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

Eva had tried to believe that having each other really was enough. While each day she had died a little inside at the knowledge that there would never be any children in her marriage. No babies to love and nurture, her own or adopted. No happy house full of the children, she had longed for all her life after growing up an only child in the war zone that had been her parents’ marriage.

She and Jack had stayed together for another two years after the specialist had delivered his devastating news. Years during which they had drifted apart as they both buried themselves in their individual careers rather than face the ever-widening rift in their marriage. Years when Jack became involved in affair after affair—possibly as a sop to his dented virility?—only to break them off each time Eva found out about them, with tears and declarations of love on his part, and promises of future fidelity. Until the next time. And the next.

Eva’s love for Jack had died a little more with each of those affairs. Until there had been nothing left but the shell of their marriage. A marriage Eva wouldn’t have wanted to bring a child into even if it had been possible.

Another three years of being on her own after the divorce, of building her interior design business into one of the most successful in New York, and Eva had realised there was still something missing from her life. The same something that had always been missing from her life.

A baby of her own.

Lots of professional women had babies on their own nowadays—so why not Eva? She certainly had enough money to be able to provide for them both comfortably, and her career was of a kind that could be worked around a baby’s needs.

So the plan was to find herself a man who was healthy, explain to him what it meant to be an IVF donor, and present him with the legal contract she would expect him to sign. Both of them would be protected from any financial demands being made on the other after the baby was born.

Putting that idea into practice had proved much harder than Eva had imagined. Broaching the subject, asking any man to coldly, clinically donate his sperm for IVF, had proved difficult.

‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Glen.’ She smiled warmly, more for Markos Lyonedes’s benefit than Glen’s. Her smile faded as she turned to look at the Greek businessman. ‘If you will excuse us?’

‘Of course.’ Markos gave a slight inclination of his head, wondering what thoughts had been going through Eva’s head these past few minutes to form that frown between those golden eyes. Whatever they had been, he certainly didn’t hold out a lot of hope for Glen Asher’s chances of sharing her bed tonight. ‘It was a pleasure to meet you both.’

‘And you,’ Glen assured him warmly.

It was a warmth that was in no way reflected in Eva’s incredible gold eyes, and she made no effort to echo her escort’s enthusiasm. ‘We’ll wish you a good evening, then, Mr Lyonedes.’

His eyes laughed down into hers. ‘I believe you called me Markos earlier.’

‘Did I?’ she dismissed coolly. ‘How over-familiar of me!’

Not familiar enough for Markos. He turned to watch Eva and her escort cross the room to make their excuses to their host before leaving. All without those amber-gold eyes giving so much as a glance back in his direction.

Markos continued to watch the sensuous sway of those curvaceous hips so lovingly outlined in that clinging red gown, and made a silent promise to himself as the doorman closed the door behind Eva’s departure.

A promise that one day—or night; it didn’t really matter what time it was!—he would hear Eva scream his name as he made love to her.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_e784713f-b5ca-55d8-9674-405163870dc9)

‘WELL, well, well—if it isn’t Ms Evangeline Grey come to call at last!’ Markos observed dryly from where he sat in his high-backed leather chair behind the mahogany desk in his office.

Lena had shown the interior designer in at exactly five o’clock on Monday evening, before quietly closing the door behind her as she left them alone together.

Markos and the interior designer Evangeline Grey.

The same Evangeline Grey who had introduced herself to him as ‘Just Eva’ on Saturday evening, in the knowledge that she had cancelled two appointments with him earlier in the week.

Markos had wasted no time after she and Glen had left the party on Saturday in asking one of Senator Ashcroft’s many aides about the identity of the woman in the red dress. Only to be informed that she was the interior designer Evangeline Grey.

Those amber-gold eyes flashed her displeasure now, as she marched into the centre of the spacious office, allowing Markos to see that she managed to look sexy even wearing a business suit—a fitted black jacket and knee-length black skirt, the latter revealing long and silky-smooth legs. Her silk blouse was the same unusual colour as her eyes; her long ebony hair neatly gathered and secured at her crown.

‘Your telephone call this morning made it clear you expected me to be here promptly at five o’clock, whether it was convenient or otherwise,’ she reminded him with barely concealed impatience.

‘Indeed.’ Markos stood up and moved slowly round his desk to lean back against it as he looked down at her between narrowed lids. ‘And the fact that you are here would seem to imply that you were no happier than I was on Saturday at the possibility of having a slur cast upon your reputation?’

A frown appeared on that smooth alabaster brow. ‘That’s hardly a fair comparison, Mr Lyonedes, when the threats you made to me this morning were in regard to my professional reputation, not my personal one.’

