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‘Can you take Sam for a moment? My seat belt’s still done up.’
Leo turned into a statue right before her eyes, rigid and unblinking as he stared down at her restless child. And if she wasn’t mistaken, that look she saw in his eyes was fear.
‘Take him?’
‘Yes,’ she said, her hands under his arms, ready to hand him over. ‘Just for a second. I just need to undo my seat belt.’
‘I…’
‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said one of the cabin attendants, slipping past the stunned Leo. ‘I’ve been secretly hoping for a cuddle of this gorgeous boy.’
She took Sam from her and swung him around, jogging him on her hip so that he stopped grizzling, instead blinking up at her with his big dark eyes, plump lips parted. ‘You are gorgeous, aren’t you? You’re going to be a real heartbreaker, I can tell.’ And then to Eve, ‘How about I carry him for you? I’m probably more used to the motion of the plane.’ Eve smiled her thanks, retrieving Sam’s bear from the seat as Leo remembered how to move and led the way.
‘There you go,’ the attendant said a few moments later, as she peeled back the covers and laid the drowsy child down. ‘Press this button,’ she said, pointing to a console on the side table, ‘if there’s anything else I can help you with.’ And with a brisk smile to them both and one last lingering look at Sam, she was gone.
‘Thank you for thinking of this,’ Evelyn said, sitting down alongside her son and tucking his bear under his arm. And then, because she felt bad about the things she’d said to him earlier and without taking her eyes from Sam, she said, ‘I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I had no right.’
‘Forget it,’ he said, his velvet voice thick with gravel. ‘For the record, you were probably right. Now, there’s an en suite through that door,’ he continued, and she looked over her shoulder, surprised to see a door set so cleverly into the panelling that she’d missed it as she’d looked around.
‘Oh, I thought that was the bathroom we passed on the way. Next to the galley.’
‘That serves the other suite.’
‘Wow,’ Eve said, taking it all in—the wide bed, the dark polished timber panelling and gilt-edged mirror and adding it to what she’d already seen, the dining table and spacious lounge. ‘Incredible. A person could just about live in one of these things, couldn’t they?’
‘I do.’
Her head swung back. ‘When you’re travelling, you mean?’
‘You know my diary, Evelyn. I’m always travelling. I live either in the plane or in some hotel somewhere.’
‘So where’s home?’
He held out his arms. ‘This is home. Wherever I am is home.’
‘But you can’t live on a plane. Everyone has a home. You must have family somewhere.’ She frowned, thinking about his voice and the lack of any discernable accent. Clearly he had Mediterranean roots but his voice gave nothing away. ‘Where do you come from?’
Something bleak skated across his eyes as he looked at his watch. ‘You’re obviously tired and I’m keeping you both. Have a good sleep.’
He turned to leave then, turned back, reaching into his pocket. ‘Oh, you’d better have this back.’ He set the tiny box on the bedside table. Eve blinked at it, already knowing what it held.
‘They extended the loan?’
He gave a wry smile. ‘Not exactly. But it’s yours to keep afterwards.’
‘You bought it?’
‘It looks good on you. It matches your eyes.’
She looked from the box to the man, still stroking her son’s back, aware of his soft breathing as he settled into a more comfortable sleep. Thank heavens for the reality of Sam or she could easily think she was dreaming. ‘What is this?’ she said, mistrustful, the smouldering sparks of their earlier confrontation glowing brightly, fanned by this latest development. ‘Some kind of bribe so I behave properly all weekend?’
‘Do I need it to be?’
‘No. I’m here, aren’t I? And so I’m hardly likely to make a scene and reveal myself as some kind of fraud. But I’m certainly not doing it for your benefit, just like I’m not doing it for any financial gain. I just don’t want to let Maureen down. She’s had enough people do that recently, without me adding to their number.’
‘Suit yourself,’ he said, his voice sounding desolate and empty. ‘But if you change your mind, feel free to consider it your parting trinket. And just like you said, you won’t even need to post it to yourself. So efficient.’
And then he was gone, leaving only the sting of his parting words in his wake. She kicked off her shoes and crawled into the welcoming bed, sliding her arm under Sam’s head and pulling him in close. She kissed his head, drinking deeply of his scent and his warm breath in an attempt to blot out the woody spice of another’s signature tones.
She was so confused, so tired. Sleep, she told herself, knowing that after a late night of sexual excesses followed by today’s tension, what she really needed was to sleep. But something tugged at her consciousness and refused to let go as his words whirled and eddied in her mind, keeping her from the sleep she craved so much as she tried to make sense of what Leo had said.
A heart of stone she’d accused him of, and when she’d apologised, he’d told her she was probably right. She shivered just thinking how forlorn he’d looked. How lost.
A man with a stone for a heart. A man with no home.
A man with everything and yet with nothing.
And a picture flashed in her mind—the photographic print she’d seen in Leo’s suite before dinner last night.
She’d been looking for a distraction at the time, looking for something to pretend interest in if only so she didn’t have to look at him, so her eyes would not betray how strongly she was drawn to him. Only she hadn’t had to feign interest when she’d seen it, a picture from the 1950s, a picture of a riverbank and a curving row of trees and a park bench set between.
