still captured by the sudden intense need to know what exactly had happened, who had dared to shoot Kyle, took a few seconds to absorb his question. “You were critical—they wouldn’t let me stay.”
“I was only critical the night I arrived. I didn’t see any family until the next day. So, how did you find out?”
Despite her clothes, which were steadily dripping, and which were now making her feel clammy and just a little chilled, she found herself blushing. There was no way she was going to tell Kyle that she had practically lived on the internet, tracking down Reuters reports, and that she had made a pest of herself by calling his regimental headquarters. “I had a modeling friend whose boyfriend was in the SAS.” That part was true enough. She shrugged. “I just happened to mention that you’d been hurt and she...found out for me.”
“But you didn’t visit me again.”
She straightened, hooking the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “I was busy. What is this? An interrogation?” Although something about Kyle had changed. The bad-tempered tension had gone and there was an undercurrent that made her feel decidedly breathless. She tried walking in her wet heels to see if they were safe. At the same time she surreptitiously smoothed her palms down the sodden, clinging line of her jacket and skirt to press out excess moisture. As a result, water tickled down her legs and filled her shoes.
Kyle stopped in the process of wringing out his shirt, his gaze arrested. “Maybe you should take the jacket off?”
“No.” Eva had routinely taken her clothes off for lingerie ads, but there was no way she was going to take one stitch of clothing off in front of Kyle. She suddenly noticed the flatness of her jacket pocket. Her glasses were gone, which meant they were probably in the bottom of the pool.
“They can stay there,” Kyle said flatly. “You don’t need them. You’ve got the eyesight of an eagle.”
“How would you know what my eyesight’s like?”
“Remember the archery contests?”
Dolphin Bay, two summers in a row, when she and Kyle would go head-to-head at the archery range. “You always won those.”
“I’d been practicing for years. You came second.”
The sudden warmth in his gaze made her feel flustered all over again. She realized that the distance she had worked so hard to preserve, and which she had been able to maintain quite well if she was angry, had gone. Burned away in the moment she had realized that Kyle wanted her.
She walked to the edge of the pool and peered in. The glasses, with their dark rims, were easily visible. “I need the glasses for work.”
“Why? They’re not prescription, just plain glass.” His face cleared. “No, wait, don’t answer, I think I can guess.”
Over seeing Kyle’s buff, ripped, hot torso, she tossed his towel at him. A split second later the sharp tap of heels on tiles signaled Jacinta’s presence a moment before she rounded the corner into the pool area.
Her eyes widened when she saw that Eva was soaked. “There you are, the bride’s father wants to give you a check—” She noticed Kyle. “Oops. Sorry, did I interrupt something?”
“Nothing.” Eva seized her chance to end the unsettling encounter and the crazy, suffocating awareness that had crept up on her out of nowhere. “Where is Mr. Hirsch?”
“In the lobby.” Jacinta glanced at Kyle’s washboard abs. “I told him you’d be right along.”
But suddenly, Eva wasn’t going anywhere. She took the one step needed to place herself squarely in Jacinta’s line of vision, so that she had to stare at her, rather than at Kyle’s bronzed, dripping skin. In the moment that she moved, it struck her that she was behaving like a jealous girlfriend. Kyle did not belong to her, and yet she was ready to fight tooth and nail to fend Jacinta off. “I’m wet and my hair’s ruined. You need to go and collect the check.”
Jacinta didn’t move. “Did you fall in the pool?”
“We both fell,” Eva said bluntly.
Jacinta made an odd little noise that sounded suspiciously like amusement quickly muffled then spun on her heel and disappeared back inside.
Kyle broke the tense little silence that developed in the wake of Jacinta’s departure by tossing his towel on a recliner and picking up his soaked shirt. “At least you managed to sell the wedding on. I’m guessing right about now, you’re getting concerned about money.”
She met Kyle’s gaze head-on. “Without the backup of my trust fund, all money counts.”
And that was the other reason she found this whole process of having to qualify for her own inheritance so hurtful and undermining. All of the bona fide Atraeus and Messena family members who were born to wealth received vast amounts of money, and their right to do so wasn’t questioned. She understood what Mario was trying to achieve with the marriage clause, but that didn’t change the fact that the whole process made her feel separated from the rest of the family, and different.
Stung anew by what she saw as further evidence that, despite adoption, she had never quite fitted into the Atraeus family, Eva turned on her heel, intending to make a beeline for her car, where she had a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers stashed for the drive back to Auckland.
Kyle caught her arm, halting her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned the money.”
The tingling warmth of Kyle’s palm, even through the barrier of damp silk, sent a small, sharp shock through her. She jerked free. “I suppose you think I’m a money-grubbing gold digger who doesn’t deserve—”
“I don’t think that.” His gaze dropped to her mouth. “You deserve your inheritance.”
Her chin jerked up. “Then why have you been doing your level best to deprive me of it?”
“Money isn’t the issue,” he muttered. “This is.” Bending his head, Kyle kissed her.
Eva inhaled sharply at the warmth of his mouth, stunned by the brief caress and the molten heat that exploded from that one point of contact. When she didn’t move, Kyle’s palm curled around her nape. The next minute she was pressed hard against the muscled heat of his body as his mouth settled more heavily on hers.
The passion was searing and instant and this time, Eva wasn’t content to just be kissed. Palms flattened against the hard muscle of Kyle’s chest, and all too aware that she was making a disastrous mistake, she lifted up on her toes and angled her head to increase the contact. His taste exploded in her mouth and the furnace heat of his body warmed her, so that she wanted to press closer still, to wallow in his heat and strength.
And suddenly, it registered just how alone and isolated she had been. Since her teenage fixation on Kyle, she had simply not allowed anyone else close. She had sidestepped relationships and sex. She hadn’t thought she needed either, until now.
The strap of her bag slipped off her shoulder. She registered the thump as it dropped onto the ground, and the sound of glass breaking and dimly remembered the champagne flute. Her arms closed around Kyle’s neck as the kiss deepened, and suddenly the cling of her wet clothes seemed sodden and restrictive, dragging against skin that was unbearably sensitive.