‘I believe the saying is “payback can be a bitch”?’ He gave an unrepentant shrug. This woman had wilfully—deliberately!—played with him on Saturday evening by not revealing her true identity, and no doubt been highly amused at Markos’s expense because of it.

Markos had thought about it long and hard over the weekend, finally deciding that if Evangeline Grey wanted to play games then he was happy to oblige her. With that in mind he had telephoned her office himself that morning and demanded to speak to her personally. After a short delay there had been a more or less one-sided conversation during which Markos had informed her that there would be no more cancelled appointments. If she didn’t want him to tell anyone and everyone who cared to listen just how unreliable he had found her professional services she would come at five.

Her only answer had been to end the call abruptly, causing Markos to chuckle wryly as he slowly placed his mobile down on his desktop.

Nevertheless, he had been sure that Eva would be here at five o’clock. He knew that she was now aware that it was well within his power to seriously damage her professional reputation if he chose to do so.

‘You’re unusually quiet today,’ he remarked, lifting his dark brows mockingly.

Oh, Eva had plenty she wanted to say to this man. She was just erring on the side of caution—for the moment.

She had realised after leaving Senator Ashcroft’s cocktail party on Saturday—her feelings of anger on behalf of her cousin aside—that it probably hadn’t been a wise move on her part to antagonise a man as powerful as Markos Lyonedes by making appointments with him which she’d never had any intention of keeping. Unwise and not a little childish, she now accepted reproachfully. As if it would really matter to a man as powerful as Markos Lyonedes if some little interior designer chose to snub him by not keeping her appointments!

Except, having met her on Saturday evening, it obviously did matter to him. It didn’t help, having duly arrived at Lyonedes Tower at five o’clock, that Eva was now totally aware of the way in which Markos Lyonedes managed to exude a predatory air—despite the expensive elegance of his tailored dark grey suit and paler grey silk shirt, with matching tie knotted meticulously at his throat.

‘Did you and Glen enjoy your late dinner on Saturday evening?’ he prompted softly.

Eva’s mouth tightened at this reminder of the time she and Glen had spent together at an Italian restaurant after leaving the Senator’s party. Several hours during which she had desperately tried to dredge up some of her former approval of Glen as an IVF donor, only to find that, rather than appreciating Glen’s healthy good looks, she was comparing them to the hard and chiselled features of the man now standing in front of her.

A man she wouldn’t even consider putting on a shortlist of potential donors for her baby.

Oh, Markos Lyonedes was definitely handsome, and obviously he was healthy and intelligent, but there all suitability as the possible father of her child ended. Markos might have more than earned his reputation for avoiding serious relationships, but Eva knew there was no way that a man as powerful as one of the Greek Lyonedes cousins would ever agree to clinically, calculatedly father a child by donating his sperm for IVF.

In fact her experience with Glen now made her wonder if it might not be better to opt for an anonymous donor after all. In the meantime, she had to cope with knowing she was physically responsive to Markos in a way she hadn’t experienced in the three years since her divorce—if ever!

Jack had been several years older than her when they’d married, and more experienced. Their lovemaking had been fun to explore at the start of their marriage. That interest, for obvious reasons, had eventually faded. To the point that by the end of their marriage, they hadn’t made love in months.

Eva’s self-esteem had been at a very low ebb after the divorce, her confidence in her desirability even lower, and it had taken months for her even to go out on a date with another man—only to discover that her emotions were completely numb, and the most she could feel for any of those men was a distant liking.

But it wasn’t anything as lukewarm as liking—distant or otherwise!—she felt in regard to Markos Lyonedes.

Eva had been convinced—with the experience of her disastrous marriage behind her, and after listening for hours to Donna’s broken-hearted meanderings down the telephone as her cousin mourned her lost love—that she was destined to be the one woman who wouldn’t ever be stupid enough to fall under the sensual spell of all that lethal Lyonedes charm and charismatic good-looks.

Which only went to prove what an arrogant fool she had been.

Because Eva now knew she only had to be in the same room as Markos Lyonedes to be aware of every single thing about him. She could feel the tug of that desire even now, causing her hands to tremble slightly, her breasts to feel hot and swollen, and a dampness between her thighs.

She could see the same desire reflected towards her in the warmth of those dark green eyes. It was a physical attunement that seemed to make the very air between them crackle and dance.

‘It was fine,’ Eva dismissed abruptly. ‘Now, if we could—’

‘Have you and Glen been together long?’

Eva frowned slightly. ‘I’m not sure that it’s any of your business, but we haven’t “been together” at all.’