Markos nodded abruptly. ‘Without speaking to anyone.’
Eva sensed the anger burning beneath the surface of Markos’s outwardly calm demeanour as they stepped out into the huge hallway, but she didn’t know him well enough yet to know who that anger was directed at: this uncomfortable situation or her.
‘Markos—’
‘Ah, there you are, angel. Feeling better…?’
Eva’s heart skipped a beat at the sound of Jack’s voice. Markos’s fingers squeezed her elbow reassuringly before the two of them turned to face the other man in the otherwise deserted vestibule of the entrance hall. Eva breathed an inward sigh of relief as she saw Jack was alone; she wasn’t sure she could bear to see the pregnant Yvette again this evening.
‘Markos and I are leaving now,’ she said coolly.
Jack raised blond brows. ‘You only just got here.’
‘And now we are leaving,’ Markos bit out coldly. ‘Please inform your father than I will telephone and speak with him some time next week.’
The other man’s cheeks became slightly flushed. He obviously resented Markos’s authoritative tone. ‘It would be more polite if you were to tell him that yourself.’
‘As I am sure you are only too well aware, the current situation is beyond politeness.’ Markos looked at the other man with coldly glittering eyes.
‘Markos—’
‘Stay out of this, angel!’
Markos released Eva’s arm and strode quickly across the hallway until he stood only inches away from the other man. He was slightly taller than Jack Cabot Grey. He was not touching him, but was still intimidating nonetheless.
‘Her name is Eva. And you will not speak to her in that way. Ever again! Do I make myself clear?’ he grated softly.
The other man’s jaw tightened. ‘You can’t just come into my father’s home and threaten me—’
‘I believe I just did,’ Markos purred softly. Dangerously.
‘I call her angel because her name is Ev-angel-ine.’ Jack Cabot Grey met his gaze challengingly for several seconds before those deep blue eyes slid away and he instead looked at Eva. ‘It would seem that your marriage to me gave you a taste for powerful men, angel,’ he drawled insultingly.
Markos drew in his breath sharply. ‘You—’
‘I only see one man who fits that description, Jack,’ Eva cut in scathingly. ‘And it isn’t you!’
‘Why, you little—’ Jack Cabot Grey broke off warily as Markos placed a hand against his chest.
‘I believe I have warned you never, ever to insult Eva in my presence again,’ he reminded him in an icily soft voice.
‘What on earth is going on here?’
Eva turned a stricken face to see her ex-father-in-law, Jonathan Cabot Grey, stride forcefully into the vestibule.
Shrewd blue eyes narrowed on his son and Markos Lyonedes as they faced each other challengingly. ‘Is there a problem…?’
Markos gave Jack Cabot Grey one last contemptuous glance before slowly stepping away from him to stroll back to Eva’s side. He faced his host. ‘Eva and I were just leaving.’
‘So soon?’
Markos might have been more impressed with the older man’s attempt at regret if he hadn’t seen the look of relief in Jonathan’s eyes before it was quickly masked by polite query. It was a politeness Markos was too displeased to indulge at this moment.
‘I am of the opinion that it would have been better if we had left some time ago,’ he said dismissively, giving Jonathan a disapproving look as he took a hold of Eva’s arm, his mouth tightening with displeasure when he realised she was trembling again as she leant into his side.
What could have happened between Eva and Jack Cabot Grey in the past to have caused this severe reaction in her? For her to be physically ill just from seeing him again?
Except…
Unexpected as it might have been, it hadn’t been seeing Jack Cabot Grey which had made Eva ill. That had only happened when the other man’s second wife had joined them.
Was it because Eva still had feelings for the man, and the existence of that second wife now made reconciliation impossible?
Her scathing attitude towards her ex-husband whenever she spoke to him would seem to imply otherwise. And yet… There was no denying that something had made Eva ill just a short time ago. The same something that was still causing her to tremble.
Markos had no idea what Eva was reacting to any longer, and that irritated him as much as everything else about this evening displeased him; he had believed earlier that they were coming to know each other, to like each other—and now this!
‘We will speak again later in the week, Jonathan,’ he assured the older man stiffly before turning to leave.
‘I’ll be in touch, angel.’
Eva stiffened as Jack called after her softly, not fooled for a moment by the pleasantness of his tone, and pretty sure she knew the reason Jack intended contacting her again…
Almost as soon as Eva and Jack had married, and had moved to New York to live, Jonathan had started talking of the possible arrival of his grandson—Jonathan Cabot Grey the Third. It was something which Eva and Jack had eventually realised was never going to happen, but Jack had never, at least to Eva’s knowledge, confided in his father. The fact that Yvette Cabot Grey was now pregnant, supposedly with Jack’s child, was either a medical miracle or something that Jack did not wish Eva to discuss with his father.
Eva didn’t know whether to be insulted, because Jack thought she would tell his father that the child Yvette carried couldn’t possibly be his, or angry, because Jack thought she would feel vindictive enough towards him that she would deliberately hurt the man who had once been her father-in-law.
The latter emotion won out as she turned to look coldly at Jack. ‘We have nothing to talk about,’ she assured him scathingly.
He quirked blond disbelieving brows. ‘No?’
‘Absolutely not,’ she snapped, before turning to her ex-father-in-law. ‘Goodbye, Jonathan. It was nice seeing you again.’ Her voice warmed slightly as she spoke to the man she had always rather liked.
Jonathan must have been surprised when Jack had returned from working in London for two years with Eva as his wife—a young Englishwoman who wasn’t in the least wealthy or of the same social strata as the Cabot Greys. But never by word or deed had Jonathan ever shown her anything but the respect and liking due to her as his son’s wife. The future mother of his grandchildren…
‘Take care,’ she added huskily, not sparing Jack so much as a second glance as she and Markos finally left together.
‘Not here and not now,’ Markos advised gruffly as Eva tried to speak once they were outside.
She shot him a fleeting glance. ‘I was only going to say thank-you.’
Markos’s tension eased slightly and he relaxed his grip on Eva’s arm. The last few minutes had been far from pleasant. For any of them.
‘If you insist, you may offer me suitable thanks once we are alone together in my apartment,’ he assured her gruffly.
She looked uncertain. ‘Your apartment…?’
He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘We have to return to Lyonedes Tower in order for you to collect your car. Once there, we might as well go up to my apartment and talk in comfort.’
An argument to which she had no rebuttal, Eva acknowledged