by Fiona Brand
The extended silence that accompanied Kyle’s smooth insertion into city traffic underlined the fact that he wasn’t happy with the idea of a wedding in a church.
Suddenly incensed, Eva contemplated telling Kyle to pull over so she could get out and walk back to her office. Her shoes were too high, her feet would hurt and she’d probably wilt in the heat, but it would be worth it. “If you think I’m going to stand in some dusty registrar’s office somewhere, you can forget it.”
Eva backed her statement with a fiery glance, in that moment prepared to cancel the wedding, cancel her very important plans for her business and the gorgeous house of her dreams—all disastrous consequences. It occurred to her that somewhere between sleeping with Kyle and agreeing to marry him she had lost her perspective and was hatching into a fully-fledged bridezilla.
Kyle muttered something curt beneath his breath as he accelerated through an intersection. “Are you always this difficult?”
Eva stared at oncoming traffic, barely seeing it. “You know I am. Mario would have wanted a church wedding. It’s important.”
“I guess I keep forgetting I’m marrying a wedding planner.”
The easy way he said the words as if, ultimately, Kyle was relaxed with the whole idea of marriage and prepared to give her her way, doused the escalating tension. The dress, the ring and getting married in church might seem inconsequential to Kyle, but they mattered to Eva. Her upbringing with Mario had always included the church. In their small family, faith had been central, deep and important. She wouldn’t feel married if it wasn’t done in a church.
Kyle braked as traffic slowed. “Which church and what time?”
Kyle’s sudden change of heart about the church, the ease with which he had adapted, sparked a suspicion. “You knew about the church all along.”
“I didn’t know the details, but the twins gave me a heads-up.”
Which meant, since he hadn’t mentioned it before, that he had more than likely saved the knowledge as a bargaining chip. In this case, to make sure she had the engagement ring he wanted to give her.
Feeling suddenly, blazingly happy that he had gone to so much trouble for her, she gave him the details. “It’s the little church just down from the house. I was lucky enough to get it at short notice.”
The vicar hadn’t liked having his arm twisted, since he’d had to reschedule a regular session of the La Leche League, who had their monthly meeting in an adjacent room, but she had doubled the fee, which had smoothed things over.
A bus up ahead stopped for a set of lights. Eva winced as she recognized one of her last lingerie advertisements splashed over the rear of the bus.
The fizzing happiness died a death. Just what she needed, a reminder that Kyle was marrying a woman who was more recognizable to the general population half-naked than fully dressed. And in that moment it hit her what that would mean to a man who made his living in the ultraconservative world of banking. To say that she was an unsuitable wife for a man who dealt with the stiff etiquette of that social world was a massive understatement.
A car peeled right and, as luck would have it, they ended up snug behind the bus, with her airbrushed, overly enhanced cleavage looming large. Eva’s fingers tightened on her handbag, as any hope that Kyle had not seen the advertisement faded.
When she had been modeling, the profession had been so competitive that this particular lingerie shoot had seemed a good business move. It had certainly kept her in public view, but until now she had not noticed how tacky the posters were.
Even more on edge now, she stared at Kyle’s profile, the clean-cut strength of his jaw and the way his broken nose made him look even sexier. “Maybe you shouldn’t marry me.”
Kyle’s gaze captured hers. “What’s wrong now?”
The mild, patient way he asked the question, as if she was a high-maintenance girlfriend with issues, made her stiffen. “Won’t marrying me be a problem in terms of your career?”
Mario had thrown up his hands often enough at her decision to become a lingerie model. Added to that, over the years Eva had become sharply aware that her career, coupled with the Atraeus name, had guaranteed the kind of prying, intrusive media attention she hated.
Kyle pulled into a reserved space in the crowded, popular enclave that was the Viaduct, a collection of bars and cafés and apartments on the waterfront, just a stone’s throw from the central heart of Auckland. Unfastening his seat belt, he half turned to face her, and suddenly the interior of the Maserati seemed suffocatingly small. “Is this about the lingerie ads?”
