But he would say that, wouldn’t he, to protect his true love? Eve had never felt so used in her entire life. ‘I’m leaving,’ she decided.
He didn’t say anything, but just stood there looking at her through cold hard gun-metal-grey eyes.
Her heart was bursting, because she didn’t really want to go. But she turned anyway and began walking towards the archway the led to the hall.
‘Back to Aidan Galloway?’ he fed silkily after her. ‘Back to the young bloods you can handle better than you can handle me?’
She stopped. ‘At least Aidan cares about my feelings.’
‘By spiking your drink so he can enjoy you without needing to put much effort into it?’
She swung round. ‘I told you it wasn’t Aidan that did that to me!’
‘Ah, yes, the other nameless young blood,’ he drawled, and Eve noticed that the cynicism was back. ‘Funny how you remembered him only after I threatened to tear Galloway limb from limb.’
He still didn’t believe her about Aidan! she realised. ‘It was Raoul Delacroix who spiked my drink!’ she insisted furiously.
Raoul Delacroix. Any other name, Ethan was thinking, and he would have laughed in her lying face! But he was recalling the look on Raoul’s face as he’d turned away from her in the bar at the beach. He was recalling the stinging sensation he’d experienced at the back of his neck, that reminded him he didn’t like what he’d seen on the young Frenchman’s face.
‘And I don’t know what right you think you have to throw my love life back at me when nothing could be more sordid than the set-up you have going here!’
‘Leave Leona out of this,’ he bit at her.
‘Leave Aidan out of it!’
Stalemate. They both recognised it for what it was. She was standing there shimmering with offence and fury and he was standing there simmering in the midst of a jealous rage! He couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t bring himself to accept that in forty-eight short hours she could have actually brought him down to this.
‘Go if you are going,’ he said as the damning remark to come straight out of that last angry thought.
She turned—but not before he had seen that heart-shaped pink mouth that had a propensity to pout, quiver, and her eyes sparkle with the promise of tears. Hell, he cursed, when he knew what was going to happen: he was going to give in. He could feel it bubbling up inside him, hot and out of control.
‘But—I’m coming with you.’ The decision itself set his feet in motion. As he strode towards her he saw his ring sparkling on her finger when she lifted her hand up to brush a tear from her cheek.
My tears, my ring—my woman, he claimed possessively. He took all three, grabbing his woman around the waist, crushing the ring in the clasp of one of his hands, and spinning her about so that he could lick the tears from her cheek. ‘Anywhere,’ he murmured, while he did it. ‘Hotel, an apartment in San Estéban. We can even take one of the other villas if that’s what you prefer.’
Preference didn’t really come into it, Eve thought helplessly. She preferred not to love him this badly. But she did. Bottom line. ‘I would prefer it if Leona Al-Qadim didn’t exist,’ she told him honestly.
‘Forget Leona,’ he muttered impatiently.
‘If you forget Aidan,’ she returned, determined to maintain some level of balance around here.
She looked into his eyes; he looked into hers; both sets were angry because they were giving in. Their bodies liked it though, Eve noticed. They were greeting each other like hungry lovers.
‘So, where are we going to go to continue this?’ His voice rasped with impatience, his body pulsed with desire.
The fact that hers was doing the same thing made the decision for her. So she reached up, touched her mouth to his, and remained that close while she murmured, ‘Here seems very convenient, don’t you think…?’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE little minx. An absolute witch, sent to torment the life out of him, Ethan was thinking irritably. There was nothing convenient about having Eve Herakleides running riot through his life.
The telephone rang. He picked it up. ‘What?’ he barked.
It was his secretary in London. Sitting there behind his desk, Ethan dealt with a list of queries while his angry gaze remained fixed on the little scene taking place outside his site-office window, where Eve stood laughing, surrounded by a whole rugby scrum of big, tough, very much hands-on builders wearing yellow helmets, dust-covered steel-capped boots, tight tee shirts and jeans.
And what was Eve wearing?
Hot-pink. It was her favourite colour, he had come to realise during the last ten days. Today it was hot-pink trousers that skimmed her hips and thighs and stopped just above her slender calf muscles, and a baby-pink top that left a lot of golden midriff on show.
Too much midriff. ‘I don’t know about that, Sonia,’ he murmured. ‘I can’t be sure I’ll be back in London to attend that meeting. You’d better ask Victor if he can do it.’
Eve’s hair was up in a natty little twist that did amazing things to the length of her neck, and in profile she looked like the sweetest thing ever to be put onto this earth. Every time she moved he saw his ring flash in the sunlight. Every time she laughed he saw his men almost fall to their knees.
‘I know they wanted me,’ he rasped out testily. ‘But they can’t have me.’
I’m already engaged, he thought, to a woman with no sense of what’s right or proper to wear on a building site! In the last ten days he’d also come to realise the full meaning of the term engaged.
‘Heard anything from Theron Herakleides?’ he thought
