Rags To Riches: Hired For His Satisfaction

Rosie laughed and frowned simultaneously as though he had cracked a rather off-colour joke. ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said, staggered by the suggestion.

Alexius gritted his teeth because marriage was the only acceptable solution he could see to the problem, loathe that reality though he did. ‘I’m serious. I’ll marry you. It will give the baby my name and I will support you so that you do not suffer in any way.’

Belatedly appreciating that he was completely serious in his offer, Rosie stared at him wide-eyed. ‘You would do that? You would actually marry me?’ she pressed in helpless fascination.

‘It is what I should do for your sake … and the child’s.’ Cool silvery-grey eyes enhanced by startlingly black lashes met hers unflinchingly. ‘I cannot leave you to raise my child alone.’

‘You’re worried about what my grandfather might think,’ Rosie assumed. ‘But people don’t get married now just because there’s a baby on the way.’

‘It’s still the right thing to do,’ Alexius responded flatly. ‘The most practical approach.’

‘I disagree. You don’t want to marry me, Alex. I wouldn’t marry you on that basis. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us,’ Rosie countered quietly. ‘But I suppose I should thank you for asking—it was a nice thought.’

Alexius stared back at her in stunned silence, unable to believe that she was actually turning him down and with the barest minimum of deliberation. ‘A “nice thought”?’

‘You taking the old-fashioned approach even though it’s not what you personally want,’ Rosie extended in rueful clarification of her thoughts. ‘No, you’re quite safe on that score. I don’t want to marry you either. Please be honest with me—’

Alexius compressed his handsome mouth hard. ‘I am being honest, Rosie—’

‘Alex, you don’t want me as a wife and you don’t want to be a father either. I can feel that reluctance in you,’ Rosie muttered with emphasis, her wide green eyes troubled but open. ‘You don’t need to pretend otherwise with me. I’m just as shocked as you are about the baby but we don’t have to get married to do the right thing.’

‘Your grandfather will very much disagree with you.’

‘Well, should I ever meet him, we’ll have to agree to differ. I don’t want a reluctant husband or an unwilling father for my child and that’s sensible, not silly,’ Rosie pointed out with conviction. ‘For a start I couldn’t fit into your world. Your friends would laugh at me. I’d embarrass you. I’m a cleaner, for goodness’ sake!’

‘Nobody would laugh at you while I was around,’ Alexius ground out forcefully, his accent thickening his vowel sounds to send a quiver of awareness running down her spine. ‘I would make a real effort to be a good husband and father—’

‘But you don’t love me … and to have you trying all the time would be very hard on my self-esteem,’ Rosie protested.

Alexius threw her a derisive look that stung. ‘Love is lust, nothing more, and I can assure you that in that department I’m unlikely to disappoint you.’

Confronted by that amount of cynicism, Rosie was more than ever convinced that she was making the wisest decision. ‘I don’t agree that all love between men and women is lust and if I ever marry, I want love.’

His strong jaw line hardened. ‘I can’t give that to you.’

‘And that’s fine since I’m not going to marry you,’ Rosie replied, stifling the wounded feeling that he could be so very certain that she could never inspire such finer feelings in him and then angry with herself for even thinking that way. ‘Maybe you should concentrate your “trying” on trying to love our child when it’s born.’

A thunderous aspect had clenched his strong features and his eyes were bright as diamonds in a dark night sky. ‘You’re being foolish, Rosie.’

Rosie folded her arms. ‘I’m the best judge of that.’

‘To turn down my offer of marriage without even properly considering it is stupid,’ Alexius informed her harshly.

‘We had a one-night stand, not a relationship!’ Rosie slung back at him hotly, temper surging up through her like lava breaking through rocks to the surface. ‘You don’t know me, you don’t know or care what I need or want and you walked away after that night, making it quite clear that you didn’t even want to see me again!’

A very faint line of colour delineated the high arc of his exotic cheekbones. ‘But I knew I would see you again when I took you to Greece to meet your grandfather,’ he reminded her crisply.

‘I don’t know if I’ll ever agree to that. Right now with the baby I’ve got enough to be getting on with in my life,’ Rosie admitted, tight-mouthed.

