‘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.