’t know what to do. As a last resort, she lifted cutlery and a napkin for him and asked him if he wanted water. For a fully grown adult male he could occasionally exude the strangest hint of helplessness, she thought in bewilderment.

  ‘Why didn’t you want me to pay for your meal?’ he demanded once they had found a table
.

  ‘I always pay for myself when I’m with a guy,’ Rosie admitted stiffly. ‘That way there are no misunderstandings.’

  His black curling lashes screened his disconcerted gaze. Socrates was going to like her, oh, yes, Socrates was going to like her a lot, he decided with suppressed amusement. But the concept of a woman paying for herself was entirely foreign to Alexius and he didn’t like it at all. ‘Tell me about that thug, Jason,’ he urged. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Until about ten days ago, I shared a flat with a friend called Melanie. Jason was Mel’s boyfriend. One night he grabbed me in the kitchen and tried to kiss me and Mel walked into the middle of it,’ Rosie recited, rolling her highly expressive eyes heavenward at the unpleasant memory. ‘She blamed me totally for it and said I must’ve led him on and she told me to get out of the flat. I thought she would have seen sense and cooled down by the next morning but instead she stomped into my room, called me a man-stealing cow and started packing my stuff for me. She threw me out …’

  ‘And Jason?’ Alexius watched in fascination as she tucked hungrily into her Irish stew like a woman who hadn’t eaten in at least a week. She might be thin but, seemingly, she had a healthy appetite.

  ‘He was forgiven on the spot … or so I assumed, but tonight he said that they’ve broken up,’ Rosie told him wryly. ‘Whatever, I still don’t want anything to do with him.’

  ‘Bearing in mind his obvious anger management issues, that’s wise,’ Alexius commented.

  ‘Are you Greek?’ she asked suddenly. ‘I recognised a couple of the words you used speaking to the guy that drove us to the doctor’s.’

  He tensed. ‘You speak Greek?’

  ‘No, only a few words, tourist stuff,’ she proclaimed, her head tilting, pale blonde hair feathering round her cheekbones in artless waves. ‘I signed up for classes once but only went to a couple. It’s a more difficult language than I expected.’

  ‘Why Greek?’ Alexius realised in surprise that he was actually quite content to sit in the dump of a restaurant if it meant he could watch her amazingly animated face, linger on her sparkling eyes and the brightness of her fleeting smiles.

  Rosie studied him. He was getting a five o’clock shadow, dark stubble marking his hard angular jaw line and defining his beautifully sculpted mouth. On him, it was an incredibly sexy look. Her tummy turned a somersault inside her as he focused those curiously light eyes on her full force. ‘Why Greek? My father was Greek,’ she admitted a little shakily, disturbed by the knowledge that he attracted her as if she were iron filings and he were a magnet. That was a scary first for her. ‘I never knew him, though. He broke up with my mother before I was born and died soon afterwards.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘She died when I was sixteen—she was diabetic and she wouldn’t follow the rules to improve her health and she had a heart attack. I don’t have any other relatives. What about you?’ Rosie prompted, marvelling that he could be sufficiently interested in her to ask such personal questions, but pleased as well.

  ‘My parents died in a car crash about ten years ago,’ Alexius volunteered. ‘I was an only child. Aside from a couple of very distant cousins, I’m alone in the world and I prefer it that way.’

  Her brow furrowed in surprise. ‘But why?’

  ‘Family members can cause you a lot of grief,’ he said, his handsome mouth compressing on that clipped judgemental statement.

  Rosie reflected that that was certainly true when it came to her own troubled relationship with her mother. Even so, the experience had not soured her entire outlook, but the unyielding angles of Alex’s features as he spoke suggested an engrained aversion to such close ties. ‘But being a part of a family can also bring great joy and security. It can be a source of strength and comfort. I saw that in one of the foster families I lived with. I’ve always wanted a family of my own,’ she admitted without hesitation.

  ‘Is that why you tried to learn Greek?’ Alexius enquired.

  ‘No, I don’t have any relatives in Greece either that I know of. But I had this crazy notion that my Greek blood would somehow make the language easier for me to learn.’ Rosie pulled a face and laughed at her youthful folly. ‘I soon found out my mistake.’

  From his side of the table, Alexius was watching her intently. He was trying to work out what it was about her exquisite little face that constantly drew his attention back there. The expressive eyes and the sadness that was there in repose? The delicacy of her bone structure? As she laughed her whole face lit up and reluctant fascination gripped him. She was so natural, so relaxed in his company and he wasn’t used to that. She had disagreed with him on the topic of families and had had no fear of saying so and arguing her point. Women, indeed men as well, usually rushed to agree with Alexius while complimenting him on his insight and intelligence. She savoured the dessert she had chosen with tiny spoonfuls, pausing to lick her lips every so often so that not a drop could escape. He stared at that soft full mouth and lust roared through him at breathtaking speed, shocking him back to awareness. For the first time, he wondered if she was deliberately teasing him and if the friendly innocence of her manner was a fake to pull in the unwary.