Alexius stared at her. The luscious pink mouth that had melted beneath his had now compressed into a tough little line of obstinacy. Frustration leapt through every line of his body. He wasn’t used to defiance or opposition. He wanted to bundle her up and stuff her on a plane, regardless of how she felt about it, because he knew that in this instance he knew best. ‘Are you planning to continue cleaning every night while you’re pregnant?’ he asked with unconcealed scorn.

Her face burned below that derisive appraisal. ‘What do you think?’

‘That you need my support right now so that you can stop working … and concentrate on your exams instead,’ he added reflectively, happier to picture her with books rather than a giant floor polisher almost too heavy for her to lift. ‘You can hardly need to be told that the sort of work you’re doing at present is too strenuous for a woman in your condition.’

Rosie had paled. ‘That’s nonsense. I’m managing fine—’

‘You fainted,’ Alexius reminded her stubbornly. ‘How is that fine?’

Her fingernails bit into her palms as she clenched her hands tight on the wave of antipathy gripping her, which rose higher every time he spoke. ‘Do you want to know why I fainted? I’m getting morning sickness and I can’t face eating first thing so trekking over here on a nerve-racking trip to confront you was a major strain on an empty stomach. I got light-headed, that was all.’

‘And if you get light-headed on a set of stairs, you will very probably fall and get injured. Am I supposed to accept that and just let you get on with it?’ Alexius blasted back at her. ‘What sort of man would simply accept that state of affairs without interfering?’

‘The same man who had sex with me and walked out in the middle of the night without a word of explanation,’

Rosie supplied without hesitation. ‘Let’s not pretend that you are Mr Sensitive, Mr Caring, because you’re not.’

That condemnation still ringing in his ears, Alexius snatched up the apartment phone to communicate with his housekeeper and order breakfast for his disruptive guest. He was in a rage, a rage such as he had not felt since his teenaged years of hormonal turmoil. He was getting nowhere with her. She didn’t listen. She had no respect. She had not even agreed to meet Socrates yet. The temper he always contained was like a wildfire seething inside him, struggling to escape the bonds of his rigid self-discipline.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Rosie demanded unevenly, suddenly breathless at the effect of those stunning liquid mercury eyes beating down on her. ‘I can look after myself, Alex. You don’t need to worry about me.’

‘You can look after yourself so well that you let me into your bed the first night!’ Alexius hurled back at her in a lion’s roar of intimidation.

Unable to argue the truth of that, Rosie didn’t budge an inch or bat a single eyelash. She knew she was annoying him but suspected that anyone who said no to him annoyed him, in which case it was past time someone said no and he was forced to hear and accept it. ‘Everyone makes mistakes … you were mine.’

Alexius strode forward, marvelling that she was standing her ground fearless before him when the rare sound of a raised tone issuing from his mouth sent his staff rushing for cover. How dared she call him a mistake? How dared she turn down his marriage proposal as if it were worth nothing? How dared she not listen?

‘That night wasn’t a mistake, moraki mou,’ Alexius growled low in his throat, his scorching gaze locked to her triangular face, lingering on her emerald-green eyes and succulent pink mouth with an intensity that dismayed her.

Reacting to the simmering buzz of energy he put out, Rosie felt her breasts push against her sweater, her stiff, tender nipples rubbing against the scratchy wool. The hot damp sensation at her feminine core was no longer new to her, for she dreamt about that night almost every night and she was used to it now, accustomed to that nagging pulse, that ache that he had taught her to feel.

‘Of course, it was a mistake,’ she contradicted.

‘No, it was not.’ Alexius locked a big hand round her wrist and pulled her up against his hard muscular body. A spluttered squawk of shock erupted from Rosie before he brought his mouth crashing down on hers with a fire that burned like a naked flame on unprotected skin. He crushed her to him with a rough groan of satisfaction and kissed her with a passion that sang through her senses like a magical spell of entrapment, his tongue stabbing with erotic rhythm into the moist interior of her mouth. One minute she was knotting her hands into his luxuriant black hair to push him away and the next her fingers were delving into those silky depths in exploration and appreciation, before finally moulding to his well-shaped head to hold him close.

Alexius lowered her to the sofa and sent a hand roving up below the sweater to tease the dainty swollen peaks that had so entranced him that night three weeks earlier. Her slender spine arched, a moan of startled pleasure wrenched from her as he played with those responsive buds that were so very sensitive to his touch. Pushing up the sweater, he bent his head to dally there with his mouth instead. A knock sounded on the door and he sprang back from her.

