‘I’ll talk to her.’ It was Ethan’s only concession, though he was planning to do a lot more than just talk to Eve when he could get his hands on her. She played with men’s feelings. She walked all over their self-respect. She made love like a natural-born seducer and he was damned if any other man was going to know how good that felt.
‘Not without the right,’ Theron smoothly said.
Ethan glared at him. ‘Explain,’ he insisted.
Theron went one better and slid several documents across the top of his desk. ‘You know the score. Sign, and you can talk to my granddaughter. Don’t sign, and you can leave her to Aidan Galloway’s adequate care.’
Ah, Ethan thought. The contract to protect Theron’s precious money. He almost laughed in the old man’s face as he stepped up to the desk, picked up Theron’s handy pen, and scrawled his signature in the allotted space.
‘Now, if you will excuse me,’ he concluded coldly.
‘Don’t you think you should have read what it is you’ve just put your signature to? It is an unwise man who signs a document without first ensuring himself that he has not just signed his entire wealth away.’
Wealth, Ethan thought. ‘What wealth?’ he mocked. His wealth stood outside in the arms of another man.
His wealth, his woman—hell, he was right back on track again; he felt so much better for realising that.
‘You’re a liar, Hayes,’ Theron inserted, then suddenly let rip with a hearty laugh. ‘Do you think I would let you seduce my granddaughter into marriage without having you thoroughly checked out? You are a Caledonian Hayes of the merchant shipping line. Your grandfather sold up in the sixties and died in the eighties, leaving you so much money you could even afford to buy me out!’
‘Ah—my credentials,’ Ethan acknowledged and the depth of his cynicism played havoc with his face. ‘How long have you been planning this?’ he demanded.
‘Marrying you to my granddaughter? Two weeks ago you became worthy of consideration when my nephew, Leandros, let slip how much money you had invested in San Estéban,’ Theron replied. ‘A mere architect, no matter how gifted he is, could not earn that kind of money in a hundred years. I have an instinct for these things.’ With a smugness that said he was enjoying himself, Theron touched a finger to the end of his nose. ‘The nose twitched. So I decided to have you checked out for curiosity sake, you understand. And for Eve’s sake, of course.’
Glancing down at the document he had just put his signature to, Ethan began to wonder what he had signed away. ‘It won’t do you any good,’ he announced. ‘I live off my earned income. Any money my grandfather left me is tied up in trusts for any children I might have.’
‘Or my grandchildren.’ Theron nodded. ‘Exactly.’
So that was what this was all about. ‘Eve is up for sale to the man with the biggest return.’
From sitting there wallowing in his own self-satisfied smugness, Theron was suddenly launching to his feet in a towering rage. ‘Don’t speak about Eve in that tone!’ he bellowed. ‘It is okay for you with your hidden millions to stand here mocking me whose wealth is well documented. But place yourself in Eve’s shoes and tell me how she distinguishes between the man who will love her for herself and the one with love only for the money she will inherit one day!’
‘So you think that by finding her a husband who is wealthier than herself, you are safeguarding her against disillusionment and a broken heart?’ Ethan’s tone poured contempt all over that concept as his own fury rose to match the older man’s. ‘Money in the bank is no guarantee for love, Theron!’ he bit out furiously. ‘It’s just—money in the bank! I am as capable as the next man is of breaking her foolish, reckless heart!’
‘If you were the kind of man to do that, you would not be standing here arguing with me about this!’
‘She already thinks I’m in love with another woman!’ he threw at Theron. ‘Are you telling me that your investigation of me did not tell you that?’
‘If it didn’t, he knows now,’ another quieter, heart-piercingly level voice inserted.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BOTH men stiffened sharply, both turned to stare at the silk-draped window where Eve now stood. Both men went as pale as death.
‘Eve, that wasn’t said to—’
The flick of a hand silenced him; the expression on her face tore him apart. She was hurting, he was hurting. Ethan didn’t even want to know what Theron was feeling like. Big, green how-could-you-both-hurt-me-like-this eyes flicked from one man to the other. She took in a breath of air. It seemed to pull all of the oxygen out of the room and left none for them to breathe.
Pale but composed, feeling as fragile as a lily about to snap in the soft warm breeze, Eve took a small step to bring herself into the very male-orientated surroundings of her grandfather’s study, and announced. ‘If you’ve both finished playing Russian roulette with my future. I would like to point out that women gained the right to choose for themselves some time during the last century.’
‘You break my heart, child,’ her grandpa told her painfully. ‘I would be failing in my duty to you if I did not make this man formally declare his intentions.’
‘He doesn’t have any intentions!’ Eve slashed at him.
‘Yes, I do,’ Ethan argued.
She turned on him, eyes burning like phosphorescence as they fixed themselves onto his. His chest swelled, his heart began to pump, other parts of him began to send taunting little signals out across his skin. She was waiting to hear more. More was coming, if he could only get past the sight of her in Galloway’s arms.
‘Will you marry me, Eve?’ There, he’d said it.