Constantine's Revenge

‘It should be easy enough,’ he said at last, his tone a masterpiece of indifference. ‘I shall simply do what I have done every day for the past two years, and that is to wipe your existence from my mind, forget I ever met you.’

‘In that case, why come here at all? You must have known…’

‘Obviously I knew you’d be here, but the wish to please Ivan on his birthday was strong enough to overcome the repugnance I felt at the thought of seeing you again.’

It was meant to hurt, and it achieved its aim with all the ruthless efficiency for which Constantine had achieved his reputation in the business world. Grace was deeply thankful for the protective concealment of the coat she still held as she crushed it close to her, feeling almost as if she needed to stem some agonising internal bleeding that had sprung from the wound he had deliberately inflicted on her.

‘But I don’t have to spend any more time with you. There are enough people here to distract us…’ An autocratic wave of one hand encompassed the crowded room at the far end of the hall. ‘And the room is quite large enough to keep us apart for some time.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’ She had to force herself to say it. ‘If we’re really lucky, we won’t even have to see each other again.’

She would do it if it killed her, would rather die than let him see just what it was doing to her to have him here like this. Constantine nodded slowly, his gaze already drifting away towards the other room where other, obviously more attractive company awaited him.

‘That would make it possible to salvage something from this appalling evening.’

‘Then don’t let me hold you back!’

Her tartness drew that black-eyed gaze back to her for one more of those uncomfortably probing stares, a faintly cynical smile playing around Constantine’s firm mouth.

‘To be honest, my dear Grace, I sincerely doubt that anything you could do would ever affect me again.’

Was it possible? Grace asked herself as he strolled away without so much as a backward glance. Could he really feel nothing for her, not even the dark anger she had seen blazing in his face at their last, cataclysmic meeting? Did she now mean so little to him that he could dismiss her from his thoughts in the blink of an eye? What had happened to the love he had once declared so eloquently, the passion he had been unable to hide?

It was dead, she told herself drearily, dead and gone, as if it had never existed. Which seemed impossible when her own feelings were in such agonised turmoil that she felt as if there was a raging tornado where her heart should be, a monstrous tidal wave of shock and distress swamping her stomach. She could only pray that she was enough of an actor to hide her misery from Constantine. That she would be able to get through what remained of this evening without giving herself away completely.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS impossible.

There was no way at all that she could pretend, even to herself, that she was oblivious to the fact that Constantine was there in the room with her. His presence was like a constant dark shadow, always hovering at her shoulder, following her everywhere she went.

If she paused to talk to anyone she felt him there, just out of sight, driving all thought of what she had been about to say from her mind. If she tried to drink some wine, or taste some food from the extensive buffet Ivan had laid on, her throat closed over what she was trying to swallow, threatening to choke her.

And the worst thing was that, for some private reason of his own, Constantine hadn’t kept to his declaration that he was going to wipe her existence from her mind. She had only to glance across the room to meet the intent stare of his watchful black eyes following every movement she made, every smile, every word she spoke.

In the end she sought refuge in the kitchen, privately admitting to her own cowardice as she used the excuse of the mounting pile of washing up to keep her there, hidden away. She was filling the bowl with hot water for the second time when Ivan wandered into the room.

‘Uh—oh! I wondered where you’d got to. Does this mean I made a mistake?’

‘In inviting Constantine?’ Grace turned a reproving look on him. ‘What do you think? Ivan, how could you?’

‘No chance of you two making it up, then?’

‘Was that what was in your mind when you asked him here? If that was the case, you couldn’t be more wrong. It’s over, Ivan, and has been for years.’

‘Are you sure? He was pretty keen to accept. I thought perhaps—’

‘Well, you thought wrong,’ Grace inserted hastily, as much to squash down her own foolishly weak heart as it leapt on an absurd flutter of hope as to disillusion her friend. ‘Whatever reasons Constantine had for coming here today, seeing me wasn’t one of them. I mean, does he look like a man who can’t let me out of his sight?’

‘He looks like a man with something on his mind, if you ask me,’ Ivan returned, with a nod towards the open door.

