Ethan himself didn’t know if he was real. He certainly felt different—alive, pumped up, energised, as if someone had slipped him the elixir of life.
That kiss with Eve perhaps?
Oh, shut up, he told himself frowningly. This is all just a sham, remember?
Just a great sham. Think of Aidan Galloway, he reminded himself. Whatever Eve liked to pretend, she had something going on with the Irishman. Love, sex—call it whatever—it was there, a throbbing pulse that said it was of a lot more than mere friendship.
‘Watch him,’ Theron advised, forcibly dragging Eve’s attention away from the long, straight-shouldered stride of Ethan’s retreat. ‘He has your measure, my girl, and I don’t think you are going to like that.’
Like it? She loved it. In fact it was tumbling around inside like a barrow load of sins desperately trying to get out. She wanted to run after him, take his hand again, laugh up into his arrogant face. She wanted to wind her arms around his neck and kiss him to heaven and back.
‘You mean, you don’t like it.’ She turned a wry, knowing smile on this other man. She knew he had her measure, and wondered if he had guessed that all of this was just a sham?
A sham. Yes, a sham, she reminded herself, and felt the smile fade away like day turning to night. ‘Grandpa—don’t spoil this for me,’ she heard herself say tremulously.
‘He’s dangerous,’ Theron stated.
‘I know.’ Her eyelashes flickered. ‘I like it.’ It was a terrible confession to make.
‘He is in love with another woman.’ The reminder was supposed to be deadly to fragile emotions.
‘I know that too.’ Eve nodded. ‘But he’s what I want. I can make him love me instead of her, given a bit of time and space.’
‘So this isn’t just a ploy to bring poor Aidan Galloway to his senses about you?’
Aidan? Eve blinked. Her grandfather as well—? ‘Aidan is still in love with Corin!’ she protested, as if he had just suggested something terrible.
Theron took his time absorbing that declaration. It worried him, because if it wasn’t Aidan, then this was exactly what it seemed to be. Yet his instincts were picking up all kinds of messages that conflicted with what he was being shown here. He couldn’t work it out. He needed to work it out.
Getting up from his chair, he reached into a drawer then came round the desk to stand in front of Eve. In his hand he held a gaily wrapped package. ‘Happy birthday, my angel,’ he murmured softly as he fed the package into her hands then placed tender kisses on both of her cheeks.
He received his reward with the kind of unfettered shower of affection he’d come to expect from Eve. ‘I love you, Grandpa.’
‘I know you do, child.’ And he did know it. It was the substance his whole life had been built upon since she’d been a shocked and grief-stricken child of ten years’ old. ‘Now, go catch your plane,’ he told her. He had been going to say go catch your man, but something held him back.
Eve left with a promise to call him as soon as she arrived in Spain. As the door closed behind her, Theron was already reaching for the telephone.
‘Ah—yassis, Giorgio,’ he greeted. ‘I have a job for you to do for me, my friend. Write this name down: Ethan Alexander Hayes. Ne.’ He nodded. ‘Anything you can find. Dig hard and dig deep and do it quickly.’
CHAPTER NINE
EVE felt so stupidly shy when she settled into the passenger seat next to Ethan. ‘Thank you for that,’ she said a trifle self-consciously. ‘I would have hated to leave him angry with me.’
Ethan made no response. Eve shot him a wary glance. His profile looked relaxed enough, but there was something about the shape of his mouth that suggested he was angry about something.
With her, with her grandfather, or with himself for allowing himself to become so embroiled in her problems?
The car engine came to life, the air-conditioning kicked in and began circulating cool air filled with the scent of him. His knuckle brushed her thigh as he shifted the gear stick. Suffocation seemed imminent, and Eve didn’t know whether it was due to that so seductive scent, or to the sensation of his accidental touch which had left her body thickened.
Or maybe it had more to do with knowing that her grandfather was right. I’m letting myself in for a lot of heartache here, she mused. He doesn’t love me, he loves someone else. Eve put a hand up to her trembling lips and felt Ethan’s lips there instead. Her hand was pulled down again; it was trembling too.
