But since he wouldn’t show her emotion, good or bad, she probably wouldn’t get to find out.
She tried to imagine him happy, with a real smile on his face, one that filled his eyes.
She couldn’t.
CHAPTER SEVEN
EVA settled into the hot tub and let the warm water wash over her limbs. The oval stone basin was set out on the wooden deck, overlooking the snow-capped peaks.
The steam rose, thick and curling in the crisp night air. It would have been relaxing if she wasn’t permanently tense from being near Mak.
He made her feel things, want things …
Love, she’d always wanted. And sex, yes, but always the two of them together. Mak made her not care quite so much about the L-word and that frightened her a little. Because she felt that sort of wildness in her she’d been trying to create for the past few months bubbling to the surface when he was around. Real. Out of control.
And that had never been part of her hazy plan.
Everything she’d done had been calculated, and while some of it had backfired, the bits of it she could control, she had controlled.
But that was all gone with Mak. Every bit of it.
She lifted her hand out of the water and turned it so it was palm up, watching as steam rose from her skin, feeling the cold start to penetrate the cloak of heat that had enveloped her.
“Enjoying yourself?” Mak was standing in the doorway, all lean, hard angles and exuding more sex appeal than any one person was entitled to.
“Less now,” she muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Yes.” She smiled, trying to project a false positivity she didn’t feel. “It’s a lovely evening. Freezing.”
“The trick is to hurry inside when you’re done with the tub.” He pulled his hand out from behind his back. “And remember your towel.” He waved the aforementioned item back and forth.
“Oh. Thank you,” she said, slightly embarrassed. Because again, she’d betrayed herself a bit. She was distracted, and she was projecting that distraction. And thanks to her little display earlier, he was well aware that he was a part of the distraction.
“I am supposed to protect you, I imagine letting you get frostbite would negate my other efforts.”
Frostbite seemed friendly compared to some of the other trouble she could get into with him. “Possibly. No one would want to marry a princess with blue toes.”
“I’m not sure about that.”
“Have you heard from my father?” she asked. She didn’t really want to know. She’d never seen her father so angry. It wasn’t the yelling, because he didn’t do much yelling. It was what he didn’t say. It was the look in his eyes. That fact that he hadn’t quite been able to look at her.
And it made her wonder if even her father believed the story about her. Why not? He didn’t know her. Not really. He knew who he wanted her to be, what he wanted her to do, but he didn’t really know her. If he did, he would know that while she might go out and have drinks with a group of friends, she wasn’t going to go and get naked with them all after.
“I talked to him briefly to let him know we’d arrived. He still doesn’t know the location, neither does he want to.”
She hesitated. “Did he say anything about Bastian?”
“Concerned for the future of that alliance, are you?”
“Not especially. Well, of the possibility of it going forward.”
“He didn’t mention it.”
She blew out a breath. “No. Of course he didn’t. Why would I want to know about my future? Insignificant things like who I’m going to marry? I shouldn’t concern myself with such trivialities.”
“Here you go sounding like a spoiled child again,” he said, his tone even, maddeningly calm.
“Really? I must be a spoiled child because I have money, and because I have money, and have always had it, I should be happy, is that it?”
“Money might not buy happiness, Eva, but it buys a hell of a lot of things that keep a person alive. Some might say that brings a bit of happiness.”
“So because of other people’s problems, people who have less in the way of creature comforts, I’m not allowed to have any problems of my own? This isn’t first-world problems here, this isn’t me complaining about my flying pony refusing lay golden eggs.”