She met his gaze squarely. “It could affect your business. I mean, won’t there be occasions when I have to socialize with some of your clients?”
“Honey, I part own the bank. I can buy and sell most of my clients. If they’ve got a problem with my wife, they can take their business elsewhere.”
A curious tingling sensation riveted her to her seat. As Kyle exited the car, she registered what that sensation was: the recognition that in that moment something basic and utterly primitive had taken place. Without so much as the blink of an eye, Kyle had informed her that she was more important than his business. More, he had given her an assurance that he would uphold her honor and protect her unconditionally. An assurance that was guaranteed to melt her all the way through, because he had made her feel that she belonged to him.
Suddenly, it did not seem like a marriage of convenience to Eva.
Kyle opened her door and held out his hand. Still feeling electrified by the uncompromising way Kyle had stated his solidarity with her, his intention, on the surface of things, to treat her as a real wife, Eva put her hand in his. When she straightened, for a moment she was close enough to Kyle that she could see the crystalline clarity of his irises and the intriguing dark striations, the inky blackness of his lashes.
Only one other person had done the same, and that had been Mario.
She was aware that Kyle would know some of the details of her background, but only the parts that she and Mario had agreed could be known. He did not know about the genetic disorder, the deaths of her brother and sisters and her mother’s depression; the constant moves to avoid one of her mother’s violent boyfriends. He could not know or guess how difficult it was for her to trust anyone.
She had entrusted herself to Kyle, and now she knew why. Somehow, beneath the battle lines they had drawn for so long and all the tension and clashes, she had recognized that bedrock quality in Kyle. It was the same quality that had attracted her when she was seventeen and still raw from the disintegration of her family and being handed through a list of foster homes. It explained why she had never really forgotten him, even though he had walked away.
For a split second, his gaze rested on her mouth, and she realized that in his sharp, percipient way, he had picked up on the intensity of her thoughts and was going to pull her close and kiss her. She was so sure of it that she unconsciously rebalanced her weight to lean in close.
“Kyle! I saw you from across the street. I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”
“Elise. I was going to call you.”
Eva stiffened as a tall, narrow brunette with dainty features and a simple silk shift and jacket that she instantly recognized as Chanel, stepped up to Kyle and kissed him on the cheek. The extremity of Eva’s reaction was easily recognizable; she was jealous. Why she hadn’t considered that Kyle had a girlfriend she didn’t know.
Kyle disentangled himself, his expression neutral. His arm came around her as he introduced Elise, a financial consultant with a rival bank. In clipped tones, he introduced Eva as his fiancée.
There was a moment of stony silence, and Eva found it in herself to be sorry for Elise.
Elise recovered fast. “I know you from somewhere.”
That would probably be from the back of a bus, Eva thought.
; Minutes later, Kyle unlocked a private entrance sandwiched between a high-end restaurant and an award-winning café. A few seconds in a private high-speed elevator, and they stepped out into the hushed foyer of a penthouse suite.
Opening a tall bleached oak door, Kyle indicated she should precede him. A little perplexed that Kyle had brought her to his apartment, rather than a café, Eva stepped into an elegant, spare hall that opened out into a huge light space. Beech floors flowed to a wall built almost entirely of glass, with sliding doors that opened onto a patio.
The apartment was vast and overlooked the bustling Viaduct with cafés and bars and a marina filled with colorful yachts. Further out the Harbour Bridge arched across the Waitemata Harbour linking the North Shore to Auckland City. To the right the quirky suburb of Devonport with its jumble of Victorian houses was clearly visible, and beyond, in the hazy distance, the cone-shaped Rangitoto Island.
A dapper man in a suit rose from one of the long leather couches grouped around a coffee table. “Mr. Messena, Miss Atraeus.”
