‘It’s a tattoo,’ he announced.
‘What do you think?’ she repeated.
‘I think you’re not safe to be let out on your own,’ he replied. ‘What were you thinking of, marking your lovely skin with something like that?’
‘I thought you might like it.’ The pout was back, Ethan noticed, the one that begged to be soothed into something else.
Well, not this time. ‘You idiot,’ he snapped. ‘That’s going to hurt like blazes by tonight.’
‘No, it won’t,’ she denied. ‘Because it isn’t real. I found this amazing little shop down one of the back streets in San Estéban where they apply these temporary tattoos. It will disappear in about a month. I think its great.’ Eve looked down to view her latest impulse. ‘I might have it replaced with a permanent one next time.’
‘Over my dead body,’ he vowed, but he had to reach out to run his thumb pad over the painted heart. As he did so he heard her breath quiver in her throat and felt the sound replay itself in other parts of himself.
He knew that sound. He looked at her face and saw her innocent green eyes had darkened into those of an outright sinner. His body quickened; she saw it happen; her mouth stretched into a knowing smile. ‘It will be interesting to see if you change your mind about that,’ she taunted silkily.
It was no use, Ethan gave up—as he always seemed to do. Swinging his chair around, he sat himself down then drew her in between his spread thighs. ‘No,’ he refused, knowing exactly what she believed was going to come. Instead he tugged the zip shut on her trousers, then took a firm grip on both of her hips and brought her tumbling down on his lap. Kisses on the mouth were much less evocative than kisses elsewhere. This way at least he would manage to hang onto some of his dignity if anyone should happen to walk in here.
By the time the kissing stopped, her eyes were glazed—but then so were his. ‘I’m going to send you packing now,’ he told her huskily.
‘But you would rather come with me.’
It was no lie. ‘If that tattoo hurts later, we are going to have a row,’ he warned.
‘It won’t,’ she stated confidently.
The telephone on his desk began to ring. Maybe it was good timing on its part because it put a stop to what was still promising to develop into something else.
‘Up,’ he commanded, and used his hands to set her back on her feet, then urged her towards the door. ‘Now go and don’t come back.’ On that brisk dismissal he reached out for the phone. ‘And leave my labourers alone!’ he added as she was about to walk out of the door.
She turned, sent him a look that stirred his blood. Then she caught him off guard, yet again. ‘I did it for you, you know,’ she softly confided. ‘You’re going to love it, I promise you.’
‘Ethan Hayes,’ he announced into the telephone, as he stood up to open the blinds so he could watch Eve walk towards the car he had hired for her to use.
The whole site had come to a stop. He watched it happen, watched her take no notice of any of the remarks that flew her way. He also saw her pause, look back and wave to let him know that she knew he was watching her. By the time she’d turned away again he knew that his own departure wasn’t going to be that far away.
He was right, but for the wrong reasons. ‘Ethan—’ it was Victor ‘—you are not going to like this, but I need to ask you to do me a very big favour…’
Eve had been back at the villa for less than half an hour when she heard Ethan come in through the door. Not expecting him for hours yet—even with the invitation she had left behind her earlier—she had just curled up in a shady spot on the terrace with the book her grandfather had given her for her birthday. It was a rare first edition of classical Greek love poems to add to the collection he had been building for her since her first birthday.
But the moment she heard Ethan’s step, the book was forgotten, a look of surprised delight already lighting her face at this major triumph in managing to get him to come back early because he couldn’t resist the invitation she’d so blatantly left him with.
‘I’m on the terrace!’ she called out and uncurled her feet from beneath her then stood up to go and meet him halfway. She reached the door through to the sitting room as he appeared in the arch leading into it from the hall. He stopped, she stopped. It took less than a second to make her welcoming smile fade from her face when she saw the expression on his. It was like being tossed back eleven days to that bar on the Caribbean beach, he looked so different.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
‘WHAT’S wrong?’ she asked sharply, absolutely sure that something had to be, because no man changed so very much in such a short space of time without having a reason for doing so.
