Passionate Playboys: The Demetrios Bridal Bargain / The Magnate's Indecent Proposal / Hot Nights with a Playboy

Some men relied on power suits to give them presence. Mathieu didn’t need to; he had more presence than any man ought to be allowed.

Enough presence to make her slightly dizzy when she stared at him.

Then don’t stare.

Damned good recommendation, but not one Rose could observe. It would have been nice, she thought wistfully, to find something … one tiny flaw she could criticise.

But there was none.

He looked tall and impressive, the discreet tailoring of the dark, beautifully cut jacket emphasising the powerful breadth of his shoulders. It hung open revealing a crisp white shirt made of a fabric fine enough to show a faint shadow of the body hair on his chest, sending her stomach into a lurching dive.

‘What are you doing lurking like that?’ Her nerves found release in snapping antagonism.

He arched one brow sardonically. He loosened his tie and allowed his eyes—actually, it was not something over which he had much control—to wander over her soft feminine curves before explaining. ‘I’m on my way to Edinburgh.’

There were occasions when being a Demetrios had its advantages, and he had the financial clout that went with the name to arrange a meeting at a few hours’ notice with the bank that was threatening to pull the plug on Jamie and the ailing estate.

The phone calls had gone pretty much as he had anticipated. The money men had been negative initially. They’d liked his plan, called it innovative and daring, but the bottom line, they had explained, was it was too late in the day.

‘Of course, Mr Demetrios, if someone else was willing to invest … share the risk the bank has already taken …?’

That too had been a response Mathieu had anticipated. He had made only one stipulation. Jamie, he had explained to them, must never know who his new investor was.

Mathieu looked thoughtfully down at the flushed angry face of his visitor and bent his head. ‘Fiona, I think Jamie was looking for you,’ he said without taking his eyes off Rose.

With a show of reluctance and several curious looks the young girl left them.

‘Can I come in or should I go around to the tradesmen’s entrance?’

He bowed slightly from the waist and stepped back for her to enter the hallway. ‘I think, yes,’ he said, pushing open one of the heavy doors that led off the vaulted hallway, ‘we can be private in here.’

‘Oh, very big on confidentiality all of a sudden, aren’t we?’ she muttered, following him inside the room.

She vaguely registered the oak-panelled walls, and the obligatory stag’s head on the wall, but her attention was concentrated on the figure who preceded her.

Nothing she could say was likely to make him feel guilty; wrecking lives was probably one of the highlights of his day.

She watched as he bent to throw a log from the stack beside the vast stone fireplace on the fire that brightened the gloomy room.

The log crackled into fiery life. So did her temper when he turned around, set his shoulders to the jutting stone mantle and said politely, ‘Is there something I can help you with, Rose?’

‘You could drop dead.’ She clamped her lips to prevent any further childish retorts that gave him the opportunity to look down at her in that superior way from escaping.

‘How things change,’ he bemoaned, his eyes glimmering mockery as he casually pulled the tie from around his neck. ‘And I thought you were different, Rose.’

Rose dragged her eyes from the small vee of brown skin revealed at his throat as he slipped the top button of his shirt and glared up at him with renewed venom.

‘Once you liked me a good deal better, but a man learns who his real friends are when he leaves behind the glamour of the racing circuit.’

‘I’m sure you still have an entourage of hangers-on and people willing to treat your every stupid pronouncement as wise and wonderful. Men like you always do.’

‘Have you known a lot of men like me?’

‘No, I’ve been lucky that way, though if I saw any coming I’d cross to the other side of the street.’

He pursed his lips and loosed a long silent whistle. ‘Someone got out of bed the wrong side this morning.’

‘This morning I had a bed.’

He levered himself off the stone mantle and took a step towards her. ‘And you don’t now?’

‘No, I don’t. No bed, no job.’

‘You quit?’

‘No, I was sacked.’

‘Smith sacked you.’ He shook his head, his expression one of mild contempt as he thought of the other man. ‘I didn’t see that one coming.’ That certainly explained her mood, but not her presence.

The rueful amusement in his expression made her see red. ‘Liar!’

He froze, the lines of his lean face moulding into a mask of chilling hauteur. ‘What did you call me?’