Kyle introduced her to Ambrose Wilson, the manager of a store that was very familiar to Eva, because a branch of her family owned it. Originally Ambrosi Pearls, the Auckland branch had recently expanded into diamonds.
Wilson indicated the long, low coffee table on which were placed several black velvet display trays that glittered with an array of diamond rings.
As Eva sat down, she fought a sense of disorientation that her wedding was in two days’ time.
As she stared at the gorgeous rings, words she hadn’t meant to say spilled out, “Was Elise important?”
Kyle, who had shrugged out of his jacket, tossed it over the back of one of the couches and loosened off his tie. “We dated a few times. Mostly at business functions.”
And they hadn’t slept together, she was suddenly sure of it. Relief flooded her. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She didn’t want to feel all twisted up and jealous, but lately she seemed unable to control her moods and Elise had pushed some buttons she hadn’t even known she had.
Kyle frowned. “Does it matter?”
Eva forced a smile and picked a ring at random. “Of course not.”
But if Kyle had been sleeping with Elise while he had been acting as the trustee of Mario’s will, surveilling her and preventing her from getting married, all bets would have been off.
The thought pulled her up sharply as she considered where it was taking her. She could only ever recall feeling like this once before, and that had been years ago when Kyle had gotten engaged to Nicola and she had been fiercely, deeply jealous. But that had been because she had been in puppy love with Kyle, and she was not in love with him now; she could not be.
A little dazed, she slipped the ring onto her finger without really seeing it.
Kyle frowned. “That one isn’t right.”
“How can you know that?”
“I don’t spend all my time with my head buried in stocks and bonds.”
She examined the ring, with its delicate bridge of three perfectly matched diamonds. It was an expensive but very conventional ring, and he was right, she didn’t like it.
Kyle picked up a ring that had its own velvet tray, a classic square-cut diamond that blazed with a pure white fire. The central diamond was large but elegant and framed by tiny white diamonds that glittered and flashed. The setting was platinum, which added to the clean, classical look of the ring. “You should wear something like this. It’s pure. Flawless, wouldn’t you say, Wilson?”
Wilson, who had been sitting at a side table with his laptop open, strolled over to look at the ring. “That’s correct. It was originally a ten-carat diamond, but we worked with it until we achieved an utterly flawless gem.”
Eva met Kyle’s gaze. He lifted a brow, and she suddenly realized what he was getting at with the ring. He knew. He knew that she had been a virgin when they had first made love. She went hot then cold. Normally when she had a fight-or-flight reaction, her instinct was to fight. This time running would have been the preferred option.
With an effort of will, she smoothed out her expression and replaced the ring she had picked up. When she would have slipped the ring Kyle had selected onto the third finger of her left hand, he preempted her and did it himself, the brush of his fingers sending tingling heat shooting through her.
Kyle’s gaze was unnervingly intent. “Do you like it?”
She was trying not to love the ring too much, but it was as perfect as Kyle’s unexpected gesture in acknowledging the gift she had given him when they had made love. She cleared her throat so her voice wouldn’t sound thick and husky when she spoke. “Yes, it’s beautiful. Thank you.”
“Good.” Kyle turned his head in Wilson’s direction. “We’re taking the ring.”
Wilson produced another box from his briefcase. “Now would be a good opportunity for you to both try on wedding rings.”
Reluctantly slipping the engagement ring off, she tried the platinum band Wilson handed her for size. The band, which had been made to match the engagement ring she’d chosen, fit perfectly, so in the end the choice was a no-brainer. Returning the band to its box, she slipped the engagement ring back on her finger.
Within minutes, Wilson had packed up the cases of rings and departed. Eva had no clue what the ring cost, although she could hazard it would run into the hundreds of thousands, if not more. No money had changed hands. But, since the Messena family were bankers for The Atraeus Group and related by blood, no doubt the transaction would take place in a more relaxed way.
Kyle checked his watch. “We need to eat then I’ll take you back to work.”
