Without warning, he grabbed her. Pulling her into his embrace, he kissed her. His lips seared her with longing and wistful tenderness. It was a kiss that held the promise of love to last forever.
She trembled. Then even as her knees went weak, a cold sheet of ice came down over her heart.
Savagely, she pushed away from him. “Never touch me again.”
Still naked, he clenched his hands, staring at her. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, guttural.
“I will do what you ask,” he said thickly. “I will stay away from you and our baby. But only until I find the proof that your father lied.” His dark eyes glittered at her. “When I have proof that you cannot deny, I will return. And you will be forced to see the truth.”
She tossed her head, folding her arms.
“Then I am well satisfied, because you will never find that proof.” Her lip curled as she gave him one last look. “But thank you. You’ve just given me your word of honor you’ll stay away from me and the baby—forever.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
FIVE months later, Eve stood alone by her mother’s grave.
It was only the first week of March, but already the first blush of early spring had come to Buckinghamshire. The weeping willows were green and gold beside the lake, splashing the season’s first color over the graveyard of the old gray church.
In her white goose down coat and green wellies, Eve felt hot and out of breath after crossing the hill from her estate. Not that it was terribly far, but at nine months pregnant, every move was an effort. Even bringing daisies, her mother’s favorite flower, to her grave.
Eve glanced at the daffodils poking through the cold earth nearby. Just a few weeks ago, the ground had been covered with snow. How had time fled so fast? Her baby was due any day now.
Her poor, fatherless baby.
It had been such a long lonely winter. During the five months since she’d left Greece, she’d tried to forget Talos. Tried to pretend that her baby’s father was a figment of her imagination, the remnant of a bad dream from long ago. But her dreams had insisted otherwise, and in her secluded, drafty mansion, she’d had one hot dream after another to make her sweat and cry out for Talos in her sleep.
She had tried to lose herself in the life she’d left behind, the whirl of social life, of lunch with friends in London and shopping trips to New York. But it had all just depressed her. Those people weren’t really her friends—had never been her friends. She saw now that she had deliberately chosen shallow acquaintances, the kind she could keep at a distance. She’d never wanted anyone to really know her. It had been the only way she’d been able to stay focused on her goal of revenge.
Now what was left?
Even though she’d regained her memory, she wasn’t the same woman anymore. Nor was she the happy, bright, naive girl she’d been before her memory had returned.
She almost wished
she were. Eve closed her eyes, missing the happy, optimistic, loving person she’d been before. That she’d been with him. She missed loving him. She even missed hating him.
But it was all over now.
Her eyes swam with tears, causing the spring countryside to smear in her vision like an impressionist painting.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, placing her hand on her mother’s gravestone. “I couldn’t destroy him like I thought.”
She knelt, brushing earth off the gray marble angel before placing half the daisies on her grave. “I’m going to have his baby any day now. And I forced him to promise to stay away from us.” She gave a harsh laugh. “I guess I never thought he’d stay so true to his word. Perhaps he’s not the liar I thought.” She wiped the tears that left cold tracks down her cheeks, chilling beneath the brisk spring wind as she said softly, “What should I do?”
Her mother’s grave was silent. Eve heard only the sigh of the wind through the trees as she stared down at the words on the gravestone.
Beloved wife, they said. She glanced at her stepfather’s gravestone beside it. Loving husband.
Her stepfather had loved Bonnie since they were children. Then she’d met a handsome Yank in Boston who’d swept her off her feet. But John had still loved her—so much he’d taken her back willingly when she was widowed, even adopting her child as his own.
But her mother had never stopped loving Dalton—who had never loved her back with the same devotion.
Were all love affairs like that? One person gave—and the other person took?
No. Her throat suddenly hurt. Sometimes love and passion could be equally joined, like a mutual fire. She’d felt it.
The desire between Eve and Talos had been explosive, matched. She’d been so lucky and she hadn’t even known it. For all her adult life, she’d been focused on the wrong thing. On revenge. On regaining a memory that had ultimately caused her nothing but grief.