CHAPTER ONE
PARADISE was a sleepy island floating in the Caribbean. It had a bar on the beach, rum on tap and the unique sound of island music, which did seductive things to the hot and humid late afternoon air, while beyond the bar’s open rough-wood construction the silky blue ocean lapped lazily against a white-sand shore.
Sitting on a bar stool with a glass of local rum slotted between his fingers, Ethan Hayes decided that it didn’t get any better than this. Admittedly it had taken him more than a week to wind down to the point where he no longer itched to reach for a telephone or felt naked in bare feet and shorts instead of sharp suits and highly polished leather shoes. Now he would even go as far as to say that he liked his new laid-back self. ‘No worries,’ as the locals liked to say, had taken on a whole new meaning for him.
‘You want a refill for that, Mr Hayes?’ The soft melodic tones of an island accent brought his gaze up to meet that of the beautiful brown girl who was serving behind the bar. Her smile held a different kind of invitation.
‘Sure, why not?’ He returned a smile and released his glass to her—without acknowledging the hidden offer.
Sex in this hot climate was the serpent in Paradise. As one’s body temperature rose, so did that particular appetite, Ethan mused, aware that certain parts of him were suggesting he should consider the offer in the bar-girl’s velvet-brown eyes. But he hadn’t come to the island to indulge that specific pleasure, and all it took was the tentative touch of a finger to the corner of his mouth to remind him why he was wary of female entanglement. The bruising to his lip and jaw had faded days ago, but the injury to his dignity hadn’t. It still throbbed in his breast like an angry tiger in dire need of succour for its nagging wound. If a man had any sense, he wouldn’t unleash that tiger on some poor, unsuspecting female; he would keep it severely locked up and avoid temptation at all cost.
Though there was certainly a lot of that about, he acknowledged, as he turned to observe the young woman who was hogging the small bare-board dance floor.
The serpent’s mistress, he named her dryly as he watched her sensual undulations to the music. She was a tall and slender toffee-blonde with a perfect Caribbean tan, wearing a short and sassy hot-pink slip-dress that was an almost perfect match for the pink hibiscus flower she wore tucked into her hair.
Eye-catching, in other words. Too irresistible to leave to dance alone, so it wasn’t surprising that the young men in the bar were lining up to take their turn with her. She had class, she had style, she had beauty, she had grace, and she danced like a siren, shifting from partner to partner with the ease of one who was used to taking centre stage. Her eager young cohorts were enjoying themselves, loving the excuse to get up close and personal, lay their hands on her sensational body and gaze into big green beautiful eyes or watch her lovely mouth break into a smile that promised them everything.
And her name was Eve. Eve as in temptress, the ruin of man.
Or in this case the ruin of these brave young hunters who were aspiring to be her Adam. For she was the It girl on this small Caribbean island, the girl with everything, one of the fortunate few. A daddy’s girl—though in this case it was Grandpa’s girl, and the sole heir to his fabulous fortune.
Money was one hell of an aphrodisiac, Ethan decided cynically. Make her as ugly as sin and he could guarantee that those same guys would still be worshipping at her dainty dancing feet. But as so often was the way for the fabulously wealthy, stunning beauty came along with this package.
She began to laugh; the sound was soft and light and appealingly pleasant. She pouted at her present young hunter and almost brought the poor fool to his knees. Then she caught Ethan’s eyes on her and the cynical look he was wearing on his face. Her smile withered to nothing. Big green come-and-get-me-if-you-dare eyes widened to challenge his cynicism outright. She knew him, he knew her. They had met several times over the last year at her grandfather’s home in Athens, Ethan in his professional role as a design-and-build architect renowned for his creative genius for making new holiday complexes blend into their native surroundings, Eve in her only role as her grandfather’s much loved, much spoiled, gift from the gods.
They did not like each other. In fact mutual antipathy ran in a constant stream between them. Ethan did not like her conceited belief that she had been put on this earth to be worshipped by all, and Eve did not like his outright refusal to fall at her feet. So it was putting it mildly to say that it was unfortunate they should both find themselves holidaying in the same place. The island was small enough for them to be thrown into each other’s company too often for the comfort of either. Sparks tended to fly, forcing hostility to raise its ugly head. Other people picked up on it and didn’t know what to do or say to lighten the atmosphere. Ethan usually solved the problem by withdrawing from the conflict with excuses that he had to be somewhere else.
This time he withdrew by turning away from her, back to the bar and the drink that had just been placed in front of him. But Eve’s image remained standing right there, dancing on the bar top. Proud, defiant, unashamedly provocative—doing things to other parts of him he did not want her to reach.
