Eve took the easier option, and rang her cousin Leandros to beg the use of his helicopter to take her to Malaga. Therefore she arrived long before Ethan got there, and had taken off for Athens by the time he pulled his car into a long-stay slot.
London was cold. He didn’t mind; the heavy grey skies suited his mood. It wasn’t until he thought to check his emails before shooting off to meet Victor, that he found a note from his secretary telling him that Theron Herakleides had come out of hiding and was now making hopeful murmurings about Hayes-Frayne being awarded the Greek project.
‘Well, shoot that in the foot,’ he told the computer screen, and switched it off. As of now, Hayes-Frayne could kiss goodbye anything to do with Greece.
He wished he’d kissed Eve goodbye before he’d left…
Athens was hot, stifling beneath one of its famous heat-waves. Eve was glad to let the taxi cab drive her up into the hills where the air was more fit to breathe. Her grandfather’s mansion house stood in a row of gracious old houses occupying one of the most prestigious plots the rambling city had to offer.
He was just sitting down to dinner when she walked in, unannounced. ‘My angel!’ he greeted in surprise, and got to his feet to come down the table for his expected embrace.
He was not expecting her to burst into a flood of tears though. ‘Oh, Grandpa!’ She sobbed as she walked into his arms. ‘I hate him. I hate him so much!’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE
palace of Al-Qadim made an impressive sight standing against a backcloth of a star-studded night sky. Its rich sandstone walls had been flood-lit from below and, as they drove through the arched gateway into its huge inner courtyard, Ethan was reluctantly impressed with the sheer scale and beauty that met his eyes.
But he didn’t want to be here. He was angry and fed up with role-playing for other people’s benefit. He was sick to his stomach with the Mr Honourable tab people seemed to like to stick on him. The Mr you-can-depend-on-me-to-bale-you-out label.
He grimaced. Somewhere back there across a large tract of land and an ocean, he was being summarily sacked from his latest role with the none too tasty word jilted to wear as an epitaph to that little affair. While here, he was about to become the focus of critical Arab eyes, when he received his second sacking in twenty-four hours from the role as wicked lover to the Sheikha Leona Al-Qadim.
‘Ethan—if you don’t want to go ahead with this, then say so,’ Victor murmured beside him.
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ he answered tersely, but then his whole manner had been terse since he’d climbed into his car in Spain and had driven away from Eve.
Eve the flirt, Eve the temptress, Eve the serpent, who’d made the last two weeks a perfect paradise—before she’d reverted to her original form. And what was that? he asked himself. Eve, the spoiled little rich girl, who wanted everything to go her way. 159
He was best out of it. He should have known that before it began. He should have seen the idiot he was making of himself every time he let her weave her magic spells around him.
The trouble was, he’d liked it. He’d liked playing slave to Eve Herakleides and her whims. She turned him on, hard and fast. She made him feel alive.
She’d had a heart temporarily tattooed onto one of her most erogenous spots just to tease him out of his mind.
‘Only, in this mood, you aren’t what I would call sociable,’ Victor inserted carefully.
‘Watch me turn on when the curtain goes up,’ he promised. ‘I’ll be so sociable with your son-in-law that they will start to wonder if it’s Hassan I’ve been having the affair with.’
‘Don’t be facetious.’
Victor was getting angry. Ethan didn’t particularly blame him.
‘You should have brought her with you if you can’t last a day out of her arms without turning into a grouch.’
‘Who are we talking about?’ Ethan’s eyes flashed a warning glance at the other man.
Victor just smiled one of those smiles that people smiled around him these days. ‘I might not have been to San Estéban recently, but even the London-office cleaner knows about the souvenir you brought back from the Caribbean.’
Souvenir from hell, he amended bitterly.
Then he saw her expression just before he’d turned his back on her for the last time, and his insides knotted into a tight ball. He’d hurt her with all of this. He’d known that he would. That’s why he’d tried to find out where she’d wanted their relationship to go, before he’d told her about this trip.
He’d wanted her to understand. He’d wanted her to trust him. See, for goodness’ sake, that he couldn’t be in love with another woman when she possessed every single inch of him!
So—what now? What was he doing here? A sudden and uncontrollable aching tension attached itself to his bones. He should be back there, arguing with Eve, not snapping at Victor! She was right in a lot of ways: he should have put her feelings first!
Oh, hell, damn it, he cursed.