‘Ethan Hayes,’ he announced in that deep smooth drawl that made her toes curl into the floor. He was wearing a light grey suit, white shirt and grey tie and was looking dynamic, again, she noticed with a wry little smile as she turned back to the toast while he discussed local by-laws.
The call ended just as she finished slotting triangles of toast into a toast rack. There was a short sharp silence that alerted her before she even turned round and saw his face.
He was gazing ruefully at the breakfast tray she had prepared ready to take out onto the terrace. ‘You’re going to be angry with me for this,’ he warned her. ‘But I’m afraid I’ll have to miss breakfast. I have a meeting in ten minutes down at the yacht club.’
Disappointment curled inside her tummy but she kept it from showing on her face by hiding it behind an understanding smile. It was what he had rushed back here to Spain for, after all. ‘So much for my display of domesticity,’ she mocked.
‘I shouldn’t be long,’ he assured her. ‘You’ll be all right here on your own until I get back?’
‘I’ll try my best not to go into too deep a decline while you’re gone,’ she promised.
‘What about my decline?’ he countered quizzically.
It was nice of him to say it, but he was in no danger of wasting away from not having her within touching distance. He was already pumped up and eager to go and take on the whole Spanish government.
Folding her arms beneath her breasts, Eve leaned against the worktop and sent him a dry look. ‘Go,’ she said.
‘Right,’ he said, but still didn’t move. Instead he looked at her, really looked at her, with a slight tilt to his head and a slight frown to his brow, as if he was trying to work
something out about her but couldn’t quite grasp what that something was. Then he seemed to give up on it and, with a brief smile, he brushed a kiss across her cheek. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ he said.
Then he was gone, striding out of the kitchen and away from her with his car keys jangling in his hand as he made for the rear courtyard, where she’d noticed the set of four garages when they’d arrived the afternoon before.
Left on her own, breakfast lost some of its appeal, though the aroma of fresh coffee was too inviting to ignore. So she carried the tray out onto the terrace and sat at one of the tables there to drink it and watch San Estéban glitter with the early morning crystal-clarity that came with the promise of a perfect summer’s day. After that she spent some time tidying the kitchen, then decided to take a long shower and dress before exploring the rest of the villa, since she hadn’t bothered to notice anything much the day before.
She took the terrace route to her bedroom, noticed she hadn’t even got around to unpacking her suitcase, and wondered if Ethan had unpacked his? A quick shower and she was just slipping into a short blue skirt and a white sun top, her next intention to explore the villa, when a telephone began ringing somewhere, it was the land-line kind that announced itself as such by its distinctive tone.
Ethan? she wondered, and felt her heart leap. He had only been gone a couple of hours yet he was missing her so much he had to give her a call? Hurrying out of the bedroom, she began to follow the sound down the wide arched hallway. The villa suddenly felt big and empty, and she wasn’t sure she liked Ethan’s taste in décor. It surprised her to think that because she liked just about every other thing about Ethan, she mused with a smile as she walked between pale sand walls on the same pale blue tiling that seemed to cover the floors throughout. It was all very cool, very Lawrence-of-Arabia, nothing shouted, nothing scarred the eyes. Yet…
She found the telephone in one of the reception rooms. As she moved towards it, it suddenly stopped ringing and the answering machine kicked in. As she waited to hear if it was indeed Ethan trying to contact her before she decided to pick up the receiver, she began to look around the room.
A stranger’s voice suddenly filled the air space. Deep and smooth, it possessed the same rich English tones as Ethan’s voice, only it lacked his toe-curling attraction.
‘Ethan,’ the voice said. ‘It’s Victor. When you get a spare minute, give me a call. I’m at the London office and that cantankerous devil, Theron Herakleides, has decided to go silent about the Greek project.’
Grandpa. Eve smiled at the cantankerous description, frowned at the part about the Greek project because she’d forgotten about her grandfather’s threats. She remained standing there waiting for Victor Frayne to finish his message so that she could call up her grandfather and try and convince him he would be cutting off his nose to spite his own face if he pulled Hayes-Frayne’s submission.
Maybe she shouldn’t have come here. For the first time she began to have doubts about her own motives. Selfish, she was being selfish, and maybe she should let Ethan off the hook and tell her grandfather the truth about what had happened. It wasn’t right; it wasn’t fair that Ethan should be forced to make sacrifices just because she’d managed to wriggle her way beneath his tough façade and basically run rings around him.
Is that what she’d done? Yes, it was exactly what she’d done, she admitted. She’d wept, she’d fought, she’d begged and had seduced and had turned him upside down and inside out—and all in twenty-four wild and dizzying hours, too!
‘Oh, by the way…’ Victor Frayne’s voice cut through her train of thinking at about the same moment Eve’s eyes settled on a row of framed photographs sitting on a long low cedarwood sideboard. ‘…the door to Leona’s bedroom is sticking. Can you get someone up there to take a look at it?’
The call to her grandfather was forgotten. A cold chill of dismay was settling on her skin. Ethan couldn’t—surely—have brought her to stay at the home of Victor Frayne and Leona Al-Qadim?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE meeting had taken longer than Ethan had expected but by the end of it Ethan was satisfied that the new yacht club building was no longer under threat. As he shook hands with the local planning officials, he was aware that his site managers were standing to one side waiting to do the usual post-mortem on the meeting, but he was eager to get away.
He kept thinking of Eve and how she’d looked when he’d left her, wearing nothing but his cast-off shirt and a becoming flush to her lovely face.
As soon as the officials departed, one of his managers stepped up. ‘Victor has been trying to contact you,’ the man informed him. ‘Something to do with Theron Herakleides and the Greek project?’
Theron, Ethan began to frown. He had forgotten all about Eve’s grandfather and his threats. ‘I’ll deal with it.’ He nodded. He glanced at his watch, realised he’d been away from Eve for over two hours, and wished he knew at what point it had been that he had become so obsessed with her that she was virtually wrapped around his every thought. ‘If everything is back on track here, can we rain check the post-mortem? I need to be somewhere else.’
He was talking to all three of his site managers, and they instantly developed distinct masculine gleams in their eyes. ‘We heard all about the souvenir you brought back with you from the Caribbean,’ one of them teased him lazily, telling him also that the company grapevine was still working efficiently.
This kind of man-to-man camaraderie was to be expected on building sites. One either sank or swam with it. Ethan usually swam.