style="font-size:15px;"> He climbed in beside her and she turned to him without missing a beat. “Where is our home?”
“My home—” he closed his door with a bang “—is Athens.”
She gaped at him. “Athens?”
“It’s where I live, and I must take care of you.” He gave her a brief, tight smile. “Doctor’s orders.”
“So I live there with you?”
“No.”
“We don’t live together?”
“You like to travel,” he said ironically.
“So where are my clothes?” she said in a small voice. “And my passport?”
“Likely at your stepfather’s estate. My staff will collect your things and meet us at the airport.”
“But…” She looked out the window, then turned back to face him and said in a rush, lifting her chin, “I want to see my home. My childhood home. Where is it?”
He gave her an assessing glance. “Your stepfather’s estate is in Buckinghamshire, I believe. But visiting there won’t help you. You spent one night there before the funeral. It hasn’t been your home for a long time.”
“Please, Talos.” Her sapphire eyes gleamed. “I want to see my home.”
His brow furrowed as he looked down at her pleading face.
Eve really had changed, he thought. His mistress had never begged him for anything. She’d never even said please.
Except…
Except for the first night he’d taken her to his bed, when all her defenses had been briefly stripped away and he’d discovered the most desired woman in the world was, against all expectations, a virgin. As he’d pushed himself inside her, she’d looked up at him in a breathless hush with those violet-blue eyes, and he’d thought…he’d almost thought…
He cut off the memory savagely.
He wouldn’t think about how it had once been with her. He wouldn’t think how she had nearly made him lose everything, including his mind.
Eve Craig was a fatal habit that he’d finally broken—and he intended to keep it that way.
“Very well,” he ground out, turning back to face her. “I will take you home—but just to collect your things. We cannot stay.”
Her lovely face brightened. She looked so young without makeup, with her hair in the casual ponytail. She looked barely old enough to be in college, far younger than his own thirty-eight years.
“Thank you,” she said warmly.
Thank you. Another phrase he’d never heard from her before.
He turned away, leaning back in the beige leather seat as his chauffeur drove smoothly through the city, turning right from Marylebone to the Edgware Road. As the car merged onto the M1 heading north, Talos stared out at the passing rain, then closed his eyes, tense and weary from jet lag and the whiplash of the past two days.
Eve, pregnant.
He was still reeling.
No wonder she’d crashed her car, he thought dully. Just the thought of losing her figure and not fitting into all her designer clothes must have made her crazy. All those months of not being able to drink champagne and dance till dawn with all of her rich, beautiful, shallow friends? Eve must have been more than shocked—she must have been furious.
Eve, pregnant.
He would not trust her to take care of a house plant, much less a child. She was not even slightly maternal. She wouldn’t love a baby. She was the least loving person Talos had ever met.
Slowly, he opened his eyes.
He hadn’t even known about the baby an hour ago, but now he was absolutely sure of one thing.
He had to protect his child.
“So I don’t live in England,” he heard her say. Steeling his expression, he turned to face her. Her face looked bewildered, almost sad as she added hesitantly, “I don’t have a home?”
Home. Against his will, he had the sudden image of Eve in his bedroom at Mithridos, spread across his large bed, with the curtains twisting from the sea breeze coming off the sparkling Aegean. That had never happened, and it never would!
“You live in hotels,” he answered coldly. “I told you. You travel constantly.”
“So how do I hold down a job?” she said in disbelief.
“You don’t. You spend your days shopping and attending parties around the world. You’re an heiress. A famous beauty.”
She gaped at him. “You’re joking.”
“No.” He left it at that. He could hardly explain how she and her dissolute friends traveled in packs like parasites, sucking a luxury hotel dry before moving on to the next. If he told her that, she might hear the scorn in his voice and question the true nature of his feelings.
Malakas, how was it possible that he’d been so caught by her? What madness had possessed him to be so enslaved?
How could he make sure that his child never was neglected, hurt or abandoned by her after she regained her memory?
A new thought suddenly occurred to him.
If she could not remember him, if she could not remember who she was or what she’d done, it meant she would have no idea of what was about to hit her. She would have no defenses.
A slow smile curved his lips as he built his new plan. He could take everything from her, including their baby. And she would never see it coming.
“So I was here for my stepfather’s funeral,” she said softly. “But I’m not British.”
“Your mother was, I believe. You both returned to England some years ago.”
She brightened. “My mother!”
“Dead,” he informed her brutally.
She froze, her face crumpling. Watching the swift movement of scenery on the outskirts of London through the window behind her, he remembered that her mother’s death was fresh news to her. And that he was supposed to be in love with her. He had to make her believe that if he wanted his plan to succeed.
“I’m sorry, Eve,” he said abruptly. “But as far as I know, you have no family.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice.
Pulling her into his arms, he held her close against his chest, kissing the top of her head. Her hair, messy and unwashed, still managed to smell like vanilla and sugar, the scents he associated with her. The scent that immediately made his body go hard
