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“Hello, Constantine,” she replied.
Like all beautiful women whose looks were widely held to be objective fact, not subject to individual opinion, every inch of her was weaponized. Including that voice. It struck him like his favorite spirit, METAXA, smooth and complex before rolling on into a deeper, hotter intensity.
He had expected to feel the attraction that hammered him then, but it was far worse now that she was in this room than it usually was when he was confronted with her picture. Everywhere.
“I thought you would enjoy this trip down memory lane with me,” he said, lounging back in the chair. His father had been a rigid man, his only excesses brutal. Constantine, by contrast, had created for himself the most dissipated, dissolute alter ego possible. It had started when he was young. He had learned, as his brother never had, that there was no point in attempting to live up to a madman’s expectations. For every time a certain level was achieved, their father made up seven more. No one could possibly scale those heights.
Constantine had stopped trying. Then and now, he took great pleasure in polluting his father’s legacy with his own brand of what he liked to call his libertine approach to rakishness.
The tabloids used other words. He delighted in all of them.
“Is that what this is?” Molly asked. For he refused to think of her asMagda. “Memory lane? Funny, that. This particular road to hell always seemed remarkably unpaved to me.”
“How droll. You’ve become so spiky over the years.”
She did not shift from where she stood, shown to perfection in the doorway to the study. And Constantine had taken on a deep, personal study of the rise of Magda, a modern supermodel in a time when supermodels were widely held to be a thing of the past. He knew she was fully aware that the sun streamed in from without, lighting her beautifully, and dancing all over the exquisitely skintight gown she wore in a deliberately overbright shade of gold. The sunlight made her glow like an angelic host. He knew that she was well aware of the position in which she stood, designed to call attention to the impeccable lines of her body that left fashion designers beside themselves as they draped their latest creations all over her frame. Here, in this study, she simply looked magnificent. And untouchable.
Too bad for her that he had other ideas.
“Everyone grows up, Constantine,” she replied. She considered. “Or, I should say, almost everyone.”
“Was that a dig?” He made a tsking sound. “That is no way to convince me to be merciful, Molly. You must know that.”
“I would prefer it if you called me Magda.”
He grinned, enjoying himself immensely. “I am certain that you would. But I think I will stick with Molly all the same. Just to remind ourselves who and what we are.”
Fascinated, he watched as a storm moved through that cool blue gaze of hers before she shuttered her gaze.
And then he waited, letting the silence spill out between them. Until, to his very great pleasure, she stopped holding that commanding position in the doorway and took a step farther into the room.
Betraying herself, he thought.
“I know you know why I’m here,” she said, sounding far more brisk, then. “I suppose we might as well get down to business.”
“Refresh my memory,” he invited her.
“I see that we’re going to play games. Lovely.”
He remembered the sixteen-year-old who had foolishly confided in him and saw no trace of her on this woman’s face. But that was just as well. Constantine did not traffic in guilt or shame, so he would never use those words to describe how he felt when he thought of that time. And yet sometimes it haunted him, all the same.
“Is that really necessary?” she asked.
“You will know what is necessary and what is unnecessary,” he assured her. “Because I will tell you.” He inclined his head, then waved a lazy hand. “For now, by all means, tell me your sad tale of woe, Molly.”
“I do not wish to bore you.” Her cool eyes glittered, like shards of ice, and he suspected she was thinking of a great many things she would like to do to him, none of them boring. All of them violent. “I know you remember my mother.”
“As it happens, I have known a great number of grasping, petulant, jumped-up whores in my life,” Constantine drawled, each word deliberate. Each word its own sharp blade. “And yet, you are correct, your mother managed to distinguish herself.”
A faint splash of color stained Molly’s cheeks. Her eyes blazed with fury. And he had the sudden, near uncontrollable urge to rise from his chair, throw himself across the room, and get his hands and his mouth into all of that fire.
But too soon, she reined herself in, iced over, and regarded him coolly once again.
Interesting, he thought. He would have to make a note of how she protected herself with that aloofness. And set it ablaze.
“I am not here to debate my mother’s faults with you, or anyone,” she said crisply.
“And yet I feel certain that should I wish to discuss your mother’s many faults and terrible decisions, I will. Entirely as I please. With or without your permission. Molly.”
