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

‘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.’