Spice of life, he mocked grimly and refused the offer. As she went to move away he saw the flight attendant glance at Eve, then at her finger. That’s right, he thought acidly, I’ve already been hooked.
By a toffee-haired witch with a sulk to beat all female sulks.
‘And you, Miss Herakleides?’
‘No, thank you,’ Eve refused. And keep your greedy eyes off my man, she thought.
A man who had a way with a black ballpoint pen that held her attention with the same rapt fascination she would have given to Picasso if she’d had the opportunity to watch him at work. It wasn’t as if he was actually doing anything special—just drawing circles round sentences then scrawling comments over the printed words. He was sitting back against the seat with an ankle resting across his other knee. He stopped writing, frowned, used the pen to relieve an itch on the side of his chin; he used it to tap out an abstract drum beat; he drew another circle, then scrawled comments again.
He sighed at something. His chest moved, and as she glanced sideways at it she realised she could see glimpses of deeply tanned flesh in the gaps between shirt buttons. Nice skin, warm skin, tight let-me-touch skin, she thought.
Close your eyes, Eve, and stop this! she railed at herself.
It wasn’t long after she closed her eyes that the magazine began to slip from her slackened grip. Ethan rescued it and folded it away, then rescued Tigger as he too began to slip off his perch.
Tigger: fun, bouncy, always in trouble—he wasn’t so old that he couldn’t remember the animal’s appeal. He had to smile at the irony because his tiger was neither fun nor bouncy, but it certainly meant to cause him a lot of trouble where Eve Herakleides was concerned.
Reaching over he gently placed Tigger on Eve’s lap, then sent him a wry man-to-man look. ‘Lucky guy,’ he told the toy, and pressed a button that would recline her into a more comfortable position for sleep. A sigh whispered from her as she resettled her body. A glance at her eyes to check if he had disturbed her showed him the fine bruising around the sockets, which told him she was still suffering the effects of last night.
He’d forgotten about that. How had he forgotten about that? Because his mind had become fixed on more lusty things, of which he really ought to be ashamed.
He returned to his papers for a little while, but not very much later succumbed to the need to sleep himself. Halfway across the Atlantic he woke up to find that Eve had curled up on her side facing him, and her hand was splaying across his chest. But that wasn’t all—not by a long shot because a couple of her fingers had somehow found their way into the gap between his shirt buttons and were now resting against his warm skin.
He liked them there, had no wish to move them, even though a call of nature was nagging at him. So he closed his eyes again and saw his own fingers slipping down the front of her gaping top in a quest to caress the warm golden globe he’d caught sight of as he’d glanced at her.
Then he thought. No way. He forced his eyes back open—just in case he might do in sleep what he had been fantasising about while awake. Been there, done that once already today, he ruefully reminded himself. Instead he gave in to the other desire and gently removed her hand from his chest so that he could get up.
She was awake when he came back, and her seat had been returned to its upright position. ‘Drink?’ he suggested.
‘Mmm.’ She half yawned. ‘Tea, I think, and can you see if they can rustle up a sandwich?’
‘Sure.’ He went off to find a flight attendant. When he came back Eve was not there and he presumed she’d gone where he’d just been. She slipped back into her seat as the flight attendant arrived with a china tea service and a plate of assorted sandwiches.
She’d freshened up, he’d freshened up, both looked a bit better for it. Ethan poured the tea while Eve checked the fillings between neat triangles of bread. ‘Any preference?’ she asked him.
You, he thought soberly. ‘I don’t mind,’ he answered. ‘I’m starving. We slept through dinner apparently.’
‘You too?’ she quizzed.
‘Mmm,’ he answered.
‘Did you manage to finish your work before you slept?’
‘Mmm,’ he said again.
‘Is that all you can say?’ she mocked. ‘Mmm?’ It was like talking to a bumble-bee, Eve thought impatiently.