His serpent in paradise, he grimly named this hot and nagging desire he suffered for Theron Herakleides’ tantalising witch of a granddaughter.
Eve was keeping a happy smile fixed on her face even if it killed her to do it. She despised Ethan Hayes with an absolute vengeance. He made her feel spoiled and selfish and vain. She wished he had done his usual thing of getting up and walking out, so that she wouldn’t have to watch him flirt with the barmaid.
Didn’t Ethan know he was treading on dangerous ground there, and that the barmaid’s strapping great sailor of a lover would chew him up and spit him out if he caught him chatting up his woman? Or was it the girl who was doing the chatting up? Then Eve had to settle for that as the more probable alternative, because Ethan Hayes was certainly worth the effort.
Great body, great looks, great sense of presence, she listed reluctantly. In a sharp suit and tie he was dynamic and sleek; now simple beach shorts and a white tee shirt should have turned him into something else entirely, but didn’t—dynamic and sleek still did it for her, Eve decided as she ran her eyes over him. She began at his brown bare feet with their long toes that were curling lovingly round one of the bar stool crossbars, then moved onwards, up powerfully built legs peppered with dark hair that had been bleached golden by the sun.
How did she know the sun had bleached those hairs? Eve asked herself. Because she’d seen his legs before—had seen all of Ethan Hayes before!—on that terrible night at her grandfather’s house in Athens, when she’d dared to walk uninvited into his bedroom and had caught him in a state of undress.
Prickly heat began to chase along to her nerve ends at the memory—the heat of mortification, not attraction though the attraction had always been there as well. She had gone to Ethan’s room to confront him over something he had seen her doing in the garden with Aidan Galloway. Bristling with self-righteous indignation she had marched in through his door, only to stop dead with her head wiped clean of all coherent thought when she’d found him standing there still dripping water from a recent shower, and as stark staring naked as a man could be—not counting the small hand towel he had been using to dry his hair. The towel had quickly covered other parts of him, but not before she’d had a darn good owl-eyed look!
Oh, the shame, the embarrassment! She could feel her cheeks blushing even now. ‘I presume Mr Galloway ran back to his fiancée, so you thought you would come and try your luck here.’ Eve winced as Ethan’s cutting words came back to slay her all over again.
‘Your foot, sorry,’ her present dance partner apologised.
He had misinterpreted the wince. ‘That’s okay,’ she said, smiling sweetly at Raoul Delacroix without bothering to correct his mistake—and wished she’d had the wits to smile sweetly at Ethan Hayes that night, instead of running like a fool and leaving him with his mistake!
But she had run without saying a single word to him in her own defence, and by the next morning embarrassment had turned to stiff-necked pride; hell could freeze over before she would explain anything to him! As a result he had become the conscience she knew she did not deserve, because all it took was a glance from those horribly critical grey eyes to make her feel crushingly guilty!
It wasn’t fair, she hated him for it. Hated his dark good looks too because they did things to her she would rather they didn’t. But most of all she hated his cold, grim, English reserve that kept him forever at a distance, thereby stopping her from beginning the confrontation that she knew would completely alter his perception of her.
Did she need to do that? Eve asked herself suddenly. And was horrified to realise how badly she did.
‘Have dinner with me tonight…’ Her present dance partner was suddenly crowding her with his too eager hands and the fervent darkening of his liquid brown eyes. ‘Just the two of us,’ Raoul huskily extended. ‘Somewhere quiet and romantic where no one can interrupt.’
‘You know that’s a no-no, Raoul.’ Smiling to soften the refusal, she also deftly dislodged one of his hands from her rear. ‘We’re here as a group to have fun, not romance.’
‘Romance can be fun.’ His rejected hand lifted up to brush a finger across her bottom lip with a message only a very naïve woman would misinterpret.
Eve reached up and firmly removed the finger and watched his beautifully shaped mouth turn down in a sulk. Raoul Delacroix was a very handsome French-American, with eyes dark enough to drown in and a body to die for—yet he did nothing for her. In a way she wished that he did because he was her age and her kind of person, unlike the disapproving Ethan Hayes who added a whole new meaning to the phrase, the generation gap.
And what was that gap—her twenty-three years to his thirty-seven? Big gap—yawning gap, she mocked it dryly. ‘Don’t sulk,’ she scolded Raoul. ‘Today is my birthday and we’re supposed to be having lots of fun.’
‘Tomorrow is your birthday,’ he corrected.
‘As we all know, my grandfather is arriving here tomorrow to help me celebrate, which means I will have to behave with proper decorum all day. So tonight we agreed that we would celebrate my birthday a day early. Don’t spoil that for me, Raoul.’