‘Sell them on? Are you nuts? They’re worth a packet!’ Maurice was openly appalled by the suggestion. ‘I make more flogging one bath than you make in a week of selling knick-knacks on your market stall!’
Involuntary amusement filled Rosie, defusing her exasperation. Her conscience stabbed her too. Maurice had been her best friend since she was thirteen. She sighed. ‘Look... why don’t you go and have a shower? I’ll help you clear the garden later.’
But Maurice hovered and cleared his throat. ‘I should have said it yesterday but I couldn’t find the words... I’m really sorry you lost your dad so soon after him finding you.’
A lump ballooned in Rosie’s tight throat. ‘He was a nice bloke,’ she mumbled, and swallowed hard. ‘I was lucky I had the chance to get to know him.’
‘Yeah...’ A frown darkening his brow, Maurice hesitated before plunging in with two big feet. ‘But why leave London in such a rush when he seems to have left you a share of his worldly goods?’
‘I don’t want to talk about that—’
‘Rosie...you can’t keep on running away from people and situations that upset you.’
A fierce flush lit her cheeks. In self-defence she turned her head away. The reminder that that had been a habit of hers when she was younger was not welcome.
‘And you can’t leave a legacy hanging in legal limbo either. The executor will be forced to track you down. That’s his job.’
‘He’ll find it difficult. I left no forwarding address’
‘Collect what’s coming to you and I bet you could say goodbye to market trading and start up an antique shop here, just the way you always planned,’ Maurice pointed out levelly. ‘Then between us we could make an offer to buy this place from my uncle instead of renting it.’
Maurice’s fatal flaw, Rosie reflected wryly. A complete inability to miss out on any opportunity to make or attract money. And because of it he would probably be a millionaire by the time he was twenty-five. His architectural salvage business was booming.
‘You could make a better life for yourself. That’s obviously what your father wanted,’ Maurice continued with conviction. ‘And why do you act so flippin’ guilty about his widow? I’m quite sure he hasn’t left her destitute!’
Rosie spun round, pale and furious, but, having said his piece, Maurice took himself safely upstairs before she even reached the hall. Baulked of the chance to tell him to mind his own business, she scowled on the threshold of the tiny lounge, surveying the all-male debris of abandoned take-aways, squashed beer cans and car magazines. Her nose wrinkled. It was going to take her days to restore the cottage to its former cleanliness. With a rebellious groan, she rubbed at her aching back with a grimy hand and wandered out into the pale spring sunshine.
A silver limousine was in the act of turning in off the road. The impressive vehicle drew to a purring halt behind Maurice’s lorry. As Rosie watched with raised brows, a uniformed chauffeur climbed out and opened the rear passenger door. She started to walk towards the barn. It might be the one day of the week that Maurice didn’t open for business but he never turned away a customer. However, when a very tall, dark male sheathed in a breathtakingly elegant dove-grey suit emerged from the limo, Rosie stopped dead in her tracks, shock and dismay freezing her fragile features.
Sunlight arrowed over Constantine Voulos’s blue-black hair, gilding his tanned skin to gold and accentuating the hard-boned hawk-like masculinity of his superb bone structure. He strode across the yard towards her, his long, powerful legs eating up the distance with a natural grace of movement as eye-catching as that of a lion on the prowl. Rosie connected with glittering dark golden eyes set between dense black lashes. Her stomach clenched, her heart hammering thunderously against her breastbone.
“All women find Constantine irresistible,” Anton had told her ruefully. “I don’t think he’s ever met with a refusal. Unfortunately that has made him rather cynical about your sex.”
Rosie surfaced abruptly from that irrelevant memory to find herself being regarded much as she herself might have regarded a cockroach. She flushed, suddenly embarrassingly aware of the soiled sweatshirt and worn jeans she wore and then as quickly infuriated that she should even consider his opinion as being of any importance!
‘We’ll talk inside,’ Constantine informed her grimly.
‘How the heck did you find me?’
He elevated a sardonic winged ebony brow. ‘It wasn’t difficult. Anton’s desk diary contained this address.’
‘Well, I don’t want you here,’ Rosie retorted with angry heat. ‘So you can just take yourself off again!’
‘I’m not leaving until we have reached an agreement.’ Constantine stared down at her, his arrogant jawline hardening, his nostrils flaring as a black frown built between his brows. ‘What age are you?’ he demanded abruptly.
‘Twenty... not that that’s any of your—’
‘Twenty?’ Constantine shot her an appalled look, his sensual mouth twisting with flagrant distaste. ‘Christos ...what was Anton thinking of?’
‘Not what you’re thinking of, anyway!’ Rosie scorned.
‘But then it takes a male of my experience to understand how the mind of a rapacious little tramp works,’ Constantine returned without skipping a beat. ‘And you must have put Anton through hell the last weeks of his life!’
Rosie went white with shock. ‘What are you talking about?’
Constantine strode past her into the cottage. ‘We’ll discuss it indoors.’
‘I asked you what you were talking about,’ Rosie reminded him shakily.
Constantine stood poised on the threshold of the messy, cluttered lounge, his hard-cut profile set in lines of derision. ‘You live like a pig!’ he breathed in disgust as he swung round again. ‘Unwashed...your home filthy. My skin would crawl if I entered that room. You need pest control.’
Stunned into rare silence, Rosie gasped at him as he sidestepped her and swiftly strode back outside again.
‘We will stay out here in the fresh air.’
Her cheeks burning with outrage and mortification, Rosie charged out after him again. ‘How dare you?’
‘Keep quiet.’ Constantine treated her to a chilling look of cold menace. ‘Keep quiet and listen well. Anton was one of nature’s gentlemen but I’m not and I’ve already worked out what your game was. I now understand why Anton wrote that new will. He drew it up without legal advice, had it witnessed by the servants and then he placed it in his desk the day he returned to London. He was afraid that he would have another heart attack and was seriously worried about your future... and why was that?’
Her breath tripped in her throat. ‘I—I—’
Icily judgmental dark eyes raked her flustered face. ‘Before Anton went on his convalescent cruise, you told him that you were carrying his child... didn’t you?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Rosie gasped.
‘Your object was to try and force him into divorcing Thespina. You put him under intolerable pressure but you were lying. You weren’t pregnant. If you had been, you’d have thrown the news in my face with pleasure yesterday!’
Rosie blinked up at him, her lashes fluttering in bemusement. Even though his suspicions were wildly off beam, she was shattered by the depth of calculation he laid at her door.
Constantine studied her with seething contempt. ‘And I’m afraid that Anton chose to deal with a problem that he could not cope with by tipping the whole bloody mess into my lap!’
‘I