While Kyle was taking plastic-covered plates of preprepared food that had been delivered by one of the restaurants downstairs out of the fridge, Eva excused herself and went in search of the bathroom. She stepped into a wide spacious hall with several bedrooms opening off it.
The hall, like the rest of the apartment, was stylish, but bare, as if Kyle had no interest in creating a home. She had noticed the lack of artwork and family photos in the sitting room, so the two framed photos gracing the wall at the far end of the hall stuck out like a sore thumb and immediately drew her.
The largest one was of a woman with long, tawny hair and a striking tan as she stood on a street in a bright, summery dress, her arms bare as she grinned and waved at the camera. Eva instantly recognized Nicola, Kyle’s wife. The second frame was much smaller and showed Kyle cradling a sleeping baby, his expression intent and absorbed as he studied the small, slumbering face.
Her heart squeezed tight as she looked at the baby, and she suddenly understood why the pictures were here and not out in the sitting room, or even placed more privately in his bedroom. It was as if Kyle couldn’t bear that kind of constant exposure to his loss, but neither could he bear to not have the photos, so he had placed them in the hall, an area he didn’t linger.
The look on Kyle’s face as he held his son briefly riveted her and, for a splintered moment, the years spun back. Her own mother hadn’t coped with losing her children. And suddenly, she understood that Kyle didn’t just not want more children; after what had happened, he couldn’t bear to have any more.
Eva had lost her brother and sisters and, ultimately, her mother. But she could not imagine the grief of losing a child.
Feeling subtly unsettled by the window into Kyle’s past, she stepped into the cool, tiled bathroom. After using the facilities, she found herself staring at her reflection and wondering how on earth she could compete with the wife Kyle had loved and chosen, and who had died.
On impulse, Eva took the pins out of her hair and let it fall around her shoulders, much as Nicola’s had in the photo—then, feeling foolish, recoiled and repinned it.
She wasn’t Nicola and never could be. Nicola had been fresh-faced, cute and athle
tic, while Eva was curvy and sultry and city sleek. From everything she had heard about Nicola, they were very different. There was no way she could compete. But it was also true that Kyle had never forgotten her.
Heart beating too fast, mind working overtime, Eva reviewed every conversation, the clashes and the fights, the heavy-handed surveillance, the lovemaking and the one salutary fact that couldn’t be ignored. After staying away from her for ten years, Kyle had come back. And he hadn’t just blended into the scenery. He had been the dominant male in her life for the past year and had systematically gotten rid of every man she had chosen.
When Eva returned from the bathroom, Kyle had set out a selection of salads, cold meats and a savory quiche on the table. She met his gaze briefly. When his scrutiny dropped to her mouth, the undisciplined tumble of thoughts coalesced into clear knowledge. Kyle had honored her condition that they did not sleep together, but at the same time he had made no bones about the fact that he still wanted her, and not just sexually. She was certain now that he wanted her.
Delightful warmth suffused her. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how much that would matter. But since they had made love, she felt more intimately connected with Kyle, to the point that whenever he was near she hummed with awareness.
Conscious of the weight of the ring on her finger and the flash and glitter of the pretty diamond, Eva filled her plate from a tempting selection of salads. After choosing sparkling water, she followed Kyle out onto the patio.
While she ate, Eva kept glimpsing the diamond on her finger and couldn’t help the rush of pleasure that, aside from the conventional need of a ring, Kyle had been so thoughtful. Under the circumstances, she hadn’t expected a ring, let alone one that was so utterly gorgeous.
Kyle caught her gaze. “I ran into Sophie and Francesca this morning.”
Eva almost choked on a mouthful of sparkling water. If Sophie and Francesca had chosen lives that did not revolve around the fashion industry, they would have been CIA, FBI or some form of Special Forces covert ops, no question. As it was, within the extended Atraeus/Ambrosi/Messena family, they were a force to be reckoned with. “You ran into them or they ran you to ground?”
