by Fiona Brand
A year ago, when she had read the terms of the will and absorbed the full import of that one little sentence, she had been so horrified she had wanted to crawl under the solicitor’s desk and hide. The whole idea that Kyle, the only available Messena husband—and the one man who had ditched her—should feel pressured to marry her, had been mortifying. “I don’t need a pity proposal.”
The wind dropped for a split second, enclosing them in a pooling, tension-filled silence that was gradually filled with the timeless beauty of the wedding vows floating from the church.
“But you do need a proposal. After two years, once you’ve got your inheritance, we can dissolve the marriage.”
Kyle’s clinical solution contrarily sent a stab of hurt through her, which annoyed her intensely.
A former Special Air Service soldier, Kyle had the kind of steely blue gaze that missed nothing. He was also tall and muscular, six foot two inches of sleek muscle, with close-cut dark hair and the kind of grim good looks and faintly battered features, courtesy of his years in the military, that mesmerized women.
All of the men in the Messena and Atraeus families seemed to possess that same formidable, in-charge quality. Usually, it didn’t ruffle her in the slightest, but Kyle paired it with a blunt, low-key insight that was unnerving; he seemed to know what she was going to do before she did it. Added to that, she wouldn’t mind betting that he had gotten rid of some of her grooms with a little judicious intimidation.
The idea of marrying Kyle shouldn’t affect her. She had learned early on to sidestep actual relationships at all cost. The plain fact was, she wouldn’t have trusted in any relationships at all if it hadn’t been for Mario and his wife picking her up when they’d found her on the sidewalk near their home one evening twelve years ago.
When they’d found out she was on the run from her last home because her foster father had wandering hands, they had phoned the welfare people. However, instead of allowing her to be shunted back into another institutional home, Mario had made a string of phone calls to “people he knew” and she had been allowed to stay with them.
Despite her instinctive withdrawal and the cold neutrality that had gotten her through a number of foster homes, Mario and Teresa had offered her the kind of quiet, steady love that, at sixteen, had been unfamiliar and a little scary. When they had eventually proposed adopting her, the plain fact was she hadn’t known how to respond. She’d had the rug pulled emotionally so many times she had thought that if she softened and believed that she was deserving of love, that would be the moment it was all taken away.
In the end, through Mario’s dogged persistence, she had finally understood that he was the one person who wouldn’t break his word. Her resistance had crumbled and she had signed. In the space of a moment, she had ceased to be Eva Rushton, the troubled runaway, and had become Eva Atraeus, a member of a large and mystifyingly welcoming family.
However, the transformation had never quite been complete. After watching her own mother’s three marriages disintegrate then at age seventeen finding out why, she had decided she did not ever want to be that vulnerable.
She caught a whiff of Kyle’s cologne and her stomach clenched. And there was her problem, she thought grimly. Although, why the fiery tension, which should have died a death years ago—right after he had dumped her when she was seventeen—still persisted, she had no clue. It wasn’t as if they had ever spent much time together or had anything in common beyond the youthful attraction. Kyle had married someone else a couple of years later, too, so she knew that what they had shared had not affected him as deeply as it had her.
Now, thanks to Kyle’s interference, she had three weeks to marry anyone but him, and the clock was ticking...
Frustration reignited the nervous tension that had assaulted her when Jeremy had informed her he was backing out of their arrangement, but now that tension was laced with a healthy jolt of panic. Mario Atraeus couldn’t have chosen a better watchdog for the unexpected codicil he had written into his will if he had tried.
She had been so close to marriage, but now Jeremy had run like a frightened rabbit. She couldn’t prove that Kyle had engineered the job offer to get rid of Jeremy. All she knew was that he had used the same tactic twice before. Every time she got someone to agree to marry her, Kyle got rid of him.
Although why Kyle had stopped her marrying a man who had been eminently suitable, and whom she had actually liked in a lukewarm kind of way, she didn’t know. Given their antagonistic past, she had thought Kyle would have been only too glad to discharge a responsibility that had been thrust on him, and which he could not possibly want.
