Passionate Playboys: The Demetrios Bridal Bargain / The Magnate's Indecent Proposal / Hot Nights with a Playboy. Элли Блейк
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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.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if your silver spoon was encrusted with diamonds,’ she speculated bitterly. ‘What’s so funny?’ she demanded indignantly in response to his dry laugh.
The satirical glitter faded from Mathieu’s eyes, leaving his expression sombre as he said, ‘I didn’t always have a silver spoon, Rose.’
She slung him an irritated glare and swung away, or she would have if he hadn’t caught her by the shoulder and twisted her back.
‘Do you mind?’ Her breath was coming in painful little gasps as she forced her eyes away from the disturbing image of his brown fingers curled over her upper arm. ‘I don’t enjoy this hands-on stuff,’ she claimed, even though her entire treacherous body was doing its best to reveal her as a liar.
She mentally crossed her fingers and hoped he would put down the tremors that were rippling through her body to her revulsion. Fortunately there was no way he could know anything about the warm, squidgy, fluttery feeling low in her belly. And unless she fell down in a heap the weakened state of her knees would remain on a strictly need-to-know basis.
Even so she half expected Mathieu to respond with a scornful laugh, but he didn’t. As their eyes connected she stopped struggling.
‘Mathieu …?’
‘I was born in a single-roomed apartment in an area of Paris that the tourists do not visit.’
Rose stared. The words that had literally shocked her into silence had erupted from his lips with an intensity that made her take an involuntary step backwards. In the split second before she saw his smooth urbane mask slide into place she saw a flicker of shock in his eyes. It was almost as if he was as surprised as she was to hear what he said.
‘Actually nobody visits there unless they have no other choice.’ His taut smile did not reach his eyes and his previous stark announcement hung in the air between them. ‘But that is not relevant.’ The words, his manner—they both signalled his intention to draw a line under the subject. A subject you introduced, Matt.
‘But