‘But—I’m coming with you.’ The decision itself set his feet in motion. As he strode towards her he saw his ring sparkling on her finger when she lifted her hand up to brush a tear from her cheek.
My tears, my ring—my woman, he claimed possessively. He took all three, grabbing his woman around the waist, crushing the ring in the clasp of one of his hands, and spinning her about so that he could lick the tears from her cheek. ‘Anywhere,’ he murmured, while he did it. ‘Hotel, an apartment in San Estéban. We can even take one of the other villas if that’s what you prefer.’
Preference didn’t really come into it, Eve thought helplessly. She preferred not to love him this badly. But she did. Bottom line. ‘I would prefer it if Leona Al-Qadim didn’t exist,’ she told him honestly.
‘Forget Leona,’ he muttered impatiently.
‘If you forget Aidan,’ she returned, determined to maintain some level of balance around here.
She looked into his eyes; he looked into hers; both sets were angry because they were giving in. Their bodies liked it though, Eve noticed. They were greeting each other like hungry lovers.
‘So, where are we going to go to continue this?’ His voice rasped with impatience, his body pulsed with desire.
The fact that hers was doing the same thing made the decision for her. So she reached up, touched her mouth to his, and remained that close while she murmured, ‘Here seems very convenient, don’t you think…?’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE little minx. An absolute witch, sent to torment the life out of him, Ethan was thinking irritably. There was nothing convenient about having Eve Herakleides running riot through his life.
The telephone rang. He picked it up. ‘What?’ he barked.
It was his secretary in London. Sitting there behind his desk, Ethan dealt with a list of queries while his angry gaze remained fixed on the little scene taking place outside his site-office window, where Eve stood laughing, surrounded by a whole rugby scrum of big, tough, very much hands-on builders wearing yellow helmets, dust-covered steel-capped boots, tight tee shirts and jeans.
And what was Eve wearing?
Hot-pink. It was her favourite colour, he had come to realise during the last ten days. Today it was hot-pink trousers that skimmed her hips and thighs and stopped just above her slender calf muscles, and a baby-pink top that left a lot of golden midriff on show.
Too much midriff. ‘I don’t know about that, Sonia,’ he murmured. ‘I can’t be sure I’ll be back in London to attend that meeting. You’d better ask Victor if he can do it.’
Eve’s hair was up in a natty little twist that did amazing things to the length of her neck, and in profile she looked like the sweetest thing ever to be put onto this earth. Every time she moved he saw his ring flash in the sunlight. Every time she laughed he saw his men almost fall to their knees.
‘I know they wanted me,’ he rasped out testily. ‘But they can’t have me.’ 145
I’m already engaged, he thought, to a woman with no sense of what’s right or proper to wear on a building site! In the last ten days he’d also come to realise the full meaning of the term engaged.
‘Heard anything from Theron Herakleides?’ he thought to enquire.
There was another person who was irritating the hell out of him. Since their tough talk in the Caribbean, he hadn’t had a single peep out of Eve’s grandfather. His own letter formally withdrawing his submission for the Greek project had not been acknowledged. The promised contract making sure Ethan didn’t get his greedy hands on the old man’s money had never appeared. No one at Hayes-Frayne could get to speak to Herakleides, and even Leandros was complaining that the Greek had dropped off the face of the earth. As far as Ethan could make out, Theron was only answering calls from his precious granddaughter. She’d been talking to him every day, but even she couldn’t get him to come clean as to what he was going to do about the Greek project. He’d just said, ‘I’ll see you in two weeks.’ Then it had been one week. Now it was down to just a few days.
Their official betrothal. His ring on Eve’s finger winked at him. ‘Nothing,’ he heard his secretary say.
The ring sparkled again as Eve lifted up her hand to brush some dry plaster from one man’s bulging bicep. The guy grinned a very macho, very sexy, Spanish grin. Ethan felt his gut tighten up in protest. Abruptly finishing the telephone conversation, he stood up and knocked on the window-pane.
Eve turned. So did the men. She sent him a wide white brilliant smile. The men’s smiles were more—manly, as in, You lucky devil, Mr Hayes.
‘He wants his souvenir back,’ he heard one man say to the others.
Eve laughed, as she had done from the first time she’d heard herself referred to as that. She liked it. Damn it, he liked it! He liked what it did to him when she sent him that teasing little smile that said, Some souvenir, hmm?
He was in love with her. He’d known it for days, weeks, maybe even months. She filled his every thought, his every sense, his every desire. He looked at her and felt a multitude of conflicting emotions, none of which on their own could adequately describe what he was having to deal with inside.
Bidding a light farewell to her macho fan club, she began walking towards his office door. He watched her come, watched her soft mouth take on a different look that was exclusively for him. It was a kiss, a sensual kiss, offered to him from a distance. She was a flirt; she was a tease; he found himself wearing an irresistible grin.
‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded though, the moment she came into the cool confines of his air-conditioned office. ‘I thought we’d agreed you would keep away from the site so you don’t cause accidents.’
She laughed; she thought he was joking, but Ethan wasn’t sure that he was. Heads turned when Eve walked by. The fact that those heads were on bodies with feet balancing on ladders or on scaffolding made it dangerous.
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