UNDERSTANDING anything about Eve Herakleides flew out of the window the moment Ethan found himself confronting her grandfather. Because Eve, he all too quickly discovered, had got in first with her version of events leading up to what Theron had witnessed. Now Ethan was angrily trying to make some sense of what it was he was supposed to have done.
Standing tall and proud behind his desk, Theron Herakleides looked on Ethan as if he was seeing a snake in the grass. ‘You have to appreciate, Mr Hayes,’ he was saying, ‘that in Greece we expect a man to stand by his actions.’
‘Are you implying that I wouldn’t?’ Ethan demanded stiffly.
The older man’s brief smile set his temper simmering. ‘You stand here claiming no intimacy between yourself and my granddaughter,’ he pointed out. ‘Are those not the words of a man who is trying to wriggle off the hook he finds himself caught upon?’
‘We were not intimate,’ Ethan insisted angrily.
A pair of grey-cloud eyebrows rose enquiringly. ‘Now you expect this old man to question what his own eyes have already told him?’
Not only his own eyes, Ethan noted, as he sent a murderous glance at Eve who was standing quietly beside her grandfather. Gone was the seductress in sexy hot-pink. Nor was there any sign of the broken little creature he’d taken under his wing. No, from the neatly braided hair to the clothes that had been chosen with modesty in mind, here stood a picture of sweet innocence wearing a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth smile that told clearly that he was going to be made the scapegoat here!
‘Of course,’ Theron Herakleides broke into speech again, ‘you could be attempting to protect Eve’s reputation, in which case I most sincerely apologise for implying the opposite. But your protection comes too late, I’m afraid,’ he informed him gravely. ‘For what I saw with my own eyes had already been substantiated by one of the men that guard my property. He saw you carry my granddaughter from our beach house to your beach house covered only by a sheet, you see…’
Damned by his own actions, Ethan realised. Then he said frowningly, ‘Just a minute. If your guard was watching the beach house, then where was he when Eve—?’
Eve moved, drawing his glance and lodging the rest of his challenge in his throat when he found those eyes of hers pleading with him to say no more. Anger erupted as he glared at her and felt frustration mount like a boiling lump of matter deep within his chest.
I should stop this right here, he told himself forcefully. I should tell Eve’s grandfather the unvarnished truth and finish this craziness once and for all. But those pleading eyes were pricking anxiously at him, reminding him of the conversation he and Eve had had the night before.
Ethan looked back at her grandfather, and Eve held her breath. If he talked, it was over. If he talked, her life was never going to be the same again.
‘I think it’s time you explained to me where you are going with this, Theron,’ Ethan invited very grimly.
A deep sense of relief relaxed the tension out of Eve’s shoulders. Thank you, she wanted to say to him. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this.
‘I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt,’ her grandfather smoothly announced, ‘and presume that your intentions towards my granddaughter are entirely honourable…’
It wasn’t a question but a rock-solid statement. Eve watched nervously as Ethan’s full attention became riveted on the older man’s face. Her heart stopped beating in the throbbing silence, her mouth running dry, as she tried to decide whether to jump in and take over before Ethan said something ruinous or to remain quiet and keep praying that he didn’t let her down.
Ethan didn’t know what he was doing. The word ‘honourable’ was playing over and over inside his head while he stared at Theron’s perfectly blank expression. Then he switched his gaze to Eve who was standing there looking like a diehard romantic who’d just had her dearest wish voiced out loud.
I’ve been well and truly set up, he finally registered, and the knowledge was threatening to cut him off at the knees.
Eve came to his rescue—if it could be called a rescue. Leaving her grandfather’s side she rounded the desk and came to thread her fingers in with his then had the gall to lean lovingly against him like an ecstatic bride. ‘You guessed our secret.’ She pouted at her darling grandpa. ‘I’m so happy! This is turning out to be the most wonderful birthday of my entire life.’
