His Reputation Precedes Him

by Carole Mortimer

  Of course it didn’t help Eva to remain detached and professional to see that Markos was dressed as casually as she was this evening. The darkness of his hair was still damp from the shower, and he had obviously changed out of the formal suit he had worn to work today. He was now wearing a black shirt, the collar unbuttoned at his throat and the sleeves turned back to just below his elbows, with a pair of faded blue denims clearly outlining the leanness of his waist and his perfectly taut bottom and long legs.

  She straightened briskly. ‘Are the rest of the rooms as awful?’

  ‘Worse.’ He grimaced.

  Eva found that hard to believe. ‘How many rooms are there?’

  ‘Four en-suite bedrooms, kitchen, breakfast room, formal dining room, a gym—’

  ‘Okay—a lot.’ She grimaced, rummaging through her capacious shoulder bag for her sketchbook and pencil as she continued to look about the room with narrowed, assessing eyes. ‘It looks more like an impersonal hotel suite than a private apartment.’

  ‘That’s probably because that’s what it was designed to be.’ Markos shrugged. ‘Drakon has his own place in Manhattan. This apartment was used only to entertain business associates in less formal surroundings than the offices downstairs.’

  ‘Do I want to know in what way they were entertained…?’ Eva eyed him derisively.

  ‘Just drinks and the occasional dinner,’ he assured her dryly.

  ‘I’ll believe you—thousands wouldn’t!’

  Markos eyed her ruefully. ‘Your opinion of the Lyonedes family isn’t very high, is it?’

  Eva felt the warmth of colour enter her cheeks. ‘I don’t know any of you well enough to make a sound judgement.’

  ‘Yet.’

  ‘Ever,’ she stated with finality.

  ‘I’ll go and make us some coffee while you look round,’ Markos suggested lightly.

  ‘Okay.’ Eva was relieved to be able to turn her attention to her surroundings as she began to sketch in her pad.

  Markos stood for several moments and admired the way Eva’s denims clung so lovingly to her curvaceous hips and thighs. The firm swell of her breasts was clearly visible beneath a fitted green blouse, her long dark hair brushed back and secured in a ponytail that made her look younger than her years.

  Markos smiled wryly as he realised she had become so absorbed in her work she seemed to have forgotten he was even there. ‘Cream and sugar?’

  ‘Fine.’ The tip of her tongue was caught between her teeth as she frowned in concentration.

  Markos felt his shaft stir at the thought of all the more sensuous uses the moistness of that tongue could be put to. ‘Or alternatively I could lie naked on the bed and wait for you to join me?’ he said huskily.

  ‘Fine.’ Her eyes had a faraway look as she continued to sketch in her pad.

  ‘Or maybe swing naked from the chandelier?’ he added with amusement.

  ‘What did you say?’ She looked up sharply, her cheeks blushing a fiery red.

  ‘Never mind.’ He was still chuckling softly to himself as he walked down the hallway to the kitchen.

  Eva felt the warmth of the colour in her cheeks as the rest of Markos’s conversation now penetrated the concentration that always enveloped her at the start of a new project.

  Except she wasn’t going to start a new project.

  Was she…?

  That certainly hadn’t been what she had intended when she’d arrived promptly for this evening’s appointment—but one look at the blandness of what should have been a magnificent penthouse apartment and she had instantly been assailed with visions of how wonderful it could and should look.

  Still, that didn’t mean she had to be the one who instigated those improvements…

  ‘Mmm—you were right the other night. Your percolator does make a delicious cup of coffee.’ Eva gave a satisfied sigh half an hour later, having taken her first sip of the strong brew.

  The two of them were now sitting on stools across from each other at the breakfast bar in the sterile black and white kitchen.

  ‘Now you know where to come the next time you want a decent cup of coffee in the middle of the night.’ Seductive green eyes looked across at her in challenge.

  Eva straightened, her expression rueful. ‘Seems a little extreme when there’s a coffee shop directly across the street from my own apartment building.’

