Элли Блейк – Passionate Playboys: The Demetrios Bridal Bargain / The Magnate's Indecent Proposal / Hot Nights with a Playboy (страница 2)
Mathieu, not explaining it had been a stunt staged to gain publicity for a low-budget movie, dismissed the young starlet with a contemptuous shrug and admitted, ‘I have not the faintest idea.’
She had been and still was a total stranger, despite her offer to show him how grateful she was, a proposal he had said thanks, but no, thanks to.
His taste had never run to that sort of gratitude. The formula-one racing circuit attracted groupies like a magnet. Women who in his opinion represented everything that was bad about today’s depressing shallow, celebrity-obsessed society.
Mathieu had frequently been tempted to say to them, Go away, get a life, get some self-respect, but he hadn’t—any attention at all they took as encouragement. So he had gained a reputation for being aloof and unapproachable. He had changed careers but the reputation persisted. It was on occasion useful.
‘I read the wedding plans were at an advanced stage.’
Mathieu angled a dark brow at the sarcasm in his father’s voice and retorted lightly, ‘I should review the sort of newspapers you read if I were you, Andreos.’
‘You are not me.’
‘Nor even a paler version.’ He knew he took after his mother; he wondered sometimes if looking at him reminded his father of the young woman he had used and discarded.
‘So there is no one—you are not in love?’
Mathieu was not in love or actively seeking it. On the contrary, if he saw it coming he had every intention of running or at least walking swiftly in the opposite direction.
What was the all-consuming attraction of love anyway? A form of temporary insanity that made your happiness reliant on someone else’s smile?
The allure baffled him.
And anyway, the people he loved had a habit of dying.
No, falling in love was not on Mathieu’s list of things to do.
The only person he relied on was himself and that was the way he liked it.
‘I fail to see what business that is of yours, regardless of which I can think of few worse fates than to be married to a teenager, even a mature teenager.’
Andreos’s face darkened with displeasure. ‘I am not telling you to marry the girl.’
‘But you wouldn’t exactly be displeased if I did either, and in the meantime you will take every opportunity to throw us together. You are embarrassingly transparent.’
Andreos looked at him, his face dark with frustration. ‘The girl is Vasilis’s only child, his heir. Her husband would—’
Mathieu lifted a hand to still the flow. ‘I hardly need it spelt out; you are empire-building.’ His lips thinned in distaste. ‘Does the girl have any say in this?’
‘Do not look down your nose at me,’ Andreos barked. ‘And do not pretend you could not make this girl love you if you chose to do so. I have seen you with women.’
‘She is not a woman; she is a child.’
‘She was good enough for your brother.’
‘They were in love.’
‘You have taken everything else of his—why not his woman?’
The words hung in the air, building the tension between the two men, until Mathieu shrugged. ‘I never wanted anything of Alex’s.’
Except a share of their father’s love, but that desire had only lasted until Mathieu was sixteen. He had been living with his father for a year when an overheard conversation had made him recognise that was never going to happen.
Mathieu’s thoughts drifted back to the occasion in question. He had been walking past a half-open door. It was hearing his own name and the anger and frustration in his normally softly spoken stepmother’s voice that had made him pause outside …
‘The boy tries
‘What you see in his eyes is naked ambition, Mia. Why can you not see that? The boy is hard, he is confrontational—’
‘You say you wish that Alex would stand up to you more.’
‘That is not the same thing. Mathieu doesn’t need love and kisses; he needs a strong hand.’
‘Not one raised in anger, I have told you that. If you ever—’
‘No, of course not. I told you I was sorry about that, Mia. You know I have never raised a hand to Alex; it’s just Mathieu lied and then, caught out in the lie, refused to apologise.’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake, Andreos, are you blind? It was Alex who broke your precious statuette and he was too scared to own up so Mathieu took the blame.’
‘No, no, you’re wrong! I don’t know what story he has told you, but—’
‘Not Mathieu, he didn’t say a word. It was Alex who told me about the beating and the broken statuette.’
