In his eyes she was a flirt, a man-teaser with no scruples to stop her from going that step too far. Well, Mr Hayes, she thought behind the now damp sheet. Here I am where you probably always predicted I would end up, hoisted by my own petard.
‘Say something!’ she snapped out. She couldn’t bear the silence.
‘Tell me what happened here.’
‘I don’t remember!’ The words and their accompanying sob drove her to her feet. Only, her legs wouldn’t support her; they felt like two rubber bands stretched so taut they quivered. And how he knew that, she didn’t understand! But he was on his feet and using a hand on her arm to support her as he guided her down onto the edge of the bed.
She was in shock. In one part of her wretched head, Eve was aware of that. She was even able to appreciate that Ethan did not quite know what to do in the situation he found himself in.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘I can’t seem to th-think straight.’ Taking a deep breath she made a concerted effort to be rational. ‘W-we were all at Aidan’s beach house. It was my birthday party and I suppose we were all a little bit tipsy. Aidan was mixing cocktails…’
Her voice trailed off, her mind drifting back over the following few minutes when Raoul had sat down beside her and they’d talked and had drunk…
After that she could remember nothing until she’d found herself back here and Raoul had been undressing her. ‘It’s okay, Eve.’ She echoed Raoul’s soothing words back to herself, unaware that what had come before had only been replayed inside her head. ‘You are back home. I am putting you to bed…’
Bed. Her stomach revolted, forcing her back to her feet and off that dreadful piece of furniture! On her rubber-band legs she stumbled, her hand went out to grab at something to steady herself with and it had to be a rock-solid bicep belonging to Ethan Hayes. The worst of it was, she didn’t want to let go again. She never wanted to let go! Why was that? she asked herself dizzily. Why was it that this man with this cold hard expression that so disapproved of her, could fill her with such a warm feeling of strength of trust?
She didn’t know. In fact she didn’t think she knew anything for certain any more. ‘I believed him.’ Staring up at Ethan’s mask-like face, her own revealed a shocked lack of comprehension at her own gullibility. ‘How could I have done that?’ she cried. ‘How could I not have known there was more to his motives than…?’
‘He spiked your drink,’ Ethan gently reminded her. ‘Don’t knock yourself over something I don’t believe you had any control over.’
Swallowing she nodded and clutched more tightly at his arm. ‘I m-must have passed out again,’ she went on shakily. ‘Next thing I remember, I was being kissed. I thought it was a dream…’ She stopped to swallow thickly, put trembling fingers up to her swollen lips and her expression crumpled on a wave of pained and frightened dismay because it had been no dream. ‘I th-think I screamed. I th-think I hit him. I think I m-managed to scramble off the bed. I know I screamed again because I can still hear it shrilling inside my h-head—’
The stumbling words were halted by the way Ethan wrapped her close to him again. It was the sweetest, most comforting gift he could have given her right then.
But Ethan wasn’t thinking of gifts, he was thinking of murder. He was seeing Aidan Galloway’s handsome face and how it was going to look when he had restructured it. He was thinking about how this proud, feisty woman had been reduced to this, because one spoiled lout didn’t know how to control his libido. He was also thinking about the way she came into his arms without hesitation, how she was nestling here.
‘I thought he was my friend.’
Ethan recognised the pained feeling that went into that wretched comment. ‘We all make poor judgements of people now and then.’
She nodded against his breastbone—he wished she wouldn’t do that he thought, as other parts of him began to respond. He wished he understood it, wished he knew why this woman had the power to move him in ways he’d never previously known. It wasn’t just the sex thing, he made that clear to himself. But he liked the way she clung to him, and how, despite the ordeal she had just been through here, she could trust him enough to cling.
‘You’re being too nice to me.’
‘You would prefer it if I tore into you about the dangers of flirting with one too many young and sexually healthy men?’
‘Like you just did, you mean?’ Lifting her head she looked at him through eyes turned almost black by fright and whatever drug was swimming in her blood.
Vulnerable, he thought. Too—too vulnerable. It made him want to kiss away her fears—What he didn’t expect was for Eve to suddenly fall on his neck and start kissing him!
Shock leapt upon him like a scalded cat with its claws unsheathed. Those claws raked a pleasurable passage across his senses before he found the wits to prize his mouth free from hers. He had to use tough hands on her waist to prize the rest of her away from him. ‘What the hell?’ he ground out forcefully as she stood staring up at him through those wide black unseeing eyes. By now he was feeling so damn shaken he was almost on the point of running himself! ‘Dear God, Eve, what do you think you’re playing at?’
The rough-cut rake of his voice brought her blinking back from wherever she had gone off to. She stared at him in horror then in dawning dismay. ‘Oh,’
