‘He was okay about you leaving with me?’ he dared to probe a little.
‘Yes,’ she answered, but he saw the tension line around her mouth and knew she was lying…Again, he tagged on, and wondered why it was that even the lies weren’t bothering him any more.
‘You surprise me,’ he remarked mildly. ‘Having flown in from Greece this morning specifically to spend your birthday with you, I expected him to be very annoyed that you were now walking out on him.’
‘He didn’t fly in from Greece, he flew from Nassau,’ she corrected, ‘where he always intended to return tomorrow, because his mistress is waiting there for him.’
Mistress. Ethan’s opinion of the seventy-year-old Theron Herakleides altered slightly with that piece of information. ‘I didn’t know he had a mistress.’
‘He has several,’ his granddaughter supplied.
Ethan almost allowed himself a very masculine grin. ‘Then, why not bring her here with him and save himself several island-hopping journeys?’
‘A Greek male does not introduce his mistress to his family.’
‘Ah.’ Ethan began to see the light. ‘And neither should a Greek woman introduce her lover to her family?’
‘You are not my lover.’
‘He thinks I am.’
‘He also thinks you are only marrying me for my money,’ she responded tartly. ‘Says a lot about my personal pulling power, don’t you think?’
It said a lot about his character too, Ethan noted grimly, and stopped the car. Turning towards her he viewed her profile through a new set of eyes, and released a heavy sigh. ‘You fed him a very carefully constructed catalogue of lies to save his feelings and he disappointed you by not appreciating the gesture,’ he deduced.
She didn’t answer, but those hands were locked into fists again.
It made him wonder if she was having second thoughts about this and was being just too stubborn to admit as much. ‘If you would rather stay,’ he offered. ‘I can understand if you—’
‘No, you don’t understand,’ she suddenly flashed at him. ‘And, like it or not, I am coming with you!’
‘Then why are you so angry?’
‘I am not angry,’ she denied.
Reaching over, Ethan whipped the sunglasses from her eyes.
‘Okay,’ she conceded, ‘So, I’m angry. Grandpa is angry,’ she tagged on with telling bite. ‘He was lying before when he appeared to be sanctioning our relationship. He now claims that there is no way he is going to let you marry me.’
‘Good for him,’ Ethan commended. ‘It means he has your best interests at heart. I admire him for that.’
Her chin came up. ‘Do you also admire him for setting up this so-called emergency in Spain, just to get you off the island and away from me?’
No, Ethan did not admire Theron for stooping that low. ‘Are you sure about that?’
‘He told me himself,’ Eve confirmed.
‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave…’ Ethan murmured, then sat back in his seat with a sigh. ‘Go back and tell him the truth, Eve,’ he advised heavily. ‘This has gone too far.’
‘I will have my tongue removed before I will tell him the truth now!’ she exclaimed. ‘This is my life, Ethan! I have the right to make my own choices without interference from anyone!’
‘So do I,’ he announced with a sudden resolve that had him starting the car engine again.
‘W-what are you doing?’
‘Going back,’ he said.
‘Why?’ she challenged. ‘Because you’ve suddenly realised that he might decide to take the Greek project away from you if you let me step on that plane with you?’
Ethan stilled again. ‘He threatened to do that?’
Her mutinous expression gave him his answer. Without another word he turned the car round and drove back down the lane and in through the sugar-pink gate posts, then along the driveway to pull up outside the palatial frontage of the Herakleides holiday home.
He was angry now, burning with it. Getting out of the car he walked round to open the passenger door. ‘Out,’ he said, reaching down to take hold of Eve’s hand so he could aid her arrival at his side.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.
‘Call his bluff,’ he declared. This was no longer a case of helping Eve out of a situation. It had become a case of his honour and integrity being placed into question, and he didn’t like that.
In fact he didn’t like it one little bit.
Eve wasn’t sure that she was looking forward to what was coming. It was one thing her being angry with her grandfather, but it was quite a different thing entirely to discover that she’d managed to make Ethan angry with him too. She loved that cantankerous old man. She understood where he was coming from; Ethan did not.
‘Don’t upset him,’ she burst out suddenly.
Pausing in the process of closing the car door, ‘Are you going to tell him the truth?’
He looked down at her, and she looked up at him, her heart flipped over. He was so much her kind of man that Grandpa couldn’t be more wrong about anything! ‘No,’ she answered mutinously.
His dark head nodded. Her hand was grasped. He began trailing her behind him up white marble steps set between tall pink pillars. The front door was standing open; Ethan took them inside. The house was quiet, so their footsteps echoed on the cool white tiling as they trod the way across the huge hallway to Theron’s inner sanctum. The man himself was lounging behind his desk talking on the telephone. But the moment he saw them appear through the door, the phone call was severed and he was rising to his feet.
‘So he brought you back. I expected as much.’ The eyes of a cynic lanced Ethan with a dismissive look before they returned to his granddaughter. ‘Which part did it, hmm? The part about me threatening to leave you nothing if he married you, or the part about the Greek project hanging in the balance?’
‘Neither.’ Striding forward with Eve still in tow, Ethan lifted up their linked hands and brought them down, still linked, upon Theron’s desk. It was a
