‘Rip it up,’ she told him.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘He’s only got me to sign my life away.’
‘I don’t want your money.’
‘I didn’t say money, I said life!’ He flashed her a hard look. ‘Are you telling me you don’t want that, either?’
Her chin went up. Two steps and she was snatching the contract from him just as he had snatched it from Theron.
Eve ripped it up. She tossed it to the ground. She placed hands on hips and waited for his eyes to move up from the torn contract to her provocative pose, to her mouth which was wearing its angry pout, and finally to her eyes shot through with challenge. ‘Okay,’ she announced. ‘I’ll take your life.’
Ethan reached out, pulled her hard up against him then kissed her…Why not? It was what they both needed. Eve didn’t so much as attempt to pull away.
‘Now, tell me why were you kissing Aidan Galloway,’ he murmured some very satisfying seconds later.
‘I wasn’t kissing him,’ Eve denied. ‘I was sobbing on his shoulder because you weren’t here and I wanted y
ou to be.’
Ethan brought up a finger to gently touch the corner of her kiss-trembling mouth. ‘And the last time I saw you with him like that?’ he probed. ‘You weren’t sobbing then.’
‘You misread what you saw that night,’ she explained, slid out her tongue and licked his finger and watched as his eyes grew darker in response. ‘Aidan had just seen Corin wrapped in a heated clinch with his cousin. They were childhood sweethearts; he’s adored her all of his life. He was devastated, I was comforting him when I heard them coming towards us, and I just reacted by kissing Aidan to give Corin a taste of her own nasty medicine.’
‘Impulsive as usual.’ He sighed.
‘Well, you should know.’ She flashed. ‘When I realised you’d seen us, I knew what you would be thinking. So as soon as I could safely leave Aidan, I impulsively went to your room to explain. Only…’
‘You found me standing there stark-naked, and decided it was more fun to stare me into embarrassing myself?’
‘If that’s what you like to think.’ She wasn’t taking the bait. Instead she caught hold of his finger then fed it across the surface of his own mouth. Already moistened by the tip of her tongue the finger left a film of moisture on his lips.
He licked it off. Sex was suddenly alive in the air. ‘You can’t control yourself around me,’ she informed him smugly, ‘which is why you made sure you kept your distance from then on.’
His own hand came to remove her teasing finger. ‘You tease and flirt without conscience,’ he condemned.
‘Your fault,’ she blamed. ‘The more you disapproved of me the more outrageous I became.’
‘Dangerous is the word that comes to my mind.’
He was referring to Raoul Delacroix, Eve realised. It altered the mood so abruptly that Ethan gave a sigh of regret when she withdrew right away from him then walked over to stare out of the bedroom window with her arms crossed over her body in a gesture he recognised as Eve needing to protect Eve.
He followed, unwrapped her arms and replaced them with his own. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to resurrect bad memories.’
‘I’ve known Raoul almost all of my life,’ she murmured. ‘We—all the crowd on the island have been meeting up for holidays there since we were small children. Flirting and teasing was part of the group culture but no one ever took it further than that.’
‘But he decided to.’
‘We hadn’t seen him for a couple of years,’ she explained. ‘When he came back to the island this summer, he’d changed. We all noticed it, wondered why, but Raoul refused to talk about it. So we drew our own conclusions and decided it had to be a failed love affair or a fall-out with his brother, André, for whom he’d always nurtured a resentment. But never in my wild imaginings did I think he had changed so much that he was capable of pulling something like that.’
‘Forget it, it’s over.’
‘But maybe it was my fault. Maybe I did lead him on.’
‘You know that isn’t true, so we aren’t getting into that,’ Ethan said firmly.
Eve pressed back against him and said no more. Beyond the window she watched her grandfather’s car taking off down the driveway. The roof was folded away so she could see Aidan sitting next to him. They would be going to a local café where they would drink coffee while Aidan told her grandfather all his woes, and her grandfather would relay wise advice, previously discussed and decided upon with Aidan’s older brother, Patrick. It was how it had always worked since Eve had lost her parents and Aidan had lost his in the same car accident, leaving Grandpa to play the role of wise counsellor to both families. Strange really, she mused. But, thinking about it, Raoul had shown signs of resentment to that closeness too.
‘Where’s your ring?’