by Fiona Brand
She stared at a pulse beating at the side of his throat, feeling even sicker than she had when eating the cake. “But when Mario suggested you should marry me, you didn’t agree.”
“I promised to see you married—”
“But you would never have chosen to marry me.” A couple whirled past, Zane and Lilah, utterly absorbed in one another, both wildly in love, the complete opposite of her and Kyle. “You just had to in the end, because I ran out of time.”
His hold on her tightened infinitesimally. “It wasn’t exactly like that and you know it.”
She stopped dancing and pulled free. “Then how was it?” She felt tense and on edge, her heart pounding. She wanted to believe that Kyle felt something more for her than duty and desire, but she also knew she had to try and be objective. No burying her head in the sand.
He caught her fingers and pulled her close again. “If I hadn’t wanted you for myself, I would have let you go ahead and marry one of the men you chose.” He paused. “You know I want you, and after that night on the beach, I think you know how much.”
She drew a breath. “What about...love?”
His gaze cooled. “What about it?”
She tilted her head and looked into Kyle’s face, the blue of his eyes, his Mediterranean heritage obvious in his olive skin, the clean cut of his cheekbones and jaw. “I love you.” The words were flat and declarative, but she couldn’t hide what she wanted. “The question is, can you love again, after losing your wife and child?”
Can you love me?
He did a slow turn into an alcove of the room that was private. “We need to slow this down. You agreed to a legal marriage,” he said quietly, “one you stipulated would be without sex. That’s not exactly a recipe for love.”
Eva instantly regretted trying to lever some kind of confession of love from Kyle. She hated the enigmatic expression on his face, as if he needed to conceal his emotions in case she saw what he was really feeling. She had seen that look on the faces of social workers and foster parents when she’d been passed from home to home as a kid. It was duty, minus emotion, the exact opposite of what she wanted!
She met his gaze squarely. “Can you really separate love from passion so completely?”
“Eva—”
“No, don’t say it. Don’t say anything.” The conversation had always been risky, but she had blown it completely, because while failing to obtain any admission from Kyle, he now knew that she loved him.
Her cheeks burned at the kind of vulnerability she had spent years avoiding. “Ask a silly question...” she said a little bitterly. “People separate love from sex all the time.”
Only, she never did. She had only ever slept with the one man she loved.
Turning on her heel, she left the room. As she walked, she could feel Kyle’s gaze boring into her back. As soon as she stepped out into the spacious foyer, she felt better. At times their relationship had felt like a game, but it wasn’t anymore; it was serious and important, because she needed Kyle to love her. This morning it had felt as if they were balanced on the brink of that possibility, but now...
Lifting her skirts, she took the stairs to the upper level. She was hot, her feet were hurting and after possibly the most embarrassing conversation of her life she needed a moment. As she stepped into the dimness of the upstairs hall, she almost walked into Constantine who was quietly strolling along with Amber dead asleep over one broad shoulder. Eva stared at the picture father and daughter made then quietly escaped into her room.
Peeling off her shoes, she sat down on the edge of her bed. Tired of coping with the dress and its long skirt, she started on the buttons and eventually managed to ease out of the layers of silk and tulle.
She changed into a light silk shift in rich summer shades of berry red, with touches of pink, purple and leaf green. Hanging the bridal gown in the closet, she slipped on a pair of comfortable sandals that left her feet mostly bare.
After checking her makeup to make sure the dampness in her eyes hadn’t smudged her mascara, she spritzed herself with perfume and walked back downstairs. As she reached the last tread, the front door, which was not locked, swung quietly open and a face from the past that she hoped she would never see again stopped her in her tracks.
Sheldon Ferris, his countenance deceptively average—the boy next door grown into middle age—smiled, his gaze taking in the rich foyer, “Nice house. You’ve done well for yourself.”
Eva’s fingers tightened on the banister. “I don’t know how you found me, but you need to leave now, before I ring the police.”
His gaze darted to either side, checking to see if anyone was about to disturb them. “And charge me with what? Knocking on your door?”
“I know it was you who trashed my house. I haven’t given the police your name yet, but if I do, by next week there could well be a warrant out for your arrest.”
Fear flashed across his expression, but it was replaced almost immediately by a hard-eyed determination. “And I know why you haven’t given them my name. You don’t want anyone to know about your trashy background—”
“There’s nothing wrong with my background.”
“Then why is it such a big secret? I checked. There are plenty of stories about your modeling success, but nothing about your past. But I guess if you don’t care about your gutter upbringing, you won’t mind if I splash it all over the press. I can see the headline now, ‘Street kid, sex symbol rises to become Atraeus heiress.’”
“You know very well I was not a street kid, or a sex—”
“Give me what I want and I won’t sell the story. I’ll leave you alone for good.” He named a figure that was even larger than the one he had quoted before. “Pay up, and I won’t tell your new husband what’s wrong with you. You’ll never hear from me again.”