No, it wasn’t all he could say, she discovered the moment he turned his head to look at her. Dark grey eyes locked with green, and the air was suddenly stifled by the kind of feelings that didn’t belong in the cabin of an aeroplane. He wanted her. She wanted him. If they touched they would go up in a plume of fire and brimstone, it was so sinful what was happening to both of them.
They didn’t touch. Eve looked away, picked up her cup and grimly drank the hot tea in the hope that it would outburn everything else. That damn ring flashed again and Ethan wished he hadn’t put it there. It had been a mad impulsive gesture to make. This arrangement was a sham. The ring was a sham. But when he looked at that thing, Eve belonged to him.
CHAPTER TEN
THE rest of the flight was a lesson in how to avoid giving off the wrong kind of signals. They dropped down into Heathrow airport in the early morning local time, then had to hurry through transit to catch their connection to Malaga. That flight was full and noisy with excited children off on holiday to Spain. It was early afternoon by the time they cleared the formalities there.
Ahead of them lay a two-hour drive south to San Estéban, but one glance at Eve put the cap on that plan. Travel fatigue was casting a greyish pallor over her beautiful skin and she looked fit only to drop down and sleep where they stood.
Ethan had used a hand to guide her into a convenient seat in the airport arrival lounge. ‘Sit,’ he quietly commanded.
Subsiding without a single murmur, she watched him park their luggage trolley next to her through listless eyes and didn’t even seem to notice that he then walked off without telling her where he was going.
He came back five minutes later to find her sitting more or less how he had left her. As he came to stand in front of her she looked up and, stifling a yawn, she pointed at their assorted luggage. ‘Just think,’ she said, ‘how convenient it would be if we ever got married.’
Following the direction of her pointing finger, Ethan found himself looking at two sets of suitcases, both of which wore the same initials embossed on their leather like a sign from the devil of what the future held for them. He didn’t like it. His mouth turned down in a show of dismay because those near-matching suitcases spoke of one giant step over that fragile line between, I can deal with this, and, The hell I can.
Eve saw he didn’t like it. ‘It was a joke, Ethan,’ she sighed out wearily.
‘Time to go,’ was all he said—heavily.
Taking hold of her arm he pulled her to her feet when all Eve wanted to do was curl up in a dark corner somewhere, go to sleep and not wake up again while he was still in her life!
Then what did he do to throw that last thought right out of her head? He placed an arm around her shoulders, gently urged her to lean against him then kept her that close while pushing the trolley in front of them as they walked outside.
I like him this close, she confessed to herself. I love it when he makes these unexpected gestures of concern. ‘You’ve no sense of humour,’ she muttered in grim rejection of her own weakness.
‘Or your sense of timing is lousy,’ he suggested sardonically.
Maybe he was right. Maybe it hadn’t been the most diplomatic observation to make when they were in effect walking alongside a whole pack of lies. She released a sigh; he acknowledged it by giving her arm a gentle squeeze that could have been sympathising with that weary little sigh. And, because it felt right to do it, she slipped her hand around his lean waist—and leaned just that bit more intimately into him.
As the automatic exit doors slid open for them, a small commotion just behind them made them pause and glance back to see a group of dark-eyed, dark-sui
ted Spaniards heading towards the doors with a pack of photographers on their trail. It was only as the group drew level with them that Eve realised the men were clustered around an exquisite looking creature with black hair, dark eyes and full-blooded passion-red mouth.
‘Miss Cordero, look this way,’ the chasing pack were pleading. Camera bulbs flashed. Miss Cordero kept her eyes fixed directly ahead as her entourage herded her towards the exit doors Eve and Ethan had conveniently opened for them. As they swept by, someone called out to Miss Cordero. ‘Is it true that you spent the night in Port Said with your lover, Sheikh Rafiq?’
Eve felt Ethan stiffen. Glancing up at his face she saw a frown was pulling the edges of his brows across the bridge of his nose. ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘Who is she?’
‘Serena Cordero, the dancer,’ he replied.