‘Say something, for goodness’ sake.’ The words left her lips on a shaken whisper.
Say what? Ethan thought frustratedly. I don’t know what I’m doing here? I don’t know what you are doing, coming away with me like this? You should be back there, home safe with your grandfather, because you certainly aren’t safe here with me!
‘What’s in the packet?’ Did he really just offer something as benign as that?
His fingers flexed on the steering wheel. The afternoon sunlight was shining on her bent head, threading red highlights through spun toffee like fire on silk. He’d never noticed the threads of fire before. Why was he noticing them now? Her skirt had rucked up, showing more thigh than he wanted to see. He could still feel the touch of her smooth skin against his knuckle and he wanted to feel more of it. All of it. Hell, damn it—everything.
‘Grandpa’s birthday present,’ she answered huskily.
Husky was seductive. It was vibrating along almost every skin cell like a siren’s melody. ‘You haven’t opened it.’
His voice had a rasp to it that was scraping over the surface of her skin like sand in a hot seductive breeze. ‘He doesn’t like me to open presents in f-front of him, just in case I don’t like what he’s chosen and he sees the disappointment on my f-face.’ She was stammering. Stop stammering! Eve told herself fiercely.
She was stammering. Was she crying? Ethan couldn’t tell because she had her head bent and her hair was hiding her face. ‘Does it happen often?’ Now he sounded husky, he noticed heavily.
‘Never.’ She shook her head. ‘I always love anything he gives to me. You would think he had worked that out by now.’ Another soft laugh and her fingers were gently stroking the present.
‘Open it,’ he suggested.
‘Later,’ she replied. She had enough to contend with right now without weeping all over Grandpa’s gift as well.
They reached the top of the lane and turned onto the only proper road on the island. It went two ways—to the lane they’d just left, or to the small town with its even smaller airport, passing the entrance that led into the Galloways’ bay on its way.
Two ways, Eve repeated. Forward, or back the way they had come. Did she want to go back? Did he want her to go back?
‘Eve—if you’ve changed your mind about this, I can soon turn around and—’
‘I’m coming with you!’ The words shot out like bullets from a gun, ricocheting around the closed confines of the car.
Ethan snapped his mouth shut. His fingers flexed again. Eve sat simmering in her own hectic fallout, and silence reigned for the rest of the way.
It took ten minutes to get there. Ten long minutes of throat-locking hell. Eve gripped her birthday gift. Ethan gripped the wheel. They slid into a parking spot by the car-hire shop and both of them almost tumbled out of the car in their eagerness to breath hot humid air.
The nine-seat Cessna was waiting on the narrow runway. A porter ran up to collect their luggage to take it to the plane. Ethan appeared out of the car-hire shop, still feeding his credit card back into his wallet as he came. His dark head was bent, his hair gleaming blue-black against his deeply tanned face. He was wearing another blue shirt with grey trousers, and over his arm lay a jacket to match. Eve clutched at the strap to her shoulder bag, over which hung the cardigan that matched her top—and wished she didn’t find the man so fascinating to watch.
He looked up. She looked quickly away. She looked beautiful, and his heart pulled a lousy trick on him by squeezing so tightly
it took his breath away.
Nassau was a relief. They had a two-hour stopover, which meant they could both make excuses to go their separate ways for a while. Eve went window-shopping; Ethan went to hunt out somewhere he could access his website and download some documents so he could read them on the flight.
On his way back to find Eve, he spied a furry tiger with its tail stuck arrogantly in the air. He began to grin. Eve would never get the joke, but he couldn’t resist going into the shop and buying if for her. While the toy was being gift-wrapped, he went browsing further down the line of shop windows and came back to collect the tiger with a strangely stunned expression on his face.
Eve was sitting with a fizzy drink can and a whole range of gifts packed into carrier bags. ‘Souvenirs for my friends in London,’ she explained. ‘They expect it.’
Ethan just smiled and sat down beside her, then offered her his gift. ‘Happy birthday,’ he said solemnly.
