Ethan's Temptress Bride. Michelle Reid

deliberately didn’t add, ‘…in case he comes back’. But he saw by her shuddering response that Eve had added the words for herself. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

      He didn’t want thanks. He wanted a solution as to what he was going to do next. Glancing at Eve in search of inspiration, he found himself looking at a wilting flower again, only she was a slender white lily this time, covered as she was in the cotton sheet.

      A sad and helpless slender white lily, he elaborated, and the image locked up a blistering kind of anger inside his chest. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked gruffly. ‘Do you think you can manage to get yourself dressed?’

      ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

      ‘Good.’ He nodded. At least she was managing to stand unsupported at last. ‘Do that, then I’ll walk you up to the main house,’ he decided, aware that there was a small army of live-in staff up there to watch over her.

      ‘No, not the house.’ Once again she vetoed his suggestion. ‘The staff will report to my grandfather and…’ Her voice trailed away, and those big eyes were suddenly pleading with him again. ‘Could I come and stay with you?’ she asked. ‘Just for the rest of tonight. I promise I won’t be any more trouble, only…’

      Again that voice trailed away to nothing, and that dark, sad, vulnerable look cut into him with a deeply painful thrust. Hell, how was it he seemed to attract these kind of situations? he wondered, racking his brain for an alternative solution only to find there wasn’t one. Beginning to feel a bit as if he’d been run over by a bus, he lifted up a hand in a hopeless gesture. ‘Sure,’ he said.

      Why not? he asked himself fatalistically. He had conceded to just about everything else.

      He was just about to leave her to it when he saw her mouth open to offer yet another pathetic thanks. ‘Don’t say it,’ he advised grimly.

      ‘No,’ she mumbled understandingly. ‘Sorry,’ she offered instead.

      His shoulder muscles rippled as they flexed in irritation. ‘Don’t say that either,’ he clipped out tightly. ‘I don’t want your thanks or your apologies.’ What he really wanted, he thought as he turned for the bedroom door, was to close his hands around Aidan Galloway’s throat.

      He was angry, Eve realised. She didn’t blame him. She had probably managed to thoroughly ruin his holiday with all of this. Feeling sick to her stomach, as weak as a kitten, and still too shocked and dizzy to really comprehend even half of what had happened to her tonight, she turned away from him with the weary intention of doing as she’d been told and finding some clothes to put on—only to go still on a strangled gasp when she found herself confronted with her own reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall.

      The sound brought Ethan’s departure to a halt. Glancing back, he followed her gaze, found himself looking at her reflection in the mirror and instantly understood.

      She’d seen her swollen mouth, her chafed skin—had caught sight of the telling discolouration on the side of her neck that Ethan had been trying very hard to ignore from the moment he’d seen it himself. And perhaps most telling of all was the pink hibiscus still trying its best to cling to her hair.

      The tears bulged in her eyes. ‘I look like a harlot,’ she whispered tremulously, lifting shaking fingers to remove the poor flower.

      A sensationally beautiful, very special harlot, he silently extended, and on that provoking thought he threw in the metaphorical towel. ‘Blow the clothes,’ he decided harshly and walked back to her side. His arm came to rest across her sheet swathed shoulders. ‘Let’s just get you out of here.’