Slowly turning his dark head Ethan looked down at her through narrowed, steely I’m-going-kill-you eyes. ‘Oh, don’t be cross.’ She pouted at him also. ‘I know you wanted to wait a while before we told anyone about us. But Grandpa can keep a secret—can’t you, Grandpa?’ It was Grandpa’s turn to receive the full spell-casting blast of her wide green witch’s eyes.
The old man smiled. It was an action that smoothed every hard angle out of him. ‘But why be secretive, my little angel?’ he quizzed fondly. ‘You are in love with each other. Don’t hide it, celebrate! We will announce your betrothal in front of the family when we return to Athens next week…’
* * *
He’s remembered he hates me, Eve realised nervously. Ethan had washed and changed before coming up to the main house, but even wearing a smart blue shirt and grey trousers she could still see the man sitting in the beach bar feeding her his utter contempt.
‘Please, Ethan,’ she said, panting as she hurried after him down the path that led the way back to the beach. ‘Let me explain—’
‘You set me up,’ he rasped. ‘That doesn’t need explaining.’
‘It was the only way I could think of to—’
‘Get a marriage proposal?’ he cut in contemptuously.
‘You’re not that good a catch!’ she retaliated.
He stopped striding and swung round to face her. Sensational, Eve thought with an inner flutter. Ethan Hayes in the throws of a blistering fury was exciting and dangerous and—
‘Then, why me?’ he bit out.
‘He dotes on me…’
Ethan responded to that with a hard laugh. ‘Now tell me something I haven’t worked out.’
‘He’s built this shining glass case around me that he likes to believe protects me from the realities of life.’
‘Take my advice, and smash the case,’ Ethan responded. ‘Before someone else comes along and smashes it for you.’ On that he turned and started walking again.
So did Eve. ‘That’s the whole point,’ she said urgently. ‘I know I need to smash the case, but gently, Ethan!’ she pleaded with him. ‘Not with a cold hard blow of just about the ugliest truth I could possibly think of to hurt him with.’
‘He deserves the truth,’ he insisted. ‘You are insulting him by protecting him from it!’
‘No.’ Her hand gripping his arm pulled him to a stop again, like a miniature tyrant she stepped right in front of him to block his path. Her eyes pleaded, her mouth pleaded, the fierce grasp of her fingers pleaded. ‘You don’t understand. He’s—’
Eve watched him go from sizzling fury to another place entirely. His shoulders flexed, his teeth gritted together, his wide breastbone shifted on an excess of suppressed air. ‘Don’t tell me again that I don’t understand,’ he bit out roughly, ‘when all I need to understand is that you are using me, Miss Herakleides. And that sticks right here.’ He stabbed two long fingers at his throat.
‘Yes, I can see that…’ she nodded ‘…and I’m sorry…’
‘Good. Now let me pass so I can go and do what I need to do.’
‘Which is what?’ she asked warily.
The morning sun dappling through the tree tops suddenly turned his face into a map of hard angles that made her insides start to shake. ‘Find the cause of this mess and make him wish he’d never been born before I deliver him into the hands of your grandfather,’ Ethan answered grittily and went to step around her.
‘You can’t!’ Once again Eve stopped him. ‘H-he isn’t here!’ she exclaimed. ‘H-he left the island by launch at first light. I know because I checked before I went to see Grandpa. H-he must have known I—’
‘You checked,’ Ethan repeated, his eyes narrowing on her pale features and her worriedly stammering lips. ‘Now, why should you want to go and do that?’ he questioned silkily.
‘I w-wanted to talk to him, f-find out why he did it,’ she explained. ‘I really needed to know if I had brought it all upon myself! H-he was a friend—a long-standing friend. Friends don’t do that to each other, do they? So I had to at least try to find out why!’
Ethan really couldn’t believe he was hearing this. ‘After everything he put you through last night.’ Grimly he stuck to the main issue here. ‘You went to confront him—on your own?’
Anxiety was darkening those big green eyes again. ‘If I’d asked you to come with me, I knew you would want to kill him!’
Time to stop looking in those eyes, he decided. ‘And you don’t want him dead,’ he persisted.