‘Oh, goddamn that boy … he made me … the thing is, Mia, when he looks at me all I can think is that I wish he’d never been born.’
He had heard enough. Mathieu had moved on, in more ways than one. It had hurt at the time to hear the truth, but it was better to face bitter reality than live in false hope.
‘You will have to pass on my apologies. I’m expected in Scotland.’
A dark mottled colour rose up the older man’s neck until his face was suffused with angry colour. Mathieu watched the effect of his words with clinical detachment.
The truth of it was he had returned just over a year ago at his stepmother’s request, not his father’s. ‘Give it a year, Mathieu,’ she begged. ‘Your father needs you, though he’d never admit it.’
Mathieu was reluctant to shatter the illusion that he cared what his father needed, especially when she added, ‘And when I am gone he will need you even more. The company and the family,’ she reflected with a rueful roll of her eyes as she spoke of the Demetrios clan. ‘They both need a strong hand at the helm. He was grooming your brother for the role …’
A memory had surfaced in Mathieu’s head—Alexander sliding his small hand in his and saying earnestly, ‘I want to be just like you when I am older, Mathieu, even if it means Father doesn’t like me.’
‘Alex would have done it well,’ Mathieu lied.
Mia smiled and shook her head. ‘I appreciate your loyalty, but we both know that isn’t true. Alex hated business. He tried, of course, to please his father, but …’ She shrugged. ‘One day Andreos would have had to accept that Alex would never take his place, but sadly for us all that day never came.’
As Mathieu moved to enfold her in a comforting embrace, hiding his shock at the fragility of her birdlike frame, she grasped his hand tight and said fiercely, ‘Promise me, Mathieu, to help him even if he doesn’t want your help.’
So Mathieu had promised, and he had stayed after his promise to her had been fulfilled, not out of a sense of duty, but because against all the odds he was enjoying what he was doing.
‘You ingrate, you will do as I say or … or …’ Andreos raised his clenched fists from his sides and glared at the younger man with every appearance of loathing.
Mathieu, his calmness increasing in direct proportion to his father’s furious incoherence, raised a satirical brow. ‘You will disinherit me?’ he suggested.
‘And do not think I won’t.’
‘That is your decision.’
‘You expect me to believe you don’t care?’ Andreos let out a loud bellow of scornful laughter and shook his head. ‘That you don’t care about losing an empire worth billions?’
‘I don’t ask you to believe anything,’ Mathieu responded calmly. ‘Your empire is yours to give to whom you wish. I know you wanted to give it to Alex—’
‘Don’t you dare say his name. He was worth ten of you.’
Mathieu continued seamlessly in the same even voice as though there had been no interruption. ‘That is no longer possible. Alex is dead.’ An image of his half-brother’s smiling face flashed into his head and for a moment his sense of loss was so acute that he could not speak.
Alex, the indulged and adored only son, could have, should have, resented the bastard older brother who had suddenly appeared like a cuckoo in the gold-lined nest. But he had not. Alex’s disposition had been as sunny and generous as his smile.
‘I am the only son you have left,’ he said bleakly. ‘You wish to mould me into someone you think is fit to carry on your line.’ Mathieu’s smile revealed his total lack of regard for the illustrious family name he had inherited in his mid-teens. He had deliberately chosen to use his mother’s name when he began his racing career to distance himself from that name.
‘Well, I think we owe one another some honesty. I am not interested in your name, your line … your empire. I have a name of my own, and I am not some malleable child, Father. I was moulded, for better or worse, into what I am today a long time ago.’
The ruddy colour on the older man’s cheeks deepened to an alarming purple. ‘It is not my fault I did not know you existed … your mother … I brought you into my home after her death.’
Like a surgical knife Mathieu’s deep, clear voice cut across the older man’s blustering protest. ‘Her name was Felicite, and you will not speak of my mother. You lost that right years ago.’
The older man’s jaw dropped. He was not accustomed to being on the receiving end of commands. Nor was he used to seeing the glow of passion in the eyes of the son he had not known existed until he was fifteen years old.