Markos gave a pained frown as this further knowledge of Eva’s life only added to those reasons why she now felt so cynical towards love and relationships. His own childhood hadn’t been without trauma, when his mother and father had died so suddenly when he was only eight, but when he’d gone to live with his aunt and uncle he had been lucky enough to find another set of parents who had loved and cared for him as their own. Whereas Eva didn’t seem to have had even one set of parents to love and nurture her.
‘You haven’t had an easy time of it, have you?’ Markos observed.
Eva smiled bravely. ‘No worse than a lot of people.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘Markos, I seem to be doing this a lot recently where you’re concerned—but I really am sorry for blubbing all over you just now.’
‘No apology is necessary.’
‘What if I were to make it a “suitable” one…?’ Eva quirked her brows at him as she pulled his bow tie undone, before starting to unfasten the buttons down the front of his shirt.
Markos regarded her warily. ‘I am not sure this is a good idea—’
Eva didn’t allow him to finish as she moved to lean into the hardness of his bared chest before pressing her lips against his.
Markos sat completely unmoving, his arms still lightly about Eva’s waist as those deliciously sensual lips moved softly against him, as light as butterfly wings. The lightness of her perfume was invading his senses, and he felt the heaviness of her breasts pressing against the hardness of his chest.
She moved back slightly, her palms hot against his chest, her breath warm against his lips as those golden eyes looked directly into his. ‘Make love with me, Markos…’
His body reacted instantly to that husky invitation, his pulse racing, heart pounding, and his shaft becoming rock hard and throbbing in seconds. It was impossible for him to deny how much he wanted to accept that invitation.
But he wasn’t going to do so.
Eva might have stopped crying, but there was no forgetting how upset she had been earlier. And the reason for that distress wasn’t going to go away any time soon—which probably meant she wasn’t completely responsible for her actions right now. For Markos to make love with her under these circumstances would surely make him as much of a bastard as her ex-husband. Even if he did literally ache to just pick Eva up in his arms and carry her to his bed!
‘WHERE are you taking me?’ Eva’s arms moved up about Markos’s neck as he stood up with her still cradled firmly in his embrace.
His eyes were a deep, dark emerald as he glanced down at her. ‘Where would you like me to take you?’
‘You know…I don’t think I really care,’ Eva answered, surprising herself with her own honesty as she realised she really didn’t care where she was going, so long as Markos was going to be there too.
Something had happened to her when that dam of emotion had burst inside her earlier and she had cried in Markos’s arms. Somehow—miraculously—she had been released from all past hurts and disappointments, leaving her emotions as light and free as they had been when she was a university student. She felt that same bubbling sense of anticipation inside her now that she’d had then—what might happen in her life next?
What might happen—not what had Eva been planning to happen? Because she no longer felt that determination to decide her life. She had let go of the past. All of it.
So Jack’s wife was going to have a baby? So what? Jack probably wouldn’t believe Eva if she were to say the words to him, but it no longer upset her that Yvette was pregnant. She simply wished the two of them every happiness with their future son or daughter, and she had no doubt that Jonathan would be over the moon when his grandchild was born—boy or girl.
One day Eva might even have that for herself—a man and a family of her own to love—but until and if that day came she would feel a contentedness, a calmness, and just wait and see what happened next.
And she really hoped that Markos was going to be part of that more immediate ‘next’. She had already known he was as charming and self-assured as Jack had ever been, and Markos was certainly more powerfully charismatic—he’d had to be to have persuaded her to go out with him at all this evening! But after tonight she also knew Markos was kind and considerate, with a quiet strength, caring for her in a way her ex-husband never had. For a brief moment earlier tonight she had really thought Markos was going to pick Jack up by his shirtfront and shake him like a rag doll!
But Markos’s strength of character was inborn, not acquired or a veneer—and Eva had never physically wanted a man so badly in her life as she now wanted Markos.
Her arms tightened about his neck as she gazed up at him admiringly. ‘You really are pretty wonderful, you know.’
He gave a half-smile. ‘Because I am capable of carrying all these extra pounds you believe you possess into my bedroom?’
‘It’s all perfectly proportioned and in the right places!’ Eva gave him a playful punch on the arm, realising as she did so that she still carried her black silk clutch bag.
He gave a disarming grin. ‘I believe I have already assured you that I am well aware of that.’
Yes, he had—which was another plus in his favour. Markos seemed to be accumulating pluses in spite of Eva’s previous prejudice against him. Too many more of them and she could be in serious danger of falling—
Whoa!
Wanting, aching to make love with Markos was one thing—a big thing, considering he was the first man Eva had wanted to be intimate with since the disintegration of her marriage. But allowing her emotions to become involved was something else entirely.
Markos was a Lyonedes. From a family that was powerful and rich beyond her imagining. More to the point, Markos was a man known for having short and meaningless relationships—not a man that a woman might pin her future hopes and dreams on. A lesson her cousin Donna had learnt only too well…
Donna!
Damn it, with everything else that had happened this evening Eva had forgotten all about her cousin’s unhappy experience with Markos!
Had she really forgotten? Or could she just no longer quite accept her cousin’s version of what had and hadn’t happened between them?
Donna had described him as being wonderful when they were going out together, but turning into a cold and ruthless stranger when he had decided he no longer wanted the relationship. Oh, Eva believed Markos was more than capable of being cold and ruthless—she had seen him being exactly that with Jack earlier this evening—she could just no longer see Markos behaving that way towards a woman. No doubt that was another no-no his Aunt Karelia had instilled in him!
Besides which, the cruel and callous Markos her cousin had described him as being at the end of their relationship would never have had the patience or the inclination to deal with Eva’s tears tonight. He would have run a mile in the other direction.
Which left Eva precisely where?
Trusting her own intuition?
She had done that in her life once before, with dire results.
No, that wasn’t quite true of the events of seven years ago. At twenty-two, her marriage to Jack had seemed to her like a good way of escaping the vicious circle of her parents’ relationship. But she was twenty-nine now, with a successful career and a life of her own. This attraction she felt towards Markos was based on that maturity and success, not