you? I know you have.’
He took a breath and put on his most calming voice—the one he used to try and reassure her when she got stressed over things. ‘I don’t want you worrying—’ he began.
She cut across him, her voice rising in pitch. ‘How can I possibly not worry? I’m worried sick! My husband comes home and announces he’s resigned from his job! That he won’t work for you any more. Athan, what have you said to him? Why is he doing this?’
Athan’s hand around the phone receiver tightened. Ian had stormed out like a damn drama queen because he’d been shown up for the adulterous rat he was. But that was the last thing that Eva could ever know. Athan’s teeth ground together angrily. And to protect her he had to protect her husband’s dirty little secret.
‘Eva, it isn’t like that,’ he said soothingly. ‘It was a mutual decision,’ he lied. ‘Ian’s made it clear to me for some time that he’s restless, that he wants to quit.’
‘But why? I was so thrilled that you trusted him enough to take him on board!’
Athan rolled his eyes, glad his sister couldn’t see his expression. It wasn’t because he trusted Ian Randall that he’d taken him on. The complete reverse! It was because he’d wanted to keep him where he could see him—where he would have to toe the line. His mouth thinned. And that was just what he hadn’t done—and now Ian thought he could evade control by doing a runner.
Eva must not see it like that, though—that was essential. So he had to lie, to smooth it down, play it down.
‘I guess he felt a bit overpowered, Eva,’ he said. ‘It’s natural that he wants to try his wings out on his own—prove his own mettle. It could even be that he’s been head-hunted,’ he ventured placidly. ‘After all, a stint at one of the Teodarkis companies makes Ian very employable.’
His efforts to placate his sister, to assure her that her husband’s desertion was not a bad thing and did not indicate any falling out with his brother-in-law seemed to be working. Eva seemed to be calming down.
‘Well, I suppose that’s true,’ she said, her voice steadying and losing the nervous tension that had racked it when she’d first spoken. ‘But I was scared that he’d walked out because he’d quarrelled with you. You know he’s in awe of you, Athan.’ Her voice sounded sad. ‘I just want you and him to get on well together, that’s all.’
Athan said nothing. There were some things he couldn’t lie about. Like the fact that nothing could make him ‘get on well’ with the man who had married his sister against all his instinctive disapproval of the match. His sister deserved so much better than a philandering lightweight like Ian Randall.
As for what the man would do now—Athan had no idea. He’d trotted out that line about Ian being highly employable but he had no great belief in it. He knew perfectly well that others assumed Ian Randall held his prestigious position as director of marketing at one of the key subsidiaries within the Teodarkis organisation purely because his brother-in-law owned the company. He wouldn’t pick up another plum position like that out in the open market. No, without the shelter that he’d got from his brother-in-law Ian would find the corporate world a much harsher place. He might have enjoyed himself, storming out of his office, but reality would soon hit home. Athan’s lip curled. He’d take pleasure in seeing Ian come crawling back for his old job.
He gave an exasperated sigh. He’d get it, too—because Eva would be upset otherwise. In the meantime—well, Ian Randall could just stay out of his hair or do anything else he damn well liked.
With one exception.
He would not go anywhere near Marisa Milburne.
So far he hadn’t, and Athan intended it to stay that way. He didn’t believe Ian would try, now that he knew that his brother-in-law knew about her, but he wasn’t taking chances. On the other hand job-hunting should, Athan profoundly hoped, keep Ian’s mind off his intended mistress—former intended mistress, he reminded himself grimly—at least for the time being.
He sighed heavily.
I have to get over her! I have to put her away, in the past, and not let myself think about her or remember her and the time we had together. It’s over—gone, finished. She’s out of Ian’s life—out of mine.
For good.
But it was one thing to adjure himself to forget Marisa—to refuse to let himself go back down those tempting, dangerous pathways of his mind—quite another to achieve it. He stared out over the Athens skyline. Where was she now? he found himself thinking. She’d cleared out of London—out of the apartment Ian Randall had paid for—and gone. That was all he cared about—all he could allow himself to care about. The fact that she had disappeared. Disappeared as swiftly as she had appeared. Had she left London altogether? Or just gone to live somewhere else in the city?
Had she found another man? Another lover?
An image, hot and tormenting, leapt in his mind’s eye.
Marisa in another man’s arms—another man’s bed …
He thrust it out of his head, refused to let it back in. It was nothing to him—nothing!—whether or not she’d found another man to fill her life with. That was all he must remember—all he must allow himself to think.
Grimly he crossed to his drinks cabinet, yanking open the doors. Maybe a shot of alcohol would banish the image from his head. Give him the peace he sought.
I need another woman.
The crudity of his thought shocked him, but that, he knew, was what it boiled down to. There was only one way to get Marisa Milburne out of his consciousness and that was by replacing her in it. He took a heavy intake of breath. OK, so how about starting right now? He could fill every evening with a hectic social life if he wanted—and right now that seemed like a good idea. A whole lot better than resorting to alcohol, for a start.
Shutting the drinks cabinet doors again, he strode from the room.
An hour later, changed from lounge suit to dinner jacket, he was mouthing polite nothings in a crowded salon at a cocktail party, wondering whether he needed his head examined. At least three women, each of them stunningly beautiful, were vying for his attention, and he was trying to give none of them reason to think he was favouring any of them. None of them, nor any of the other women at the party, had the slightest allure for him. Even after a second glass of vintage champagne.
Restlessly he looked about him, hoping against hope that someone, somewhere, would catch his eye. But as his gaze ran over the assembled females dispassionately not a single one made him look twice.
‘ … in the Caribbean … ‘
The fragment of speech brought him back. One of the women—a voluptuous brunette with lush lips and a traffic-stopping figure—was talking, it seemed, about a proposed cruise. She was pausing invitingly for him to say something.
But he wasn’t seeing her …
He was seeing Marisa leaning against him, curled up beside him on the wide palanquin-style sun-shelter in front of their cabana, overlooking the beach, sipping a cocktail with him as they watched the sun go down in a blaze of gold and crimson. Her body so soft,