‘No,’ she breathed. ‘I’m trying to avoid trouble not stir it up! A war will erupt between the two families if what happened last night ever got out.’
But that wasn’t the real reason, Ethan thought grimly. She was hiding something, he was sure of it.
Then that something was suddenly clawing its way up his spine and attacking the hairs at the back of his neck. It was written all over her, in those big green apprehensive eyes, in the unsteady tremor of her lovely mouth—in the very words she had said!
‘You’re in love with the bastard.’ He made the outright accusation. No wonder she’d felt compelled to find out why he had done what he had done! Why she didn’t want Ethan to go anywhere near him—why she was trying to protect the swine now!
Her chin shot up. ‘I’m what?’ she questioned in shrill surprise.
But Ethan was no longer listening. ‘I can’t believe what a fool I’ve been,’ he muttered. For him it was like lightning striking twice! First, he had got embroiled in Leona’s love problems. Now he found himself embroiled in Eve’s!
‘How dare you?’ she gasped out, dropping the surprise for indignant fury.
‘No.’ Ethan hit back by turning on her furiously. ‘How dare you get me mixed up in your crazy love life?’
He was angry; she was angry; the old hostile sparks began to fly. The air crackled with them, ‘That’s rich,’ Eve mocked, ‘coming from a man who is only here on this island because he’s in hiding after being caught red-handed with another man’s wife!’
The sparks changed into a high-voltage current. It was unstable—very unstable. ‘Who told you that?’ Ethan demanded.
Eve shrugged. ‘Leandros Petronades is a relative of Grandpa’s. He told Grandpa, and Grandpa thought I should know before I committed myself to you.’
‘It’s a lie,’ he declared.
Eve didn’t believe him. ‘Don’t insult my intelligence,’ she denounced. ‘Do you think I didn’t notice the bruise on your face when you arrived on the island? Everyone noticed it. In fact it was the source of much speculation.’
‘And the bruise on your neck?’ Ethan went in with the metaphorical knife and took some satisfaction from seeing her snap her hand up to cover the mark.
‘I forgot!’ she gasped out in impressive horror.
Ethan didn’t believe her. The brazen hussy hadn’t even bothered to cover the damn thing up! ‘How many more people have seen it and been equally imaginative about how it was put there?’
She blushed and looked uncomfortable. Ethan released a harsh laugh. ‘My God,’ he breathed, ‘you are unbelievable! Take my advice, Eve,’ he offered as his grim farewell. ‘Go back up to the house and tell your grandfather the truth before I do it for you.’
‘You wouldn’t…’
He was turning away when she said that. It brought him swinging back again. ‘I would,’ he promised. ‘And you know why I would do it? Because you are a danger to yourself,’ he told her. ‘You flirt with every man you come into contact with, uncaring what your flirting is doing to them. Then you have the rank stupidity to fall in love with a piece of low life like Aidan Galloway—And even after what he tried to do to you last night, you are still standing here protecting him! That makes you dangerous,’ he concluded, and tried to ignore her greyish pallor, the hint of tears, the small shocked jerk she made that somehow cut him so deeply he almost groaned out loud.
Instead he walked away, striding down the path towards the beach with so much anger burning inside him he had to reign in on just about every emotion he possessed, or he’d be doing something really stupid like—
Like going back up the path and taking back every rotten, slaying word he’d spoken, because he knew what it was like to be in love with the wrong person, didn’t he?
At least Leona was warm and kind and unfailingly loyal to her husband, he grimly justified his reason for not turning back. Aidan Galloway was a different kind of meat entirely. He was poison; he needed exposing before he tried the same thing with some other woman.
From a window in the main house, Theron Herakleides observed the altercation on the path down to the beach through mildly satisfied eyes. He wasn’t quite sure what the altercation was actually about, but he had a shrewd idea. Ethan Hayes had just been well and truly scuppered by his enterprising granddaughter and he was now in the middle of a black fury.