Rose lifted her chin to a belligerent angle and placed her hands on her hips. She had no intention of allowing herself to be intimidated, even though he did have the look of a jungle predator about to pounce.

‘You heard me.’ She lifted her chin and ignored the sound of hissing outrage that escaped through his clenched white teeth. ‘You’re many things, but you’re not stupid.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, his voice dripping with mockery.

‘You must have thought of the consequences when you told everyone I’m a drunken nymphomaniac?’

‘I did not tell anyone anything of the sort …’ He stopped, an expression of pained comprehension passing across his face as he slapped a hand to his forehead and swore.

Rose’s head came up with a jerk. ‘Well, it’s the sort of thing that could slip anyone’s mind, I suppose.’

He bit back a cutting response to her sarcasm and watched, his expression softening, as she rubbed a hand wearily across her eyes with the back of her hand.

‘I hope, incidentally, that it makes an amusing after-dinner anecdote.’

‘I can’t believe he actually sacked you.’ He regarded her with frowning concern.

‘And I can’t believe you actually care,’ she cut back. ‘But I really don’t see why the concept is so hard to get your head around. What did you expect my boss to do when you told him I was a groupie—give me a raise?’ Her lip wobbled and a tear escaped from the corner of her eye. ‘Damn,’ she muttered, brushing it away. ‘Why does this happen when I’m mad?’ Her head dropped as she fought to regain her composure.

As he studied her bent head and watched her hunched slender shoulders shake Mathieu experienced an alien and compelling urge to take her in his arms. It was followed by an almost equally violent need to throttle her idiot employer.

‘I did not relate the story.’ He half expected her to resist when he put a hand in the narrow of her back and steered her towards the nearest chair, but she didn’t. ‘Sit down before you fall down.’ Impatience masked the concern he didn’t want to be feeling.

Why should he feel responsible? It was not his fault that she had worked for someone who was parochial and intolerant. Neither, despite what she thought, had he been telling tales.

‘I did not relay the story at all. I suppose it’s possible he simply overheard something that Jamie said.’ Mathieu looked doubtful.

‘Jamie …?’ Brushing her hair from her face with her forearm, Rose tilted her head and looked up at him, rolling her eyes in disbelief. ‘My God, is there anyone you didn’t tell?’

‘Jamie was in the hotel that night. He heard me complaining about the hotel security and he wormed the story out of me. When he saw you he guessed …’

‘Guessed,’ she echoed. ‘You must have dropped some pretty heavy clues.’

‘I didn’t need to. Jamie doesn’t miss much. If it’s any comfort, as a consequence of seeing you my standing in his eyes has plummeted.’

With a dry laugh she lifted her head. ‘That I doubt.’

‘It was me, I think.’

Both turned in unison as the door swung inwards to reveal Fiona standing there. Jamie’s sister looked the picture of guilt.

Mathieu’s brows twitched into a straight line of disapproval. ‘Fiona, have you been eavesdropping?’

‘Yes …no, that is, it wasn’t deliberate the other time.’

Mathieu’s brows lifted. ‘Other time?’

Fiona’s eyes slid from his as she shuffled her feet miserably and mumbled, ‘I heard you and Jamie talking about Monaco and the hotel and …’ her eyes lifted to Rose ‘… you. Grace said—’

‘Grace?’ Mathieu ran a hand along his jaw, looking impatient. ‘Who is Grace?’

‘Who is Grace?’ Fiona echoed, sounding indignant. ‘You know who she is. She’s been my best friend for ever, or since we were four anyway … her dad runs the climbing centre. I texted her and, well, she might have texted Ellie and Ellie probably sent an email to a few other people.’

‘Oh, my God,’ Rose breathed shakily. ‘I think the mystery of how Mr Smith knows the story is solved,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘The only mystery is how there’s anybody left this side of Inverness who doesn’t know.’ Hearing the note of hysteria in her voice, she bit her lip.

Presumably Mathieu heard it too, because he looked at her oddly before he jerked his head at the teenager and snapped, ‘Out.’ A tearful Fiona fled and he walked across to a bureau, out of which he produced a bottle and a glass. ‘Jamie’s best malt,’ he said, filling the glass.

‘If that’s for me,’ Rose said, shaking her head as he walked towards her, ‘I don’t like whisky.’