He didn’t reply, not immediately anyway. Instead he built the tension by grimly yanking the tie loose from his collar and tossing it aside then releasing his top shirt-button before issuing a heavy sigh.
‘We need to talk,’ he said on the back of that sigh. That was all, no warm greeting, no teasing comment about the little red heart she was wearing for him.
Fear began to walk all over her self-confidence, ‘W-what about?’
‘You and me,’ he replied, ran a hand round the back of his neck as if to attempt to ease the tension she could see he was suffering from. ‘We’ve been living a lie for the last ten days, Eve. Have you ever stopped to think about that?’
Think about it? She lived with it! Ate, slept and made love to it!
‘For me it stopped being a lie from the first time we made love, Ethan,’ she answered. ‘So maybe you had better tell me whether you’ve thought about it much recently.’
Her sarcasm hit a nerve, but instead of an answer he made a grimace that she just did not like. Something had happened; it had to have done to change the man she had left only an hour ago into this person who was so uptight she could actually feel his tension cutting through the air like a sharp knife. And worse: he had stopped looking at her.
‘I have to go away for a few days,’ he suddenly announced.
That was the root of all of this tension? ‘Well, that’s all right,’ she murmured, unable to believe that was the answer to what was bothering him. Forcing herself to walk forwards on legs that weren’t all that steady, she tried to look calm as she placed her book down on a nearby table then turned to look expectantly at him. ‘Business?’ she asked.
‘Yes—no.’ He changed his mind and began to frown. ‘It’s more an errand of mercy…’ Then he muttered, ‘Damn this, Eve—I’m trying to find out if you intend to still be here when I get back.’
Was that all? Staring at him, Eve couldn’t believe the sense of relief that went flooding through her. ‘Of course!’ she exclaimed. ‘Why ever not?’
For some bewildering reason, her reply only filled him with exasperation and he strode forward to grasp her left hand then lifted it up to her face. ‘Because this ring,’ he uttered tightly, ‘will become a formal engagement ring on Saturday in Athens. So if you want out, you have to say so now.’
‘Do you want out?’
‘No.’ He sighed. ‘I do not want out. I just needed to know where I stand with you before I—’
‘Well, I don’t want out,’ she cut in softly, and her smile came back to her eyes, to her slightly quivering mouth. ‘I want you.’
He loved that mouth, Ethan reaffirmed something he already knew. He loved this woman. But was her ‘I want you’ enough to make him declare himself?
Was it enough to get him through the rest of what he had to tell her. ‘Enough to trust me?’ he therefore had to ask.
‘Trust you about what?’
Well, here it comes, he thought, the bottom line to all of this. He took a deep breath, let it out again, desperately wanted to kiss her first, but held back on the need and looked deep into her beautiful green eyes. ‘Victor Frayne called me as you were leaving the office. He needs a very big favour from me. Due to unfounded rumours involving me and his daughter Leona, her marriage is under threat. So I am flying
out to Rahman to help scotch those rumours—at her husband Sheikh Hassan’s request.’
He added Hassan’s name to give it all sanction. He hoped it would hold a lot of sway. But silence came back at him, though it wasn’t really silence because Eve’s eyes told him a lot; their warm green slowly froze over until they’d turned to arctic frost. Her kissable mouth became a hard cold untouchable line, and loudest of all, she snatched her hand out of his and curled it into a tight fist at her side.
‘You’re still in love with her, you bastard,’ she whispered.
‘No.’ He denied it. ‘Leona needs—’
‘To know she still has you dangling on a string.’
Coming from the very woman who had him dangling, Ethan couldn’t help but laugh at that.
Eve’s response was to step around him and walk coldly away.
She had never felt so betrayed. He’d manoeuvred that discussion, worked it and her like a master conductor until he’d got her to say what he’d wanted to hear, before he’d told her what he’d known she had not wanted to hear.
