Maggie gave a strange, humourless laugh. ’Metaphorically speaking, yes. Can I expect you?’
Jade hesitated, her curiosity aroused by Maggie’s odd-sounding voice. Was it possible that Constantine was going to sue for libel, despite Maggie’s bravado. Oh, how she hoped so. That would show them that they couldn’t go around printing whatever they liked about people!
For the first time, Jade knew what it felt like to be on the receiving end of tabloid journalism. But she had never tricked anyone into giving her an in- terview—nor tape-recorded them without knowing.
‘Jade?’ came Maggie’s strained voice. ‘Are you still there?’
Jade looked around the room, realising that she couldn’t sit in her flat for the rest of her life regret- ting what had happened, could she? What the hell! ’Yes, Maggie, I’m still here,’ she answered coolly. Curiosity got the better of her. ‘Send someone over then, and I’ll come into the office. But I’m not confronting those vultures outside on my own.’ I used to be one of those vultures, she thought. But no longer, thank heavens.
She felt like some minor celebrity when two burly men duly elbowed their way through the waiting Press and into a car, and when she walked through the office the atmosphere was more hushed than usual. At the sight of Jade, all conversation was killed stone-dead.
Head held high, determined that they shouldn’t read any trace of emotion in her face, Jade walked towards Maggie Marchant’s door, tapped it and opened it to see that it was not the editor who sat behind the cluttered desk.
It was Constantine.
CHAPTER SIX
JADE could only stare in disbelief at Constantine, incongruously seated in her boss’s chair. He wore a suit; he looked impossibly elegant and un- reachable. And about as friendly as a range of craggy mountains.
His dark eyes flicked over her, and she found herself wishing that she hadn’t just thrown on the first items to hand, imagining his lips curling with disdain. But he surprised her. His face remained implacable; not a flicker of emotion whatsoever on the ruthlessly carved features as he took in her short, flared cotton skirt, worn with an old, closely fitting indigo shirt.
He switched his gaze to Maggie Marchant, who Jade now noticed was standing in one corner of the room, uncharacteristically silent and looking ter- ribly out of place. She found herself blinking in surprise—what on earth was happening?
‘Leave us,’ ordered Constantine.
Jade expected Maggie to reply with a torrent of abusive rhetoric, because no matter how rich and how powerful Constantine might be, in the offices of the Daily View Maggie ran a tight ship, with the proprietor giving her an astonishing amount of freedom to run the paper as she saw fit. But no outburst followed; instead Jade was treated to the unbelievable spectacle of Maggie nodding her head and slipping silently out of the office like a messen- ger-girl.
Little hairs on the back of her neck bristled as she scented danger—the threat of it was emanating from every pore of that impressive frame. She wanted to run and hide from him, from the danger and the ever-present and still powerful attraction she felt towards him. And what a fool you are, Jade Meredith, she thought in abject disgust as she began to turn away.
‘And where do you think you’re going?’ came a silky voice.
She injected steel into her voice. ‘As far away from you as possible!’
‘Perhaps to sell more details of our so-called affair?’ And then the mouth did curl. ‘I think not.’
A sense of fair play emerged as indignation righteously reared its head. It had been the same while she was at school—it was all very well being punished for something she had done, but not for something she hadn’t done. But she wasn’t going to crawl to him—she would give him the facts coolly and rationally. ‘I want you to know I didn’t write that story, Constantine!’ But to her own ears it sounded blurted and made up. ‘Honestly!’
He subjected her to a slow and contemptuous scrutiny. ‘If I were you, I would think very care- fully about using that particular word,’ he suggested icily. ‘It doesn’t go at all well with your track record.’
‘But I didn’t write it! I wouldn’t have had them print it in a million years—I’m just not the kind of person who goes around parading her private life in front of millions!’
He gave a soft, brutal laugh. ‘Oh, really?’ he mocked. ‘Then how did the paper know that I’d been your lover? Or that I’d asked you—’ and here he swore very softly and explicitly in Greek, and for the first time Jade was glad she didn’t understand the language ‘—to marry me?’ he fin- ished on a note of harsh incredulity, as if ques- tioning his sanity at the time of asking.
Oh, what was the use of trying to explain that she’d been trapped by a combination of her emotional state at being made love to and then dumped by him and the unexpected potency of brandy on an empty stomach? He’d never believe her in a million years, and even if he did, he’d never forgive her, not now. He was not, she recognised— a forgiving kind of man. ‘Are you planning to sue?’ she asked.
He ignored the question. ‘Sit,’ he ordered, indi- cating the chair in front of the desk with a cursory nod of the gleaming jet head.
And because the sheer emotion of seeing him sitting there after everything which had happened between them seemed to have reduced her legs to the consistency of jelly, Jade found herself sinking into the chair.
‘Are you going to sue?’ she repeated.
He gave an impatient nod of the dark head. ‘No, I am not going to sue,’ he gritted out tersely. ‘There is little point in suing since what was published was the truth—or pretty close to it.’ He leaned back in his chair, surveying her from hooded, hostile eyes. ‘On a technical point, the article was, of course- inaccurate.’ He closed his eyes and recited from memory. ‘ “My Ste
amy Nights of Love with Greek Tycoon”.’
Jade blushed with shame at the tasteless headline, and he opened his eyes, which narrowed marginally as he took in the heated flares of colour which lay over her high cheekbones.
‘As you know,’ he ground out, ‘there were no nights of love; and more fool me. For if I had not been so taken by your convincing little virginal act I would have taken you on the island when you offered yourself so willingly to me. Over and over again,’ he said in a soft, cruel voice. ‘Until I had satiated the aching in my loins, and rid myself of my obsession for you.’