Just One Night...: Fiancée For One Night / Just One Last Night / The Night That Started It All

‘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.’