  ‘I doubt it has the same fringe benefits,’ he drawled.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know—the young guy who serves behind the counter at weekends is pretty hot.’

  It was Eva’s turn to laugh as Markos growled low in his throat, but that laughter faded as she became aware that it was the first time for a very long time that she had felt so relaxed in a man’s company she was actually allowing herself to flirt with him. And Markos was the very last man she should be feeling relaxed or flirtatious with!

  She straightened on the barstool. ‘He’s about nineteen years old, and probably not into older women who could do with losing a few pounds,’ she said dryly.

  ‘Are you serious?’ Markos gave her a disbelieving look.

  She gave a perplexed frown. ‘Sorry?’

  He gave a shake of his head. ‘Eva, that nineteen-year-old in the coffee shop probably has his tongue hanging out the whole time he’s serving you your coffee!’

  She scowled. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

  He gave a pained wince. ‘Eva, exactly what do you see when you look in the mirror?’

  ‘I don’t understand…’

  Her puzzlement was so totally without guile or artifice that Markos was left in no doubts as to it being genuine. His expression softened. ‘Maybe if I were to tell you what I see when I look at you…?’

  Eva eyed him warily. ‘This conversation isn’t going to get insulting, is it?’

  ‘Hardly!’ Markos grimaced as he recognised that’s exactly what he currently was: hard and hot and throbbing, as he always seemed to be when he was in Eva’s company. And when not in her company too, if the last two days were any indication. ‘Can it be that you really don’t know—don’t see—how stunningly, incredibly gorgeous you are?’

  She shifted uncomfortably. ‘Could we get back to discussing a colour scheme for your sitting room—?’

  ‘Let’s see.’ Markos chose to ignore her change of subject as he looked across at her consideringly. ‘Your hair is the colour of midnight—black with a blue sheen—and your eyes—oh, God. I could talk about your eyes all night! They are the colour of the purest gold. Hot—’

  ‘Markos—’

  ‘Molten gold I could happily drown in,’ he continued remorselessly. ‘And your skin is as pale and unflawed as alabaster. And your mouth!’ His voice darkened smokily. ‘Would you like me to tell you the things I have imagined those softly sensuous and pouting lips doing to me these past two days?’

  The blood in Eva’s veins was now pounding as ‘hot and molten’ as the way Markos had seconds ago described her pale brown eyes, and she shifted uncomfortably as she felt an echoing heat between her thighs, dampening her panties.

  Her denims chafed against the arousal nestled there. An arousal that, until meeting Markos Lyonedes, she hadn’t believed herself capable of feeling. An arousal she didn’t want to feel. Not for Markos. Not for any man!

  Jack had been only too eloquent in his criticisms of her on the day they’d parted for the last time. He had scathingly told her how it was her fault he had turned to other women, that she had let herself go since learning they wouldn’t have a baby together, that she had always lacked the social graces necessary in his wife, that her hair needed professional styling rather than being left to grow naturally, and that her fuller figure wasn’t only unfashionable but a total turn-off sexually.

  Oh, Eva hadn’t been so without self-esteem by that time that she hadn’t known some of his remarks had been made out of pique, deliberately designed to hurt her because she had finally had enough of Jack and his affairs, but that didn’t mean his criticisms hadn’t
hurt, or remained as a vulnerability buried deep inside her.

  Which was perhaps the reason why she had decided she didn’t need another man permanently in her life.

  There was no perhaps about it: her unhappy marriage to Jack and the hurtful things he had said to her that last day were precisely the reasons Eva had made the drastic decision not to remarry and to have the baby she craved on her own, through IVF.

  And yet she couldn’t seem to find the words to stop Markos as he continued gruffly, ‘I’ve imagined you licking and kissing my chest and nipples, your lips and tongue hot and moist as they move down my stomach to my—’

  ‘Markos, please…!’ Eva groaned in breathless protest, even as she felt her own nipples ache beneath her blouse. Just from listening to Markos describe having her make love to him? Oh, God…!