‘It’s medicinal,’ he said, handing it to her.

With a sigh of irritation she took the glass. ‘I’ve lost my job. I’m angry, not ill.’

‘It’s true, you know. Take a sip, it’ll steady your nerves.’

Not while you’re standing this close, she thought, lifting the liquid to her lips. ‘What’s true?’ she asked, giving a shudder at the taste the sip of peaty malt left in her mouth.

‘It’s true Jamie thinks that any man who threw you out of his bed needs therapy.’ Maybe he was right, Mathieu thought as his eyes were drawn once more to the soft lush outline of her pink lips.

‘I wouldn’t mind,’ she mused, staring into the bottom of the glass, ‘if I had actually done anything.no, actually, I would mind,’ she burst out, levelling a burning resentful glare at Mathieu. ‘So long as I did my job well, my personal life is none of his business, the narrow-minded, pompous little bigot. He said people might get the wrong idea about our relationship. Can you imagine?’ she asked, her voice rising in an incredulous note, before she added with a bitter laugh, ‘Sleep with that cold fish. God,’ she muttered, ‘I’d rather sleep with you!’

‘I’m flattered.’

Rose put down the glass very carefully. This interview was not going as planned; by now she ought to be making a grand sweeping exit. The alcohol and fire, she decided, were having an undesirable mellowing effect.

‘Don’t be,’ she advised. ‘If there’s one thing I despise more than a sanctimonious prig, it’s a man who can’t resist boasting about his conquests to the boys.’

‘Conquest?’ His dark brows rose. ‘Your memory of the occasion is no doubt hazy, but we didn’t actually—’

‘No, because I wasn’t good enough for you!’ Almost before the words were out of her mouth Rose was struck by the incongruity of her reaction to his jibe.

While she felt indignant about the rejection on her twin’s behalf, she also felt relieved. Relieved that Mathieu had resisted Rebecca’s advances, because if he hadn’t. Her thoughts skittered to a halt as a look of stupefied shock spread across her face.

I’d have been jealous!

She skimmed a look up at the man responsible for this foreign emotion. She had never been jealous of her twin even though there had been ample cause. Rebecca was always the talented one, the slim one, the passionate one. The one that men were drawn to.

But Mathieu hadn’t been.

‘You were drunk.’ Mathieu dragged his eyes from the heaving contours of her bosom at that moment outlined in heather-blue angora.

‘It wasn’t me,’ she snarled through gritted teeth. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? My God, but you are so judgemental. Haven’t you ever done anything you regret?’

‘I suppose it is something that you can regret it.’

‘Did it ever occur to you that there might be a reason for her behaviour? A reason that had nothing to do with you being totally irresistible for what she did that night? Did it ever occur to you that she might have been going through a really traumatic time in her life? That she might have found out the man she was engaged to, the man who dumped her at the altar, was gay?’

Mathieu watched as she stopped to catch her breath. Presumably her use of the third person was part of the denial thing she had going on.

‘You were engaged to be married?’ There was an inflection in his deep voice that she couldn’t quite pin down, but Rose immediately knew that she had made a tactical error.

Her instinctive desire to offer an explanation for Rebecca’s uncharacteristic behaviour had only resulted in him believing she was trying to excuse herself.

Eyes shut tight, she groaned in sheer frustration as she bellowed, ‘Not me; we are not talking about me.’

Mathieu, it seemed, was.

‘Of course not.’

This was said with such obvious insincerity that she wanted to scream.

Mathieu looked down at his hands and saw they were bunched into fists at his sides. It was irrational to feel the sort of violent antagonism he was experiencing for a total stranger. He took a deep breath and forced his tensed muscles to relax.

‘Who was he?’

‘Look, I really don’t want to discuss my personal life with you.’

‘At least you now admit it is your personal life.’

Rose rolled her eyes in frustration. What was the point denying it when he obviously wasn’t going to listen?

‘I can see that it must have been a shock, but I’m sure you will agree in retrospect that getting drunk and sleeping with strangers was not the wisest response,’ he continued.

‘You have obviously never been in love.’ She studied his lean face with dislike, and thought it was a safe bet that there had been droves of women who fancied themselves in love with him.