Something about the arrangement or the atmosphere of that black and white photograph had jagged in her memory at the time, just as it struck a chord now. It was the old man sitting all alone on that park bench, hunched and self-contained, and sitting all alone, staring out over the river.
A lonely man.
A man with no family and nowhere to call home.
A man with nothing.
And it struck her then. Twenty or thirty years from now, that man could very well be Leo.
It was just a hiccup, Leo told himself as he considered the task ahead, just a slight hitch in his plans. Only a weekend, three nights at most, and the deal would be wrapped up once and for all. After all, Culshaw knew that even though they all called the shots in their respective businesses, none of them could just drop everything and disappear off the face of the earth—not for too long anyway. Neither could he risk them walking away. It had to be tied up this weekend.
He sighed as he packed up his laptop. He’d got precious little done, not that he’d expected to, with a child running riot. Only this one he’d barely seen and still he’d got nothing done.
Maybe because he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
What was it about the woman that needled him so much? She was so passionate and wild in bed, like a tigress waiting to be unleashed, waiting for him to let her off the chain. Wasn’t that enough? Why couldn’t she just leave it at that? Why did she have to needle him and needle him and lever lids off things that had been welded shut for a reason? All her pointless questions.
All working away under his skin. And why did she even care?
Two days. Three nights. So maybe extending his time in her presence wasn’t his preferred option, but he could survive being around Evelyn that long, surely. After all, he’d had mistresses who’d lasted a month or two before he’d lost interest or moved cities. Seriously, what could possibly happen in just a weekend?
Hopefully more great sex. A sound sleep would do wonders to improve her mood, and a tropical island sunset would soon have her feeling romantic and back in his arms. Nothing surer.
And in a few short days he’d have the deal tied up and Evelyn and child safely delivered home again.
Easy.
‘Mr Zamos,’ the cabin attendant said, refreshing his water, ‘the captain said to tell you we’ll be landing in half an hour. Would you like me to let Ms Carmichael know?’
He looked at his watch, rubbed his brow, calculating how long she’d slept. If his theory was right, her mood should be very much improved already. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘but I’ll do it.’
There was no answer to his soft knock, so he turned the handle, cracked open the door. ‘Evelyn?’
Light slanted into the darkened room and as his eyes adjusted he could make her out in the bed, her caramel hair tumbling over the pillow, her face turned away, her arm protectively resting over her child’s belly.
Mother and child.
And he felt such a surge of feeling inside him, such a tangle of twisted emotions, that for a moment the noise of that blast blotted everything else out, and there was nothing else for it but to close his eyes and endure the rush of pain and disgust and anger as it ripped through him.
And when he could breathe again, he opened his eyes to see another pair of dark eyes blinking up at him from the bed. Across the sleeping woman, the pair considered each other, Leo totally ill equipped to deal with the situation. In the end it was Sam who took the initiative. He pulled his teddy from his arms and offered him to Leo. ‘Bear.’
He looked blankly at the child and immediately Sam rolled over, taking his toy with him, then promptly rolled back and held his bear out to Leo again. ‘Bear.’
And Leo felt—he didn’t know how he felt. He didn’t know what was expected of him. He was still reeling from the explosion of emotions that had rocked through him to know how to react to this.
‘Bear!’
‘Mmm, what’s that, Sam?’ Eve said drowsily, and she looked around and saw Leo. ‘Oh.’ She pushed herself up, ran a hand over her hair. ‘Have I overslept?’
Her cheek was red where it had lain against the pillow, her hair was mussed and there was a smudge of mascara under one eye, but yet none of that detracted from her fundamental beauty. And he felt an insane surge of masculine pride that he was the one responsible for her exhaustion. And a not-so-insane surge of lust in anticipation of a repeat performance in his near future.
‘We’ll be landing soon. You don’t want to miss the view as we come in. It’s pretty spectacular, they tell me.’
It was spectacular, Eve discovered after she’d freshened herelf up and changed Sam before joining Leo back in the cabin. The sea was the most amazing blue, and she could make out in the distance some of the islands that made up the Whitsunday group. From here they looked like jewels in the sea, all lush green slopes and white sand surrounded by water containing every shade of blue. The sun was starting to go down, blazing fire, washing everything in a golden hue.
‘That’s Hamilton Island,’ he said, indicating a larger island as they circled the group for their approach. ‘That’s where we’ll land before transferring to the helicopter for Mina Island.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, pointing over Sam’s shoulder. ‘Look, Sam, that’s where we’re going for a holiday.’ Sam burst into song and pumped his arms up and down.
It did look idyllic, she thought. Maybe a couple of days relaxing on a tropical island wouldn’t be such a hardship. She glanced over at the man beside her, felt the familiar sizzle in her veins she now associated with him and only him, and knew she was fooling herself.
With Leo around things were bound to get complicated. They always did.
Which meant she just had to establish a few ground rules first.
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_b9fe4ced-2a58-5b71-bf91-38bd9a8181d5)
‘I ’M NOT sleeping with you.’