  In the sudden silence that had fallen, Rosie was insanely aware of Alex’s intent scrutiny. She could feel every breath she drew, the tightening pulsing sensation in her nipples and the sliding sense of warmth in a place much lower down that she wasn’t used to thinking about. An electrifying tension held her still, that treacherous warmth at the heart of her body tugging at her as she stared back at him. She knew it was desire controlling her, knew exactly what it was but could barely believe she was feeling it. The last time a man had got her that hot under the collar she had been sixteen and the object of her affections had been a poster pin-up on her bedroom wall, the lead singer of a long forgotten band. Alex Kolovos was a far more dangerous prospect than that first tender crush.

  ‘It’s time I said thank you and went home,’ Rosie told him curtly, keen to pull back and make her escape, for she didn’t like feelings or reactions that were not in her control. They made her feel unsafe and foolish. It had always been her secret terror that she might have inherited more of her mother’s impulsive passionate nature than she had ever appreciated. Jenny Gray had been a pushover for the wrong men, easily impressed, easily bedded, easily discarded. Rosie’s mother had lived in a chaos of traumatic relationships, always hoping for something better, never finding it, but hope had sprung eternal with every new man who came along.

  Alex sprang upright, lifted her coat from her fingers and held it out for her to put on. ‘I’m not used to that kind of attention,’ she confided, her face colouring at the admission as they walked out of the restaurant and on down the street. ‘You can leave me now. I only live three doors down.’

  Alexius said nothing but ignored the invitation to leave. She was unlocking the battered front door when, without even realising it, he put his hand on her arm to stay her. She turned back, colliding with those silvery-grey eyes of his, and her heartbeat hammered so fast she was afraid she might somehow choke on the tightness in her throat.

  He wound his hand into her hair and bent his imperious dark head—it was a long way down to her level, he discovered as he captured her lush mouth with his. And that single sweet taste of her went straight to his head like the finest brandy and he kissed her with tortured, driving urgency, hauling her slight body up against him. He wanted her at that moment with a sexual ferocity he had never experienced in his life before.

  At his first touch, Rosie had initially frozen in shock, but just as quickly she melted, entrapped by the surge of hunger that leapt inside her like a burning flame that threatened to consume her. Her arms went round his neck without her volition and she rejoiced when he crushed her to him. One little taste of him was only enough to make her crave the next with every fibre of her being. His tongue delved inside her mouth and she gasped, straining into his big powerful frame, desperate to sate the ache in her pelvis
as he unleashed a tempest of desire through her body.

  As she broke free of him briefly so that she could catch her breath, she was trembling and she didn’t want to let him go, didn’t want to let him walk away. ‘Come in for coffee,’ she heard herself say.

  Coffee, she thought, trying not to wince as she thrust wide the door. Everyone knew that that was a euphemism for sex, didn’t they? What was she doing making such an invitation? Panic almost claimed her. He was more than she could comfortably handle. Her brain told her that she didn’t want passion. She didn’t want the dreadful feeling of loss clawing at her now as her body longed for him to touch her again. Safety with men meant maintaining a distance, never wanting more than she might receive, ensuring that she didn’t feel too much or get hurt. He broke every rule and that was too risky.

  Alexius lifted his head, shrewd grey eyes veiled, face tight with self-discipline. What the hell was he doing? What the hell was he playing at here? His body rigid with suppressed arousal, he lowered her back to the ground, knowing that he could more happily have pushed her back against the door and satisfied his hunger there and then. He wanted her. He wanted her more than he had wanted any woman in a very long time. There was nothing wrong with that, he decided abruptly. He didn’t need to question his libido.

  Determined to see where she lived, he followed her over the threshold. The entrance needed painting and the stair carpet was badly worn. It was dingy and for the first time he thought critically of his godfather, who had clearly committed money to the cause of raising his granddaughter without ensuring that it went to her rather than her mother.

  The door to the living room opened and a tiny dog rushed out to leap at Rosie’s knees with shrill yelps of joyous welcome. She scooped him up and cuddled him like a toy. Enormous bat ears flexed above big dark eyes and the dog growled the instant he saw Alex. It was a chihuahua but it looked more like a cartoon rat of the nasty variety, Alex decided.