Just like he hadn’t wanted her.
Frowning at the thought of the brief, passionate interlude they had shared eleven years ago, she met Kyle’s gaze squarely. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Dropping into the little sports car’s bucket seat, she snapped the door closed. The engine revved with a throaty roar. Throat tight, still unbearably ruffled that he had actually had the gall to give her a pity proposal, she put the car in gear. Spinning the car in a tight turn, she headed in the direction of the Dolphin Bay Resort, where the reception was being held.
Her jaw tightened at the thought that even the location of the reception was tainted with memories of Kyle and the one time he’d kissed her. In starting her wedding business, though, she’d had to be pragmatic. The Dolphin Bay Resort was family run and offered her a great discount. She would have been flat-out stupid not to use the venue.
Still fuming, Eva strolled into the resort to oversee the gorgeous, high-end fairy-tale wedding she had designed as a promotional centerpiece for her wedding planning business. A perfect wedding that should have been hers, if only Jeremy hadn’t cut and run.
Cancel that, she thought grimly. If only Kyle hadn’t paid Jeremy off with a lucrative job offer in sandblasted Dubai! Taking a deep breath and reaching for her usual calm control, she checked her appearance in one of the elegant mirrors that decorated the walls. The reflection that bounced back was reassuring. Lately her emotions were all over the place, she was crying at the drop of a hat, she actually wanted to watch rom-coms and she was having trouble sleeping.
None of that inner craziness showed. She looked as calm and cool and collected as she wished she felt, her mass of tawny hair smoothed into an elegant French pleat, her too curvy figure disguised by a low-key skirt and jacket in a pastel pink that matched her shoes and handbag. The businesslike but feminine image achieved a balance between the occasion and her role as planner.
More importantly, it ensured that she did not compete with the bride or other female guests in any way. She had learned that lesson at what would have been her first wedding when the groom had gotten a little too interested in her and the bride had cancelled.
Eva walked through to the ballroom where the reception was being held and lifted a hand to acknowledge the waitstaff, all of whom she knew well thanks to the half dozen weddings she had staged at Dolphin Bay. She tensed as she glimpsed commiseration in the normally businesslike gaze of the maître d’ as he mopped around an ice sculpture of swans she had recklessly commissioned because this was supposed to be her one and only wedding day.
The five-tiered extravaganza of a cake, snow-white icing sparkling with crystals and festooned with clusters of sculpted flowers so beautifully executed they looked real, stopped her brisk movement through the room. Out of the blue, the emotion she had been working hard to stamp out grabbed at her. She had wanted to make this a day she would remember all of her life. Unfortunately, that had been achieved since it would be difficult to forget that her perfect wedding now belonged to someone else.
Stomach churning with a potent cocktail of frustration, panic and a crazy vulnerability caused by the fact that Kyle seemed intent on stopping her attempts to achieve a workable, safe marriage, she spun on her heel and made a beeline for the kitch
en.
Bracing herself, she pushed the double doors open and stepped into a hive of gleaming white walls and polished steel counters. The cheerful clattering and hum of conversation instantly stopped. Eva’s chest squeezed tight as waves of sympathy flowed toward her, intensifying the ache that had started in her throat and making tears burn at the back of her eyes. The jolt of emotion was crazy, given that she hadn’t loved Jeremy in the least and marriage had not been on her horizon until Mario had literally forced her to it with that clause in his will. A clause designed to railroad her into the kind of happiness he had shared with his wife and which he had thought she should also have, whether she wanted it or not.
Until she’d started planning this wedding, she had thought Mario had been utterly wrong in believing he could make her want to be married. But every detail of planning her own wedding had confronted her, throwing together the stark realities of her life and cruelly highlighting the parts she couldn’t have: the romance and the happy-ever-after ending that true love promised. Most of all, it emphasized the happy aftermath she would never experience: her own babies.
