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

Markos kept his expression deliberately bland. ‘You did not appear to become ill until after the appearance of Grey’s second wife. Do not cry, Eva.’ All attempts to remain detached fled as he saw the tears shimmering in Eva’s huge gold-coloured eyes, and Markos quickly placed his brandy down on the glass-topped coffee table before moving onto his haunches beside the chair where she sat, to take her icy cold hand in his. ‘Talk to me, Eva. Tell me why you are crying.’

‘I’m not,’ she denied, even as those tears began to fall down the paleness of her cheeks. ‘I just… You’re right. Seeing Yvette…it was a shock—’ She broke off and began to cry in earnest.

It was as if a dam had burst inside Eva—the dam that had held back all the grief and pain she had buried deep inside her when her hopes and dreams of having a family of her own, a baby of her own, had been dashed five years ago, when the specialist had told them that Jack could never father a child.

A child Jack now appeared to be having with his second wife.

It didn’t matter by what means Yvette Cabot Grey had become pregnant, only that she was. With the baby Jack had denied Eva five years ago.

Markos was completely at a loss as to what he should do or say as Eva buried her face in her hands and sobbed as if her heart were breaking. Which perhaps it was.

Over Jack Cabot Grey?

Having no experience upon which to draw, it wasn’t for Markos to criticise whom others might choose—or not choose—to love. Except that Jack Cabot Grey was everything Markos disliked in a man: shallow, selfish and, where Eva was concerned, in Markos’s opinion cruelly vindictive. None of which changed the fact that Eva could not seem to stop crying as if her heart were breaking.

Markos reached out and gathered Eva up into his arms, lifting her and cradling her tenderly against his chest before sitting down in the chair himself. Her tears quickly dampened the front of his shirt. Markos ran his fingers soothingly against her temple, considering the irony of holding the woman he desired in his arms as she cried over another man.

If his cousin Drakon could only see him now.

‘It was the baby,’ Eva finally choked out painfully. ‘I—we—we tried for so long to have a baby of our own, and—we finally had tests. The specialist told us it wasn’t possible,’ she sobbed.

Oh, dear God! And that cold-hearted bastard Cabot Grey had stood there and calmly introduced his pregnant second wife to Eva, all the time knowing that Eva wasn’t able to have a baby herself. The absolute bastard!

Could this also be the reason Eva’s self-confidence was so fragile beneath her veneer of derision? The reason she was so determined not to become involved with another man? Possibly also the reason she and Jack Cabot Grey had divorced?

Markos could certainly believe the latter. Even on such short acquaintance Markos knew that Jack Cabot Grey was the sort of vindictive bastard who would never have let Eva forget she was unable to give him the Cabot Grey son and heir.

‘It’s all right, Eva,’ he assured her softly, speaking into the silky softness of her hair. ‘Everything is going to be all right.’

She gave a choked laugh. ‘Of course it isn’t.’

No, as far as Eva was concerned perhaps it wasn’t… ‘You are a beautiful young woman, with all your life still ahead of you. Not all men are like Jack Cabot Grey—’

‘Thank goodness!’ She gave a shiver of revulsion.

Markos looked down at her quizzically. ‘You really do not love him still?’

Eva straightened before attempting to stand up, but she was prevented from doing so as Markos’s arms tightened about her to keep her firmly sitting on his knee.

Which was pretty embarrassing, now that Eva thought about it. In fact the whole of this evening had been embarrassing, she realised, now that she had got over her shock and calmed down a little.

First of all she had completely flipped out when they’d arrived at Jonathan’s house. Then she had almost collapsed with surprise when she had realised Jack was also at the party. Even worse, she had run from the room and been violently ill in the ladies’ powder room once she had seen that Jack’s second wife was pregnant. An embarrassment that Markos had witnessed when he followed her. And now she had cried all over Markos’s white shirt, probably ruining it, no doubt giving him completely the wrong impression as to why she had become so upset in the first place.

Not the best first date she had ever been on.

She doubted Markos had ever had one like it before, either.

She gave a shake of her head. ‘I’m not sure that I ever did love Jack,’ she answered him honestly. ‘Not really.’

‘And yet you married him…?’

Eva nodded. ‘I was a student when we met at a party given by one of my father’s friends. Jack was six years older than me, and he seemed so mature and self-assured in comparison with my other friends—taking me out to the theatre and wining and dining me at expensive restaurants.’ She grimaced as she saw Markos’s raised brows. ‘I’ve had plenty of time to think about this, and I know now that I allowed myself to be dazzled by Jack’s easy charm and self-confidence. I mistook being dazzled for being in love.’

Markos looked down at her quizzically. ‘It was a big thing to move to New York with him—away from your family and friends—after you were married.’

‘I’m afraid that was probably in an effort to get away from most of my family. My parents aren’t the happiest married couple in the world,’ she explained at Markos’s questioning look. ‘They should probably never have married each other, and they certainly shouldn’t have had a child together. My childhood was like a battlefield.’

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!

CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_f1c47cf6-c68c-5983-b6e0-0c568a6fe221)

‘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!