Irresistible Greeks: Red-Hot and Rich: His Reputation Precedes Him / An Offer She Can't Refuse / Pretender to the Throne

‘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 ruefully. Her car was at Lyonedes Tower, and she did owe Markos a suitable thank-you—although she had a feeling her idea of suitable and Markos’s might differ greatly in content! He had been so supportive of her this evening and she owed him an explanation as to the reason he had needed to be so.

‘Coffee, wine or brandy?’ Markos offered dryly once they were once again in the anaemic sitting room of the penthouse apartment at Lyonedes Tower.

‘Oh, I think this situation calls for brandy all round, don’t you?’ She sighed wearily as she sank down in one of the boxy cream armchairs.

‘I am unsure as yet exactly what this situation is.’ He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over a chair, before moving to the bar situated at the other end of the room and pouring brandy into two glasses.

Eva grimaced as she took the glass Markos held out to her before moving to stand a short distance away from her. ‘It isn’t every day that you meet your ex-husband by accident!’ She sipped the brandy, instantly feeling the effects of the fiery alcohol as it slid easily down the back of her throat. ‘The last I heard of Jack he was living and working in France.’

‘Which is obviously where he met and married Yvette.’

‘Obviously,’ Eva echoed noncommittally as she stared down at the beige carpet.

‘Are you still in love with him?’

She gave Markos a startled look and the glass shook precariously in her hand. ‘What?’

His smile lacked humour. ‘In the circumstances it is a relevant question, I would have thought.’

Eva drank down the rest of her brandy before answering him, in the hopes that its warmth would melt the block of ice that seemed to have formed in her chest. ‘What circumstances?’