Ethan took his time in rising to his full height and trying to decide what his next move should be. It was as clear as day that some sort of assault had taken place here, that Eve was shocked and distressed and maybe—
‘I hate you, do you know that?’ she choked out suddenly. ‘I really—really hate you for coming in here like this!’
‘I heard a scream, came out to investigate and saw someone leaving here,’ he felt compelled to explain. ‘There was something in the way he moved that made me—Eve—’ he changed tack anxiously ‘—you’re shaking so badly you look like you’re going to collapse. Let me—’
‘Don’t touch me,’ she breathed, then quite suddenly her legs gave away on her and she sank, folding like a piece of limp rubber down onto the edge of the rumpled bed.
Standing there, Ethan was uncertain as to what to do next. She didn’t want him near her, she wanted him to go, but there was no way he could do that without making sure she was fit to be left on her own. His eyes fell on the hot-pink dress, then the scrappy pink bra lying beside it. His skin began to crawl again in response to the horror that was painting itself into his head. The evidence suggested rape, or at the very least a bungled attempt.
A thrust of bloody anger had him bending down to scoop up a white cotton sheet from the tangle of bedding on the floor, then carefully draping the sheet around her trembling frame. It wasn’t that she was naked, because he’d noticed the pair of pink panties when she’d risen to her feet. But, as for the rest…His teeth clenched together as he lowered himself into a squatting position in front of her again.
She was clutching the sheet now, face still hidden, hunched shoulders trembling like mad. ‘What happened here, Eve?’ he questioned grimly.
‘What do you think?’ she shot back on a bitter choke. ‘I suppose you think I deserved it!’
‘No,’ he denied that.
‘Liar.’ She sobbed and lifted the sheet up to use it to cover her face.
‘Eve—nobody of sane mind would believe a woman deserves what appears to have happened here,’ he insisted soberly.
‘I’m drunk,’ she admitted.
He could smell the alcohol.
‘It was all my fault.’
‘No,’ he said again, his hands hanging limp between his spread thighs, though they desperately wanted to reach out and touch her.
‘I can’t feel my legs. I don’t even know how I got here. I think he spiked my last drink.’
‘Possibly,’ Ethan quietly agreed, willing to feed her answering remarks if it helped him to understand just what had happened here.
She moved at last, rubbing the sheet over her face then slowly lowering it so he could get his first look at it. Her lips were swollen and he could see chafe marks from a man’s rough beard. His jaw became a solid piece of rock as he noticed other things and tried to keep that knowledge off his face.
Maybe she saw something—he wasn’t sure, but she released the sheet and rubbed trembling fingers over the side of her neck, then lifted the fingers higher to push back her hair and clutched at her head as she began to rock to and fro again.
Ethan’s fingers twitched; she saw it happen. ‘I’m all right,’ she said jerkily. ‘I just need to—’
Get a hold on what has happened to me, he finished for her mentally. ‘How bad was it?’ He had to ask the question even though he knew she did not want to answer it. But this could well be the kind of scene that required a doctor and the police to investigate.
But Eve shook her head, refusing to answer. Then, from seemingly out of nowhere, a huge sob shook her from shoulders to feet and she was suddenly gulping out the tears with a total loss of composure.
A silent sigh ripped at the lining of his chest. ‘Look, Eve, will you let me hold you? You need to be held but I don’t want to—’
‘You hate me.’ She sobbed.
‘No, I don’t.’ This time the sigh was full-bodied and heavy. ‘I’ll go and call the police.’ He went to get up.
‘No!’ she cried, and without any warning she slid to the ground between his spread knees and landed heavily against his chest, almost knocking him over in the process.
As he flexed muscles to maintain his balance, she began sobbing brokenly into his shoulder. It was a dreadful sound—the sound nightmares were made of. Her arms went around his neck and began clinging tightly. The sheet began to slip, and with his jaw locked like a vice against the gamut of primitive emotion building inside him, Ethan caught the sheet, replaced it over her shoulders, then took a chance and wrapped his arms round her to just hold her while she cried herself out.
Her tears began to wet his shoulder and neck, mingling with her breath as she sobbed and quivered. She smelt of alcohol and something much more sweetly subtle, and he hoped she hadn’t noticed that her naked breasts were pressing against his equally naked chest. She felt warm and soft and so infinitely fragile it was like holding a priceless piece of art. As his eyes took in the debacle of their surroundings, he couldn’t think of a less likely setting or situation to discover that he was holding the perfect woman in his arms.
The unexpected thought stopped his train of thought. Maybe he tensed; he was certainly shocked enough to have turned into a pillar of rock. Whatever, the sobbing grew less wretched, the grip on his neck began to ease. Old tensions erupted, defensive barriers began to climb back into place. He could actually feel Eve taking stock of the situation. The sobs quietened, silence came and within it her distress changed to a self-conscious embarrassment.
She had noticed the intimacy of their embrace.
Untangling her fingers from round his neck, Eve lifted her head out of his shoulder, then drew away from him just enough to gather the sheeting around her front. She couldn’t believe she had done that—couldn’t believe she had just sobbed her heart out on Ethan Hayes of all people, nor that she had done it with her bare breasts flattened against his naked chest.
So now what did she do? she asked herself helplessly, and put a hand up to cover the aching throb taking place behind her heavy eyes. He didn’t speak, though she wished he would because she just didn’t know what to say to him.
‘I’m sorry,’ were the weak words that eventually left her.
‘Please don’t be,’ he returned, sounding so stiff and formal that she wanted to shrivel up and die.