Eve recognised the name now. Serena Cordero was the unchallenged queen of classical flamenco. Her recent world tour had brought on a rash of Spanish dance fever, causing schools dedicated to the art to open up all over the place. It wasn’t just classical dance she performed with sizzling mastery. Her gypsy fire dance could put an auditorium full of men into a mass passion meltdown.
None of which explained why Ethan was standing block-still with a frown on his face, she mused curiously. Unless…‘Do you know her?’ she asked him, already feeling the sting of jealousy hit her bloodstream at the idea that Ethan might know what it was like to have the exotic Serena dance all over him!
But he gave a shake of his dark head. ‘I only know of her,’ he said, making the chilly distinction.
‘Then why the frown?’
‘What frown?’
He looked down at her. Eve looked up at him. The now familiar sting of awareness leapt up between the two of them. ‘That frown,’ she murmured, touching a slender long finger to the bridge of his nose where his eyebrows dipped and met. It was too irresistible not to trail that fingertip down the length of his thin nose. Her hand was caught, gently crushed into his larger hand and removed.
The question itself was no longer relevant: Serena Cordero had suddenly ceased to exist. Mutual desire was back, hot and tight and stifling the life out of everything else.
‘Let’s go,’ Ethan murmured, striving to contain it.
He wanted her, she wanted him. It was going to happen some time, Eve was sure of it. ‘Okay,’ she said.
Attention returned to the exit doors, they stepped outside into the afternoon heat. Coming here from the Caribbean should have meant they were acclimatised to it by now. But the Spanish heat was so dry it scorched the skin, whereas the Caribbean heat was softened by high humidity and cooled slightly by trade winds coming off the sea.
The Cordero entourage had disappeared already. There was a chauffeur-driven car standing by the kerb waiting for them. Eve was glad to escape into the air-conditioned coolness of its rear seat. Having helped to stash their luggage in the car boot, Ethan joined her. The heat emanating from his body made her shiver, though she didn’t know why it did.
Two hours of this, she was thinking breathlessly, as they took off with the smoothness of luxury. The prospect brought back the aching tiredness, the tiredness thankfully dulled the aching pulse of desire. Settling back into soft leather, Eve had just reconciled herself to this final leg of their journey when, to her surprise, they hadn’t even left the airport perimeter before they were turning in through a pair of gates and drawing to a halt next to a gleaming white helicopter bearing the Petronades logo on its side.
‘What now?’ she asked curiously.
‘Our transport to San Estéban, courtesy of your cousin, Leandros,’ Ethan sardonically supplied. ‘Having been so instrumental in getting us both here, I thought it was time he helped make this final part a bit easier.’
Easier, truly said it. Their two-hour drive south was cut by two-thirds. As they skipped over the top of a lush green headland, Ethan said, ‘San Estéban.’
Glancing out of the window, Eve felt her heart stop beating in surprise. ‘Oh,’ she said, gasping in astonishment, unsure what it was that she had been expecting, but knew that it certainly wasn’t this.
Her gaze took in the modern example of a Moorish castle guarding the hill top, then it flicked down the hill to a beautiful deep-water harbour with its mosaic-paved promenade that linked it to the pretty white-washed town. In the quest to create something magical, that same Moorish style repeated itself in a clever blend of modern with ancient. Nothing clashed—nothing dared. It was no wonder that her grandfather had been so eager to have Hayes-Frayne apply their magic touch to his project, she realised. From up here she could see the same sense of vision that must have inspired her grandfather when Leandros had suggested he come out here and take a look for himself.
Turning her face she looked into Ethan’s grey eyes and saw a different man looking steadily back at her. The artist—the man with the vision that inspired others; the sensitive romantic who perhaps could fall in love with the unattainable, and maybe even go so far as to love because that person was out of his reach. It was a well-known fact that artists liked to suffer; it was a natural part of their persona to keep the creative juices flowing by desiring what could never be.
Was that part of her attraction? Eve then found herself wondering curiously. With her grandfather openly stating that Ethan was not what he wanted for his only grandchild, had Theron unwittingly lifted her to the same desirable heights as the very married Leona Al-Qadim?
