was she was saying to him. Without much tempting she managed to urge the manager into motion to the music, his big hands spanning her tiny waist, his dark head dipped to maintain eye contact. Like that, they teased each other as they swayed.
Suddenly Ethan knew it was time to leave. Downing the rest of his drink, he came to his feet, placed some money on the bar and wished the girl behind it a light farewell. As he walked towards the dancers he thought he saw Eve move that extra inch closer to Jack’s impressive body.
Done for his benefit? he asked himself, then shot that idea in the foot with a silent huff of scorn to remind himself that Eve Herakleides disliked him as much as he disliked her.
Outside the air was like warm damp silk against his skin. The humidity was high, and looking out to sea Ethan could see clouds gathering on the horizon aiming to spoil the imminent sunset. There could be a storm tonight, he predicted as he turned in the direction of his beach house. Behind him the sound of a woman’s laughter came drifting towards him from inside the bar. Without thinking he suddenly changed direction and his feet were kicking hot sand as he ran toward the water and made a clean racing dive into its cool clear depths.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Jack cautioned. ‘He’s too old and too dangerous for a sweet little flirt like you.’
Dragging her eyes away from the sight of Ethan Hayes in full sprint as he headed for the ocean, Eve looked into Jack Banning’s knowing gaze—and mentally ran for cover. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said.
Jack didn’t believe her. ‘Ethan Hayes could eat you for a snack without touching his appetite,’ he informed her without a hint of mockery to make the bitter pill of truth an easier one to swallow.
‘Like you, you mean,’ she said with a kissable pout, which was really another duck-and-run. ‘Big bad Jack,’ she murmured as she moved in closer then began swaying so provocatively that he had to physically restrain her.
He did it with a white-toothed, highly amused, grin. ‘Minx,’ he scolded. ‘If your grandfather could see you he would have you locked up—these messages you put out are dangerous.’
‘My grandpa adores me too much to do anything so primitive.’
‘Your grandfather, my little siren, arrives on this island tomorrow,’ Jack reminded her. ‘Let him see this look you’re wearing on your face and we will soon learn how primitive he can be…’
CHAPTER TWO
ETHAN took his time swimming down the length of the bay to come out of the water opposite the beach house he was using while he was here. It belonged to Leandros Petronades, a business associate, who had understood his need to get away from it all for a week or two if he wasn’t going to do something stupid like walk out on his ten-year-strong working partnership with Victor Frayne.
Victor…Ethan’s feet stilled at the edge of the surf as the same anger that had caused the rift between the two of them rose up to burn at his insides again.
Victor had used him, or had allowed him to be used, as a decoy in the crossfire between Victor’s daughter, Leona, and her estranged husband, Sheikh Hassan Al-Qadim. In the Sheikh’s quest to recover his wife, Leona and Ethan had been ambushed then dragged off into the night. When Ethan had eventually come round from a knockout blow to his jaw, it had been to find he’d been made virtual prisoner on Sheikh Hassan’s luxury yacht. But if he’d thought his pride had taken a battering when he’d been wrestled to the ground and rendered helpless with that knockout blow, then his interview with the Sheikh the next morning had turned what was left of his pride to pulp.
The man was an arrogant bastard, Ethan thought grimly. What Leona loved about him he would never understand. If he had been her father, he would have been putting up a wall of defence around her rather than aiding and abetting her abduction by a man whom everyone knew had been about to take a second wife! 19
Leona had been out of that marriage—best out of that marriage! Now she was back in it with bells ringing and—
Bending down he picked up a conch shell then turned and hurled it into the sea. He wished to goodness he hadn’t had that conversation with Jack Banning. He wished he could stuff all of these violent feelings back into storage where he had managed to hide them for the last week. Now he was angry with himself again, angry with Victor, and angry with Sheikh Hassan Al-Qadim and the whole damn world, probably.
On that heavily honest assessment, he turned back to face land again. Leandros Petronades had been his saviour when he’d offered him the use of this place. Not that the Greek’s motives had been in the least bit altruistic, Ethan reminded himself. As one of the main investors in their Spanish project, Leandros had been protecting his own back, plus several other business ventures his company had running with Hayes-Frayne. A bust up between Ethan and Victor would have left him with problems he did not need or want. So when he’d happened to walk in on the furious row the two partners had been locked in, had seen the huge purple bruise on Ethan’s face and had heard enough to draw his own conclusions as how the bruise got there, Leandros had immediately suggested that Ethan needed a break while he cooled off.
So here he was, standing on the beach of one of the most exclusive islands in the Caribbean, and about the lush green hillside in front of him nestled the kind of properties most people only dreamed about. The Visconte hotel complex occupied a central position, forming the hub around which all activities on the island revolved. Either side of the hotel stood the private villas belonging to those wealthy enough to afford a plot of land here. André Visconte himself owned a private estate. The powerful Galloway family owned many properties, forming a small hamlet of their own in the next bay. But if the size of a plot was indicative of wealth, then the villa belonging to Theron Herakleides had to be the king.
Painted sugar-pink, it sat inside a framework of ancient date-and fabulous flame-trees about halfway up the hill. From the main house the garden swept down to sea level via a series of carefully tended terraces: sun terraces, pool terraces, garden terraces that wouldn’t be believed to be real outside a film set. There were tennis courts and even a velvet smooth croquet lawn, though Ethan could not bring himself to imagine that Theron Herakleides had ever bothered to use it. Then there were the guest houses scattered about the grounds, all painted that sugar-pink colour which came into its own with every burning sunset. Almost on the sand sat the Herakleides beach house, the part of her grandfather’s estate that Eve was using while she was here.
It had to be the worst kind of luck that the Petronades and the Herakleides estates were beside each other, because it placed her beach house right next door to his, Ethan mused heavily, as he trod the soft sand on his way up the beach. Other than for Eve’s close proximity he was happy with his modest accommodation. The beach houses might be small but they possessed a certain charm that appealed to the artist in him. Nothing grand: just an open-plan living room and kitchen, a bathroom and a bedroom.
All he needed, in other words, he acknowledged as he came to a stop at the low white-washed wall that was there to help keep the sand back rather than mark the boundary to the property. Set into the wall was a white picket gate that gave access to a simple garden and the short path that led to a shady veranda. Next to the gate was a concrete tub overhung by a freshwater shower head. Pulling his wet tee shirt off over his head he tossed it onto the wall, then stepped into the tub and switched on the tap that brought cool water cascading over his head.
His skin shone dark gold in the deepening sunset, muscles rippled across his shoulders and back, as he sluiced the sand and salt from his body. Standing a few short yards away on the hot concrete path that ran right around the bay, Eve watched him with the same fascination she had surrendered
