Eva ruthlessly suppressed the desire to respond to the glimpse of humor since, technically, she was the one who had done the pushing. Grimly, she concentrated on drying the shoes. She absolutely did not want to start remembering all the moments they had shared all those years ago and start thinking of him as funny or sweet. They’d had their moment, and it hadn’t worked out. “I’m glad I pushed you. You deserved it.”
The quick flash of a grin almost stopped her heart. “Still the same old Eva.”
And who, exactly, was that? she wondered a little bitterly. Years ago she had come to the conclusion that he saw her as a messed-up adopted kid. The kind of woman no Messena male in his right mind would date, let alone marry.
To cover up the fact that she was having difficulty keeping her gaze off his torso and a smattering of scars that looked suspiciously like knife or maybe even bullet wounds, she gripped the back of a lounger to put on first one shoe, then the other. She knew Kyle had been injured twice, the second time life threatening enough that he’d been medevaced from Germany back to Auckland.
That time, she had been concerned enough that she had rung the hospital to get an update on his condition. When they had refused to do that over the phone, she had gone there herself, brazening her way onto Kyle’s ward, even though visiting hours had finished. When she had finally found him, she had used her family connection to the Messenas and her celebrity status as a model to get into his room.
She had been shocked to see him pale and still and hooked up to monitors and drips, then a senior nurse had walked in and she’d had to leave. That had been just as well, because as she’d walked out the door Kyle’s eyes had flickered open.
Dragging pins from her soaked hair and finger combing it out into some semblance of neatness, she couldn’t resist the compulsion to sneak another glance at the worst of the scars and, inadvertently, found herself caught out by Kyle’s gaze.
“I know that was you, all those years ago at the hospital.”
She froze. “Maybe.”
He raked wet hair back from his forehead. “I thought I was dreaming, but the nurse confirmed it.”
She busied herself picking up her bag in order to drop the pins into it, but she wasn’t paying close enough attention, so some of them scattered over the pavers. Crouching down, she began gathering them up. “It was no big deal. I was in town and heard you’d been—hurt—”
“As in, wounded.” He handed her a pin that had skittered over by his foot.
She straightened and found herself uncomfortably close to his naked and still-damp torso. “I didn’t want to say that, just in case you had that condition—”
“Post-traumatic stress disorder. Battle fatigue.” His mouth quirked in a distractingly sexy way. “No chance, since I have no memory of being hit.” He hesitated. “Why didn’t you stay?”
Eva, still captured by the sudden intense need to know what exactly had happened, who had dared to shoot Kyle, took a few seconds to absorb his question. “You were critical—they wouldn’t let me stay.”
“I was only critical the night I arrived. I didn’t see any family until the next day. So, how did you find out?”
Despite her clothes, which were steadily dripping, and which were now making her feel clammy and just a little chilled, she found herself blushing. There was no way she was going to tell Kyle that she had practically lived on the internet, tracking down Reuters reports, and that she had made a pest of herself by calling his regimental headquarters. “I had a modeling friend whose boyfriend was in the SAS.” That part was true enough. She shrugged. “I just happened to mention that you’d been hurt and she...found out for me.”
“But you didn’t visit me again.”
She straightened, hooking the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “I was busy. What is this? An interrogation?” Although something about Kyle had changed. The bad-tempered tension had gone and there was an undercurrent that made her feel decidedly breathless. She tried walking in her wet heels to see if they were safe. At the same time she surreptitiously smoothed her palms down the sodden, clinging line of her jacket and skirt to press out excess moisture. As a result, water tickled down her legs and filled her shoes.
Kyle stopped in the process of wringing out his shirt, his gaze arrested. “Maybe you should take the jacket off?”
“No.” Eva had routinely taken her clothes off for lingerie ads, but there was no way she was going to take one stitch of clothing off in front of Kyle. She suddenly noticed the flatness of her jacket pocket. Her glasses were gone, which meant they were probably in the bottom of the pool.
“They can stay there,” Kyle said flatly. “You don’t need them. You’ve got the eyesight of an eagle.”
“How would you know what my eyesight’s like?”
“Remember the archery contests?”
Dolphin Bay, two summers in a row, when she and Kyle would go head-to-head at the archery range. “You always won those.”
“I’d been practicing for years. You came second.”
The sudden warmth in his gaze made her feel flustered all over again. She realized that the distance she had worked so hard to preserve, and which she had been able to maintain quite well if she was angry, had gone. Burned away in the moment she had realized that Kyle wanted her.
She walked to the edge of the pool and peered in. The glasses, with their dark rims, were easily visible. “I need the glasses for work.”
“Why? They’re not prescription, just plain glass.” His face cleared. “No, wait, don’t answer, I think I can guess.”
Over seeing Kyle’s buff, ripped, hot torso, she tossed his towel at him. A split second later the sharp tap of heels on tiles signaled Jacinta’s presence a moment before she rounded the corner into the pool area.
Her eyes widened when she saw that Eva was soaked. “There you are, the bride’s father wants to give you a check—” She noticed Kyle. “Oops. Sorry, did I interrupt something?”
“Nothing.” Eva seized her chance to end the unsettling encounter and the crazy, suffocating awareness that had crept up on her out of nowhere. “Where is Mr. Hirsch?”
“In the lobby.” Jacinta glanced at Kyle’s washboard abs. “I told him you’d be right along.”
But suddenly, Eva wasn’t going anywhere. She took the one step needed to place herself squarely in Jacinta’s line of vision, so that she had to stare at her, rather than at Kyle’s bronzed, dripping skin. In the moment that she moved, it struck her that she was behaving like a jealous girlfriend. Kyle did not belong to her, and yet she was ready to fight tooth and nail to fend Jacinta off. “I’m wet and my hair’s ruined. You need to go and collect the check.”
Jacinta didn’t move. “Did you fall in the pool?”
“We both fell,” Eva said bluntly.
Jacinta made an odd little noise that sounded suspiciously like amusement quickly muffled then spun on her heel and disappeared back inside.
Kyle broke the tense little silence that developed in the wake of Jacinta’s departure by tossing his towel on a recliner and picking up his soaked shirt. “At least you managed to sell the wedding on. I’m guessing right about now, you’re getting concerned about money.”
She met Kyle’s gaze head-on. “Without the backup of my trust fund, all money counts.”
And that was the other reason she found this whole process of having to qualify for her own inheritance so hurtful and undermining. All of the bona fide Atraeus and Messena family members who were born to wealth received vast amounts of money, and their right to do so wasn’t questioned. She understood what Mario was trying to achieve with the marriage clause, but that didn’t change the fact that