She had known since she was seventeen, thanks to a rare genetic disorder she carried, that she shouldn’t have children. The disorder had proved fatal for her twin and two siblings, which had made her doubly wary about the whole concept of marriage. There was always the possibility that she could meet someone who didn’t care about the disorder and who would be happy to adopt, but she had difficulty getting past the fact that she literally carried death in her genes.
In retrospect, it had been a huge mistake giving in to the temptation to design a wedding that patently did not go with a marriage of convenience. It smacked of wish fulfilment, and it had opened up a Pandora’s box of needs and desires she had thought she had put behind her. She should have settled for a registry office ceremony. No fuss, no bother, no emotion.
Pinning a smile on her face, she breezed through the large bustling kitchen and waved at the head chef, Jerome, a Parisian with two Michelin stars. Jerome had designed the menu personally for her. He sent her an intense look brimming with passionate outrage and sympathy, even though he knew she had managed to sell the wedding on to a couple who had been desperate to marry quickly, owing to a surprise pregnancy.
Eva flinched at the concept that her pretty young bride not only had her perfect wedding, but was also pregnant. She could not afford to dwell on the painful issue that while she could not have children, other women could, and at the drop of a hat.
Keeping her professional smile firmly fixed, Eva fished her menu out of her bag and ran through it with Jerome. For once there were no last-minute glitches. Every aspect of this wedding appeared to be abnormally perfect. After dutifully admiring the exquisite mountain of cupcakes, which Jerome was decorating—her favorite forbidden snack—she escaped back to the reception room before he could toss his icing palette knife down and pull her into a comforting bear hug.
Kyle had proposed.
The kitchen doors made a swishing sound as they swung closed behind her. Eva stared blindly at the crisp white damask on the tables, the sparkle of crystal chandeliers and lavish clusters of white roses. She did not know why Kyle had the power to upset her so. It wasn’t as if she was immersed in the painful, oversentimental first love that had gripped her at age seventeen. It wasn’t as if she still wanted him.
As the wedding guests began to spill through the doors, she rummaged in her handbag, found and slipped on a pair of the most unflattering glasses she’d been able to buy. The lenses were fake, just plain glass, but the heavy, dark rims served to deflect the attention that her good looks usually attracted.
Fixing a smile on her face, she did a brisk circuit of the main reception room, which she and her assistant, Jacinta, had dressed earlier. Waiters were loading silver trays with flutes filled with extremely good champagne she had sourced from an organic vineyard. Trays of her favorite canapés from the five-star kitchen were lined up in the servery.
The reception was heartbreakingly gorgeous. Since it was supposed to have been her own, she had put a great deal of thought into every detail, no expense spared. The only consolation was that she would be very well paid. And, in three weeks’ time, if she was still unwed, she would be in desperate need of cash in order to retain her house and keep her business afloat.
The doors to the kitchens behind her swished open as guests began to seat themselves at tables. Jacinta Doyle, her sleekly efficient personal assistant, came to stand beside her, a folder in one hand. Jacinta gave her a look laden with sympathy but, tactfully, kept things businesslike. Halfway through a list of minor details, she stopped dead. “Who is that?”
An annoying hum of awareness Eva was desperate to ignore made her tense. Adjusting the glasses, which were too heavy for her nose, she frowned at the rapidly filling room. Her mood plummeted when she saw Kyle. “Who do you mean, exactly? There must be a hundred people in the room.”
“He is hot.” Jacinta, who was hooked into the sophisticated, very modern dating scene with a new man on her arm every week, clutched dramatically at her chest before pointing Kyle out just in case Eva hadn’t noticed him. “I’m in love.”
Irritation flared, instant and unreasoning. “I thought you were dating Geraldo someone-or-other.”
“Gerard. His visa ran out, and his money.” She shrugged. “He went back to France.”
