CHAPTER ONE
EVE saw him across the other side of the room and her world stood still. It was like watching a film, where fantasy took over and made real life fade away and it had never happened to her before.
That click. That buzz. That glance across the room which held and hung on in glorious disbelief as you met the eyes of a man and somehow knew that he was ‘the one’. But of course it was fantasy, it must be—for how on earth could you see someone for a minute or a second and know that this total stranger was the person you wanted to spend the rest of your life with?
Except that this man was not a total stranger, though maybe that was fantasy, too. After all, it had been a long time.
She quickly glanced down at her drink and pretended to examine it, before risking another look, only this time he had turned away, and although her heart lurched with disappointment that he obviously didn’t share her fascination, at least it gave her the chance to study him without embarrassment.
She was almost certain he was Luca, but he was certainly Italian; he couldn’t have been anything else. Jet-dark hair framed the head he held so proudly and she drank in his perfect features as if trying to memorise them. Or remember them. The hard, intelligent black eyes, the Roman nose and an autocratic mouth which was both luscious and cruel.
He was striking and innately sexy, with a careless confidence which drew the eye and made it stay. In a room full of rich, successful men he stood out like some beautiful, exotic creature—his golden-olive skin gleaming like softly oiled silk, his body all packed, tight muscle. He looked like the kind of man who would command without even trying—an arrogant aristocrat from another age, yet a man who was essentially modern.
Eve was used to assessing people quickly, but her eyes could have lingered on him all evening. He wore his clothes with elegant assurance—a creamy shirt which hinted at a sinewed body beneath and dark, tapered trousers emphasising legs which were long and hard and muscular. He was very still, but that did not mask some indefinable quality he had, some shimmering vibrancy, which made every other man in the room fade into dull insignificance.
He had slanted his head to one side, listening to a tiny blonde creature in a sparkling dress who was chatting to him with the kind of enthusiasm which suggested that Eve wasn’t alone in feeling a gut-wrenching awareness that she was in the presence of someone out of the ordinary. But why should that surprise her? A woman would have to be made out of stone not to have reacted to that package of unmistakable, simmering sensuality.
‘Eve?’
Her reverie punctured, Eve turned her head to see her host standing beside her, holding a bottle of champagne towards her almost-empty glass. ‘Can I tempt you with another drink?’
She hadn’t been planning to stay long and she had intended her first drink to be her last, but she nodded gratefully, welcoming the diversion. ‘Thanks, Michael.’
The drink fizzed into the flute and she glanced around the room. The blinds had been left open, but with a view like that you would never want to draw them. Moonlight and starlight dipped and dazzled off the lapping water outside and the excited chatter, which had reached fever-pitch, gave all the indications of this being a very successful evening indeed.
She raised her glass. ‘Here’s to birthday parties—your wife is a very lucky woman!’
‘Ah, but not everyone likes surprises,’ he said.
Eve’s eyes strayed once more to Luca. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said slowly as her heart began to bang against her ribcage. ‘Great party, anyway.’
Michael smiled. ‘Yeah. And great you could make it. Not everyone can boast that they have a television personality at their party!’
Eve laughed. ‘Michael Gore! You’ve known me since I was knee-high to a grasshopper! You’ve seen me with grazed knees in my school uniform.’ She gave him a wry smile. ‘And I hardly think that presenting the breakfast show on provincial television classifies me as anything as grand-sounding as “television personality”.’
Michael smiled back. ‘Ah, but the girl’s done good,’ he said.
Maybe the girl had,
but right then she felt as vulnerable as that schoolgirl with grazed knees. And, to her horror, she realised that she had gulped most of the drink down and that Luca—if indeed it was Luca—was still listening to the animated blonde. And that the last thing she needed in her life was the complication of a charismatic, complicated kind of man who was every woman’s dream. Eve had learnt early in life that it was important to have goals, just so long as you kept them realistic.
‘And the girl needs her sleep,’ she sighed. ‘Getting up at three-thirty every morning tends to have a negative effect on your long-term energy reserves. You won’t mind if I slip away in a while, Michael?’
‘I will mind very much,’ he teased. ‘But not if your legion of fans are going to blame us for deep, dark shadows under your eyes! Go when you like—but why not come back for lunch again tomorrow, when the show’s over? There will be stacks of stuff left and Lizzy and I have hardly had a chance to talk to you all evening.’