Returned to reality with a mortifying bang, Rosie looked down at her bare chest in horror and, wrenching her sweater back down, she sat up. ‘Don’t touch me like that again!’

Alexius skimmed knowing eyes like silver arrows back to her, a slumberous light in his gaze. ‘Because you like it too much to say no?’ he mocked as he strode to the door to open it.

Rosie’s heart-shaped face was so hot it felt sunburned. He was a taker, a user. He had stolen that kiss as coolly as he had stolen her virginity and she needed more self-control around him. She certainly shouldn’t be noticing that he crossed the room with the grace of a strolling tiger, all fluid rippling muscle and aggressive confidence. The real problem was that he excited her and just being in the same room with him was thrilling and there was something frighteningly seductive about the charge of that excitement. Was that excitement lust? She guessed it had to be.

Alexius settled a heavy tray down on the coffee table. ‘Eat …’ he urged.

There was a chocolate croissant amongst the assorted baked offerings in the bread basket and her mouth watered even as she reached for it. She poured tea and asked him politely if he wanted any, for there was a second cup.

‘I only drink coffee,’ he said.

She discovered that she was still trembling in the aftermath of that passionate embrace. He was so hot he burned her, teaching her that she was a much more physical person than she had ever imagined. It was not a discovery she was grateful to have made because it made her feel vulnerable and weak in a way she had never been before.

‘Why did you get angry when I said that night was a mistake?’ Rosie asked curiously.

‘It was too good to be a mistake. I very much enjoyed it,’ he told her with unselfconscious cool.

Rosie almost choked on her tasty mouthful of chocolate croissant and remained silent until she had swallowed it in a painful rush. ‘I’ll think about meeting my grandfather when my exams are over,’ she conceded.

Alexius dealt her an assessing glance, noting that her belligerent streak was currently at bay. ‘And will you also think then about marrying me?’

Rosie stiffened and raised her eyes as high as his slightly stubbled chin. It was a very determined, very stubborn chin with a cleft and outrageously male. ‘No, that decision was clear as cut glass and I won’t be revisiting it.’

Alexius released his breath in an exasperated hiss of impatience. ‘Why not?’

‘How can you ask me that when you don’t want to get married in the first place?’ Rosie prompted with raised brows signalling her astonishment at his attitude. ‘Have you ever wanted to get married?’

‘No,’ he conceded.

‘Have you ever wanted a child of your own?’

Alexius frowned at that unfortunate question and hesitated.

‘You promised to tell me the truth from now on,’ Rosie reminded him doggedly.

‘No,’ he admitted curtly. ‘I have never wanted a child.’

‘So, why on earth would I want to marry you?’

Evidently, she lacked the greed gene he was used to igniting in all her sex. ‘Security? Support? A father for the child?’

‘If I married you, you’d be off with another woman in five minutes flat,’ Rosie forecast with a grimace at that humiliating likelihood. ‘You don’t strike me as the sort of guy likely to adapt easily to domesticity and parenthood either, particularly if you didn’t choose either of your own free will.’

Alexius, ludicrously unused to being deemed a potential failure at anything he attempted, gritted his teeth. ‘I might surprise you.’

‘And pigs might fly,’ Rosie remarked only half beneath her breath.

Alexius elevated a fine black brow. ‘Is that a challenge?’

‘No, it’s not,’ Rosie hastened to tell him, keen not to start another row. ‘Can’t we be friends, Alex?’

‘I don’t want to be friends with you,’ Alexius shot back at her as she brushed crumbs from her lap and stood up. ‘Have you eaten enough?’

‘More than enough,’ she insisted, glancing at her watch. ‘I have a class to get to.’

Alexius lifted the phone. ‘I will organise a car.’

‘That’s not necessary.’

‘A car and driver will be at your disposal for the foreseeable future,’ Alexius delivered as she walked to the door.

Rosie spun back, her eyes wide. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. What would I do with a car and a driver?’

‘Use them,’ Alexius responded without an ounce of humour. ‘Give me your phone number …’

‘Isn’t it ironic that you’re asking for it now only because I’m pregnant?’ Rosie tossed at him before she could think better of it, glancing across at him to see that his handsome features clenched hard at that blunt reminder.