But at least he moved at last by sitting back on his ankles to place some much needed distance between them, and Eve dared herself a glance at that hair-covered chest she could still feel warm and prickly against her breasts. She liked the sensation, just as she liked the way she could taste the moist warmth of his skin on her lips.
Oh—what is happening to me? In trembling confusion brought the sheet up to cover her face again. Beyond her hiding place the silence in the room throbbed. What was he thinking? What did he really want to do? Get up and leave? Wishing he hadn’t come in here at all? Why not? She knew what Ethan Hayes thought of her. She knew he was seeing only what he would have expected to see.
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,’ she gasped out in a shaken whimper, and then it was she who tried to make a mortified bolt for it. But the moment she tried her legs gave away once more.
On a muttered curse Ethan caught her up, then dumped her unceremoniously back onto the bed. The whole thing was taking on a surreal quality. Standing there he stared down at her as if she was some kind of alien while she rocked and groaned with a hand flattened across her horrified mouth. It was then as he watched her that it really began to dawn on him that the swine must have spiked her drink with something pretty potent and it was still very much at work in her blood. ‘I’m sorry,’ she was saying over and over. ‘I don’t know what came over me. I don’t—’
‘You need a doctor,’ Ethan decided grimly.
‘No!’
‘We need to call in the police and get them to track that bastard down so that we can find out what it is he’s slipped you.’
‘No,’ she groaned out a second time.
But Ethan wasn’t listening. He was too busy looking around for the telephone. As Eve saw him take a stride towards one sitting on a low table across the room, she erupted with a panic that flung her anxiously to her feet.
‘No, Ethan—please—!’ she begged him. ‘No police. No doctor—I’m all right!’
Virtually staggering in her quest to put herself between him and the phone, she stood there trembling and looking pleadingly up at him while he looked down at her with an expression that grimly mocked her assurance.
‘I will be all right in a minute or two!’ she temporised, saw him take another determined step and felt the tears begin to burn in her eyes as fresh anxiety swelled like a monster inside. ‘Please—’ she begged again. ‘You don’t understand. The scandal, my grandfather—he will blame himself and I couldn’t bear to let him do that!’ I can’t bear to know that he will never look on me in the same way again, Eve added in silent anguish. ‘Look…’ at least Ethan was no longer moving, and the panic had placed the strength back in her legs ‘…I was drunk. It was my own f-fault—’
‘There is no excuse out there to justify date rape, Eve,’ Ethan toughly contested.
‘B-but it didn’t get that far. I m-managed to stop him before he could—’ The words dried up. She just couldn’t bring herself to say them and had to swallow on a lump of nausea instead. ‘I’ll get over this—I will!’ she insisted. ‘But only if we can keep it a secret between you and me; please, Ethan—please—!’ she repeated painfully.
She was pleading with him as if she was pleading for her life here, but Ethan could see the lingering horror in her eyes, see the shock and hurt and bewildered sense of betrayal, see the swollen mouth and the chafed skin, and the effects of some nasty substance that had turned her beautiful eyes black and had left her barely able to control her actions.
Did she really expect him to simply ignore all of that? In an act of frustrating indecision he sent his eyes lashing around the room. It looked like exactly what it was: the scene of some vile crime. The man was dangerous; he needed to be stopped and made to pay for his actions.
Flicking his gaze back to Eve, Ethan opened his mouth to tell her just that—then stopped, the breath stilling in his lungs when he saw the tears in her eyes, the trembling mouth, the anxiety in her pale face that was now overshadowing the incident itself. His mouth snapped shut. A sigh rattled from him. Surrender to her pleas arrived when he acknowledged that she was in no fit state to take any more tonight.
‘Okay,’ he agreed with grim reluctance. ‘We will leave the rest until tomorrow. But for now you can’t stay here on your own…’
He deliberately didn’t add, ‘…in case he comes back’. But he saw by her shudderi
ng response that Eve had added the words for herself. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
He didn’t want thanks. He wanted a solution as to what he was going to do next. Glancing at Eve in search of inspiration, he found himself looking at a wilting flower again, only she was a slender white lily this time, covered as she was in the cotton sheet.
A sad and helpless slender white lily, he elaborated, and the image locked up a blistering kind of anger inside his chest. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked gruffly. ‘Do you think you can manage to get yourself dressed?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘Good.’ He nodded. At least she was managing to stand unsupported at last. ‘Do that, then I’ll walk you up to the main house,’ he decided, aware that there was a small army of live-in staff up there to watch over her.
‘No, not the house.’ Once again she vetoed his suggestion. ‘The staff will report to my grandfather and…’ Her voice trailed away, and those big eyes were suddenly pleading with him again. ‘Could I come and stay with you?’ she asked. ‘Just for the rest of tonight. I promise I won’t be any more trouble, only…’
Again that voice trailed away to nothing, and that dark, sad, vulnerable look cut into him with a deeply painful thrust. Hell, how was it he seemed to attract these kind of situations? he wondered, racking his brain for an alternative solution only to find there wasn’t one. Beginning to feel a bit as if he’d been run over by a bus, he lifted up a hand in a hopeless gesture. ‘Sure,’ he said.
Why not? he asked himself fatalistically. He had conceded to just about everything else.
He was just about to leave her to it when he saw her mouth open to offer yet another pathetic thanks. ‘Don’t say it,’ he advised grimly.
‘No,’ she mumbled understandingly. ‘Sorry,’ she offered instead.
His shoulder muscles rippled as they flexed in irritation. ‘Don’t say that either,’ he clipped out tightly. ‘I don’t want your thanks or your apologies.’ What he really wanted, he thought as he turned for the bedroom door, was to close his hands around Aidan Galloway’s throat.
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