  His eyes were dark now, burning with the same desire that coursed through Eva. ‘But I have not yet finished telling you how beautiful you are.’ He gave a self-derisive shake of his head. ‘First let me say that you do not need to lose even one pound in weight. You are perfection just as you are,’ he added firmly, his voice once again clipped and precise, but this time with forceful decisiveness rather than anger.

  She gave a rueful shake of her head. ‘I—’

  ‘Eva, there are very few men who actually prefer women with no breasts or hips,’ he continued determinedly. ‘That is a myth which has been perpetrated by dress designers and by women themselves, I believe.’ The darkness of his gaze swept over her appreciatively.

  ‘The fullness of your breasts is exactly the right size to fit perfectly into the palms of my hands.’

  ‘That’s only because you have large hands.’

  ‘And all of me is in proportion,’ Markos assured her as he reached across the table to clasp one of Eva’s smaller hands in his. ‘Eva, who told you that you are not sexy and beautiful? What ungrateful, stupid man could ever have told you such lies?’

  Eva couldn’t breathe. Markos’s sensually descriptive words had aroused her to the point where she had briefly dropped the safeguards that had got her through the past five years—the last two years of her marriage to Jack, suffering his numerous affairs, and the past three avoiding any relationship that even looked as if it might touch her emotionally.

  But Markos was a man who had refused from the first to take no for an answer. A man who was now demanding answers to questions that were too painful for Eva to answer.

  She pulled her hands free of his before getting abruptly to her feet. ‘Has it occurred to you that maybe it was a woman?’ she challenged scornfully, deliberately. ‘That maybe the reason I’m not interested in a relationship with you is because I’m not into men?’

  Markos sat back on the stool. ‘No.’

  Eva blinked. ‘Just…no?’

  ‘Just no, Just Eva,’ he drawled dryly.

  She eyed him scathingly. ‘Is that male arrogance talking?’

  ‘Or the knowledge that seconds ago you were as aroused as I am?’

  Her gaze slid down from his, across the rapid and shallow rise and fall of his chest, the flatness of his stomach, down to—

  Eva’s breath caught in her throat as she saw the thick hard length of Markos’s arousal clearly outlined against the press of his jeans.

  He hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said that everything about him was in proportion.

  ‘You are so beautiful you make my chest ache, and so desirable you obviously make another part of me ache.’

  ‘Please, Markos—did your years of living in England teach you nothing about our reserve?’ she cut in to prevent him making what she was sure was going to be another embarrassing—arousing!—statement.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ He walked slowly towards her. ‘But fortunately I am Greek, and we Greeks are far less reserved in our appreciation of a woman.’

  He was standing so close to her now—just a heartbeat away—that Eva could feel the heat of his body, smell that lemon soap and sandalwood aftershave. That heat and the male smell that was uniquely Markos was now curling about her, invading her senses until she could no longer think straight.

  If she had been thinking straight then she would never have allowed this situation to get so completely out of hand. So charged with sexual awareness she could almost reach out and touch it…

  Markos drew his breath in sharply at the first touch of Eva’s hands against his chest. Her palms seemed to burn through the thin material of his shirt to sear the flesh beneath. His first instinct was to reach out and pull her into his arms before lowering his mouth to claim hers.

  His first instinct.

  His second instinct warned Markos against moving at all as he allowed Eva’s hands to tentatively seek out and touch the hard contours of his chest and the muscled width of his shoulders, sensing that the slightest movement on his part would result in her once again erecting those barriers around her emotions and needs. Barriers some other bastard had instilled in her, which Markos now realised had resulted in Eva hiding her vulnerability behind a mask of spiky cynicism.

  It quickly became an agony of self-control for him to withstand the caress of her fingers and palms against and over him. His teeth were gritted, his jaw clamped shut, and his hands were clenched tightly at his sides as he resisted the impulse to reach out and take her into his arms. It was an impulse that became even more painful still as her fingertips ran lightly over the front of his denims, against his thickened length.

