by Jennie Lucas
“Eve.”
She looked back at Talos. He was so darkly handsome and powerful, and at the moment his sensual mouth was pressed into a hard line. He was clearly determined to have his way.
But something inside her made her resist him.
“Thank you for asking me to marry you,” she said awkwardly. “It’s very warm and loving. But my baby won’t be born for months—”
“Our baby,” he corrected her.
“And I can’t be your wife when I can’t even remember you.”
“We’ll see,” he said softly. Silence fell on their drive as she watched the passing scenery. Finally, the car turned off the road to a smaller lane. She saw a redbrick Georgian mansion at the base of tree-covered hills, reflected in a wide gray lake.
“Is that my stepfather’s house?” she breathed in shock.
“Yes.”
The car drove up the long lane through the park and woodlands then stopped in front of the entrance. As Talos opened the door and helped her from the car, Eve looked up with an intake of breath. She craned her head back to get a good look at the mansion, with its striking Victorian Gothic parapets stabbing upward into the steel-gray sky.
Holding her hand over her eyes to block out the noon sunlight that had finally penetrated the clouds, she looked back at him. “I lived here as a teenager?”
“And now it is yours, along with a vast fortune.”
She looked at him sharply. “How do you know?”
“You knew it yourself yesterday, when you attended the reading of the will.”
“But how do you know?” she persisted.
He shrugged. “I’ll make sure you get a copy of the will. Come.” Taking her hand, he escorted her past the grand sweep of the front door. Inside the foyer, five servants waited to greet her, headed by the housekeeper.
“Oh, Miss Craig,” the plump woman sniffed into her apron. “Your stepfather loved you so much. He would be so glad to see you’ve finally come home!”
Home? But it wasn’t her home. Apparently, she’d barely set foot in this place for years!
But looking at the elderly housekeeper’s sad face, Eve felt a sympathetic pang. She put an arm around her.
“He was a good man, wasn’t he?” she said softly.
“Yes, that he was, miss. The best. And he loved you as his own natural-born child. Even though you weren’t, and American to boot,” she added, wiping her eyes. “He’d be so happy you’ve finally come back after so long.”
Eve paused delicately. “Has it been so…?”
“Six, no, seven years. Mr. Craig always invited you back for Christmas, but…”
Her voice trailed off as she wiped tears with her apron.
“But I never came, did I?” Eve said.
The older woman shook her head wistfully.
Eve swallowed. Apparently she’d taken her stepfather’s money and let him pay her bills as she shopped and partied her way around the world, but hadn’t even had the grace to return for an occasional visit!
And now he was dead.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered over the lump in her throat.
“Let me take you to your room. You’ll find it’s just as you left it last.”
Shortly afterwards, the quietly sobbing housekeeper left them in Eve’s old bedroom. In the darkness, with Talos behind her in the only light of the double doorway, Eve yanked back the black curtains, filling the room with gray light.
Turning back to get a good look at her room, she choked back a gasp of dismay. Everything was red and black, down to the king-sized black lacquer bed. Dramatic. Modern. Sexy.
Garish.
Talos leaned against the door frame as Eve looked through the room, desperate for something, anything that would tell her what she needed to know. She opened closet doors, running her hands idly over the new clothes that hung there. The clothes were like the room, sexy and dramatic. Powerful clothes for a woman who desired attention and knew how to wield it.
Eve shivered.
She pulled open the shelves, touching each item lightly with her hands. Black stiletto heels. A Gucci handbag. A Louis Vuitton suitcase. Finding her passport, she thumbed through it, searching for answers that weren’t there. Zanzibar? Mumbai? Cape Town?
“You weren’t kidding,” she said slowly. “I do travel constantly. Especially for the last three months.”
When he didn’t reply, she turned back to face him. His face seemed carefully expressionless.
“Yes,” was all he said. “I know.”
She tossed the passport into her suitcase with the sexy clothes and shoes that all seemed foreign, as if they belonged to someone else. Leaning against the modern black four-poster bed, she looked around her with a heavy sigh. “There’s nothing here.”
“I told you.”
Desolately, she went to the bookshelf. It held only faded fashion magazines, years out of date, and a few slender volumes on etiquette and charm. She picked up the book on top, a splashy pop-culture book and read the title out loud in dismay. “How to Get Your Man?”
“That’s never been your problem.” There was a distinct edge to his voice.
Her heart was breaking, and he was making jokes? She made a huffing sound and chucked the book in his general direction. He caught it midair.
“Look, Eve,” he said evenly. “It all doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter—these things tell me who I am!” She jabbed her finger toward the closet. “I’ve just found out I was the kind of girl who only cared about her looks, who ignored a stepfather who loved me, and who never bothered to come home at Christmas.” Tears rushed into her eyes. “And I let him die alone,” she whispered. “How could I have been so cruel?”
Desolately, she picked up a dusty photo in a gilded frame. She saw the image of a man giving a cheeky wink, his arm around a beautiful dark-haired woman who was laughing with joy. Between them was a plump little girl with a big beaming smile and two missing front teeth.
