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Jade blinked. ‘Ha, ha,’ she said, but Maggie’s face didn’t look as though she was joking. ‘He can’t do,’ she protested. ‘He wore jeans; drove the most beaten up old car I’ve ever seen in my life. He’s just an ordinary—’ But she bit the word back.
No. Not ordinary. No way in the world was Constantine ordinary.
But Maggie had obviously caught her drift. ‘He’s Greek. They’re all like that. No matter what they acquire—and believe me, Constantine Sioulas has acquired more than most—at heart they remain simple men with simple tastes. And simple appe- tites,’ she added knowingly.
Jade was more confused than ever. ‘Then why have I never heard of him; why didn’t I recognise him?’
‘Just because you work on a newspaper, it doesn’t mean to say you’ve heard of every tycoon in the world, particularly one who keeps his head down and his nose clean. You’re too young, for a start. Ten years ago when he was twenty, his father died and Constantine inherited—you’d have been about ten at the time, and in my experience ten-year-olds don’t read newspapers. The Press went crazy—here you had this young Greek god of a man who was absolutely rolling in it. He stood about a year of it, and then he began to guard his privacy, and the privacy of his family, as if it were Fort Knox. He’s always surrounded by at least one minder. He hasn’t been interviewed in years.’ Maggie chomped on her gum. ‘What’s he like, Jade?’
Jade’s head was spinning. How to describe Constantine? ‘He’s…’ What? Gentle? Ruthless? Both of these.
‘Good lover?’
Jade nodded without thinking; the brandy was now making her feel as though she’d like to lie down on her bed and sleep for a year. Or a hundred years, until, like Sleeping Beauty, the kiss of Constantine would awaken her.
‘And what would you say was the most impress- ive thing about Constantine?’
As the brandy seeped into her brain, Jade had the sudden overpowering compulsion to confide in her boss. ‘His strength,’ she said. ‘Oh, Maggie—I can’t tell you what he was like…’
‘Try, dear.’
Perhaps if I had a mother who didn’t spend her whole time criticising me, I could confide in her, instead of my hard-baked editor, she thought. Somewhere at the back of Jade’s mind, a warning bell rang, but there must have been more brandy in the cup than she’d thought, because the warning bell very quickly became indistinct.
‘He was so—charismatic. Sexy and strong and gentle and funny. We had a fantastic time. He even—asked me to marry him.’
The unshockable Maggie actually choked on her gum. ‘You are joking?’
‘Why would I joke about something like that?’ Although, as each minute passed, the idea did seem more and more bizarre.
‘Jade,’ Maggie’s voice was breathless. ‘Are you quite sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure! How could I be mistaken about something like that?’ Jade slammed her cup down on the desk. Her head was spinning and now she felt an unfamiliar lurching feeling in her stomach. ‘Maggie,’ she mumbled. ‘I don’t feel very well.’
‘I’m ordering you a cab to take you home right this minute.’
‘But I haven’t filed my piece on Russ Robson.’
‘Leave it,’ said Maggie uncharacteristically. ‘I’ll find another piece to fill it.’
Just what that piece was, Jade was to discover the next morning when the demented buzzing of the doorbell bounced into her disturbed dreams about Constantine, and she glanced at the bedside clock to discover that it was almost eight o’clock. And with consciousness, the ghastly events of yesterday re-entered her memory with painful clarity.
The doorbell shrilled yet again.
Pulling her dressing-gown on, Jade stumbled out of bed, looked in the mirror and winced. Who on earth was that at the door? She wasn’t expecting anyone, and Sandy, her television director flat- mate, was away filming for a fortnight.
Hope, foolish hope, stirred to life within her. What if it was Constantine?
And what if it was? After the way he’d treated her? Now that her mind had cleared from the ef- fects of Maggie’s brandy, common sense had pre- vailed. And if she saw the no-good brute just once more in her life, it would be once too often. If it was Constantine, she would tell him to go to the hell he deserved!
But it was not Constantine.
She opened the front door to mayhem. Flash- bulbs exploded in her face as photographers and journalists, some of whom she recognised, jostled on the doorstep like a disturbed ants’ nest.
‘Miss Meredith—this way!’
‘Over here, Jade!’
‘Hey, Jade—would you like to comment on the item in this morning’s Daily View?’
