gallery opening.
Both times, Griffin had been without a date, but Eva wasn’t fooled. She’d seen women come and go. Mostly go, since Griffin seemed disinclined to bestow his greatness on any one woman for too long.
Her chin lifted, her eyes locking with Griffin’s. Despite her father’s poor introduction, there was no reason she should be defensive—she was perfectly comfortable with her decision.
“Carter Newell,” she said emphatically.
Griffin strolled farther into the room. “So congratulations are in order.”
She noticed he didn’t say he was offering any, just that it was what politeness dictated—if he were being polite.
Griffin’s gaze swept over her, and despite being dressed appropriately enough in a vintage Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress, she felt as if she were on display.
Her blood pressure went up. This was par for the course in her interactions with Griffin. Their conversations always had a subtext that her father was oblivious to.
“Congratulate her, but send condolences my way,” her father grumbled.
Griffin’s eyes focused on her hand. “Where’s the ring?”
His words were such a perfect echo of Marcus Tremont’s, she ground her teeth. “You’re just like my father.”
“And there’s nothing wrong with that!” her father said.
Her eyes stayed on Griffin’s, daring him to make some other comment.
Griffin’s lips quirked, almost as if he was ready to diffuse the challenge that hung in the air. “You look as if you’d like to lob hors d’oeuvres at me—or maybe spear me with a dessert fork.”
There it was again—an oblique, patronizing reference to her business, sailing straight over her father’s head. She should have known better than to believe for a second Griffin would back away from a challenge.
She smiled thinly. “Don’t tempt me.”
Turning to her father, she decided to change tactics. “You know, you should be happy,” she offered. “After all, the sooner I’m married, the sooner you might get the grandchild you keep referring to.”
To herself, she admitted the timing of her engagement to Carter might have the teeny, tiniest thing to do with the fact that she longed for a baby.
Though she’d dated through her twenties, the right man had never come along. Her mother had entered menopause prematurely, and she didn’t know how much time she herself had left. Of course, she’d taken a test, and while it indicated her egg supply wasn’t dire at the moment, she also knew waiting was a gamble with increasingly bad odds.
She’d told Carter about her issue with premature menopause, and he’d been enthusiastic about starting a family as soon as possible after the wedding.
“Anyone but Carter Newell,” her father shot back now.
She read Griffin’s silence as tacit agreement with that statement. Damn him.
Her father looked from Griffin back to her, his expression grumpier than ever. “If you two were at least friendly, I could have entertained the hope you’d marry each other.”
Eva sucked in a breath.
There it was, out in the open. Her father had finally given voice to what she’d always suspected he’d been thinking.
With a quick, sidelong glance, she noticed Griffin continued to look unruffled.
His reaction was so true to form, it was maddening.
She, on the other hand, was still waiting for the hot sting of embarrassment to recede from her face.
She opened her mouth.
“Marcus,” Griffin drawled before she could speak, “you know Eva is too—”
If he said frivolous, she swore she’d kick him in the shins.
“—hot-tempered for me.”
She clamped her mouth shut. How could she argue when she’d just been thinking of clobbering him?
Griffin’s eyes mocked her, as if he knew what she’d been contemplating.
She swung her attention back to her father.
She sometimes felt like just another prized possession in Marcus Tremont’s asset portfolio—and by marrying Carter Newell, she supposed her father wasn’t getting the return he’d banked on.
Still, she refused to weaken. “Mom and I will be checking out possible venues and going dress shopping.”
Her father’s eyebrows lowered. “Your mother knows about this already?”
She pasted on a sunny smile. “I suggested that’s what my plans were to her before I came in here, yes. But I decided to go beard the lion in his den by myself.”
Her father glowered.
“I hope to see you at the wedding—whether you can bring yourself to give me away or not.” The words were said flippantly, but a thread of emotion ran beneath them that she refused to analyze too closely.
She turned on her heel and, not sparing another glance at Griffin, strode out of her father’s library.
She was everything he desired, but in the wrong package.
Griffin watched Eva Tremont sashay out of the library, her clingy knit dress hugging every curve.
His lips twisted.
She was quite a package, and had been ever since he’d first laid eyes on her. She was equal parts headstrong heiress, savvy businesswoman and sexy single woman.
It was also clear she despised him. If he had to guess, he’d say it was because he reminded her of every way she fell short as Marcus Tremont’s heir.
That he’d more recently become CEO of Tremont REH was probably just rubbing salt in the wounds.
Still, his ties to Marcus Tremont and Tremont REH were also the reason Eva was off-limits to him, he reminded himself. He wasn’t the commitment type, and committed was the only type of relationship that would be acceptable with the boss’s daughter.
Of course, now that he remained on as CEO of Tremont REH more as a favor to Marcus than anything else, Eva wasn’t really the boss’s daughter any longer, but she remained related to someone he valued as a friend, a colleague and a mentor.
“That bastard Newell,” Marcus Tremont said, calling him back from his thoughts.
Griffin had met Carter Newell only a couple of times. But he’d been able to size the guy up as a smooth operator on the make.
When Carter had trumpeted his skills as a financial advisor, Griffin had listened detachedly,
