‘Shall we go in?’ Ethan cut through it with his light invitation.
‘Yes.’ Eve made an effort to smile and didn’t quite manage it as she walked into the villa while he brought the luggage inside then closed the door behind him.
Fresh tension erupted. Eve didn’t quite know what to do next and Ethan didn’t seem too sure himself, so they both started speaking at the same time.
‘Is this one of your own designs?’ she asked him.
‘Would you like to freshen up first or—? No.’ He answered her question.
‘Yes, please.’ She answered his.
He sighed, ran a hand round the back of his neck and looked suddenly bone-weary. Eve chewed nervously on her bottom lip and wished herself back in the Caribbean lying on a beach.
‘Guest bedroom’s this way…’ Picking up her luggage he began leading the way over pale blue marble beneath arched ceilings painted the colour of pale sand. As they walked, they passed by several wide archways that appeared to lead to the main living space. But Eve was way beyond being curious enough to show any interest in what those rooms held. All she wanted was to be on her own for a while, to take stock, maybe even crash out on the large bed she’d caught sight of in the room Ethan was leading her into.
‘Bathroom through that door,’ he said as he placed her luggage on the top of a cedarwood ottoman. ‘You can reach the terrace through there…’ He pointed to the silk-draped full-length windows. ‘Make yourself at home…’ He turned toward the door, had seconds though
ts, and turned back again. ‘I’ll be working out on the terrace if you want me. Other than that…take your time…’
Lightly said, aimed to make her feel comfortable with whatever she wanted to do, he did not take into account that he hadn’t once allowed his eyes to make contact with her eyes since they’d entered the villa.
Which meant that he was feeling as uncomfortable with this new situation as she was. ‘Right. Fine,’ she said.
He left her then; like a bat out of hell he got out of that room and made sure he shut the door behind him as he went. Eve wilted, had a horrible feeling that he was standing on the other side of that door doing exactly the same thing, and really, really wished she hadn’t come.
Ethan was beginning to wonder if she’d made a run for it when, over an hour later, Eve still hadn’t put in an appearance. At first he’d been glad of the respite, had taken a shower, had enjoyed a home-made pot of tea out here on the terrace with only the view and a dozen telephone calls to keep him company.
But as time had drifted on without him hearing a peep from Eve, he’d begun to get edgy. Now he felt like pacing the terrace because the tiger inside him was making its presence felt again.
What time was it? Six p.m., his watch told him. Two minutes later than it had been the last time he’d looked. He grimaced, then sighed to himself and walked over to the terrace rail to look down the hillside where San Estéban lay basking in the early evening sun. This time yesterday he had been sitting in the bar on the beach in the Caribbean drinking local rum and chatting with Jack Banning.
No, you were not, you were watching Eve dance with her eager young men and wishing you weren’t there to witness it, a grim kind of honesty forced him to admit.
A sound further along the terrace caught his attention. His stomach muscles instantly tightened when he recognised the sound as one of the terrace doors opening. Eve appeared at last, wearing a plain straight dress with no sleeves, a scooped neck and a hemline that rested a quiet four inches above her slender knees.
Quiet—why quiet? he asked himself as he watched her walk over to the rail then stand looking out over the bay. There was nothing quiet about Eve Herakleides, not where he was concerned anyway. Her hair, her face, her wonderful figure—Even that sudden and unexpectedly shy expression on her face rang bells inside him as she turned and saw him standing there.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘SORRY,’ she murmured in apology. ‘I fell asleep.’
‘That’s okay,’ he replied, feeling all of that restlessness ease out of him to be replaced with—damn it—sex. The thought of it anyway. ‘I’ve been working. Didn’t notice the time.’
‘This is a lovely view,’ she remarked, turning her attention back to the bay. ‘Nothing looks new or out of place; everything simply blends as if it’s been like this for centuries.’
‘That was the plan.’ After a moment’s hesitation he went to stand beside her and began to point out the different features the resort had to offer. She smelt of shampoo and something subtly expensive. Her voice, when she inserted a comment, played feather-like across his skin. ‘We haven’t even begun developing that area yet,’ he said, indicating toward one of the farthest edges of the bay, and went on to describe what would be seen there within the next year or two.
His arm caught her shoulder, his voice vibrated along her flesh, raising goose-bumps on her skin as she listened to him—no—that she absorbed with a breathless kind of concentration every detail he relayed to her and wished she could remember a single one of them.
But she couldn’t. It was the man who held her wrapped in fascination, the rest was just wallpaper pasted on for appearances’ sake. ‘Quite utopian,’ she murmured eventually. ‘And all your own?’
‘No.’ He denied that with a wry shake of his head. ‘I would love to say it was, but a very austere Spaniard called Don Felipe de Vazquez owns all the land. Victor and I are just the men who transformed his ideas into reality.’
‘All of this doesn’t reflect an austere temperament.’ Eve frowned. ‘I see the heart of a romantic at work here.’
‘Maybe he has hidden depths.’ But, by his tone, it seemed he didn’t think so. ‘It’s more likely he has a good instinct for what will return a healthy dividend on his land.’
‘You don’t like him,’ Eve said, presuming from that.