She was near to tears and didn’t want him to know it, so she spun away again taking with her the image of him just standing there staring at her as if she’d just grown two heads. Well, maybe she had! She certainly felt as if she had two heads rocking on her neck. She was tired through lack of sleep, exhausted with lingering shock and whatever else was still permeating her bloodstream. And she was hurting inside because she still couldn’t bring herself to understand why Raoul had believed he could do to her what he had tried to do! Nor could she quite manage to justify that she hadn’t deserved what had happened.
That was the toughest pill to swallow. Self-contempt. She named it bleakly as she stared out of the window, while a deathly silence crowded in from behind. What was he thinking? she wondered painfully. What was now going on inside his cynical head?
Ethan was struggling to think anything much. She was amazing, was his one main impression, and that came from the gut not the brain. But, standing there with the light coming in from behind her, she seemed to shimmer like a proud goddess sent down from the heavens to mess up his life. No wonder her grandfather worshipped her. He was beginning to understand what that felt like.
He was also stunned by what she’d thrown at him. Worse, he wanted to refute what she’d predicted was bound to happen but knew that he couldn’t. It was the way of the world. Since the beginning of time, woman had been cast in the role of temptress and man merely as a slave to her seductive wiles. He was as guilty as anyone of assuming the same thing about Eve. He’d even likened her to the serpent in paradise, when in truth the serpent had been his own desire to tap into that special magic that was Eve. Man being man at the expense of woman, in other words, blaming her for his weakness.
It was not a nice thing to admit about oneself.
‘So…’ He sighed in what he knew was his surrender to the whole darn package that was Eve. ‘Tell me what it is you want to do,’ he invited.
Eve turned to look at him. All he saw was a pair of tear-washed wounded eyes. ‘Do you mean it?’ she asked him in an unsteady voice that finally finished him.
Ask me to bite the apple, Eve, and I will do it, he mused ruefully, well aware that man’s oldest weakness was still very much alive inside him; after all he had just admitted to himself. ‘Yes, I mean it,’ he confirmed and even felt like smiling at his own downfall.
Her fingers released their comforting clutch on her arms. He watched them lower to her sides then turn themselves into two tight, hopeful little fists. He wanted to claim those fists. He wanted to prize those fingers open and feed them inside his shirt so they could roam at their leisure.
‘Continue to play the charade—just for a few weeks,’ she begged him. ‘Give me time to let Grandpa down about this marriage thing—without my having to admit the truth to him.’
Well, he’d asked, now he knew. He was to play the love-struck lover of Eve until she decided it was no longer necessary. Why not? he asked himself. Why the hell not? At this precise moment he was even prepared to lie down on the floor and let her walk all over him.
Time to move, time to react. She was waiting for an answer. Dragging his eyes away from the inner vision of himself lying at her beautiful feet, he looked at his watch and tried to concentrate well enough to read it.
Twelve o’clock, he saw. ‘You’ve got approximately two hours to pack a bag and say your farewells,’ he announced with a smoothness that in no way reflected what was really happening inside him.
‘Why, where am I going?’
Well, there’s an interesting question, he mused. And wished he knew the answer. ‘You can’t come to despise me enough to jilt me while you’re here in the Caribbean and I’m in Spain,’ he pointed out. ‘So you are going to have to come to Spain with me.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
EVE was late.
Standing by the car he aimed to return to the hire company at the tiny airport on the other side of the island, Ethan was beginning to wonder if she’d had a change of heart about coming away with him, when he caught sight of her coming along the path that led to the lane behind the beach houses.
She was pulling her suitcase behind her through the dappled sunlight cast by the shady overhang of the trees. Tall and slender, as always faultlessly sleek, gone was the sweet Miss Modesty look she’d created for her grandfather’s benefit. Now the smooth and slinky siren was back in a misty-lavender skimpy camisole top edged with lace, and matching narrow skirt that did wonderful things to her figure as she moved. She had also let her hair down so it swung like spun toffee around her shoulders, and a pair of silver-framed sunglasses pushed up on her head held it away from her face.
A face that wasn’t happy, Ethan noticed as she came closer. A face that was not just pale any more but sad and very grim.
‘You’re late,’ he said as she reached him. ‘I was beginning to think you weren’t going to bother.’
‘Well, I’m here, as you see.’ And there was nothing loverlike, pretend or otherwise, in the way she flipped the sunglasses down over her eyes before she handed over her case then climbed into the car without offering another word.
Grimacing to himself, Ethan stashed the case then joined her. As they drove off up the lane he noticed that she didn’t spare a glance for the sugar-pink gate