‘We still have a lot to discuss, moraki mou.’

Rosie winced. ‘I think I’ve said all I’ve got to say.’

A satiric smile slashed his sculpted mouth. ‘While I have barely begun.’

Rosie wrote her number on a piece of paper and looked back at him. ‘Don’t tell my grandfather I needed time to think about meeting him, just tell him I have exams on,’ she urged suddenly. ‘I don’t want to hurt his feelings.’

‘What about mine?’ Alexius quipped.

‘I don’t think you’re over-endowed in that department,’ Rosie told him frankly. ‘You’re too aggressive and sure of yourself to be sensitive and too selfish to be caring.’

‘I just fed you,’ he shot back in his own defence, disconcerted by her candour. Was that truly how she saw him?

‘You’re probably investing in the fact that I’m carrying the Stavroulakis heir,’ she surmised, suspicion paramount as she gazed back at him, belatedly noticing the strain etched into his face and surprised by it. Did more go on beneath that smooth, sophisticated surface of his than she had supposed? Or was it the horrendous threat of the marriage he had forced himself to offer that had stressed him out? How could he do that? How could he ask her to marry him when he didn’t want to get married and he didn’t want a child? What had made him go against his own nature like that? Was it her grandfather’s likely response to her condition and Alexius’s part in it that he wished to guard against? Was that his main motivation? Marriage as a cover-up, an olive branch?

The Stavroulakis heir, not, by any stretch of imagination, a joke, Alexius mused grimly after he had instructed Titos to put a discreet bodyguard on Rosie. A child, a boy or a girl, he didn’t care which. He had no preferences whatsoever. But if there was a child born, he knew that he would ensure that it enjoyed a very different childhood from the one he had endured as the last Stavroulakis heir. That was his most basic duty towards his own flesh and blood and nothing more complex.

When Rosie stuck her key in the lock the following afternoon after her classes, she was tired and still stuck firmly in a state of mental turmoil. Since the day before she had been whisked everywhere she went by a BMW and a driver, who sat around waiting for her to emerge from every class without complaint. Such a luxury felt weird in her very ordinary life, almost as weird as Alexius Stavroulakis asking her to marry him, disregarding the gulf in their social status, disregarding even the obvious fact that he neither cared for her nor wanted their baby. Why on earth had he done that? she asked herself in frustration. Was he crazy? She might be hugely attracted to him, but to have said yes to such a proposal would surely have been a disastrous mistake, she reflected uncertainly, her head aching from such stressful thoughts. She wanted to give her baby the best possible chance in life but was convinced that so unequal a marriage would never last. Even worse, the fallout from a messy marital breakdown would only cause bad feeling between her and Alexius, which would in turn have an adverse effect on their child. On those grounds, it would be much wiser to build a more distant but civil relationship with Alexius outside the bonds of marriage. A relationship without intimacy or any very deep feelings, she conceded with a regret she could not stifle. But had she not so clearly seen Alexius’s lack of interest or desire for either marriage or parenthood she might have been very tempted to say yes to his proposal.

Martha came downstairs, Bas cradled in her arms. ‘You’ve got a visitor.’

Rosie walked into the lounge and stiffened in dismay when she saw Jason Steele rising from the sofa. Oh, hell, she thought ruefully. She was not in the mood for Jason on top of everything else she had undergone over the past forty-eight hours.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘I’LL keep hold of Bas,’ Martha whispered in her ear. ‘He doesn’t like him.’

‘Thanks,’ Rosie said, entering the lounge and shutting the door on the older woman. ‘Well, this is a surprise, Jason. How did you find out where I lived?’

The big blond man grimaced. ‘I’d sooner not say but I had to see you after what happened a couple of weeks ago,’ he told her. ‘All I wanted was the chance to talk to you.’

‘Sit down, Jason. You scared me that night,’ Rosie admitted, taking the chair opposite him.

Jason dropped back into the sofa, which creaked in protest beneath his considerable bulk. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. ‘I didn’t mean to do that but that guy wading in, interfering in what was none of his business, got to me. I thought you and I could go out some night … maybe see a film or go for a meal, whatever you like.’

Discomfiture at the invitation made Rosie turn pink. ‘That’s not a good idea—’

‘Why not? What’s wrong with me?’ Jason asked with more than a hint of belligerence.