Blinded by his exotic heritage, dark devastating looks and charismatic smile, not to mention the raw sex appeal he exuded from every pore.

‘You feel equipped to make this assumption because …?’

Rose blinked. ‘You’ve been dumped?’ She gave a laugh of total incredulity as her glance travelled up the long, lean length of him. ‘Now that I don’t believe.’

His lips twitched and a gleam that she deeply distrusted entered his dark eyes. ‘It might be that not everybody finds me as irresistible as you do.’

‘For a man with power, position and money a lot of women would be willing to overlook a good many flaws.’

‘You are not very charitable to your sisters.’

‘I doubt if I have anything in common with your lovers.’ Thinking of them did not improve her mood. ‘You know, it would serve you right if I went around telling everyone that you were awful in bed …’ If she had a reputation she might as well use it.

Rose was startled when her threat drew what seemed like a totally genuine laugh from him … genuine and attractive, she thought, very conscious of the butterfly-wings sensation low in her belly. It was the brandy on an empty stomach, she told herself.

‘You think I’m joking?’ she asked him belligerently. ‘I would, you know.’

He shook his head. ‘No, I’m sure you would. The only problem is I think you’re assuming I have a fragile male ego. I don’t. I imagine,’ he mused, not smiling, ‘it is partly to do with genetics and—’

‘And partly,’ she cut in contemptuously, ‘to do with every woman in your life telling you how perfect you are.’ Poor deluded idiots. ‘Newsflash, Mathieu, women lie.’

‘You being the exception.’

‘Well, I’m not about to tell you you’re perfect,’ she promised grimly as she rose to her feet with slightly wobbly dignity. ‘I’ve said what I came to, I’m going now and I just … no.’ She broke off and lifted her blazing eyes to his before placing her shoulder bag very firmly on top of her case beside the chair. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ No way, that would be letting him off too easily.

She had come here to vent her feelings and hopefully prick his conscience, but she could see now that it had been naïve of her to expect him to exhibit some remorse. The man was a total stranger to compassion.

‘You messed up my life—you can put it right.’

The smile was wiped from his face. A spasm of distaste contorted the perfectly proportioned contours of his lean features. ‘And how much will this putting right cost me?’

‘Cost?’ She stared up at him in bewilderment. Then as his meaning sank in the colour left her cheeks as a wave of revolted fury washed over her. This hateful man couldn’t open his mouth without insulting her.

‘You think I’m asking you for cash? I wouldn’t take money off you if I were dead,’ she declared in a quivering voice.

He looked down at her for a moment, his expression considering. ‘If that were the situation money wouldn’t do you much good, but as you are very much alive …’ His eyes moved from the sparkling scorn in her bright eyes, and touched the soft fullness of her lips before sliding slowly across the smooth opalescent skin of her slender throat.

‘I don’t want your money; I want a job,’ she declared.

He looked perplexed by her explanation. ‘A job?’

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘YES, I want a job, the thing I had until you decided to slander me to anyone that would listen.’

‘I haven’t slandered you to anyone, I told you—’

Rose cut off his weary explanation with a bored wave of her hand. ‘Yeah, yeah … It seems to me that under the circumstances it’s the least you could do.’

‘Slander is a crime.’

Rose shrugged, lowered her eyes from his lean face and thought looking sinfully seductive and dangerous ought to be one too.

‘And I’m sure you have a team of lawyers who make damned sure that nothing you don’t like ever gets said or printed about you.’

‘That might not be such a bad idea,’ he conceded.

‘Are you laughing at me?’ she asked, studying his solemn expression suspiciously.

He took a step closer and looked at her with his dark head inclined to one side. The expression she didn’t trust was still in his eyes, but she was no longer sure it was laughter. Whatever it was it made her heart beat a lot faster against her breastbone.

‘You could sue me,’ he suggested softly.

Rose held her ground even though every instinct she had was screaming at her to run. The charge that he gave off was electrical, almost physical; her own reaction was definitely physical. Just being this close to him made her toes tingle and her stomach quiver.

‘And don’t think I wouldn’t if it wasn’t for …’ She stopped, biting her lip.

‘If it wasn’t for what?’