And for what purpose? Had he received a telephone call from her grandfather also? Did he now know, as she did, that the Greek project was about to be awarded to Hayes-Frayne?
‘Don’t do this, Eve,’ he threaded heavily after her.
She didn’t want to listen—refused to listen, and just kept on walking out of the sitting room and down the hall into the bedroom. Their bedroom. The one they’d been sharing since the first night he’d brought her here. She hated him for that. She now hated him so very badly that she could barely draw breath over that burgeoning hate.
He arrived in the doorway just as she was flipping her case open on the bed. A sense of déjà vu washed over her; only, last time this scene had been played their roles had been reversed.
‘Eve—this is important.’ He tried an appeal.
She almost laughed at his choice of words, coming hard on the back of what she had just been likening this moment to.
‘We are talking about an Arab state here—a Muslim state where women are held sacrosanct. The smallest hint of a scandal and she can be cast out into the wilderness without a single qualm. I have to go.’
‘I’m not stopping you,’ she pointed out.
‘This is stopping me!’ he rasped back angrily.
‘Okay.’ She turned on him in the midst of her own sudden fury. ‘You don’t go and I don’t go!’
It was the gauntlet tossed down on the tiles between them. Ethan even looked down as if he could see it lying there—while Eve held her breath, though it didn’t stop her heart from thundering madly in her ears, or fine tremors from attacking her flesh.
Because this was do or die. He chose her over Leona or it was finished for them. He knew that, she knew that.
His eyes lifted slowly, dark lashes uncurling to reveal stone-cold reservoirs of determined grey. ‘The rumours are lies,’ he stated. ‘Just a cruel and ruthless pack of lies put about by Sheikh Hassan’s enemies with the deliberate intention of forcing him to reject his wife and take another one. His father is dying. A power struggle is on. Leona is caught right in the middle because she cannot bear his child. Those who don’t want to unseat Hassan from power are pressurising him to take a second wife who can give him that child. If you have one small portion of understanding what that must be like for her, then you will accept that I cannot turn my back on her need for my support now.’
‘How does your going to Rahman scotch those rumours?’ Eve questioned with an icy scepticism that made him release a short tight laugh.
‘If you knew the ways of Arab politics you would know that no Arab would invite his wife’s lover into his house,’ he explained. ‘I am to be placed on show.’ The laughter died. ‘Held up in front of Rahman’s best and most powerful as a man Hassan trusts and admires. And if you think I’m looking forward to that, then you’re wrong,’ he grimly declared.
‘So you love her enough to put her needs before your own pride,’ Eve concluded. And that was what this was really all about. Not whether he went or whether he stayed. It was about whether he still loved Leona enough to do it. The rest was just icing to cover an ugly cake.
‘I’m going home, to Athens,’ she told him flatly. ‘This is it. We are finished.’
Ethan released another very bitter laugh. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘at least you managed to do what you set out to do. You gave yourself two weeks to get around to jilting me. You’re even slightly ahead of time. Well done, Eve.’
With that, it was Ethan who walked away.
Why? Because he had his answer. If she’d loved him, she would have trusted him. If she’d cared about anyone but herself, she would have understood why he had to go.
Funny really, he thought, when only five minutes later he walked out of the villa and climbed into his car. A bit of encouragement on Eve’s part and he would probably have invited her to go to Rahman with him. She would have enjoyed the novelty of watching him be foisted up as a pillar of good old-fashioned gentlemanly honour, when she knew the real man could take a sweet virgin and turn her into a sex goddess.
Too late now. He didn’t want a woman that couldn’t trust his word, and she didn’t want a man who didn’t jump to her bidding every time she told him to. On that most final of thoughts on the subject of Eve Herakleides, he started the car and drove out of the courtyard then turned to skirt San Estéban so he could meet the main road to Malaga.
While Eve still stood where he had left her, staring at nothing, feeling nothing—was too scared to feel.
