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

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 I don’t understand.’

Mathieu’s jaw tightened. Neither did he. He didn’t understand what impulse had made him volunteer personal information that way. He might as well have handed the woman a gold-edged invite to tramp around in his head.

It was bizarre. Andreos had said a lot worse and utterly failed to get under his guard, but for some reason Rose’s silver-spoon jibe, not to mention her assumption of moral superiority when she had made it, had really got to him.

Since when did he give a damn what anyone thought of him? It didn’t matter to him if Rose Hall dismissed him as some spoilt, pampered rich kid who had grown into a spoilt, pampered man.

‘What are you talking about?’

His lashes lifted from his chiselled cheekbones. ‘I’m not.’

‘You can’t say something like that and leave it,’ she protested.

He gave a very Gallic shrug. ‘Why not?’

Rose rolled her eyes. ‘Are you serious?’

‘I am not the subject of this conversation.’ His sanity possibly should be. For the first time in his life he was worried that if he started talking he couldn’t guarantee where the cut-off point would be. He had already let this woman have a glimpse of himself that should have remained private. That was a pretty heavy price to pay just for the pleasure of the look of smug superiority wiped off her face.

‘Your father is Andreos Demetrios, isn’t he?’ Just about the richest man in Europe and Mathieu was his heir. How could what he was saying be true?

A growling sound escaped Mathieu’s clamped lips as he bared his teeth in a ferocious smile and glared down at her. She was like a damned terrier with a bone.

Rose, who didn’t have a clue what she had done to earn such seething resentment, kept her chin up but regarded him warily.

‘You want the salacious details? Fine.’ His lip curled contemptuously as he punched the air in a gesture of frustration and asked himself, ‘Why not?’ before dragging a hand through his hair. ‘Andreos is my father; I have the DNA results to prove it. But my mother,’ he continued in the same driven manner, ‘was not his wife. My mother was a young girl who gave birth nine months after a one-night stand.’

‘Then you were a …’

‘A bastard—yes, I am.’ Her embarrassed flush brought his mocking smile to the surface.

‘And you had no contact with him … your father … when you were young?’ A pucker appeared on her smooth brow. ‘Surely he gave your mother financial support.’

‘It was only after my mother’s death that I learned who my father was.’

‘Didn’t you ask? Weren’t you curious?’ It seemed inconceivable to Rose that anyone would not want to know their roots.

He shook his dark head, his expression remote as though his thoughts were in another time and place. ‘We were fine as we were, just the two of us.’

‘Did he know?’

‘About me? Apparently not. I went to live with him six months after she died.’ He related the information in a flat, expressionless tone … well, having revealed this much there seemed very little point holding back now. Dieu, what was it about this woman that activated some previously dormant soul-bearing gene in his make-up?

She met his eyes. All she could see was her own reflection in the mirrored silver surface. His expression, in stark contrast to the blaze of white-hot emotion that had been written there moments earlier, was inscrutable. ‘It is sad, your mother being alone …’

‘She wasn’t alone; she had me.’