‘If I have any further trouble with Jack I will tell you about it,’ she bit out tightly. ‘Now can I leave?’ she prompted angrily.
‘Of course.’ Markos smiled his satisfaction—both at Eva’s reply and the fact that her fighting spirit had so obviously returned. He enjoyed verbally sparring with her almost as much as he had enjoyed making love with her. Almost…
‘How kind of you!’ Her eyes flashed deeply gold.
‘In future, kindness is my middle name,’ he drawled mockingly.
‘And I thought it was arrogance,’ she came back tartly.
Markos gave a husky chuckle. ‘I will very much look forward to seeing you back here promptly at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.’
The fire dissipated from her eyes and she looked at him uncertainly. ‘Markos—’
‘Nine o’clock tomorrow morning, Eva,’ he repeated firmly.
No matter how much Eva might wish it otherwise, Markos knew that things were far from settled between them…
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘SO, WHAT do you think…?’ Eva looked at Markos uncertainly as he stood on the threshold of his newly decorated sitting room.
Markos thought that during the past three weeks he had learnt first-hand exactly what hell was!
It wore figure-hugging denims, form-fitting white T-shirts over full and luscious breasts, had long ebony hair, golden eyes, kissable lips, smelled of something lightly floral and sensual—and went under the guise of interior designer Evangeline Grey!
Because that was exactly who Eva had become during these three hellish weeks. Crisp, no-nonsense, utterly professional and bearing absolutely no resemblance to the woman Markos had made love with during that memorable Sunday.
The first week hadn’t been too excruciating. Eva had only appeared at his apartment on the Monday and Tuesday, when she came in to take precise measurements for the carpets, curtains and other draperies.
The second week she had been more in evidence—calling in briefly every day in order to supervise her team of decorators, and to present Markos with the designs she had made for the rest of the rooms in his apartment.
And each time she’d arrived Markos had been the one who met her at the main lift before taking her up to his apartment.
By the time the furniture and fittings had arrived in the third week Markos had contacted Security and instructed them to let Eva in to the building any time she arrived, as well as giving her his security code to the private lift going straight up to his apartment.
All in an effort to spare himself the ordeal of so much as seeing the coolly remote stranger that Eva had become, let alone actually speaking to her.
And yet…any time Eva was in the building Markos instinctively knew she was up there—in his apartment, in the room just above his office.
He had been both angry and hurt the day he had insisted she would continue to redesign the interior of his apartment—and now he had found he was the one being punished, as day after day he was forced to suffer the cold professionalism of her manner towards him.
None of which was helped by the fact that every time he walked into his apartment his senses were bombarded with…well, with the presence of Eva.
He could see her influence now everywhere he looked in this newly furnished and decorated room: the pale terracotta-coloured walls adorned with bold coloured paintings of Greek islands, the carpet the colour of the Aegean Sea in summer, the deep rust colour of the comfortable sofas and chairs adorned with many scatter cushions in colours of blues and greens and yellows, the curtains draped at the huge picture windows in those same rich colours.
Such boldness of colour should have been too much, and yet somehow it not only worked but it also seemed to fill a hole in Markos’s soul—a tiny oasis of need which was his love of Greece, a hunger that he hadn’t even realised was there until he saw the colours and the warmth of his native country reflected so vividly in this room.
A hunger that Eva had not only seen and recognised in him, but addressed and filled with this warmth of colour…
He turned to her now. ‘It’s…amazing,’ he said huskily.
‘In a good way or a bad way?’
Markos
gave a rueful smile as he recognised the wariness in Eva’s tone. ‘A good way, of course.’ He stepped further into the room and allowed those warm Aegean colours to seep into his inner being, filling him with the same sense of peace and tranquillity he felt whenever he returned to Greece. Which was nowhere near as often as he would have liked it to be.
Eva heaved a deep sigh of relief as she felt the heavy weight of responsibility lift from her shoulders. She watched Markos’s pleasure in his surroundings; as she had imagined, the richness and boldness of the earth tones suited Markos perfectly, bringing that same warm richness to his eyes and his swarthy, chiselled features as he strolled about the room.