She stared at the adults in the photo for a very long time, but no memories came back to her. They had to be her parents, but she couldn’t remember them. Was she really that heartless? Did she truly have no soul?
“What did you find?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t help.” She threw the photograph across the room, where it bounced softly against her bed. She covered her face with her hands. “I can’t remember them. I can’t!”
Crossing the bedroom in three long strides, he took her by the shoulders. “I barely knew my parents, but it hasn’t hurt me.”
“It’s not just the past,” she whispered. “Why would you want to be with a person like me? Without substance, without heart?”
He didn’t answer.
“And now it’s all too late,” she said over the lump in her throat. “I’ve lost my only family. I have no home.”
“Your home is with me,” he said in a low voice.
She looked up at him. The sunlight from the tall windows gently caressed his face, illuminating floating dust motes like tiny stars all around them in the red-and-black bedroom.
“Let me show you.” He slowly stroked up her bare arms, his fingers light against her skin. “Marry me.”
Electricity spread up her arms and down her body. She fought the urge to step closer to him, to press her body against his chest. Shaking her head, she breathed, “I can’t.”
“Why?” he growled.
“I don’t want you to marry me out of pity!”
His hands suddenly moved around her, caressing her back through her dress, causing the black silk to slide deliciously over her body with his featherlight touch. “Pity is the last thing I feel for you.”
She closed her eyes, leaning forward in spite of herself. Wanting more of his touch. Wanting to feel his warmth. His heat.
He pulled her more deeply into his arms. She felt the scent of him, the warmth of his body beneath his clothes.
“Come away with me,” he whispered into her hair. “Come to Athens
and be my bride.”
She felt the hardness of his body against hers, the strength of his arms around her. He was so much taller and more powerful than she was. His hands ran softly along the edges of her hips, up the length of her back as her breasts crushed against his chest.
She swallowed, trembling. She licked her lips, moving her cheek against his shirt as she looked up at him. “I can’t just run away,” she sighed. No matter how she wished she could. “I need my memory back, Talos. I can’t just float through the world not knowing who I am. I can’t marry a virtual stranger, even if you’re the father of my child—”
“So I’ll take you to the place where we first met. To where we began.” She felt his dark gaze fall upon her mouth as he said softly, “I’ll show you the place where I first kissed you.”
Her bones turned to liquid. She looked up at him, her heart pounding as she licked her lips involuntarily. “Where is that?”
His eyes were hot and dark. “In Venice.”
“Venice,” she repeated, and the word was a wistful sigh. She looked up at him with yearning, knowing she should refuse—knowing she should stay in London and see the specialist Dr. Bartlett had recommended. But her refusal caught in her throat. Caught by her romantic dreams. Caught by him.
Talos reached down to stroke her tender bottom lip with his thumb, caressing her face with his powerful hands.
“Come to Venice,” he said darkly. “I will show you everything.” He cupped her face with both hands, holding her hard against his body as he looked down at her, commanding her with his gaze. “And then,” he whispered, “you will marry me.”
CHAPTER THREE
SUNLIGHT reflected off the water as they took the motoscafo, a private water taxi, from the Marco Polo Airport. The September weather was bright and warm as they crossed the lagoon, passing by the Piazza San Marco and the Bridge of Sighs on the way to their hotel.
Venice. Talos had never expected to return here again.
But sometimes, he thought grimly, a man had to change the playbook in the middle of the game. He would do whatever it took, be as romantic a fool as any man could be, in order to lure Eve into marriage before her memory returned.
He looked down at her in his arms as they crossed the water of the canal. Her eyes shone with wonder, her full pink lips were slightly parted as she gazed around the city with awe.
The same way every man who saw Eve looked at her.
Even right now in this water taxi. The young Italian driver kept glancing back in his mirror. Talos’s bodyguard, Kefalas, was sitting in the seat behind them, and even he had looked at Eve a bit longer than strictly necessary.
Eve was freshly showered and had changed her clothes on his private flight from London. Her dark hair now fell in thick, glossy waves past her bare shoulders, brushing the nipples Talos could easily picture beneath that clinging red jersey dress. The dress showed off the top swell of her overflowing breasts beneath the spaghetti straps, and barely reached halfway down her creamy thighs. She’d put on lipstick, a red color that matched her dress. Her legs were slender and perfect, ending in sharp black stiletto heels.
He couldn’t blame either of them for staring. Even though he wanted to kill them for it.
Strange, Talos thought, he’d never been jealous before of other men staring at Eve. He’d always accepted it as his due. He’d taken it for granted that other men would always want what he, Talos, possessed.
But for the first time it caused his stomach to curl. Why? Because Eve was carrying his child? Because he intended to make her his wife?
His wife in name only, he reminded himself. To protect his unborn child. Not because he cared for Eve. He felt nothing for her but scorn. And, he was forced to admit, lust.
Giving the driver a hard stare until the young man blushed and returned his focus to the wheel, Talos pulled Eve closer against him on the seat. She leaned back against his chest, reaching her arms over his neck and smiling up at him.
“It’s beautiful here.” Her blue eyes were as warm as bluebells in a spring meadow. “Thank you for bringing me to Venice. Even though I’m sure it was very inconvenient…”
He smiled down at her. Taking her hand, he brought it to his lips.
