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“Please, Talos.” Her sapphire eyes gleamed. “I want to see my home.”
His brow furrowed as he looked down at her pleading face.
Eve really had changed, he thought. His mistress had never begged him for anything. She’d never even said please.
Except…
Except for the first night he’d taken her to his bed, when all her defenses had been briefly stripped away and he’d discovered the most desired woman in the world was, against all expectations, a virgin. As he’d pushed himself inside her, she’d looked up at him in a breathless hush with those violet-blue eyes, and he’d thought…he’d almost thought…
He cut off the memory savagely.
He wouldn’t think about how it had once been with her. He wouldn’t think how she had nearly made him lose everything, including his mind.
Eve Craig was a fatal habit that he’d finally broken—and he intended to keep it that way.
“Very well,” he ground out, turning back to face her. “I will take you home—but just to collect your things. We cannot stay.”
Her lovely face brightened. She looked so young without makeup, with her hair in the casual ponytail. She looked barely old enough to be in college, far younger than his own thirty-eight years.
“Thank you,” she said warmly.
Thank you. Another phrase he’d never heard from her before.
He turned away, leaning back in the beige leather seat as his chauffeur drove smoothly through the city, turning right from Marylebone to the Edgware Road. As the car merged onto the M1 heading north, Talos stared out at the passing rain, then closed his eyes, tense and weary from jet lag and the whiplash of the past two days.
Eve, pregnant.
He was still reeling.
No wonder she’d crashed her car, he thought dully. Just the thought of losing her figure and not fitting into all her designer clothes must have made her crazy. All those months of not being able to drink champagne and dance till dawn with all of her rich, beautiful, shallow friends? Eve must have been more than shocked—she must have been furious.
Eve, pregnant.
He would not trust her to take care of a house plant, much less a child. She was not even slightly maternal. She wouldn’t love a baby. She was the least loving person Talos had ever met.
Slowly, he opened his eyes.
He hadn’t even known about the baby an hour ago, but now he was absolutely sure of one thing.
He had to protect his child.
“So I don’t live in England,” he heard her say. Steeling his expression, he turned to face her. Her face looked bewildered, almost sad as she added hesitantly, “I don’t have a home?”
Home. Against his will, he had the sudden image of Eve in his bedroom at Mithridos, spread across his large bed, with the curtains twisting from the sea breeze coming off the sparkling Aegean. That had never happened, and it never would!
“You live in hotels,” he answered coldly. “I told you. You travel constantly.”
“So how do I hold down a job?” she said in disbelief.
“You don’t. You spend your days shopping and attending parties around the world. You’re an heiress. A famous beauty.”
She gaped at him. “You’re joking.”
“No.” He left it at that. He could hardly explain how she and her dissolute friends traveled in packs like parasites, sucking a luxury hotel dry before moving on to the next. If he told her that, she might hear the scorn in his voice and question the true nature of his feelings.
Malakas, how was it possible that he’d been so caught by her? What madness had possessed him to be so enslaved?
How could he make sure that his child never was neglected, hurt or abandoned by her after she regained her memory?
A new thought suddenly occurred to him.
If she could not remember him, if she could not remember who she was or what she’d done, it meant she would have no idea of what was about to hit her. She would have no defenses.
A slow smile curved his lips as he built his new plan. He could take everything from her, including their baby. And she would never see it coming.
“So I was here for my stepfather’s funeral,” she said softly. “But I’m not British.”
“Your mother was, I believe. You both returned to England some years ago.”
She brightened. “My mother!”
“Dead,” he informed her brutally.
She froze, her face crumpling. Watching the swift movement of scenery on the outskirts of London through the window behind her, he remembered that her mother’s death was fresh news to her. And that he was supposed to be in love with her. He had to make her believe that if he wanted his plan to succeed.
“I’m sorry, Eve,” he said abruptly. “But as far as I know, you have no family.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice.
Pulling her into his arms, he held her close against his chest, kissing the top of her head. Her hair, messy and unwashed, still managed to smell like vanilla and sugar, the scents he associated with her. The scent that immediately made his body go hard and taut with longing, with the immediate temptation of a long-desired vice.
Thee mou. Why couldn’t he stop wanting her? After everything she’d done, the way she’d nearly ruined him, how was it possible that his body still longed for her like a dying man thirsting for water? Was he really such a suicidal fool? Did he have no honor, no pride?
He had pride, he thought, clenching his jaw. It was her. Even now, acting so sweetly demure, her innocence attracted him like a flame. He remembered the fire of passion inside her. And how he was the only man who’d ever tasted it.
He felt himself tighten.
Stop! he ordered himself. He wouldn’t think about her in bed. He wouldn’t want her. He did have some control over his own body, damn it!
She clenched her fingers against his sleeve, her face pressed into his crisply tailored shirt.
“So I have no one.” Her voice was small, almost a whisper. “No parents. No brothers or sisters. No one.”