His eyes were certainly desiring her, she noted, but, for the first time, she didn’t like what she could see. Don’t raise me up onto a pedestal, she wanted to warn him, because she had no intention of remaining there, safely out of reach.
The helicopter dropped them onto a helipad custom-built to service the Moorish castle which, she realised, was really a hotel set in exquisite grounds. A car was waiting to transport them along the hill top that surrounded the bay where exclusive villas lay hidden behind screens of mature shrubs and trees. Eventually they pulled in through wide arched gates into a mosaic courtyard belonging to one of those villas.
Ethan unlocked the front door while the driver of their car collected their luggage and stacked it neatly by the door. Ethan knew the man; they’d chatted in Spanish throughout the short journey and continued chatting until the driver got back into his car and drove way.
Almost instantly silence tumbled down around them as it had done once before when they’d found themselves suddenly on their own like this.
‘Shall we go in?’ Ethan cut through it with his light invitation.
‘Yes.’ Eve made an effort to smile and didn’t quite manage it as she walked into the villa while he brought the luggage inside then closed the door behind him.
Fresh tension erupted. Eve didn’t quite know what to do next and Ethan didn’t seem too sure himself, so they both started speaking at the same time.
‘Is this one of your own designs?’ she asked him.
‘Would you like to freshen up first or—? No.’ He answered her question.
‘Yes, please.’ She answered his.
He sighed, ran a hand round the back of his neck and looked suddenly bone-weary. Eve chewed nervously on her bottom lip and wished herself back in the Caribbean lying on a beach.
‘Guest bedroom’s this way…’ Picking up her luggage he began leading the way over pale blue marble beneath arched ceilings painted the colour of pale sand. As they walked, they passed by several wide archways that appeared to lead to the main living space. But Eve was way beyond being curious enough to show any interest in what those rooms held. All she wanted was to be on her own for a while, to take stock, maybe even crash out on the large bed she’d caught sight of in the room Ethan was leading her into.
‘Bathroom through that door,’ he said as he placed her luggage on the top of a cedarwood ottoman. ‘You can reach the terrace through there…’ He pointed to the silk-draped full-length windows. ‘Make yourself at home…’ He turned toward the door, had seconds though
ts, and turned back again. ‘I’ll be working out on the terrace if you want me. Other than that…take your time…’
Lightly said, aimed to make her feel comfortable with whatever she wanted to do, he did not take into account that he hadn’t once allowed his eyes to make contact with her eyes since they’d entered the villa.
Which meant that he was feeling as uncomfortable with this new situation as she was. ‘Right. Fine,’ she said.
He left her then; like a bat out of hell he got out of that room and made sure he shut the door behind him as he went. Eve wilted, had a horrible feeling that he was standing on the other side of that door doing exactly the same thing, and really, really wished she hadn’t come.
Ethan was beginning to wonder if she’d made a run for it when, over an hour later, Eve still hadn’t put in an appearance. At first he’d been glad of the respite, had taken a shower, had enjoyed a home-made pot of tea out here on the terrace with only the view and a dozen telephone calls to keep him company.
But as time had drifted on without him hearing a peep from Eve, he’d begun to get edgy. Now he felt like pacing the terrace because the tiger inside him was making its presence felt again.
What time was it? Six p.m., his watch told him. Two minutes later than it had been the last time he’d looked. He grimaced, then sighed to himself and walked over to the terrace rail to look down the hillside where San Estéban lay basking in the early evening sun. This time yesterday he had been sitting in the bar on the beach in the Caribbean drinking local rum and chatting with Jack Banning.
No, you were not, you were watching Eve dance with her eager young men and wishing you weren’t there to witness it, a grim kind of honesty forced him to admit.
A sound further along the terrace caught his attention. His stomach muscles instantly tightened when he recognised the sound as one of the terrace doors opening. Eve appeared at last, wearing a plain straight dress with no sleeves, a scooped neck and a hemline that rested a quiet four inches above her slender knees.
Hot-Blooded Husbands Bundle Page 28