ridiculous?”
Kyle’s gaze narrowed at the way Eva carefully avoided the issue of his proposal. “You’re family.”
“Distant and only on paper. It’s not as if I’m a real Atraeus.”
Kyle’s brow’s jerked together. “Your name is Atraeus.”
Eva dragged in a breath, relieved that the unnerving sense that Kyle had seen right through her desperate attempt to seem normal and completely impervious to him had dissipated. “That doesn’t change the fact that I’m adopted. I’m not blood.” And that she could still remember what it felt like to wear secondhand clothes, eat cereal for dinner and fend off her mother’s boyfriends. She was a very poor cuckoo in a diamond-encrusted nest.
“Mario wanted to help you. He wanted you to be happy.”
She drew a breath. The clean scent of his skin deepened the panicked awareness that was humming through her. “I’m twenty-eight. I think that by now I know what it takes to be happy.”
“And that would be paying some guy to marry you?”
Eva’s brows jerked together. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but barely fifty years ago, arranged marriages were common in both the Messena and the Atraeus families.”
“Last century, maybe.”
“Then someone should have told that to Mario. And it underlines my point that a marriage of convenience is not the worst thing that could happen.” And it wasn’t as if she actually wanted to be loved. She had seen what had happened to her mother when she had become emotionally needy. Relationship train wreck followed by train wreck, the plunging depression and slow disintegration of Meg Rushton’s life. It had all been crowned by her mother’s inability to care for Eva, the one child who had survived the disorder.
A young man tried to squeeze in beside Eva. Kyle blocked him with a wolf-cold glance and a faint shift in position. In the process, his arm brushed against hers, sending a tingle of heat through her that made Eva even more desperate to get away. With grim concentration, she stared over Kyle’s broad shoulder at the bottles of spirits suspended at the rear of the bar and tried not to love the fact that Kyle’s behavior had been as bluntly possessive as if they had been a couple. That was exactly the kind of thinking she could not afford.
Kyle’s gaze, edged with irritation, captured hers. “Let’s put this in context. If a man is unscrupulous enough to take your money for marriage, chances are he won’t have a problem pressurizing you until you give in to sex.”
Eva’s heart thumped hard in her chest at the thought that Kyle could possibly have a motivation that was tied in with caring about her, that in his own hard-nosed way, he had been trying to protect her. The next thought was a dizzying, improbable leap—that Kyle had a personal interest in stopping her from having sex with other men because he wanted her.
Annoyed that she should even begin to imagine that Kyle’s concern was based on some kind of personal desire for her when she knew he regarded her as a spoiled, shallow good-time girl, she put the revelation in context. Kyle was gorgeous, megawealthy and successful, but the reality was that, like his older brothers and her macho Atraeus cousins, shunt him back a few centuries, give him a sword and buckler and he would fit right in. Just because he was being protective to the point of being intrusive didn’t mean he was attracted to her. It was just part of his DNA. “I know how to handle men. Believe me, sex will not be an issue.”
Kyle’s gaze dropped to her mouth. “Then, honey, you don’t know men very well.”
Her heart pounded a little harder, not at the implication that she was naive about men in general, but at the low, rough timbre of his voice and the sudden revelation that Kyle did find her attractive.
Eva swallowed against the sudden dryness in her throat. The fingers of her right hand curled tight against the childish urge to press the heel of her palm against the sharp pounding of her heart.
Someone else jostled her to get to the bar. Kyle said something low and curt, his arm curled around her waist as he pulled her against his side. The move was more courteous and protective than overtly sensual, but even so, another hot pang shot clear to her toes.
He released her almost immediately, but not before his gaze touched on hers, filled with unexpected knowledge. Another shockwave went through her. If she’d thought Kyle hadn’t noticed that she was still crazily attracted to him, she was wrong. He knew.
“Damn, let’s get out of here.”
Taking her hand, he forged a path through the now-busy bar, and out of the blue, memories she’d buried flooded back. Kyle’s fingers linked with hers years ago, the carefree flash of his grin as they’d escaped from the crowded party. The way the earth had stopped spinning and she’d forgotten to breathe when they had run down to the beach and long weeks of swimming and talking together had finally reached a flash point.
Breath suddenly constricted, she pulled her hand free and tried to ignore the heated tingling of the brief contact.
Kyle stopped, coincidentally, right beside the wedding cake. “You might think you can handle marriage to some guy you’ve only just met, but I know for a fact you’ve never even lived with a man.”
The memories winked out with the suddenness of a door slamming. Her temper flared at the evidence that Kyle had been prying into her life. “Just because I haven’t had a long-term relationship—”
“The way I heard it, you haven’t had any real relationships.”
She dragged off the glasses, her eyes flashing fire. “How can you know this stuff?” Although she knew the answer had to be Kyle’s younger sisters, the Messena twins, Sophie and Francesca. Over the years she had become good friends with the twins, so of course they knew exactly how her life had played out. No doubt Kyle had engaged Sophie and Francesca in some kind of casual conversation, gathering intelligence. They would not have realized that telling Kyle she didn’t go in for casual relationships would matter. “I knew it. You’ve been spying on me.”
“Checking up on you. It’s part of the brief.”
And with his military background, Kyle had a certain skill set. When he had gone into the army, she had still been lovesick enough to keep tabs on him. Not satisfied with the rank and file, he had done officer training, then had gone into the Special Air Service, the SAS. When he had been sent on his first overseas assignment, she had lost sleep for weeks, wondering if he had been wounded or even killed. Then she had learned that he had come back from the mission just fine and gotten married on his days off. It was then she had decided she would never worry about him again.
She folded her arms across her chest, glad to have that salutary reminder about just how meaningless that long-ago holiday romance and kiss on the beach had been. “I am not a job.”
“No.” He stared at the monster cake with a faintly incredulous gaze. “You’re a pain in the butt.”
Her chin shot up. “Then why do the job?”
“Believe me, if Mario had chosen someone else, I would have been more than happy.”
“Ditto.”
A muscle jerked fascinatingly along the side of his jaw. Bolstered by the unmistakable sign of tension, Eva delivered the only ultimatum she had. “Then unless you