Served him right for seducing her, Theron thought coldly. If he hadn’t been so sure that Eve truly believed she was in love with the rake, the hell being wrought down there on his path would have been happening right here at his own orchestration.
But if his beautiful Eve thought he was going to let her throw herself away on a man like Ethan Hayes, she was so wrong it actually hurt him to know that he was going to have to show her just how wrong she was. So what if the man was an outstandingly gifted architect? So what if he, Theron Herakleides, had actually held him in deep respect until today? By tomorrow Ethan Hayes would be out of the picture, Theron vowed very grimly, and Eve was going to learn to recover from her little holiday romance.
With those thoughts in mind, Theron turned away from the window to pick up the telephone. ‘Ah—yassis, Leandros,’ he greeted pleasantly, and fell into light conversation with his nephew while glancing back out of the window to see the way Eve had been left standing on the path, looking like a thoroughly whipped peasant instead of the proud and brave goddess he believed her to be.
Ethan Hayes would pay for that, he vowed coldly. He was going to pay in spades for playing with the heart of a sweet angel when everyone knew he was in love with Leona Al-Qadim!
‘I am about to call in that favour you owe to me,’ he warned Leandros Petronades, then went on to explain what he required of him. ‘The sooner the better would be good for me, Leandros…’
Standing there on the sunny path, feeling as if she had just been reduced to dust by a man angry enough to tear down a mountain, Eve was carefully going over everything Ethan had tossed at her so she could be certain she had heard him correctly.
Aidan—‘Oh, good heavens,’ she gasped as the whole thing began to get even more confused and complicated. Ethan believed it was Aidan, not Raoul, who’d been with her in her bedroom last night!
The telephone was ringing as Ethan let himself into the beach house. He stood glaring at the contraption, in two minds whether to ignore it. He didn’t want to speak to anyone. He did not want to do anything but stew in the juices of his anger.
But, in the end, he gave in and picked up the receiver, if only to silence its persistent ring. It was Victor Frayne, his business partner, which did not improve his mood any. ‘What do you want, Victor?’ he questioned abruptly.
‘Still as mad as hell at me, I see,’ Victor Frayne drawled sardonically.
Mad as hell at the world, Ethan grimly extended. ‘What do you want?’ he repeated with a little less angst.
Victor went on to tell him that they had an emergency developing in San Estéban and that Leandros Petronades wanted Ethan back there to sort it out.
‘Can’t you see to it?’ Ethan snapped out impatiently. He had no will to feel accommodating towards Victor nor Leandros Petronades for that matter, the latter being the spreader of gossip about his rich and varied love life!
‘It’s a planning dispute with the Spanish authorities,’ Victor explained. ‘Apparently we’ve breached some obscure by-law and they are now insisting we pull down the new yacht club and rebuild it somewhere else.’
‘Over my dead body,’ Ethan pronounced in fatherly protection of what happened to be one of his proudest achievements in design. ‘We have not breached any by-law. I know because I checked them all out personally.’
‘Which makes you the man with the answers, Ethan,’ Victor relayed smoothly. ‘Therefore, it makes this your fight. I have to warn you that they are threatening to bulldoze the place themselves if we refuse to do it.’
‘I’ll be on the next plane,’ Ethan announced, and was surprised to discover how relieved he felt to reach that decision. Now he could get the hell out of paradise and leave the serpent to look for a fresh victim to mesmerise before she bit!
‘Have you heard from Leona?’ he then heard himself ask, and could have bitten himself for being so damned obvious.
‘She’s fine,’ Leona’s father assured him. ‘She is cruising the Med as we speak and thoroughly enjoying herself, by the sound of it.’
Which puts me right in my place, Ethan thought as he replaced the receiver. Out of sight, out of mind and where I belong.
‘Damn,’ he muttered. ‘Damn all women to hell.’ And, on that profound curse, he picked up the telephone again with the intention of reserving a seat for himself on the three o’clock plane to Nassau, where he could catch a connecting flight to London, and then on to Spain. Only he didn’t get quite that far because a movement at the door caught his eye.