She stared at him in big-eyed surprise. It was amazing, he mused, how much he adored those eyes. ‘Open it,’ he invited, tongue-in-cheek. ‘I’m not at all sensitive to disappointment.’
He was smiling, really smiling, with his mouth, with the warm soft grey of his wonderful eyes. Eve smiled back, really smiled back, then handed him her can so she could give her full attention to ripping off the gold paper from her present. Meanwhile Ethan drank from her can and watched with interest as the tiger emerged.
There was a moment’s stunned silence, an unexpected blush, then she laughed. It was that wonderfully light, delighted laugh he’d heard her use so often for other people but never for him before. ‘Good old Tigger—you idiot.’ She turned to him. ‘How did you know I have a whole roomful of Tiggers back home?’
He hadn’t known, but he did now, which rather sent his private joke flat, because Tigger was not quite the animal he had been thinking about when he’d bought the furry toy. Still, did it matter? She liked it, that was enough.
‘ESP,’ he confided, tapping his temple.
With her old exuberance, Eve leaned over to kiss him, realised what she was about to do and hesitated halfway there. Wary eyes locked on his, and a black eyebrow arched quizzically over one of them. Her heart gave a thud. Irresistible, she thought. I’m falling head over heels and don’t even care any more. She closed the gap, knowing by the dizzying curling sensation inside that a kiss was about the most dangerous thing she could offer right now, even here in the transit lounge of a busy airport with hundreds of people playing chaperone…Because he might think he was fatally in love with Leona Al-Qadim, but he fancies the pants off me!
And I’m available, very available, she added determinedly. Their lips met—briefly—and clung in reluctance to part.
Yes, Eve thought triumphantly, he does want me. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured softly.
‘You’re welcome,’ he replied, but he was frowning slightly. Eve wished she knew what thoughts had brought on his frown.
Thoughts of Leona Al-Qadim? Was he sitting here with one woman’s kiss still warm on his lips and daring to think of another? Like a coin flipping over, she went from smiling certainty of her own power to win this man, to dragging suspicion that the other woman would always win.
Tigger was receiving a mangling, Ethan noticed, and wondered what the poor tiger had done to deserve such abuse? Then he had to smother a sigh, because he knew it was him she was thinking about as she twisted the poor animal’s tail round in spirals. They kept kissing when they shouldn’t. They kept responding to each other when they shouldn’t. He was not the right man for her, and she was most definitely not the right woman for him.
‘Here, do you want this?’ He offered the drink can back to her.
Eve shook her head. ‘You can finish it if you want.’
He didn’t want it, but he knew what he did want. On that grim thought he got to his feet, too tense and restless to sit still any longer in this—crazy situation that should never have begun in the first place!
Walking over to the nearest waste-disposal bin he dropped the can in it, took a deep, steadying breath, then turned to go back the way he had come. Eve was no longer sitting where he had left her. Alarm shot through his veins like an injection of adrenalin, that quickly changed to a kind of thick gluey stuff that weighed him down so heavily he couldn’t move an inch.
Why? Because her hair lay like silk against her shoulders, her bags of shopping hung at her sides. Tall and tanned and young and lovely, she was drawing interested gazes from every man that passed her by because she had class, she had style. She was an It girl, one of the fortunate few—and right at the present moment in time she was looking in the same jeweller’s window he’d stood looking in only minutes before. Same place, same tray of sparkling jewels, he was absolutely certain of it. His feet took him over there, moving like lead in time with the heavy pump of his heart.
‘Which one do you like?’ he asked lightly over her shoulder.
She jumped, startled, glanced up at him, then looked quickly away again, blushing as if he’d caught her doing something truly sinful. ‘The diamond cluster with the emerald centre,’ she answered huskily.
Husky was back, he noticed, and husky he liked. Reaching down, he took her bags from her then placed a free hand to the small of her back. ‘Let’s go and try it,’ he murmured softly.
‘What—? But we can’t do that!’
She was shocked, she was poleaxed—he even liked that. The lead weights dropped away from his body; he sent her a wry grin that made her eyes dilate. ‘Of course we can,’ he disagreed. ‘It’s tradition.’