  Eva’s caresses grew bolder as she felt the pulsing response beneath her fingertips, and she knew a deep and compelling need to release that aroused hardness from the confines of Markos’s jeans and—

  She snatched her hand away before moving back abruptly. ‘I think this has gone quite far enough!’ Her voice came out husky and breathless rather than conveying the firm resolve she had hoped it would.

  Markos groaned low in his throat, wanting, needing so much more, but instead he allowed himself to be guided by those instincts that warned against pushing Eva too far too fast. ‘Will you come to a party with me on Saturday evening?’

  Startled, she raised her lids. ‘What…?’

  Markos gave a pained smile in acknowledgement of the fact that his obvious arousal made this the last thing Eva had expected him to say. But he knew that the invitation he wanted to make—for her to stay on here now, so that the two of them could cook dinner together—would be met with a blunt refusal. As would his plans for what happened after dinner…

  ‘I have been invited to a party on Saturday evening, and I would very much like it if you would agree to be the guest included on my invitation.’

  She blinked. ‘You’re asking me out on a date?’

  Markos chose his words with care, having realised in the past few minutes that he still needed to go slowly with this particular woman, that to do anything else would only drive her away. ‘I am asking you to accompany me to a party on Saturday rather than leaving me to spend the evening alone in a room full of strangers.’

  She shook her head. ‘You must know your host to have been invited in the first place.’

  ‘He is a business associate. Nothing more.’ Markos shrugged dismissively.

  Eva smiled wryly. ‘There are sure to be dozens of beautiful women there, so I doubt you’ll remain alone for long—’

  ‘And I would prefer to take my own beautiful woman,’ he interrupted firmly.

  Her cheeks warmed. ‘I am not your—’

  ‘Eva, please.’ Markos cut off her protest gruffly. ‘For business reasons I have to attend this party, and for personal reasons I would like you to accompany me.’

  When he put it like that…

  Every instinct of self-preservation Eva possessed told her to say no to Markos’s invitation. To stand by her earlier decision to recommend he use another interior designer, and then refuse to see him again.

  She should say no. She had to say no. She must say no.

  ‘In that case I would be pleased to accompany you. Thank
you for asking me,’ she heard herself say softly.

  Markos chuckled huskily when he saw the chagrined expression appear on Eva’s face immediately after she had accepted his invitation. ‘Sometimes instinct can be stronger than logic, hmm…?’ he suggested mischievously.

  ‘And sometimes instinct can be a complete pain in the—!’ She broke off with a grimace. ‘I’ll meet you here, if that’s okay?’

  ‘Because you do not wish me to come to your apartment?’ Markos guessed easily.

  ‘Not at all.’ She frowned her irritation. ‘I’ll probably have some preliminary sketches and colour charts to bring over for you to look at by then, anyway,’ she added briskly.

  It was in an effort, no doubt, to put their relationship back on a businesslike footing. A businesslike footing Markos felt sure Eva had previously decided they wouldn’t even be having. Her visit here this evening had been in response to Markos’s threat of two days ago rather than any real intention of working for him.

  ‘Bring them, by all means. I had intended to arrive at the party at about nine o’clock, so if you were to come here at eight, that should give us time to look at your sketches before we leave.’

  ‘Fine,’ Eva agreed tersely—and realised she had just committed herself to the redesigning of his apartment.

  She looked so annoyed with herself for doing so, so irritated, that Markos didn’t know whether to laugh or kiss her.

  ‘It is no good, Eva, I have to kiss you again!’ He groaned as he moved to put his arms lightly about her waist. ‘Just once, hmm?’ he encouraged throatily, lowering his head slowly towards hers. She seemed too surprised to protest.

  Markos was determined not to send Eva hurtling off into the night this time, so he restrained his need to devour her and kissed her slowly, lightly, tasting her lips as she stood stiffly in his arms rather than giving in to the desire to swing her up into his arms and carry her off to his bedroom.