They’d landed on Hamilton Island and made the helicopter transfer to Mina without incident, arriving to be greeted by Eric just as the sun was dipping into the water in a glorious blaze of gold. Eric had laughed, secretly delighted she could tell, when they’d all stood and watched the spectacle, telling them they’d soon get used to ‘that old thing’, before dropping them off at their beachside bure to freshen up before dinner.
And now, after a tour of the timber and glass five-star bungalow, their eyes met over the king-sized bed. The only bed, aside from the cot set up for Sam in the generous adjoining dressing room.
She wasn’t about to change her mind. ‘You’ll just have to find yourself somewhere else to sleep.’
‘Come on, Evelyn,’ he said, sitting down on the bed and slipping off his shoes, peeling off his socks, ‘don’t you think you’re being just a little melodramatic? It’s not like we haven’t slept together before.’
‘That was different.’
He looked over his shoulder at her, one eyebrow raised. ‘Was it?’
Her arms flapped uselessly at her sides. From outside she could hear Sam laughing as Hannah, the young woman who had been sent to be his babysitter, fed him his dinner. At least that part of the arrangements seemed to be going well.
‘I’m not sharing a bed with you,’ she said. ‘And I certainly don’t have to sleep with you just because we happen to be caught in the same lie.’
He stood, reefing his shirt from his pants as he started undoing the buttons at his cuffs. ‘No? Even though you know we’re good together?’
She blinked. ‘What are you doing?’
He shrugged. ‘Taking a shower before dinner,’ he said innocently enough, although she saw the gleam in his eyes. ‘Care to join me?’
‘No!’
But she couldn’t resist watching his hands moving over the buttons, feeling for them, pushing them through the holes. Clever hands. Long-fingered hands. And as he tweaked the buttons she was reminded of the clever way he’d tweaked her nipples and worked other magic… She looked away. Looked back again. ‘There’s no point. No point to any of it.’
‘It’s only sex,’ he said, finishing off the rest of the buttons before peeling off his shirt. ‘It’s not like we haven’t already done it—several times. And I know for a fact you enjoyed it. I really don’t know why you’re making out like it’s some kind of ordeal.’
‘It was supposed to be for just one night,’ she said, trying and failing not to be distracted by his broad chest and that line of dark hair heading south. ‘A one-night stand. No strings attached.’
‘So we make it a four-night stand. And I sure as hell don’t see any strings.’
She dragged her recalcitrant eyes north again, wondering how he could so easily consider making love to a person like they had for not one but four nights, and not want to feel some kind of affection for the other party. But, then, he had a head start on her. He had a heart of stone. ‘It was nice, sure. But that doesn’t mean we have to have any repeat performances.’
‘There’s that word again.’ His hands dropped to the waistband of his pants, stilled there. ‘“Nice”. Tell me, if you scream like that for nice, what do you do for mind-blowing? Shatter windows?’
She felt heat flood her face, totally mortified at being reminded of her other wanton self, especially now when she was trying to make like she could live without such sex. ‘Okay, so it was better than nice. So what? It’s not as if we even like each other.’
‘And that matters because…?’
She spun away, reduced to feeling like some random object rather than a woman with feelings and needs of her own, and crossed to the wall of windows that looked out through palm trees to the bay beyond. It was moonlit now, the moon dusting the swaying palm leaves with silver and laying a silvery trail across the water to the shore, where tiny waves rippled in, luminescent as they kissed the beach. It was beautiful, the air balmy and still, and she wished she could enjoy it. But right now she was having trouble getting past the knowledge that she’d spent an entire night, had bared herself, body and soul, to a man who treated sex as some kind of birthright.
And if it wasn’t bad enough that he’d not so subtly pointed out she’d been vocally enthusiastic, now he’d as much as agreed that he didn’t even like her. Lovely.
And that was supposed to make her happier about sleeping with him?
Fat chance.
She felt his hands land on her shoulders, his long fingers stroking her arms, felt his warm breath fan her hair. ‘You are a beautiful woman, Evelyn. You are beautiful and sexy and built for unspeakable pleasure. And you know it. So why do you deny yourself that which you so clearly desire?’
Self-preservation, she thought, as his velvet-coated words warmed her in places she didn’t want warmed and stroked an ego that wanted to be liked and maybe, maybe even more than that.
‘I can’t,’ she said. Not without losing myself in a place I don’t want to be. Not without risking falling in love with a man who has no heart. ‘Please, just believe me, I’ll pretend to be your fiancée, I’ll pretend to be your lover. But, please, don’t expect me to sleep with you.’
The big house, as the Culshaws referred to it, was exactly that. Not flashy, but all spacious tropical elegance, the architecture, like that of the bures, styled to bring the outside in with lots of timber and glass and sliding walls. Outside, on an expansive deck overlooking the bay and the islands silhouetted against the sky, a table had been beautifully laid, but it was the night sky that captured everyone’s attention.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many stars,’ Eve confessed, dazzled by the display as they sat down for the meal. ‘It’s just magical.’