Eva sincerely doubted that. She stared at the shifty gleam in his eyes, not for the first time wondering what her mother had ever seen in him. She guessed he had been younger and handsome in a lean way; now he was a little heavier with gray at his temples and his suit had seen better days. “I’m not paying you a cent. And if you think you can threaten me with telling Kyle anything at all about my past, you can forget it. Believe me, nothing you could ever say would make any difference to our marriage.”
And that was nothing more than the truth.
The sound of footsteps made Ferris shrink back onto the front porch: the fear in his expression was palpable. Eva didn’t wait to see who it was, no doubt strolling from the sitting room down the hall to the bathroom. She grasped the edge of the door and looked Ferris square in the face. “Mario had information about you. Pretty sure, if I look long enough, I’ll find out what it was, and when I do, I’ll take it to the police.”
She closed the door firmly and held her breath as the shadow of Ferris’s outline seen through the frosted glass disappeared. Feeling empowered that she had faced down her ex-stepfather, who had always been something of a bully, Eva walked back upstairs to her room and found her tote bag.
Extracting her phone, she rang Auckland Central and left a message for Detective Hicks to let him know that Ferris had called at her house, demanding money. She also stated that he had been harassing her and that she was certain he was the person who had broken into her house. The next call was to the PI she had retained. He didn’t pick up, either, so she left a message asking him to forward any information he had found out about Ferris to Detective Hicks.
She hung up and considered the threat Ferris had made. She knew he would carry through and go to the press, which meant she was out of time.
Her heart squeezed tight as she considered what the disclosure of her dysfunctional background and her genetic disorder would do to her relationships with her adoptive family and with Kyle. Kyle wanted her sexually, and they had shared tender moments, but he had just not had enough
time to fall for her. She had hoped they would have time, but if she was pregnant, her time had run out.
When she replaced the phone in her bag, her fingers brushed the pregnancy test kit she had bought.
As much as she needed to know if she was pregnant or not, she couldn’t do the test right now, because to do so was to know the truth. And if she was pregnant, she would be honor bound to tell Kyle.
In retrospect, her decision to veto sex had been a huge mistake.
She loved Kyle; she had loved him for years. It was a depressing thought, but she had to wonder if she would ever fall for anyone else, or if Kyle was it for her. If that was the case, and she was beginning to think it was, then she couldn’t let him go without a fight.
She was out of time. She needed to try one last time with Kyle, no matter how exposing or hurtful it was. She needed to change the rules and exploit the one power she did hold in the hope that Kyle would, finally, fall for her.
She needed to make love to her husband on their wedding night.
Thirteen
Kyle would have followed Eva if one of the aunts hadn’t buttonholed him. After frustrating minutes of listening to a genealogy that went back to some obscure coastal village in Phoenicia, now modern-day Lebanon, his younger brother, Damian, took pity on him, clapped him on the shoulder and insisted he help him with the marquee.
Snagging a couple of bottles frosted with condensation, Damian handed one to Kyle and jerked his head in the direction of the tent, which was flapping gently in the evening breeze. “Aunt Emilia and the family tree,” Damian’s expression took on a hunted cast. “How far back did she get? The First Crusade?”
“Not quite. You interrupted her during the Third.”
“Cool. You owe me one.”
Damian bypassed the marquee entirely and stopped where the edge of the lawn dropped away to the small crescent beach below. “Although, strictly speaking, I’m in your debt.”
Beginning to be annoyed, because he was certain Damian was referring to his marriage, Kyle watched the sun as it sank by slow increments into the sea, casting a brassy glow across the water. “You are not in my debt.”
Damian gave him an, are-you-for-real look. “You did the deed,” he said mildly. “I didn’t think you’d let Mario pressure you into marrying Eva.”
Kyle’s jaw tightened. “Don’t talk about my wife like that,” he said softly. He met Damian’s gaze. Damian, for all his youth, was something of a hard-ass, but Kyle had lived and fought with tougher men. “Mario applied pressure on all of us, but that wasn’t why I married Eva.”
“I don’t believe it—you’re in love with her.”
Kyle frowned at the conclusion Damian had reached. What he felt for Eva was deep and turbulent. When other attractions had faded, somehow the fiery sexual connection that sparked between them when they were teenagers had held. For reasons he could not fathom, Eva was different for him. But he did not think the difference was about love.
For a start, because he’d spent so many years staying away from Eva, he didn’t know about large chunks of her life. Come to that, he didn’t know about almost any aspect of her life until Mario had adopted her.
His lack of knowledge about Eva made him frown. He had already engaged a security firm to put together a file for him. It was too late in the day to check with them now, but he would make it his business to check on progress in the morning.
Damian finished his beer, checked his watch and indicated they should walk back to the house. “I forgot that you once had a thing for Eva. After you lost Nicola and the baby, I guess I didn’t think you’d marry again.”
The mention of Nicola and Evan made Kyle’s chest tighten, although, like the conversation he’d had with Eva in the car the night they’d made love, he was actually able to think of them again without reliving the horror of the explosion. Somehow, the one thing he hadn’t thought would happen had: he was finally beginning to heal.
Kyle let the still-full bottle of beer dangle from his fingers. “I miss Nicola and Evan,” he said flatly. He and Nicola had had a good life together. She had come from a military family and had understood the life. They had traveled together and eventually made a baby together. “But they’re gone.”