Tradition, Eve repeated and felt her mind start turning somersaults, as the hand on her back firmly guided her into the shop. Ethan placed her bags on the floor at his feet, kept her close and calmly asked for the tray of rings. It arrived in front of them, sparkling beneath the lights. Long, lean, tanned male fingers plucked the diamond and emerald cluster off its velvet bed. While the assistant smiled the smile used for lovers, Ethan lifted up her left hand and gently slid the ring onto her finger.
‘What do you think?’ he prompted softly.
Eve wasn’t thinking anything, she discovered. ‘It fits,’ was all she could manage to come up with to say.
‘But do you like it?’ he persisted.
‘Yes,’ she answered, so gruffly she didn’t know her own voice.
‘Good. So do I,’ Ethan said. ‘We’ll take it,’ he told the smiling sales assistant.
‘But—look at the price!’ she gasped as the assistant went away with Ethan’s credit card.
‘A lady doesn’t check the price,’ he told her dryly.
‘But I can’t let you buy something that expensive! Can you afford it? We shouldn’t even be doing it.’ Eve was beginning to panic in earnest now, Ethan noted, feeling his few minutes of pure romanticism turned to ashes as she spoke. ‘W-we told Grandpa we were going to keep all of this a secret.’
‘There will be nothing secret about us living together in Spain, Eve,’ he dryly pointed out, and earned a startled look from those eyes for saying that. Yes, he thought grimly, take a moment to consider that part about us living together, Eve. ‘But if you really don’t want the ring—’
‘No—Yes, I want it!’
‘Good.’ He nodded. ‘A sham is not a good sham without all the right props to go with it.’
Eve’s heart sank to her shoes as reality came rushing in. Here she was thinking—while he was only thinking—a sham. She swallowed on the thickness of her own stupidity. ‘Then we’ll go halves on the cost,’ she decided.
If she said it to hit back at him then she certainly succeeded, Eve noted, as he stiffened. ‘You really do think that because I can’t match your grandfather’s billions I must be as poor as a church mouse, don’t you.’
Eve gave a noncommittal shrug for an answer. ‘I just don’t want you to be out of pocket just because I dumped myself on you like this.’
‘Well, think of how much relief you will feel on the day you throw
it back at me.’
The assistant arrived back to finish the sale then. Maybe it had been a timely interruption, Eve thought, as she watched him sign the sale slip and receive back his passport and credit card, because the sardonic tilt to his tone when he’d made that last remark had been aimed to cut her down to size. When, in actual fact, she suspected they both knew it was Ethan Hayes who’d taken the blow to his ego.
But the ring had suddenly lost value, its sparkle no longer seemed so fine. Their flight was called, and in the time it took them to gather up their belongings the whole incident was pushed away out of sight, even as the ring winked on her finger every time she moved her hand.
The plane was full, but first-class was quiet, with new state-of-the-art seating that offered just about every comfort that might be required. As they settled themselves in for the long journey, Eve unearthed Tigger from her hand luggage and sat him on the arm between their two seats.
You were my favourite birthday present, she told the stuffed tiger—not counting Grandpa’s present, of course, she then added loyally, which she intended to open when she wasn’t feeling so miffed at Ethan Hayes. As for you, she looked down at the ring sparkling like a demon on her finger, you’re just a prop, which means you are as worthless as paste.
Within an hour of taking off, Ethan was deep into a stack of printed literature he’d managed to get someone in Nassau to pull off his website. Eve wasn’t talking. Now he was glad he hadn’t confided in her that the ring was the very one he’d picked out himself only minutes before she’d picked it out. Silly stuff like that provoked curious questions. Questions provoked answers he didn’t want to give. It had been a stupid gesture anyway. He wished he hadn’t done it. Now the damn ring kept on sparkling at him every time she turned a page of the magazine she’d brought with her onto the plane.
‘Would you like a refill for that, Mr Hayes?’ the flight attendant asked him. Glancing up at the woman he saw the look in her eyes was offering a whole lot more than a second cup of coffee.
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