month she had waited to see if this was going to be the month when she could excitedly tell Jack she was pregnant. Except it hadn’t happened. Not the first year. Nor the second. Until in the end they had decided to see a specialist and find out if either of them had a problem—and, if they did, what to do about it.
The results of those tests had been devastating and, although Eva hadn’t realised it at the time, they had also sounded the death knell to her marriage.
Jack was sterile. One hundred per cent, no room for error, sterile.
Oh, they had told each other that it didn’t matter, that they had each other. It had only been when Eva suggested that maybe they could adopt that the chasm had widened even further between them. Jack had adamantly refused to consider adoption, stating that his blue-blood New York family would never accept as heir a child who wasn’t biologically Jack’s.
Eva had tried to believe that having each other really was enough. While each day she had died a little inside at the knowledge that there would never be any children in her marriage. No babies to love and nurture, her own or adopted. No happy house full of the children, she had longed for all her life after growing up an only child in the war zone that had been her parents’ marriage.
She and Jack had stayed together for another two years after the specialist had delivered his devastating news. Years during which they had drifted apart as they both buried themselves in their individual careers rather than face the ever-widening rift in their marriage. Years when Jack became involved in affair after affair—possibly as a sop to his dented virility?—only to break them off each time Eva found out about them, with tears and declarations of love on his part, and promises of future fidelity. Until the next time. And the next.
Eva’s love for Jack had died a little more with each of those affairs. Until there had been nothing left but the shell of their marriage. A marriage Eva wouldn’t have wanted to bring a child into even if it had been possible.
Another three years of being on her own after the divorce, of building her interior design business into one of the most successful in New York, and Eva had realised there was still something missing from her life. The same something that had always been missing from her life.
A baby of her own.
Lots of professional women had babies on their own nowadays—so why not Eva? She certainly had enough money to be able to provide for them both comfortably, and her career was of a kind that could be worked around a baby’s needs.
So the plan was to find herself a man who was healthy, explain to him what it meant to be an IVF donor, and present him with the legal contract she would expect him to sign. Both of them would be protected from any financial demands being made on the other after the baby was born.
Putting that idea into practice had proved much harder than Eva had imagined. Broaching the subject, asking any man to coldly, clinically donate his sperm for IVF, had proved difficult.
‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Glen.’ She smiled warmly, more for Markos Lyonedes’s benefit than Glen’s. Her smile faded as she turned to look at the Greek businessman. ‘If you will excuse us?’
‘Of course.’ Markos gave a slight inclination of his head, wondering what thoughts had been going through Eva’s head these past few minutes to form that frown between those golden eyes. Whatever they had been, he certainly didn’t hold out a lot of hope for Glen Asher’s chances of sharing her bed tonight. ‘It was a pleasure to meet you both.’
‘And you,’ Glen assured him warmly.
It was a warmth that was in no way reflected in Eva’s incredible gold eyes, and she made no effort to echo her escort’s enthusiasm. ‘We’ll wish you a good evening, then, Mr Lyonedes.’
His eyes laughed down into hers. ‘I believe you called me Markos earlier.’
‘Did I?’ she dismissed coolly. ‘How over-familiar of me!’
Not familiar enough for Markos. He turned to watch Eva and her escort cross the room to make their excuses to their host before leaving. All without those amber-gold eyes giving so much as a glance back in his direction.
Markos continued to watch the sensuous sway of those curvaceous hips so lovingly outlined in that clinging red gown, and made a silent promise to himself as the doorman closed the door behind Eva’s departure.
A promise that one day—or night; it didn’t really matter what time it was!—he would hear Eva scream his name as he made love to her.
‘WELL, well, well—if it isn’t Ms Evangeline Grey come to call at last!’ Markos observed dryly from where he sat in his high-backed leather chair behind the mahogany desk in his office.
Lena had shown the interior designer in at exactly five o’clock on Monday evening, before quietly closing the door behind her as she left them alone together.
Markos and the interior designer Evangeline Grey.
The same Evangeline Grey who had introduced herself to him as ‘Just Eva’ on Saturday evening, in the knowledge that she had cancelled two appointments with him earlier in the week.
Markos had wasted no time after she and Glen had left the party on Saturday in asking one of Senator Ashcroft’s many aides about the identity of the woman in the red dress. Only to be informed that she was the interior designer Evangeline Grey.
Those amber-gold eyes flashed her displeasure now, as she marched into the centre of the spacious office, allowing Markos to see that she managed to look sexy even wearing a business suit—a fitted black jacket and knee-length black skirt, the latter revealing long and silky-smooth legs. Her silk blouse was the same unusual colour as her eyes; her long ebony hair neatly gathered and secured at her crown.
‘Your telephone call this morning made it clear you expected me to be here promptly at five o’clock, whether it was convenient or otherwise,’ she reminded him with barely concealed impatience.
‘Indeed.’ Markos stood up and moved slowly round his desk to lean back against it as he looked down at her between narrowed lids. ‘And the fact that you are here would seem to imply that you were no happier than I was on Saturday at the possibility of having a slur cast upon your reputation?’
A frown appeared on that smooth alabaster brow. ‘That’s hardly a fair comparison, Mr Lyonedes, when the threats you made to me this morning were in regard to my professional reputation, not my personal one.’
‘I believe the saying is “payback can be a bitch”?’ He gave an unrepentant shrug. This woman had wilfully—deliberately!—played with him on Saturday evening by not revealing her true identity, and no doubt been highly amused at Markos’s expense because of it.
Markos had thought about it long and hard over the weekend, finally deciding that if Evangeline Grey wanted to play games then he was happy to oblige her. With that in mind he had telephoned her office himself that morning and demanded to speak to her personally. After a short delay there had been a more or less one-sided conversation during which Markos had informed her that there would be no more cancelled appointments. If she didn’t want him to tell anyone and everyone who cared to listen just how unreliable he had found her professional services she would come at five.
Her