“Nothing is inconvenient to me if it gives you pleasure,” he said, and softly pressed his mouth against her skin.
He felt her shiver beneath his touch in the warm afternoon sun. The air was salty and fresh. In the distance, he could hear the calls of seagulls, hear the distant chiming of medieval church bells.
“You’re so good to me,” she whispered, visibly affected by the way he’d kissed her hand. The realization that she was almost like an innocent, easily swayed by sensual desire, lit a dark fire in his heart.
The femme fatale she’d once been had disappeared along with her memories, it seemed. Dressed in the red dress and lipstick she still looked just like the same arrogant, cruel, fascinating creature she’d been three months ago, but she’d changed completely. With her skittish reactions, her youthful naïveté, she was almost like a virgin.
Except she wasn’t—she was pregnant with his baby. And while she’d certainly been a virgin before they’d met, she’d never been innocent!
Remembering how they’d conceived that baby, all of his limbs suddenly seemed to burn where he had contact with her. Looking down into her beautiful face, he saw the vulnerability in her blue eyes, saw her pupils dilate. He was reminded of those hot breathless weeks in Athens when her naked body had been beneath his own. When he’d thought that beneath her achingly beautiful, shallow surface something existed that might be truly rare—truly worth possessing.
And he’d kept right on thinking that up until the day he’d seen her having breakfast with his rival, coldly giving him evidence to destroy Talos’s company.
Remember that moment, he told himself harshly. Remember how she betrayed you—and why.
But as Eve looked up at him dreamily beneath the elegant, decrepit palazzos of Venice, with the sunlight shining off the canals, all he could suddenly think was that he wanted to kiss her. Now. Hard. To brand her permanently as his, to punish those cherry-red lips until she gasped and cried out in his arms.
His hands tightened around her shoulders, his fingers gripping into her slight frame as he remembered their days and nights in June. He’d been addicted to bedding her. He’d been lost in a woman, in a way he’d never experienced before or since.
He considered himself ruthless. He considered himself strong. But she’d bested him and he’d never seen it coming.
Now, he hated her with all his heart.
But he still wanted her. Wanted her with a consuming desire that could destroy him, if he ever let down his guard.
He would never give in to her temptation. Even if his weeks of bedding her had been the most erotically charged experience of his life, he would never take her again. If he ever even kissed her, he might be lighting a flame that he could not control.
He watched her nervously lick her lips—those full, cherry-red lips that had once made him shudder and scream with desire so intense he’d literally thought it might kill him.
He could tell she was bewildered by the electric connection between them. She didn’t understand it. Unlike the Eve he’d known, who’d kept her feelings so carefully hidden, this girl didn’t guard her expression. Her thoughts were clearly bare on her angelically beautiful face.
Good, he told himself harshly. The perfect weapon to use against her. He would convince her to marry him. He would romance her. Woo her. Court her. Lure her. He would take her as his wife—today. By any means necessary.
Except one.
He would not take her to his bed. He would not.
Eve turned her face up toward the bright Italian sun from the windows of the boat, leaning back against Talos’s strong, powerful body as the motoscafo bounced across the waves. The leather seat hummed beneath her thighs from the vibrations of the engine.
She took a deep breath of the
sharp, salty air. Her skin felt warm. Her body felt hot all over as she leaned against Talos’s hard chest. Even through his black shirt she could feel the heat off his skin.
Then he smiled down at her. His smile did all kinds of strange things to her, making her heart pound. Her days of darkness and emptiness in rainy London now seemed like a lonely dream. She was in Italy with Talos. And their baby. She placed her hand on her still-flat belly.
The water taxi slowed, pulled near the dock of a fifteenth-century palazzo. She stared at the high pointed windows that embellished the crumbling red stucco facade with awe at its exotic Gothic beauty. “Is that where we’re going?”
His black eyes gleamed as he looked down at her. “Our hotel.”
Oh. Their hotel.
She swallowed as she climbed from the taxi to the dock, picturing what it would be like to share a room with this man. To share space. To share a bed.
Just thinking of it, she stumbled on the dock.
“Careful,” Talos said gruffly, grabbing her arm to steady her. “You don’t have your sea legs yet.”
All the colors of Venice, the twisting, sparkling water, the bright blue sky and tall, red campanile tower of the nearby piazza, seemed to fade into the background with a swirl of color behind him.
“You’re right,” she said over the lump in her throat. “I don’t.”
They stood on the dock as his bodyguard-assistant, Kefalas, paid the young Italian taxi driver and organized the luggage. But all Eve could see was Talos.
He was so handsome and tall and strong, she thought. She felt his arms tighten around her, and she suddenly wondered if he was going to kiss her. The thought scared her. She jerked away from him nervously. “We will, um, get separate rooms, won’t we?”
She heard a low, sensual laugh escape him as he shook his head.
She licked her lips. “But—”
“I don’t intend to let you out of my sight.” He came forward toward her on the dock, and it took every ounce of her courage not to back away. He loosely brushed a tendril back from the blowing salty breeze. Kissing her temple, he whispered, “Or out of my arms.”