He frowned as the conversation referenced the thought that had not been far from his mind for a couple of weeks now, the possibility, even if it was remote, that he could be a father again despite what Eva had said.
He examined how he would feel if she was pregnant and hit the same blank wall he had lived with for years. The raw fact was he just couldn’t go there again. He couldn’t be a father again.
Damian strolled onto the patio. “Nice piece of real estate.”
Kyle scanned the guests, although he couldn’t spot Eva. “The twins told me about it.”
“I didn’t know Sophie and Francesca were in the market for a house.”
“They weren’t,” he said deliberately. “Eva was.”
Damian shook his head. “I don’t know why I was so worried.” Shaking his head, he clapped Kyle on the shoulder and strolled off to join his girlfriend. Sky was a lean blonde, with ultrashort hair and dark eyes and who could ride a stock horse almost as well as Damian.
Kyle dragged at his tie, loosening it. Damian thought he had fallen for Eva and had bought her the house as a gift. He should correct him, but there was no way he could lay bare the truth that he had used the house as leverage in order to convince Eva that she should move in with him.
The whole business had involved a ruthless streak he had not known he possessed, although it was a fact that ruthless male behavior ran in the family. Constantine had kidnapped Sienna, and Lucas had decided not to mess with a successful formula and had done the same with his wife, Carla. Kyle’s oldest brother, Gabriel, had proposed a fake engagement to keep his wife Gemma in his bed, and Nick had not been much better, luring Elena to the Dolphin Bay Resort under false pretenses then cheating on a bet to get her in his bed.
Frowning when he didn’t immediately see Eva, Kyle deposited the beer he hadn’t bothered to drink on a table and went to find her, but instead got caught up in a flurry of goodbyes as Constantine, Lucas and Zane, all with arms full of sleepy kids, made their way to their cars. The caterer had finished packing up his equipment and had left while he’d been talking to Damian and, thankfully, so had the bevy of aunts.
Damian, his jacket slung over one shoulder, his arm wrapped securely around Sky, lifted a hand in farewell. He was followed by the twins, who grinned, kissed and hugged him, signifying that the conclusion Damian had jumped to had spread through the family like wildfire.
By the time Kyle stepped back inside, the house seemed eerily empty, except for the kitchen staff who were busily tidying up glasses and bottles in the sitting room.
Jerking his tie from his shirt, Kyle walked to the French doors and began closing the house up for the night. As he locked the last door, he checked his watch. It had been a good thirty minutes since he and Eva had argued on the dance floor.
His stomach tightened at the thought that Eva might have been upset enough to walk out. And in that moment he realized that, despite his attempts to control the way he felt about her, he hadn’t succeeded. It had been evident in his knee-jerk reaction when Damian had spoken about Eva and the way he had claimed her as his wife.
It was evident in the way he felt now. Tension coursed through him at the thought that Eva might have been upset enough after their conversation to leave him, then a footfall registered and he turned to see her walking down the stairs.
A van door sliding closed then the roar of the caterer’s van heading down the drive sounded.
Kyle noticed the test kit in her hands and went still inside. “What’s the result?”
Eva reached the bottom of the stairs, her face oddly pale. “I haven’t used it ye
t. I guess I’m a coward, but the plain fact is I don’t want to know until tomorrow.”
She slipped the tube back into its box and placed it on a hall table and walked toward him. “There’s just one other thing. I’ve changed my mind.”
She stopped close enough that she could feel the heat emanating from Kyle’s skin. She ran a finger down his chest. The heady masculine scents of clean skin and the subtle spice of sandalwood made her head spin.
Kyle’s hand curled over hers, holding her palm to his chest. “What about?”
Lifting up on her toes, she boldly wound one arm around his neck, leaned in close and gently bit down on one lobe. “About the clause in the agreement that prohibits sex. If anyone is going to sleep with my husband, it’s going to be me.”
“There’s not exactly a line.” When she would have drawn back, his hands closed on her hips, holding her against him. “I’ll get my lawyer to strike out the clause in the morning.”
“But as long as we have a verbal agreement, the new condition is in effect.”
“We could shake on it,” he muttered, “but I’ve got a better idea.” Lowering his head, he finally did what she had been dying for him to do ever since the wedding ceremony; he kissed her.
Long minutes later, the world went sideways as Kyle picked her up. When he reached the top of the stairs, instead of going into her room, he continued on down the hall and into the master suite, where he set her on her feet. The sun was down now, and the room was dim with shadows. Moonlight silvered the walls and threw light over the large bed occupying the middle of the room.
Kyle cupped her face and bending, he kissed her again. “Since we have a new agreement, this is where you’ll be sleeping from now on.”
She tried to both kiss him and start on the buttons of his shirt. When he finally lifted his mouth, she finished the buttons. “You won’t get an argument from me.”
“Can I get that in writing?”
“No chance.” She caught the corner of his grin, as if he liked it that she argued with him, and out of nowhere hope flared, built on the foundation of a long-ago friendship and the mystifying strength of the connection that had always sizzled between them.
