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.’
‘How old were you when she died?’
‘Nearly fifteen.’
‘And that six months before you went to live with him?’
Mathieu ran a hand over his jaw and nodded. It was years since he had even allowed himself to think about that time in his life. There was something almost liberating about allowing himself to share these private recollections.
‘I stayed on in the flat and I worked as a construction labourer to pay the rent.’ These were things he had never told anyone— not even Jamie, his best friend.
‘But you were fifteen,’ Rose exclaimed, her eyes round with shock.
‘I was tall for my age.’
‘That’s not what I meant. You were a child—you shouldn’t have been alone that way. You should have been at school.’
‘I didn’t go to school when she got ill, and afterwards …’ He gave a careless shrug. ‘I suppose I fell through the cracks. Look,’ he said, changing the subject abruptly, ‘whether you believe it or not, I am sorry you lost your job, but I have no vacancy that would suit your qualifications.’
‘I’m a qualified librarian, but I haven’t always worked with books.’ As she looked at him Rose was unable to shake the image from her head of him as a lonely little boy forced first to care for his dying mother and then to fend for himself. Her tender heart ached when she thought about it.
‘I know what you’re good at,’ he said, his eyes lingering on her lush mouth as he once again was overwhelmed with the urge to kiss it, ‘and that I can get it for free.’
Mathieu moved his head to one side just a split second before her hand would have connected with his cheek. He caught her wrist and surprised her almost as much as he did himself by bringing it up to his mouth and brushing the smooth blue-veined inner aspect of her wrist with his lips.
Eyes wide, she released a small cry and pulled back. Mathieu released his hold and watched as she nursed her hand against her heaving breasts.
‘Sorry, that was a cheap crack.’ And he had made it to drive the look of compassion from her face. If there was one thing he could not tolerate, it was pity.
Rose’s head came up; he had sounded genuinely regretful.
‘And not true,’ he continued. ‘Nothing is for free in this world.’
This cynical outlook caused her brow to furrow, but she bit back her instinctive protest.
‘We all of us do things we regret in life. It is not helpful to be reminded of them constantly, especially when you have obviously made an effort to turn your life around.’
My God, this was priceless. Rose Hall, the fallen woman, trying to live down her past … what would he say if he knew the truth?
Rose would have laughed if her ironic appreciation hadn’t been severely dented by her response to the light seductive touch of his lips on her skin. Being this close to him short-circuited any sense of self-preservation she had left.
She pulled her hand away, but the sensitised skin of her wrist carried on tingling.
‘You’re offering me some sort of grudging pardon?’
Forgiveness from Mathieu Demetrios. A man who by all accounts had hardly led a blameless existence.
‘That’s really big of you,’ she responded with a smile of dazzling insincerity. ‘But for your information I haven’t done anything I’m ashamed of … well, not the anything you’re talking about anyway.’ She stopped. ‘Are you listening to me?’
The disturbing smile twitched the corners of his lips as he shook his head and confessed, ‘No … I was having a Eureka moment.’
‘What are you looking at me like that for?’
‘I have thought of a position that you might be suited for. Yes, the more I think about it …’ His narrowed eyes travelled from the tip of her glossy fair head to her toes and back again. He slowly nodded. ‘Yes, you might just do.’
‘Do what? What are you talking about?’
‘You need a job; I need …’ He paused, a smile that filled her with deep distrust spreading across his lean features. ‘I have a vacancy.’
‘A