Eva pretended to be absorbed in her own checklist of things to do. “Don’t let your heart beat faster over Kyle, because you’ll be wasting your time. He’s too old for you, and he’s not exactly a fun type.”
“How old?”
The irritation morphed into something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on. “Thirty,” she muttered shortly.
“I wouldn’t call that old. More...interesting.”
Something inside Eva snapped. “Forget Kyle Messena. He isn’t available.”
Jacinta sent her a glance laced with the kind of curiosity that informed Eva she hadn’t been able to keep the sharpness out of her voice. “Kyle Messena. I thought he looked familiar. Didn’t he lose his wife and child in some kind of terrorist attack overseas? But that was years ago.” She pointedly returned her gaze to Kyle, underlining the fact that she could look at him any time she liked, for as long as she liked.
Even more annoyed by the speculation on Jacinta’s face, as if she was actually considering making a play for Kyle, Eva consulted her watch. “We’re ten minutes behind schedule,” she said crisply. “You check the timing for service with the chef. I’m going to get a cold drink then have a word with the musicians. With any luck we’ll get out of here before midnight.”
With a last glance at Kyle, Jacinta closed the folder with a resigned snap. “No problem.”
But there was a problem, Eva thought bleakly. The kind of problem she had never imagined she would suffer from ever again. For reasons she did not understand, Jacinta’s interest in Kyle had evoked the kind of fierce, primitive response she had only ever experienced once before, years ago, when she’d heard that Kyle was dating someone else.
She needed to go somewhere quiet and give herself a stern talking-to, because somehow, she had allowed the unwanted attraction to Kyle to get out of hand, to the point that she was suddenly, burningly, crazily jealous about the last man she wanted in her life.
Three
Kyle strolled to the bar, although if he were honest, the drive to get a cold beer over settling for the champagne being served had more to do with the fact that Eva was headed in that direction.
Eva’s expression chilled as he leaned on the bar next to her. The faint crease in her smooth brow as she sipped from a tall glass of what he guessed was sparkling water somehow made her look even more spectacularly gorgeous, despite the disfiguring glasses. It was a beauty he should have been accustomed to, yet it still made his stomach tighten and his attention sh
arpen in a completely male way.
She met his gaze briefly before looking away. An impression of defensiveness made him frown. Normally Eva was cool and distant, occasionally combative, but never defensive.
She placed the glass down on the counter with a small click. “I thought you had left.”
The unspoken words, now that you’d made sure I hadn’t secretly gotten married, seemed to hang in the air. Kyle shrugged and ordered a beer. “I decided to stick around. We still need to have a conversation.”
“If it’s about the terms of the will, forget it. I’ve read the fine print—”
“You’ve ignored the fine print.” She had certainly failed to notice that he was her primary marriage candidate.
The faint blush of color in her cheeks flared a little brighter, sharpening Kyle’s curiosity. Eva was behaving in a way that was distinctly odd. He was abruptly certain that something had happened, something had changed, although he had no idea what.
She sent him a breezy professional smile, but her whole demeanor was evasive. “If you don’t mind, I really do need to work.”
Usually, Eva was as direct and uncompromising as any man. The blush and the avoidance of eye contact didn’t fit, unless... His heart slammed against his chest, spinning him back to the long summer days they had spent on the beach as teenagers. For a split second he wondered that he had missed something so obvious. But he guessed he had been so absorbed with trying to control the desire that had come out of left field that he had failed to see that Eva was fighting the same battle.
She tried to sidestep him, but the bar area was now filling up with people, lining up for drinks. Feeling like a villain, but riveted by the discovery, he moved slightly, just enough to block her in. She stopped, a bare inch from brushing against his chest.
Kyle’s stomach tightened as he caught another whiff of Eva’s perfume. He knew he should leave her alone and let her get on with her job. But the desire to evoke a response, to make Eva admit that she wanted him, was too strong. “The whole point of Mario’s will was that he wanted you to marry someone who would actually care about you and who wasn’t in it for the money.”