Rose dropped her eyes and shook her head. ‘Just thank your lucky stars I’m not litigious,’ she gritted back huskily. ‘The legal system is loaded in favour of people like you, anyway.’ Even as she said it Rose knew the stereotyping was flawed; this man might be despicable, but he was not part of the herd. He was unique.

‘Like me?’

His dangerously low-voiced query made Rose wind her anger around her like a protective scarf. ‘You know, if you possessed a fraction of the moral fibre you like to shove down other people’s throats,’ she yelled, ‘you’d own up to the fact it was your fault I lost my job and want to put it right.’

Mathieu watched as she sucked in a wrathful breath causing a good deal of quivering under the soft angora. The blazing gold eyes that meshed with his were shimmering with tears of anger. ‘Want …?’ he echoed thickly and swallowed.

The truth was at that precise moment the only thing that he wanted to do was drag her into his arms and kiss her senseless. The raw, primitive nature of the response she drew from him was like nothing he had ever experienced before.

He had had the opportunity to do a lot more than kiss her and he had walked away. When offered on a plate what his body now craved, he had been able to reject it with no difficulty.

What had changed?

Four years ago he had been aesthetically aware of the beauty of the woman who had offered herself to him, but he had not been tempted. There had been no chemistry.

Yet now he could not be in the same room as her, or even think of the scent of her perfume, without feeling the stirring of desire.

A bemused groove between his darkly defined brows, his brooding glance drifted speculatively across the soft contours of her face. Emotional and physical control was something he pretty much took for granted, he was master of his appetites and he had met women who were more beautiful, so what was it about this one, beyond the obvious, that ate away at his discipline? And why now and not four years earlier?

‘But, of course, someone like you wouldn’t understand what it is like to lose a job.’

He arched a dark brow as he met her scornful glare. ‘What exactly am I like, Rose?’ He liked the way her name felt on his tongue; it led him to wondering how she would taste.

‘I’d tell you if I thought it would do any good, but no matter what I say you’ll still carry on thinking you’re God’s gift to the human race and the female part of it in particular.’ Her angry gaze grew distracted as it stilled on his lean dark face. Wouldn’t anyone who looked in the mirror and saw that face every morning be arrogant?

‘But basically you’re someone who wouldn’t have a clue what it means to lose a job. We don’t all have a private income to fall back on.’

‘You have a family to go home to—you won’t exactly starve.’

‘I have a family and I have savings, but that’s not the point. I’m twenty-six. I don’t want to sponge off my parents.’ And neither did she want to go back and have everyone say I told you so.

‘You assume that I have led a rich, pampered existence?’ Anything less pampered than his life up to the age of fifteen would have been difficult to imagine.

Yet in many ways those years when there had been just himself and his mother living what many would consider a deprived, hand-to-mouth existence had been in the ways that counted the happiest of his life.

Mathieu was in a position to know firsthand that money and material possessions did not buy happiness. He had wanted for nothing materially when Andreos had recognised him as his son. But that first year there had been many occasions when if someone had offered him the chance to return to the life he had had before Andreos he would have taken it without a second thought.

Rose felt a rush of anger. Surely he wouldn’t be hypocritical enough to suggest anything else. ‘Now why should I assume that when you’re standing there in your fancy suit and handmade Italian shoes?’ she drawled sarcastically. ‘I suppose you’ve spent no end of nights worrying about paying bills.’

‘Not lost sleep,’ he conceded. ‘But I have needed to—what is the expression? Rob Peter to pay Paul.’

Suspecting his mockery, she glared. ‘Oh, yes, I’m sure you had it tough.’

A flicker of sardonic amusement flashed into his eyes as he lifted his shoulders in a minimal but expressive shrug. ‘You might be surprised.’

Rose looked at him in disgust and he looked back with a faint smile and cool confidence that went bone-deep. Was that confidence a result of his privileged upbringing or was that inherent in the man?

Rose suspected the latter was true.

‘Surprised that a man who is wearing a watch that costs more than some houses knows what it’s like to be hard up,’ she tossed at him scornfully and folded her arms across her chest. ‘Frankly, yes, I would be surprised. Very surprised. You’re heir to a huge fortune … squillions!’

And even if his wealth hadn’t been common knowledge it would be obvious just by looking at him, she reflected, her gaze travelling up the long, lean, supremely elegant length of him, that he was part of an exclusive élite.