Reluctantly Grace followed the direction of his gaze, her eyes fixing immediately on the tall, muscular figure of Constantine leaning against the wall. With a glass in one hand, he had his attention firmly fixed on the woman in front of him. Small and curvaceous, with long dark hair, she was wearing a nurse’s uniform with a skirt so indecently short she would never have been allowed on to any hospital ward.

‘And what he has on his mind is very definitely not me,’ she said, unable to erase the bitterness from her voice.

Her stepsister Paula was dark and petite, she recalled on a wrench of pain at the memory. And Constantine had always admitted to being attracted to small, curvy brunettes, so much so that Grace had never quite been able to understand just what he had been doing with her.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Ivan, leave it!’ Grace pleaded, unable to take any more.

The words had barely left her lips when Constantine looked up suddenly, deep-set eyes meeting Grace’s clouded grey ones. For a fleeting, tormenting moment their gazes locked, and she shivered before the cruel indifference in their ebony darkness. Then with a cold travesty of a smile Constantine lifted his glass in a grim mockery of a toast, one that had her biting down hard on her lower lip to keep back an expression of pain.

Swinging round so that she no longer had to see him or his companion, she squirted washing-up liquid into the bowl with a force that made bubbles boil up wildly.

‘Constantine has no thought of any reconciliation on his mind,’ she said through gritted teeth, blinking hard against the burning tears that stung her eyes. ‘Just get that into your head, will you?’

And just who are you trying to convince? her conscience questioned reproachfully, distracting her so that she was barely aware of Ivan leaving her alone again.

Was it true? Was it possible? Had she really been fool enough to harbour even the faintest hope after all this time? Oh Grace, Grace! You fool! You crazy, weak-minded fool!

How could she ever have been so stupid? Hadn’t Constantine made his feelings, or rather his lack of them, brutally clear? Had she spent so many long, lonely nights lying awake with that final callous dismissal still sounding in her thoughts, and yet not been convinced by it? She had to be out of her tiny, crazy mind if that was the case.

We have no future together… The words Constantine had flung at her, the coldly contemptuous voice in which they had been spoken lacerated her soul all over again, making his feelings for her patently clear.

Clear enough even for the most foolish, naively besotted heart, Grace told herself miserably. In spite of being blinded by love, as she had been then, she had heard the conviction in his voice, recognised the finality of the emotional life-sentence he had been handing her. So why should she allow herself to dare to question it now, when surely the two years’ silence, two years’ distance on Constantine’s part, was added evidence of just how much he had meant what he’d said?

‘If you wash that plate any more, you will erase the pattern from it.’

The dryly amused voice, instantly recognisable as Constantine’s, broke into her reverie with such unexpected suddenness that she started violently, dropping the plate into the washing-up water in a plume of spray.

‘Don’t sneak up on me like that!’

‘I did not sneak. You must have a guilty conscience to jump like that. Or perhaps you were daydreaming. Is that it, agape mou? Were you thinking of some man—someone deeply important to you, to judge by the look on your face?’

‘I wasn’t thinking of anyone!’ Grace objected, terrified that he would suspect the true nature of her thoughts. ‘And don’t call me that! I’m not your love any more!’

‘So you remember the Greek I taught you?’

She remembered that particular phrase! How could she ever forget it? Her thoughts skittered away from memories too painful to bear. Memories of tenderly embracing in the warm darkness of a mild early spring evening on Skyros, her head pillowed on the strong frame of his chest, hearing that softly accented voice whispering those words in a way that resonated with barely suppressed desire.

‘Oh, yes, I remember that, and so many other valuable lessons you taught me.’ Grace laced the words with vinegar, deliberately taking them miles away from the sort of lessons he had originally had in mind. ‘And believe me, I don’t ever intend to forget them. I— What are you doing?’

She flinched back as Constantine moved suddenly, one hand coming out towards her face.

Her instinctive panic earned her a sharp-eyed glance of reproof, Constantine’s mouth twisting cynically.

‘You have soap bubbles on your nose…’ A long finger gently flicked the froth away. ‘And on your brow… They might have gone into your eye.’