The sound of the front door closing only five minutes later came as a big shock though. She hadn’t expected him to leave so soon. She hadn’t realised the end was going to be so quick and so cold.
She even shivered, found herself staring at Tigger who was sitting where he always sat, on the table beside the bed. He was looking at her as if to ask what kind of fool she was.
Well, she knew she was a fool. She’d worked so very hard to bring Ethan to the point where he’d want her to keep his ring on her finger. Now she’d thrown it all away.
Was that good or bad? Staring down at the ring, she watched its sparkle grow dim behind a bank of tears, and knew her failure was not in making Ethan want her, but in failing to make him love her.
Malaga airport was packed as always. Ethan arrived just in time to catch his flight to London, where he would have time only to go to his apartment, catch a couple of hours’ sleep then pack a bag before he was due to link up with Victor for their trip to Rahman.
Eve took the easier option, and rang her cousin Leandros to beg the use of his helicopter to take her to Malaga. Therefore she arrived long before Ethan got there, and had taken off for Athens by the time he pulled his car into a long-stay slot.
London was cold. He didn’t mind; the heavy grey skies suited his mood. It wasn’t until he thought to check his emails before shooting off to meet Victor, that he found a note from his secretary telling him that Theron Herakleides had come out of hiding and was now making hopeful murmurings about Hayes-Frayne being awarded the Greek project.
‘Well, shoot that in the foot,’ he told the computer screen, and switched it off. As of now, Hayes-Frayne could kiss goodbye anything to do with Greece.
He wished he’d kissed Eve goodbye before he’d left…
Athens was hot, stifling beneath one of its famous heat-waves. Eve was glad to let the taxi cab drive her up into the hills where the air was more fit to breathe. Her grandfather’s mansion house stood in a row of gracious old houses occupying one of the most prestigious plots the rambling city had to offer.
He was just sitting down to dinner when she walked in, unannounced. ‘My angel!’ he greeted in surprise, and got to his feet to come down the table for his expected embrace.
He was not expecting her to burst into a flood of tears though. ‘Oh, Grandpa!’ She sobbed as she walked into his arms. ‘I hate him. I hate him so much!’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE
palace of Al-Qadim made an impressive sight standing against a backcloth of a star-studded night sky. Its rich sandstone walls had been flood-lit from below and, as they drove through the arched gateway into its huge inner courtyard, Ethan was reluctantly impressed with the sheer scale and beauty that met his eyes.
But he didn’t want to be here. He was angry and fed up with role-playing for other people’s benefit. He was sick to his stomach with the Mr Honourable tab people seemed to like to stick on him. The Mr you-can-depend-on-me-to-bale-you-out label.
He grimaced. Somewhere back there across a large tract of land and an ocean, he was being summarily sacked from his latest role with the none too tasty word jilted to wear as an epitaph to that little affair. While here, he was about to become the focus of critical Arab eyes, when he received his second sacking in twenty-four hours from the role as wicked lover to the Sheikha Leona Al-Qadim.
‘Ethan—if you don’t want to go ahead with this, then say so,’ Victor murmured beside him.
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ he answered tersely, but then his whole manner had been terse since he’d climbed into his car in Spain and had driven away from Eve.
Eve the flirt, Eve the temptress, Eve the serpent, who’d made the last two weeks a perfect paradise—before she’d reverted to her original form. And what was that? he asked himself. Eve, the spoiled little rich girl, who wanted everything to go her way. 159
He was best out of it. He should have known that before it began. He should have seen the idiot he was making of himself every time he let her weave her magic spells around him.
The trouble was, he’d liked it. He’d liked playing slave to Eve Herakleides and her whims. She turned him on, hard and fast. She made him feel alive.
She’d had a heart temporarily tattooed onto one of her most erogenous spots just to tease him out of his mind.
‘Only, in this mood, you aren’t what I would call sociable,’ Victor inserted carefully.
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