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She had been about to say that she would be sacked if she were seen strolling through the hotel with one of the guests—but, come to think of it, it wasn’t as if she was planning to work here again. ‘People will talk,’ she said. ‘If you’re seen accompanying one of the waitresses to the staff cloakroom.’
‘So let them talk,’ he snapped. ‘I think it is a little late in the day for you to act concerned after your dramatic entrance into my suite!’ And he pulled open the door and stalked out, leaving Laura to follow while he spoke in rapid Greek to the two guards.
They rode down in the penthouse lift, which seemed to have shrunk in dimension since the last time she had been in it. Laura was acutely aware of his proximity and the way his powerful frame seemed to dominate the small space. She was close enough to see the silken gleam of his skin and to breathe in that heady masculine tang which was all his. Close enough to touch…
And Constantine knew that she was aware of him; he could sense it in the sudden shallowness of her breathing—the way a pulse began fluttering wildly beneath the fine skin at her temple. Did she desire him now, as women always did, and was anger responsible for the answering call in his own body? The sudden thick heat at his groin? The furious desire to open her legs and bring her right up against him, so that he could thrust deep into her body and spill out some of his rage? What was it about this plain little thing which should suddenly have him in such a torrent of longing?
He swallowed down the sudden unbearable dryness in his throat as the lift came to a halt and the door slid open on some subterranean level of the hotel he hadn’t known existed. Laura began to lead the way through a maze of corridors until she reached the women’s cloakroom.
‘Wait here,’ she said breathlessly.
But he reached out and levered her chin upwards with the tips of his fingers, feeling her tremble as he captured her troubled gaze with the implacable spotlight of his own.
‘Don’t run away, will you?’ he murmured, with silky menace.
Laura stilled. In the light of all the vicious accusations he had hurled at her, his touch should have repelled her—but it did no such thing. To her horror, it reminded her of what it was like to be touched by a man, and the hard, seeking certainty of this man’s particular touch.
With an effort she jerked her head away. ‘I wasn’t pl-planning to.’
‘Hurry up,’ he ordered, as the heat at his groin intensified—for he had seen the sudden darkening of her eyes and sensed her body’s instinctive desire for him. That in itself was nothing new—women always desired him—what perplexed him was the answering hunger which stirred in his blood.
Laura nodded. ‘I…I can’t stay in this uniform. I’d better change while I’m in there—so I may be a couple of minutes.’
‘I’ll wait,’ he ground out, but her words triggered an unwanted series of explicit and strangely powerful memories as the door closed behind her. Of the young woman who had shed her clothes with such unashamed pleasure—taking him into her pink and white body and gasping out her pleasure. Had that same woman conceived his child that night? he found himself asking, the question spinning round and round in his brain as he stared at the dingy wall of the staff corridor.
Laura took off her uniform and, leaving it neatly folded beside one of the laundry baskets, she pulled on her jeans, T-shirt and thin jumper—she’d experienced too many cold winters not to have learnt the benefits of layering. Then she picked up her handbag and waterproof jacket and walked outside, to where Constantine stood in exactly the same spot, like a daunting dark statue.
Beneath the harsh glare of the overhead light, she began delving around in her handbag until she pulled out the picture of Alex taken at school, just a few months ago—she handed it to him.
Constantine stared down at it in silence for a long moment. The child had black eyes and a faint olive tint to his skin, and the dark curls of his hair looked as if an attempt had been made to tame them especially for the photo—but already they were beginning to escape. He remembered his own hair being just as stubborn at such an age.
Narrowing his eyes, he studied the image more carefully. The child was smiling, yes—but there was an unmistakable wariness about that smile, and Constantine felt a sudden wild leap of protectiveness, mixed in with an innate sense of denial. As if the logical side of his mind refused to accept that he could start the evening by hosting a glittering party and then the evening would end with a paternity claim foisted on him out of the blue. That he should suddenly be a father. He shook his head.
‘He looks just like you!’ Laura blurted out, wanting him to say something—anything—to break this tense and awful silence.
An icy feeling chilled his skin. He had never felt quite so out of control as he now found himself—not since his mother had died and he had watched his father fall to pieces before his eyes, and had decided there and then that love did dangerous things to a man. ‘Does he?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘That proves nothing,’ he snarled as he thrust the photograph back into her hand. ‘For all I know this might just be a very clever scam.’
Laura swayed, unable to believe that he would think her so cold and calculating. So manipulative. So sexually free and easy. But why shouldn’t he think that? He didn’t know her—just as she didn’t know him. Though the more of himself he revealed, the more she was beginning to dislike him. Had he forgotten that she had gone into his arms an innocent, unable to resist the powerful sexual pull he had exerted?
‘B-but you knew that I was a virgin that night,’ she reminded him painfully.
He shrugged, as if her words meant nothing—but the concept of a woman’s purity was both potent and important to a man as traditional as Constantine. He forced himself to remember his incredulity that a young woman should so casually give her virginity to a man she knew she would never see again. Or had he been naïve? With her he had played the man he had never allowed himself to be—the itinerant traveller without a care in the world. What if her sweet and supposed ignorance of his wealth and his status had all been an act? Suppose she’d seen his yacht and started asking questions in between serving him tea and having dinner with him? Wouldn’t that make her eagerness
to lose her innocence to a man who was little more than a stranger more understandable?
Constantine had spent his whole life being surrounded by people who wanted something from him—maybe this woman was no different.
‘You told me you were a virgin, but those could have simply been words. And, yes, I know that you gasped as I entered you,’ he said brutally, before pausing to add a final, painful boast. ‘But women always do—maybe it is something to do with my size, or my technique.’ He shrugged as her fingertips flew to her lips, hardening his heart against her obvious distress. ‘Maybe you thought that affecting purity would guarantee you some sort of future with the kind of man you were unlikely to meet again. That if I thought you were a virgin I would think more highly of you—rather than just as a woman who had casual sex with a man she’d just met.’
Laura felt ill. It was as if he had taken her memories of the past and ground them to dust beneath his heel. ‘Well, if you think that,’ she said, putting the photo back in her wallet with trembling fingers, ‘then there’s nothing more to be said, is there?’
But Constantine moved closer, so close that she could feel his body heat, and she hated the thought that flashed through her mind without warning. This was the man who had planted a seed in her body…whose child had grown within her. The image was so overwhelming that it made her instinctively shudder. And wasn’t nature famously canny, if cruel—conditioning women to desire the biological father of their child, even if that man was utterly heartless? Laura swallowed, because now he was lowering his head towards her so that she was caught in the intense ebony blaze of his eyes. Surely he wasn’t going to…?
But he was.