He looked down at her, tipping her chin upwards so he could see the tears sparkling in her beautiful violet-blue eyes. “You have me.”
She swallowed, searching his face as if trying to read the emotion behind his expression. He schooled his features into concern and admiration and the closest attempt at love he could manage, never having actually felt it.
A sigh came from her lips as she exhaled. A soft smile traced her lips. “And our baby.”
He gave a single grim nod. Their baby was the reason he had to make sure his control over Eve was absolute. The reason he had to make her believe he cared about her.
It was no different, he thought sardonically, than she’d once done to him. He would lull her into believing she could trust him. Make her willingly marry him.
Then—oh, then…
The instant their marriage was final, his life’s goal would be to make her remember the truth. He would be with her when she finally remembered. He would see her face as it fell.
And he would crush her. The thought of revenge made his heart glad.
Not revenge, he told himself. Justice.
Leaning forward, he held her closer in the backseat of the Rolls-Royce.
“Eve.” He cupped her face in his large hands. “I want you to marry me.”
Marry him?
Yes, Eve thought in a daze, looking up into his handsome face. Feeling his strong, rough hands against the softness of her skin, the warmth of his touch seared her, tracing down her neck to her breasts and lower still.
How could any man be so masculine, so beautiful, so powerful all at once? Talos was everything her tattered, empty, frightened soul had desired. He would protect her. Love her. He would complete her life.
Yes, yes, yes.
But even as the words rose to her lips, something stopped her. Something she couldn’t understand made her pull her face away from his touch.
“Marry you?” she whispered. She searched his dark eyes, her heartbeat quickening in her chest. “I don’t even know you.”
He blinked. She saw that he was surprised. Then his eyebrows lowered into a frown.
“You knew me well enough to conceive my child.”
She swallowed. “But I can’t remember you,” she said. “It wouldn’t be fair to take you as my husband. It wouldn’t be right.”
“I was raised without a father. I do not intend my child to endure that. I will give our baby a name. Do not deny me,” he said urgently.
Deny him? How could any woman deny anything to a man like Talos Xenakis?
But it didn’t feel right.
With a deep breath, she turned away, glancing out at the passing scenery. It had changed since they’d left the outskirts of London, become soft and green beyond the rain-splattered windows. Trees had started to turn orange and yellow, rich autumnal colors between the green.
“Eve.”
She looked back at Talos. He was so darkly handsome and powerful, and at the moment his sensual mouth was pressed into a hard line. He was clearly determined to have his way.
But something inside her made her resist him.
“Thank you for asking me to marry you,” she said awkwardly. “It’s very warm and loving. But my baby won’t be born for months—”
“Our baby,” he corrected her.
“And I can’t be your wife when I can’t even remember you.”
“We’ll see,” he said softly. Silence fell on their drive as she watched the passing scenery. Finally, the car turned off the road to a smaller lane. She saw a redbrick Georgian mansion at the base of tree-covered hills, reflected in a wide gray lake.
“Is that my stepfather’s house?” she breathed in shock.
“Yes.”
The car drove up the long lane through the park and woodlands then stopped in front of the entrance. As Talos opened the door and helped her from the car, Eve looked up with an intake of breath. She craned her head back to get a good look at the mansion, with its striking Victorian Gothic parapets stabbing upward into the steel-gray sky.
Holding her hand over her eyes to block out the noon sunlight that had finally penetrated the clouds, she looked back at him. “I lived here as a teenager?”
“And now it is yours, along with a vast fortune.”
She looked at him sharply. “How do you know?”
“You knew it yourself yesterday, when you attended the reading of the will.”
“But how do you know?” she persisted.
He shrugged. “I’ll make sure you get a copy of the will. Come.” Taking her hand, he escorted her past the grand sweep of the front door. Inside the foyer, five servants waited to greet her, headed by the housekeeper.
“Oh, Miss Craig,” the plump woman sniffed into her apron. “Your stepfather loved you so much. He would be so glad to see you’ve finally come home!”
Home? But it wasn’t her home. Apparently, she’d barely set foot in this place for years!
But looking at the elderly housekeeper’s sad face, Eve felt a sympathetic pang. She put an arm around her.
“He was a good man, wasn’t he?” she said softly.
“Yes, that he was, miss. The best. And he loved you as his own natural-born child. Even though you weren’t, and American to boot,” she added, wiping her eyes. “He’d be so happy you’ve finally come back after so long.”
Eve paused delicately. “Has it been so…?”
“Six, no, seven years. Mr. Craig always invited you back for Christmas, but…”
Her voice trailed off as she wiped tears with her apron.
“But I never came, did I?” Eve said.
The older woman shook her head wistfully.
Eve swallowed. Apparently she’d taken her stepfather’s money and let him pay her bills as she shopped and partied her way around the world, but hadn’t even had the grace to return for an occasional visit!
And now he was dead.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered over the lump in her throat.