‘I didn’t say there was anything wrong with you,’ Rosie hastened to assure him before deciding that in his particular case honesty probably was the best policy. ‘But it wouldn’t be right for either of us … I’m pregnant, Jason.’

Jason looked stunned. ‘You’re joking me?’

‘No, I’m telling you the truth.’

‘Pregnant?’ he repeated, staring at her as if she’d admitted to leprosy and with something akin to disgust.

Out in the hall she heard a door opening and closing, the low timbre of male voices and Bas bursting into sudden frenzied barks.

‘I didn’t even know you were seeing anyone.’ Jason grimaced and got back on his feet again. ‘Well, this has been a waste of my time and no mistake—I don’t want to date a woman expecting some other bloke’s kid!’

Before Rosie could assure him that he really was quite safe from that development, the door behind her opened abruptly and all hell seemed to break loose at the same moment. Bas leapt at Jason, whom he loathed. Alexius, accompanied by the head of his security team, Titos, appeared just as Jason kicked the dog out of his path. Rosie loosed a shriek of horror as Bas flew up in the air and hit the wall before falling in a limp heap by the skirting board.

‘Oh, my Lord, Jason … you’ve killed Bas!’ she sobbed, surging forward.

‘Don’t upset yourself,’ Alexius advised, pulling Rosie back from the dog to take her place, sliding a hand under the tiny still body, grimacing as he noted that one of Bas’s legs was definitely broken, stuck out as it was at an unnatural angle. ‘His heart’s still beating. He’s been knocked out. We’ll get him straight to a vet—’

‘You’re a monster, Jason!’ Rosie exclaimed furiously. ‘First you hurt me, now you’ve attacked Bas—’

‘The dog attacked me first!’ Jason blistered back furiously. ‘And I didn’t mean to hurt you!’

‘Everything was fine until you burst in here,’ Rosie told Alexius in reproach, crouching down beside him and then flying upright again to stalk into the kitchen and snatch up a tray on which she carefully positioned the tiny dog with shaking hands.

‘Call the police,’ Alexius instructed Rosie. ‘You have to make a complaint against Jason this time—’

‘There’s no need for that,’ Jason began.

‘There’s every need,’ Alexius cut in with ruthless bite. ‘You followed her home from work last night … you’re stalking her!’

‘I’m not stalking her. I only followed you to find out where you had moved to,’ Jason told Rosie ruefully. ‘I didn’t do you any harm. I didn’t even come to the door because I knew it was too late to visit—’

Dismayed to realise that Jason had followed her home the night before, Rosie turned dazed eyes to Alexius and muttered anxiously, ‘Let’s get Bas to the vet first. He’s the most important thing here—’

‘No, you are,’ Alexius corrected, shooting Jason a look of bitter animosity.

‘I’m not going to bother her again,’ Jason protested. ‘I didn’t even know she had a bun in the oven.’

Alexius frowned, that phrase not having come to his ears before. As he registered its meaning along with Jason’s expressive shudder, Bas moaned in pain on the tray and Rosie stroked his little domed head with a tender hand while tears flooded her eyes. ‘I can’t bear anything to happen to Bas … he’s all I’ve got left of Beryl!’

Alexius urged her out of the door, draping the jacket Martha passed him round her narrow shoulders. ‘Beryl?’ he queried, watching in consternation as tears spilled down her cheeks.

‘She was my foster mum,’ Rosie told him unevenly as Alexius grasped the tray and urged her into the back of the limousine waiting at the kerb. ‘I moved in with her when I was twelve. It was the only place I was ever happy. She treated me like family. She really loved me—’

‘Do you still see her?’ Alexius prompted, keen to take her thoughts in a more positive direction for Bas was bleeding from the nose and Alexius wanted to distract her: the dog didn’t look good.

Rosie dashed the tears away irritably. ‘She died when I was twenty. She was ill for a long time with breast cancer. I was fifteen when it was first diagnosed and she got all the treatment but it came back the next year and the doctors couldn’t do anything more … it was terminal. One of Beryl’s grown-up children bought Bas as a surprise for her a few months before she died. I thought it was an insane idea to give her a pet when she was so ill, but Bas gave her an interest … He brightened those last months for her, so I couldn’t let him go after she’d passed.’